Jake raised his arm to signal the busboy, pointing at our empty shot glasses. “Dos más,” said Jake.
“Oh, honey,” I said, putting my hand on Jake’s shoulder and looking at the busboy apologetically. It was offensive to assume he didn’t speak English, and also offensive to speak Spanish as badly as Jake did. I didn’t speak Spanish at all, but I was going to immerse myself some summer soon.
“More tequila?” said the busboy.
“Yes, please,” I said.
Jake said, “Sí, sí.”
“What didn’t work out?” said Benji, his brow furrowed. “What do you mean, Alice?”
“The birth mother has forty-eight hours to change her mind,” explained Jake. “And our … and we …” Jake’s eyes grew teary, and he put his palm over his face. I stared dully at the burn scar on his thumb.
“She took the baby back,” I said. “She just … we had him at our house. We had him on the couch, and even on top of our bed. We put him in clean diapers and a swaddling blanket. He slept in his crib. And then she … she changed her mind.”
“They came and got him this morning,” said Jake.
“Oh my God,” said Lucy.
“Maybe she’ll … maybe it’s not …,” sputtered Carole, an English teacher at Chávez Memorial High School, which was located three blocks from Conroe’s BBQ.
“Anyone want a flauta?” I said, passing the tray. We didn’t mention Mitchell again, and Jake and I left the restaurant without the baby gifts. We were pretty drunk, so Jake called Austin Taxi from the Matt’s El Rancho parking lot. On the ride home, I rested my head on my husband’s shoulder, watching the bright signs outside the cab window as we crossed the interstate to the Eastside: We Buy Gold Emporium, Churros Aqui!, Top Dawg’s Bar and Grill. I told the driver to hang a right after Frank’s Coin Laundry, where I brought our clothes every Monday when Conroe’s was closed. Two blocks later, Jake said, “Here we are.”
2215 Mildred Street—our home. We’d bought it from an elderly black woman who was moving to Pflugerville, joining the exodus of black families from downtown Austin’s Eastside to the sprawling suburbs. It was a cottage, really: one thousand square feet of termite-nibbled hardwood. Jake and his father had painted the house a glossy white, added black shutters to the windows, erected a picket fence around the yard. I’d bought two brass lanterns to hang on either side of our hunter-green door. On one of our evening walks around the neighborhood, we’d found a broken porch swing. Jake used his welding equipment and a few cans of Rust-Oleum to restore the swing, hanging it on the front porch. In the backyard, we’d planted a lemon tree and a row of bamboo. We could be poster children for Eastside gentrification, but we were not ashamed. We’d made a home for ourselves on Mildred Street, same as the crazy lady at 2213 and the young family at 2217. Same as Omar Martinez, who lived across the street and worked at Juan in a Million, home of the best hangover breakfast in town.
Our house was dark. As the cab pulled away, Jake sank into the porch swing and I let myself inside. This had been, we’d vowed, the last chance. I was infertile, and our hopes for adoption had about run out. We had borrowed every last dime available to try to impregnate a kind but stoic surrogate in Detroit named Janeen. After Jake and I had flown to Michigan seven times, Janeen said—kindly and with stoicism—that she needed to close this chapter and move on. She was now pregnant with a Brooklyn man’s sperm. I knew because I read her blog.
In the decade we’d been trying to have a baby, our life had become a symphony of failure, almost rapturous with dramatic and dashed hopes. Pregnant women contacted us through our adoption agency, but then chose another couple, kept the baby, or (in one case) turned out to be a nut job who’d never been pregnant in the first place. I’d maintained a website advertising our cheery life and happy home (writing corny stories about how we’d met; what our days at Conroe’s BBQ were like; and what sports, religion, and hobbies we’d teach our youngster), but though we received emails aplenty, none of the desperate people perusing the site had decided to bless us with a baby.
In the Detroit airport, after Janeen’s announcement, Jake told me he was done. In the Fuddruckers restaurant next to Gate C17, he grabbed my hand and begged me to stop. Exhausted and low, I agreed to deactivate our adoption file, to close this chapter, to move on with grace, gratitude, and all that crap. We embraced, ignoring the stares of the other Fuddruckers patrons. I felt, when we were aloft and sailing through the sky toward Austin, that maybe we would be okay. But then Naomi had chosen us, and baby Mitchell had come.
The night before, I’d fed him. Small and dark, with a cap of black curls, Mitchell had opened his brown eyes and looked at me. “I’m your mommy,” I said, tasting the precious words. I fit a bottle between his lips and watched him suckle, felt his body ease. As I held him, he passed with a tiny shudder from wakefulness to sleep. The moon outside his window was full. I was full. And then the agency called.
I went to Jake, brought him a beer. He opened it and drank, then I grabbed the can and took my own mouthful. The beer made the pain a bit less sharp, just for the evening. “Oh, God,” I said, sitting down next to Jake, breathing the sultry air. The moon was still round and bright.
“I wish I knew what the point of this was,” said Jake. “Or would you say were?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “and I don’t care.”
“Fair enough,” said Jake.
People always seem surprised when they first meet me and Jake. He’s good-looking and sure of himself, a blond former football star. In contrast, I’m nervous and dark-haired, more comfortable in the backcountry than at a country club. If Jake is a lion, regal and handsome, I’m a wren: fragile, easily spooked, ready to take flight. Somehow, though, it works. At night, I tuck myself into a ball, and Jake surrounds me, and I am warm.
In the moonlight, I saw a figure emerge from Beau and Camilla’s house next door. “Hello?” called Camilla. As she approached, I could see she was carrying a metal pot.
“We’re drinking on the swing,” admitted Jake.
“I am so sorry,” said Camilla. Her Nigerian accent made the words especially sad somehow.
“Did you see them take the baby?” I asked.
Camilla hesitated, then nodded. Camilla and Beau had two daughters who had inherited their father’s light hair and their mother’s feisty attitude. “I made soup,” said Camilla, unlatching our gate.
“Thanks,” I said. I made a move to stand, but Camilla shook her head.
“I’ll put it in the kitchen,” she said, climbing our three front steps, opening the door. I heard her set the pot on our stove, and then she reappeared. “We’re here, if you need anything,” she said. “I mean, we’re there,” she said, pointing.
“Thanks,” Jake and I said in unison. We watched Camilla walk across the alley back to her home, where her family waited for her.
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