Summer Snow (19 page)

“Julia,” Mrs. Walker broke in softly, “it's okay.” I opened my mouth to make nothing of it, but she hadn't paused. “You know, I had a friend who had three baby girls in a row. When she got pregnant a fourth time, she prayed every single day that it would be  a boy. She was convinced that God had answered her prayers.”

I already knew the outcome of the story from the tone of her voice, but I listened anyway because I wanted to know what the friend did with her disappointment.

“When the baby was born, it was a girl,” Mrs. Walker finished, confirming what I had suspected. She stopped, didn't say anything more.

I looked up. “And …,” I prompted.

“And it was very, very hard on her.”

I was mystified. Where was the moral to this story? “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” I asked, struggling not to sound indignant.

“No. I'm just trying to let you know that it's all right to feel whatever you feel. Do I think that you'll get over this? Yes. Do I think that you'll fall crazy in love with this baby the moment he's put in your arms and it won't matter that he is a he? Yes. But for now, don't beat yourself up for feeling sad.”

It was the last thing I expected to hear. But somehow I felt the tension between my shoulders ease at Mrs. Walker's reassurances. “Thank you,” I said.

“Don't thank me,” Mrs. Walker demurred. “Any mother would tell you the exact same thing. We all go through moments when our children are not who we hoped they would be.”

It was a slow and lazy morning once I had unburdened myself. Mrs. Walker's scones were indeed incredibly good, and I had a second, effectively ruining my lunch, before I headed home. Tea alone with Mrs. Walker had been a much-needed reprieve, and I nearly crushed her in an unreserved embrace as I got ready to  go.

“Hey, what did I do to deserve that?” She laughed.

“You listened,” I told her earnestly. “Sometimes I don't feel like I have anyone to talk to. Lately Grandma and I have had a hard time connecting …” It was true that Janice and Simon got in the way of my time with Grandma, but there was more to it than that, and Mrs. Walker guessed as much.

She frowned. “Nellie loves you so much.”

“I know.” I smiled slowly. “We're working on it.”

“Good. Glad to hear it.”

We stepped onto the porch together, and I turned my face to the sun, reveling in the warmth of its rays. It was decidedly spring and the ensuing softness of the world seemed to gentle everything else in turn. My problems seemed lesser. My worries not as urgent. I was so glad I had come.

“Thanks so much,” I said, smiling at Mrs. Walker and starting down the steps. “It's been a great morning.”

I thought she would respond in kind, thank me for coming or wish me a good day, but when she said my name, it was tight and unexpectedly urgent. “Julia?”

Somewhat taken aback, I turned.

Mrs. Walker was watching me with an uncertain line deepening a shadow across the length of her forehead. I was surprised to see her troubled and took a step back toward her. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing's wrong,” she assured me, but the cheer in her voice seemed forced. “It's just … remember that friend I was telling you about? The one with four daughters?”

I nodded, perplexed.

“Here.” Mrs. Walker held out a postcard-size piece of paper.

I took it without hesitation but did not look at it, focusing instead on her distressed gaze. I waited for her to explain.

“She's a counselor. I thought about giving you her number so many times, but it felt out of place. Well, it still feels out of place, but I guess I was ready to do it today.” Her words tumbled over one another, restless and eager to be out of her mouth.

“Counselor?” I asked, not understanding.

“She's an adoption counselor. I don't know if you ever thought about giving the baby up for adoption—and I'm not suggesting that you do—but she'd love to talk to you. It's free. You don't have to commit to anything. …” Mrs. Walker wrung her hands.

I tried to swallow around the dryness in my throat. “Adoption?” I managed after a moment. “You mean abandon my baby?”

Mrs. Walker's eyes got wide. “No, of course not. Not
abandon
. Give the baby up for
adoption
.”

I knew exactly what I had said, but I smiled thinly and tipped the postcard at her. “I'll take a look at it.”

