“Oh, well, all’s well that ends well,” Paul says, glancing surreptitiously at his watch just as the phone rings. John jumps up, a marionette jerked to life.
“I’ll get it.”
“Chloe Pinter has been a godsend, though.” Francie starts fresh, smoothing the red napkin in her narrow lap. “John always says someone had their thinking cap on when they hired that girl. I don’t know where the domestic program would be without her. This calendar year alone they have done fourteen U.S. adoptions. It’s unprecedented.”
“Well, and good news for you too,” Eva says from where she is piling more cranberry sauce on her plate at the sideboard. “We can be mommy friends.”
Francie sniffs, and Paul is horrified to see she’s almost crying. “You know”—she sniffs again and makes two little circles of emphasis with the thumb and forefinger of both hands, sharp points, as though she is shaking out a wet T-shirt by the shoulders—“this has been the hardest thing in my entire life. I have wanted this more than I have wanted anything, and to have it be so difficult to attain—”
John comes back into the dining room and doesn’t sit down. He clears his throat like he is about to make an announcement, then changes his mind, and sits. He picks up his orange napkin, shakes it out, crumbs flying. Francie has dropped her hands and, to Paul’s relief, stopped emoting.
“Well?” she pounces.
“That was Chloe, Chloe Pinter. From the agency.”
“Ah, the famous Chloe Pinter,” Paul says, full of warm expectation.
“Is it time?” Francie’s words tumble out on top of one another. “But the baby’s not due for two weeks! What? John, is it good news? Is it time?”
“It’s not news.” John’s words march out, scrubbed clean, careful. “Penny is not in labor. Chloe just wanted to let us know that, tonight, when she went to take Thanksgiving dinner to them, at the apartment, there were some baby items.”
“Wh-what do you mean? What kind of baby items? Did she say?”
“She wasn’t very specific, but she did mention a crib.”
As much as he dislikes the McAdoos, Paul feels in his gut where this news hits them.
“She did say,” John continues dully, “that they had an explanation, but—”
“What?” Francie’s head snaps up. “What did they say?”
“They said Jason, the birth father,” John explains, “that Jason’s brother and his girlfriend have moved into the apartment as well, and that they aren’t aware of the adoption plan.”
“Oh my god,” Francie whispers. “Oh my god.”
“It could be nothing, Francie.” Eva lays her hand on Francie’s forearm, thin as a cashmere-wrapped golf club. “It could be exactly what she says.”
“It’s a classic red flag. I should never have gotten my hopes up.”
From the kitchen behind him, Paul can hear one of the McAdoos’ two whisper-quiet Whirlpool dishwashers change cycle.
SEVEN EXCRUCIATING MINUTES LATER, the evening has limped to a close and Paul is warming up the car as Francie and Eva stand in the doorway of the McAdoos’ looming Tudor. Eva leans in to hug Francie, her enormous belly an intrusion between them. She walks slowly, backlit by the golden glow of the replica 1800s gas lamp in their breezeway. She settles beside him in the brand-new Volvo Cross Country, a splurge for the safety of the baby, and snuffles as she strains to buckle her seat belt.
“Well, let’s put that on our calendar for next year,” Paul says.
“Oh my god, it was brutal. Poor Francie.”
“Yeah.” Paul drives out between the stone pillars with more replica gas lamps. They are made of copper, oversize. He could probably get them for $1,200 each, wholesale. Retail, they’d run about two grand, and the McAdoos have four of them sprinkled on the pillars, all the way down here by the street, like it’s nothing.
“And you! Honey, you could have made more of an effort with John.”
“What?” Paul has just remembered that they abandoned Eva’s fabulous pumpkin cheesecake, the one potential bright spot in this miserable evening, in the McAdoos’ Sub-Zero.
“Come on, honey.”
They drive the few blocks in silence, winding through Portland Heights. Against his better judgment, Paul lets the thoughts in his head tumble out into the charged air of the car, unfiltered.
“I can’t wait for this to be over.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing.”
“No, I’m sorry, you can’t wait? I weigh ten pounds more than you, I can’t breathe, I look like an elephant, I’m never comfortable, I have to pee every five freaking minutes, I am about to have hemorrhoids hanging out of my ass, and you can’t wait?”