My husband always reminds me to keep an even keel, and we had both managed to do so during our long interview with Miriam and Antonio. But as we headed back to my office, his brisk pace and steely eyes told me he was way off kilter.
“If they wanted to talk with our daughter, why didn’t they tell us from the get-go?” he asked, kicking at the carpet in front of my desk with the toe of his shoe. “We could’ve told them no right away and saved ourselves a lot of time and energy.”
In that instant I realized he’d allowed himself to be more swept up in the excitement about adopting Miriam and Antonio’s baby than he’d let on. I looked away, his suffering too painful to watch. My eyes stung with tears.
I closed my office door, grabbed a Kleenex and sat on the couch, waiting for our emotions to settle a bit. David remained standing, staring out the window.
Five minutes later, after one unanswered knock, Julie stormed in. “You know this is a deal-breaker, don’t you?” she said sharply. She heaved herself into my spare chair and glared at me. “We were so close. Can’t you talk him into this, Caroline?”
Her dismissive attitude toward my husband rankled me and was more than I could take. I blew my nose, wiped my eyes with a soggy, mascara-stained tissue, and sat up straighter.
“First of all, I don’t appreciate your tone or talking about David as if he weren’t standing here in the room with us. Second, I don’t intend to ‘talk him into it.’ I agree with him completely.”
Her jaw dropped.
“We have a solemn obligation to protect our daughter, Julie,” I said, rising to stand over her and astonishing myself with my heartfelt fervor. “We can’t put her in the position to be the deal-maker or deal-breaker here. She doesn’t even know we were considering adopting this baby, for God’s sake. And how do you think she’d feel if she learned we were and the deal was nixed because of something she said or didn’t say? Please convey our decision to your clients. And it’s non-negotiable.”
Julie shook her head. Without a word, she got up from the chair and marched out the door, letting it slam behind her.
David and I exchanged a glance—conveying in a nanosecond our solidarity—and suddenly I was okay again. We could handle anything, as long as we faced it together.
“Thanks for putting it so eloquently,” David said. “I would’ve been much less diplomatic!”
“You’re welcome,” I said. “And, please promise me we’ll never become so desperate to have a child that we stop thinking rationally.”
“You got it.”
I walked to my desk to shut down my computer. “Let’s get out of here. I need a glass of wine and a hefty dose of seven-year-old-girl chatter.”
**
Lily was at once delighted by simultaneous undivided attention from two parents and mindful of our deflated moods. She passed out more compliments and endearments than we could count and hung on our every word. She certainly didn’t inherit her considerate nature from her biological mom.
After a cobbled-together stir-fry dinner, which Lily proclaimed the best she’d ever tasted, we all sat together on the couch for an “I Love Lucy” festival. We’d received the whole video series of the black-and-white TV show as a gift and treasured every episode. I never tired of watching Lily laughing ‘til she cried at the antics of Lucy and Ethel. Sit-com friendships are beyond enviable.
For a while, at least, I was able to forget the day’s disappointments. Neither David nor I put up any resistance to our daughter’s plea for “just one more episode” before bedtime.
I let Lily soak an extra ten minutes in her cloyingly sweet Bubbleberry Mr. Bubble bath and reveled in her warmth as I wrapped her in a large soft towel. “Thanks, Mom. You’re the best!”
Tuesday, October 16
The foul-smelling inmate snitch lurked behind a cement pillar in the basement-parking garage of my office building and, as I approached my car, sprang out and shoved me to the ground. Sitting astride me, pressing my face against dank concrete, he bound my hands and feet and then my mouth with duct tape. With the strength of a madman, he yanked me up and threw me into the trunk, striking my head against the frame.
The next thing I knew, I was seated at my kitchen counter—still bound but no longer gagged—watching in horror as he rummaged through the cutlery drawer. “Please,” I said quietly, hoping to find a way to reason with him.
“Shut the fuck up,” he yelled.
Lily bounded in the back door and stopped in her tracks, unable to comprehend the scene. “What—”
With a beefy, tattooed and filthy arm, he grabbed her around the neck, wielding a carving knife in the other hand.
“No!” I screamed, bolting upright in bed. My shoulders heaved with sobs. I shook my head in a futile effort to banish the horrific scene and felt David’s arms envelope me.
His heart raced against mine as he held me close, tenderly stroking my back.
Without warning, Lily burst through our bedroom door, slamming it against the wall as she barreled toward the bed. “What’s wrong?” she shrieked, renewing my terror.
My hysteria had to have been as terrifying to David and Lily as my nightmare—with the recurring evil character—had been to me.
“Climb in, honey,” David said, scooting over to make room for her in the bed between us. “Your mom just had a very scary dream. That’s all.”
My scream must’ve exorcised the demons—at least temporarily—for I was able to sleep in peace the rest of the night.
