Daughters for a Time (13 page)

“I’m going to get some air,” Ross said, and walked toward the back of the kitchen, where a door led to the alley.

I looked at Tim and he gave me a sympathetic smile. I bit into a piece of crusty focaccia, letting the coarse salt and rosemary melt on my tongue.

Claire clicked her cell phone closed, took a long sip of champagne, and finally relaxed.

“She’s fine,” she announced. “Fast asleep.”

I could imagine Maura sucking on the pacifier that she was still allowed to use at night, pausing occasionally to pull it out and examine it, as an old man would do with a pipe.

“You think you worry now…” Tim said to Claire, with his lighthearted chuckle. “Just wait ‘til she’s a teenager.” He smiled. Poor Tim. Just trying to make conversation, just trying to sympathize.

“Don’t even mention it,” Claire said, tensing her shoulders. “Besides, I know all about raising teenagers.” Claire looked at me with raised eyebrows.

“Here it comes,” I said, laughing. “Let’s hear how incorrigible I was, how, if not for you, I would have ended up in the gutter.”

“Well,” Claire said.

“We all did crazy things when we were teenagers,” Tim began. “My buddies and I used to swipe the dustiest bottle from my dad’s liquor cabinet—usually Schnapps, if I recall—put it in a Coke bottle, and drive around cruising for chicks.”

“How’d that work for you, honey?” I asked, leaning into Tim and kissing his cheek.

“They were lined up,” he joked. “They knew I was super cool with my dad’s Oldsmobile and my bottle of Schnapps.”

“We all did reckless things,” Claire agreed.

“I doubt
you
ever did,” I joked. “If you did, it would have been during the three-minute bell between honors math and honors science.”

“You’re right.” Claire smiled. “I was kind of busy keeping you out of trouble, going to school, and taking care of the house.”

“I know, I know,” I said. “I owe you my life, Claire. Anything you ever want, you’ve got it. My kidneys? Liver?”

“You never know,” she said. “You might need to save my life someday.”

“I’m all yours.”

Claire had finished high school before I had even started. Even so, her reputation was still there, like the perky spirit banners that lined the hallways.
Go Team!
Claire was in Advanced Placement
everything
, the president of the student council, a peppy cheerleader. And while I did pretty well in the grades department, I couldn’t touch Claire in the attitude department. The teachers, en masse, were effusive about Claire: Future leader! Strong prospects! The sky’s the limit! Rather than compete, it was easier to be the sister in the black Van Halen concert shirt who stood across the street from the high school smoking cigarettes before the morning bell, the kid who forged her sister’s signature to get out of class, the freshman who hitched rides from seniors. On a number of occasions, Claire was called into the principal’s office to discuss my behavior. I’d sit in the hallway, outside of the office, in a hard plastic chair, and listen to Claire lobby on my behalf. “She can do the work,” Claire argued. “We just need to get her to focus. She’ll do better. I promise this won’t happen again. She needs to stay in school. Detention or expulsion will only make her spiral further downward. Our mother died, you remember that, right? Give her a break. She’s still grieving. This is just her way.”

Ross came back inside. Tim poured more wine, which we all happily accepted.

Claire smiled and then ate a piece of Tim’s bruschetta. “Oh God,” she gushed. “This is to die for. I am going to
dream
about this taste.”

“Not much to it,” Tim said. “Just grilled shrimp, avocado, garlic, chili flakes.”

“Just sautéed in the skillet?”

“I’d be happy to show you.”

“What I dream about,” Ross said, “are those potato things that Helen used to make.”

“Blini,” I said. Blini were one of my specialties back when I worked the dinner shift: potatoes, flour, crème fraiche, eggs. Pure, silky warm, melt-in-your-mouth comfort food.

“I’ll make them for you next time you’re at our house,” I said.

“Why not make them now?” Tim asked.

“Are you serious?” I asked, looking at the kitchen like I was looking into the mouth of a monster. It had been so long since I’d been behind the line during the dinner shift, elbowing my way among the sous chefs, different entirely from my baking station across the way or helping out at lunch. My palms grew sweaty just at the thought.

“Go ahead, Helen. Make your brother-in-law a blini.”

“Okay,” I said, standing up and smoothing my billowy blouse again. It would be nice to pull an apron tightly around this puffy shirt. As soon as I got home, I planned to toss it into the give-away box.

