Heather swings her glance between Tina and me and still doesn’t say anything. Is she overwhelmed? Unsure? Is she wishing she hadn’t come at all? Her skin is pale and freckly, and there are violet circles under her eyes. I smile encouragingly, waiting for her to begin.
‘I guess I picked you,’ Heather begins slowly, choosing each word with care, her hands clasping her fake leather bag in her lap, ‘because you are – I mean, you want to be – a single mom. And I… I admire that.’
She admires me? I want to feel pleased but I’m not sure I believe her. And, I realize, I’m kind of a weird choice for her, aren’t I? I would expect someone like Heather – although I realize I’m making assumptions – to want the typical family, complete with white picket fence and slobbery dog. I wonder why she doesn’t.
‘I’m glad you admire that, Heather,’ I say. ‘I know a lot of people might be taken aback by a single mom, even in this day and age, which is sad.’ I’m going into talk show mode, all fake intimacy and forced cheer, making me cringe inwardly, but I can’t stop it.
‘Well, I’m not.’ She sounds stubborn, like she’s fighting against the tide, and maybe she is. Maybe in her world a single mom, or at least choosing to be a single mom, is a strange and suspect thing. But it still doesn’t feel like a completely credible reason to choose me for her child’s mother.
‘And what about Kevin?’ I ask carefully. ‘How does he feel about this?’
Tina and Heather share a quick, worried look, and I tense. More uncertainty, it seems. How much is too much? When do I decide it’s not worth the risk, the pain? To come so close and then have it all snatched away? To love and lose? That definitely is worse than never loving at all. I know.
But of course it’s worth it, it has to be, because I still want this so much. And I’ll take just about any risk to find my family.
Heather turns back to me, her expression resolute. ‘Kevin,’ she says flatly, ‘doesn’t care.’
Five
HEATHER
Tina and I don’t speak on the way down in the elevator, which looks almost as luxurious as Grace Thomas’s apartment. There’s a table and a chair in it, as well as a CCTV camera in the corner. I wonder how many people pick their nose or their wedgie in here and are caught on camera by a bored doorman.
Once I might have giggled at the thought, and Kevin would have joked around about it, got right up in the camera and wiggled his thumb in his nose. I can picture it, but it’s like looking through the wrong end of a telescope, because he hasn’t been funny like that or even happy for months. Years. The knowledge is like a dragging weight inside of me, pulling everything down.
‘I’m sorry Kevin wasn’t able to make it today,’ Tina says, not for the first time. She pursed her lips when I first told her he wasn’t coming.
Now I shrug and look away. Tina has met Kevin just once, two weeks ago, to go over the initial paperwork. He didn’t say a single word the whole time we were there, didn’t even ask who we might be giving this baby to. I’m the one who has got us this far, pushing and dragging all the dead weight. It hasn’t been easy, and the only way I’ve done it is because I don’t have any other choice.
After looking at those parent profiles online, I got spooked and I started to backtrack. I couldn’t just give my child away. I wasn’t some pregnant teenager or heroin junkie; I was a married woman with three children, a respectable person in a small, close-knit community. Other people had hard times and they didn’t go and give up their kid. I wouldn’t either.
And so I convinced myself I could make it work. I swallowed my pride, went online and applied for food stamps, even though I knew Kevin would hate the thought of us accepting a handout from the government. I also took out a loan from one of those shady sharks on the street corner, the kind of guy who murmurs in sympathy as he cracks his knuckles. I knew it was crazy but when the alternative is losing your house, what are you going to do?
I paid it back two days later when Kev’s last disability check came in, plus the huge interest, which meant we had absolutely no money at all; I’d even gone through the sofa cushions and coat pockets for loose change, all eight dollars and forty-eight cents of it, which I used for gas. Kevin never questioned any of it, never even noticed.
We had the food stamps, so at
least we’d eat. Although they aren’t food stamps anymore; we got an EBT card, and it looks like just a credit card, except I wouldn’t have to pay it back. After it came, I took the girls to the grocery store, feeling generous, almost hopeful. We were eligible for nearly four hundred dollars a month for food. I could feed my girls. So I let them toss things into the cart, a few treats, nothing too big, and when Amy asked if we could buy one of those rotisserie chickens for dinner, because they smelled so good, I said sure, why not? We had the money, for once. They deserved it.
Then we got to the checkout, the food already packed in bags, and I went to pay. I tried to be subtle about it, just sticking the card into the machine like it was no big deal, but the cashier saw and shook her head.
‘Sorry, but not everything here is eligible for food stamps.’
I went still and cold inside, the card, with BENEFITS written in big, black letters on it, suddenly seeming obvious, still clutched in my hand. Then the cashier started taking stuff out of the bags and stacking it on the side. A bottle of economy-brand shampoo, some toothpaste, a six-pack of beer for Kevin, that damned chicken. Amy let out a little cry of protest and Emma looked at me in confusion. Lucy pressed close to my side, her thumb in her mouth.
From behind me someone let out a loud, drawn-out sigh, and the cashier gave me a smile of tired sympathy.
‘Sorry, hon, but it’s the law. You’ll have to pay cash for those.’
But I didn’t have any cash. I thought that was the point of an EBT card, of the whole system. You didn’t need any cash. I saw a woman I recognized from school waiting in line behind the guy who had sighed and was now tapping his foot, craning her neck to see what was going on.
‘Mommy,’ Lucy said, tugging on my sleeve. ‘Why can’t we buy the chicken?’
‘What do you want to do, hon?’ the cashier asked. She was trying to be nice but I could tell she was impatient too. The line was growing longer. I felt my face flush, my whole body, with hot, prickly shame. The mom from school caught my eye, and without even thinking through what I was doing I grabbed Amy and Lucy’s hands and walked right out of the store, Emma hurrying behind, leaving all the food in the bags, the chicken and shampoo and beer piled on the side.
‘Mommy, what are you doing?’
‘What about our chicken?’