God and Jetfire by Amy Seek Read Free Book Online Page B

comfortably within known boundaries.
    She said my options wouldn’t be limited to the twenty or so couples she had on file, who were all Catholic couples living in southwest Ohio.There were many more couples, in other places across the United States. She advised me to go “online,” where I could search for open adoption agencies. They would send their own files of Dear Birth Mother letters, and if I found a couple I liked, Molly would work with their agency to represent me.
    â€œHow many profiles do people usually look at before they find a family?”
    â€œIt really just depends; everyone’s different. Did you have any questions about those?”
    â€œNo,” I said, shaking my head. The couples piled in my lap seemed perfectly nice. From what I could tell, they were ready for parenthood in exactly the ways I wasn’t. They were married and had houses and jobs and incomes. But they weren’t simply “waiting adoptive families,” the way I’d imagined them. I’d pictured them like the starving children in Africa my mother would tell me about: a homogeneous mass of people who were deserving inasmuch as they were in need. I thought I would cast my baby into the void of human heartbreak and know that, whatever it cost me, it was at least doing something good for someone who deserved it. But these were not homogeneous people at all! They had their own hair colors and names and neighborhoods and brothers who kissed llamas. They would have smells and jukeboxes and three-car garages. They might blast the air-conditioning, or heat the swimming pool, or watch enormous televisions in finished basements with parquet floors and windows that looked out to the undersides of holly bushes. There were so many things to watch out for.
    Molly said that open adoption means you get to know the couple who adopts your child. That knowing had seemed simple and good. I’d know their names and addresses and what they looked like. Knowing seemed like a form of protection I’d retain as a parent. I’d have a window, like a guardian angel, into my child’s life. But now knowing seemed dangerous and complicated. That window opened wide. I’d know the pattern of the wallpaper in the kitchen and the color of the carpet—and I would feel responsible for it, and for everything it signified. Everything I saw, I was choosing for my child. They’d be adopting my baby, but I’d be adopting the burden of every last detail of their lives, and I wouldn’t be able to ignore it any more than I wanted to shut that window to my child. But once I signed the papers, the entire future would be set in motion, and I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.
    *   *   *
    When Jevn returned from Colorado, I told him that the meeting with Molly had been promising. I could feel a new distance between us, and I tried to think about how to love him in the right way—the new, broken-up but having a baby way. How to not hate him and his potential. But on my twenty-third birthday, it felt more like the old days. He took me to see Island of the Sharks at the Omnimax in the old art deco train station. The entrance was punctuated by fountains and pools and terraces and sculpture, and as we walked along them, I asked him to slow down; my tailbone was still hurting from my fall on the ski slopes. But I was always asking him to slow down. Sometimes I’d refer to the saying Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. “Just walk beside me and be my friend.”
    â€œMaybe you should just be my friend and speed up!”
    The old train hall was sheltered by a monumental dome. We went to opposite corners of the arch, spoke softly to each other, and waited. His secret message would go bouncing up into the ceiling only to arrive at my ear, perfectly preserved as a whisper. After the film, we drove downtown for dinner at my