The Opposite of Loneliness Essays and Stories(33)

The pageant director was a chubby man in his fifties. He cupped my elbow in his palm while he explained the procedures and walked through the logistics for the following day. I was to sit in the front row and hold Emma wrapped in blue cloth in my lap. Henry, the Stouffers’ baby, was the first baby Jesus; however, should he start crying or moving around, the director would give me the sign, Ms. Stouffer would take Henry down to the basement, and I would move forward and hand Emma to Mary. Conceptually, it seemed a bit bizarre. But I was assured elbow-in-hand that two babies were essential, so I smiled at him with only my eyes and pretended my head hurt so I could go back downstairs.

I saw my first pageant in Mesnil-le-Roi, just outside Paris, when I was in France the year after graduation. There was a Swiss boy and it was his idea, but it was stuffy and the goats smelled so we left and went back to his apartment. I’d thought I’d have a different mind in France—but when I landed at de Gaulle, it was still me. I worked in a school and walked around on weekends trying to force bohemia. When I came home, I was yearning for someone to whisper to, but everyone was twenty-three and living in New York.

Julian and I broke up just before I left. We’d tried to make it work after the adoption, but things were never quite the same. Giving her away was my decision and, like it or not, Julian understood what it meant. The baby asked if we really meant our forevers; he said yes, and I said I didn’t know. I wanted to experience the world and meet new people and everyone says you’re supposed to be single for at least some time. He tried to get me back, but not for too long.

The problem was, I’d broken up with him while I was still in love, so I never had the time to let it wash out. My mom said I shouldn’t marry the first guy I dated and my friend Eliza had said I looked like I was bored. But I never met anyone better. I dated other men, but I seemed to pass them by, waiting for someone who’d trace my back while I slept and take me to church on Sundays. I’d meet Him in Paris, after Paris, in graduate school, at work. But each location passed as I rolled them off my shoulders. My sister called it a fluke at Thanksgiving one year when a friend of our aunt’s asked about my husband.

“It’s strange,” she’d said, passing the gravy. And I’d felt a sudden urge to pour it on her head.

*

When I got back home that night, everyone was in the kitchen and living room preparing for dinner. My sister, her husband Alex, their sons Michael and Gabriel, my brother Henry, his wife Zoe, and their three children, Annabel, David, and Toby. My mother was thrilled to have her family reassembled and she scrambled around the kitchen, assigning tasks and things to chop. When I opened the door, everyone ran over to hold Emma and I could see my mother smiling behind the island in the center of the kitchen. The adoption was far less of an event than the births of my nieces and nephews and I specifically requested that I didn’t want a shower or any public announcement. My sister had driven up in October, but it was the first time Henry or any of the kids had met Emma.

“Meet your new cousin,” he said to Annabel, who was thirteen and held her arms out immediately.

“Oh my God,” she cooed. “She’s adorable. I love her!”

“Annabel was just saying in the car how excited she was to meet Emma,” Zoe explained. “She doesn’t have a sister so she was saying she wanted to give Emma all her old dolls when she’s older.”

“Wow,” I said, wide-eyed. “Annabel, that’s so kind of you. How grown-up.”

I tried to imagine what Emma might look like when she was thirteen but I only saw another version of Annabel. Inevitably, I’d thought of this same scene a hundred times when I was younger: Julian’s and my child meeting her new family in some kitchen somewhere. She was probably in that same kitchen right now—eating Christmas dinner, if her family even celebrated the holiday.

Still, it was nice to get attention for once, and not have to give it. The prospect of bringing Emma to every family holiday from now on filled me with a kind of comfort, and the idea of her older cousins playing with her and teasing her made me extremely glad. I tried to forget my (rarely expressed) concerns that the whole thing was a big mistake, and for the most part I managed. Seeing her inside my family gave it all a little context, and I was proud to be bouncing her on my knee while the adults sipped decaf coffees at the end of the night.

Christmas Day was the same as it always was—only I’d woken up early with my brother and sister to make a little stocking for Emma that I unpacked later while Henry held her up so she could watch. Zoe had planned to cook French-bread French toast with a fresh strawberry sauce but she’d forgotten to get enough eggs, so I volunteered to make a quick trip to Whole Foods, the only market nearby that’d be open. I tried to take Emma with me but my mother insisted I leave her.

“It’s fine,” she’d said. “I had a few of these myself.” I looked at Emma, clutching a new stuffed snowman, and watched her blink at me, gnawing. I wondered for a moment how well she could recognize me but dismissed the thought as ridiculous. Emma didn’t cry too often with the particular request of being returned to my arms and it sometimes made me insecure.

*

I ran into him at the supermarket. Of course. The last time it’d happened was three years ago at the liquor store on Christmas Eve. I saw him before he saw me, holding a slip of paper and roaming down the spice aisle. He looked good, the same, slightly pudgier than he was a few years ago, but still sporting his mop of curly brown hair. My reaction to his presence was always visceral, and I felt my hands start to shake slightly as I watched him. It struck me in that instant that I could have just turned around, walked to another aisle, and avoided the encounter. But I didn’t even consider it.