The Hypothetical Girl (15 page)

“Vivacious,” said Al, “Blanquita!”

“What?” she said, peering out from beneath the pillow, looking annoyed. “I don’t wanna go up in a balloon. I am afraid of heights.”

“No, it’s just that I have to leave. I have to go to Gallup.”

“Gallup?” she said. Nobody went to Gallup. It was the last stop before Arizona on Route 66, a strip of bars and drunken Navajo people with their government checks, wannabe artists who couldn’t afford Santa Fe, and a lot of Middle Eastern jewelry dealers who made a lot of people feel just plain suspicious ever since 9-11.

“Yes,” said Al, suddenly feeling warmly toward her. “I have to go. Now. If you wanna come, you can, but I have to leave.”

“Can we at least get some breakfast?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said.

Blanquita sat up. She had not expected this little odd man who had made love to her so passionately all night to be so mysterious. “Really? Gallup?”

Al had told nobody about Betty. Not even his own mother, and here he was about to tell a stranger. Vivacious, the Internet vixen. In some odd way it seemed appropriate, to tell this Internet-found hoochie about his Internet-found daughter-to-be. He smiled.

They drove fast. It was already a quarter to nine and it would be bad form to be late. They went over a long stretch of low hills and then they passed Acoma Pueblo, “the so-called Sky City,” Al said.

“Yes,” said Blanquita, “they lived up on that mesa. A long time ago, they got sick of the Spanish priests telling them what to do and all, so they rounded ’em up and pushed them off the edge. Like pirates would. Off the plank, you know.”

This chick has some spunk
, Al thought. And he admitted it, he liked that. They drove over the rim of a red canyon that looked chopped open, a piece of exposed meat.

Above them a blue and green Tabasco-sauce-shaped balloon floated. “It’s them,” said Blanquita, pointing up. It was, the guys they had drunk stingers and wine coolers with the night before. They waved down, arms like teensy sticks. They looked like insects. “It’s Steve and Jerry.”

“Wow,” said Al, “it is!” The colorful balloon looked so bright over the badlands. Long ago, a volcano had
spit up all over the place, left a dark spew of black rock that seemed crumbled, a giant package of broken Oreos sprinkled over the hills.

“So where are we going?” asked Blanquita, aka Vivacious.

“To meet the social workers,” he said. “And get my daughter.” He paused. “I am adopting!”

Her name was Betty and she had been born to a Navajo couple who had been killed in a terrible car accident the previous summer. Their four children had all been absorbed into the homes of extended family. But Betty was a special-needs child, and nobody felt equipped to take her in. Nobody except Al. He had decided the previous winter he wanted a daughter. He was fifty-six years old and was giving up on the perfect Jewish woman thing. He just wanted a child to love and to raise; he had chosen Betty off a website for special-needs adoptions. She was tiny and “slow” and had a harelip. She had “trouble learning.” But she was “pleasant and sweet” and “liked cats,” the website said. Al had a cat and loved children. He liked the way they could smell of dust and melted candy. The way their hands got sticky so easily and they laughed with such abandon. He had begun to feel he would never hear that sound in his own life. He had begun to feel very saddened by that. So he was adopting. He was adopting Betty.

He was sure his family would be discouraging. His mother, especially. She had disapproved of all his girlfriends, one right after another, for thirty years. Nobody good enough for her boychik. A little Navajo girl? It would certainly give Esther the famous “agita” which she had suffered for over twenty years—so he would just hold off on sharing the news, until Rosh Hashanah at least, when he would be home in New York and she would find out. That would give him several months to get used to little Betty and for Betty to get used to him. They would travel around in his RV selling the famous whirligigs. He would homeschool her. They would be happy, little Betty and he. He would not judge her for her harelip and slowness, and she, in turn, would love him for taking her in and for his marvelous and beautiful whirligigs, mobiles, and chimes. That was how he pictured it, anyway.

But now, here he was, a man with an Internet hoochie woman in tow. He could hardly leave Blanquita alone in the RV; that would be rude. But he could hardly bring her, either. They would wonder, of course, who she was. Or maybe they would like it, the appearance of a woman. A potential mother for this girl, they might even think. It could, actually, be helpful. He knew they still had misgivings about him.

