Then Came You - Jennifer Weiner [105]
There were a million things for me to do and read and buy and figure out. I’d need more formula . . . and baby food . . . and a high chair, and one of those crazy little vibrating bouncy seats that had always made Violet look like she was being electrocuted. I’d also have to find other babies for Rory to be friends with. There was, I knew, at least one woman in my dad’s building with a smallish-looking baby. We’d exchanged hellos in the elevator a few times, and while it was true that I hadn’t noticed whether her baby was a boy or a girl, I would make a point of asking the next time I saw them.
Annie wiped her eyes while I signed the papers. “You know how to work the car seat?” she asked. “Are you sure you’ll be okay?” I told her I’d be fine with the car seat and that I was positive I’d be fine. I was almost out the door with the baby in my arms when she said, “Oh! My milk!”
“Pardon?”
She pointed to a scary-looking machine next to her bed. Clear tubes ran into funnel-shaped suction cups that were screwed into bottles with ounce markings on their sides. “I was going to overnight India my breast milk for the first month. Should I still do that?”
“That would be very nice.” The baby was getting heavy. I shifted her from my left arm to my right. Her head flopped back alarmingly, and I adjusted it fast, hoping Annie hadn’t seen. “Do I pay you by the bottle, or how does it work?”
She shook her head. “You don’t have to pay me anything. India set it all up. I’ve got a FedEx account. They’ll stop by in the morning with the dry-ice packs and the boxes, and you should have it every day by noon.” She reached onto the bedside table, where she had two of the little bottles, each one full and labeled with a strip of tape indicating, I supposed, the time she’d pumped it. “Here. This will get you started.”
What do you say to a woman who’s just handed you four ounces of her breast milk? One of the bottles was still warm. I shifted the baby again, trying not to cringe as I put the milk into the diaper bag. “Thank you. We’ll be in touch.”
“Send pictures,” she said. I could tell that she was getting ready to cry again, so I quickly set the baby into the car seat, fumbled the buckles shut, and hurried to the exit, where Manuel was waiting.
That had been seven days ago, and the baby seemed to be doing well, so far. If she sensed that she was at the center of a storm, being cared for by people who were not her biological parents, she gave no indication. “She’s good-natured,” Tia the doula told me, pointing out that Rory cried only when she was hungry or wanted to be held or rocked. That might have been true . . . but if it was, she was hungry or lonely for most of the time she was awake. Worse, she wasn’t cute. To my eyes, not only did she not resemble anyone in my family, but she didn’t look like she was completely through being formed. Her eyebrows were so faint they were almost invisible. She had stubby lashes, mottled pink skin, and an unfortunate case of acne . . . but she was filling out a bit, losing some of her scrawniness and starting to look a little more like the plump pink babies I’d grown familiar with from diaper commercials.
I gave her car seat another gentle push with my toe, then glared across the conference table. “Why didn’t they tell me I’d be the baby’s guardian? When did they decide?” Leslie pulled a fresh tissue from the box and pressed it underneath her right eye.
“They made their decision months ago. I don’t know why they didn’t tell you. We certainly urge our clients to be as