After I scrubbed my hands and fastened my apron, I slipped behind the stainless steel, thankful that it was a Monday night and only Philippe was on the line. First, I prepared the eggplant and set it to roast. Then I peeled and boiled a couple of Yukon Gold potatoes, the perfect potato for absorbing cream, and pressed them through a sieve. I whisked in the flour and crème fraiche, added an egg, and whisked again until the batter was smooth. Seasoned with salt and pepper, spooned onto the griddle. Once the pancakes were slightly golden, I removed them from the griddle and topped each one with roasted sweet peppers and eggplant caviar.

For the next half an hour, we drank a bottle of wine, ate blini, and reminisced. It was the happiest I had felt in so long. It was definitely the most connected I had felt in a long time, chatting easily with my sister and brother-in-law, leaning in to Tim naturally, knowing that soon enough we’d be on our way to China.

Later, Philippe brought our second course, an heirloom tomato tart with
nicoise
olive tapenade, mixed field greens, and basil vinaigrette. And then sweet potato
agnolotti
with sage cream, brown butter, and prosciutto. Followed by our main course, butter-poached Maine lobster with leeks, pommes, and red beet essence. We ate until we were slouched back in our seats with bulging bellies.

While we rested and let our food settle, Tim slipped out of the booth and into his office. A few minutes later, he returned, holding a stack of papers. His eyes were aglow; a smile had invaded his face, his mouth pulling toward his ears. In all of the years I had known him, I had never seen
this
look on his face, something akin to jubilation and joy and wonder.

“What’s with you?” I asked.

“It’s here,” he said.

“What?”

“The referral from the adoption agency,” he said. “It was just e-mailed a few minutes ago.”

My heart went into a free fall, ending somewhere in the bottom of my stomach. In Tim’s hand was a photo of my daughter.

“Xu, Long Ling, female, was born on the fourth of December, two thousand and eleven,” Tim read, “and was sent to our institute by Xuan Cheng Police Station on the sixth of December, two thousand and eleven.”

“She was only two days old when they got her,” Claire said.

“And how old is she now?” I asked, trying to do the math.

“About eleven months,” Claire said. “She’ll be just about a year when you get her.” Claire covered her mouth; she was crying.

“We named her Xu, Long Ling,” Tim read. “
Xu
represented her birthplace.
Long
meant that she was born in the year of the dragon.
Ling
meant clever and spiritual. We gave her the name with many of our good wishes for her.”

“What else?” I asked.

“She eats steamed egg or congee with pork and biscuits and fruit. She sleeps fairly deeply and does not cry often.”

“Oh, good. No crying,” I said.

Claire looked at me skeptically. “Yeah right.”

“Xu, Long Ling is fairly outgoing and active. She is a very lovely little girl.”

“Pictures, pictures,” I said, rubbing my hands together in anticipation.

Tim sat down, slid a piece of paper with three photos in front of me. My hands shook as I reached for the printout. In the first photo, she was sitting in a basket, propped up with blankets, looking upward as if the photographer were shaking a rattle overhead. Her grin revealed two front teeth and a dimple in her left cheek. The next photo was of her in the crib, nestled against another baby who looked much bigger than she did. The third photo was taken in front of an artificial backdrop of cherry trees, as if our new daughter wasn’t really in China but instead with us, enjoying the spring blossoms on the National Mall.

I blinked back the stinging tears, swallowed the guilt and shame I felt for all of those months when I doubted that I could love an adopted child. My daughter was gorgeous, and without ever meeting her, I already knew her and could feel what she was feeling and knew that she’d never leave, and if she did, she would have company because I’d follow her to the ends of the earth.

I placed my hand on my heart because it was warm and tingling and I knew exactly what was happening. It was healing.

“Oh God,” I said solemnly. “I love her so much.” I put my hand over my heart because, truly, it was swelling and the stretch of it almost left me breathless.

Tim, Claire, and Ross looked at me with their own watery eyes and quivering chins.

“Excuse me for a second,” I said, and slipped out of the booth, down the hall, and into the ladies’ lounge, sinking deeply into the upholstered chair. Through blurry eyes, I smoothed the arm of the chair, remembering how I’d deliberated over the choice of fabric—this one (Tuscan Morning) or another (Florentine Flowers). I slid onto my knees and thanked God. I now knew that love showed no bias where children were involved, that love transcended international waters. That loving a child had nothing to do with pregnancy, labor, and delivery.

