Lorrie Moore - A Gate at the Stairs

I could see she was getting ready to enter a new understanding of society. It would be artificial and touristic. It would be motherhood in a safari suit. But how not? It was better than some. Probably it was better than most.

We found a metal-edged diner, went in, and sat at the counter side by side, letting our coats fall off our shoulders and dangle from the stools, anchored by our sitting butts. The counter had been freshly wiped with some piney disinfectant and right where we sat there was an old red Coca-Cola dispenser that resembled the outboard motor of a boat. I sat between Sarah and Edward, like a child. This they seemed to like, but it made it hard for me to have any appetite at all. I could not eat, as if eating were the most inappropriate and irrelevant and perhaps even revolting thing we could be doing right then. At one point I turned too quickly and the wrist edge of my sweater sleeve knocked some french fries to the floor. When I was younger I could get away with not eating something I didn’t like by claiming to my parents either that it was too rich or that it had fallen on the floor. (Later I would use this with people: “She was too rich” or “He fell on the floor — what is there to say?”) And here I was now suddenly verklempt by my indifference to food. I was floating away from myself. My breath would go musty and sour if I did not eat, so I tried. I ordered a vanilla milk shake and sucked it down. Edward and Sarah would occasionally reach across me to touch each other — a hand on a thigh, or upper arm, or shoulder — and then retreat into their separate and separating spaces. Everyone was quiet, though I wasn’t sure why.

We returned to the hotel, headed to our respective rooms. I noticed that when older people got tired they looked a lot older, whereas when young people got tired they just looked tired. Sarah and Edward looked a little aged; our early lunch had not refreshed them and some worry had knotted their mouths and generally dragged their features downward. They were waiting for a phone call, they said, and they would call me after they got it.

“OK,” I said, and crawled back into my room and into my bed with my clothes on. I’d brought only one book, the Zen poems, and was finding their obliqueness fatiguing and ripe for parody. I decided instead to investigate the official Judeo-Christian comedy, and pulled the Gideon Bible from the nightstand drawer. I started at the beginning, day one, when God created the heavens and the earth and gave them form. There’d been no form before. Just amorphous blobbery. God then said let there be light, in order to get a little dynamic going between night and day, though the moon and stars and sun were not the generators of this light but merely a kind of middle management, supervisors, glorified custodians, since they were not created until later — day four — as can happen with bureaucracy, even of the cosmic sort. Still, I thought of all the songs that had been written about these belated moon and stars and sun, compared to songs about form. Not one good song about form! Sometimes a week just got more inspiring as it went along. Still, it was truly strange that there was morning and night on day one though the sun wasn’t created until day four. Perhaps God didn’t have a proofreader until, like, day forty-seven, but by that time all sorts of weird things were happening. Perhaps he was really, completely on his own until then, making stuff up and then immediately forgetting what he’d made up already. People were dying and coming back and having babies and then not able to, so their handmaidens would instead. Then I slid into the nap I knew the lunchtime milk shake would bring on if I just let it.

I awoke to a faint knocking on the door.

“Tassie? It’s Sarah. We’re going to go to the hospital for the baby’s checkup. Do you want to come?”

“Yes, I’m coming,” I said, then hurried to the door to open it, but it slammed into the brass slide lock through which I peered, dazed, as if through bars, at a slim slice of Sarah.

My nap had not effectively rebooted me. Sarah was wearing her winter coat, but I could still see she was shrugging beneath it. “The agency is switching foster families and they have an appointment this afternoon at the hospital for our little girl.” She was also wearing that hand-knitted hat with the ear flaps and pom-pom ties. Were these back in style? Had they ever been in style?

I had to close the door on her completely in order to undo the lock and open it again, this time wide. “Let me get my shoes on,” I said.

“This was supposed to be the Presidential Suite,” she said, gazing into the room at the holes in the wall.

“Well, even presidents get shot,” I said.

“I was just going to say that myself,” she said, smiling. “But I didn’t want to scare you.”

I didn’t know whether this was interesting — that we were both thinking the same gruesome thing — or even whether it was actually the case. Perhaps it was just rhetorical ESP: Kreskin’s Guide to Etiquette. But even if it was true, that we were about to say the same thing, did this connect us in some deep, private way? Or was it just a random obviousness shared between strangers? The deeper life between two people I had yet to read with confidence. It seemed a kind of vaporous text that kept revising its very alphabet. An exfoliating narrative , my professors would probably say. The paratext of the possible.

“Sorry this is so beat up,” she added.

“It’s OK.”

“Our bedspread is even more lurid than yours,” she confided. “Maybe hunters come here in hunting season. We’re in the Packer Suite, which is green and gold with footballs on the wallpaper. I kept thinking they were walnuts. The balls, I mean. Edward had to clarify.”

“Ha! Well, at least the water pressure’s good!”

“Yes, well, we’ll wait for you in the car out front,” said Sarah, turning to go. Was she trying to keep some irritation out of her voice? Of course! Once again I realized I wasn’t really supposed to go with them to this, but I had forgotten and in my sleepiness had said yes.

In the car they made small talk about the carseat they had just purchased at Sears. It was next to me in the back, still with some plastic around it. “It looks safe,” I said blithely.

“They make them better now,” said Sarah. “The kids are more securely locked in. Kids used to be able to leap out in no time.”

In the hospital lobby, a new transitional foster care person was carrying baby Mary, who was now sporting a hat and had been bundled into a pale blue snowsuit that was perhaps institutionally owned and intended for boys. “Hi, I’m Julie,” said the woman. “I’m a foster parent for Adoption Option. I just fetched Mary here from the CSS foster home — there was a little bit of a scene at the door.” She loosened her hand just slightly from Mary and flapped it toward Sarah like a seal flipper.

“Oh, really,” said Sarah, shaking her hand. “I’m Sarah.”

“Yes, I know. And you must be Edward and you must be Tassie.” She gave us each a nod, still hanging on to Mary.

“A scene?” asked Edward, not letting this go.

“Well, the birth mother had made her decision — she was switching agencies — but this foster family was a little upset. They were reluctant to let the child go, and the changeover, I’m afraid, was a bit dramatic.”

“Really?” Sarah looked worried. “What happened?”

“Oh, I’ll spare you.” Julie sighed and touched the little girl’s nose, making her smile. She turned back to Sarah, hesitating. “You met their teenage daughter, Lynette?”

“Yes.”

“Enough said,” said Julie. “Wanna hold your child?”

“Let me see if she’ll come to me,” said Sarah. She reached toward the little girl and said, “Come here, baby.” The little girl went with her calmly, and Sarah settled her happily on her canted hip.