“Don't be mad. This is why I never gave it to you before. I didn't want you to misunderstand my intentions.” Mrs. Walker reached for me and grasped my shoulders with her lovely hands. Her perfectly manicured nails dug into the fabric of my shirt. “I'm not suggesting anything. I just want you to know all your options.” A bottomless compassion radiated through her fingers, and though I knew she meant well, I felt she was badly misguided.

Closing my eyes, I tried to calm the mistrust that rose up in response to her concern. Mrs. Walker was looking out for me. It was an act of friendship, of love even. “I'll think about it,” I said, hoping to sound more receptive than I felt.

“That's all I ask,” she conceded. Pulling me into a quick hug, she kissed my cheek. “You're going to be just fine, Julia DeSmit. Just fine.”

I nodded once before walking away.

In the grove, I pressed my back against a budding tree and examined the glossy card. There was a picture of a handsome young man and a cute, curly-haired woman cradling a baby whose face was hidden by a fluffy, white blanket. They were huddled over the infant, and it didn't matter that no one could see the child. The faces of the happy couple said it all.
All His Children
, the card read.
We will find a loving home for your baby
.

“She—
he
—already has one,” I said. I tore the card once and then again and again until I couldn't tear it anymore. When I held up my hand, the many pieces scattered in the wind, odds and ends destined for squirrels' nests and tree hollows and forgotten burrows. Nothing more.

Blue Moon

I
WANTED SO MUCH
when I was young. I was an endless abyss of want, of need, of desperate dreams for myself that defied logic. The promise of what was to come hung like rings around the moon on clear autumn nights; the future was unmistakable. It was always there, glistening in the dark and suggesting that life was little more than climbing a ladder into the sky, where I could reach up with one hand and secure everything that I had ever hoped for in my grasping fingers.

Oh, I dreamed.

And they are not easy to give up, these dreams.

When I learned that I was having a baby, those lavish promises fell like moonbeams that flickered with ephemeral light and quickly died against the backdrop of my much-changed life. I was a modern woman; we were decades past the days when girls were sent to distant relatives to have babies in secret and return as if nothing had ever happened. Nor did I have to stand in front of my church to admit before the entire congregation that I had committed the sin of fornication. But none of that changed the fact that I would be a single mom before the age of twenty. I was a college dropout. My patient, enduring grandmother wouldn't live forever. I couldn't support a child on my wages at a dumpy little grocery store, and no decent man in his right mind would be interested in such damaged goods. Janice was living proof. And, frighteningly, unlike Janice, I didn't have a saintly ex-mother-in-law to fall home to. The stark reality was sobering.

Better things
, Mrs. Walker had said. Better than what? Better than those ornamental wishes that shimmered from my childhood moon? I doubted it. Not for me.

I had effectively relinquished those romantic ideas long ago— with Dad, with Thomas and then Parker, with my schooling and that measureless hope that I could be
more
—yanked them from the night with one angry sweep of an arm, no longer believing in such nonsense. Or so I thought.

But while I tried to be sensible, realistic, even prosaic, I found that hope rose like sweet cream to the surface. I still dreamed. And after the word—
adoption
—had been spoken aloud by someone I respected and loved, I dreamed haunting dreams of clean slates and fresh starts. In my sleep, in that hazy moment between oblivion and waking, my mind would form the most unfathomable of thoughts:
Maybe I can pretend that nothing ever happened
.
Maybe I can let him go, be free.

Then a nearly frantic horror would overtake me. No.
No
. He was mine. I was his. Our lives were interwoven in a way that excluded anything less than his life mingled with mine. I could not erase him from my future. I could not give him away as if he were no more important than a trinket to be passed from hand to hand. Nor did I want to bequeath him a legacy of leaving. A legacy like Janice's.

But I was being theatrical. “Adoption is a beautiful, necessary thing,” I would whisper to myself. The ultimate sacrifice of love. Maybe my problem was that I did not love him enough.

Or that I loved myself too much.

