“You want to know if I’m a lesbian.”
Zoe blushes. “Well. Yeah. But you don’t have to answer.”
“I’m straight as a two-by-four. My husband and I have three rugrats and a house full of constant chaos.”
“But you…” Zoe hesitates. “You work here?”
“I eat kung pao chicken like it’s going out of style, but I’m pretty sure I don’t have an Asian cell in my body. I love Toni Morrison novels and Tyler Perry movies although I’m not black.” Angela smiles. “I’m straight, Zoe, and I’m happily married. The reason I work here is because I think you deserve that, too.”
I’m not really sure when I began telling myself I’d never have kids. I’m still young, sure, but options are different when you’re a lesbian. The dating pool is smaller; chances are you will wind up going out with someone who already knows the last person who broke your heart. Plus, unlike straight people, who are almost expected to fall onto a track that leads to marriage and kids, a gay couple has to make a serious, expensive, invested effort to have a baby. Lesbians need a sperm donor, gays need a surrogate mother, or else we have to forge into the rough waters of adoption, where same-sex couples are often turned away.
I was never the kind of girl who dreamed of babies and who practiced swaddling my teddy bears. As an only child, I didn’t have a chance to help care for a younger sibling. I hadn’t had a serious relationship, before Zoe, for several years. I would have happily settled for love, without offspring, if that was my trade-off.
Besides, I told myself, I already had children. About six hundred of them, at Wilmington High School. I listened to them, and cried with them, and told them that tomorrow was always going to look a little better than today. Even the ones who have graduated I still think about, connect with on Facebook. I enjoy knowing that, like I promised, everything worked out okay.
But lately, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.
What if I wasn’t just everyone’s substitute mother during the hours of eight and three but an actual one? What if there was an open school night I got to attend as an audience member instead of a speaker? What if I found myself on the other side of the school counselor’s desk one day, advocating for my daughter, who was desperate to be placed in an English class that was already overcrowded?
I have not experienced that butterfly beat of life inside me, not yet. But I bet it’s a little like hope. Once you feel it, you know the absence of it as well.
Zoe and I haven’t had our baby, but we’ve allowed ourselves to wish. And I’ll tell you-from that moment, I was a goner.
It has been a hellish morning. A sophomore was suspended for robotripping, drinking Robitussin cough syrup in order to get high. But right now, everything’s quiet. I would call Zoe, but I know she’s in the weeds. Taking time off to visit the GLAD offices meant missing a day at the hospital for her; because of that, she’s postponed her music therapy lesson with Lucy so that she can spend a few hours on the pediatric burn unit. It is May, and I have no shortage of work I could do, but instead of doing my job, I turn on my computer and Google “Pregnancy.”
I click on the first website.
I press my hand against my abdomen. It seems inconceivable (pun intended) that this might be a home to someone, soon. Someone the size of a green olive, nonetheless. Why do they describe everything in terms of food? No wonder pregnant women are always starving.
Suddenly Lucy bursts into my office. “What the fuck?” she says.
“Language,” I reply.
She rolls her eyes. “You know, if I’m taking the time from my day to meet with her, she could at least have the courtesy to show up.”
I can easily translate Lucy’s anger-what she really means is that she’s disappointed her session’s been postponed. That-even if she’d rather die than admit it-she likes meeting with Zoe.
“I left a note on your locker,” I say. “Didn’t you get it?” It is the way we communicate in this school-by taping onto lockers notes for school counselor appointments and academic counseling sessions and even notices of field hockey championships.
“I don’t go near my locker. Last year someone put a dead mouse inside just to see what I’d do.”
That’s pretty appalling, but not surprising. Teenagers never fail to amaze me with the ingenuity of their cruelty. “Zoe’s work schedule was a little crazy this week, and she had to reschedule. She’ll be here for your next appointment.”
Lucy doesn’t ask me how I know this. She doesn’t know that I’m married to her music therapist. But hearing that Zoe hasn’t left for good seems to mollify her. “So she’s coming back,” Lucy repeats.
I tilt my head. “Is that what you want?”
“Well, if she ditches me, it sure as hell would fit the pattern of my life. Depend on someone, and they fuck you over.” Lucy looks up at me.
“Your drumming session was pretty interesting,” I say, remembering the impromptu rock concert in the cafeteria. I had spent an hour in a closed session with my principal after that fiasco, trying to explain the merits of music therapy with suicidal kids, and why having to sterilize the pots and pans and soup ladles once more was a small trade-off for mental health.
“I’ve never had anyone do that for me before,” Lucy admits.
“What do you mean?”
“She knew she was going to get in trouble. But she didn’t care. Instead of making me do what I’m supposed to do, or be what everyone wants me to be, she did something totally crazy. It was…” Lucy stumbles, trying to find her words. “It was fucking brave, is what it was.”
“Maybe Zoe’s getting you to feel more comfortable being yourself.”
“Maybe you’re using the hour I would have spent in music therapy to play Freud.”
I grin. “You know all my tricks.”
“You’re about as hard to read as Elmo.”
“You know, Lucy,” I say. “School’s out in less than two months.”
“Tell me about it-I’m counting the days.”
“Well-if you have any plans to continue music therapy over the summer, it’s something we’ll need to arrange in advance.”
Lucy’s gaze flies up to meet mine. I can tell she hasn’t considered this-when school breaks in June, so do all school activities, including school-based counseling sessions.
“I’m sure Zoe would agree to meet with you over the summer,” I say smoothly. “And I’m happy to use my key to let you guys into the school for your sessions.”
She jerks her chin up. “We’ll see. It’s not like I really care one way or the other.”
But she does, desperately. She just won’t say so out loud. “You have to admit, Lucy,” I tell her, “you’ve already come a long way. You couldn’t wait to get out of the room during that first session with Zoe, and, well, look at you now. You’re angry because she had to reschedule.”
Lucy’s eyes flash, and I think she’s going to tell me to go do something anatomically impossible, but then she shrugs. “She kind of crept up on me. But… not like in a bad way. Like when you’re standing on the beach right down by the ocean, and you think you’ve got a handle on it, and then when you look down again you’ve sunk so far that the water’s up to your hips. And before you can get freaked out, you realize you actually don’t mind going swimming.”
Beneath the barrier of my desk, my hand steals to my belly again. Our baby will be the size of a plum, a nectarine, a tangelo. A harvest of the sweetest things. Suddenly I want to hear Zoe’s voice asking me for the thousandth time whether or not yogurt containers can be recycled, or whether I wore her blue silk blouse last week and took it to the cleaners. I want ten thousand ordinary days with her; and I want this baby as proof that we loved each other so fiercely that magic happened. “Yes,” I agree. “That’s exactly what she’s like.”
Angela Moretti had said she’d call us when she had more news, but we didn’t expect it to be just days after our
