The Art of Losing Yourself (36 page)

C
ARMEN

The mixture of raw meat, egg, onion, and breadcrumbs squished between my fingers as stray thoughts bounced around inside my mind. I couldn’t pin one of them down long enough to form anything cohesive. They hop, hop, hopped like a jar full of bouncy balls dumped onto a concrete slab. The unfilled manager position at The Treasure Chest, Aunt Ingrid’s steady decline, my producer’s continued pressure to build my platform on social media, Gracie gone for the night in Apalachicola, Ben and I alone for the night for the first time since August, and the phone call from our social worker that never came. When I called her about my CPR certification, she congratulated me, added it to our profile, and that was that. I hadn’t heard from her since.

The front door slammed shut.

Ben was at Brandon’s, helping him put on a new roof. By my watch, he wasn’t due home for another forty-five minutes. I removed my hands from the bowl and leaned back on my heels to see into the living room. It was Gracie. She kicked off her boots and marched upstairs. No “Hello.” No “Hi, I’m home early.” Did she even go to Apalachicola at all? A seven-hour round-trip drive wasn’t easily done in one day.

I quickly washed and dried my hands so I could go upstairs to check on her. When I reached her bedroom, I found her lying on her stomach in the middle of her bed, earbuds in, chin resting on her fist, eyes closed. We’d gone to the hair salon a week ago, and I still couldn’t get over how much better she looked without the black locks trimmed in green.

“Gracie?” I took a tentative step inside.

Nothing.

“Gracie?” I said, a little louder this time.

She opened her eyes and removed one of the earbuds.

“Is everything okay?”

“Peachy.”

“I thought you weren’t coming home until tomorrow?”

“Plans change.”

“Do you want to tell me what happened?”

“Not particularly.”

Her short, dry tone set off an unwelcome combination of irritation and fear. Irritation, because it brought back unpleasant memories of our relationship before our Thanksgiving breakthrough. Fear, because I’d been secretly anticipating this moment of reversion—bracing for it—as though the last several months had been a strange fluke and at any moment the tenuous relationship we’d established would be cut in half. I swallowed the emotions down and took a more definitive step inside. We’d come too far to revert to our old ways. I wouldn’t let her shut down now. “Did you invite Mom to the match?”

“Yes.”

“Is she coming?”

“She has to work.”

“What?” That was ludicrous. Gracie was her daughter, for crying out loud. This was exactly why a person was given personal days. “Did you tell her it was the state championship?”

“It’s not a big deal.”

Having Gracie in my house had taught me a few things. Namely, the more she acted like she didn’t care, the more she actually cared. I was compelled to call Mom up myself right now and demand she take the day off. It didn’t make any sense, her not coming. And seeing as I was the one who encouraged Gracie to put herself out there and invite Mom, I felt personally responsible for her disappointment now. “I’m going to call her.”

She scrambled up into sitting. “Don’t do that.”

“Gracie, you made it all the way to the state finals. I don’t care what you say, that is a big deal. Mom should be there.”

Gracie picked at a loose thread on the down comforter.

“It’s a big accomplishment. You should be really proud of yourself.” I took another step inside. “Ben and I are. You know that, right?”

A soft blush crept into her cheeks.

There were moments like these—more and more of them—that endeared me to my sister in a way I never expected. This thing I was doing—taking care of Gracie? Somewhere along the way, it had turned into something so much more than obligation. “Are you sure you don’t want me to call her?”

“Positive.”

“Well, if Mom isn’t coming because she has to work, that’s her loss. I will be there—front and center. I’ll even wear bells if you want me to.”

Although Gracie looked down at her lap, her cheek swelled in a way that lifted my spirits. I’d made my sister smile. “I don’t think bells will be necessary, but thanks.”

“You bet.” I turned to leave before remembering something. “Hey, I almost forgot. Eli stopped by earlier.”

She looked up. “When?”

“A couple hours ago. I told him you weren’t going to be home until tomorrow.”

“What did he want?”

“I’m not sure. To hang out, I guess.”

“Oh.” Gracie resumed her thread picking.

