|
“What have I done? I don’t know, she cried for the entire flight.”
“Good girl,” I whispered to her. “Making sure the pilot stayed awake.” She made a cross noise.
“And everyone else, I had to walk her up and down the aisle for the entire journey because it was the only way she‘d turn down the volume and this old woman kept looking at me and asking Em where her mommy was, you know implying something. I mean what’s that about?”
“Okay, lets get the pair of you home.” I said sweeping him off toward the parking lot. “What’s all this on the trolley?”
“This is not even half of her stuff, this is just the essentials. It’s like travelling with a small, bad tempered army.”
When we got back to Sam’s apartment, I showed him the things that I had been busy borrowing or buying for Em and then I sent him off to have a shower while I got Em ready for bed. She cheered up after a feed and I was pleased that she seemed to remember me, laughing whenever she saw me. We had a chat while I changed her and even in the couple of weeks away from her she had developed some new sounds to practise and was reacting more to the things going on around her.
I put Em down to sleep in her new crib in the living room and Sam, by then looking less ragged, came to kiss her good night. When she was settled we darkened the room and went into the bedroom. Sam lay down on the bed.
“I can’t tell you how much I missed you,” I said, kissing him. “Both of you.”
“I missed you too,” he said giving me a look that I recognised. “ Josh?”
“Sam?”
“Do you think there’s any possibility at all that we could have sex?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
Afterwards we brought Em’s crib into the bedroom with us and fell asleep with her at the end of the bed, which now seemed very natural.
Sam and I woke a couple of hours later, it was early but we lay still, my arms encircling Sam. We talked quietly, catching up on the last couple of weeks. I told him about Karen.
Sam turned round so he was facing me. “Josh, you’re kidding me, you’re telling me this now?”
“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to do this when you were over there. It isn’t a thing. I’m sure of it.”
“Someone wants to adopt my niece. How is it not a thing?”
“Because Sam, I talked to her. She’s not going to pursue it.”
“You believe her?”
“I really do.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. Phone her, talk to her.”
“Yeah, I will.” He dropped his head. “Sorry. I’m psycho-uncle.”
“No problem.” I pulled him back down into my arms and he relaxed a bit.
“You went to New York.”
“Its no problem. She’s a nice person, she doesn’t like her brother much either and she went to see Sal and Em in California the other month.”
“That’s more than I did.”
“Well, whatever, I’m just saying, she wants what Sal would have wanted.”
“Maybe she would be better for Em, I mean better than me.” Sam said after a while.
“Sam, is everything okay? Are you having second thoughts about adopting Em?”
He paused before answering. “No, I’m not,” he caught my expression. “No, don’t worry Josh, I still want to very much. I’m just wandering if I’m the right person to do it. I mean I’m forcing us to come out, with all the consequences that will have, when all along she might be better off with a mother. I just couldn’t do anything with her today, not a thing, nothing worked. I have no experience of this, I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“Sam, Sam, come on, take it easy. You had a bad day, after two pretty crappy weeks, think of everything you’ve had to do as well as learn to take care of a baby more or less by yourself. And you did it. And how many aeroplanes have you been on where there hasn’t been a baby crying its head off and driving everyone demented? Just think of it as revenge.”
Sam smiled then. “You want to quit being the voice of reason Josh, it’s freaking me out.”
“Its childbirth dear, it’s made you irrational.”
“Oh, right, we’re doing that joke are we?”
“Apparently.”
******************
The next day Sam brought Em into work. CJ and me came out of a meeting to find my section completely devoid of female staff and we were told that Sam was in with Toby. We went round to Communications and we found Em in Bonnie’s arms surrounded by some of the others.
I knew CJ had a pathological fear of babies but she edged fairly close and said “Hello gorgeous.” She turned to me and added. “She looks okay, how many times has Sam dropped her?”
“CJ!”
“Don’t give me righteous indignation I’ve seen him carrying two cups of coffee.”
I saw Sam in Toby’s office so I wandered in and stood in the doorway, Toby was speaking.
“Are you sure about this? Are you really sure? There’s plenty of time for you to have children.”
“But they wouldn’t be Em.”
“She’s just a baby, Sam.”
“I know, but she’s my sister’s only child, she’s my responsibility and Toby, she is who she is. Do you know she’s got a different kind of cry, almost a different word for how she’s feeling? Do you hear her now? That’s ‘I’m all right, but I kind of want to see someone familiar pretty soon.’”
I personally thought it was a bit more serious than that so I went back to let her see my face. She laughed when she saw me and held out her arms. You couldn’t beat that feeling. Bonnie handed her to me and everyone went ‘aww’. I brought her into the office.
“So what was that little noise?” asked Toby.
Sam hadn’t turned round, just replied. “That’s, ‘here’s Josh’.”
Toby looked at him steadily. “Well just don’t hand in your notice until you’re sure you can keep her. In the meantime, you can work from home when you need to and we can work around you.”
“I appreciate that Toby, and you know if I could have my job and Em I would but I just don’t think that’s possible.”
Toby nodded and then got up to inspect Em. “So Sam,” he said. “ How many times have you dropped her?”
“Why do people keep…I haven’t Toby, I swear.”
Toby peered at her and she blinked at him, possibly awed. “Emma Seaborn,” he said in just the same tone he used with Congressmen. “You seem to have fallen into the hands of Sam and Josh, two of the biggest klutzes on the planet.” She reflected his frown. “And yet, you still have one, two, three, four limbs,” he tugged at each one causing her to giggle shyly. “One intact, though somewhat chewed penguin, and no visible dents. I find this very surprising.” She reached out and pulled his beard.
“Good work, Em,” I said proudly.
