For now, the idea still forming in his mind, he said only, “We’ll see how things shake out.”
“I feel bad for her,” Lexie said suddenly from the far end of the table. “Bebe, I mean. She must feel so awful.”
“I’m sorry,” said Izzy, “is this the same Bebe that you referred to last month as a negligent mother?”
Lexie flushed. “She should’ve taken better care of the baby,” she admitted. “But I dunno. I wonder if she just got in over her head. If she didn’t know what she was getting into.”
“And that’s why pregnancy is not something to be taken lightly,” Mrs. Richardson cut in. “You hear me, Alexandra Grace? Isabelle Marie?” She lifted the dish of green beans and helped herself to an almond-sprinkled spoonful. “Of course having a baby is difficult. It’s life changing. Clearly Bebe wasn’t ready for it, practically or emotionally. And that might be the best argument for giving the baby to Linda and Mark.”
“So one mistake, and that’s it?” Lexie said. “I’m not ready to have a baby. But if I—” She hesitated. “If I got pregnant, you’d make me give it up, too?”
“Lexie, that would never happen. We raised you to have more sense than that.” Her mother set the dish back in the center of the table and speared a green bean with her fork.
“Well, somebody’s heart grew three sizes today,” Izzy said to Lexie. “What’s with you?”
“Nothing,” Lexie said. “I’m just saying. It’s a complicated situation, that’s all.” She cleared her throat. “Brian was saying that even his parents don’t agree about it.”
Moody rolled his eyes. “The case that tore families all over Cleveland apart.”
“John and Deborah are entitled to their own opinions,” Mr. Richardson said. “As is everyone at this table.” His gaze swept around the room. “Trip, what’s this I hear about a hat trick in yesterday’s game?”
After dinner, however, Mr. Richardson’s thoughts were still clouded. “Do you think,” he asked Mrs. Richardson as they cleared the table, “that Mark and Linda really know how to raise a Chinese child?”
Mrs. Richardson stared at him. “It’s just like raising any other child, I should think,” she said stiffly, stacking the plates in the dishwasher. “Why on earth would it be any different?”
Mr. Richardson scraped the remnants of egg noodles from the next plate into the disposal and handed it over. “Of course everything important is the same,” he conceded. “But I mean, when that little girl gets older, she’s going to have a lot of questions. About who she is, where she came from. She’s going to want to know about her heritage. Will they be able to teach her that?”
“There are resources out there.” Mrs. Richardson waved a dismissive hand, inadvertently flicking a few drops of stroganoff onto the counter. “I don’t see why they can’t learn it alongside her. Wouldn’t that bond them all closer, learning about Chinese culture together?” She had vivid childhood memories of Linda swaddling her Raggedy Ann in an old kerchief and gently putting it to bed. More than anyone, she knew how fiercely Linda McCullough had always wanted a baby, how deep that longing to be a mother—that magical, marvelous, terrifying role—ran in her friend. Mia, she thought, ought to understand that better than anyone: Hadn’t she seen that in the Ryans? Hadn’t she, maybe, even felt it herself, hadn’t that been why she’d run away with Pearl? She swabbed at the counter with her thumb, smudging the granite. “Honestly, I think this is a tremendous thing for Mirabelle. She’ll be raised in a home that truly doesn’t see race. That doesn’t care, not one infinitesimal bit, what she looks like. What could be better than that? Sometimes I think,” she said fiercely, “that we’d all be better off that way. Maybe at birth everyone should be given to a family of another race to be raised. Maybe that would solve racism once and for all.”
She shut the dishwasher with a clang and left the room, the dishes inside still rattling in her wake. Mr. Richardson took a sponge and wiped the sticky counter clean. He should have known better than to bring it up, he realized: it was too personal for her; she couldn’t see clearly; she was so close that she didn’t even realize how unclearly she was seeing. For her it was simple: Bebe Chow had been a poor mother; Linda McCullough had been a good one. One had followed the rules, and one had not. But the problem with rules, he reflected, was that they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things. When, in fact, most of the time there were simply ways, none of them quite wrong or quite right, and nothing to tell you for sure which side of the line you stood on. He had always admired his wife’s idealism, her belief that the world could be made better, could be made orderly, could perhaps even be made perfect. For the first time, he wondered if the same held true for him.
17
It soon became clear, however, that Mr. Richardson was not the only conflicted party. The judge seemed to be waffling as well. A week passed after the hearing, then two, with no decision made. In mid-April, Lexie was due for a follow-up appointment at the clinic, and to both Pearl’s and Mia’s surprise, she asked Mia to accompany her.
“You don’t have to do anything,” she promised Mia. “I’d just feel better if you were there.” The earnestness in her voice was persuasive, and on the afternoon of the appointment, after tenth period, Lexie parked her Explorer outside the house on Winslow. Mia started up the Rabbit and Lexie climbed into the passenger seat and they drove away together, as if she really were Pearl, as if Mia really were her mother taking her on this most intimate errand.