"No pictures?"
Disapproval – or was it disappointment? - vibrated off Cecelia Griffin's face in rough waves that threatened to capsize her daughter.
"Yes, Mama, like I said. I didn't ask the technician to make any pictures because I didn't think anyone would want to see them."
Carter cringed at how chilly that explanation sounded as it came out. Was she really so indifferent to her baby or just to her mother? To Taylor too? Or just to John?
Celia didn't miss a beat, reading minds being her well-honed specialty.
"You think I wouldn't be interested in seeing those fancy three-D scans of my baby?"
"My baby, not yours, Mama."
"Yes, alright. Your baby. But my granddaughter. My first granddaughter. And the only one I'm likely to ever have at this rate. So, yes. I would have wanted to see those pictures."
Carter watched as vertical lines between her mother's glossy brown eyes winked and stretched in an accustomed pattern: definitely this was disappointment registering on these familiar features now.
With weathered hands, Celia smoothed the hem of her lime green blouse over her thighs. The white slacks she wore were cropped several inches above the ankle, giving no concession to either the fall season or the dropping temperatures. At sixty-nine, Cecelia Griffin's sumptuous curves still commanded admiration and the white polka-dots flung across her tropical shirt proclaimed that she used her body as she wished, convention and fashion be damned.
Buttoned up and meek was not her mother's style. Celia didn't see the need to disguise her figure or her feelings, an approach her daughter appreciated but never quite managed to apply to herself.
Carter sighed at this impasse and lifted the mug of chamomile tea in front of her own face as a kind of dam to prevent sharper words from escaping her mouth.
"O.K. Next time I get an ultrasound, I'll bring you along and you can order as many photos as you want."
She almost added, Knock yourself out, Mama. Fill up a whole picture album if you want. But the grassy taste of chamomile filled her mouth instead of those sarcastic phrases and she let the feeling go with another sigh.
Her mother seemed to let it go too.
"You're looking good, Jossy. You got that bounce back in your step now, even though you're getting pretty big. And your skin is like glass, it's so smooth and fine."
A smile ran across Celia's full mouth, curling up one corner as she tilted her head to the left.
Although they were seated at the square table in Carter's kitchen, she felt as if once again her mother had somehow claimed these domestic precincts as her own territory. Celia's energy, her piercing intellect, even the crisp citrusy fumes of her scent filled up every corner.
"You feeling alright these days?" The maternal concern was genuine, Carter knew, and she felt cosseted in its warm embrace. "Sleeping O.K.?"
"Yes, fine."
The skimpy rote answer inspired a skeptical look, so Carter expanded.
"I'm doing better, Mama. The doctor liked my blood pressure and my weight gain was right on track, she said."
As if endorsing that last bit of news, Celia pushed the saucer of soft molasses cookies from the middle of the table. Carter took the peace offering and let the sweet sticky crumbs settle on her tongue as her mother stood from the table and gathered her thoughts for another line of conversation.
"Now, where'd that colander go?"
Celia seemed to be talking to herself as she rummaged behind several lower cabinet doors until she found the utensil and wrestled it from its tangled nest.
"You start snapping these string beans so we can get dinner on the stove before Taylor gets home from practice."
Matching actions to her words, Celia plopped a giant plastic sack of beans in front of her daughter and rotated her left hand in the universal gesture meaning hurry up.
"You think you have enough string beans for the three of us, Mama?" Carter laughed at the vegetable mountain on the table.
"I always like to be prepared."
Celia drawled the last word.
"You never know who else might turn up, right?"
She paused in her unwrapping of the pork chops to give Carter a long look.
"No, Mama. No one else is turning up tonight."
Carter returned the look for a moment, then dropped her eyes and seized an innocent bean.
"No one. Period."
Snapping the ends off with undue force didn't relieve the tension completely and Carter knew her silence wasn't going to derail the conversation her mother seemed determined to pursue.
"So is it you? Or him? Or the both of you together?"
"Both of us together what?"
Carter chose to be dense and let her mother say what was on her mind without help.
"Both of you together deciding to not talk about this - this whatever it is you two got going on. About this baby girl and how you both're going to bring her into this world."
"We talk about it. Sometimes. He knows I'm for adoption."
Celia placed the unopened package of chops in the frying pan and turned her back to the stove.
"And is that what he wants too? Or this just you flying solo again like you do?"
Carter thought back to the intense snatches of conversation that had led her and John to that shaky agreement.
"He said if adoption seemed the best way to go, then he would back me up, whatever I decided."
These talks had been one sided and halting, as their exchanges often were when matters turned personal.
She had told John about Finch's investigations, the lists of adoption agencies and go-between attorneys ready to cut a private deal. She had spoken about scanning the files of potential parents: dry stacks of resumes, financial records, medical reports, diplomas, grainy photos clipped to weepy application letters.
Between the facts and numbers, she had let little drops of her fear ooze out, those doubts that stained her reasoning. Without meaning to, she had let him glimpse the insecurities shimmering beneath the placid surface of her convictions.
In these talks, John was a portrait of silent concentration: head tilted to one side, soft eyes trained on her mouth, breathing stifled as if the slightest rustle would blow away some important word and scatter the meaning of her sentences.
Occasionally his dark-lashed lids would flutter as if absorbing a painful blow, then fly open again to take in another phrase. Even in the public spaces where they always met - a park, a sleek café, or poky bar - tears would sometimes hover in his eyes when her words ran too rough. And as he blinked, russet would seep across the high planes of his cheekbones, hinting at turbulence suppressed.
In those tender moments, when his moist mouth opened to her and he swallowed repeatedly to choke down a plea, she almost relented, almost gave into his vulnerability and her need.
"And you think he really meant it?"
Though Celia's quiet words drew her from the melancholy trance, its emotional tide flooded through her response:
"He's a good man, Mama. He meant it."
She knew it then: she wanted him. That desire surged through her now, as strong and certain as anything she had ever believed.
Maybe not this golden daughter they had created. Maybe not the tame coupled life that danced like a phantom just beyond their grasp. Maybe all those ethereal dreams must slip away even as she reached for them.
But if she could have him - for now if not forever - she hoped she could finally hold that elusive completeness that had taunted her all her life.
Two hot tears slid down her cheeks and splashed onto the pile of clipped green beans before her. She gasped, but didn't want to say more for fear of unraveling altogether.
Celia's voice washed soothing and cool through the little kitchen then:
"If you believe it, baby, then I know it's true."
A heavy arm across her daughter's back, a squeeze to the shoulder as she leaned in close.
"You're carrying a plenty big burden as it is right now. Trying to fix the world. Fix him too, I guess. But that's not your job now."
Warm breath carried the fragrance of molasses and ginger wafting across her cheek where a kiss sealed the sweet embrace.
"You don't have to set it down, Joss. But sharing that burden'll make it lighter as you go along."
"I'll try, Mama. If I can, I'll try."
Celia patted her daughter's cheek, then stroked a thumb beside her mouth to smear the tears running there.
"That's all you have to do. Try."
In the close silence of the kitchen, the two women pressed their heads together for a long moment.
Then the mother straightened and took a step back toward the stove. Wrestling with the plastic wrapping, she finally freed the pork chops and dropped them on a plate beside the burners.
"Now where'd that salt get to?"
She flung open the doors to all the upper cabinets in quick succession.
"I don't see how you keep the salt in a different cupboard from the pepper. It just don't make any sense at all!"
