Mother Mother. Jessica O'Dwyer

the museum, and over that, layered horizontal stacks. There was more than one way to expand.

      “What about up?” Julie pointed her pen toward the ceiling. “Vertical.”

      “The Landmarks Commission will never allow it,” Eames said. “It destroys the building’s integrity. You know that.”

      “What if we sell our air rights? A developer buys the rights and builds a condo tower on top of us.”

      Eames raised his eyebrows, nodding slowly. Doni hovered with a tea towel behind him, also nodding. Dr. Conrad picked up her coffee cup, sipped, and set it down carefully into the saucer, wiping off a red lipstick print with her napkin. “Go on.”

      “We expand up into the lower floors and build an escalator to connect the two spaces. The condo tenants upstairs pay our mortgage.”

      Dr. Conrad pushed her cup and saucer away and folded her napkin onto the table. She turned Julie’s yellow legal tablet toward herself and studied it for a moment. “May I take this?”

      Julie tore the sheet from her tablet and handed it to the director. And with that brief and simple exchange of paper, selling the air rights became Dr. Conrad’s idea.

      *

      GUATE PARENTS

      Call, write letters to your Senator. Harass, harass, harass.

      Anyone get PINK this week? Where are we?

      Amber waiting on Ella asked me to tell everyone she lost her referral, is starting adoption in Uganda. Blessings to all.

      Nobody understood the unique agony of waiting for a child except other parents who were waiting. They banded together on Guate Parents and updated one another obsessively.

      The old days of timelines that stretched to ten months seemed ludicrous, enviable. Their infants developed into toddlers, their toddlers to little boys and girls. They became experts at finding cheap flights and prided themselves on quoting inter-country adoption law chapter and verse. When they returned to Guatemala to visit, they buttered up nannies and foster mothers with gifts of blue jeans and Nikes and prayed their kids recognized them.

      When Julie overheard Doni talking about her to a cluster of artists at an opening, saying Julie should give up, it was hopeless, Julie didn’t acknowledge Doni for two weeks. Walked right by her into Dr. Conrad’s office or at the sink in the restroom without saying hello.

      When Claire called and said, “Gunther’s walking, he’s babbling, and by the way, when are you getting that kid?” Julie didn’t return her sister’s calls or emails for a month. It was too painful. As much as Julie wanted to be a good sister and even better auntie, she couldn’t. Claire doted on Gunther, lived for that boy, as she should, just as Julie lived for Juan. Julie didn’t want to drag her sister down. And with her long hours at the Clay, Julie had no energy to drive to Fresno to visit. She felt terrible that Gunther was two and she’d only seen him once, on his first birthday.

      If only Juan weren’t so far away. If only the adoption would get finished. No adoptions were getting finished. Every case was stalled. No explanation was given by the Guatemalan government. The process simply stopped. The parents whose children’s cases remained in the pipeline dubbed themselves “The 600.” Even the U.S. Embassy couldn’t give the group an exact number of how many cases were stalled. The number six hundred covered all possibilities. Only one impulse drove them: to get their children out.

      Over the next year, Julie and Mark flew to Guatemala three times, suitcases stuffed with gifts for Berta and clothes for Juan in bigger sizes. They spent a long weekend over Easter, Juan’s August second birthday week, and the week between Christmas and New Year’s, when the Clay’s offices and Mark’s lab were shuttered. Their private joke was they’d accumulated premier status on United and seen nothing except the inside of the airport and the hotel. Only from watching the news were they aware that narcos controlled the country and gangs infested Guatemala City, three hundred bus drivers were assassinated every year for failure to pay kickbacks, and ninety-nine percent of crimes went unprosecuted.

      Juan often arrived with a minor ailment: a cough or slight fever, a mild case of pink eye. Nothing that two Tylenol and a tube of ointment couldn’t clear. Mark attributed the bugs to hogar living, reassuring Julie their son would be fine once they got him home.

      Their visits followed a pattern. Breakfast in the Marriott restaurant with Juan and any other American families in residence. Juan’s morning nap, while Mark answered emails and Julie socialized with the other mothers, catching up on the latest shutdown updates. Who was in, who was out, did anyone get pink? Lunch, delivered to the hotel by Domino’s or Little Caesar’s, and Juan’s afternoon nap. Dinner, again, in the Marriott restaurant. The best was when Emily and Jake were there with Gabriela, or Rachel and Matthew with Carmen, or Kayla with Mia or Grace with Argelia. The presence of so many other Guate Parents meant no one was getting out. At least Julie wasn’t falling behind.

      She was tempted to move to Guatemala permanently—several women in the hotel had stayed for months and told her of others who rented apartments in the small city of Antigua—but they couldn’t afford that. Although life with Dr. Conrad as boss became more challenging by the day, she needed to keep her job to pay for Juan’s hogar care, vaccinations, medical check-ups, plus airplane flights, hotel, and meals.

      Julie didn’t care how much it cost. To watch Juan toddle on stiff legs, reach for her nose, splash in the baby pool, she’d spend their last dollar. He liked polenta and papaya, mashed up champurrada cookies served at the hotel’s Sunday buffet, and watching Plaza Sésamo. The hotel’s only acknowledgement of the Christmas season was a wooden Nativity scene by the concierge desk in the lobby. Juan liked a Wise Man and the Baby Jesus, and they took pictures of him playing with both.