Rescuing Julia Twice (5 page)

Now this was sounding farcical to me. Throughout the adoption process, we'd been shepherded through every step. In Novosibirsk our passports were kept by the hotel clerk until we left the city, and when we asked Olga why this was necessary, she shrugged. But now, being told we couldn't travel at the end of our trip, was beyond what I could tolerate.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I have made plans, and I intend to keep them.”

I could imagine the counselor putting a yellow sticky on my folder that said “Difficult client” or some such label. However, for reasons I'll never understand, she backed off and said, “Okay then, do what you must.”

I booked three nights at the Moscow Marriott. I'd had just about enough of feeling yoked.

Everything about the adoption process puts you under a microscope. It starts when the counselor comes to conduct the “home study,” which is a vetting process that determines whether you're suitable parents and whether you can provide a safe, loving home. Really, it's a sham, though it still feels invasive when a stranger steps into your apartment and asks you where the baby is going to sleep and what kind of a relationship you have with your mother. The counselor is clearly ticking off questions
from a checklist, but there is nothing about this interchange that feels genuine. As long as I give her the right answers, she's satisfied. Then there are the fingerprints at the police station to prove you're not a convicted felon or a child molester. And the financial disclosures and letters of recommendations and health declarations.

Why isn't every parent subjected to all this? Come to think of it, maybe that doesn't seem like a bad idea.

The Marriott Hotel on Tverskaya Street seems like a gleaming palace after doing time at the Centralnaya Hotel in Novosibirsk. There are marble floors and human-size elevators and obliging concierges who are only too happy to arrange tickets to the Bolshoi Ballet or make a dinner reservation. After arriving at our room, I stand in the shower for twenty minutes, washing away days of discomfort and compromised bathing. I rotate my neck and let hot water penetrate into my shoulders. I stay in the shower until I'm light-headed from the heat and steam. Everything about the heat and the lovely little complimentary shampoos and the marble tiles distances me from where we've been. Because I like to think in metaphors, I picture Novosibirsk as a labor pain. Birth mothers, of course, must go through excruciating pain to have a child. Is this process my equivalent? The pain I must experience to know joy?

Right now, though, I don't want to think about Novosibirsk or Olga or ammonia-scented orphanages or the fact that we're going to have to come back and do this all over before we can bring Julia home. Right now I want to be a tourist. I want to read about Russia in the travel books I've brought on the trip and plan our days ahead.

Ricky and I dress for dinner. It's still necessary to wear layers because Moscow is cold, too. It's about zero degrees, maybe ten degrees warmer than Siberia. Ricky is wearing lined cargo pants, a turtleneck, and a black sweater. He looks handsome tonight. I have put on a dab of makeup for the first time in forever, though I still feel laden because I'm wearing long underwear under my pants and three layers of wool on to
p. We put on our coats, hats, and gloves, and the concierge hails us a cab to take us just a few blocks to the restaurant. It is snowing.

It is a trendy place, large and angular with abstract art on the walls and candlelit tables.

“This is a step up from New York Pizza,” Ricky quips, referring to the pizza restaurant in Novosibirsk where we went every night seeking familiarity.

I doubt there are places like this in Siberia. In fact, Ricky and I haven't been to a hip restaurant anywhere recently because we've been living on an austere budget. This meal—in fact, this entire diversion to Moscow—is a treat that makes me feel uneasy, but Ricky has helped persuade me that the expense will not break us.

One year ago, Ricky lost his job. He had been working for his brother Jeffrey at a Brooklyn company his father started in the 1960s that sells nuts and bolts. Ricky took the job, one he viewed as beneath him, because he desperately needed to escape financial ruin and an ex-wife in Florida. When he arrived in 1998, he probably thought working for his brother would be a temporary respite from practicing law or at least a reprieve until he figured out what to do next. But when we got together in 2000, he was still there, bored, underutilized, and restless. He made decent money, and although he dreamed of one thing or another, he took no concrete steps to extricate himself. Jeffrey helped him along when he fired him in January 2002. We were shocked—but not really. Jeffrey offered to give him back his job at half the salary. Ricky and I agreed he'd refuse that offer and face the unknown. I knew I could continue to cover our meager expenses with my freelance writing work, and his unemployment checks would help. But we were still undergoing fertility treatments, and I couldn't help but wonder if I was unable to conceive because in my heart I didn't feel like we could support a child. We were thirty-nine years old: ticktock, ticktock.

Since August, Ricky has been building a tea business. He sells loose-leaf teas and herbals and tea-related accessories such as clay and iron pots on the Internet, and he goes to flea markets and corporate venues, too. He's been working hard and the business shows promise, but it doesn't
feed us. I've been toiling harder than ever, though writing assignments have dried up since 9/11. It is not a time in our life or in the world at large that feels bountiful and open. It's hard to relax and trust that all will be well, though that's what Ricky says constantly.

