Authors: Kerry Reichs
I fled to the sanctuary of the side stage. Maybe I was supposed to feel triumph from getting laughs, but I didn’t. I felt seasick. I was a camera actress, not a stand-up. My hands shook. I gripped them around an icy bottle, gulping the water.
“You were fantastic!” Julian bounded behind the curtain, wreathed in grins. He swept me into a hug.
LaMimi responded to being crushed against his concrete chest. That only fanned my ire. I yanked back.
“You think that was funny?”
“Hilarious.” His eyes danced.
I stabbed him with a finger. “That was cruel.”
“You aced it.”
“I nailed my appendectomy too, but I didn’t enjoy it.”
“I thought you were wonderful.” He placated.
“I thought you were an asshole,” I said. I didn’t care about
Cora
. “I don’t appreciate being set up like that. I’m leaving.”
“Let me drive you home,” he appeased. It made me angrier that I was the only one rattled.
“No. You’ve driven me quite enough.” I turned my back on him and stomped away. I’d have walked ten miles in five-inch Louboutins before riding with Julian Wales. Lucky thing I had my car. I didn’t like him. I didn’t get him. Particularly why he was smiling as I strode off.
W
yatt was in Target and he thought he might be having a nervous breakdown. It was not a feeling he was used to.
“Can I help you?”
The clerk startled him and he clutched the Egg Genie, embarrassed to be considering an item emblazoned with
AS SEEN ON TV!
“I’m fine.” He hurried off, now committed to spending $14.99 for something he could do with a pot of water. Or maybe he couldn’t. Maybe he’d been boiling eggs wrong all these years. Wyatt had a pretty simple bachelor’s rule for cooking. He did what his mother had done. But maybe what had worked before wasn’t good enough anymore. Ilana had spun the normally doubt-free Wyatt into crisis.
“You’re going to be judged by a different standard,” said the woman leading the Dad(s) Alone support group. “We’re still a society that doesn’t credit males with strong parenting urges. We’re trapped in a decades-old film reel of the father dragged kicking and screaming to adulthood via the delivery room, where he is a comedy of mishaps before he holds his newborn child and falls in love with the wisdom beyond years in its wee baby eyes. It’s a bunch of crap.” Her anger was genuine, lips quivering under a poor choice of lipstick (he was going with Peach Daiquiri) and righteous indignation. Her hair looked as though it had been styled with a weed whacker.
Wyatt hadn’t taken the time Katherine Feely Jones had encouraged him to take. He was an action man. He’d spent the three weeks since their meeting looking into less expensive adoption routes, like the state foster system. He’d stumbled across the Dad(s) Alone forum on the Web and decided to visit a meeting. He’d tried to blend into his folding chair, an unmemorable shade.
Fourteen other earnest men clutched paper cups and shifted in their uncomfortable plastic seats. No one wore name tags, so they were identifiable only by physical characteristics—Earring, Stain-on-Tie, Face Like a Hound Dog, Uncanny Resemblance to Jay Leno. Wyatt was reminded of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings he’d attended as a spectator. Former students, looking to get their lives back on track, would ask him to accompany them as they started the difficult journey to sobriety. Sometimes his presence helped and sometimes it didn’t, but Wyatt had spent many nights in smoky church basements, clutching bad coffee cut with powdered creamer, feeling helpless in the face of the stories.
At Dad(s) Alone, the similarities ended at the basement. It was smoke free, and guests sipped herbal tea, yet Wyatt felt the same sense of helplessness.
“Adoption agencies may discriminate against male-parent adoptions,” said Peach Daiquiri. “You have to work harder and be better. Things normal parents can get away with, you can’t.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “No smoking; no DUIs; no speeding tickets; no one-night stands; no porn; and I swear to god, even if you’re a jockey by profession, you’d better not have whips in your barn. Spying eyeballs will twist them into something nefarious. Don’t let your dog so much as think about taking a crap on someone else’s yard. If it’s not the adoption agency, it’ll be some ‘concerned citizen’ looking to take you down. Don’t let them. You have every bit as much of a right to raise a family as anyone else.”
“What possible justification can someone have against a loving couple providing a home for a child in need?” sputtered a ramrod-straight man with rapidly blinking eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses.
“
We saw a special about neglected children in Los Angeles, and immediately started the adoption process. It still took two years of jumping through hoops before we were approved to foster.” There was a smattering of claps. Wyatt paid attention.
