Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [167]
“Jewel, I want to ask you a question. Something I’ve been thinking about. You don’t have to answer today; you can think it over as long as you need to. Or maybe you’ll just say no, and that’s fine, too. But I want to ask.”
“Ask me, then.”
Lusa’s heart pounded. She had imagined asking this in a more casual setting, maybe while she and Jewel did something together in the kitchen. She hadn’t realized before today that it was too late for casual. And this was not a casual thing.
“What is it, then?” Jewel seemed troubled now by the pause.
“I wondered if, when the time came, if the time came…” Lusa felt her face grow hot. “Forgive me if this is inappropriate to ask, but I wondered what you’d think about the idea of my adopting Crys and Lowell.”
“Taking care of them or adopting them?”
“Adopting them.”
Jewel studied Lusa’s face, surprisingly unshaken. She didn’t seem angry, anyway, as Lusa had feared she might be.
“We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to,” Lusa said. “I can’t imagine anything harder to think about.”
“Don’t you think I think about it every minute of the day?” Jewel said in a flat voice that frightened Lusa.
“I guess you do. I would. That’s why I brought it up.”
“Well, it’s not something you ought to feel obligated about,” she answered finally. “I’ve got four sisters.”
Lusa looked at the floor, at her callused knees and dirt-streaked thighs beneath the hem of her shorts, and then she took Jewel’s hand back in hers without looking up. “You’ve got five sisters. I’m the only one without children.” She glanced up then at Jewel, who was listening. “But that’s not the reason. That wouldn’t be a good reason. I love your kids, that’s the reason. I love Crys and I love Lowell. I’m not sure I’d be the greatest mother, but I think I could learn on those two. Lowell’s easy, he’s a heart stealer, and Crys…Crys and I are two peas in a pod.”
“You’d have plenty of help, right down the hill,” Jewel said equivocally.
“Plenty of help,” Lusa agreed, encouraged by Jewel’s use of the conditional. She hadn’t said no. “More help than you can shake a stick at. Although to be honest I don’t think Lois and a stick should be allowed near those kids. At least till they’re older.”
“Not till they’re older,” Jewel echoed, closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the big green chair. “Can you picture Crys at the senior cotillion?”
“Believe it or not, I can,” Lusa said gently. “But she might be wearing a tux. She’s got the world by the tail; she just needs help figuring out what to do with it. It’s going to take an open mind. When I look around this family, the best candidate I come up with is me.”
Jewel opened her eyes and looked down at Lusa with a new expression. “There’s some papers I have to get their father to sign before I can really decide the next step. I’ve been thinking about all this since I first got sick. I had the papers drawn up already at the lawyer’s.”
“For what, releasing them for adoption?”
“Well, just releasing them to me. He doesn’t even know I’m sick. There’s no telling what he’d do. I don’t think he’d really come scoop them up, but you never know with him. With Shel, that’s the one thing you can count on, is that you never can tell. He might think he wanted them, for a week or two, and then he’d dump them out like kitties by the side of the road when he figured out a kid has to eat and shit.”
She closed her eyes again and winced. Lusa stroked the backs of her hands until whatever it was passed over. She wondered what this invisible beast was doing to Jewel on the inside, what parts of her it