“And now is when you get her? Today? In Gallup?”

“Yes,” he said to Blanquita. “I know it seems weird, but I have been planning this for a long time.”

They had to stop in Grants to fill up the RV; the thing guzzled fuel like a drunk. It felt good to rise up out of the Rio Grande valley and gain a little altitude, get away from the smoggy hot city. They drove past the Continental Divide and to a place where a deep mesa abutted a canyon and a distant rainstorm wagged like a gray finger, scolding down from the sky. Then they came to the Giant Truck Stop. It was a mall of a truck stop. Right there in the middle of seeming nowhere. They stopped for some breakfast. Al had grits and steak; Blanquita had red chili stew. “I make it better,” she said.

He smiled. He was nervous. Soon he would meet Betty. That was when he got the idea. He would ask Blanquita to wait right there, at the truck stop. “I will come right back and get you,” he said. “I just need to make a good impression. You know.”

“And I would make it a bad impression?” Blanquita asked.

“Well, we are just new friends and all and this is serious business. I am adopting a little girl today.”

“Just why are you doing this, anyway?” Blanquita asked. “Do you think you can handle it? It’s a lot of work, you know.”

“Of course I know,” Al said. He was feeling annoyed. He had been planning this day for over two years.

“Okay,” said Blanquita, “I’ll wait here. Just because I know they aren’t expecting me or anything, not that there is anything
wrong
with me.”

“Oh, no!” said Al, “of course not, you’re great! I just didn’t tell them about … you know … any kind of partner. They do a lot of background checking, in advance.” He wiped his mouth hard, with a napkin, like he was wiping a dead bug off a window.

“Okay, then,” said Blanquita, glancing around the Giant Truck Stop. There was a little shop she could browse in, a place with magazines. And she could always have coffee and read the paper. “So, like, when will you be back?”

“Oh, not long … very soon, in fact.”

“Okay,” said Blanquita. She leaned over and gave Al a little kiss. “That is for last night. For being so sweet and all.”

“My pleasure,” he said, and winked at her.

It was afternoon. He was right on time. Al straightened his collar and tucked in his shirt. He had brought the adoption papers his lawyer had drawn up.
Here goes
, he thought. He was expecting … what was he expecting? He was expecting a little girl, a child to love.

They were meeting at the Office of Family Affairs and Planning, a typical government office, yellow painted cinder block walls, linoleum floors. Smelled of Mr. Clean. He had driven through the town fast, past a motel that looked like concrete teepees, and another with a cowboy lassoing a calf. Gallup was famous for its neon signs. He had seen a book about it.

There, sitting on a bench with a blue dress on, between the two social workers, was the girl. She looked down at her shoes. She was tiny. Much smaller than he had imagined. She was wearing a shirt that said “I heart Rodeo.”

He shook the hand of the first social worker. “Al,” he said.

“Mark,” said the man. “And this is …”

“Betty?” he said, completing the sentence.

The girl looked up for the first time. He saw her and she saw him. Her face was full of trepidation. Beside her was a suitcase and a bag of stuffed animals.

“Are those your friends?” asked Al.

Betty nodded. He pulled over a chair and sat across from them.

“What are their names?”

She looked down at her shoes again.

“Betty is a little shy, but I am sure she will come around.”

“That one looks like it should be named Jimmy,” Al said, pointing to a stuffed dolphin.

“It’s a girl,” whispered Betty. “Her name is Darlene.”

“Of course, I should have known it is a girl. She is so pretty.”

The social workers went over the paperwork, and then they all went out for an early supper at Earl’s restaurant. It was a diner-ish place, very local, with people
walking from one table to the next to say hello to one another. A few people stared over at Al and the social workers; he could tell they were wondering what these white people were doing with the little Navajo girl. He smiled to himself. He was imagining a time someday when he and Betty would hike the Grand Canyon or he would watch her play the violin in a school concert.

What the other people were thinking was
Perv white guy, staring at that little girl
. And he could feel it, their distrust, their judgmental thoughts. They were like heat-seeking missile thoughts; they pierced his warm skin and moved down toward his even warmer heart. But right there he stopped them. Al who made whirligigs reflected on what he knew for sure about himself: He was a good man. He had a simple craft. He wanted a family. He might even adopt a boy as well, who knows? He was not a person who would ever hurt anyone.

