Desperate (2 page)

“L
ily,” I said. Some quick mental math: it had been two weeks since we’d seen her crying on the curb. “What can I do for you?” She was wearing an aqua green jersey tank top sporting a peace sign shaped into a heart. Her light denim jeans, again ripped at the knees, partially concealed a pair of scuffed black lace boots. A waiflike nymph dressed in hipster clothing, Lily tilted at the waist, attempting to look past me and into the apartment.

“I was wondering if I could talk to you and your wife for a moment,” Lily said.

I stepped aside, motioning her in.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Please, come on in. Anna, honey,” I called. “It’s Lily, the girl from the bus stop. She wants to talk to us.”

I tried to quiet the shake in my voice, but I’m pretty sure Lily picked up on it. I heard commotion from the back room, Anna shuffling her papers, then the sound of footsteps rushing. I loved seeing my wife in her Saturday garb, hair askew and in a loose ponytail, gray baggy sweatpants, purple tank top, and bunny slippers still on her feet in the afternoon. She looked every bit the frantic mom, with one notable exception. Anna tightened her ponytail and smoothed her hands nervously down the front of her sweatpants.

“Lily,” Anna said. “What a nice surprise. Please, come in, sit down. Can I get you something? Something to drink?”

I picked up the anxiety in Anna’s voice and, if I’d tuned my ears right, could have heard her heartbeat tick up a few notches, too. What was Lily doing here? What did she want from us? Was this related to her pregnancy?

Lily took a few tentative steps inside and made a quick inspection of our home. “No, I’m fine. Nice place you have,” Lily said, following Anna into our living room.

We lived in a modest two-bedroom apartment. The baby’s room, or what would be the baby’s room, was Anna’s office. The living room was small but nicely decorated. Anna and I bought all new furniture after we got married. We had black bookcases from Boston Interior, a nice oriental rug covering part of our hardwood floor, a plush new couch, lots of houseplants, and some artwork—oils and watercolor landscapes that Karen had collected. Anna could have painted something as good, if not better, but she was not emotionally ready to break out the brushes and paints just yet. I had kept the paintings Karen had bought in the attic of our upstairs rental unit, but Anna insisted we hang them on the walls.

“She was your wife, Gage,” Anna had said. “She’ll always be a part of our lives. I think it’s unhealthy if you try to hide the past. We need to celebrate her.”

This was Anna. She wasn’t threatened by my past. She embraced it. That was why she never asked me to remove the silver chain with a heart-shaped locket that hung on a corner of the wall-mounted medicine cabinet in our bathroom. I had bought the piece of jewelry for Karen’s birthday. Inside the locket, I had placed a picture of Karen, Max, and me, small as can be, but somehow we all fit. Every morning Anna sees that locket while she’s getting ready for the day. Brushing her teeth. Combing her hair. Putting on her makeup. She’s never asked me to move it, because she knows I need them there while I’m getting ready for my day. It comforts me. Anna understands that it doesn’t take away from the life we’re building together. The chain has been in the same spot day after day.

Lily peered into the dining room, which was connected to the living room by a wall-length pass-through. She paused to study the mess on the dining room table: cardboard tubes of various sizes, smaller cylinders that functioned as engines, launchpads, glue, tape, and a small toolbox.

“What’s all that?” she asked.

“Oh, Gage builds model rockets for the kids at St Luke’s Hospital,” Anna said. “There’s a field out back, so if children are too sick to come outside to see the launch, they can watch it from a window.”

Lily’s face brightened. “Oh, that’s so sweet. What made you decide to do that?”

Like a fog drifting in, a weighty and uncomfortable silence filled the room. “Gage and his son, Max, used to build model rockets,” Anna said, her voice lowering. “He wanted to do something that would honor Max’s memory and help other children as well.”

That Anna and I both did work with sick children—her painted murals and my model rockets—was one reason our bond had developed so quickly. Lily broke eye contact, and I got a sense she was familiar with our background. Based on her reaction, I knew better than to show her the rocket in a box I kept under my bed, the one I couldn’t bring myself to launch. It was an Estes Cosmic Explorer Flying Model Rocket with laser-cut fins and waterslide decals. The oversized body tube made for precision fin alignment, and the E engine could propel the rocket some 900 feet in the air. It had one of the biggest blow-molded nose cones of any flying model rocket. It was the rocket Max and I were building before he died.

