Admission (60 page)

Portia finished
The Old Curiosity Shop
on the morning of her appointment with the social worker, a transplanted Californian who asked to be called Lisa and whose
husband taught Latin just over the hill at Andover. To Portia’s disappointment, Lisa, too, seemed quite taken with the idea
that Portia couldn’t know what was best for her, that she must be unaware there was support, in the state of Massachusetts,
for single mothers.

“I get calls every day,” she explained patiently to Portia. “Women who gave up their babies in the fifties and sixties. They’ve
never gotten over it. It ruined their lives.”

“My life will not be ruined,” Portia said firmly.

“Back then,” the social worker went on, “the idea was that the baby would get a family that could give it what a single mother
couldn’t, and the birth mother would just magically forget that she had ever given birth. She was supposed to go back to school,
meet somebody, get married, and have her real babies. But you couldn’t become a mother and then sign a piece of paper that
said you weren’t a mother. Biology is a little tougher than that. And today there isn’t the stigma of a single parent.”

“I’m aware of that,” said Portia, who was, after all, the daughter of a militant single mother.

“You’re clearly an intelligent woman. You can go to college, and the college might well have day care facilities. You’d be
eligible for medical coverage and other benefits. You think you can’t do this, but you can.”

“I don’t
want
to do it,” said Portia, losing her temper. “
That’s
the reason. Would you be happier if I had an abortion?”

“You can’t,” said Lisa. “It’s too late.”

“I know it’s too late!” Portia told her. She was just barely in control by this point. “I mean, if I’d
had
one. Listen, I’m pro-choice, and this is my choice, okay? And please don’t tell me there won’t be families willing to adopt
a white newborn.”

Lisa sighed. “No, I wouldn’t tell you that.”

“Because you can’t have that many white newborns coming down the pike, I’m guessing.”

The woman shrugged. Portia almost felt sorry for her. But not sorry enough to stop making her perfectly valid point.

“How many? I’m just curious.”

“What?” said Lisa, though she probably knew exactly what she was being asked.

“White newborns. Available for adoption in this state. Last year, say.”

She waited.

“Oh… well, I’d have to look it up.”

“Ballpark.” Portia folded her arms.

Lisa sighed. “I do remember one, last year. I don’t think there were others.”

“And how many families willing to adopt that one white newborn?”

The social worker looked at her. She was no longer trying to be nurturing or even polite. “Quite a number,” she said at last.
“As I’m sure there will be quite a number hoping to adopt your child. If you continue to make that decision.”

“Past tense,” Portia said unkindly. “I’ve made it.”

“But you don’t have to make it yet. You can wait. You can see how you feel once your baby is born. I can promise you, there
will still be families then.”

“No,” Portia said icily. “Look, it’s my life and my decision. I’m trying to do the right thing, for both of us. Can you just
explain to me, what is the problem here?”

But she was the problem. In the silence that followed, Portia understood this very clearly. There was something off about
her, a woman who clearly could raise her own child and bafflingly didn’t want to. It had not occurred to her that she would
run into this difficulty. Honed as she was on the brutality of the clinic bomber, the “pro-life” assassin, and the prayerful
protesters helpfully pointing out that young girls terminating their pregnancies had the agonies of hell to look forward to,
she’d naively assumed that choosing to carry and give birth to her child would have everybody standing up and applauding.
Not so.

The social worker leaned forward and spoke softly. “Can I ask you, is this pregnancy the result of a rape or an incestuous
relationship?”

Disgusted, Portia shook her head.

“Is there something you’d like the police to know about?”

Yeah, she thought fiercely. I’d like the police to know that I’m asking for an entirely reasonable and not to mention perfectly
legal form of help and not getting it.

“No. Look, are you going to be able to handle this adoption? Should I go to New Hampshire or Vermont?”

Lisa looked sharply at her. “That’s not necessary. I just wanted to be sure you had adequate counseling. In fact, I’d like
to refer you to one of our staff therapists. It’s part of our service package,” she said.

