up, his fingers still poised over the keyboard. “When is the part that is mutually beneficial? The altruism part. The goddamn adoption part. Because this is ridiculous. Who does that? It’s like preying on the elderly.”
“Thanks.” I thought, If I get a child right this minute, when that child is my age, if I am still alive, I will be just about eighty. Just about.
“You know what I meant.”
I went to check my e-mail, trying to get far away from this moment, a trick that I can only say I have learned from growing up a girl.
Among my accumulation of morning e-mails there was one from that friend who consistently sent out mass messages about dogs.
I clicked on the link and, as always, there was a dog in need. This one, a beautiful gray pit bull with a creamy white chest, maybe eight months old, had been found chained to the Williamsburg Bridge during the snowstorm the night Heather called. Who would do that? Who would leave a beautiful, helpless animal that way? I tried not to think about Harriet’s ever leaving us. I started sobbing for the dog, abandoned and freezing, all alone on the bridge. What did the world look like to him now? I thought.
Who would do such a thing?
_______
After several hours, I left my office/closet and went to the kitchen to make a sandwich. Ramon and Harriet were on a walk, and while they were out, I noticed that the daisies Ramon had gotten me on the way home from the restaurant two nights previously, delicate as wildflowers, had drunk up much of the vase’s water and perked up. I was about to trim their stems and add more water when my phone rang. Katrina. I had removed her icon but I had not expelled her from my phone book altogether, and now I made out her name through the fractured face and leaking ink. It had been well over a month since we’d spoken, and I didn’t know if she was pregnant, or if she was ever pregnant. I didn’t know if she was looking for a friend or for money, and I didn’t know if she was a Nazi, and still? I was excited.
Because, I thought, Katrina from Joshua Tree might be our birthmother. Because she might hold what we want like a cloud holds the rain. Because perhaps she had her pregnancy confirmation and had talked to other prospective adoptive parents, from many agencies, but she had still decided we were perfect, and, because she lives across the country, we will send photos and letters as our child grows and we will not have to deal with the host of Aryan Nation boyfriends she courts.
“Hello?” I answered in that breathless way I will never be
able to control. I grabbed a pen and turned a bank envelope blank side up.
No one said anything but I could hear movement in the background.
“Hello?” I said. “Trina? Are you there?”
Still there was no answer, but I could hear her speaking. Oh, that looks cute, she said. There was murmuring, and then the sharp knifelike sound of a hanger moving along a rack, the ruffle of clothing, the smack of plastic hangers hitting other plastic hangers. Let me see, I heard Katrina say. Turn around, she said.
I sat down on the couch, where I could see that on the fire escape, the snow was still piled high.
Cassie, that tank top is so cute! I like the way it hits you just here at the waist. Right here, she said, and there was again the sound of movement. I knew Katrina was touching her daughter at the hip. Come on, let me see. We should get that one.
I lay back on the couch and looked up at the bowed ceiling. I held my breath. I couldn’t hang up.
Oh, do you see those boots there? Do you want to try them on?
Something was said that I could not catch, and then I heard Trina’s voice again. Oh, that is nice. Go try that on, honey.
Then there was a voice from a distance. Mom? It was farther away than Trina’s voice but I could hear it clearly; I could hear its youth. Do you think this is too small?, the voice, the voice of a teenager, said. Mom?
I stood up, cradled the phone between my neck and shoulder, and pulled a daisy, dripping with water, from the vase on the mantel. I watched my thumb snap the bloom from the stem.