The Baby Merchant Page 8

  She should have called a cab, called the cops, called it quits last night here but it was weird out. The footing was uncertain. No matter which door she chose he could be standing there.

  She heard his footsteps circling for hours, but some time before sunrise she heard a door slam and the throaty snarl of a cheap car scratching off. She didn’t need to hear Gary shouting, I’ll be back. She knows he will. Crazy, she thinks, he’s crazy to assume that biology constitutes possession. He came in grinning like a carnival prizewinner primed to pick up the plush elephant, the Nokia or iPod, the Twin Towers paperweight that he won with a lucky shot. As if one shot makes him a dad.

  The incursion leaves her jittery and possessive. This isn’t your inalienable right, you jerk, it has nothing to do with you.

  Sasha knows better than anyone that it doesn’t. She’s carrying this baby, and she has no right. As if a dumb college fuck like Gary could actually take care of a child. As if she can. Biology doesn’t make you a mother. Or give you a father’s rights. When it comes to a freshly hatched baby, she doesn’t know what to do. She wouldn’t know where to start. Which, for God’s sake, is why she came here in the first place. To find somebody who does. She wants a real mother and father to throw their hearts into taking care of this baby she is having.

  If she leaves, what will happen to her baby then?

  Gary’s mad sense of entitlement frightens her. Mine, he said. They are like kids fighting over a rubber doll. No. It’s mine.

  God, she can’t stay! Worse. She is afraid to go.

  It’s pathetic but her time here has made her lazy and dependent. It was the relief, she supposes, after all that uncertainty. Somebody to take care. Before Newlife, Sasha was taut with worry. What on earth would she do with this tiny, breakable thing, how could she manage a child without hurting it— specifically, without messing up the way her mother had? How could she keep from replicating the pattern, yet another Donovan woman crawling home? The solutions the agency offered were beautifully simple. Ideal.

  We will find a perfect home for your baby. Sign here and let us do the rest.

  Decided, she drifted along like a holiday rafter with no fixed destination and no deadlines, floating down a stream she had no desire to divert, or to escape. With everything taken care of she simply let go, humming along without worrying about what day it was or what to wear or when to go down to the sunny dining room, or what would happen next. She slept a lot, who wouldn’t? When all your decisions are made for you, you have time to dream.

  In dreams she’s only a container for the beautiful firefly she can release at the end. She loves it, she supposes, but in an abstract way. The way every artist loves her work. She can’t wait to let it out of the jar. No. She can’t wait to stop being the jar. She can watch it fly out to light up the sky. Think what beautiful patterns he’ll make! Dreaming, she let the pregnancy take her; at the end of nine months she and her baby would part with a kiss and a wave, Sasha and her firefly free to light up their separate parts of the world. Next time they meet, she thought before Gary intruded, it will be as equals, two joyful, free spirits— Oh, so this is what you’re like. What a nice surprise.

  Then Gary.

  For the first time since she hit Newlife, the decisions are back in her lap. Last night she thought it was clear. This morning, she doesn’t know. Is she better off running? Safer here? The chasm between now and her due date stretches and Sasha teeters like a ropewalker. Can she make it across without Gary jerking the rope out from under her? What if she can’t?

  The rest of the pregnant world is up and dressed and downstairs for the day, happy to waddle through the morning, laughing in front of daytime TV without a care while, alone in her room, Sasha broods. She should be showering. Putting on today’s flowered scrubs. Shuffling out to face the day. Instead she lies here, parched and anxious, while her imagination darts like a trapped ferret trying to gnaw its way to an exit without knowing which way.

  “Sally?”

  When you don’t sleep and sunrise finally tells you it’s OK to quit trying, sometimes you drop off out of sheer relief. Sasha blinks and sits up, flailing. Did I sleep? “What!”

  Maureen Storch, the placement officer, is standing over her with that nice-nasty Pepto-Bismol breath: “Sally, get up!”

  “It’s Sasha.”

  “Whatever, Sarah.”

  “Sasha.”

  The woman blinks bulging thyroid eyes. “Why aren’t you ready?”

