“An anonymous donor, then. We can pick traits. Athletic. High I.Q.”
“Egg donor is a little too engineered for me. At least this process is a hell we know.”
Julie flopped back on her pillow. She loved Mark and her job at the Clay and their life together, but it no longer felt like enough. She longed to be a mother, to shower a child with her love. To give her child the kind of life she never had.
She stared at the ceiling. “I can’t believe we’re at square one. Do you think this is a sign?”
“Only a sign of how screwed-up the system is.”
Mark unfolded his hands and slid his body closer, melding into Julie. “Time to focus on something else.”
*
It was late Friday afternoon when Julie called Kate from the Clay conference room for extra privacy. Kate spoke briskly over the phone. “I don’t advise waiting to start a second adoption. Guatemala could close any minute.”
“Don’t they always say that?” Julie asked.
“This time it’s real. You saw the article. The U.S. government doesn’t like looking bad.”
An Associated Press article claimed professional “finders” called jaladoras were combing the Guatemalan countryside in search of pregnant women, and that adoption fees paid by Americans were given to birth mothers to relinquish their babies, after jaladoras took their cut. Yet Kate had told them their $30,000 went to attorneys, U.S. and Guatemalan, and covered the cost of foster care and doctor visits until the baby was picked up by adoptive parents.
Julie asked Kate point blank: “Is it true they’re paying birth mothers?”
“Nobody needs to go looking for birth mothers. Not when so many women are willing to give their babies away.”
Julie tried to visualize a place where mothers willingly gave away their babies. Where they presented themselves to jaladoras, saying Here’s my baby. Take him.
Kate’s voice pulled her back. She said the U.S. wasn’t fooling around. They were signing the Hague Treaty, which imposed strict limits on inter-country adoption. The Hague would require Guatemala to seek placements for children in-country first, as well as to adhere to a strict level of transparency. There was no way Guatemala could comply. The U.S. had set the closure date for adoptions. December 31, 2002.
That date was less than four months away. “You’re telling us this now?” Julie said.
Kate said if they held tight, she’d put them at the head of the line. The $30,000 would be carried over to the next referral. Julie’s shoulders shook, from excitement or fear. Maybe both.
“We’ll only agree if you promise you’ll get us a baby.”
“Done,” Kate agreed.
“Because we can’t go through that again.”
Kate clucked in sympathy. “You won’t have to, Julie. Trust me.”
Although no baby could replace Felix, a new dream child began to take shape. Probably another boy—most adoptive parents preferred girls, so boys were easier to get—handsome like Felix, but in his own unique way. A boy somewhere who maybe wasn’t yet born, who was waiting to come into this world. Wherever he was, whoever he was, when he finally presented himself, Julie and Mark would be ready.
The message from Kate appeared three weeks later. “Referral,” the subject line read, and although Julie trembled with anticipation, she didn’t open the photo attachment. She waited until nighttime, when Mark got home from the lab, so they could meet the boy who might be their son together. They stood at the kitchen counter in front of Julie’s open laptop.
His name was Juan Rolando Garcia Flores. Born on August 1, 2002, to a birth mother named Karla Inez Garcia Flores in a city named Escuintla. Five pounds three ounces at birth. Black hair and brown eyes, sitting up against a blue blanket, hands clenched at his sides.
Julie stared at the picture and tried to stop her heart from racing. Did she dare believe this time would be different? She’d already fallen in love with Felix and the three babies she’d miscarried. Juan was an infant alone in the world, and he needed her.
The baby’s Apgar scores were good, his vaccines up to date, and he showed no evidence of HIV. Was it true? Was Juan Rolando their son?
And just like that, they decided.
TWO
BAY AREA, CALIFORNIA
SEPTEMBER 2002
Monday morning, Julie walked from the parking garage through the Clay Museum’s front garden, where a special events crew was taking down tables from the wedding held in the courtyard the Saturday before. The museum’s bottom line depended on renting out its space. The sculpture garden, with its beds of calla lilies and abstract sculptures, including a prized Alexander Calder mobile, was a favorite bridal venue. The garden was also where they hosted evening exhibition openings in warm weather. Artists who made it to the Clay had good reason to celebrate, and champagne and wine flowed freely.
Julie pulled open the front door and threaded her way through the warren of offices past colleagues bent over their keyboards, until she reached hers at the end of the row. Shoving her purse into the bottom desk drawer, she opened her computer.
“Hey, Jules. Have you heard the news?”
Eames, from the office across from hers, rolled toward her on his desk chair. He was the Clay’s head of publications. “Talbot got tapped for the Lochnivar gig. He’s moving to New York.”
“As assistant director?” Talbot Jones was director of the Clay, the big boss. Technically, an assistant directorship was a step down, but the Lochnivar Museum was three times the size of the Clay and New York the most respected and vibrant art market in the world.
“It’s his foot in the door,” Eames said.
Julie scrolled through her emails to scan the announcement. The board of directors thanked Talbot, enumerated his many accomplishments during his fifteen-year tenure, and wished him well. As soon as possible, they’d conduct a nationwide search for a suitable replacement. “I wonder who we’ll get,” Julie said.
“One of the usual suspects. We’ll be fine, as long as New Person doesn’t want to shake things up with New Team.”
Why hadn’t Talbot told her about the new job himself? He’d hired Julie as a curatorial intern twelve years earlier, plucking her resume from the hundreds submitted by hungry art grads, and kept her on after graduation, molding her into the curator she’d become. More than that, Talbot had always defended her artistic vision, no small feat in a museum where everyone from the president of the board to the receptionist voiced an opinion on the appearance of everything from typeface to the color painted on gallery walls.
Julie was more than a little miffed. The museum was their obsession—Talbot’s and hers. Together, they’d grown it from an assortment of paintings, lithographs, sculptures, and drawings donated by the fabulously wealthy, art-loving philanthropist Orrin Clay, into a significant collection of work by ground-breaking, emerging artists.
She just hoped the new director didn’t mess things up.
*
The search had been underway for two weeks when Talbot’s assistant, Doni, asked Julie to come to the office. Talbot wanted to speak with her.
Julie ticked off deadlines in her mind, artist studios she was scheduled to visit, sure she hadn’t missed any. Nevertheless, her heart thrummed loudly as she walked to Talbot’s office, pausing at Doni’s desk while the assistant buzzed him to let him know Julie was waiting. An air of formality clung to the director, despite his urban hipster uniform of fitted black suit, striped socks, and narrow purple