But Lily’s alarm clock—usually muffled by our closed door—startled me awake at six forty-five. Her raggedy and less-than-sweet-smelling blanket sat on my pillow and confused me, until I looked over to see her nestled against her dad’s back, both oblivious to the annoying beep.
I shook her shoulder. “You slept with us last night, Pumpkin. Go shut off your alarm and get moving.”
Lily padded out—thankfully without complaint. Sinking back against the pillows, I stared at the ceiling, unprepared to face the day and harboring a nagging sense of trepidation.
David sat up slowly and reached for the long-sleeved t-shirt he kept at the foot of the bed. I tilted my head and absently watched as he poked his head and arms through the shirt.
He walked to the door, shut it silently, then came back to sit next to me on the edge of the bed.
“I’m worried about you,” he said. “You’ve got stress written all over your face, you’re not sleeping well, and now your nightmare’s scaring the bejesus out of Lily and me. Don’t you think it’s time you called Dr. Brownhill?”
“You’re probably right,” I said without conviction. I thought the world of my therapist, but it felt a little like defeat to go back to her.
“You’ll call her today?” he asked and pointedly waited for my reply.
“Okay.”
**
Dr. Clarice Brownhill had been the psychologist assigned by the court to evaluate David and me as prospective adoptive parents before Lily’s birth. I’d made an instant connection with her, and I later sought her out for therapy for my panic attacks. A compact woman with short, silver-gray hair, she wore classically stylish clothes woven from natural fibers, Native American jewelry, and the most loving smile imaginable.
I called the clinic as soon as it opened and was grateful to learn Dr. Brownhill had had a cancellation and could see me later in the morning. Much as I hated to admit it, David was right: I needed her help.
Dr. Brownhill’s office always set me at ease. Sunlight streamed through the slats of the wooden window shutters, lush green plants contributed oxygen and life, and the buttery-soft overstuffed furniture soothed raw nerves and muscles. Redolent with the ever-present fresh flowers on her desk and spiced tea brewing in a pot in the corner, the room whispered sanctuary. Here, I felt truly cared for.
“Tell me what brings you here today,” Dr. Brownhill said when she’d seated herself in a massive club chair, her bare feet tucked under her.
I tried to swallow the lump in my throat and grabbed a tissue from the box sitting next to me. “Last night I woke up screaming from the worst conceivable nightmare and scared David and Lily half to death.”
Dr. Brownhill listened as I recounted the details. “It does sound terrifying.”
“And it was so vivid and realistic—not like some dreams where everything’s jumbled together.” I said. “That scared me even more.”
“Dream analysis isn’t my area of expertise.” She scratched her head with her pen. “But perhaps the dream’s intensity was your subconscious mind’s way of forcing you to confront a critical issue you might otherwise try to ignore. Does that sound plausible to you?”
I nodded. “Yes, but I’m not sure which issue. There seem to be plenty.” I told her about my recent panic attack, about the adoption and surrogacy options we’d been considering, and about Kate’s multiple legal problems and her unwillingness to cooperate with the cops. Dr. Brownhill was one of only a handful of people who knew Lily was Kate’s biological child.
“I find it interesting the bad guy in your dream is, as you call him, ‘a snitch,’ and your law enforcement friends are asking Kate to testify against her source. It’s also interesting that you’re helpless to stop the snitch from hurting Lily.”
“So you think my defending Kate is the biggest source of my stress?”
“You know you’re the only one who can answer that,” she replied with a smile.
“I didn’t want to take this case in the first place but didn’t feel I had any choice.”
“A lack of choices is always problematic,” she said. “Why did you feel you didn’t have a choice?”
“I told you how helpful Kate was to me when I started having the panic attacks in college. If she hadn’t made me see a doctor to get on medication, I don’t know what would have happened. And then she gave us Lily…”
Dr. Brownhill gave me her “go on” nod.
“I felt obligated to represent her.”
“Hmmm. Did Kate say as much to you?”
“Not in so many words. Just a few comments like ‘I’d do it for you.’”
“Let’s take this point by point,” Dr. Brownhill said. “It seems to me that suggesting a friend see a doctor is pretty innocuous. An appropriate response might be a thank-you note or a nice bottle of wine—not a life-long sense of indebtedness.”
She looked at me expectantly, and my stomach did a little flip-flop. I couldn’t bring myself to answer.
“Okay. Then we’ll move on to ‘she gave us Lily.’ The gift of a child is immeasurable, for sure, but you and David gave Kate a gift in return: a positive solution for what could otherwise have been a life-changing problem.”
“Kate could have elected to terminate the pregnancy and no one would have been the wiser,” I said. “Although she initially claimed it was too late for an abortion, that turned out not to be true.”
“But Kate was morally opposed to abortion and was afraid of the guilt she would feel if she chose that route.”
“What?” I asked. “Where’d you get that idea?”