  Sasha’s head jerks. “What?”

  “Don’t you remember? Today’s the day!”

  She wonders what Maureen knows that makes her so officious. Has Gary been down there shooting his mouth off? She’s afraid to ask. “What time is it?”

  “Quit stalling. You know damn well it’s time.”

  She’s running out of time and she doesn’t even know what time it is. “What’s happening?”

  “Didn’t you hear the bell? It’s almost ten. You’re late.”

  “Late for …”

  “The prospects.” The placement officer says with exaggerated patience, “You knew they were coming at nine. Why aren’t you up?”

  “Then this isn’t about …” Better not finish this sentence, she realizes. If they haven’t heard from Gary, fine.

  “They’re the last on your list, Egan, so get moving. They’ve been in the special room for an hour.”

  Strung out on no sleep, Sasha rummages: what were those people’s names? “Who have?”

  “The Hansons! They’re your last couple in this round.” Maureen slaps her clipboard on the bedstead. Schedule for the day, checkoff sheet, green folder. “Remember, you only get thirteen tries.”

  “I’m sorry.” She is. If they don’t suit her, her name sinks to the bottom of the list. Reject the Hansons and she loses her place in line; it’ll be weeks before she gets another chance.

  “You’d better be nice to them!” She taps the folder as though she has them clipped to the poop sheet inside. “Be extra nice to them because they’re your last for a long, long time.”

  Sasha shudders. The Hansons are downstairs in the observation room, waiting for her approval. When she has her baby they’ll take it away. Why isn’t she relieved? She just isn’t, that’s all.

  “Aren’t you excited? What’s wrong with you?”

  There are so many answers to that question that she’d better not start. She scowls into the mirror. “Minute.”

  “You don’t want to keep them waiting.”

  “I said, just a minute.” It’s going to take more than a minute. She’s trying to figure out how to handle this. If she runs, Gary will hunt her down. If she stays and promises this couple her baby, Gary may swoop down and steal it out of its crib before they can collect. What if she and the Hansons love each other? Can they make the match and leave together, the three of them?

  “No. Now.” Maureen jabs a ballpoint at her shoulder, leaving a blue mark on yesterday’s scrubs; last night she was too upset to change. “They’ve been waiting in the special room for an hour.”

  “Wait, OK?” Comb. Lipstick. Nothing helps. “I look like shit.”

  “Girl, what’s the matter with you?”

  “Bad day.”

  The idiot woman is happy to misread her. “Like you think they care how you look? They came all the way from Indianapolis, so get with the program.” Maureen will say anything to hurry her along. Sasha’s been a difficult client and she and Maureen are a bad match. It’s taken the placement officer weeks to come up with these prospects and now she’s twitching like Dolly Levi on the eve of an arranged marriage.

  “I’m not talking about bad hair. I said I needed a minute, OK?” The Hansons. If they’re as nice in person as they came off in the video conferences, they may be The Right Ones. Then she can give her baby two nice new parents and a good home. She can hand him over and walk away, knowing that he has the perfect place, nice house with a big yard, his own room— cute bunk beds and kid wallpaper, sailboats on th
e sheets— in some safe, comfortable neighborhood with people who know how to take care of a kid.

  Better. She’ll have allies. They’re both lawyers. Let them help her solve the Gary problem, and she’ll be free.

  “One minute exactly,” Maureen says. “No more.”

  “At least turn your back while I dress.” You’d think once you decide not to keep a baby that you wouldn’t care who took him home with them, but you do. This is, after all, your flesh and blood you are parting with. You need to do the right thing by this living being you’ve put into the world. This means you take your time deciding which parents, you owe it to him to make damn sure they’re right. Smart enough and kind enough. Enough like you so they can understand him. Better than you so they can give him what he needs. By this time Sasha has made so many snap judgments that there have been staff meetings about her. Each refusal is a black mark on Maureen’s fitness report.

  “Sixty seconds.”

  “All right, Maureen!”

  “I’m counting.”