Portia looked down, intensely irritated. Then she agreed, made another appointment for the following month, and left. She
had given them the very least amount of information she legally could: a name, a Social Security number, birth date, level
of education. She’d said nothing about Tom except that he, like her, was Caucasian and college educated. No, she did not wish
to give his name.

“Has he been notified of the pregnancy?”

Portia hesitated. “Yes,” she said.

“And you have discussed this decision with him?”

What did they want from her? thought Portia, struggling to contain herself. “Yes. Sure.”

“All right,” Lisa said sadly. “I’ll get the paperwork started.”

There was no master plan. Portia did not intend to micromanage the adoption, choose the family, name her baby. She had no
wish to present Tom with the fact of what had happened, torment her mother, explain herself to Dartmouth College, or do any
single thing that might bring any other human being into her confidence. She barely wanted to be in her own confidence. She
would be writing no letters, contacting no registry, doing no search for the child she was determined to relinquish. What
she wanted—the only thing she truly wanted—was to place her healthy baby in good, responsible hands and then do the very thing
Lisa had declared to be impossible: magically forget that she had ever given birth. She refused to believe it would not be
possible. Those women, the ones whose lives had been destroyed, they weren’t like her. They’d been forced and pressured and
abandoned. Of course they’d felt violated. Of course they’d been distraught and enraged. But this was different. Not because
she was a better person. There was nothing to be proud of. She had been born later and given choices. She felt for those women,
of course, but she would be able to do what they could not do: become a mother and then sign a piece of paper that said she
wasn’t one.

By the time all this was over, she would have been in Lawrence for seven months and three seasons. She would have read thirteen
Dickens novels, with only
Edwin Drood
left to finish (she would somehow never, in the ensuing eighteen years, find time to finish it), and coached Milagro and
Gloria to final grades of B and B plus, respectively. She would have paid rent for the first time and interviewed doctors
for the first time (after the unsavory encounter with Dr. Beerkin, she shopped around until she found a grandmotherly OB-GYN
in an office at the hospital). She would have lost upward of fifty games of checkers to the woman with Down syndrome next
door, whose delight at winning never seemed to diminish.

It hadn’t even been especially hard, she would think years later. Ever since she could remember, she had fretted about the
idea of growing up, always somehow worried that she would not be able to actually achieve adulthood when the time came. Since
freshman year, she had watched women about to graduate go sloping off to interviews at Career and Employment Services, unsteady
in unfamiliar heels, their customary sweats and jeans replaced with broad-shouldered suits. Sometimes they would fly off to
Cleveland or Chicago or New York for further interviews and return with incredible stories of hotel rooms with concierge service
and in-room movies—everything on the corporate tab. After commencement, off they would go to their tiny apartments and the
late night car service home (again, on the company) when the account or the deal required them to stay late. They came back
to visit and brought new tales of their new lives in the great world. To the college girls still in their nightgowns with
their open chem or econ textbooks and powdered cocoa, they spoke of group runs with the Roadrunners Club in the park, summer
shares on Fire Island, credit cards, dry cleaning, and wine tastings. Somehow, Portia had allowed herself to believe that
this—this package of employee perks and health club memberships—represented adult life, not just because the former rowers
and field hockey players and sorority treasurers had transformed themselves into businesswomen, speed-walking to work in their
Lady Foot Locker sneakers, but because their lives didn’t look remotely like Susannah’s life. That part of it was a good thing.
That part of it, Portia thought she might like very much. But in the end, she didn’t think she could ever pull off such a
transformation.

Yet in the seven months she’d spent in Lawrence, it hadn’t been at all difficult to assemble the trappings of adulthood, the
accumulation of objects, the rituals, the paper trail of bills and checks. Not every twenty-year-old woman was a junior in
college, it seemed; some were living on their own in places like Lawrence, paying their rent, making small talk with the bored
teenager in the checkout line, taking care that there was enough toilet paper. It was, she would think perversely, a thing
to be sort of proud of, perhaps not on the scale of bringing a human being into the world, but unlike the human being in question,
a thing she would certainly be taking away with her. And when she went back to Dartmouth, and when she saw Tom again, she
would not be the same childish person she had been, but a placid, seasoned woman, moving forward, unencumbered and unafraid,
and above all else, contained. No one would ever know what had happened here. Portia would barely know, herself.

