Read The Child for Free Online

exclaimed falsely, as she robotically kvelled over the kids. “Congratulations.”
    “This is my father,” Adrianna said, introducing Eva to an overwhelmed but glowing old man. “Daddy, here. Take Felicity.”
    Adrianna took out her ponderous breast and fed the other infant as her father held his granddaughter tenderly, bouncing her up and down, creating a false nostalgia for a youthful fatherhood that he had avoided the first time around with job obligations. It was the same breast that Eva had seen at the Michigan Women’s Music Festival in 1979, when she and Adrianna and five others shared one tent and ran around naked, smoking pot and blowing their minds. It had been weighty even then.
    “How is Louise?” Eva asked. Could they possibly still be together?
    “She’s fine. She had a boy two summers ago. Devon. Now it’s my turn. Are you pregnant, too?”
    “No, I’m here for a mammogram—I mean a sonogram.”
    “Oh, I hope everything turns out all right.”
    Despite the two intervening decades, Adrianna still looked the same. Even as a co-ed she’d been matronly, but now she seemed unchanged and therefore young. She still had that very annoying slow way of speaking, as if her throat was clogged with sludge.

    “You know, Louise and I wanted to do something productive with our relationship, and now we’re happy. Daddy, just burp her.”
    “Still in the East Village?”
    “We moved to New Jersey. The schools are better there. Middlesex.”
    Eva stared at the happy, loving daddy. Was motherhood the only way to get one? Of course it was; she’d already figured that out. Even though her own father was long dead, she knew that producing a child meant she could tell herself it would have made him happy, finally. Then she could lament his death, because the inevitable happiness would have given her the father she always craved.
    “I’ve got to go now,” Eva said.
    “I hope it turns out alright.” Adrianna was preoccupied with the suckle.
    On the way back into Dr. Pollack’s office, Eva remembered when she and Adrianna had been friends. When Adrianna first fell in love with Louise and how horrible her father had been to all of them. Eva had never seen the man before, but she remembered the sorrowful nights over long beers as Adrianna faced his brutal judgment.
    “Is Louise your boyfriend or your girlfriend?” he snapped.
    That kind of thing was so painful back then. So unexpected and unnecessary. There was no respite from it. It tore young women apart.
    Eva had never, ever forgotten that phrase. The cruelty. The wish to wound one’s own daughter because she loved. It lingered all those years as a memento of the amazing ease with which people throw things away. She wondered if Adrianna had forgotten all about it.

    “What’s the matter?” Dr. Pollack asked when she was finally back in his office. “You have bad insurance?”
    “Terrible. I have to pay first, and then they decide if and what they will reimburse.”
    “What are you, an actress?”
    “No, a lawyer.”
    There it was again. The shame.
    “I mean, I was a lawyer. I helped people get welfare when there used to be welfare. Now I’m a teacher. I mean, I’m an adjunct. I teach a few courses.”
    “At a college?”
    “Yeah.”
    Eva had realized over the last few months that if she had fought harder for her clinic, it would not have been defunded. But in this humiliating moment it was thunderbolt true. She had given up too soon. Why did she do that? That wasn’t the person she wanted to be.
    “And they don’t give you health insurance?”
    “No, Doctor, I have to buy my own.”
    “That’s terrible,” he said.
    It was terrible, and maybe he was her friend after all. He seemed to understand.
    “You see, Eva, between the two mammograms and the sonogram you’ve had this morning, the cost is already around fifteen hundred dollars.”
    “I’ll have to put it on my credit card,” she said. Then she realized that she wanted this man to