When You Least Expect It (22 page)

“What is it, then?”

“I didn’t know it would be like this,” Jeremy said quietly.

“Like what?”

Jeremy finally rolled over so he was lying on his back, staring up at the rotating ceiling fan. “This whole adoption thing is out of control. It’s taken over our lives.”

“No, it hasn’t,” I disagreed. “I know it’s taking more time and resources than we might have originally thought. And I know it’s been a little awkward having Lainey basically move in with us. That’s why I suggested the weekend away. I thought we could use some time to ourselves.”

“It’s more than that,” Jeremy said. “I feel like …” He stopped and waved a hand helplessly.

“What?”

“I feel like I’m drowning,” Jeremy said.

The air left my lungs, and it was a few long beats before I remembered to start breathing again. “What are you saying? That you don’t want to go through with the adoption?”

“I don’t know what I want anymore,” Jeremy said quietly.

I closed my eyes and curled my hands into fists. This wasn’t happening, I thought. Not now. Not when we were so close to finally having a baby.

Jeremy continued, “Everything’s changed so much, so quickly.”

“That’s just how it works. You wait and wait, and then you finally find a birth mother, and suddenly everything changes,” I said.

“I think it was a bad idea to have Lainey move in to the guesthouse. It crossed a line.”

“It’s unorthodox, I admit. But maybe it was meant to be.”

“Meant to be?” Jeremy repeated dubiously.

“Maybe. I absolutely believe that this baby, Lainey’s baby, was meant for us. So maybe whatever we have to go through to bring him or her home was meant to be. Maybe Lainey needed to come here, and meet us, to know that we would be the best choice,” I suggested.

“Except that she made the decision to give us the baby about five minutes after she met us. She didn’t exactly put a lot of thought into it,” Jeremy said.

“Maybe she instinctively knew this was meant to be, too,” I said. Jeremy gave a grunt of disbelief. “What, you don’t believe that’s possible?”

“I don’t think there’s some divine plan for us to have this baby, no,” Jeremy said.

We lay there in silence. Otis rolled over on his back, sighed heavily, and began to snore.

“If you were unhappy with the situation, you should have said something before,” I finally said.

“Before what?”

“Before I got my hopes up,” I said. My throat felt thick and raw, and I could feel a sob pressing up in my chest. I swallowed hard, trying to hold it back.

“Look. I’m not saying I’ve changed my mind, or that I want to tell Lainey she has to move out. I just need you to know that I’ve been feeling overwhelmed. Something has to change.”

Hot tears stung at my eyes. Where were we supposed to go from here? Unlike Jeremy, I was one hundred percent sure that this baby, Lainey’s baby, was meant to be ours. If Jeremy didn’t feel the same way, what happened then?

“I can’t do this right now,” I finally said.

“You’re right. I probably shouldn’t have brought it up right at bedtime,” Jeremy said. “We can talk about it later.”

I nodded, even though that’s not what I had meant. It wasn’t talking about it tonight that was the problem. It was talking about it at all. Jeremy rolled over and turned off his light. I did the same, although sleep was out of the question. I lay awake, staring up into the darkness long after Jeremy’s breath had deepened into sleep.

Jeremy and I didn’t continue our conversation the next day. After breakfast, Jeremy holed up in the dining room with the pocket doors closed, while I headed to my studio intending to spend the day compiling the album for the Farrell wedding and, if there was time, sorting through the maternity photos I had taken for my upcoming show. Lainey didn’t come to work with me. She went off with my mother to have her tarot cards read by one of Georgia’s poetry club friends. I was glad for the chance to be alone, and to lose myself in my work.

The wedding album went quickly, so I was able to turn my attention to the maternity proofs after lunch. I’d decided to feature ten women in the show, including Lainey. Dr. Jones had been helpful, sending a few of her patients my way. I’d asked each model to agree to pose at four different sessions, and in return, I would give each woman a copy of the portraits I used in the show. It was an agreement they’d all been pleased with. So far, each woman had sat for me three times, and I now had to go through the proofs, picking out which ones I wanted to use.