  The Hansons think the agency has called them in as a special favor, to help them decide what kind of baby they want. They think they are playing with Newlife nurses’ children to help out. They flew into Orlando from Indiana and rented a car and drove out to Newlife because parent-wannabes will do anything to ingratiate themselves with the staff. Actually, they are auditioning. In fact, they are here on approval. Approval only, Sasha reminds herself. Does she want this placement, or does she not want it?

  “I make it sixty seconds,” Maureen says.

  If Sasha doesn’t like their looks, by contract she gets to say thumbs down. She can return them, no obligation, no charge, like mail order clothes that don’t fit. They’ll never know they were in the running here and she and Maureen will be back at square one. When they began this, Maureen handed her a long list. Now all the other names are ticked off and they are down to one. Sasha is supposed to spend today watching the Hansons through the one-way mirror in the Observation Room. Maureen says she has a week to decide, but with Gary lurking, she doesn’t have that kind of time.

  “Ninety.” Maureen flashes her watch.

  In fact, she has no time. No time at all. She has today. Until Gary shows up. If she likes the Hansons’ looks she’ll just call the shot. She’ll tell Maureen they’re fine, let’s do this. Then she’ll check her lipstick and run her fingers through her hair one more time and when Maureen brings the Hansons into the observation booth to meet her, she supposes they’ll all be so happy and relieved and glad to see each other that they’ll hug. She’ll promise the Hansons her baby and in return, she will enlist their help. Maybe they can get her out of here! Maybe she can wait out the last weeks of her pregnancy at their big house in Indiana and have her baby in Indianapolis, in the hospital of their choice.

  Together they can keep her baby safe. She hopes. God, she hopes!

  “Two minutes. Now move!” Maureen shoves her into the elevator and they go down. “You’re gonna love them,” she says grimly, propelling her to the observation room. “Unless you want to cut to the chase and sign the papers now.”

  “I have to see them,” Sasha says through clenched teeth. With Gary hovering, she has to do this fast. The Hansons are lawyers, which is a plus. She needs allies to help her shed Gary. Sasha’s a smart woman, she’s just too pregnant to fight him without help. With Gary and Grand out there in a holding pattern, casting shadows whenever they pass overhead, she needs all the support she can get. Together, she and these nice people who can’t conceive will decide how to cope with the guy who has zero rights in this matter but will do anything to prevent this adoption.

  If Gary wants to crank up Grandmother and roll her in like a cannon and fire, well, the Hansons will fight back. If they really want this baby they’ll fight it up to the Supreme Court. But what if I don’t like them? she thinks, gulping. Her hands fly to her face. What if they don’t like me? The doors open.

  “Now, get in there and get started.” Maureen Storch is one of those plain, freckled puddings who hates women who are better looking than they are. She doesn’t like Sasha much. “In my ten years here I’ve never had more trouble with a placement.”

  “Don’t push.”

  “Come take a look at your baby’s new parents.” Maureen thinks she is projecting professional cheer but her voice is tight with hostility. “Today’s the day.”

  “I said, don’t!”

  “Now, smile.” Maureen pushes her into a chair. “And when you buzz me to bring them in, make sure you’re smiling. It’s now or never, right?” God she is trying hard not to sound grim.

  The darkened observation booth is small, lighted only by the glowing one-way mirror that opens on the nursery. Right. It’s now or never. Now or never, but how can she think straight when she hasn’t slept? No time for a shower and nothing to eat since the supper she was too distressed to swallow. She should have eaten. She should have begged for coffee. Oh, this is bad.

  Maureen sticks her head in again with that atrocious, cheery grin. “Buzz me the minute you’re sure.”