She clung stubbornly to this idea.

Through the summer, which was very hot, she grew ponderous and breathless. The sisters next door moved on, complaining of
the construction dust, and a man Portia didn’t like the look of took the apartment. The counselor she’d been coerced into
seeing tried to get her to talk about the adoption. She did not want to talk about the adoption. Portia did not even want
to approve the family. She didn’t want to know anything about where the baby was, only that it would be safe, as if they could
promise that. She let them tell her only that the couple were from Watertown, in their thirties, and married for a decade.
They were, according to Lisa, “ecstatic.”

All right.

And so she went home and tried to settle into
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
and waited for it to begin.

On the ponderously hot morning of Sunday, August 19, her water broke as she was walking home along the Merrimack River with
a bag of the few things she could still stand to eat: Triscuit crackers, peanut butter, carrots, and cranberry juice. At first,
she thought she had somehow broken the juice and irrationally looked for the red liquid on the ground. When it wasn’t there,
it took her a long, addled moment to realize what was happening. She stood where she was, deliberately considering her options,
stunned by how quickly her world had just contracted to a few mundane decisions.

Get home, put the food in the kitchen, call the taxi?

Set down the bag, ask a passerby to phone the doctor?

Stand very still until someone noticed that she was having a baby and took care of her?

She went on home, stopping twice to fully appreciate the earliest (and, sadly, mildest) contractions, and when she arrived,
she carefully placed the plastic bag on the kitchen table. Of course, she would not be eating this food now, but wouldn’t
she want it when she came home? After? Or would these always be the foods of her pregnancy, things she would never want to
see again, like the vast dresses she’d been wearing for the past two months and the dirty Keds her swollen feet had come to
rely on, and the 1960s television shows that seemed to dominate the local channels? She was trying to think past the elephant,
which was not just in the room but squarely in her path. She did not want to go to the hospital too soon and be sent home,
multiplying what she imagined would be, at the very least, an uncomfortable journey, but after only another ninety minutes
she decided to move while she was still competent to manage the trip. She called the taxi company, and while she waited for
it to arrive, she called Lisa and told her what was happening. The social worker at the hospital would be informed, Lisa said,
and she would call the parents now and tell them what was happening. “Good luck,” she told Portia, who was momentarily stymied
by the use of the word
parents
.

She had not attended Lamaze classes, not because she objected to the idea of it, but because she couldn’t face not having
a partner. She had, however, dutifully read a book about the method, which—sadly—she had to jettison entirely once the contractions
hit their stride. Within minutes of changing into a gown she was gasping for relief, which they seemed happy enough to give
her, and with the lower half of her body mercifully numb, she fell almost peacefully asleep and awoke four hours later, nearly
fully dilated. The room’s other bed had acquired an occupant, a sleeping woman with straw yellow hair and a ruddy complexion.
She was immense, her midsection so large but so ill defined that Portia couldn’t tell whether she had had her baby yet or
not, and she never found out, because as soon as her lower abdomen came jolting back to life, they moved her down the corridor
to an antiseptic little chamber.

The grandmotherly OB-GYN was away on the Cape with her actual grandchildren for the weekend. Her replacement was called “Dr.
B.” He came in clapping his hands but never actually looked up from the end of the table, and he never asked her name. She
tried not to take this personally, as he wasn’t much of a conversationalist in general and made use of a single abbreviated
word, one size fits all, to conduct the labor. “’Kay,” he said at the end of each contraction. “’Kay,” he said when the next
one began. “’Kay” meant whatever it had to mean:
Good job. Try harder. Stop pushing. Push harder
. It was extraordinary how quickly she deciphered all this. She wanted to laugh at him, but by the time she caught her breath,
it didn’t seem funny anymore. “’Kay,” he said, “next one.”