I eye the menu and wince. Ricky sees me.

“Stop worrying,” he says. “We will never go without. Just order what you want.”

At night, I have trouble sleeping. My body is so fatigued, but my mind won't let it rest.
Am I crazy?
I think to myself in the dark.
Should we really bring home a baby before we sort out our financial problems?
We know the adoption agency is not really aware of our circumstances because the application process asked mostly about an earnings history, not current income.

How does Ricky lie there, so sure that everything will be all right, that it will all work out? I have a solid track record of working, but still, what if something happens to me? I don't want to ruin our time in Moscow, so I flick the thoughts away as though they were pesky picnic flies. Finally at 5
AM,
still sleepless, I peel myself from under the covers and go to the hotel swimming pool.

Swimming is my refuge from pain, physical or mental. I have learned that by going back and forth, thirty or fifty or seventy times, depending on the length of the pool, I can release whatever shackles me. I have noticed this works even in dire times, like when I got divorced in my early thirties or after my dog died. I don't know if it is the repetitive motion or the muting of sound or the focus on breathing, but something about swimming rescues me temporarily from anxiety. The pool in the Marriott is cool and divine. I am alone. I knife through the water with purpose. I wonder if lack of sleep will make it hard to swim, but surprisingly it doesn't. I keep going for thirty minutes. I find the energy, the purpose, the way one does when one must. Afterward, I lie down on a lounge chair. I try to drift into sleep, but I'm still unable to let go.

I return to the room where Ricky wakes slowly. “Come back to bed,” he says.

“No, I'm going to shower. Let's get some breakfast.” This excites him, because the Marriott has a spread of smoked fish, herring, fruits, and egg dishes that makes him feel regal. He tosses the covers aside and joins me in the shower.

After breakfast we head to the Metro. The escalator descends so deeply I feel like we're entering a mine. My guidebook tells me that the deepest section of the Metro is 276 feet. I still have remnants of the head cold I had in Novosibirsk, and the deeper we go, the faster my sinuses drain. I'm blowing my nose furiously, but I'm distracted by scores of tattered, lobster-faced souls scattered everywhere in the Metro. Some are slumped over; others are begging with open palms and blank eyes. One woman is spitting and screaming. These are the people who have been lost in the collapse of communism or ensnared in Russia's disease, vodka. Olga's words float back up at me, as do the sorry characters we'd seen lying along the snowy roadside in Novosibirsk.

We leave the Metro to go to the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. Afterward, we walk hand in hand around the Arbat, a cobblestone pedestrian street that is one of the oldest areas in Moscow. It dates back to the fifteenth century, when it was home to artisans, and where Russian nobility lived in the eighteenth century. Now it is lined with overpriced but alluring shops. Street vendors sell everything from Russian soldiers' winter hats to fake KGB IDs to nesting dolls. This winter streetscape has a carnival atmosphere. I notice a lovely china shop. It is filled with the ornate designs Russians favor.

“Let's go in,” I say. “Look at this, Ricky.” I lift a blue and white teacup with gold accents and gently bring it to my mouth, pinky outstretched. “Isn't this wonderful? Decadent. And look, look at the teapot that goes with it. How lovely! And the sugar bowl,” shaped like an elephant. “Aren't elephants good luck?” I am not superstitious—at least I don't think I am.

I'm delighted by the Gzhel, Russian porcelain popularized in the 1830s. It is fancier that anything we own, but there's something about being an adoptive parent that makes you feel as though you should bring back little pieces of your daughter's heritage to her new home. My mind flits between a scene in which I'm serving tea from these beautiful objects and the running tab of what we've been spending. Again, Ricky encourages me, and the saleswoman wraps up four cups, a teapot, and the elephant sugar bowl.

On our last day in Moscow, we go to the GUM (pronounced
goom)
department store, which is a famous glass-encrusted Victorian pile filled with expensive shops. It resembles the grand pavilion at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. A refuge from the near-zero cold, we walk up and down the nearly deserted mall. Like everywhere else in Russia, there are shops filled with fur hats. I go into one and try some on. When I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I feel ashamed.

“That one looks nice on you,” Ricky says. “Buy it.”

“Don't even …”

I grab his hand and we leave the store.

On the way out of the arcades, I notice a children's store. It is fancy. It has the look of the New York City Madison Avenue children's boutique. I peer closer to get a look at a beautiful ivory-white quilted down jacket ringed with a fur hood.

“That jacket is made for Russian winter,” I say. “It's precious.”

“Let's go in and have a look,” Ricky replies.

“Nah, I don't think so. Let's leave it.”

I walk away with a pit in my stomach. I want this baby. I want to clothe and protect her, but I'm not ready. She's not real yet. She's in Siberia. I need more time.