Lorrie Moore - A Gate at the Stairs

I would never take a man’s name. I knew that, in the deepest part of me, even though I also suspected that the women who did take their husbands’ names understood something about marriage that I didn’t. Me? I would never even let a man drive.

“Of course then we were unable to conceive again. I was too old.”

“Really,” I said. None of this was my business. What could I care about the threads and seeds of someone else’s fertility, the scooped-out womb of a melon at a picnic I was not attending? What did I care? I was back under the coat with Gabriel and Peter Gabriel and St. Peter and his gate.

Sarah poured some more SB into her glass and then into mine, and I gulped at it. “I’ve had to tell you all this because the adoption agency has now found out everything. And it has jeopardized the process with Emmie,” said Sarah. “As maybe it should. It’s my fault. We were less than forthcoming.”

What? Who were these people, “Susan” and “John,” “Sarah” and “Edward”? They could not hang on to anything.

The wine heated my neck. “You’re going to give up Mary-Emma?” There was too much emotion in my voice.

“This at long last is our formalized punishment,” she said. “When there’s hell to pay, are you paying hell, or paying with hell?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. My hands gripped at each other.

“Well,” she said. “I’ll let you know.”

Startled and furious at everyone, I could not believe the things I was hearing anymore. Briary, loamy SB flew to my lips. “You sought her out and brought her here. She loves you! Excuse me for saying this, but you have a responsibility now that’s greater than … than …” Than what? Than before? Than others’? Than mine? Was this my stab at saying Hey, what am I supposed to do here? I haven’t a clue, but this, these words, is what I’m choosing. “You have to fight it! For her!”

“Edward doesn’t want to, it seems,” said Sarah. And here she looked more tired than I’d ever seen her in months of tiredness. “It’s not entirely up to us, you see. Even if we lose out, or choose not to battle at all, maybe it would all be for the best. People would find out. Her schoolmates in the future might know. Maybe we should let Emmie go. Even if we didn’t have this particular thing in our past, maybe she shouldn’t be with us. You know, this kind of adoption is complicated. If all those Wednesday nights have taught me one thing, it’s this: love is not enough.”

All those Wednesday-night bull sessions had taught her that love is not enough? That’s where she was getting her information? And that’s what she had taken away? Who was the woman who was going to kill Karl Rove? Wasn’t that her? I wanted to shake her.

“I am not enough,” she added. She was fighting despondency with rigidity. Where had I seen this before? Bonnie.

I was quiet. Did she not have me to help? Wasn’t that why I was here? Was I failing, too? You have me , I wanted to peep but didn’t.

“Edward is not on board. I can’t stress this enough. Emmie deserves better than us. Ideally, she should be with black parents. At least one. Ideally.”

“But she’s mixed! Besides, there were no black parents for her.”

Sarah looked startled at my words. “Well, I know, but some time has gone by now: maybe some have newly become available. We have to look at the bright side of this. She should have better people who would show her the way. Edward and I are not good at being canaries in this particular coal mine. We are like two canaries looking at each other and saying, ‘Are we going where I think we’re going?’ One could write a whole sad children’s book on the subject. The worried and chattering canaries headed for the mines!”

“What about the feelings of a two-year-old girl?”

Sarah began to speak with a slowly building force. “You know, maybe I’m not good at this. Last week I was so stressed, I said to her, ‘If you don’t go in there and watch TV right now, there will be no TV for the rest of the week.’ ”

I tried to smile, perhaps ruefully. “Is that so wrong?”

Sarah stiffened. “Maybe women have been caught in a trap: we work harder so we can have more babysitters so we can work even more so we can have more money to hire more babysitters.” I tried not to feel personally stung by this. “I almost took all her frozen yogurt pops and zapped them in the microwave. As punishment. I think nuking the treats is a sign of something not good.”

“Well, you didn’t actually do it.” I was in over my head.

“I didn’t?” she said, testing me.

There was being in over your head and then there was being sucked completely under. My heart pounded against my chest like a prisoner against bars. I was sure I had read that expression somewhere and now I knew what it meant. When people in deep water started to drown, parts of them exploded. “No,” I said.

“No,” she agreed. “I didn’t. She’s a fantastic little girl. She really is. I love her to death.”

I did not say anything. She blanched at her own words.

“So do I,” I said. I would rescue her.

“I know you do. You know? When she first came into our lives, neighbors would stop by with little presents and they would always look at her and smile and say, ‘What a lucky little girl.’ They thought she was lucky to have us. But one day I took her for a walk in the neighborhood and the most racist person on the block came up to us, smiled at Emmie, and said to me , ‘You are very lucky.’ She’s the one who got it right.”

“Maybe everybody’s lucky,” I said awkwardly, adding, “that is, if they are lucky.”

“Or maybe in the end everybody’s unlucky. She shouldn’t have a punishing, faithless father whose idea of racial equality is to bring a rainbow coalition into his bed.” Now things were beginning to harrow me again. “Forget that! That was just the wine! But, well, you know that Edward is a flirt.”

I said nothing. If she wasn’t careful, everyone would rush out of her life, like out of a burning building.

“He can’t do relationships. Can’t really do acquaintanceships. He can’t do people at all. In fact, really he should just stay off mass transit!” Here she sipped some more wine. “All forms of transportation!”

“He bikes a lot,” I said dopily.

She smiled in a bitten, crooked way.

“The problem with seeing one’s marriage as a farce,” she continued, “is that all the slamming doors are in your heart. Well, that’s not the only problem.”

“There’s always Farceholics Anonymous.” I was now being inhabited not just by loamy, briary wine but loamy, briary Murph. “I’ve actually heard of that,” I added, lying.

“Really?”

“Really,” I lied again. Perhaps I had lost my mind.

Her voice was mordant. “A match made in heaven — where do you get those? That’s what I want to know!”

I now put my wine down on the coffee table and was wringing my hands as I used to when I was a child. “I think you have to actually go to heaven to get one.”

“Yes,” Sarah mused. “I suppose they don’t ship. Or rather, they don’t ship well. ”

“Yeah, you’d have go to the source. Where they’re made. That’s a lot of stairs. And steps. Stairs and steps both. There are always obstacles.”

“Yesterday at the bank I accidentally made off with the suction canister at the drive-in teller. Maybe what Emmie really shouldn’t have is a mother who is too busy.”

This again seemed to negate me. I was the one who was hired to neutralize or at least mitigate the busyness. But I hadn’t succeeded and could feel myself being neutralized and mitigated instead.