“You told me.”
“When?”
“If you remember, before the adoption, you and David had access to Kate’s medical records and her psych evaluation, and you talked to me about what you’d read. I’m somewhat ashamed to admit it, but after I saw the article in the paper about her arrest, I went back and reviewed my notes from those old sessions. That’s how I recall what you told me at the time.”
Dr. Brownhill must’ve read the puzzled look on my face.
“What I’m saying is this,” she said, “Kate did you a favor by giving you her child, but you did her a favor by saving her from hell and damnation—at least in her mind.”
“Why don’t I remember that?” I asked, shaking my head. Didn’t Kate recently tell me she planned to give Yvonne Pritchard money for an abortion? Something she once found morally reprehensible? I was confused by the conflicting information but didn’t have the energy to pursue the train of thought. “That’s a side of her I just can’t see.”
“You’ve had a lot of other things on your mind since the day you signed on to become Lily’s mom. But you also need to keep in mind addiction is a progressive disease. Kate has progressively morphed into someone different than the friend you once knew. And addiction also alters one’s moral compass—as evidenced by all the addicts who steal from their families to support their habits.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I said, not wanting to face what I already knew. “But what do I do?”
“Could you give up Kate’s case?”
**
Tuesday evening, while Lily was at a Brownie meeting, David and I sat bundled up in front of a fire on the patio, a bottle of wine on the table between us. The cool air reminded me of the all-too-quickly-coming winter.
We stared in silence for a while, mesmerized by the tongues of flame dancing among the logs.
“Did the session with Dr. Brownhill help?” he finally asked.
I nodded. “It always helps me to talk to her.”
“I get the sense there’s still a lot on your mind,” he said, reaching over to take my hand. “You feel miles away from me.”
I swallowed a few times, unsure I could trust my voice not to break. “Talking with Dr. Brownhill didn’t change the fact that there’s way too much emotional stuff going on, and it’s all out of our control.”
The wind shifted, and a pillar of smoke wafted David’s way. He moved his chair close to the other side of mine, took my hand again, and looked at me with concern.
“My worlds are colliding,” I said, “after all my efforts to keep them separate. It feels like one of those apocalypse movies with invaders on every side and the clock ticking away.”
He shifted in his chair. “Did she have any suggestions?”
I paused for a moment over a sip of wine and collected my thoughts. No way was I going to tell him she’d suggested I consider giving up Kate’s case. I didn’t feel like rehashing why I’d taken the case to begin with. Moreover, I didn’t want to field any more questions about my sense of obligation to Kate. “She says I should take each problem by itself, examine it, and try to recognize how I feel about it,” I replied.
“And?”
“Well… take the adoption, for example. We agonized about whether to choose Linda Wordsworth’s surrogacy candidate or Miriam and Antonio’s baby. We made the choice to go for the adoption, felt confident and enthusiastic about it, and then got shot down. It’s just so fucking frustrating. Thank heaven we didn’t call Linda off—though it’ll take me a while to gear back up emotionally for surrogacy.”
David was silent for a moment, then said quietly, “Linda called me today.”
Instantly on edge, I sat forward in my chair. “When were you going to tell me? What did she say?”
Letting go of my hand, he took his time refilling our glasses.
“She said our potential surrogate is thinking of contracting with another couple.”
My heart sank. “A bidding war?”
“No…” he said slowly. “More like she’s pressing for an immediate answer—and Linda hasn’t even had the opportunity to interview her on our behalf.”
“Oh, no, David. I don’t think I can bear it if we lose another option. What did you tell her?”
He got up and put another log on the fire as my impatience grew by the second.
I shook my head in dismay. “Don’t tell me you burned this bridge, too.”
“Wait just a minute,” he shot back, spinning around to face me. “I thought we were on the same page in thinking Miriam and Antonio’s request to interview Lily was out of line. We both agreed to say no. And now you’re implying I ‘burned the bridge.’”
“I’m sorry, David. We are on the same page about it. It’s just…” I thought for a moment. “My emotions feel raw… It’s like all the wounds from the miscarriages and years of infertility have been ripped open again. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”
He nodded and poked at the fire.
“So what did you tell Linda?” I asked.
“I thought about our conversation yesterday—you know, about being desperate? Giving in to the surrogate’s demand for an immediate answer and acquiescing to her financial demands felt like acts of desperation.”
“So you told her no.”
“Caroline, I really believe we need to let this percolate for a while. Being turned down by Miriam and Antonio was a big deal, and we deserve time to make the right decision,” he said. “I told her we wouldn’t be able to give her an answer until Friday.”
“And her response?”
“She wasn’t optimistic that the surrogate would wait.”
As if to ward off the cold, I hugged myself and began rocking back and forth in my chair. Yes, I’d told David we shouldn’t act out of desperation—but maybe I’d been wrong.