“Is everything okay between you two?” Gracie had come home earlier than expected last Saturday. I’d wanted to ask why, and about a million other questions too, but I showed some restraint. Another thing I’d learned about my sister these past few months? The more I asked, the less she said. I waited for Gracie to brush the question off. To tell me yeah, everything was fine. Instead, she twisted the ring on her finger, her eyes transforming from unsure to resolute. And just as she opened her mouth to say something, my phone rang.

I ignored it, silently cursing the interruption.

On the third ring, Gracie plugged the earbud back into her ear. “You better get that.”

With a sigh, I pulled the interrupter from my back pocket. The second I caught sight of the number on the screen, my breathing stopped. It was our social worker. Our social worker was calling. On a Saturday. My heartbeat quickened into a full-throttle gallop. One that pounded in my throat and in my ears and in the back of my knees. I stood there for one hopeful, terrifying second, then stepped out into the hallway with all the uncertainty in the world gathering in my chest. I swiped at my screen with numb fingers and pressed the phone against my ear. “This is Carmen.”

“Carmen, hello! It’s Sandy Booth. How are you?”

“I’m okay.” More like having a heart attack. More like unable to breathe.
More like one hundred percent freaking out, because why was she calling me on a Saturday to ask how I was?

“Good, good. So I have some promising news.”

I held my breath.

“A birth mother saw your portfolio this morning.” There was an infinitesimal pause. An eternal pause. An outside-of-time pause. “She’d like to schedule an interview.”

It was the phone call I’d been waiting for. The phone call I thought would never come. And suddenly, it was here. This was really happening. At some point today, while I was lost in my helter-skelter, bouncy thoughts, a birth mother saw our portfolio and called our social worker, and now our social worker was calling me. She explained that the birth mother would like to schedule an interview with us this Wednesday. I answered Sandy’s questions as coherently as possible. And when I hung up the phone, I slid down the wall and cried.

C
ARMEN

Ben pulled into an empty parking stall and turned off the car. I wiped my palms along the thighs of my pants. I’d changed my outfit twenty times before settling on a nice pair of jeans and a lilac-colored blouse. I hoped the casual confidence of the ensemble would hide my growing sense of desperation for a baby and put the birth mother at ease. But what if I was wrong? What if she took one look at my jeans and assumed I didn’t care enough? Dress to Impress, that was my producer’s motto.

Drops of rain spat at our windshield. I peered up at the gray sky with mounting disconcertion, trying not to take the drizzle as a bad omen. I had been absolutely meticulous about pinning down the initial weather conditions earlier this morning. My meticulousness was one of the reasons I was so good at what I did. The rain wasn’t supposed to begin until after midnight. I’d said so myself on this morning’s forecast.

“You okay?” Ben asked, his hands still on the steering wheel.

No, I wasn’t. Ever since our social worker’s phone call, I’d been tossing and turning at night, catching twenty-minute snatches of sleep between long lulls of staring at the ceiling. I should have been exhausted by now, but so much adrenaline coursed through my veins, I could probably go another forty-eight hours without any sleep at all. My teeth began chattering. It had nothing to do with being cold.

“Carmen?”

“She has to like us, Ben.”

He let out a long breath and pulled at his jaw. There wasn’t a whisker in sight and it was Wednesday. Ben never shaved on Wednesdays. Today, however, was not a normal Wednesday. Today was so far from a normal Wednesday—so packed full of consequence—that I couldn’t get a grip. “I’d like to pray for us before we go in.”

I blinked at the suggestion. It had been a long, long time since he’d suggested it.

Ben reached across the seat and took my clammy hand. I didn’t understand how his could be so dry, so steady. “Lord, thank You for this opportunity. We’re both nervous…”

The rest of Ben’s prayer slipped away. I couldn’t hear his words over the pounding of my heart or my own frantic,
Please, God…Please, God…Please, God
. It had been so long since I’d let myself hope, and now that it was knocking, I was flat-out terrified to answer.

If You are really up there, please
.

