A Mother's Goodbye

I put one hand on his shoulder, wanting to anchor him in place, in the importance of this moment. ‘Why don’t I get out the markers and some cardstock? You can make it in the kitchen.’

In the end the card is only half-made, and I do the kind of thing I once thought I’d never do – I finish it, sloppily, so it looks like Isaac’s work. I don’t even feel guilty.

On Thursday I arrange a dinner for the three of us, but Dorothy’s flight leaves at eight and so we end up bolting through it, everything feeling rushed instead of important.

I give her Isaac’s card, and a card from me, and a gift card as a going away present, but what I really want to do is hug her, cling to her, beg her not to go. Losing her feels like being cut away from my anchor so I’m free-floating in a foreign sea.

She’s the closest thing I have to a mom, someone whose calm, comfortable capability has soothed me over the last seven years. She has talked me down from the ledge of helicopter parenting more than once, boomed out her big belly laugh when I’ve stressed about things that definitely don’t need stressing about, like whether Isaac is getting enough Omega-3 in his diet or if he should learn a second musical instrument.

‘Child,’ she’d say, clapping a great big hand on my shoulder, ‘you don’t need to worry about a thing like that.’

I’ll miss her so much. I’m scared to be a mother without her in the background, my safety net for sick days or sudden, panicked requests for advice or reassurance.

‘Keep in touch,’ I tell her as she heaves herself up from the sofa. ‘Please. And if you do decide to come back to New York…’

‘You’ll have someone by then,’ Dorothy says with one of her easy smiles. ‘You’ll be fine, you and Isaac. Right, my little man?’ She puts her arms around him and Isaac gives her a quick hug, still looking unfazed. And in that moment I realize he doesn’t remind me of Kevin; he reminds me of me I was around Isaac’s age, when my mother went into the hospital for the first bout of intensive chemo. I remember my father telling me to hug her, and I did quickly, squirming away before she’d let go because I was afraid and it all felt so strange. Maybe that’s what Isaac is feeling.

He catches my eye and I give him a reassuring smile. It’s going to be okay. The two of us, a team, against the world. Just like me and my dad. That’s how it’s been; that’s how it will be now.

Moments later Dorothy is gone, and I stand in the doorway after the elevator doors have closed, unwilling even now to accept that she has left for good. I’ve made a call to the agency I used to hire her but I haven’t even seen any applications yet. Tomorrow Isaac is going to Stella’s after school, but after that I don’t know what I’ll do. I can’t depend on Stella every day; in any case, Will and his brother have about a billion after-school activities. I suppose it will have to be after-school club for Isaac, although that always feels like the garbage can of childcare solutions, a bunch of lonely-looking boys stuck in a classroom until seven at night.

Then my phone rings, and with a wave of trepidation I see that it’s Heather.

‘Heather?’ I try to keep my voice light and bright, as if I didn’t give her a pretty devastating ultimatum four days ago. ‘What’s up?’

‘Grace.’ She sounds serious, even grim. ‘We need to talk.’

Sixteen

HEATHER

I don’t tell Kevin or the girls about Grace’s request to halt Isaac’s visits. Not right away, at least, mainly because I’m just trying to absorb it myself, but also because I’m scared. I don’t want to hear what they think. Not, at least, until I know what I’m going to do.

I end up telling Stacy, because while it’s not always easy to hear her plain-speaking advice, she’s sensible and she’s on my side. At least, she’s not on Grace’s side. She’s never been bowled over by Grace’s glamour, not like the girls were when they were little, trying on her lipsticks and touching the buttery-soft leather of her bag. Kevin, of course, has never liked Grace; in fact, he’s liked her less and less as the years have gone on.

As for me… every time she talked about my son in those first few weeks, it took everything I had not to ball my hands into fists and scream at her to give him back to me. I certainly thought about it many times. I envisioned it, almost relished the look of shock and despair I knew I’d see on her face. I pictured plucking my baby out of her arms, as easy as that. It was my right. For six whole weeks, it was my right.

Of course nothing is ever that simple. The night before I signed the papers, I asked the nurse to bring Isaac to me. She resisted, because he was still in the NICU, but I just wanted a few minutes with my child, and she knew about the adoption.

So she wheeled him in, and I held my son for the first and last time. I cradled him like a football, his head resting against my knees. He blinked up at me, scrawny and frog-like and so very beautiful. I stroked his petal-soft skin, I traced his faint eyebrows, the bow curve of his little lips. I memorized him, imprinted him on me.

‘I love you,’ I whispered, so only he could hear. ‘I love you. That’s why I am doing this. I hope you realize that one day. I hope you understand it.’ He began to squirm, and I hefted him gently; he was so very light. ‘You’re going to have a good life,’ I told him. ‘A happy life. And I’ll still see you. You won’t forget me.’ I kissed him then, and I put him back in the bassinet, and the nurse wheeled him away while my cracked heart broke in pieces all around me.

The next morning I signed the papers, and then I left the hospital, and it felt as if someone had just snipped the strings that had been holding me up. I went back home, surrounded by Kev and the girls, everyone needing me in different ways; I wanted to fill up my hours taking care of them, but I was so tired and I felt as if I were viewing the world through a cloudy haze. I stayed in bed, letting the world unravel around me, for as long as I could.

After a few days Kev’s patience and goodwill ran out, and Lucy started wetting the bed again, and Amy was suspended from school for two days for hitting some kid. I didn’t have time to indulge my grief. I put it away, and I soldiered on, waiting for that first visit, counting on it to sustain me. And it almost did.

Now, sitting across from Stacy in her pretty kitchen with the fake granite countertops and colorful stencils on the walls, I tell her about the conversation with Grace. She raises her eyebrows but I can tell she’s not surprised.

‘So she finally worked up the courage to say something,’ she says when I’m finished, and I flinch. Even Stacy didn’t have to be that blunt. She’s supported me since I was pregnant, even though her kind of love has been tough sometimes. She babysat the girls when I was sore and aching, recovering from the Caesarean; she accepted it when I insisted on the open adoption, although I could tell she felt cautious. She’s even met Isaac a couple of times, and been cheerful and frien

dly, easy-going in a way that helped everyone else. But I can tell she’s going to give me a dose of her older sister know-it-allness now, and I’m not sure I’m ready for it.

‘You think she’s wanted this all along?’ I ask.

Stacy sighs and shakes her head. ‘Oh, Heather. Of course she has. Why wouldn’t she?’

‘Plenty of people have open adoptions, and the relationships are all positive and healthy.’ I read that in a book, but still.