“Yeah, yeah, move along, folks, nothing to see here.” Dan had nudged her up the stairs with his duffel bag, and when they were in his old bedroom with the door closed, she pushed him flat on his back on his twin bed and pounced on top of him.
Now Dan crosses their bedroom and sits down next to her, feathering his fingers through her hair. “Where are you going this morning?”
“Southeast, for a birth mother’s doctor’s appointment. But I can drop you off.”
Dan strips off his crinkling orange rain jacket, lies down next to her, and rests his head on her chest, cupping her breast through her tank top.
“You know you’re my transportation queen, don’t you? Driving Miss Daisy.” He kisses her neck, and she thinks, Birth moms keep her waiting all the time, so what if she’s a few minutes late?
CHLOE PARKS NEXT TO the Dumpsters at the squat, stucco apartment complex in Southeast, an area of Portland known as Felony Flats. Last year she convinced Judith to pay Julio the landlord a flat five hundred dollars a year to accept any birth parents they cosign with, regardless of their record or lifestyle. So far they have had seven birth mothers living here, some with their husbands, boyfriends, other children, though they usually move on quickly. Only Heather and Penny are here now.
She checks around the car before she gets out as she gathers her file, cell phone, and purse. There is nowhere in the city where she is truly nervous for her safety, but this, and maybe a few sections of North Portland, are as close as it comes.
Heather and her son Michael live in 12, on the ground floor, across from Jason and Penny. Chloe glances toward their apartment, blinds pulled low, as she trudges through the muddy pathway in the courtyard, the mulch worn thin, littered with cigarette butts sucked into the quagmire.
Heather opens on her first knock.
“Chloe, you’re late!” she says as she buttons her son’s raincoat. “My appointment is at nine thirty, and we’ve got to get the car seat in and stuff.” She hands Chloe Michael’s car seat, covered in mashed granola bar bits.
“Sorry. Traffic, weather.” Chloe waggles her fingers at Michael, hiding behind his mother’s gray pilled sweatpants.
“Michael, honey, say hi.” Heather is flustered, brushing her hair back toward her dangling ponytail, and Chloe is once again taken with how beautiful she is, the sharp angles of her rosy cheeks, everything in her face fresh without makeup. You could open any magazine and see models, albeit with straight teeth, a team of stylists, and no kids, trying to look this good.
“You look great,” she says, and Heather harrumphs.
“Come on, honey,” she says, hiking Michael up to her hip, his thick toddler thigh riding over the top of her belly as they cross the courtyard. “God, the baby’s always so active in the morning.” Heather hefts herself into the passenger seat, her hand over her stomach, twisting to get comfortable under the safety belt.
“Did you eat breakfast?” Heather is too skinny. The rare times Chloe has seen her without her signature baggy gray sweats, her arms were like branches, her belly barely a volleyball.
“Michael had Cheerios, right, honey?”
“Ohs!” Michael cries from the back. Chloe checks him in the rearview mirror as she merges onto 205.
“Listen, we sent you a check for prenatal vitamins last week, and you cashed it. I hope you got them.”
“You know, I really meant to, but it was Michael’s birthday, and the prenatals make me sick. I’m eating really good, though, lots of salad. I swear.” Heather is seventeen, but she looks about twelve when she holds her fingers up in a Scout’s honor sign and grins.
“So, listen.” Heather changes the subject. “Not to be nosy, but the other people with your agency, in eight? Penny and Jason?”
“Yeah?” Chloe doesn’t know how she knows this, but she’s not surprised. Other clients in the building have had intimate knowledge of one another’s lives. Maybe the common walls are thin, or there is a local, grandmotherly gossip.
“So, did I look at their portfolio, the people they chose for their baby, I mean?”
“I don’t remember.” Chloe turns off the interstate.
“I mean, are they a nice family? Who they chose?”
“Why are you asking?”
“Can you just tell me who it is?”
“Heather…” Chloe sighs.
“Just tell me. I remember all the portfolios. God, I studied them for like forever.”
“It’s John and Francie,” Chloe says, though she shouldn’t.