“My husband. .” Maya started, and trailed off. She found herself without the energy to remark on the lawn now. It was a special concern of Alex’s. He worried over it to the point of detriment. She had read that fallen leaves ought to remain — their decomposition fed the soil. But those leaves were in Home Depot bags before they hit the ground. For this, Alex had massive energy. Once, he had hauled himself out of bed with a fever because the leaves were choking his grass and had to get cleared. He was contemplating cutting down the large oak that was responsible until Maya reminded him it would probably lower the home’s resale value.
Forgetting her earlier mindfulness, Laurel stubbed her cigarette into the grass. Then she lay down. Maya looked worriedly toward the house and the yellow light falling from the kitchen, which turned a small square of space outside the sliding doors indigo. What were those three discussing? She needed to get back inside.
“Come down here, won’t you?” Laurel said.
Maya looked down, flummoxed.
“Just get down here next to me,” Laurel said.
Maya’s jeans were dark — the grass stain would not show. “Where should I—” she started, and then just came down. The grass was cool under her hair.
“You’re shit for stars,” Laurel said, looking up.
“There’s more where you are?” Maya said.
“It’s way open,” Laurel said. “You have to drive a couple of miles to see as many homes as I can see from right here. It’s like a giant board. And if you do anything too sudden-like, you’ll fall off. Here, hold my hand so we don’t fall off the board.” Nervously, Maya allowed her hand to be fished for in the dark. If Alex saw her now. Laurel had work hands. Was she lying about the Ramada to seem more respectable? They lay listening to cicadas.
“I don’t like to fly, either,” Maya said, trying to ingratiate herself. “Actually, I can’t. It sends me into convulsions. I came to America on a boat, like they did a hundred years ago.”
“Oh, I’d like to try flying,” Laurel said.
Maya’s cheeks colored. She was grateful for the darkness. Laurel and Tim drove not because Laurel couldn’t fly — they didn’t have the money for it.
Maya lifted herself partway and looked over at Laurel. “I’m sorry for asking this,” she said. “Please.” No response came from Laurel, but also no objection. “Please tell me he’s healthy.”
Laurel looked over at Maya. “You’ve seen the medical history.”
“Please.”
“He’s the healthiest boy you’ll ever lay eyes on.”
Maya wanted to embrace Laurel down there on grass — then reproached herself; she was always too ready to believe. But then she darkened and said: “Why us, Laurel?”
Laurel stared back up at the sky. “I don’t have to tell you he’s an accident baby. Tim’s eighteen years old, and he makes six thousand dollars a year riding bulls. And you saw the way that he walks. So I don’t know if I’ll have a husband in a wheelchair in five years. Like half of them end up in wheelchairs, making the best of it. Making the best of it — I hate those words. Being heroes about ending up in a wheelchair. Why can’t he make the best of what he’s got now — instead of waiting to make the best when he’s got so much less? But he wants less, so I gave him less. I ain’t letting him raise a child this way. Not with me, if that’s what he does with his life. My own fault for getting my days wrong. But Tim and I, we have to be together. Him I can’t let go of. Him”—she nodded toward the house, meaning the baby—“I can.”
“But how?” Maya said, Laurel’s words so unbelievable that she smiled in astonishment.
“I’m going to find out. He’ll be with good people. You’re good people, I can see it. Earn real money. And don’t ride bulls for a living.”
Maya wanted to tell Laurel that she was making a mistake. But if she happened to persuade her? She said with incredulity: “He won’t quit? He’d rather give up the baby?”
“It’s complicated,” Laurel said. “In the meantime, decisions need to get made. I made it.” She laughed coarsely. “My need was greater.”
“But if that’s all it is — if it’s just his rodeo—” Maya sputtered out.
“Make him stop? Why don’t you persuade your husband to change the adoption to open?”
“But that’s different! Alex would never — a child!”
“You don’t know the first thing about rodeo, so you think it’s not important,” Laurel said.
“No. Yes. Of course,” Maya hurried to appease her. She went back down on the grass. She got relief out of it; propping herself up required a keeping together of something that was allowed to dissolve when prostrate. “We are like castaways on an island here,” she said.“Only there’s been no accident.”
“I guess that’s why I wanted it,” Laurel said.
After a moment, Maya said: “If our form didn’t say ‘closed,’ would you have agreed to an open adoption?”
“I don’t know that,” Laurel said. “What’s done is done. We didn’t specify either way. I care he’s far, and with good people. It’s probably better this way.” Laurel stood up and ran her hands down her thighs and back, but Alex’s grass was so severely maintained that none of it had detached onto her dress. “Come on. It’s time that he met you.”
But Maya wished to keep talking to Laurel. The new information made things less understandable, not more. There was so much more to talk about — enough to justify them remaining known to each other. After a moment, Maya rose, heavier than she had gone down.
Inside, Alex was speaking to Tim with an animation that surprised Maya while Mishkin busied himself on the other side of the dinner table. “We thought you ran away together,” the adoption supervisor said on sighting the women, his mouth full of grechanniki. “You’re a genius at the stove, Maya.”
“You’ll raise him in the Jewish faith, won’t you,” Tim said, his idea of a tension-defusing subject change. He looked around the kitchen, as if he expected it to broadcast some signal of Jewishness. The boy continued to sleep in the car seat like a grocery bag that still needed unpacking.
“They might, being Jews,” Laurel said.
“We never met someone of the Jewish faith,” Tim said. “We read about it.”
“We don’t drink the blood of Christian babies,” Alex said in a failed effort at humor.
Tim regarded him with mortification.
“We are not very Jewish,” Maya rushed in. “The Soviet Union was an atheist country. That’s how we grew up.”
“We’re both fairly devout,” Tim observed. He looked over at his wife. Alex frowned. Maya wished desperately to change the subject. Tim helped by asking for the bathroom. He was over six feet and had to pull his chair far from the table before his legs could swing out. He limped away.
“What happened to the leg?” Alex asked Laurel, of whom he was slightly afraid. Laurel only grunted luridly.
“Maybe you want some time with him,” Alex said, motioning to the car seat.
“We just had forty-two hours together,” Laurel said. “The long good-bye.”
When Tim returned, the four of them stood awkwardly over the small bundle, the clock clicking from the wall, Mishkin retreated into the corner, from tact or a fearfulness of his own. Laurel broke the silence. She ran her fingers through the gold sheets of her hair and tucked them behind her ears.
“Ma’am,” she said, stepping toward Maya. Maya’s blood ran cold from the formal greeting. “This is your child. You’re the mother. You will raise him as you see fit. But I want to ask you for one thing. This is why we drove two thousand miles. I wanted to look you in the eyes and ask you. Please don’t let my baby do rodeo.” She looked at Alex, at Tim, at Maya, at her boy, hers for only the rest of this minute. Then she spun around and walked out of their lives. She hadn’t touched her son once since walking inside. And Maya understood that she had been seduced outside, apologized to and reassured and made to look at stars and hold hands, in order to become an ally — someone of whom this request could be made, and who would, through the years, honor it.