Lorrie Moore - A Gate at the Stairs

“I don’t really believe in interracial relationships,” said Bonnie, looking in a kind of dead-faced way at Sarah.

“The whole tragic mulatto thing?” said Sarah with a light, fluffy sarcasm that had flown in from some other conversation entirely. “The whole what about the children thing?”

“What?” Bonnie contorted her face as if in pain. She wanted to be respected for the gift she was giving the world and in this room she wanted to be in charge, but now it seemed clear she probably wasn’t.

Roberta glared at Sarah. “Sorry,” said Sarah. Something gentler returned to her voice. “Sometimes other people’s cell phone conversations come in on my fillings.” She grinned.

“Really?” asked Bonnie, confused.

“Actually, that happens to me sometimes,” I chimed in. “I swear to God. It’s very weird.”

Sarah tried to make her way back to Bonnie, whom she’d lost. “But, Bonnie, I just wanted to ask you: Isn’t the baby half African-American?” Sarah recrossed her legs. She had winced a little at Roberta’s “little Irish Rose.” I could see she was torn between not wanting to seem confrontational and wanting to know just what kind of racism was here in this room.

“More like a quarter, I think. I don’t know. He — my daughter’s father — once asked me what I would think of having a child who had one black grandparent.”

This did not sound like date-rape chat, or like fling chat. Or chat, really, of any sort at all. But perhaps I was learning a thing or two about chat. Where was Suzanne with the coffee?

“Maybe he was Italian,” said Bonnie.

No one laughed, which was excellent. No one laughed out loud.

Suzanne at last came in with coffeepot and cups, and just as she was pouring and passing around the coffee the outside door cracked open. “Is this—” said a man’s voice. “Oh, yes, I see it is,” and the door opened wide. In stepped a distinguished-looking man: he had a balding head with pewter-hued hair grown long and wavy in the back; it was like he was wearing a head cape. His salt-and-pepper mustache was clipped neatly.

“Edward!” Sarah jumped up.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said. His gaze, which had been on her, turned to his own paper cup of coffee, which he sipped from, as if it were not just delicious but urgent, and I could see he was showing us himself, his aquiline profile, his handsome objectness, so that for a minute he did not have to trouble himself to admire us but to soak up our appreciation of him. He had snapped in two the connecting gaze he’d quickly made, then unmade, with Sarah, but one could see it was his habit to almost imperceptibly dominate and insult.

Instead of being angry, Sarah looked happier than I had ever seen her in my brief acquaintance with her. Something in her face softened and relaxed, and a youthful light went on behind every part of it. Despite everything, she was in love with him. I had not seen love very much, and it was hard for my midwestern girl’s mind to imagine being in love with a guy this flamboyantly self-involved and, well, old. He could have been fifty or even fifty-four. But Sarah went over to him, clasped his face in her hands, and smooched him on the lips. He patted her on the back as if to calm her down. His deep eyes, his charming smile — I could not then and there see any of it. This was love, I supposed, and eventually I would come to know it. Someday it would choose me and I would come to understand its spell, for long stretches and short, two times, maybe three, and then quite probably it would choose me never again.

“The cab headed out of the airport and got halfway to Pulaski,” Edward was saying, “before the driver realized he was headed in the wrong direction.”

“Here we say ‘Plasky,’ ” Roberta said quickly.

“Came back through something called Allouez — how do you say that?”

Many of the original French traders seemed to have had such an adversarial relationship to nature, especially water, that everything they named took on their gloom: Death’s Door, Waves’ Grave, or Devil’s Lake, all lovely vacation spots translated from the French. Even in Delton County “the lake of God,” du Dieu , was known by the locals as Lake Doo-doo. By comparison, “Allouez” seemed welcoming, though perhaps sarcastic.

“Alwez,” she said, as if it weren’t French at all.

“Edward Thornwood,” he said, thrusting out his hand at her.

“Edward. Edward. Yes. Edward. I’m Roberta,” she said, clearly trying to emphasize that this was a first-name-only situation. Could the revelation of his last name be a deal-breaker? Would the birth mother in a change of heart later remember it, track him down, take her baby back? I tried to live cautiously — or eventually learned to try to live — in a spirit of regret prevention, and I could not see how Bonnie could accomplish such a thing in this situation. Regret — operatic, oceanic, fathomless — seemed to stretch before her in every direction. No matter which path she took, regret would stain her feet and scratch her arms and rain down on her, lightlessly and lifelong. It had already begun.

Sarah introduced Edward to everyone again, once more as just “Edward,” perhaps to help erase the memory of his uttered last name, and he focused his bright gaze and kind words— so wonderful to meet you, I know this is a complicated time —on me. This caused visible consternation in Bonnie, who began to look even sadder and more distant, for it was clear Edward thought I was the birth mother and that I was the one who needed to be charmed. Bonnie desired and required the focus of this meeting, if not this entire day, to be on her. Could she not be the star even for that long, just once, given everything, giving everything away as she was doing?

“Edward, Bonnie here is the birth mother,” said Sarah.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, nodding toward her but failing to summon the same energy he had had for me. I wondered if being mistaken twice now for a possible mother portended something not so sparkling for my future.

“Care for some more coffee?” asked Suzanne. She lifted the pot and toasted his cup with it.

“No, thanks,” he said. And then we all chatted some more. Edward was a researcher — no longer associated with a university. He did research on eye cancer.

“How did you get interested in eyes?” asked Roberta brightly.

“Well,” said Edward, seated on the loveseat with Sarah. He gave a look of innocent, empirical glee. “At first I was interested in breasts.”

“How very unusual,” said Roberta.

I let out a small amused hoot — a mistake.

Bonnie simply stared at him.

“But there is a kind of eye cancer in mice that benefits greatly from a chemical that’s in grapes and red wine, actually — it’s called resveratrol — and I got interested in that. Of course no big pharmaceutical company is interested because it’s a natural product and not patentable, and the big companies control the research grants—”

“But you have some outside interest,” said Roberta to the rescue. These birth mothers wanted rich, rich, rich. They wanted to know their babies would have all the things they hadn’t. And the babies would. They were cute; they would be fine. The person who most needed adopting, it seemed to me, was Bonnie.

“Oh, yes. There’s some interest,” he added quickly. He could take a lawyer’s cues as quickly as Sarah. “But it’s not like I’ve invented a killer robot or anything as glamorous as that.” There was silence, so he continued. “Unfortunately, artificial intelligence is very artificial. In my opinion.”

Sarah piped up awkwardly. “Here we are with my professional kitchen and his lab and despite all that chemistry our bodies could never get anything cooked up between us.” There it was again: adopted kid as default kid. In nervous ingratiation Sarah had crossed some line — of privacy and sensitivity, perhaps even of honesty — though I didn’t know it then. Edward gave her a sharp look. Nonetheless, Sarah continued. “Not a green thumb in the house,” she said. “Even invasive species won’t grow in my garden. I have the shyest vinca in the world.”