Lorrie Moore - A Gate at the Stairs

Function and intention gave Roberta a sturdy demeanor. “Is Sarah here?” she inquired, hoping to clear away me, the riffraff.

“Let me think,” I said. I actually did need to think in order to figure out what further to say. I wasn’t sure what Sarah might want me to do. Roberta was starting to be irked with me. Irritation entered her eyes in a low, cold flame. “Let me go see,” I added.

Upstairs Sarah was already standing in the hall, a little paralyzed, but with Mary-Emma dressed in a pink corduroy jacket and a pink velvet headband around her afro. Mary-Emma’s head was sunk down on Sarah’s shoulder, as if it tired her to be so dressed up; it was getting close to nap time.

“Roberta Marshall’s downstairs,” I said.

“Jesus, I can’t believe she came so soon. I can’t even believe she came today.” Sarah looked paralyzed. But then breathed deeply and brushed past me, with Mary-Emma, to go greet Roberta at the door.

Sarah, too, did not invite her in, so I could see from the landing, where I watched, near an open black trash bag of stuffed animals, a Brio train, and folded baby blankets, that my instincts had been correct. She did not even open the outer door but just stood, slightly braced against the open inner one.

“Hi there, Sarah. And hello there, Mistress Mary,” chirped Roberta from the doorstep through the screen.

Mary-Emma looked at her wordlessly, then buried her face in Sarah’s sleeve again.

“Not quite contrary,” said Roberta, shrugging off the quip.

“You did not make it clear you were coming today,” said Sarah.

“I’m sorry. I thought you understood. Legally, your time is up as foster parents, and if the adoption papers can’t be finalized, we move on to the next couple in line. Which means—”

“Which means what?”

“I was getting to that. It means Mary has to be moved into the regular foster care that we use. Just for the time being, of course.”

“Why can’t we be the foster care?” Sorrow flooded Sarah’s face.

“Because you’re not. Our agency has specific ones we use. There was that problem with your withheld information, which we’ve discussed already. I don’t want to get into that now.”

“Well, we were her foster parents for all these months. I mean, we are still this second, I should think.”

“Your being foster parents has been a technicality, as I explained, until the adoption was finalized. Since you’re not going ahead, we must make other arrangements.”

“You’d move her right now this minute based on a technicality?”

“I’m afraid it’s sort of the law.”

“I need to discuss things further with my husband, I think.”

“You’ve had all this time.”

“Well, yes, but we still need more time. To transition. At the very least. Just to transition. To sit with this decision and make the transition.”

“The law doesn’t offer that kind of comfort zone. I’m sorry. I wish for your sake it did.” And here she slowly opened the outer screen door, insinuating her body over the threshold.

“Hey, Mary! Want to go for a ride?” Roberta stooped to look Mary-Emma in the eyes and made a big, false happy face.

“What are you doing?” Sarah began to lean back into the house.

Roberta began to hold her arms out for Mary-Emma. There was going to be a scene. Sarah swung Mary-Emma away.

“Don’t touch her!” Sarah cried, and Mary-Emma began to whimper.

“You can make it easier for the child,” said Roberta, “or you can make it difficult.” She edged in further, filling the doorway, shoving the screen door now completely behind her hip. She reached out again, worming her fingers around Mary-Emma.

Sarah pulled her brusquely away.

“Sarah,” Roberta said scoldingly. “Don’t make this a tug-of-war.”

Sarah’s face became a mask. “Do you have a carseat?” she asked quietly. Defeat was coming over her. Probably there was a kind of shiny bird or spiny fish that did this, gave away its babies, flailed out at its own family, and did it all disguised as a rock to avoid being eaten.

“Yes, of course,” said Roberta. The most personal matters were supervised by bureaucracies so that humaneness would not interfere and obstruct. Everyone could shrug and plead the little laws of life.

“OK. Well, I’ll walk her to the car. I won’t have you just snatching her in the doorway.”

Sarah walked her to Roberta’s car and put her in the back. “Wait a minute. I have her stuff,” she said, and ran ashen-faced back into the house, grabbing the trash bag from the landing. The original white plastic trash bag had now been replaced with a newer, larger black trash bag, and filled with Mary-Emma’s original dowry, plus some other items — clothes, a Gund Pooh bear, the Brio train, a silver cup, and the Diana Ross CD, which I’d placed in there just before tying up the whole thing with its yellow plastic tie. I had also added Steve the fish, tied him tight in a Baggie with water and plopped him on top in a plastic take-out container. It didn’t seem like much, traveling the world with just these trash bags. I might have hoped to save Mary-Emma from this particular country-western song—“these plastic bags hold my life, darlin’ dear”—or at least this particular verse, but I wasn’t strong enough to wave away anything as strong as music, let alone harsh facts. I had tried to be Amber, recalcitrant, oppositional, but had also, like Sarah, ended up as passive, translucent, and demolished as Bonnie, just watching the baby go.

“Here,” said Sarah, thrusting the bag in Roberta’s direction. In her other hand she had a sippy cup, and she handed it to Mary-Emma through the open car window.

“Mama?” Mary-Emma looked frightened.

“I can’t go with you,” said Sarah, and simply blew the child a kiss. “But it’ll be OK. I promise.”

“Ciao, Mama!” Mary-Emma began to cry and thrust her arms from the backseat. Sarah stood curbside, saying nothing. “Ciao, Mama! Ciao, Mama!” Her farewell was not even the language of the mother or the babysitter, but the babysitter’s ex. Mary-Emma’s cries came floating back through the open window as the car zipped down the street and took a right at the first corner.

I could not believe what Sarah had done.

Of course King Solomon was right. The woman brought before him with the disputed baby, the one who consented to the infant’s being cut in half, was not the real mother.

But she was the real wife.

Sarah turned and ran quickly inside. I followed. I have never heard a houseful of such weeping. Inside, Noelle had entered through the back door with his vacuum cleaner and pails. “What’s going on?” he asked, placing a Diet Coke once again in the freezer.

“I’m not the one who can tell you,” I said. Then I left as quickly as I could.

For a week I busied myself in a robotic way with tasks, half waiting for the phone to ring — to have it be Sarah or Reynaldo or even more hilariously Mary-Emma, as I missed her. I wanted to hear that all these little nightmares were gone — mistakes had been made! — that a lot had been patched up and swung open and glued back, and can you get over here right this minute, you are needed! But one spring day tumbled after another, identical and dull, and the semester seemed to be closing up shop, indifferent to me. I went on two geology field trips, both times as a quasi zombie. I did my final Dating Rocks research paper: “The Plausible Sufic Geology of Stonehenge.” I was reduced. I was barely there. When misfortune accumulated, I could feel now, it strafed you to the thinness of a nightgown, sheared you to the sheerness of a slip. Light seemed to shine right through your very hands, your blood no longer red: your skin in the breeze billowing, like a jellyfish. Your float through the day had all the reality of a trance, triggering distant memories though not actually very many. The passing of time was the lightest of brushes. Life was ungraspable because it would not stay still. It skittered and blew. It was a mound of random trash, even as you moved through the hours like a ghost invited to enjoy a sparkling day at the beach.