I marveled at how one of the models, Yasmin, had changed in the five weeks between sessions. At her first sitting, I’d photographed her at a local park, reclining in the grass. She’d been drawn and pale, and was barely showing. At the second shoot, perched in the bed of my old Ford pickup, she had transformed—her breasts were full, her stomach was rounded, her skin was
glowing. But another model, Laura, was just the opposite. At her first sitting, she’d been about six months along, and blooming with the same sort of vitality I’d recently noticed in Lainey. But just three weeks later, she’d been exhausted and huge when I photographed her at the beach. In my favorite picture, she’d draped a striped towel around her shoulders and was staring down at her sandy feet, her eyes shuttered.

I’d been right to move the shoots from the stark white background and artificial light of my studio to the outdoor settings. The pictures didn’t look like the sort you’d find on a greeting card—they were grittily real. All of the emotions associated with pregnancy, the joy, discomfort, worry, anticipation, were reflected in my models’ faces.

After work, I stopped off at the grocery store, and by the time I got home, it was already dusk and an early moon was hanging full and low in the sky. It was what my mother had always called a “child’s moon,” because it was visible while children were still awake to see it. Both my mother’s and Lainey’s cars were parked in the driveway. Jeremy’s was not.

“Hello?” I called out.

“I’m in here,” Mom called out from the living room. The television wasn’t blaring, which, I surmised, meant Lainey wasn’t there. I was correct. My mother was alone, sitting on the sofa, reading a romance novel. I wasn’t sure how this fit in with her bleak view of the publishing industry or her claims that she only read classical literature. I was fairly sure that none of the classics had cover art featuring a shirtless Fabio.

“Hi,” I said. “Where is everyone?”

“Lainey’s in her room, napping. Jeremy went out for a drink.”

“He went out for a drink?” I repeated. Jeremy had never been much of a drinker. He’d occasionally go out for a beer if he had an old college buddy in town visiting, but that was about it. I felt a twinge of guilt. Was this a result of our upsetting talk the night
before? Had he felt the need to drown his sorrows? “Do you know where he went?”

“He said something about a martini bar. I think he went with your neighbor from across the street.”

“He went out with
Kelly?”

Mom shrugged. “I guess so.”

My eyes narrowed. I knew all about Kelly’s bar, the Dirty Martini. Or, at least, I knew what Mimi had told me about it, and she’s always had top-notch information. The Dirty Martini was the current hot spot for the young and horny. Jeremy wasn’t drowning his sorrows; he was getting an eyeful at the local meat market.

“Are you hungry? I bought a rotisserie chicken at the store, and I’m making butternut squash risotto,” I said, stalking back to the kitchen.

My mother trailed after me, still holding her trashy romance book, marking her place with one finger. I pulled the butternut squash out of the shopping bag, and began hacking it apart with my largest carving knife. It was an excellent way to channel my aggression.

“Is everything okay?” Mom asked.

“Fine,” I said through gritted teeth.

“You don’t seem fine. You seem angry.”

Butternuts were a pain in the ass to slice, but according to the Bradley pregnancy diet—which I was preparing for Lainey, despite her insistence that french fries count as vegetables—a well-balanced pregnancy diet should include five servings of yellow or orange vegetables per week. Lainey categorically refused to eat anything orange, so I’d taken to sneaking her weekly ration in where she wouldn’t suspect it, for example, adding pumpkin puree to homemade brownies. The squash in the risotto was harder to hide, but if I grated enough Parmesan cheese over the dish, maybe she wouldn’t notice it.

“I’m not angry. I’m pissed off.”

“There’s a difference?”

“Yes,” I said. “One makes you want to reevaluate your life. The other makes you want to hack things up with big knives.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Mom suggested.

“Not really.”

“I thought Jeremy seemed out of sorts, too. A bit sad. Did you two have a fight?”

“Not exactly,” I said.

“It would be understandable. You’re both under a lot of pressure and going through some big changes in your life together. It would be odd if you weren’t feeling the strain. Do you have any wine?”

“Check the fridge. There’s an open bottle of white in there,” I said. “If you’d rather have red, I think there’s a bottle in the pantry.”

My mom retrieved the red wine from the pantry and, after rummaging around in the kitchen drawers for a corkscrew, opened it. She poured generous servings into two wineglasses, and set one beside me on the counter, with the air of a nurse tending to an ailing patient.