“Sam, did you tell her to pull my beard?”
“Actually yes.”
Leo and the President came by then on their way through Communications. The President swept Em into his arms. “Sam.”
“Yes sir.”
“She’s mighty cute.”
“Yes she is.”
“How many times have you dropped her?”
************
That afternoon Sam found a child minder through a friend. She would look after Em from 8.30 – 5.30 to enable Sam to work 9-5 and at least have the rest of the day with her.
The childminder quit after two days as Sam was late home on both evenings and she didn’t have time to wait around. That was a predictable outcome, a lesson in why Sam would have to find another job. Toby, displaying previously unseen forbearance, immediately sent Sam on leave until he had sorted out his arrangements.
Through all of this we found ourselves in a domestic rhythm which I wouldn’t have thought possible. Sam taking the major responsibility for Em and me taking over on the rare occasions I got home in time to be of any use. She didn’t often wake up in the night but she did wake up early and that became our time.
On Thursday Sam had an appointment with an attorney. We figured that we should get the adoption process moving as quickly as possible because Rick was an unknown quantity, despite what Karen had said about him, and at the moment he still had the right to take Em.
The appointment was at 4pm. I came home early to look after Em so Sam could have an undisturbed meeting. I brought the new tax bill with me. I really needed to work on it but naturally Em had other ideas. She was full of beans and wanted to play, so that’s what we did for a while until I thought she was bound to go to sleep or at least sit quietly in her chair. Not a chance. So we played some more until I was practically dead from a marathon of toy piano playing but I didn’t think I’d ever tire of hearing her laugh.
I prepared a feed for her and then took her to look out of the window at the front of Sam’s apartment. The view out onto the street seemed to fascinate her and she liked to watch the cars and people going by. There was a window seat that I could sit comfortably in and have her cradled in my arms while she watched and had her bottle. She did finally begin to calm down so by the time I started reading sections from the tax bill to her she was about ready to go to sleep.
It was now 6.30 and I began to feel uneasy at the length of time Sam had been out without calling. It left me with the sense that perhaps the meeting hadn’t gone well. I found I didn’t want to let go of Em and I kept her with me until he returned.
Sam didn’t get back till gone seven and I knew as soon as I saw him that something was wrong. His hands were still plunged into the pockets of his black coat when he came to us.
“Sorry I’m so late back,” he said.
“That’s all right, I figured you’d stopped off somewhere.”
“I’ve been walking,” he ran his finger lightly along Em’s cheek. “Are you raising her consciousness again?” he asked.
“I’m actually boring her to sleep.”
“I think you could do that.” He took her from me and rested her against his shoulder, with both his arms around her. She was more asleep than awake now but she lifted her head enough to see that it was Sam and then rested back comfortably against him closing her eyes.
“You want to see something cute.” I said, but mostly to myself. He closed his eyes too and inhaled the baby-smell of her hair. “Is something wrong, Sam?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Something’s wrong. I’m going to put her to bed.” I gave him her penguin and he took her into the bedroom. When he returned he faced me on the window seat. He cupped my face in his hand and kissed me. “I can’t adopt Emma.”
“Sam?”
“The District of Columbia will do anything rather than give a baby to a man or a homosexual.”
“No Sam, the law says…”
“The law says one thing, it does another.”
“They can’t discriminate against you because you’re gay.”
“Its not the reason they’ll give, the reason will be that they don’t think I can provide a permanent and stable home for her. They’ll say that my job is not secure, my relationships and my home life are neither permanent nor stable, they’ll say that I can’t meet the specific needs of the individual child because she’s a baby girl and she won’t have a mother. If I challenge this they’ll point out that not so long ago I was in the newspaper with a call girl and if I say that you’ve changed my life, they’ll want to know why, if that’s the case, we haven’t told anyone we’re together. To protect our careers would be the wrong answer.”
“But you’re her closest relative, that gives you preference.”
“Her father is her closest relative, I get extra bonus points for being her uncle but that’s it.”
“Sam, you can’t give up before you’ve even started. Decisions can be appealed, we can fight.”
“And in the meantime Em’s six months or a year with a foster family before she can have anything permanent and you’ve possibly thrown away your career…”
“I don’t care about that.”
“Well I do. I won’t have you doing that when there’s very little chance of success.”
“Sam, please.”
“Josh. I got some very clear advice from the attorney and I’m not surprised. I probably would have worked it out for myself if I hadn’t been so desperate to have her.”
“Well what if you don’t tell them you’re in a homosexual relationship. We can maybe come out when it’s all over.”
“You know better than that Josh. We’re in the public eye, we’re forever in front of this enquiry or that hearing. If we’re found to have lied or withheld information they could take her into care just to make a point. Not to mention, there would be God knows what other kinds of consequences. I can’t risk that, not for any of us.” He shook his head. “And anyway, I’d still be failing to be a woman, it might not make any difference.”
I breathed. “Sam, are you absolutely sure about this? Are you really, truly going to be able to give her up?”
“I don’t have a choice. I know how much you love her Josh, but I don’t see what else I can do.”
“But, we could…”
“No, Josh, we can’t, we just can’t…” His strength suddenly deserted him and he seemed close to tears. I pulled him into my arms.
“Its okay Sam. Its okay.” I closed my eyes, remembered that I had decided a lifetime ago that I would support Sam in whatever he thought was best, remembered that I trusted his judgement in most things much more than I trusted my own. “So what do we do now?”
His head rested on my shoulder for a moment longer, then he swallowed. “You liked Karen, didn’t you?”
“Karen Gregory? Yeah, she’s great.”
“Then, now, we talk to Karen.”
End of part two
to part three
back to part one
back to west wing
back Home
email Jackie
|
