“I mean, Gordon, that a . . . well, a court is not going to just say, here, let’s give this little baby to an old schoolteacher and her husband who sells vitamins.” She glanced at Mark. “Sweetie, I’m sorry, but you know what I mean. When they could give her to this rich developer and his preppie wife who had their first child when they were thirteen.”
“Stop exaggerating, Mom. You just hate Diane,” Gordon said. “That’s half of what this is about.”
“It’s more than that,” said Lorraine.
“It really is more than that,” Mark added, “though we’re probably biased—”
“Don’t go all fair and balanced on us, Mark,” Lorraine told him through clenched teeth.
Gordon was aghast. His mother and father were fighting. Comets would collide with the earth. The last time he had seen his parents fight was the time Mark let Gordon sleep over at Davey Ober’s house, where Davey’s two brothers shot crows with their .22s. Lorraine had come roaring up the Obers’ driveway and all but hauled Gordon out by the arm, grinning at Mrs. Ober and nattering about some family function they’d forgotten, tossing him into the front seat, practically breaking his tooth with the seat belt, zooming home down Q, up First and onto Cleveland Avenue, yelling at Mark, don’t you ever, ever let him go to a house where there are unlocked guns!
Georgia had come out and sat beside him, I figure you’re grounded for two weeks, she’d said, maybe more, smiling. And he’d realized, right then, how his parents had found out about the Ober kids’ guns in the first place. Still, he hadn’t been grounded. Lorraine had come swooping out onto the porch, clasping him to her, telling him, I only have one Gordie, while Georgia watched in disgust.
“You always knew you were the one, didn’t you?” his mother asked now.
“I was the one?”
“To adopt Keefer?”
He had known, of course. He had known. But he had known in theory. He had known in fact. But not in huge, present, demanding fact.
“Keefer has to have a real parent of her own, not just grandparents,” Lorraine said, sounding, to Gordon, faint and far off.
“I don’t know if I’m ready, Mom.”
“I don’t know if you’re ready, either,” Lorraine sighed.
“He’s ready,” Nora put in. “Gordie, it’s not like you’re going to be alone. We’re all here. And Georgia will help you.” Gordon looked into his aunt’s good, faded blue eyes and did not have the heart to speak one syllable about the afterlife, or lack thereof. “Listen. I wasn’t going to say this right now,” Nora went on, “but I called that adoption agency, too. The social worker is sending the paperwork overnight, all the forms, the medical forms and such, and she said they can start the home study right away.”
“You have to move.” Lorraine began scribbling on her own notepad, “The Wiltons have that pretty flat, the third story of the big Victorian, on First. Their daughter teaches first grade, Judy. She must be forty now. She lives on the second floor. Helen Wilton says it’s a beautiful place, only one bedroom, but really spacious, not like your—
“Dump,” Gordon finished for her.
“Bachelor pad,” Lorraine said primly.
“I’m not going to move,” Gordon said stubbornly. “I just got my place fixed up.” Oh, Georgia, he thought, all I was going to do was get my posters framed.
“It’s not that fixed up, Gordie,” his mother told him dryly. “And there’s not enough room for a family.”
A family. She was right. Where would Keefer sleep? On the sofa? Under the sofa?
“So anyhow,” Nora went on, “the social worker will come out Tuesday—is that okay, Gordie? It’s not too soon, is it?”
It’s all too soon, he thought.
Nora went on, “I don’t think you can move by Tuesday, Gordie, but Hayes and Rob and the boys and I will help you spruce the place up.”
“Did you tell them everything?” Lorraine asked Nora.
“You mean, about Georgia and Ray and all? The lady knew. She saw it on TV.”
“I mean, about Ray and Diane.”
“I told her the truth, Lorraine,” Nora said stoutly. “I told her we were going to adopt a baby. She’s going to come out to see Gordon at one in the afternoon.”
Lorraine reached across the table and caught Nora’s big rough hand in her delicate small one. “You’re God, Nora,” she said.
Gordon pulled Keefer onto his lap. Close enough, he thought.
