An Empty Lap by Jill Smolowe
Author:Jill Smolowe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books
VIII
TWO WEEKS LATER AS I cross the lobby of the time & Life Building, I spot Eric, a colleague I haven’t seen in months. Eric is the classic year-of-living-dangerously journalist, always parachuting into trouble spots. Though we don’t know each other well, we have a warm relationship. I love to hear about his adventures; he loves to recount them.
“Hey, Eric,” I call. “Long time, no see. What’s up?”
His vivid blue eyes have a wild, excited look. “I’m leaving for Sarajevo in a couple of hours.”
The question comes out of my mouth before I’m aware it’s formed in my head. “Could you do me a favor if you get a chance?” Impulsively, I tell him that Joe and I are trying to adopt, and that we’ve heard conflicting reports about the situation in Sarajevo. “Could you try to find out if there are infants available for adoption?”
“Sure.”
I walk away, embarrassed by my rudeness. Here, this guy is going off to trench hop, and I’m bugging him about babies.
Despite our resolve to confine our efforts to Spence, in January Joe had asked a People correspondent to check into the situation while on assignment in Bosnia. He’d also phoned a former Newsweek colleague in London, who’d recently visited Sarajevo for the United Nations. Their conflicting replies had left us wondering what was happening to all those babies we’d read about in the newspapers, the unwanted children born of the rape of Muslim women by Serbian troops.
A week later on February 17, my office phone rings, jarring my concentration. What the hell? I think. Friends and family know better than to call on a writing day.
“Jill?” The line is crackling, the voice barely audible. “It’s Eric. Are you serious about adopting a baby?” His voice is so distant that I have to shut off my office fan. “I’ve been to a hospital in Sarajevo. There are six babies there, two and three days old. The director of the hospital is determined to get these babies to safety.”
“Are you serious? Do you think it’s really possible?”
“Yeah, I do. A New York Times reporter recently took a baby out of here for an Italian couple.”
“Are these babies the children of rape?”
“I don’t think so. Their mothers are dead.” Eric isn’t sure if the infants are Muslims, Serbs, or Croats. “The babies are all healthy. Do you want a boy or a girl?”
This conversation is beginning to feel surreal. “If it were just me, I’d say, yes, do it. I’m ready to hijack babies off subways. But I have to check with my husband.” We agree that I’ll leave Eric a message on his office answering machine. That way, we won’t have to try to coordinate phone calls between two continents, two time zones, and two unpredictable work schedules.
I grab the next elevator to the People floor, then sit in Joe’s office, nervously waiting for him to return from a meeting.
“Wease?” His tone is surprised as I gesture for him to close the door. We rarely visit each other during the workday.
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