The Mothers A Novel - By Jennifer Gilmore Page 0,46

cleared her throat.

“There’s also e-mail.”

“I thought we’d be able to talk,” she said. “There’s not a lot of e-mailing here.”

“Anyway.”

“I think this is good news, though.”

“You think?” I asked her. “Well then it must be!” I was becoming furious, but I could not say why that was.

“Yes,” she said. “I do. All those hormones, after everything you’ve been through, I just don’t know if that was good for you. Being pregnant could be difficult too for you, I mean, if all that stuff had worked.”

“Stuff.”

“Okay, treatments.”

“Hmm,” I said. The sound of judgment. I guess I didn’t like it much either.

“How are you feeling? Can I help with anything?” she asked.

“You mean physically?”

“Both,” she said. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Yes,” I said, tensing up. “I feel just fine.”

“How’s your stomach? Are you able to eat okay?”

“Yes.” But I no longer wanted to discuss it with her.

There was silence.

“And how about the adoption? Are you excited?”

“Excited? No. Feeling hopeful,” I said. “Cautiously optimistic,” I told her, though this was just something I had read that I was supposed to feel.

“Being positive is important.”

I didn’t respond. People were always telling me such things. Had this all happened because I had been negative? Like Ramon and I just had fantastically awful karma? I made another mental note not to send my hypothetical child to school in California. “Yes,” I said. “It is. Anyway, you’re surfing in El Salvador, right?” El Salvador. It might be a fascinating place. Our future baby could have biological parents from there.

More breathing. But I noted that it seemed quiet, in Punta wherever. I tried to picture my sister, tan, her legs smooth, the color of Bambi, and easy on a board. Instead I kept picturing her at her eighth-grade dance, a huge corsage strapped to her wrist, waiting for her date to arrive. Now I didn’t hear the sounds of people or traffic or the sea breaking hard on the shore. “I’m not surfing, but yes, there is surfing here. It’s actually the largest break in Latin America.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

Lucy laughed. “It’s good is what it means. People come from all over to catch the waves here.”

“Okay!” I said. “Dude.”

She laughed. “In any case, all’s well. Seems like we’re both fine! I should get going, but maybe we can talk again soon.”

“Okay,” I said. “Talk to you soon then.”

“Kiss Harry for me,” she said before hanging up.

I smiled when she said this, but I had the worst feeling, when I hung up, that I had missed the purpose of our conversation, that we both had. We had been apart for so long and no longer knew how to speak, other than as strangers. How are you feeling? we said, but what we meant was, Where are you? Who are you now? Are you still in there?

_______

The next day, Ramon and I were back on the road—albeit this time just for a forty-five-minute jaunt to White Plains—for our information session with the organization that, as our agency did not have an office in New York, would be handling our local paperwork and doing our home study. The moment we got on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, we hit traffic.

“About tonight,” Ramon said now. “Let’s try and let other people talk a little tonight, okay?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Other people need to talk,” he said.

“Well, I’m sorry.” Wounded, I gazed longingly out at the road.

“Me for instance. Or anyone. You could really just let anyone talk.”

“Oh sure!” How easily can hurt become anger? Far too easily. “Sure. And why don’t you try and not say something completely stupid then. Okay?”

“I said let’s. I did not say you. God, Jesse.”

“Yes you did,” I said. “I know what you meant. I know exactly what you meant.” I felt the anxiety filling me, water poured over ice, crackling, in a tall glass. Please, I thought, let us just not be late.

“Of course you did. Because you take over every conversation we ever have. Stupid?” Ramon was incredulous, his hand thumping the wheel. “What, may I ask, do you find that I say to be so stupid?”

“Let’s see.” I placed a finger to the side of my cheek, replicating a person deep in thought. “Calling people who are in charge of getting us a child the wrong name? Stupid. Telling the entire group that we didn’t agree how we were going to raise our children with regards to religion? Also stupid.”

“We agreed when we signed on for this,” Ramon said, “that we were