his cheeks flushed, and they can hear him saying, “Yes, thank you, this has been a long time coming. We’re very pleased.”
Casey’s speakers are playing the ubiquitous “Mambo Number 5,” and Maria is doing the jitterbug with Chien.
“I’m sorry,” Chloe says to the McAdoos. “Celebrating. We’re all a little excited here.”
John McAdoo winces expectantly as he straightens his gimp leg, puts a tentative arm around Francie. She swivels her wrist so the car seat she is carrying faces out into the living room, reaching in to pull the blanket back to show the baby off.
Oh no. Chloe realizes that they think, that they believe, that all of this is for them, for John and Francie and their domestic baby. A long time coming.
Quickly, she mumbles something about the Marshall Islands and “so much good news in one day!” and hustles them upstairs to her office to sign the paperwork.
OREGON OPEN ADOPTION—A place for all mothers
FRANCESCA97201
Joined: 26 Jun 1998
Posts: 17271
Posted: Fri, Dec 2 2000 10:24 pm
Post Subject: (45233 of 45258)
Thank you, ladies, for all the congrats! I am home, a single mother LOL!!!
DH is somewhere over the Pacific—
She remembers this evening, the parking lot behind the adoption agency. The sky turning pewter, and somewhere, someone in Troutdale burning leaves. The smoky scent, the charcoal sky, were hallmarks of Oregon autumn, so different from where she grew up in Florida, where the only change was ten degrees, more or less rain and mosquitoes.
John had stopped as the driver of the shiny black town car held the door for him, lifted his hand to her, a wave. She jerked her head forward, a nod to show, yes, she saw him, but her hands were clutching the handle of the bulky new car seat—god, how did anyone carry those things! Why did everything have to be so goddamn safe? Didn’t she and her brother survive, childhood years spent astride Aunt Helen’s lap behind the wheel of that boat of a Buick? It’s a conspiracy, devised by the car seat people to prey on the anxiety of new parents. Francie fell victim too, top-of-the-line car seat, highest safety rating, two hundred and thirty-nine dollars. It’s probably as good as the fifty-dollar one, but you never know. And her SUV is a Mercedes—a German-engineered tank. For all the atrocities of the Holocaust, nobody can say the Germans don’t make a hell of a good luxury car.
A sudden question mark: Had John kissed her under the cover of the agency porch? Funny how the kiss of someone can be so many things; initially anticipated, then carefully analyzed, later expected, and finally overlooked. She remembers that John did reach down and run a hand over Angus’s blue-capped head, and that she had thought this was a good thing. This is the relationship she is cheerleading, breaking out her pom-poms for now.
My baby
My baby!
is asleep, swaddled in his Pottery Barn crib in his perfect nursery across the hall. He is an angel, an excellent sleeper. I am the luckiest woman on earth!!!!
Back when she turned thirty-five, before she met John, Francie had boldly spouted (after three appletinis on a girls’ night out), “If I’m not married and knocked up by thirty-nine, I’m looking into sperm donors and single parenthood.” But it was just something she said, she didn’t really believe it could happen. But now here is the poor baby (Angus! still not 100 percent on John’s name choice), who in the course of two days and sixty-two pages of legal documentation has gone from having four possible parents to a single mother.
OREGON OPEN ADOPTION—A place for all mothers
FRANCESCA97201
Joined: 26 Jun 1998
Posts: 17272
Posted: Sat, Dec 3 2000 2:37 am
So much for my first night—he’s been crying over an hour. Help!
Typing with one hand is nearly impossible, pathetically slow.
Francie stands up again, pacing, the baby cradled, jiggling, her arms throbbing but it gets worse, louder, if she puts him down. Top-of-the-line swing and bouncy seat? Two hundred and sixty-five dollars wasted—he hates them!
“Shhh, shhh, SHHH!”
She knows the dimensions of the nursery, eighteen by twenty-four, but it feels like a jail cell as she does her forty-third lap; the three dormered windows that usually display the verdant view are now showing nothing but close darkness. God, she’s exhausted. John’s return ticket is eight days away, but she knows there is always one more meeting, a tour of the brewery, a potential distributor; he never flies home on his original itinerary date.
Then, mercifully, as suddenly as he began, the baby stops, staring