Inside, the house was already full to overflowing. There were mimosas and an omelet station. There were caterers offering bite-sized quiches and poached eggs in puddles of velvety hollandaise. There was a three-tiered pink-and-white cake, draped in fondant and topped with a sugar figurine of a baby holding the number 1 in its chubby hands. And everywhere pink and white streamers unfurling their triumphant way toward the kitchen table, where Mirabelle McCullough, the birthday girl, nestled in Mrs. McCullough’s arms.
Mrs. Richardson had met Mirabelle before, of course, months earlier, when she’d first arrived at the McCullough household. She and Linda McCullough had grown up together—Shaker class of 1971, old friends since meeting in second grade—and there had been a lovely symmetry to their paths as they’d both gone away to school and come back and settled in Shaker into careers of their own. Only where the Richardsons had right away had Lexie, then Trip and Moody and Izzy in quick succession, Mrs. McCullough had undergone over a decade of trying before she and her husband had decided on adoption.
“It’s just providential, as my mother used to say,” Mrs. Richardson had told her husband on hearing the news. “There’s simply no other word for it. You know what Mark and Linda have been through, all that waiting. I mean, I bet they’d have taken a crack baby, for goodness sakes. And then out of the blue the social worker calls them at ten thirty in the morning, saying there’s been a little Asian baby left at a fire station, and by four o’clock in the afternoon there she is in their house.”
She had gone over the very next day to meet the baby and in between cooing over the child heard Linda recount the story—how she’d gotten the call and had driven directly to Babies “R” Us, buying everything from a complete wardrobe to a crib to six months’ supply of diapers. “Maxed out the Visa,” Linda McCullough had said with a laugh. “Mark was still putting the crib together when the social worker pulled up with her. But look at her. Just look at her. Can you believe this?” She had bent over the infant cradled against her, with a look of pure astonishment.
That had been ten months earlier, and the adoption process was well underway now. They hoped to have it finalized in a month or two, Mrs. McCullough told Mrs. Richardson as she handed her a mimosa. Little Mirabelle was a darling thing: a fuzz of dark hair topped by a pink ribbon headband, a round pert face with two enormous brown eyes staring out at the crowd, Mrs. McCullough’s beaded necklace clenched in her fingers.
“Oh, she looks like a little doll,” gasped Lexie. Mirabelle turned her face away and buried it in Mrs. McCullough’s sweater.
“This is the first big party we’ve had since she came to us,” Mrs. McCullough said, running a hand over the girl’s dark head. “She’s not used to having so many people around. Are you, Mimi?” She kissed the baby’s palm. “But we couldn’t let her first birthday go by without a celebration.”
“How can you know it’s her birthday?” Izzy asked. “If she was abandoned and all.”
“She wasn’t abandoned, Izzy,” Mrs. Richardson said. “She was left at a fire station where someone would find her safely. It’s a very different thing. It’s brought her to this very good home.”
“But you don’t know her real birthday, then, do you?” Izzy said. “Did you just pick some random day?”
Mrs. McCullough adjusted the baby in her arms. “The social workers estimated she was two months old when she came to us, give or take a couple of weeks. That was January thirtieth. So we decided we’d celebrate November thirtieth as her birthday.” She gave Izzy a tight smile. “We think we’re very lucky, to be able to give her a birthday. It’s the same as Winston Churchill’s. And Mark Twain’s.”
“Is her name really Mirabelle?” Izzy asked.
Mrs. McCullough stiffened. “Her full name will be Mirabelle Rose McCullough, once the paperwork goes through,” she said.
“But she must have had a name before,” Izzy said. “Don’t you know what it is?”
As a matter of fact, Mrs. McCullough did know. The baby had been tucked in a cardboard box, wearing several sets of clothing and cocooned in blankets against the January cold. There had been a note in the box, too, which Mrs. McCullough had eventually convinced the social worker to let her read: This baby name May Ling. Please take this baby and give her a better life. That first night, when the baby had finally fallen asleep in their laps, Mr. and Mrs. McCullough spent two hours flipping through the name dictionary. It had not occurred to them, then or at any point until now, to regret the loss of her old name.
“We felt it was more appropriate to give her a new name to celebrate the start of her new life,” she said. “Mirabelle means ‘wonderful beauty.’ Isn’t that lovely?” Indeed, staring down that night at the baby’s long lashes, the little rosebud mouth half open in deep and contented slumber, she and her husband had felt nothing could be more appropriate.
“When we got our cat from the shelter, we kept her name,” said Izzy. She turned to her mother. “Remember? Miss Purrty? Lexie said it was lame but you said we couldn’t change it, it would be too confusing to her.”
“Izzy,” Mrs. Richardson said. “Behave yourself.” She turned to Mrs. McCullough. “Mirabelle has grown so much over the past few months. I wouldn’t recognize her. So skinny before, and now look at her, she’s chubby and glowing. Oh, Lexie, look at those little cheeks.”
“Can I hold her?” Lexie asked. With Mrs. McCullough’s help, she settled the baby against her shoulder. “Oh, look at her skin. Just like café au lait.” Mirabelle reached out and laced her fingers into Lexie’s long hair, and Izzy drifted sullenly away.
“I do not get the obsession,” Moody murmured to Trip, in the corner behind the kitchen island, where they had retreated with paper plates of quiche and pastries. “They eat. They sleep. They poop. They cry. I’d rather have a dog.”
“But girls love them,” said Trip. “I bet if Pearl were here she’d be all over that baby.”
Moody could not tell whether Trip was mocking him or simply thinking about Pearl himself. He wasn’t sure which possibility bothered him more.
“You were listening in health class when they talked about precautions, right?” he asked. “Otherwise there are going to be dozens of girls running around with baby Trips. Horrific thought.”
“Ha ha.” Trip forked a piece of egg into his mouth. “You just worry about yourself. Oh wait, in order to knock someone up, someone has to actually sleep with you.” He tossed his empty plate into the garbage can and went off in search of a drink, leaving Moody alone with the last few bites of his quiche, now gone cold.