After I dabbed my eyes with a wet cloth, I went back to our booth.

“Now, Helen,” Tim said. “If you love her so much, give the child a name.”

“Sam,” I said. “Samantha Ann, named after our mother, if that’s okay with you.”

Claire hugged me and I felt her chest heave. “That’s really nice, Helen,” she said.

“I had been saving it—the name—all these years, thinking that someday we would name our daughter Sam. But tonight I realize that the little baby in this photo
is
our daughter.”

Philippe brought champagne and we toasted and cheered and smiled until our cheeks ached.

After saying good-bye to Claire and Ross, Tim and I drove home in a giddy silence with only the hum of the car and the occasional clunk when we hit a pothole. There was a quiet
and an awkwardness and an electricity to the moment that reminded me of a first date. Finding words beyond “Oh my God,” and “I can’t believe it,” and “This is really going to happen,” left us speechless. All these months I had tried to keep some distance, just in case the adoption didn’t go through. Now it was here. It was upon us. And I was bobbling my emotions, as though they were slick and impossible to grasp.

Tim pulled into our neighborhood and then into our driveway, pushing the button to open the garage, which was so narrow that it was almost comical. We joked all of the time. “Suck it in,” we’d say as we each squeezed through the ten inches our car doors were allowed to open. We entered our house and stood in the darkness. Tim reached his arms around me and I leaned into him, letting the weight of my head bear into his chest, feeling the steady thump of my heart, hearing the drum of his in my ear.

“This is really happening, huh?” I asked.

“This is really happening,” Tim said. “I’ll be right back.”

I went into the family room and sat on the edge of the sofa. Tim returned a minute later with a bottle of wine and two glasses. He poured, lit a few candles around the room, and flipped on the stereo. A Cranberries CD we both liked.

Tim handed me my glass of wine. I took a long sip, letting the earthy notes of leather and dried cherries and licorice slide down my throat. I laid my head back against the pillow, staring up at the ceiling.

“What are you thinking about?” Tim asked.

“Sam,” I said, exhaling. “Her first year. How she’s been without us for an entire year.” I considered the parallels: how she was growing in her mother’s womb as our social worker, Elle Reese, walked through our home, inspecting it to see if it was suitable for a child; how she was born and abandoned right around the time our dossier of paperwork was sent to China;
how she lay in her crib, staring at the ceiling day after day, and night after night, while Tim and I, too, stared at our ceiling, imagining what it would be like to be parents to our baby girl.

Tim took a sip of wine, looked at me. “I hope she likes football. I need someone to watch the Redskins with me.”

“I hope she’s
fat
,” I said, thinking of Maura when she was born, her doughy legs and ripples of elbow fat. “As fat as a Butterball turkey, with lots of rolls and dimples.”

“I’m going to teach her to cook,” Tim said. “I’m going to get her a little apron and chef hat.”

“I’m going to teach her to bake,” I said, wondering if raising a daughter shared any similarities to baking. I imagined a two-by-four recipe card. First mix your dry ingredients: an abundance of love, understanding, and compassion. Separately mix your wet ingredients: patience, tolerance, and forgiveness. Mix until your batter is as comforting as a set of mother’s arms. Pour into your pan. Bake. May take a lifetime.

“I just hope she’s healthy,” Tim said, striking a more somber tone. “That’s all that matters.”

“I just hope she likes us.”

Tim kissed me and my body went slack. He undressed me, and we made love. For the first time in years, I made love to my husband without the thought of getting pregnant, without visualizing super-swimming sperm penetrating plump eggs, without sending a begging batch of prayers up to God.

It was only our third date when Tim and I first made love. He’d cooked me an incredible dinner of filet mignon and lobster tails; we drank an endless supply of Chianti. I could still recall the buttery taste of his mouth, the roughness of the stubble on his cheek, the salt of his skin. It was at that moment that I realized how lonely I’d been my whole life: a father who left, a mother who died. I knew that, one day, I would tell Tim how I felt so alone. And while sleeping with him so early in our
relationship was a patently risky move, I never once felt nervous that he wouldn’t still be around the next day. I curled into Tim and tried to hush a lifetime of Claire blaring in my head, “One or two drinks, maximum! Make him ask you for another date! Don’t give it away for free!”