Horn Rims’s outraged blinking escalated. “So there we were, like idiots, waiting for that call from the agency. Weeks went by, then months, and now almost a year. They even re-ran that special! And not so much as a single call!” He seemed ready to vibrate off the chair, a wooden soldier on a truck bed. His partner patted his back. “It’s outrageous—there are thousands of kids desperate for a good home.”
The circle of men nodded. Dapper, all, knit polos taut over biceps, military-short hair glinting with gel. Spacing between chairs indicated pairs—gaps between every other. Only Wyatt’s chair had space on both sides.
Peach Daiquiri sighed. “There’s still prejudice against men adopting. Some stems from fears of pedophilia. Some stems from prejudice against gays. And some is the traditional belief that a woman is the best caregiver for a child.”
Horn Rims was not appeased. His partner, by contrast, was soft spoken. “The strange thing to us was how we came to the adoption process with a lot of joy, as a first choice. Nearly all the straight couples came from a place of pain, a last resort. It seemed to us that we were better suited for parenting, that we had less baggage.”
Peach Daiquiri hesitated at the edge of the minefield. “There’s no better or worse qualification to parent,” she said slowly. “The decision to adopt puts everyone on equal footing in the most important qualification—wanting this blessing in your life.”
Wyatt applauded her diplomatic response. He knew too many parents coming from that place of pain to pass judgment.
“Doesn’t the fact that we’re in committed relationships make a difference?” Earring clasped the hand of Stain-on-Tie.
“Regardless of whether stereotypes about two-dad families are true, if a birth mother, agency, social worker, or attorney believes that children shouldn’t be placed in a two-dad home, you’re going to face an uphill battle.”
“Should we adopt daughters?” Stain-on-Tie spoke for the first time.
Peach looked doubtful. “I don’t think gender specification is a good thing,” she answered carefully. “The more open you are to any child, the less it looks like you have a suspect preference.”
“It’s ridiculous that we’re having this discussion!” sputtered Horn Rims. “Single women aren’t suspected of molestation if they try to adopt a boy!”
“It’s true.” Peach was genuinely sad. “We’ve come a long way, but there’s still far to go.”
Wyatt wondered if he looked gay. He was the only straight man in the room. And the only single man.
“How do we start?” asked a man so studiously dressed in every shade of blue the ensemble shrieked that he’d rather be wearing a flair of pink.
Peach brightened. “I have a sheet!” She handed a sheaf of light blue papers to her left. Everyone took one and passed it on.
It was cheerful and covered with little icons of yellow ducks and baby rattles, and provided no real information. It wouldn’t have passed even the flimsiest of laugh tests with Wyatt’s students. He could imagine their mockery: “Don’t forget: Wake up! And breathe!” “Put on your pants! Don’t shit in them!”
Sensing that the natives were restless, Peach rushed on. “Once you apply to adopt a child—regardless of whether it’s through an agency, a broker, or directly to the court—the laws of California require a home study. That’s the written report of the social worker who has met with the applicants on several occasions, both individually and together.” Peach did not offer the single-applicant scenario.
“How long does it take?” Useful information had recaptured the group’s attention, though Horn Rims rolled his eyes to make sure they knew he was ahead of the class. Wyatt had a flash of gladness the couple hadn’t been given a child, but then felt guilty and disloyal.
“Three to six months, but public agencies may take longer. The criminal background check and verifying employment history can take time.”
“Are there special considerations we, as gay couples, need to anticipate?” Blue Boy focused on the practical. Wyatt bet he was a lawyer. Then he wondered if he was supposed to speculate about people in support groups without name tags.
Peach looked at them frankly. “Take down the black-and-white framed nudes, no matter how tasteful. Throw out the dildos. Hide the Thunder from Down Under wall calendar. Serve homemade lemonade and cookies, not umbrella drinks and sashimi. Don’t have a criminal record, and if you do, come clean at once. Get a Volvo, an ironing board, and a Crock-Pot. If you can dig up a doting granny and cart her over in a rocker, all the better.”
Someone joked, “I’ll lure Gran with my famous apple martini,” amid chuckles. Wyatt had never owned any porn, but he made a mental note to throw out any Abercrombie & Fitch catalogs, and maybe that flammable-seeming blanket he’d kept from a United Airlines flight back from Hawaii.
“Look,” Peach said. “I don’t want to pander to stereotypes, but others will, so think of every gay joke you can imagine and dispel traces of it from your home. Be prepared for more challenges than a straight couple, but be persistent in pushing through them.” She smiled. “It’s an exhausting process, but worth it in the end.”
