The Mothers A Novel - By Jennifer Gilmore Page 0,86
to give up the child. Or? If the father does know the adoption plan, because then he can hinder it. If it’s early in the pregnancy, before five months, say, then the birthmother has ample time to change her mind. If the grandparents are involved, they can decide they will parent the child. And if they’re not involved, that’s a red flag too, because the birthmother isn’t getting the support she needs.
“That’s not a problem,” I said. I did not mention the Third Reich imagery. “Trina told me she’d be going to the doctor on Wednesday. We’re set to talk after her appointment.”
“That’s great!” Crystal said. “I’ll let you know as soon as I get the paperwork.”
_______
Katrina did not call me after her appointment on Wednesday, nor did she call on Thursday. On Friday I left her a message, and then I tried her several days later.
“Oh hi, Jesse.” She sounded very faraway. Not just alone-on-the-surface-of-the-night-desert far, but also: gone. As if I had not heard about her mother who never loved her, her daughter’s drug problem, her son’s anger-management issues.
“Hey there!” I was terribly cheerful. “How are you?” I thought then of something Katrina had said in one of our many hours of previous conversations: What would I have been had I the power to choose my own mother? she’d asked. I could have everything you have. I could have been a professor, like you, or a doctor or a musician. I want to choose my child’s mother right.
But she was only choosing by what a mother does. I realized, from where she sat, trying to get herself and her children out of a trailer park I saw tilted on some desert precipice, that was important. A professor? I speak from experience: great hours, summers off, but the world is coming down around us. I thought, My mother was a good person, her job was a job that helped people. But was she a good mother? I thought of all the mothers of my youth—the ones who schlepped us across town, who cut oranges into smiles for our soccer games, who sewed patches on their kids’ torn pants, the ones who were there, station wagons humming, when we got out of school. Who was a better mother? Claudine read to me before my parents came home. But does it really matter who read to me? Because I was read to. I grew up being read to every day.
“I’m in the grocery store, can I call you back?” Katrina asked.
Her tone was changed, dismissive. I wondered if she had found someone else, another person who had what she wanted, for herself or for her child; I couldn’t say.
_______
“Nope,” Crystal said when I called to tell her. “We never got a verification of Katrina’s pregnancy. Sometimes,” she said, “the birthmothers are scared. They’re so young. They change their minds.”
“She’s forty.” The rare birthmother bird, shaking the branches of a leaf-filled tree. I pictured Carmen again, young and beautiful and hopeful, a spiral notebook at her chest as she leaned back dreamily against her locker.
“It’s like dating,” Crystal said now. “You get some duds before you find true love.”
“She’s a grandmother,” I said. I still did not tell Crystal about the emblems of Nazism on Myspace, which would have precluded another date on both our parts.
“She might not have been pregnant,” Crystal said. “She might have just been looking for a friend. Or she might be shopping around agencies. She might have been after money.”
“Why,” I asked Crystal, “am I talking to someone who has not sent in a confirmation of pregnancy?”
“Sometimes it takes a while to get that. Sometimes,” she said, “we have to go on our reserves of faith. You will have a child. It might not be Katrina’s and it might not be the next birthmother’s, but it will totally happen for you guys!”
How many ways, I thought, my breath short, can we fail?
_______
I called to tell Lucy about Katrina, and as the phone rang I could imagine the beat of the conversation. Did I tell you the one about the Nazi birthmother? I would ask her. She goose-stepped right out of the picture, I would say, and we would both laugh.
“Hey, Mom,” I said when my mother answered.
“Hi, honey. How are you?”
“Fine!” I said cheerily. “Is Lucy around?”
“She is.” She paused. “She’s had a few complications,” she whispered into the phone. “Nothing serious, she’s going to be fine, but she’s going to stay here for the birth.”