“I wasn’t there,” she said.
Tracy began to explain our side of the story when Barbara cut him off. “I think I already know what happened,” she said.
“You mean, based only on what she told you,” said Tracy. The subtext being, Don’t we get a turn?
Barbara folded her arms. “I’m curious,” she said. “Your intention is to adopt a baby from South Africa. Were you aware that gay couples were forbidden to do so in that country for decades?”
“Yes, but they changed their policy,” said Tracy.
“In other words, they saw the light,” said Barbara. “Is that really what happened, though? Did key government officials suddenly wake up one morning and become more accepting of gay couples?”
“Someone there had to,” said Tracy.
“But not all of them, right? Or maybe it was none of them; maybe it was simply a matter of someone new coming along, one person,” she said. “Did you ever consider that?”
I’d been the dutiful listener up until that point, content to let Tracy do the talking. It was now clear, though, that he was preaching to the choir. Barbara had tipped her hand when referring to Ms. Peckler’s eleven years at the agency. That’s longer than I’ve been here, she’d made a point of saying.
“Barbara,” I said, cutting in, “is it possible that Mr. French didn’t run it by you first?”
“Mr. French?” she asked.
“The man who was supposed to conduct our home interview but couldn’t at the last minute,” I said.
Barbara smiled. “Wow, Family Affair…I used to love that show,” she said. “Edward sort of does look like Mr. French, doesn’t he?”
“If I had to bet, he went to Ms. Peckler on his own and asked if she could fill in for him,” I said. “Right?”
“Yes,” said Barbara. “I only found out after the fact.”
I turned to Tracy. He got it now. “In other words, Ms. Peckler wouldn’t have been your choice,” he said.
“No,” Barbara answered. “She wouldn’t have been.”
This was excellent news. The next step seemed obvious.
“Thank you,” said Tracy.
“For what?” asked Barbara.
“Allowing for another home interview, I’m assuming,” he said. “With the person you would’ve chosen.”
Barbara unfolded her arms, leaning back in her chair. Her expression almost made the words redundant. “If only it were that simple,” she said.
Chapter 24
HE RARELY, if ever, yells or screams. Instead, when Tracy’s mad, his temples throb. I mean, they really throb. It’s as if all his anger is pounding on the inside of his skull, looking for a way out.
For the first time, I thought his head might actually crack open.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
Tracy couldn’t even walk. Out on the sidewalk, less than fifty feet from the entrance to Barbara Nash’s office building, he peeled off and sat down on a bench outside a pastry shop. Or maybe it was a deli. I didn’t really bother to look. I was too busy staring at those temples.
“We should sue,” he said. “In fact that’s exactly what we should do.”
But Tracy never confused mad with foolish. No sooner had the words left his mouth than he admitted what we both already knew. We couldn’t sue. It was torture for him to say it. “They’re not denying us the right to adopt, are they?”
No, Barbara and her agency weren’t.
Instead they were postponing us. Six months, to be exact. That’s how long we had to wait before we could be granted another home interview, and it had nothing to do with how busy the agency was. This wasn’t about the calendar. As Barbara explained it, this was all about “checks and balances.”
The so-called process we were supposed to trust also required the trust of everyone else within the agency. The person conducting the home interview had to be given a certain autonomy. He or she couldn’t fear having a recommendation overturned simply because Barbara might disagree with the assessment. That was the balance—the balance of power.
The check was that Barbara could ultimately allow another home interview after a suitable waiting period.
Suitable, that is, to everyone except us.
“I don’t think I can wait another six months,” said Tracy. “Or six days, for that matter.”
“I know,” I said. “I just don’t know the alternative.”
“Maybe another agency?”
“Start from scratch? That would take even longer than six months.”
Tracy fell silent again. We were both hurting, but I knew his pain was worse because of the guilt. The more he sat there blaming himself, the more I racked my brain for something—anything—to give us some hope, a little optimism. I had nothing.
It was a helpless feeling. It was also all too familiar, I realized.
And suddenly, that was something.
God, how much I still miss her…
Chapter 25
“MY MOTHER,” I said.
Tracy turned to me. He’d been staring down at the ground, his body moving only to blink. He knew I almost never talked about my mother. Not in earnest, at least. Although I could tell an entire lecture hall full of students that she named me after Bob Dylan, they would never know about the cancer that took her life when I was thirteen.
“When she went back into the hospital for the second time, when everyone except me knew that she’d never be coming home again, she asked my father and brother to leave the room one day when we were visiting,” I said. “She wanted to talk, just the two of us. She told me how much she missed cooking my favorite meal, this elaborate noodle casserole that had chicken and sausage and something like five different cheeses. It truly was my favorite. Anyway, she handed me a list she’d written.”
Tracy smiled. “A grocery list.”
“Yes. Every single ingredient. My father drove me to the market and gave me money, but he had strict instructions from my mother that he had to stay in the car. I had to do all the shopping on my own and bring everything to the hospital, where she’d arranged to use the kitchen in the doctors’ lounge. My mother wanted to cook for me one last time. How could they say no?”
“Of course not,” said Tracy. “They couldn’t.”
“But that wasn’t the real reason,” I said. “That wasn’t why she was doing it. The list, making me buy the food—even letting me prepare some of the casserole when she told me she was getting too tired—it was all about giving me the chance to do something I hadn’t been able to do the entire time she’d been sick. Help her. I was only thirteen. She was going to die soon, and there was nothing I could do about it. She couldn’t tell me everything was going to be okay; she would’ve never lied to me like that. She knew how helpless I felt, and she figured out a way for me to help her. Not save her life, not make her awful pain go away. It was simply so I could make her smile for one night as she watched me eat that casserole.”
Tracy stared at me for a moment. His forehead was smooth, those temples quiet. “Thank you for that,” he said finally.
“There’s always something that can be done. It will come to us,” I said. “Don’t worry.”
Chapter 26