herself in the bathroom mirror, wishing she had brought her purse, something to combat the circles under her eyes. She hasn’t been sleeping well in the empty house.
“I don’t know that Eugenia could make it through two weeks in the Marshall Islands, though a bout of food poisoning or some tainted water might do her good. What the hell—show them all!”
“But what about their preferences? I don’t know the race of the baby’s father, and the mother’s back at the table downing a beer right now. She told me she’s doing meth to keep her weight down so she can dance.”
“Meth? So the baby will be small, might have some attention problems, no worse than coke. I’d worry more about the alcohol. Ask her about AA. How far along did you say she was?”
“About four months.” Chloe braces herself.
“Four months!” Judith explodes. “Why are you even meeting with her?”
“I didn’t know this until now.” And we haven’t had a new birth mother call in more than a month.
“Always ask the due date on the phone! What have I taught you? I hope you were clear that we don’t start financial assistance until the third trimester.”
“Well, she said”—Chloe rummages through her tiny purse for something cosmetic to reacquaint her with the girl in the mirror, comes up with Chapstick—“she needs to start earlier, since as a dancer she’ll be unemployed soon.”
Chloe can hear Judith sighing. “We need birth mothers, yes, but we need them to actually make us some money.” Chloe knows that the adoption fee for her program is $26,000 for a healthy Caucasian baby, but with reductions for mixed races and prenatal substance abuse, that number can be whittled down as low as $13,500.
“Okay, go back and show her the portfolios, but don’t let her pick anyone. Find out if the father of the baby is white, and what other harm she is causing the baby. Try to get her to stop drinking. I won’t stir up the hornet’s nest by calling any families yet. And do not promise to start paying anything now.”
They say good-bye, and Chloe hangs up, feeling sick to her stomach. By the restroom door, she sees the back exit for the restaurant and has a brief fantasy of slipping out to her car and driving away, but to where? There’s a lot of ocean between Portland and Maui…
When she gets back to the table, all the good crispy chips are gone, the nacho pile reduced to soggy, bean-saturated tortilla crumbles. Still, she stabs them with a fork.
“So I just want you to know,” Debra says, as she slugs from her Corona, “you’re not the only agency I’m meeting with.”
Chloe chews.
“I’ve got an appointment with Cascade and some other one, Heart something, later this week.”
Chloe looks out the window at the parking lot again, to her car. She picks up her pen, wonders what Dan is doing.
“What do you know about the father of the baby?” she asks mechanically.
“What are you saying?” Debra scowls at her, flips her crimped hair defensively. “You think I don’t know who it is?”
The waitress is passing, and Chloe flags her, signals for the check. All she can think of, like a heavy, magnetic pull, is her bed, the white baffled down comforter, the clean six-hundred-thread-count sheets, her memory foam pillow and mattress topper. She will call in sick, go home and pull the shades, finally get a good solid sleep.
“I know who he is all right, but he won’t admit it.”
“It’s okay,” Chloe says, as she has a hundred times, “in Oregon we’re not required to notify the father of the baby; we don’t need his consent. It’s just that adoptive families like as detailed a medical history as we can provide, for the baby’s sake.”
“Oh, he’s healthy, you don’t gotta worry about that. He’s the same daddy as my Mike, who I did with Catholic Charities two years ago. Nice couple.”
And against her better judgment, Chloe says, “A full brother, then? Catholic Charities has a family who has a full brother to this baby?”
Debra nods, dumping sugar onto another lime slice.
“Then you should really be working with them. They might want this baby very badly.”
Debra slurps on the lime wedge. “Nope. I’m going private again, like I did with my Hayley.”
“Okay,” Chloe says, but in the long, drawn-out way that means Why?
“I told you. I promised; I’m taking my kids to Disney afterward.”
ON THE WAY OUT, Chloe stops at the bar and orders a diet Coke, hoping the