Lily and Anna each took a seat on the couch, while I shut off
Pawn Stars
and returned to my perch on the green armchair.

“So,” Anna said, flashing me a nervous look. “What can we do for you?”

Lily was still looking around, as if she’d never seen how two adults lived.

“I can’t get over this place,” Lily said. “It feels so . . . homey.”

“Gage and I are very happy here,” Anna said. “Lily, do you need something?”

Again Lily looked around—stalling, or at least that was my interpretation. She kept massaging her interlocked hands. I noticed that she hadn’t repaired her chipped manicure since our last meeting. Lily’s mannerisms were that of a forest creature, eyes darting about, legs bouncing, a bundle of nervous energy.

“I need some help,” Lily began.

“Help,” Anna said.

“I decided I don’t want to get an abortion,” Lily said. She dropped that piece of news as if we had been a part of her decision making from the very start. “I mean, I could. I could afford it, that’s what I’m saying. But I don’t want to. I want to give my baby up for adoption.”

Anna and I looked to each other and then back to Lily.

If Lily picked up on our shocked expressions, it didn’t register in her eyes. “I didn’t know what to do,” she continued. “I went to the library and did a Google search thing for adoptive parents. Anyway, it took me to this website with a bunch of people looking for birth mothers. I did search by state because I thought maybe I could still see my baby, you know. Not take care of it, but see it.” Lily laughed, uncomfortably. “I mean, him or her. I don’t know the baby’s sex yet. But anyway, I thought if the parents were at least in Massachusetts I’d be able to see my baby—well, not
my
baby, but
the
baby. You know what I mean. I’m sorry. I’m really nervous, and I don’t know how all this works.”

“Go on,” Anna said, reassuringly.

“Anyway, I started clicking through all these profiles and seeing all these different families looking to adopt, and it really made me happy. I mean, I could actually help complete somebody’s family. Really, it was amazing for me to think that I could do this. I haven’t done much good for anybody, but here I am in a position to do something really great for somebody. And then I saw your profile on the site. I remembered you right away. You guys were so nice to me.”

Anna was nice, I thought. I didn’t do or say much of anything.

“Lily,” Anna said. “Are you asking if we would be willing to adopt your baby? Is that what you came here to find out?” Anna’s voice lifted. Her eyes welled.

Lily nodded as she bit at her lower lip—revealing, at least to my eyes, the girl within a woman’s body. Scared, confused, but also hopeful and excited.

Anna was elated, her eyes beaming. But there was another side to her as well. She was already guarded, fearful of getting her hopes up.
Is this really happening?
she seemed to be asking herself.

“You want us to adopt your baby?” Anna asked again. She needed Lily to say the words.

“That’s what I’m here for,” Lily answered, still massaging her hands. “I want to pick you guys, but I don’t really know how.”

Anna did a laugh/cry thing, inhaling a breath while swallowing a sob. I got up from my chair, went over to Anna, and sat myself down on the arm of the couch. I put an arm around her shoulder.

“Lily, this is a huge decision,” I said. “We’re incredibly grateful, but are you sure this is what you want?”

Lily looked around the apartment, as though searching for anything that might change her mind.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” she said. “I mean, I read your story on the website, so I know that you both . . . you both . . . you know.”

“We both lost a child,” I said. “It’s okay, Lily. We can talk about it.”

“I’m really sorry,” Lily said. “I hope this helps, you know, with . . . stuff.”

With stuff.

Goodness, Lily was a child herself, I thought, completely inexperienced.

Anna leaned forward and wrapped her arms around Lily’s neck, her hug it seemed matching the force of a python’s embrace.

“There’s so many details to work out,” Anna said as she let go, excited, which meant she was using her hands. “We’ll need to get the home study done right away, and of course I’ll have to find a new place for my office, then there’s the matter of a lawyer. I’ve got one, but we need to call her ASAP. What about medical? Are you okay with the medical care?”

