My mind raced, my thoughts disjointed and blurry—yet remarkably clear, too. I told myself that there were risks, that I might regret it in the morning, if not sooner. I told myself he might only be pretending to like me—that he was really just using me to get laid, that surely I was only one of many. I told myself that it wasn’t the kind of thing a girl like me did, especially with someone like him.
But the answer was still yes. With every beat of my heart, I heard yes. And then I said it aloud, holding his gaze, so there would be no mistake about my decision. Heat, lust, and alcohol aside, I knew exactly what I was doing—that I was making an indelible, irrevocable choice. I knew it as I felt him enter me slowly, lingering for a few seconds before he withdrew to put on the condom and begin again. I knew I was changed forever.
Yet in that still, salty aftermath, I never imagined what would follow. I never dreamed that it would be anything other than a moment in time. A story from my youth. A chapter from that summer. A heat wave with a beginning, middle, and definite end.
3
Kirby
My name is Kirby Rose, and I’m adopted.
I don’t mean to make it sound like an AA confession, although sometimes that’s how people take it, like it’s something they should be supportive about. I just mean that they are two basic facts about me. Just as you can’t pinpoint the moment you learn your name, I can’t remember the first time I heard my parents tell the story of that out-of-the-blue phone call announcing my birth and the news that I would be theirs in seventy-two hours. All they had to do was drive to Chicago (a short trip from their neighborhood in South City, St. Louis, where they both grew up and still lived), sign some papers, and pick me up at the hospital. All they had to do was say yes.
It was April Fools’ Day and for a second my mom thought it was a joke, until she reassured herself that nobody would be cruel enough to play such a trick on a couple who had been trying and wishing, waiting and praying for a baby for over ten years, from virtually the day they got married. My dad was an electrician, my mom an administrative assistant at a big law firm in town, so they made decent money, but they couldn’t afford any fancy fertility clinics. Instead, they looked into adoption—first sticking with domestic Catholic agencies, then gradually registering with any organization in any country that might have a baby to give them. China. Russia. Colombia. Shady lawyers. It didn’t matter; they just wanted a baby.
So of course my mother shouted yes into the phone before she knew a single fact about me. Then, as my dad picked up the other extension, the lady on the phone calmly reported that I was a healthy six-pound-three-ounce baby girl. Nineteen inches long, with big, blue eyes and a head covered with peach fuzz. She said I had a big appetite and a sweet disposition. She called me “perfect”—and told them that they were the lucky ones chosen by the agency from hundreds of adoptive parents.
“Congratulations,” she said. “We’ll see you soon.”
My parents hung up, wept, embraced, then laughed through more tears. Then they rushed out to Babies “R” Us the way people hit grocery stores before a blizzard. They bought tiny pink clothes and a crib and a car seat and more toys and dolls than I could ever hope to play with, then came home and transformed my mother’s sewing room into a lavender and yellow nursery.
The next day, they drove to Chicago and checked into a hotel near Northwestern Memorial Hospital. They had to wait three more days to meet me, neither of them sleeping for more than a few minutes here and there, even though they knew it was the last good rest they’d have for a while. In the meantime, they discussed baby names, my mother lobbying hard for her maiden name, Kirby. We have to see her first, my dad insisted. I had to look like a Kirby—whatever that was.
My dad typically picks up the story from there, telling me how he cut himself shaving, his hands shaking so much that he almost let my mother drive to the hospital, something he never does because she sucks so badly at it. Then he skips ahead to the papers they hurriedly signed, and the moment the lady from the agency returned with a baby—me—swaddled in a pink fleece blanket.
“Meet your daughter,” the lady said as she handed me to my parents. “Dear one, meet Lynn and Art Rose. Your parents.”
It has always been my favorite part of the story. The first time they held me, gazed down at my face, felt the warmth of my body against their chests.
“She has your nose,” my dad joked, and then declared me a Kirby.