Everything We Ever Wanted by Sarah S

Author:Sarah S. [S., Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-08-22T00:17:00+00:00

………………………………………………………… eleven

T hey sat on the couch and watched TV, quietly at first. Awkwardly. Then the next day, he said hi. She said hi back. They said nothing after that, but at least they continued watching

together. Sometimes he laughed at the jokes on sitcoms. Sometimes she walked into the room and found him watching PBS nature programs— about the mating habits of weasels, about lions on the Serengeti—and was surprised, never knowing he liked these shows. Now when Scott went into his room, he didn’t always shut the door. He even joined Sylvie for dinner last night, whereas before he’d just eaten on his own, often standing over the sink, shoving bites into his mouth as fast as he could.

She offered to make him whatever he wanted. Finally he said he wouldn’t mind a banana cream pie. It seemed so random—banana cream pie! She’d never seen him eat a banana in his life. But after she made the pie, throwing out her first attempt at the crust because it was a bit too soggy, she watched him eat it with pleasure, every forkful a confirmation that she was doing something right. She didn’t want to comment on the sudden shift in their dynamic. Scott was like a flighty cat—the slightest thing would send him scurrying back under the desk. And what would she say, anyway? Gee, isn’t this nice? You and I are finally acting like mother and son! He’d sneer.

She listened to him breathing evenly as he slept in his old bedroom. It was the same thing she did when he was a little boy, hovering over his soft, twisted shape, wondering who he was, what the first eighteen months of his life had been like before she’d come along. Those eighteen months worried her, certainly; there were plenty of things that could happen to a child in that span of time that could affect them for life. Why had his mother given him up, ultimately? Had it been the right thing to do to not ask to know anything about her, beyond that she was healthy and living across the country? Scott was brought to them by plane; Sylvie had stood with James and Charles at the airport gate, her stomach jumping nervously as two adoption coordinators stepped off the Jetway dragging a baby carrier, a fold-up stroller, a bunch of cloth bags, and, finally, a stroller containing Scott. “Oh,” Sylvie had cried, clutching her hands at her breastbone when she saw him, those round, shiny eyes, that small dewdrop of a mouth, those fat cheeks. He was such a little person, so different than she was. It wasn’t the same having him in the house as it had been when Charles was a baby; she never had an intuitive, maternal sense of what he might do next. When he cried and cried, she had no idea what he wanted. Because she wasn’t his coauthor, because he hadn’t sprung from her, he would always be impenetrable and alien. Sylvie

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