what to make of the walking, talking child they visited at the temporary foster home. The adoption agent assured them he had been born only a few days earlier. “I have his birth certificate right here,” she said.
Maybe children these days grow up faster than they used to, the hopeful parents told themselves. We should have studied the child development book more carefully, they thought.
They did not voice their doubts, fearing they’d reveal their inexperience, their ignorance. One slip of the tongue and their application would be rejected.
They felt intimidated by the adoption agent, who handled babies as carelessly as basketballs, and also by the foster mother, who had eight children in her charge.
The prospective mother had been looking forward to the cuddling, burping, nurturing years; she’d been gearing herself up for sleepless nights of colic and lullabies and martyrdom. The child before them, calmly regarding them with large brown eyes, was already far beyond that stage. Yet there was something so appealing, so desirable, so eminently wantable about him that both prospective parents found themselves smitten. They had to have him. He sat on the carpet knocking one block against another, seemingly bored, covertly watchful. They both felt a quickening in their hearts: the anxiety of bargain hunting—the sensation that if they did not get him immediately, someone else would come along, perceive his value, and snatch him up.
When they brought him home he ran through the house pointing at things, wanting to learn their names. “Microwave,” they said. “Piano.” “Baby monitor.” “Treadmill.” “Shoe tree.” “Television.”
They were charmed by his curiosity. Privately they fretted over the way he stiffened whenever they touched him. He was remote, as patiently tolerant as a teenager suffering the whims of unhip parents.
He just needs time, they thought, to get used to us.
What does bonding mean, exactly the new mother wondered. She thought of the unknown woman, the biological mother who’d carried the boy inside her body for nine whole months, and realized she was jealous.
The boy was too well-behaved, too precocious, too perfect. It made them nervous. His perfection made him seem vulnerable, ripe for spoiling. Doesn’t it seem like the perfect, angelic little boys are always the ones to get cancer, get hit by cars? the mother thought.
He never made any mistakes. If there were mistakes to be made, they’d be made by the parents. So they washed everything twice, planned educational vacations. The pressure was excruciating.
He’d been their son for over a year when he told them about the face.
He appeared at their bedside in the middle of the night, white and glowing in his astronaut pajamas. “Can I come in?” he said.
They relished the moment, kissing him, tickling him, tucking him in between them.
“Did you have a bad dream?” the mother said.
“There was a face in the window,” the boy said, and described glittering eyes and shining teeth and a wiry net of hair, long fingers scrabbling at the sill and warm breath that seeped into the room. A sad face. It watched him for a long time, he said, not moving.
“It isn’t real,” the father said. “It’s only a dream.”
The mother thought of goblins, gypsies, pirates, a hundred fairy tales of stolen children. She tightened her grip. “We’ll protect you,” she whispered fervently. “We’ll never let anyone take you away.”
“Take me away?” the boy said. The father groaned softly.
She realized she’d made a blunder, planting a new fear in his head that had not been there before.
The next day the father made a great show of testing the locks on the boy’s bedroom window. He pointed out the tree branches that moved in the wind like hair. He talked about the damp smells rising up from the basement, the stink and scrabbling of skunks digging through the garbage cans. The boy listened impassively.
For the next few nights the boy slept peacefully. The parents did not.
And then he was back, glowing in the dark, his feet padding across the floor. “It’s back,” he said calmly. They lifted their covers for him, pleased that he was finally having the normal problems of a normal child.
The face came back periodically. Not often, but every few weeks. The parents tried to dispel the son’s fears, but with less and less enthusiasm as time went on. They worried that if the nightmares stopped, the tenuous intimacy with their son would be gone forever. The mother, in her heart of hearts, secretly made contingency plans—if his nightmares stopped, she’d simulate them (a Halloween mask dangled from the roof, say).
If she left the imprint of a finger in his sandwich, her son would eat around it and leave the little island on his plate. He continued to flinch at the touch of her hand. Still, she sometimes wondered if he was secretly starved for affection, if he’d fabricated the face story as an excuse.
Or maybe, she thought, he’d invented the face as a way of comforting them. She wouldn’t put it past him, her wise little son.
In the night she stroked her son’s shoulders and kissed the top of his head. She wrapped her arms around him and pretended he was inside her.
The next morning she went into his room to make the bed and found the window open and the curtains frothing in the wind. She felt a momentary panic—danger! falling baby!—but the window guard was still in place. She closed the window and locked it. As she was turning away she noticed fingerprints spotting the glass. She must have done that herself, just now. How careless. I’ll clean it later, she thought, and bent to the bed, brushing away a few of her son’s long black hairs.
To her surprise, she found the bottom sheet damp. Never before had her son wet the bed. She dipped her fingers in the wet spot, feeling fascinated, amazed, intensely maternal. My son, she thought proudly, wets the bed. She imagined telling a friend about it. Oh, yes, like any normal child, he wets the bed occasionally. When he has a nightmare. What can you do? No, of course we’re not worried about it. He’ll outgrow it eventually.
But still there was something strange about it.… The stain was perfectly clear; it looked like water. And rather than one spot it was composed of many, a string of drops.
She glanced around furtively to make sure she was alone, then raised her wet fingers to her nose. She smelled nothing. She put her fingers to her tongue. The wetness tasted like tears.
I called my sister and said, What does a miscarriage look like?
What? she said. Oh. It looks like when you’re having your period, I guess. You have cramps, and then there’s blood.
What do people do with it? I asked.
With what?
The blood and stuff.
I don’t know, she said impatiently. I don’t know these things, I’m not a doctor. All I can tell you about anything is who you should sue.
Sorry, I said.
Why are you asking me this? she said.
I’m just having an argument with someone, that’s all. Just thought you could help settle it.
Well, I hope you win, she said.
I went home because my sister told me to.
She called me and said, It’s your turn.
No, it can’t be, I feel like I was just there, I said.
No, I went the last time. I’ve been keeping track, I have incontestable proof, she said. She was in law school.
But Mitch, I said. Her