Khaki

RESCUE CREW

One of my favorite rooms I’ve ever designed was featured in my first coffee table book. It was an awkwardly configured bathroom in which, years before it was popular or I had ever seen it in Veranda, I placed a gorgeous, antique claw-foot tub in the middle of the room. It was something I’d never expected.

Adopting a child wasn’t something I’d ever expected either. But you can’t know how your life is going to turn out until you’re living it.

I feel guilty sometimes about the way it all happened, about my participation in your birth mother giving you up. But then I push that thought away because if I hadn’t been at the right place at the right time, if I hadn’t done what I did, then I wouldn’t get to wake up every morning to the sweet sound of cooing through the baby monitor or see you laugh with delight when I walk into the room. And so I know it all turned out like it was supposed to.

But I’ll never forget the day that Jodi came to me, head hung down, eyes red-rimmed and puffy, and asked, in the quietest, saddest voice I’ve ever heard, “Can I borrow some money?”

It sounds terrible now, but, in the moment, I was kind of annoyed. I had planned a call with the head of my design firm, Anna. And I was in the throes of three very demanding design projects, was working on a marketing plan for my new book, had to get a blog post finished, and needed to check in with Daniel, the manager of my antiques store in New York, to see what I needed to buy at the auctions that weekend. And Alex was with Mother and Daddy for only three hours. Needless to say, every moment had been carefully orchestrated.

But, all the same, I brought Jodi through the front door and sat beside her on the couch, holding her hand, looking deep into her watery eyes, my mind going to the first, natural place it would go. “Oh, Jodi, you’re not drinking again, are you?”

She shook her head like that simple movement was taking all the strength in her bony body. I looked her over, her mousy hair stringy and greasy, hanging in her face, a tomato-sauce stained sweatshirt over a pair of faded jeans with holes that hadn’t been put there ironically. My mind jumped to a vision of poor, sweet Jodi, down on her knees, wearing away at that fabric, praying every minute that God would give her a different life.

“I am happy to lend you money,” I began slowly. “And I’m not trying to treat you like a child. But I can’t give you cash without knowing what it’s for.” I thought back to the last time I had helped Jodi out, to the lecture from Graham I was certain would never end. He was usually fairly amused by my antics, my husband, and I craved that way he looked at me like I was the only thing on earth that mattered. He scolded me only when it was serious. And he was serious that I never, ever give money to an alcoholic.

One fat tear fell down Jodi’s face, but she wiped it away quickly and said, “I gotta get an abortion. I ain’t got the money to do that and make the trailer payment.”

I leaned back on the couch and took a deep breath. My first thought was, Why her and not me? But I pulled myself together. I knew exactly where she was because I had been there a few years earlier, right after my first husband Alex had died. Of course, I wasn’t contemplating an abortion for the same reasons as Jodi. I was just afraid. Afraid of being a widowed mother. Afraid of being alone. Afraid of dying and leaving an orphan. It was the kind of afraid that wakes you up at night and won’t let you settle back down, the last wound-up, sugar-crazed girl at the slumber party. Part of me wanted to tell Jodi I was sorry, give her the money, and go on about my day. Part of me knew that, at nineteen and a recovering alcoholic with a minimum-wage job, the future was bleaker for her and that baby than a hospice patient.

But the other part of me knew how having my Alex had erased the gray rain cloud hovering above the black-and-white sketch of my life and replaced it with a full-color blue sky. The other part of me knew that one day, the little girl in front of me shaking like a guitar string in a blues solo might wish she had known all the information before she had made her decision. And so, I found myself wrapping my arm around her and saying, “Honey, I’ve got to tell you about when I found out I was pregnant with Alex.”

I told her about the abortion clinic that rainy day in New York and Jane, the counselor who had helped me realize that I should at least think about my other options. I told her about how I saw Alex jumping inside me for the first time on that ultrasound screen, and I realized that I wasn’t just a widow and I wasn’t all alone; I was a mother. I told this teenager, whom I didn’t know much better than the teller at the bank, my deepest, darkest secret, the horrifying truth that I had shared only with Graham and my best friends Stacey and Charlie.

I poured my soul out onto the living room rug like a can of Carpet Fresh. And I knew from her vacant, listless stare that she was so buried in the ash from the eruption of her life that she couldn’t hear me.

So I said, “Jodi, I have to tell you: I was in the worst, deepest, darkest well of my life and that baby was the rescue crew that came to fish me out. I don’t know how I would have made it without having him to live for.”

Her face shifted. “Ricky left me.”

I nodded solemnly, but I was thinking that was probably the best thing that could ever happen to her. But I didn’t say that, of course. Instead, I asked quietly, “Did he know about the baby?”

She nodded like she was about to be unhooked from life support and take her final breath. I knew how she felt. I remembered that weariness that seeps through your organs and hides out in your bones, that sadness that takes over your mind and grips you in a way that you don’t think you’ll ever get back to a place where a smile can dance on your lips or a laugh tickle the back of your throat.

“He seemed like he was all right with the whole thing. But he didn’t show up for my doctor appointment yesterday mornin’. And he didn’t come home last night. And he ain’t been here all day today.”

I wanted to say, Good riddance. But you can’t make someone see how terrible their partner is when they’re blinded by love, no matter how ill-advised that love is. “Doesn’t he disappear like this from time to time?” I asked.

She finally leaned back on the silk faille-covered sofa, pausing for a second, staring down at her feet. Then she said, her voice cracking, “He’s gone for good this time.”

I wanted to tell her that gone for good meant dead like my husband Alex. Gone for good didn’t mean cruising around in the truck that your pregnant girlfriend was paying off with her hard-earned money. It didn’t mean chugging beer with one hand on the wheel, throwing empty bottles out the window into the bed—and, if you were really, really lucky, a girl drunk enough that she didn’t realize what a no-good bastard you were. But I remembered being nineteen. I remembered that shiny half dollar of love story hope that made you think the beast was going to turn into a prince if you just waited a little longer. Sure, he was an ass, but he was going to change for you.

I had bitten my tongue long enough and so, in a way that I hoped seemed encouraging, I said, “Sweetie, I think you’re better off raising this baby by yourself than you would have been with him.”

She shook her head. “I cain’t be trusted with a baby.”

I cocked my head and adjusted the books on the mirrored coffee table, catching a glint of my diamond in the reflection.

“I think you’ll be an incredible mother. Why couldn’t you be trusted with your own baby?” She shook her head again. I added, “I know you’re young, but you’re smart and ambitious.” I leaned back, smiled, and rubbed her arm supportively. “For heaven’s sake, you can change a tire faster than a highway patrolman.”

I thought that would elicit a smile, but instead, I saw a shiver inch up her spine. “What if I get to drinking again?” she whispered like she was afraid the cloisonné lamps would hear her and tell.

And that was when I realized it: I could try to equate our two situations all I wanted to, but they’d never really be the same. Because addiction is a force that I can read about or listen about or think about, but that, praise Jesus, I’ll never truly understand.