When the prayer ended, we stepped out into the afternoon drizzle that wasn’t supposed to be, took the elevator to the third floor, and entered suite 301, an office we were well acquainted with. Sandy glanced out her open door and stepped out to greet us with a handshake. She had a chin dimple, a pixie haircut, and a calm demeanor I was sure she’d learned throughout her years as a social worker. “Come on in,” she said, leading us into her office and motioning to a round table in the corner. “How are you two doing? I know this can be nerve-racking.”

Can be?
As in, some people’s nerves weren’t racked at this point in the process?

“We’re hanging in there.” Ben pulled out one of the chairs for me.

“That’s good.” Sandy sat at the table too. “I want to remind you that an interview doesn’t always result in a match. The birth mother is interested in your portfolio and would like to get to know you a little better. The best thing to do is to just be yourself.”

I nodded, but in all honesty, I wasn’t sure what that meant anymore.
Be myself
. Who was that? The Carmen everybody thought they knew on the television screen each morning? The Carmen who smiled at church on Sunday? Or the Carmen who, at one point or another, started feeling disillusioned by it all? Ben gave my hand a reassuring squeeze beneath the table.

A soft knock sounded on the opened door.

Ben and I stood. And there she was—the birth mother, a small slip of a girl with dark hair, freckles, pale arms, and a bulging belly. She couldn’t be any older than Gracie. Sandy greeted her with a warm hug and introduced us. Missy offered us a shy “hello” with a thick Alabama drawl and took the last of the four chairs at the table. I had an almost irrepressible urge to wrap her in a hug, but I mashed my hands together in my lap. Hugging her would be odd.

“This can be as long or as short as we’d like,” Sandy said. “It’s nothing formal. It’s simply a chance for you to get to know one another and ask some questions.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off Missy’s belly. There was a little baby in there, a baby that might become a Hart. A baby I might hold in my arms and call mine. A baby we’d been waiting so long for. A deep and irrepressible longing swelled in my chest, and with that longing came the hope I was terrified to let in. I forced my attention away from her belly and noticed that Missy was looking at me. My heart skipped a few beats.
Say something!
But nothing came. I was completely tongue-tied.

“How are you feeling?” Ben asked.

“Besides the heartburn, the pregnancy has been pretty easy.”

Ben smiled that smile of his—the extra charming one. I’d never been more grateful for it. Maybe it would win us points with her like it did with all the booster club moms.

Missy smiled back, then pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket. It was the kind of sheet one tears out from a spiral-bound notebook. “I wrote some questions down.”

“That’s great, Missy,” Sandy encouraged. “Why don’t we start with those?”

“I really liked your portfolio.” The paper crinkled as she unfolded it and looked at Ben. “You’re a high school teacher?”

“Yes. I teach ceramics and I coach football.”

“They’re two-time state champs.” The second the words jumped from my mouth, I cringed inside. What relevance was that?

“You must be good, then.” Missy turned to me. “And you’re a meteorologist?”

“For now, but we’ve always talked about me staying home once we have a child.” My thoughts wandered to The Treasure Chest. Aunt Ingrid was able to run the motel with Gerald and raise Dad and Patrick at the same time. What if I did the same? I imagined living there. Gracie too. Running the motel alongside my sister with a little baby in my arms.

“And y’all don’t have any children yet?”

“That’s correct.”

“Carmen’s younger sister is living with us temporarily,” Ben said.

“She’s around your age. Her name’s Gracie. She’s a great kid.”

Missy looked down at her paper. I didn’t miss the way it trembled in her hand. Seeing the tremor eased some of my anxiety, made me feel a bond to the girl. I wanted to assure her that I was nervous too. We could be nervous together, and then maybe we could laugh about it together too. But I kept the words inside. “Why haven’t you had any biological children?” she asked.

Ben glanced at me. “We’ve had some miscarriages.”

“That must have been hard.”

“It was, but we’re excited to be here now,” Ben said.

“God had a purpose for it.” I cringed again, because did I really just say that? How many times had people offered that same sentiment to me after our first miscarriage, and how many times had I wanted to crumple it into a ball and light it on fire? It might be true, I may have once believed it, I might even believe it still. But that didn’t make it helpful.

