A Watershed Year by Susan Schoenberger Read Free Book Online Page A

answer.”
    “I’m still working out the money issue.”
    “For older child, there is small discount. Twenty thousand.”
    Lucy took this in. If she could do the adoption for twenty thousand, she might not have to take out a loan. And Yulia was right, it would eliminate years of day-care issues for her. She had to keep her job, didn’t she? But a baby would be more malleable, less marked by what had come before. What if this four-year-old had a hard time adjusting?
    Logically, she knew she should give herself some time to consider Yulia’s offer, weighing the pros and cons of adopting an older child, but the tangle of grief and longing inside spoke for her.
    “What would I have to do next?”
    “We submit I-600A to Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, complete state papers and home study. FBI does fingerprints and background check. Then we plan trip to Russia.”
    “You’ll come with me, right?”
    “No, but we have facilitator in Murmansk. Very easy.”
    “So I’m about to become a mother?” Lucy said. An emotion she couldn’t identify filled her chest, something with enough power to push the anvil of grief aside. She put a hand over her mouth, unsure of how to process the excitement, the terror, the joy, the finality of the moment. She looked at Yulia, who gave her a rare smile.
    “In Russia, we say
mama
.”

    AS A TEENAGER, Lucy would dread being kissed by her great-grandmother’s wet, quavering lips, already so wrinkled they had lost their definition from the rest of the face. But now she enjoyed spending time with Mavis, who could be counted on to forget anything Lucy told her. She liked stroking the delicate meringue of white hair, which had been wiry at one time but now felt as soft and fine as a toddler’s. Mavis couldn’t say what year it was, but she sometimes talked about what milk cost in Sicily when she was a girl.
    “How is she today?” Lucy asked the receptionist on duty in the front lobby of the nursing home.
    “Lovin’ life,” the woman said. “Just told me I needed a breath mint. She don’t hold back.”
    This was true. Whatever mechanism prevented people from saying what they thought had worn out for Mavis. She opened fire and then blew on the gun without a trace of guilt. Lucy found her propped up in her wheelchair in front of the television, watching, of all things,
I Love Lucy
.
    “Hi, Nana,” she said, kissing the top of Mavis’s head.
    “Well, how are you, dear? Did you see that? She just lit her nose on fire,” Mavis said.
    “I thought I’d take you out for ice cream,” Lucy said.
    “As long you’re paying.”
    She signed Mavis out, and a male nurse arrived to help Lucy take her great-grandmother out to the car. Mavis weighed no more than eighty pounds and couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, but she retained the vocal power of her younger years, when she was a full-figured woman who always wore heels.
    “Look at this mess,” Mavis said loudly as the nurse buckled the seat belt around her delicate bones, which Lucy knew would snap like balsa wood under the slightest pressure. “Wadded-up tissues, wrappers, coffee cups. I’m so sorry, dear. If I’d known it was this much of a disaster, I would have suggested we take your car.”
    “This
is
my car, Nana.”
    “It is? I could have sworn mine was blue.”
    “You haven’t had a car for fifteen years.”
    “Wait, it was aquamarine. A Pontiac with automatic windows. I used to drive it down to the…” Her voice trailed off, then she looked at Lucy as if seeing her for the first time, which made Lucy wonder whether Mavis perceived the passage of time as a forward motion anymore.
    At Friendly’s, Lucy parked the car and then helped Mavis into her wheelchair, relying on passersby to help her push it over the curb and through the heavy glass doors. Harlan, whose upbringing compelled him to open doors for Lucy, had taught her over the years that accepting help was a form of giving. “It’s a