The Mothers A Novel

24

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School had begun again and I gave myself over to the daily focus of my long-neglected work. I attended departmental meetings I had once avoided; I met with students; I planned new assignments; I graded and returned papers promptly; I worked on improving my handwriting. I took long walks through the neighborhood with Harriet, and I concentrated on Lucy, making plans for Ramon and me to be there when Hannah arrived, red and screaming, into our lonely family.

Sometimes we are moving when we think we are standing still. That is what I have learned about waiting.

It was Valentine’s Day when Crystal called. I remember looking out my office window at the ridiculous red construction-paper hearts and pink cupids pasted, ironically perhaps, along the hallway. It gave the impression that we had retreated backward, to elementary school, that there was no future to be had at all, that there was only the past to carry us through these brief sunny corridors.

“Remember Carmen?” Crystal said.

Two colleagues in our shared office looked up from their work at the sound of my sobbing.

_______

“Ramon!” I collected my scattered books and folders and papers. I gathered up everything. “It’s happening.”

He was silent.

“Carmen,” I said. “The first one. The very first one.”

_______

Zero to one hundred. That evening we were on a plane, and we were flying. We soared over New York City and our city glittered below us, glowing, jeweled, an answer to so many of our questions, and we were heading to light, to desert, to perpetual spring.

To Carmen, the first one to break our hearts, but she had changed her mind and she had chosen us, and she was to be induced the next day, and we were flying.

Shakily, I held Ramon’s hand. “Let’s rent a convertible,” I said. We could be in California for several weeks waiting for the paperwork to be finalized. I imagined us high in the hills, the desert extremes; Joshua Tree would be in full bloom now. I imagined our hair flying behind us, the sun to our cold, chapped faces.

What would Carmen look like—beautiful or plain, fat or thin, dark or light? I had spoken to her only for a moment. Hello, she had said softly into the phone. Is this Jesse?, she had said, and I had answered, Yes, it’s me.

“We can’t carry a newborn around in a convertible,” Ramon said. “Are you nuts? We will have a baby. What we need is a car seat and diapers.”

Startled, I looked over at Ramon. “Oh my God,” I said. “This is happening. Is this happening?” There was, after all, the chance that Carmen would keep the child, or that her parents would. There was a chance that we would be coming back alone. Still, there was the possibility for anything.

“I believe that this is,” Ramon said, turning to the window. “I believe it,” he said.

When we’d spoken, I had thanked Carmen for her altruistic act, and I had thanked her for choosing us, however she had come to choose, in whatever way she had come to that decision. We’ll take good care of your daughter, I’d said, and I saw Ramon then, bent over a little girl who was growing clearer, a photograph in a darkroom, coming to light. I saw Lucy and me running through the sprinkler in our suburban backyard. Claudine was at the screen door, her hands on her hips, and the wet grass was between my toes.

Let her be real, I thought.

The lights of the city—our city—receded as we ascended until pinpricks of fuzzy light embroidered the sky.

We were headed there, closer and closer. Outside our window, the sky was pitch-black. She is real, I thought.

We have found her.





Acknowledgments



THANK YOU TO THE MacDowell Colony, for the time and space to begin making my way to this project. Thank you to Meg Wolitzer, for her unwavering support. Thanks as well to Nina Revoyr and Jen Loja, always faithful early readers; to Allison Devers, who lent me Asbury Park; to Mitchell Kaplan, who encouraged me to use my real voice; and to Elissa Schappell, who demands bravery. I am indebted as well to Suzanne Nichols and Mia Diamond Padwa for their unremitting work off the page. And deep gratitude to the mothers: Judy, Voula, and Kate. Thank you to all the great people of Scribner, including Kelsey Smith for her terrific input and Kate Lloyd for her publicity prowess. Thanks to Clay Ezell of ICM for his constant work on my behalf. And big love and appreciation to my tireless advocate Jenn Joel, for her support, and to my editor, Alexis Gargagliano, whom I’ve been lucky enough to have with me for every book, and who gave this one its happy ending.