Lily made several nervous glances, first to me and then back to Anna. Lily had a look about her that I couldn’t quite fathom. Panic, perhaps? Anna’s own eyes were widening with panic. Was it the word “medical”? Could something be wrong with the baby? In the span of a few short minutes, Anna had begun bonding with Lily’s unborn child and brooding over an uncertain future. I found myself worrying as well.

Lily clarified her predicament. “I don’t have any medical insurance,” she said. “I know I’m supposed to have it, but whatever. I work as a cocktail waitress at Jillian’s Pool Hall. They don’t have great benefits, but hey, at least I make good tips. So I haven’t really been to a doctor, but I can tell you that I’m probably close to three months along.” Lily looked down at her stomach. “I know I’m not showing much, but my clothes are definitely tighter. I Googled it just to make sure everything was okay, at the library when I found you guys, and a lot of people don’t show until like four months or something.”

“So what’s wrong?” Anna asked, her voice steeped with concern.

“Nothing,” Lily said. “Look, I’d love to get a checkup. You know, one of those picture things.”

“Sonogram,” I said. “An ultrasound is the procedure, a sonogram is the picture.”

Anna’s look wondered how I knew the distinction. My look said I remembered it from when Karen got her sonogram of Max.

“Yeah. One of those,” Lily replied.

“We can help with that,” Anna said. “We’ll get the lawyer to include your medical costs in the agreement. That’s not so unusual in these situations.” Anna was talking in her management consulting voice, direct and authoritative.

“Yeah, that’s great,” Lily said, evidently still unsettled about something. “While you’re at it, can your lawyer work up a place for me to live?”

Anna and I exchanged worried looks.

“What’s going on?” Anna asked.

“Remember my asshole boyfriend?” Lily said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Well, he’s changed the locks on the apartment. Says he doesn’t want to see me no more.”

“Did he threaten you?” I asked. “Did he try to hurt you?”

At this point in the conversation, somebody else, somebody other than Anna or me, might have stopped these proceedings. Despite my personal tragedy, I was pretty much leading a normal life. I went to work at Lithio Systems each and every weekday. I was married to a woman I loved. I liked watching shows on Nat Geo, the Discovery and History channels, and fixing stuff around the house. I built model rockets for sick kids. I grew up in Rhode Island, the only child of two loving parents, and I’ve never been much except for a good husband, good father, and a good employee. I’ve always done my best to do the right thing. This was my existence. It wasn’t about pool halls, medical insurance issues, homelessness, financial troubles, and angry ex-boyfriends with potentially violent tempers. I had been, to that point, on a steady course, my true north.

With the decision to adopt, however, my comfort zone shifted far from that northerly direction, and I was more than happy to adopt other people’s problems along with the gift of their unborn child.

“He hasn’t hurt me, if that’s what you’re asking,” Lily said. “But he might. I don’t trust him. I can’t stay there.”

“Where have you been sleeping?” Anna asked.

“With friends,” Lily said. “Couches and stuff.”

“What about your parents?” I asked.

“What about them,” Lily said with a snap of venom.

Evidently that would be a conversation for another time.

Anna looked over at me. I knew exactly what she was going to say.

“We might have a solution to that problem, too. Gage and I need to discuss it first.”

“Wow, that’s amazing. Talk about our fates aligning,” Lily said.

Anna’s expression appeared equally enthralled, while mine remained somewhat guarded.

Maybe that’s because I was thinking about Max.

L
ily left the premises. Where she went, I didn’t know. Our lives were not closely tethered yet, and I wasn’t certain they would be, so I didn’t think it appropriate to ask. I met back up with Anna in the living room. Her eyes were dancing, drunk on this nectar of possibility. Anna undid her ponytail, and I took a moment to appreciate the way the afternoon sun lit her wavy brown curls. She seemed to be glowing with happiness, and I felt something stirring inside me as well. I was confronting the very real possibility of having a child to parent.

Anna sat cross-legged on the couch, biting her finger and staring at me anxiously.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“I think I know what you wanted to offer Lily,” I said.

“Gage, the apartment is empty. She could move right in.”