Just then, as he thought that thought, as he was commending himself on his inner goodness, he remembered her: Blanquita. And he knew he had left her sitting at the Giant Truck Stop, waiting for him. He flushed red with the recognition of it. That he had everything in life he needed now. As he looked at Betty his heart swelled. He could help her with her math. He could buy her stuffed animals for Christmas. He could … he could do so many things for her, he could hardly wait to begin. He would be her father.

When they reached the RV, having signed off on all the paperwork, the social workers told Al he had passed the psychological exam with flying colors and muster of every sort. He was
a dad
. They all shook hands and smiled. What a good deed was being done. What fortune that Al wanted Betty and Betty needed Al.

But Betty looked terrified as the social workers drove away. She was visibly shaking. Looking at her tremble, Al felt for the first time the huge and real weight of this decision, this responsibility. She was a person. And his heart went out to her. He could imagine her fear.

“Here,” he said. “Look at this …” He held up a wooden whirligig in the breeze. To his delight, she smiled. She reached out her hand to touch the spinning top of wood. Her smile broadened and it became a laugh. Not a big one, not a guffaw, or even a chuckle. But yes, a definite laugh. Inside the laugh Al thought he could hear the echo of a deep and resonant intelligence, a certain beauty. His heart bloomed.

It was getting dark and they began to drive. Al had strapped Betty into a car seat. She was very small for her age. He turned onto the main road of Gallup and then drove down onto the interstate. His foot pressed on the gas, and it occurred to him he was going to do what might be considered a very bad thing. He would not stop at the Giant Truck Stop. He would
not go and get Blanquita. He would not drive back to Albuquerque. In fact, he would not do anything he had ever done before. Al, aka Whimsy999, a man who made whirligigs, was a father now, and nothing else mattered.

E
very evening, after her daughter, Lillypie, had been bathed, pajamed, watered, told a long story about forest fairies, and put to bed in her room on the second floor of their house, Ophelia retreated downstairs. A single mother, exhausted from a long day of work and child care, she would make herself a cup of stiff tea—oolong or a chai concoction with elongated strands of honey that would sink into the dark liquid and pool at the bottom in a deep reservoir of sweet. She would dim the lights and close the curtains, shutting out the night, and put on music from one of the easy-listening channels on her television—either the new age channel or the light jazz station—and sit herself on the couch to unravel the stress of the day. She would sip the tea and then begin her list of affirmations:

Then, having restored her ego to some semblance of peace, she would sit herself cross-legged, in a meditation position, with her ankles folded over her thighs, and proceed to unlatch her chest, swing open the little door there, reach in and take out her heart from her rib cage.

It was blue-red and purpled with veins, a normal heart by anyone’s standards, yet a heart in need of attention—she could tell by the way it looked up at her, so gratefully, after she released it. It gazed into her eyes with a sense of longing, a gentle question always on its face, which she took to mean
What now, my dear?

In the quiet of the living room with the washing machine chugging away in an adjacent room, the refrigerator humming in the kitchen, a gentle
ommm
, the creak and rattle of the house all around in the wind and weather outside, the cats sleeping in their baskets, the dog in his corner, having been given his quota of attention for the day, she finally had time and space to speak with her heart.

Sometimes she told her heart a story the way she told her daughter stories. Sometimes she just sat there and stroked it gently, or rubbed it around the top, in the small spot between where her aorta and coronary arteries were set, a place she liked to think of as between its
ears. Her heart loved this and after a few seconds, inevitably, it would begin to purr.
I love you, heart
, she would say.
You know I do
.

She knew her heart had been through a lot. That time in Panama, for example, when she was very young and working for the Peace Corps. A local fisherman had facilitated the exchange of romantic little notes between her and an anthropologist on the mainland for months, only for her to be told she was not the
one
, that night in Boca del Toro, when he came across from Chiriqui Grande in the fishing boat. On his one visit to the island, they had made love for hours, after which he whispered to her softly, not that he loved her but that he would not be back. It was love but not
the
love, he said.