Missy shifted in her chair. “Your portfolio mentioned that y’all are Christians. Is your religion a big part of your life?”

I held my breath, unsure where to step. This entire conversation felt like a land mine. We learned, during all our classes and meetings with Sandy, that sometimes a mother will choose a family because of a particular answer, sometimes they will reject a family because of a particular answer, and sometimes the answers matter very little. Faith was a hot-button topic. The best thing we could do, according to Sandy, was answer honestly. Easy for her to say, since she wasn’t the one with everything to lose.

“Yes, it’s a big part of our life,” Ben said. “Or at least we want it to be.”

Missy nodded, as though she approved, and like a baby bird flapping its wings for the first time, hope fluttered. This time, I didn’t fight it. I didn’t attempt to tamp it down. As the interview continued, Missy seemed to grow more comfortable. The paper in her hand stopped shaking. She became more generous with her smile. We even shared some laughter. And my fluttering hope took flight. Sandy was there in case things got uncomfortable or stilted, but she barely had to say a word. Missy asked us how we met. Ben shared the story, and even Sandy seemed to get caught up in the romance of it. When he finished, Missy folded up her paper. The interview had come to an end. I was desperate to know if we passed.

“Are you all finished?” Sandy asked.

“I have one more question.” Missy set her hand over her swollen abdomen. “Would you like to be in the delivery room when the baby is born?”

Tears pricked my eyes. Yes, yes, yes. A thousand times yes. I blinked quickly, to dry the tears before they formed. “We’d love to, but only if you’re comfortable.”

Sandy turned to us. “Do either of you have any questions for Missy?”

Ben and I exchanged a look. We didn’t have any questions, but maybe we should. According to Sandy, the father wasn’t involved, nor did he wish to be involved. I didn’t want to bring up a sore topic, but it felt like I should say something. A million things. About how long we’d waited. How desperate I was to be a mother. How much we would love her child. But I couldn’t gush. I couldn’t beg. Those were things I could not do. So I smiled a smile I hoped conveyed everything I was feeling. “You are very brave,” I said, “for giving this child life.”

Ben took my hand and echoed my sentiments.

On the walk to the car, I wavered between elation, because I was positive this was it, and the worst kind of dread, because what if it wasn’t? The winged hope inside me alternated between soaring and plummeting. It was enough to give me a stomachache. As soon as we were in the car and buckled up, all the nervous energy I’d been holding in tumbled out. I gave my husband a play-by-play of the interview with commentary as if he hadn’t been there. He pulled out onto the road and drove us home. By the time I finished, we’d already crossed the Three-Mile Bridge.

“What did you think?” I asked.

He shot me a quick glance, then returned his attention to the road. “I think it went okay.”

His response set my hope into a nosedive. “Just okay?” Were we not in the same interview? “She asked if we wanted to be in the delivery room. That has to mean something.”

“How do you know she doesn’t ask that for every interview?”

My defenses flared.

“I just don’t want you to get your hopes up.”

“My hopes up? Ben, this is the first time I’ve felt any hope at all.”

A muscle worked in his jaw.

I wanted to scream. “Is it really too much to ask for you to be hopeful with me?”

“That’s not fair.”

“
Fair? Fair!
None of this is
fair
. We did everything right, Ben. We played by God’s rules. Natalie and Brandon didn’t. My mother didn’t. Neither did your sister. Yet God still gave them kids. Tell me where the fairness is in that.”

Ben had no response.

The only noise was the
pitter-patter
of rain and rhythmic
woosh-swoosh
of the windshield wipers. I pressed my lips together and stared out the window as water painted streaks across the glass and my eyes blurred with heated emotion. Neither of us said a word. Not when we turned down our street. Not when familiar houses slid past the window. And not when we were parked in the driveway with an engine that clicked and clinked into rest.

He twisted the car key around his keychain. “Will a baby fix everything that’s broken, Carmen?”

The whispered question slunk into my ear, chafing against my heart, my nerves, my mind.

“Because I have to tell you. I am terrified it won’t.”

Unable to sit beneath the weight of his fear for even a second, I grabbed the door handle and let myself into the rain.