CHAPTER seven
On the day that would have been Georgia and Ray’s second wedding anniversary, Lorraine and Mark walked down the narrow folding step from an eight-seater plane onto the tarmac at the Jupiter Municipal Airport, after a patchwork of flights from Wausau to Milwaukee, Milwaukee to Tampa.
The heat was paralyzing. The skin of Lorraine’s face seemed to shrink a size with the initial blast of it. How did people live?
“Air-conditioning,” Mark told her. “They don’t go outside for six months of the year. But neither do we, Lor. The other way around.” Actually, Mark admitted, the heat felt good to him. He’d been cold for weeks.
They sat in the baggage-claim area, Lorraine feeling like a sparrow in the peacock pen. For Tall Trees, her manner of dress was unique, understated, urban. But in Florida, all the women, and the men, Lorraine now remembered—from the times they’d visited first Gordie and Georgia, and then Ray and Georgia—seemed to vie with one another to do the best impersonation of a tropical fruit drink. “Teal is the new beige here,” she said to Mark.
“Hmmmm,” he replied, with not even a pantomime of interest. Lorraine felt a quirt of anger. Why did she have to be the one to bother with the up-tempo chat? It was not only he who could not ignore that just twenty-four months ago at this very hour—twenty-four months comprising an afternoon of life, no more, especially once life spilled over into the plain of middle age—they had been seated in the front pew at Our Lady of the Lake, watching Georgia dash away tears, promising to honor and cherish Raymond, her husband, for all their lives. Crying and then laughing as Georgia, after their twenty-second kiss, sneaked a peek over Ray’s back at the green diamond, gift to the firstborn son from Diane’s mother, Kathryn, who sat nodding and smiling on the other side of the aisle, her burnished, lineless face a twin of Diane’s own.
The green diamond now lay gleaming in Lorraine’s bedside table drawer, slipped from Georgia’s finger by Bud Chaptman, pressed into Lorraine’s hand by a sobbing Natalie at the little supper following the funeral.
For Keefer.
Why had Lorraine suddenly had to take on the role of activator, motivator, cheerleader for the bunch of them? Mark had slept sixteen hours a day for the past week, and it had been Lorraine who had sworn to give up . . . she’d gently layered her arsenal of pills among her underthings in her carry-on bag that morning as if she were crating eggs. Keeping her grief at arm’s length took a pharmaceutical hit squad. When would she be able to lie down and keen?
On Monday, there had been the first lawyer’s appointment, which had gone beautifully. Greg Katt’s wife had been one of Lorraine’s former students. Katt’s quick enthusiasm reassured them all. Gordon should be able to petition to adopt Keefer under that section of Wisconsin law that provided for immediate family. Commonly referred to as “stepparent” adoption, it also applied to any close family member, parent, aunt, uncle, sister, brother. Lorraine was bathed in relief. The home study could be streamlined down from the daunting two-inch-thick packet of forms they’d received on the previous Saturday because, Katt explained, the presumption of fitness to parent was weighted heavily in favor of the family the minor child already knew and loved. Greg Katt had Xeroxed the McKennas’ copy of the only will and testament the three of them knew of and promised to speak to both the lawyer who’d prepared the first will—someone Lorraine didn’t know named Stacey Sweeney—and to Attorney Liotis, Ray’s new lawyer, that week.
“Passions run high at a time like this,” he’d told them, tapping his tented fingers, “but tr
y not to worry. The first thing I’m going to do is file a petition for temporary guardianship for you and Mark. That only makes sense. And if the Nyes file, too, where are they? Well, you are here and she is here. And it’s first come, first served, that is, first filer gets the petition heard first. This should be no problem. Any judge will realize a family needs time to sort things out. You intend to give the Nyes the same access to your granddaughter as they would have had if their son had survived, do you not?” They’d all nodded. “I don’t see a huge, huge problem here. Unless one of the Nye siblings who is married comes forward, I don’t see a problem. And even then, there would be the issue of Keefer’s comfort. Her comfort, psychologically speaking, that is.” He’d asked about visiting—how often had Caroline and Alison come to spend time with Keefer? How often had they visited Tall Trees? Were they primary caregivers for Keefer during her time spent in Florida?