When the long nights drifted into day, I watched Janice and Simon and wondered if I would wax slowly into the same harried woman my mother had become: unkempt hair, defeated eyes, low-hung head like a puppy waiting to be whipped, though trying to hide the truth behind glossy lipstick and secondhand suits. It made me want to weep with the possibility. With the
lack
of possibility. And yet, watching Janice hold her son in a gaze so fierce and loyal and loving, I knew that she would not change her situation for all the vast and breathtaking world. She wouldn't change a thing.

I clung to that thought when nightmares danced between the steps of my faltering dreams.

The bland sense of well-being that I worked so hard to cultivate at home evaporated like water on asphalt in the middle of July every time I made the short drive to Value Foods. The weight on my shoulders, the sense of being trapped, a reluctant prisoner, became heavier and heavier as I drew closer to the scrutinizing eyes at the grocery store.
My life
, I would think, pulling into the parking lot. And the years stretched out before me as long and gray and solemn as the highway unfurling in the distance. There was nothing ahead but more tired towns, more of the same limited opportunities for a woman in my position.

At work, I found it difficult to hold myself so delicately all day long, to live with the understanding that this was my present and my future. It was hard to accept that everyone knew what I had done and assigned value to me as a person because of my stupid mistake. I was effectively labeled, with or without the scarlet letter. So in the beginning I tried to make myself invisible, avoiding conversations and even eye contact, feeling sorry for myself and regretting the decision that was really not a decision at all.

Sadly, it didn't take a degree in engineering to know that my attempts at invisibility were about as effective as trying to stop the tide with outstretched hands. At the six-month mark, I gave up trying. I stopped sucking in, let my shirt hang loose, and tied my apron in a slack knot above the round ball of my belly. The effect was almost silly: the stiff canvas of my royal blue apron hung in a straight-edged A-line that could have been the front of a sandwich board. I almost wanted to write cryptic messages across the fabric. Maybe “Abstinence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder.” Or “True Love Waits.” But then again, such sayings made my heart snag as if pricked by a barbed hook.

Graham was the only person at Value Foods who treated me as if nothing had changed, as if I was the same Julia he had met back in February. And I suppose I was the same person, though I couldn't help but find it strange that fourteen-year-old Graham, mature beyond his years, could look past what I had done to still see who I was. I don't know if he asked Alicia to arrange it or not, but we seemed to work together all the time. And his simple decency was the one thing that got me through every day.

Once he said to me, “You look pretty today,” and I shrank defensively because I was sure he was rubbing salt in a wound. But his smile was authentic and his eyes reassuring, and I had to accept that he meant what he said.

“Thank you,” I managed after a moment. It struck me that it had been a very long time since I had heard such gracious words.

“You think I don't mean it,” Graham said. “But I do.” And then he offered to stock shelves for me so that I could take his position bagging groceries behind Alicia. I was forced to interact with more people that way, but it was much easier on my back. I gave him the sort of smile that is intended as a gift.

That Thursday evening seemed to commence a tradition, and for many Thursdays to come, Graham, Alicia, and I worked together with Alicia and me handling customers up front while Graham bent and stood, lifting boxes in my place. Alicia acted a bit weird around me, but she didn't avoid me the way some other employees did. I knew that malice had nothing to do with how they dodged my company; what does one say to someone in my position? I could barely think a thought to myself without becoming sad or offended or at the very least reminded of the many concessions I would have to make. I wasn't bitter that my coworkers steered clear of me. I would have done the same thing in their shoes.

But Alicia, like Graham, was different somehow. She wasn't overly friendly like he was, but she also didn't act as if she were afraid of me, as if pregnancy were contagious and I might infect her with an ill-timed sneeze. Instead, Alicia seemed wary and a little too cheerful and bright, almost forcefully irreproachable and full of wide-eyed naiveté. Maybe I was being far too presumptuous, but she gave off the impression that my situation hit a bit too close to home for her comfort. She exuded a generic fear, a feeling of
it could have been me
. But she was courteous; she chatted with me between customers and never stared at my stomach, and working with her came in second only to working beside Graham.