The Mothers A Novel - By Jennifer Gilmore Page 0,18

strangling me on the inside where possibility breathed.

“But what if I want to sleep through this too?” I asked the dark now.

I could hear the cars moving along the highway. I could hear the ice machine cracking in the hallway, the ding of the elevator traveling inside the building. What would my life be like? I wondered, as I had lost my earlier clarity, and with it, my power to imagine. If I could see the face of the child that would be ours, I would know even a little. There in the dark rose the magic pot. I felt Claudine hovering over me, her substantial arm around my neck, the other in front, holding the book, her deep odor of sweat and musk, and the strong timbre of her voice. She turned the thick pages and I can’t say I wished for my mother then, but I wished to see her now, as I could see the magic pot drawn in that book, on the ground of a farmer’s dusty field at dusk, lacking enchantment. It grew in my imagination, so massive and black, a pot to be stirred by a coven of witches, a cauldron in a forest in winter, cold and oh so empty.

5

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The next day we were exactly on time. We were the second couple to arrive, and I felt confident and assured as I pulled my chair up to the pretend wooden table, a packet—the yellow logo of a sun beaming along the agency’s name—placed neatly at each space, like a table setting.

“Good morning.” I nodded to the other couple. “Anita!” I said, because I remembered her name. She was a veterinarian. There has never been a vet I haven’t liked or couldn’t talk to.

Anita’s eyes cracked into whiskerlike laugh wrinkles as she smiled.

“Mornin’,” she said.

Ramon nodded. He never remembered anyone’s name, ever. And this was compounded by the fact that, though he worked in graphic design and was a visual person, he could not recall faces either. Suffice it to say, it was great fun to go to a party with my husband.

“You guys, you and Paula,” I said, loud enough so it would somehow imprint on Ramon’s brain. “Remember, Ramon?” I asked.

Ramon leaned over and shook hands. “I think we need to put our name tags back on,” he said, after which one of the delicate-skinned social workers hustled over to a table and shuffled through some papers for blank name tags. She sat and began to painstakingly write our names again, the tip of her tongue protruding from her mouth.

Soon the other couples materialized, taking the same places they had the previous evening. And then Nickie emerged from the office with a regal let’s-get-down-to-business stance, and the training was thus commenced.

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The day was mind-numbing. We were given a wide range of information, including, but in no way limited to, how to create a profile, which includes a letter to the birthmother and photos—with captions—of our lives together. The birthmothers receive these profiles from the agency, sometimes in huge stacks, and this is our way of introduction. We learned the word count for birthmother letters (950 words), what we should communicate in these letters (who we are, where we’re from, why we’ve chosen open adoption, just to start), the sizes of the photos (five by seven for the main one, the one that should communicate visually that we are in love, which should be in front of a seasonless plant), what we should be doing in the photos, what we should be wearing in the photos (bright colors), what we should be thinking in the photos (how much we want to be parents).

There were toll-free numbers to call and be called on, websites to visit and to create, designers to contact, though I saw Ramon scoff at that.

“How will you portray that you’re committed to each other, to being parents? How do you want to be perceived?” Nickie said. “Who are you as a couple?”

I looked around at the other couples. Brian, a journalist in DC, was most recognizable to me, with his jeans and a hunter-green wool sweater, the collar of a shirt folded at the neck casually, unlike the blinding white, knifelike corners of his partner Gabe’s shirt. Gabe had his hand at Brian’s back and together they looked over the sample brochures, bright, sturdy flyers of couples who had come before us and had already measured their photos properly, found foliage to stand in front of in the middle of