My father throws his hands up in mock exasperation and says, “Enough of the shoes! Tell us what happened!”
“Okay,” Daphne says. “So I’m trying on these shoes and this really cute, young pregnant girl sits down next to me. I notice that she’s not wearing a wedding band, and I start wondering if her hand is just swollen from being pregnant and her rings won’t fit or if she’s not married and got pregnant accidentally. And I’m sort of thinking that it was an accident because, you know, she looks soo young. Then I have to admit, I have this pang of bitterness, like, how is that fair? How can some people have a baby so easily and get pregnant when they don’t try at all and don’t even really want a baby?”
“Daphne!” Maura and I say in tandem. Daphne is known in our family for being the slowest, most circuitous storyteller of all time.
Daphne laughs and streamlines her tale. She says that she and the girl, whose name is Amber, got to talking about how comfortable Easy Spirits are. Amber told Daphne that she waitresses at night and her feet hurt all the time. Daphne told Amber that she’s a teacher and she sure knows about achy feet. It turns out that Amber is in college getting her degree in education. Daphne asked her what college. Amber said Hofstra, which is where Daphne went to school. They then discussed professors they both know and courses Amber is taking and where she’d like to someday student-teach.
So then Daphne asked about her baby, and after a few minutes of polite chatter about the gender and due date, Amber came right out and told Daphne the rest of her story, that she got pregnant accidentally (the condom broke) and her boyfriend, now ex-boyfriend, wanted her to have an abortion. And so did her parents. But Amber said she just couldn’t do that. But she also knows in her heart that she isn’t ready to be a mother and that it wouldn’t be fair to the baby to try. She wants a better life for her son. So she decided to give the baby up for adoption. She researched agencies and finally registered with one in Westchester, the kind that facilitates open adoptions. She said she had met several couples, but just hadn’t found the right match yet. She said that everyone had been super nice, but the vibe was always off. Now the baby was coming soon so she was running out of time.
Daphne pauses for a second to sip from her water glass. Then she says, “At this point, I just burst into tears with this guy named Bo helping me into a pair of chocolate-brown loafers Then, I find myself confiding in Amber, telling her all about our struggles. And when I finish, we just sort of look at each other. Straight into each other’s eyes. And it’s like, in that instant, we both just knew that we were meant to meet So we end up buying the same pair of shoes, and going to the food court to talk more. That night she came over for dinner and met Tony, and they hit it off, too. Right, Tony?”
Tony nods. “Yeah. I really like her She has a good head on her shoulders.”
“And a great, big heart,” Daphne adds.
“What does she look like?” Maura asks.
Daphne says, “She’s cute. She has straight brown hair and dark eyes and a sweet smile. She’s tall at least five ten.”
“The tall part is pretty cool,” Tony says. Tony is on the short side and frequently laments his height with respect to athletics. Daphne says he had the ball-handling skills and three-point shot to play college basketball. If only he had been a little taller.
“Do you know anything about the father?” I ask.
“Yeah. We saw a picture of the birth father,” Daphne says, subtly correcting me, letting all of us know that Tony will be the only father, not the pimply teenager who impregnated Amber, then dumped her and encouraged her to abort. I will not make that mistake again. She continues, “He looks like your normal, average guy. He goes to Hofstra, too”
“And he’s six three ,” Tony says, laughing.
“So what exactly is an open adoption?” I ask.
Daphne tells us that Amber will be a part of their son’s life. She says, “We want him to know his birth mother.”
“So it’s a done deal?” my father asks.
Daphne nods and says that she and Tony have already sorted out most of the paperwork and paid their fees. Then she says, “It’s crazy and all happening so fast We have so much to do in the next few weeks!”
My mother looks worried as she asks what I am thinking but would never have said aloud, “How do you know Amber won’t change her mind and try to get the baby back?”
Daphne’s answer is patient but persuasive, as if she herself once had the same concerns but has now come to see the light. She says, “Actually, Mother, birth parents in open adoptions are less likely to change their minds. They are at greater peace with their decision because they can see for themselves that the baby is happy And one can argue that in some ways, open adoptions are better for the child, too, because he won’t have to spend a lifetime wondering about his birth mother.”