The Mothers A Novel - By Jennifer Gilmore Page 0,29

awesome!”

“Cheese?” My mother swatted Harriet’s nose; she was already grazing around the table.

“But hopefully it will be soon.” Ramon walked over to the coffee table and cut a slice of Manchego, clearly chosen in his honor. “I, for one, certainly hope this is all over very soon.”

Why couldn’t he have just said “we”? I clenched my teeth. I am angry at everyone, I thought. How will I stop being angry at everyone? Ramon had opened the door to discussion.

“I understand.” My mother watched him eat her proffered cheese. “We are really excited to hear all about your weekend. You know you haven’t talked to us much about this at all.”

I closed my eyes. How would I explain? About one of those blond social workers—Crystal or Tiffany, with their Johnson’s No More Tangles–like smell, asking us, their faint eyebrows raised: Will the adoptive child feel welcome in your home, embraced by all members of the family? Will the adoptive child feel welcomed by the prospective adoptive grandparents?

“We’re not against talking to you about it, Mom.”

“Thanks so much for taking Harriet.” Ramon looked at both of my parents.

“We love having her!” My dad cut himself a big slice of cheese.

“Anyway.” I grabbed my bag to go upstairs. “Just so you know, we’re dancing as fast as we can.”

_______

Up up up to the attic. The goddamned attic. It is a place, but let’s be real, the attic is also a metaphor. And so is the woman who lives there. I was moved to the attic when Lucy was born and she, in all her adorable, teensy babyness, took over the room next to my parents’ bedroom.

I heard the padding of Ramon making his way up the carpeted stairs behind me.

“Can you believe that?” I hissed, turning toward him.

“Come on, Jesse.” Ramon reached the top step. “Your mom’s just trying to help.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, please.”

“You have to relax.” Ramon put his hands on my shoulders.

I shook them loose. “Seriously? If you tell me to calm down, I might lose my mind.”

“I said relax.”

The last time I’d seen Michelle, Zoe had been playing with some hideous bald doll at the table, and, reaching to pat my arm, she’d told me, as her kid banged the shit out of the doll, It will happen for you guys. Everyone I know who has really wanted a child has gotten one, she’d said. I’d laughed inwardly then, but now, here in the attic, I thought perhaps the problem was that I had not wanted this enough. Perhaps I had, like so many mothers, had my doubts. My wasted wishes, ones I’d made in this room, for boys to love me, for my sister to disappear, for my nightmares to recede and my dreams to come true—perhaps these were responsible for what I now lacked.

“I am as relaxed as I’m going to get,” I told Ramon as I lay back on my old twin bed.

“You know, we don’t have that many black friends,” Ramon said. “A few, but not that many.”

I breathed deeply. “What’s your point?”

“You took the black pom-pom. You just took them all without thinking.”

“Oh, I thought,” I said.

“Did you though?” Ramon asked.

“You guys ready for dinner?” my mother called from below.

Up came Harriet, her little brown nose peering over the top stair.

“Harriet!” I threw myself on top of her, willing her to lie down. She licked my face. I lifted up the leather of her ear and whispered to her, and she kept trying to pull away to lick my face, language too much for her to bear.

“I might have liked to choose too,” Ramon said.

“We’re good!” I screamed downstairs. “Be there in a minute!”

9

__

At the dinner table Ramon talked to my parents with an easy manner he rarely possessed in social situations. For him there was a divide between family and non-family, and tonight he seemed natural in his skin as he chatted casually with my parents about the weekend.

“And then”—he gestured with his fork—“we had to choose colored pom-poms. And deal with a lot of forms. Wait, let me back up. We have to get this eight hundred number. Randy,” Ramon said to my dad, “can we do it from your business line, which would then be forwarded to our cell? But anyway, that’s a whole other thing, basically, the mothers—”

“The birthmothers.” I could sense it gathering itself up in the pit of my stomach, the past, dinner, a tight fist, a ball of hair and bones; I could feel all of