Lorraine and Mark had given the best answers they could summon. Lorraine was forced to reckon how much of the past year’s life had gone on above her head, in the unexplored stratosphere of life outside Georgia’s illness. Gordon remembered only the visits of Keefer’s godparents, Ray’s cousin Delia and her husband, Craig, who had driven up from Madison a dozen times or more, often bringing along Delia’s daughter, Alex, the red-haired teenager who’d brought Keefer all her old Barbies. “Well,” Katt told them, “Wisconsin law pays very close attention to what is referred to as the best interests of the child. And everything here suggests that the best interests of a child who has endured such a difficult . . . transition in her little life is to stay right where she feels safe.”
And on Tuesday, Katt had filed. And the judge had agreed to a temporary order, with circumstances to be reviewed in ninety days.
They had her. Legally at least. Lorraine considered writing to the Nyes, but decided it would be indelicate. And dangerous. After all, Keefer was in Florida at the moment. The Nyes were in physical possession. Mark said possession was nine-tenths of the law. Lorraine convinced herself that waiting to explain about the order could wait until Ray’s parents had withstood their son’s memorial . . . and until Keefer was in the backseat of their rental car, on the way to the airport.
On Wednesday, when Cindy Rogan from Adoption Alliance had come to interview Gordon at his suddenly country-antique–decorated apartment, Lorraine and Mark had been shanghaied by the investigator from Northern Mutual, who’d spent two hours grilling them about Ray’s emotional state. The representative had been one of those men so petite it seemed impossible he could purchase suits in the men’s department, a stereotypically parched and tidy insurance man, with a mustache that wasn’t worth his trouble. He’d informed them that Ray had paid premiums for three months on the policy in question, paid regularly and on time, he’d sighed, as if this were a source of profound regret! And he’d further told them that the company would endeavor to conduct a reenactment of the crash, which the McKennas could attend if they chose.
“Why would we do that?” Mark had asked him.
But Gordon had felt confident during the interview, Lorraine heard that night from Lindsay Snow, who’d dropped by Gordon’s house immediately after work. The social worker would have to come back when Keefer was home, to observe her interaction with Gordon.
There was one hitch. It was a good thing, Lindsay diplomatically told Lorraine, that Gordon was moving, because Cindy Rogan had expressed concern about the busy street. So Lorraine had spent the entire next morning trying to track down Helen Wilton to follow through on her idea of getting Gordon moved into the Victorian, to convince her that she didn’t really want to rent to that photographer who was going to document the archaeological dig at Wood Violet Hollow. A man who’d only be around a few months? Gordon would be a more stable tenant, Lorraine sweetly assured Helen. It would be years before he’d be able to afford a house of his own. Helen was dubious, as the photographer was single and about the same age as her very single daughter, Judy. But Gordon was so strong. He could help out with maintenance around the place. And he was such a polite boy. And the baby. . . . Finally, Helen relented. It only remained for Lorraine to talk Gordon’s landlord into breaking his lease, which should be breezy, since he was one of Dale Larsen’s longtime deputies.
For Keefer. That was why Lorraine had pushed herself to limits she had not imagined she possessed, wheedled and plotted and strategized even though a single thought of Georgia, a chance glance at her graduation portrait on the turn of the stairs, could bend Lorraine double, make her cover her ears as if agony had an intolerable sound. For Keefer. For Keefer.
They had not seen Keefer for a week. Big Ray and Diane had shown up with a little two-wheeled suitcase stuffed with new outfits—“Just summer togs, Lorraine,” Diane had explained. “She’d melt down there in those dungaree things.” And though the tears had begun when Lorraine handed Keefer to her other grandmother, Diane had wisely kept up a monologue about Baby’s very own swimming pool, a pool outside, where it was nice out all the time! Finally, tentatively, Keefer had waved bye-bye. Relinquishing her doused the pilot light. Neither of them spoke, but their bed beckoned, a void as cool and neutral as a snow field. This is what they would become, Lorraine thought, as they lay down, Mark’s right arm automatically opening to enclose her shoulder, old people lying expectant in the motionless museum of their past, sinking into a suspended state, a voluntary hibernation. Gordon would return to the unintentionally self-seeking life of a young single man, grooming his life, his work, his pleasure. Keefer. Keefer. Lorraine’s longing for the delectable curve of Keefer’s rear end frightened her into the first long, black, sodden sleep since the crash. Gordon woke them. “She’s already gone, isn’t she?” His good-natured face was slack. Lorraine moved over, and he lay down next to them. They’d all lain there until it was dark outside, safe to get up, and then for some reason, they had all spent three hours cleaning the house, afterward deciding to drive over to the condo to see what furniture of Georgia’s and Ray’s was useful and anonymous enough to transfer to Gordon’s new digs.
