you, our financial obligation to you and Penny, is over at six weeks. It’s been almost two months.”
“Oh, so that’s how it is—you got what you wanted, now you want us to just go away?”
Well, yes, she thinks. That’s usually how it works.
“I can make referrals to other service agencies.” She kneels up off the floor, grabs her Rolodex off her desk. They have done this before, had this very conversation.
“I see how you operate. No fucking turkey and mashed potatoes now. Now you got our baby, you don’t give a shit about us.”
Chloe sits back against the sofa.
“Jason, you signed—”
“Penny’s not got out of bed in a week. She’s fucking crying in there, and I don’t see you coming around to check in on her, now that you got our baby.”
“Now those kinds of services you can have. Free counseling for a year. I gave you our counselor’s card, Justine Albright. Do you need her number again? I’ve got it right here.”
“And we’re hungry too. Fucking starving. WIC found out she gave the baby up, so we’re not getting our checks from them, and you don’t give a shit about us, now you got our baby.”
“Jason—”
“I won’t live like this! Penny’s got herself all locked up in the bedroom, and you with your goddamn SUV and your Portland Heights, getting rich off us! You’re a bottom-feeder! You took our baby—”
“You do realize I didn’t take your baby, right? I don’t have him here under my desk—” She hears a slam, cursing, a car honking. Could he really have been at her house? Where is he now? Standing in her kitchen? The phone booth outside Strohecker’s? “Jason, calm down.”
“I won’t calm down!”
“I will talk to Judith about a loan, or some groceries, there’s no need for anyone to be starving. But I also want you to call Justine Albright, for yourself. You have a right to your feelings, your grief and your anger—”
“Fucking right I do. You took advantage of us, and you took our kid,” he says, but his tone is settling, more sullen than angry.
“I don’t have your baby.”
“But you know who does.”
“Jason, I’ve got to go. But I will talk to Judith, and I really want you both to make some appointments with the counselor, okay?”
No answer. Chloe waits a minute, and is about to hang up when he says, “She just wants to see him.”
“What?”
“Just look through the window, that’s all.”
“Jason—”
“You’re gonna give me their address.”
And he hangs up.
It is so much easier when, after the papers are signed, everyone simply retreats, goes back to their corners, disappears. The adoptive parents into the all-consuming babyland, the birth parents drifting on, carrying their grief with them like battered travel trunks.
Chloe puts the phone back on her desk. Jason’s not dangerous, she thinks. He cried into her neck, afterward, outside Penny’s hospital room on the little couch. No reason to be afraid of him.
Chloe turns on her monitor to check for new e-mail from Dan. None. How can he go days without contact? Heather’s adoption is over, what is she doing here? Her hands shake, stomach clenches. Jason Xolan was at her house this morning!
“We’re grieving,” Jason had said; “is there a time limit?” That’s all—he’s just grieving.
On the wooden stairs, heavy footfalls with long pauses: Judith, making the ascent. Chloe stuffs the bridal magazines under the dust ruffle of her couch and grabs the dry-erase board from where it is propped, uncaps a smelly marker as Judith comes in and flops heavily onto the couch.
“Good girl, you’re in early,” Judith says with a nod.
“Hi,” Chloe says casually, erasing all of Heather W.’s line with the pad of her thumb. Just like that. “Updating my board,” she says.
“Good.” Judith is still out of breath, and there are deep pit stains on her ballooning black turtleneck dress. “Catch me up to speed.”
“Well…” Chloe holds the dry-erase board away from herself, frowns at it like a child’s Impressionist painting. “As you can see, things are sort of slow…”
On the top half of the board it says BIRTH MOTHERS, underlined twice, and in neat rows beneath that are three names, due dates, and then check marks in columns that represent where they are in the process. Medicals done, drug screens, portfolios viewed or chosen, maternity/food/housing, counseling referrals, birth plan, legals reviewed.
“I’ve got Abby, Jade, and Marissa, but Marissa’s not calling me back, so I think I’d put her as a maybe.”