We reviewed our plan on the ride over to Families by Design. We were in our tricked-out video van, full of equipment rented by our tech guru, Laurent. From this command center, they’d be monitoring and taping every moment of our interview. My mother had a video camera concealed in her brooch and a backup in the temple of the stylishly thick eyeglasses she wore, which she didn’t need, but which further altered her appearance.
I was also wired, with my camera hidden in my tiepin.
The small devices wouldn’t record more than grainy, heavily pixilated images, but that was adequate for the job. It would give the footage a realistic spy-cam quality. And while it was hard to get good video from this kind of equipment, the sound would be clear and capture everything that was said. That was its most important role in gathering the material we’d need to prove if Families by Design was, in fact, unforgivably lax in assessing its potential parents.
“Now, remember,” my mother said to me, “you must turn and look at me frequently. Not just your head, darling, your whole body.”
“If we’re there adopting a child together,” I said, “I assume they’ll believe we’re a couple. I don’t think it’s necessary for me to constantly gaze adoringly at you. Wouldn’t want to overdo it.”
“It’s not that, darling. It’s just that the cameras I’m wearing aren’t going to capture me. I need you to get my reaction shots with that clever little one you’ve got on.”
Not for the first time, I concluded that my mother’s greatest talent was to make and keep herself the center of attention.
Andrew handed us fake IDs and made us run through our cover story again. He’d already had the production staff prepare the false documents and applications we used to set up the appointment. The most important part of our deception was establishing me as a wealthy investor whose start-up funds helped build three of the five most popular online social networks, making me very rich, indeed.
I’d had input into the planning of our fake identities. What no one knew was that the character I was playing was based on a real customer of mine back in the days I was hustling. Not only was my client fabulously wealthy and a brilliant venture capitalist, but he was also a motormouth. I’d learned enough from him that, if I had to, I could speak believably about how I’d made my fortune through the art and science of angel investing.
Our assumed names were Murray Goldsberry and Zorah Heffelbergen. We decided to pose as an unmarried couple to create the first of many considerations any reasonable adoption agency would want to ask about. Not that unmarried people couldn’t adopt, mind you, but it was a point of information worth exploring in a culture where married couples enjoyed certain rights and responsibilities that would affect a child’s well-being. But, trust me, being uninterested in tying the knot was the least of the Goldberry/Heffelbergens’ problems.
I couldn’t wait to see what the folks at Families by Design would make of the others.
34
“Our goal,” the alarmingly well-manicured and groomed owner and chief operating officer of Families by Design, Amanda Peterson, said smiling, waving her arms at us like a spokesmodel demonstrating a particularly valuable prize on The Price Is Right, “is to help you build the family of your dreams.”
So far, Ms. Peterson said everything with a smile. From “How nice to meet you,” to “Can I get you something to drink?” to “So tell me, how did you hear about Families by Design?” was delivered with a Zenlike joyfulness. I wished I had a vest full of explosives so I could open my jacket to see if she announced a bomb scare with that same accommodating merriment.
An attractive, well-poised woman with impeccable diction, Ms. Peterson was probably somewhere in her late forties, although with the right skin care routine and a good surgeon, she may well have been a good deal older. Her skin was tightly stretched against her face, which, like the rest of her, was too thin by half. For all her outward graciousness, you got the sense this was a woman willing to starve herself, or anyone else, for that matter, to get what she wanted.
As generous as she was with her smiles, they never quite reached past her cheeks. It gave them a robotic unnaturalness. The top half of her face was either immobilized by Botox or disinterest; it was too soon to tell.
Her office, like the entire suite, was lavishly decorated in soothing pastels. Mary Cassatt prints of rosy- cheeked mothers and daughters called to the ladies, while Norman Rockwell scenes of fathers and sons playing baseball and reading with their children were hung to bring tears to the eyes of prospective dads. Ms. Peterson sat behind a glass table with no drawers or file cabinets. A sleek silver MacBook Air and our file were the only items on her desk. On a credenza behind her, a tall, single white lotus, in full bloom, arched delicately from a silver bud vase. I remembered reading somewhere that many considered the lotus a symbol of fertility, and I wondered if it was there to inspire or depress.
“Tell me”-Ms. Peterson smiled-“why do you want to adopt?”
“I’ve always wanted kids,” my mother said. The voice that came out of her was a new one. Half New York yenta, half British nanny. She sounded like a character invented by a bad actress in a Saturday Night Live skit that would never be heard from again. She threw me an accusatory glance. “But my old man over there only shoots blanks.”
She leaned in to give Ms. Peterson a conspiratorial wink. “When he even makes it past the starting flag, that is. Usually, One Minute Murray finishes before he even enters the race, if you know what I mean.”
If Ms. Peterson ever had nightmares of the kind of woman with whom she’d never want to be in a room, my guess is they featured someone very much like my mother. “I see,” she said, the smile still there but trembling.
“Personally,” my mother said, “I take it as a compliment. When they finish before they even begin? That’s how you know a guy’s really into you.” She paused for a moment. “If not, literally, into you, pardon the pun.”
I wondered if it were true that certain ninja masters and Hindu fakirs could, when required, turn themselves invisible. If so, it was a skill I’d have paid anything for at the moment.
Ms. Peterson smiled. “You two have been together long, then?”
I was sure that question had been answered in our application. I wondered if Ms. Peterson was trying to trip us up, or if she hadn’t bothered to read it.
“Forever!” my mother exclaimed. She glanced over at me. “Almost eight months, right, honey?”
“Urgh,” I answered. Maybe if I appeared incoherent, they’d leave me out of it.
“Eight months?” Ms. Peterson’s grin, for one quick moment, fell. “And you’re ready for a child?”
“Ready?” my mother asked. “ More than ready! When you meet the right man, the one you love, the one you want to spend the rest of your life with, the one you know is too smart to marry you without a prenup, which you wouldn’t sign with a gun to your head but who you know would never not provide for his beloved child, even if it is just adopted, you know it, don’t you, Amy, darling?”
Of all the objectionable, tasteless things my mother had just said, I think calling Ms. Peterson “Amy” was the one that bothered her the most. The smile stayed frozen but the eyes narrowed. I sat forward in my seat, looking forward to being kicked out of there.
“Ah,” Ms. Peterson began, “love. To hear you speak of ‘love’ warms my heart, Ms.”-she glanced at the file on her desk-“Heffelbergen?” She said the name as if she couldn’t believe it, then quickly recovered. “Isn’t that what a family’s about? Love? Where there is love, there is life. That’s what I always say.”
My mother nodded. “But let’s face it, Amy. You don’t mind if I call you that, do you?”
I was sure my mother noticed how much she did.
“Of course not,” said the grinning skeleton across from us.
“I’m not getting any younger. And I hear that these adoptions can take months. Years even. I don’t have that kind of time, Amy. When you have a big bass floating near your fishing boat,” she darted her eyes at me, “you don’t want to waste too much time baiting the hook. You want to reel that sucker in before some other, younger, prettier boat comes along, if you catch my drift.” She winked conspiratorially.
“Well.” Ms. Peterson smiled, tapping her perfectly rounded nails against the smooth glass of her desk. The clinking noise sounded like coins falling. Pennies from heaven. “These things can take time. There are many, many