  Sasha does not say, how do I know if I’m sure? On paper, the Hansons look ideal. They’ve passed all the psychological tests with high marks; their sheet bears Maureen’s Highly Recommended star. For days Sasha looked deep into the eyes of Jim and Carla Hanson via WebCam; she learned to love them on the tape she ran to shreds but it’s daunting, having them here, bumping around on the other side of the glass. She is trembling as she looks into the bright nursery. Inside, the Hansons laugh and murmur engagingly as they help one-year-old Lonnie Dietrich stack plastic cups—ADD Lonnie, whose last two placements didn’t take. Generic yuppie couple, she thinks, good-looking in their Levi’s and Patagonia shirts; smiling and, OK, older, which is not so good, do these people have the energy to keep up with any child of mine? She knows without needing to be told that her firefly will be a little torpedo. Still she’s OK with older, if they’re good at what they do. At least they know how to make this hard-to-place kid Lonnie giggle, and Lonnie is borderline autistic. The man who wants so badly to be a dad is scratching his ribs and galumphing like a monkey: oook oook oook. With a look over her shoulder at the mirror, the mother-in-waiting tickles Lonnie and rolls him over and makes him laugh. Sasha’s beginning to think this just may work out.

  In the next second Mrs. Hanson does something that overturns her.

  Rolling the child over on the floor, the woman who looks nice enough on WebCam looks up, as if a sixth sense has told her something has changed. Abruptly she stands, abandoning the laughing child like a toy she has lost interest in. Mystified, Lonnie begins to cry. Without glancing his way, Carla Hanson comes up to the one-way mirror. She leans into her reflection, pressing her face so close that her nose makes a grease spot and her lipstick smears the glass.

  “I know you’re watching, Mother,” she says with the same hostility Sasha senses in Maureen. “Don’t pretend that you aren’t.”

  Maybe it’s the proximity and maybe it’s a flaw in the glass but with those moist eyes Mrs. Hanson looks a lot like Gary Cargill, leaning in with a single-minded greed that is every bit as naked as Gary’s and, in spite of the barrier, overflowing into Sasha’s personal space. Her naked hunger, that slack mouth make clear that this woman Sasha wanted so much to be right for her baby is all wrong. Peel off the smile and the granola clothes and she is every bit as mediocre and stupid as Gary. Carla Hanson won’t see Sasha recoil but she’s the kind of woman who would go on talking even if she did.

  Hungry and anxious and— now that they are so close—ravenous!— she goes on, pleading in that creepy, condescending kindergarten teacher tone: “I know you’re in there, Sarah, and Sarah, I want you to know that Jim and I will take wonderful care of this sweet little baby boy of yours. I can’t wait to have a baby, Sarah, and I’m just so …” the word squeezes out, “so happy that we’re going to have yours! I mean, I’m sorry you’re too busy being a big artist to take care of him but look at it this way, w
ith us he’s bound to be much-much better off …”

  Hanson may be embarrassed by his wife’s gushing, but he can’t shut her up. “Always wanted a boy,” he says gruffly. “And since you can’t handle it …”

  Maureen, you bitch. What happened to confidentiality!

  On the other side of the mirror Carla Hanson warbles on. “Oh, I can’t wait to hold my brand new baby, I wish he’d just pop out right now so I could pick him up and take him home!”

  Smiling into her own reflected face, the woman does not see Sasha bristling behind the mirror: Not my firefly, you don’t. She mutters, “Did you have to come on so fucking strong?”

  The woman is so close that orange lipstick smears the glass. “Come on, sweetie, give him here.”

  Carla Hanson can’t hear Sasha’s involuntary, feral growl and she won’t see Sasha’s belly jump as the band of muscle protecting her baby clenches and she backs away from the glass murmuring, “Oh no you don’t, you stupid bitch. No way,” shaking her head as she comes crashing out of the booth and smack into Maureen.

  “Too soon, Sarah.” Maureen fans the door, trying to push her back inside. “For Pete’s sake, take your time.”

  “Get out of my way.”

  “You’re too close to term to go making snap judgments. Now get back in there and let’s wrap this thing up.”

  “It’s not a package!”

  “Bundle, then. As in bundle of joy.” The professional sweetness is undercut by spite. “Hurry up, please. It’s time.”

  “I’d rather die.”

  “You weren’t in there long enough to know.”

  “Have you seen them?”

  “Yes I’ve seen them, for crap’s sake I picked them out for you! Now get back in there and give them a little time.”

  “They’ve had time.” She feints but everyplace she turns, Maureen is, wig-wagging like a basketball guard. “Move, Maureen.”