“The important thing is that you and Jeremy talk things out, and don’t let small hurts pile up into something more serious,” Mom continued.

“I can’t talk to him.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s not the person I thought he was. Because it turns out that when the going gets tough, Jeremy shuts down,” I said.

My mother settled herself into a kitchen chair and took a large gulp of wine. “This all has to be hard on him,” she commented.

“On him! How is this hard on him?” I said, placing the knife down on the counter with a bit more force than necessary. I wiped my hands on a towel, yanked a pan out from under the counter,
and plopped it onto the stove. I splashed some olive oil into the pan and turned on the burner. “What exactly does he do? I’ll tell you: He does
nothing
. He spends all of his time closed up in his office.”

“He’s probably working,” Mom said.

“That’s just it, I don’t think he
is
working. Every time I’ve gone in there, he’s on the Internet.” I dumped the cut-up squash in the pan. It sizzled pleasantly, giving off an earthy, caramel fragrance.

“That doesn’t mean he’s not working at other times. He’s an artist, after all. We can’t predict when the Muse will inspire us.” My mother looked thoughtful as she sipped her wine. “You know, I’ve never been one to believe in archaic gender constructs, but it is very common for men to feel that they bear the ultimate responsibility for the family finances.”

I turned on her, the full force of my anger and frustration bubbling up to the surface. “Oh, really? Then why am I the one working day and night trying to get the extra money we need to cover all of the adoption costs? Why am I the one who has to worry about everything all of the time? I’d love to check out for weeks on end like Jeremy, but you know what? I can’t. I have too much responsibility! Oh! And I didn’t even tell you! Do you know who called me today?”

“Who?”

“Carol, asking me if I’d like to be included in Stacey’s baby shower!”

“That was nice of her,” Mom said grudgingly. She and my mother-in-law had endured a strained relationship for years, dating back to my wedding, when words were had about whether a passage from the Bhagavad Gita would be read aloud during the ceremony.

“No, it wasn’t! She didn’t say, ‘I’d love to throw both of you a baby shower.’ Oh, no. Her exact words were, ‘I’m hosting a baby shower for Stacey in late May, and I thought I’d check with you to see if you want to be included. I don’t think it’s appropriate to ask
Stacey’s friends to get you presents,’” I paused, the words choking in my throat. “‘But we can put your name on the cake.’”

My mother’s face darkened with anger. “I hope you told her to stick that cake right up her bottom.”

I shook my head. “Of course not. I never do. Because for some insane reason, I never want to hurt her feelings.” I gave the pan of squash a vigorous shake. “Besides, if I had turned her down, or hinted in any way that her offer was less than gracious, she would have just made a big stink about it.” Tears stung at my eyes, and I wiped them, forgetting that I had squash goop on my hands. “So now I’m going to be forced to spend hours watching a hugely pregnant Stacey open presents, while I just sit there like a great big infertile freak! Not to mention it’s the weekend right before my show, so it’s about the worst possible time for me to have to drive up to Jacksonville! This is all Jeremy’s fault.”

“You can’t blame Jeremy for what his mother does.”

“Watch me.”

“This is hard on him, too. The changes, the pressure … I’m sure Jeremy is doing his best.”

I snorted. “Jeremy is an emotional cripple!”

I was just about to tell my mother how Jeremy had basically admitted he was having second thoughts about the adoption, when a movement by the door caught my eye. I turned my head, already knowing who it was. Lainey. How long had she been standing there? But I already knew: long enough to witness that I wasn’t the patient, calm, perfect adoptive-mother-to-be I’d been pretending all along to be. My stomach tightened, and a ripple of fear passed over me.

“Hi,” Lainey said. She looked from me to my mother. Otis got up off his bed and, tail wagging, greeted Lainey. She petted his head.

“Hi. Come in and sit down. Can I get you anything? Would you like a cup of herbal tea?”

Lainey wrinkled her nose. “Gross,” she said.

“Hot chocolate?” I suggested.

She hesitated. “Do you have any marshmallows?”

“Yes, of course!” I began rushing around, putting the milk in the microwave to heat, getting out the cocoa and the marshmallows. “Did you get some rest?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Lainey said. She yawned widely, not bothering to cover her mouth.