The Mothers A Novel - By Jennifer Gilmore Page 0,50

ice pack–like, over my left eye.

“That’s not really the beginning, though,” I said, removing my hand. Would he mention that we were out of money? Because that could preclude us from getting a baby. Would he mention that word—cancer—because that could very well do it too. I couldn’t remain silent. “I mean, that’s not really exactly why we came to adoption, because you didn’t want to do IVF anymore, is it?” I asked Ramon.

I could feel the temperature of the room change as people shuffled their feet. Lydia looked at us with unconcealed interest.

Ramon scanned the room. He swallowed hard. I watched his Adam’s apple move along the knobby spinelike track of his throat. “We are so happy to be here.” He looked around the table, eyes glistening. “And very relieved.”

My limbs loosened, the tension in my body draining. Perhaps this would not be a mutiny after all. I nodded my head. “We are really really relieved.”

“Everyone here is coming from a different place,” Lydia told

the group. “But I think we can all recognize that adoption is not always everyone’s first choice. That’s the reality, and everyone’s journey here is different. Even those in couples often feel differently about it.”

I nodded. The tone was so all-encompassing that I could see us dabbing patchouli behind our ears, joining hands, and breaking into “Kumbaya.” And while I was grateful Ramon did not mention our finances or my illness, I understood his urge to discuss them both. Ramon was making less money now, and we owed an irresponsible amount for doctor and hospital bills. My job was not secure. I was a cancer survivor—it was only because the cancer had been in remission for almost fifteen years that we were even entitled to pursue domestic adoption at all—and I wondered if that could be considered an ethnicity of some kind, if there could be affirmative action for the almost-died.

I remembered it then, that moment just before I was to have my first and rather sudden surgery. My mother led the surgeon by his elbow, out of the room. Doctor, she’d said—I could hear her, and she was so plaintive, my mother, who up until that moment, I had always seen in charge—will she be able to have children?

Yes, of course, he had said, and even through the haze of pain medication I’d thought he was one of those doctors who can close a woman down with a mere nod of the head.

My mother had come back into the room. You can still have children, my mother told me, taking my hand.

Jesus, Mom, I’d said. I don’t give a shit about children right now. I remember that I said this.

You will, my mother had said, patting my hand. I know that you will.

“Thank you.” I dipped my head to Lydia. I looked across the table at the single woman, so that she might continue the introductions, ensuring our story would end there, for now, willing myself, just this once, to be silent.

“Well,” the single woman began. “I had to make a decision. It was now or never . . .”

_______

The last person to speak that night was Lisa, of the white couple. I learned she was, in fact, in her early fifties. She was tall and thin, and pinched and plain and nervous and sad. The man looked younger and more dapper in his tie and hat, and he was fidgety as his wife spoke, gazing around the room with a glazed expression. I did not like him in the least.

“I’m Lisa and this is my husband, Danny. We are here because we want to foster a child again,” she began, clearing her throat. I watched her long bony fingers work themselves. “We are older, I know, and Danny already has a child, a girl, who is grown.” She looked down at her hands.

Danny’s legs were crossed and the top one kicked vigorously, rocking his upper body. He looked at his watch.

“We were fostering a boy until a little over eight months ago.” She took a huge breath and stopped suddenly, as if her heart had caught in her expanding chest. “He died!” she said, with more emphasis than I know she’d intended. “He was four years old. We’d been fostering him for two years. He had congenital heart failure.”

I closed my eyes and opened them again. And I could feel Ramon do the same.

“We are ready”—Lisa looked down at the table—“to do this again. Adoption is just not an option for us. We’re