I couldn’t argue. I’d bought this white clapboard two-family home about a month after Karen and Max died, four years before I met Anna. Prior to that, I’d been living as a family with Karen and Max in Swampscott, a lovely town on the north shore of Massachusetts. In hindsight, those were near perfect years, but I didn’t always think so. Every desire I had for more money, a nicer house, fancier vacations, all of Max’s frustrating behaviors (too many video games/too few books, not sitting still at the table, no concept of the inside voice) used to bother me. I wasted a lot of time and energy sweating the small stuff. Death, I’d discovered, had a cruel way of magnifying my regrets as both a husband and a father.

Anyway, not a single friend or family member questioned my decision to put the house on the market. They understood that memories could become monsters if not given the proper distance. So I bought in East Arlington, figuring I didn’t need as much space. Aside from the change in locale, the added rental income from the upstairs unit would help out at a time when I wasn’t so sure I could keep on working. I had taken six months off after the accident and spent most of it in therapy or self-medicated on the couch.

Until a few weeks before Lily’s visit, the rental unit had been a zero hassle and a highly beneficial part of my life. Sure, sometimes it took a while to find a suitable tenant, but I always managed to find someone who paid the rent on time and kept the place in reasonably decent shape. But at the moment nobody was living there

My previous tenant, a guy named Will Gaines, had planned to spend another year in the upstairs unit while he finished pharmacy school. But about a month before, he’d changed his mind and given us two weeks’ notice, forfeiting his security deposit in the process. Will never did explain his reasoning. Anna had been advertising for a new tenant, but as with our online profile on ParentHorizon, we’d gotten only a few nibbles—no quality bites.

“It’s furnished,” Anna said. “Between both our jobs, we’ve got money to cover the rent for a year.”

I got up from the couch to stretch and yawn, something Anna said I did anytime I’m uncomfortable about something, which aptly described my current condition.

“I don’t know, honey,” I said. “We really don’t know anything about her.”

“What did we know about Will? Or your tenant before him?” Anna asked.

I shrugged. Anna, as usual, had a point.

“I mean, what did we know about each other before we got married?”

“I knew that I loved you,” I said.

“And I you. I’m just saying that knowing all the details about somebody doesn’t mean that you really know the person. I’d want to help this girl anyway, especially because she could be our baby’s birth mother.”

“Anna, you’re already counting on this, aren’t you?”

“I feel it in my heart, Gage.”

Anna came over to me and burrowed her face against my chest. I felt my resolve weakening, my arguments ringing less potent in my head. She had that effect on me. Maybe I was being overly cautious.

“This is what we want, Gage. We can make it happen now.”

I broke from Anna.

“We’ve got to do more,” I said.

“Like what more?”

“Like who is she, Anna? Who are her parents? Where is she from? How about we get some of those questions answered first.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Anna offered. “I’ll get whatever information we can get, okay? I want to give Lily the apartment, and I need to hear from you that we’re in this together. I need to know that we’re a team, or nothing is going to happen.”

I broke from Anna, wanting to make sure she could see my eyes. In addition to my yawning habit, I apparently blinked a lot whenever I fibbed. “I want this,” I said. I tried to keep from blinking. Really, I did.

Anna turned from me, arms folded.

“Gage, I don’t know what to say. I thought you were on board. What’s the trouble?”

I grabbed her shoulders, turning her to face me.

“I am on board. I’m just . . . I guess maybe I’m just scared.”

“I know you’re scared. I am, too. But we’re entering a new phase in our lives. It’s been five years since you lost Max and four since Kevin died. It’s so hard for me to think about becoming a mom again, and I have a lot of guilt about it, too, but I also know that we’re ready for this. We’ve talked about becoming parents again. We both want it.”

“Sweetheart, I know, I know,” I said, keeping a grip on Anna’s well-muscled shoulders. “Everything just happened so fast that I think I’m reeling a little bit.”

“I understand,” Anna said. Her look broke my heart, which softened my stance.

“Let’s do this,” I said. “You check up on Lily, like you said, okay? See what you can learn about her. If you think this is all on the up-and-up, we’ll offer her the apartment. It’ll be your call and I’ll back you a hundred percent. Sound like a plan?”

Anna nodded. I let go of her shoulders and collected my keys from the basket on a table in the foyer. Before Anna, my keys could have been anywhere.

“Where are you going?” Anna asked. “Oh, let me guess. You’re going to touch base with Brad.”

Anna knew me better than anyone.