The locks had been changed.
Lorraine, furious, had wanted to call the Nyes at that moment, from the nearest pay phone. But Gordon swung himself up onto the second floor terrace and pushed in a window. They’d made piles: towels, silverware, Georgia’s beautiful, heavy, enameled cookware. And then they’d boxed all Ray’s hats to send to his parents, except one, his Evans Scholars hat, which Gordon asked to keep. Lorraine had called Masterlock the next morning at 7:00 a.m. and had the locks changed again.
An hour after Mark and Lorraine’s flight landed, they were still waiting, Mark impatiently insisting that they rent a car, since clearly the promised ride was not forthcoming. But just as they gathered their things and headed for the rental-car booths, one of the Nye girls’ husbands, Leland, showed up, waving and shaking his head.
“I have to apologize, folks,” he said. “Everything between here and Texas is torn up for the highway renovation. Big Ray and Diane are going to have my hide. Did you guys have to wait long?”
“Oh, no,” Mark said, “we’ve just been people-watching.”
Into the land of palms and Porsches they’d gone, Leland thoughtfully dialing up talk radio to simulate conversation. He told them that Keefer was berry brown; Caroline swore the baby could swim. Leland would take them to Caroline’s house right now, where Keefer was playing. Everyone else was at the club, absorbed in last-minute details for the memorial. How long would they be staying? Mark dithered; he’d thought they might drive around a bit, perhaps up to the campus to see Ray and Gordon’s old fraternity. Perhaps to Cape Canaveral, where a shuttle launch was scheduled for Saturday; he could not conceal, Lorraine thought ruefully, the wisp of excitement in his voice. She wondered if there might ever be a grandfathers-in-space program. “Well, that’s great,” Leland smiled, slipping a pair of pearly sunglasses from the glove box. “Keefer is going to love having you guys around.”
Mark and Lorraine exchanged glances. M
ark took Lorraine’s hand.
When Leland swung open the car door for them in front of a Spanish-style house on a boulevard shaded by sentry rows of cypress, Lorraine stopped on the lawn to listen. She could hear Keefer. “Birdie! Birdie up!”
“That’s a sentence,” she’d whispered to Mark.
Leland offered to drop their luggage at Silver Shoals, where the McKennas had reserved their room, despite Big Ray’s protests that they had nothing but space at their place. “Do you need to get back to the office?” Lorraine asked. She had no idea what Leland did, but his car and his clothing did not hint at carpentry.
“Actually, no,” Leland dipped his head. “I’m living at my alumnae club right this minute. Caroline and I are trying to figure some things out. It’s been . . . well, we’d planned this before Ray died, but it’s been a real hard time for her. Goes without saying I just love the Nyes, every one of them,” he went on, “and family’s family.”
“We’re sorry,” Mark said.
“Oh, golly, there’s worse things. Caro’s just the best friend I’ve got. We’ll be just fine.”
And then Keefer, with Caroline close behind, was running barefoot down the lawn, tumbling into a half-somersault, up without missing a beat. Mark was as unashamedly fervent as Lorraine had ever seen him, covering the baby’s wrists and elbows and forehead with kisses. Mark had not wept from joy since . . . Gordon was born. They all sat in Caroline’s meticulous, subzero sunroom, drinking mint tea, marveling over the parade of toys Keefer carried, one after another, to her grandmother’s lap for inspection.
“Have you seen my folks yet?” Caroline asked brightly.
“Leland just brought us here, and I guess we can take a taxi? To the hotel,” Lorraine told her, “I could use a bath, and maybe we can take Keefer swimming. I know you have so much to do.”
“Well, she’s had her share of swimming! That’s not going to be a novel experience,” Caroline told them.