Tension eased from most of the collective shoulders, and the men smiled at one another. Wyatt felt more isolated than ever.
“Here’s an informational packet that can answer any remaining questions.” Peach smiled at Wyatt, the fluorescent lighting making her frosted lipstick even more unsuitable. “Would you like a second one for your partner?”
“No thank you, I’m single.”
Fifteen pairs of eyes swung in his direction. Wyatt was transported to the first time he’d volunteered as a student teacher. A little boy had informed Wyatt he had to “make winkle.” Wyatt was guiding him to the miniature-size toilet when the teacher bellowed “STOP!” from across the room, halting all activity. Wyatt had frozen, foot dangling in midstep as the teacher raced over.
“I’m sorry,” she’d pulled the child’s hand from Wyatt’s. “You’re not allowed.”
They’d disappeared into the bathroom, leaving Wyatt feeling like a pervert. She’d later apologized, explaining that it was strict school policy and not personal. But that hadn’t stopped Wyatt from feeling dirty. He saw a new ugliness. Somewhere between changing diapers and hugging a high school graduate was a danger zone for children where adults harbored malice. It could come from anyone. It could come from Wyatt. In Wyatt’s imagination, the Dad(s) Alone looked at him like that now. Or maybe it was relief that they at least had it easier than
someone
.
“I’m a teacher.” He declined to say principal, then wondered if it sounded bad, as if he was inserting himself where children were abundant. He might as well announce that he was a priest, Boy Scout troop leader, and did parties on the side as Bobo the Clown.
Peach said, “Single male adoption
is
a challenge.”
Horn Rims’s partner smiled at Wyatt. “There are lots of special-needs children who desperately need placement.”
You haven’t been able to get one
, Wyatt thought. He was starting to feel like a restaurant with too few customers. Wyatt wasn’t opposed to a special-needs adoption, but he found it ironic that single parents were directed to children who required more support. Wyatt was no hero. He wanted a healthy baby, like everyone else.
“I’m hoping to adopt an infant,” Wyatt said.
They all looked at him with pity, but said no more. They closed the meeting, and exited, two by two, each pair discussing their respective plans, together.
Wyatt recalled the meeting as he was having his nervous breakdown in Target. It was his first and he didn’t like it. To be fair, Bed Bath & Beyond had to take half the blame. He’d been back and forth between the two stores for half an hour, staring at the selection of those pot thingys that cooked for six days. Crock-Pots. Who knew there were so many? He thought the basic $24.99 version would meet his needs, but he must be wrong because there were more of the $59.99 variety. Having never owned a Crock-Pot, Wyatt had no idea what he sought in one. He called his cousin.
“Surely you’re joking?” Eva said.
“You like roast chicken,” Wyatt said, as if Eva might have forgotten.
“Yes, I do. And when I want a roast chicken I go to Cha Cha Chicken. The more important fact here is that you
don’t
like roast chicken.”
“I like chicken.”
“Wyatt, a roast chicken is the whole bird. It comes with the bones.”
Wyatt didn’t like food with bones in it. Who could be bothered to go to all that trouble?
Eva persisted. “Why do you want a Crock-Pot?”
“Mom used to make chicken and dumplings in a long-cooking pot. It was homey.” Wyatt smelled chicken and dumplings permeating his home as the social worker showed up and caught him unexpectedly over the fire-retardant ironing board.
“Okaaay.” Eva was waiting for an explanation that made sense. “And? What stress is this Crock-Pot triggering from deep within your psyche? A building teeming with high school children doesn’t freak you out, whereas the mere thought has me reaching for the Xanax with one hand and my Snuggie with the other.”
Wyatt hadn’t told Eva about the Dad(s) Alone meeting. “It’s all the
stuff,
” he tried. “I never got married, so I didn’t get the stuff.” The adrift feeling fluttered in his chest. “When a person has a baby, they have a baby shower and get the baby stuff. You know, strollers and cribs and onesies and blankets and toys. You need a lot of stuff for a baby. But see, they already
have
the other stuff. They got married and registered, and they got the blenders and food mixers and Cuisinarts and Crock-Pots and waffle makers. But I never did. Am I supposed to register for baby stuff
and
kitchen stuff?” Wyatt looked at the towering wall of appliances stretching skyward. “That’s a lot of stuff.”