Swimming Across the Hudson Read Online Free PDF Page B

“You’re married, aren’t you, Mr. Suskind?”
    â€œNo,” I said.
    â€œThen you want to adopt a baby on your own?”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œAre you gay?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHow old are you, Mr. Suskind, if you don’t mind my asking?”
    â€œThirty.”
    â€œThirty. That’s not very old. Have you considered waiting?”
    â€œI’ve considered it.”
    â€œI don’t mean to dissuade you, Mr. Suskind, but you’re going to have some difficulty. You’re an unmarried man. There are people’s prejudices to contend with. Have you thought of other options? Maybe you could get a friend to help you out.”
    Jenny wasn’t home when I returned from the social worker’s, and I was immediately disappointed. She’d had a trial that afternoon; I’d forgotten that she would be late at work. I wanted her to be there so we could talk about what had happened, even though I understood that nothing really had happened. A week had passed since my birth mother’s letter had arrived, and I’d been reduced to the infant she’d given up, needy and petulant.
    These feelings surprised me. I don’t mind being on my own. When I was twenty-three, I hiked the Appalachian Trail by myself. Occasionally I get into my car, drive up the coast, and spend time alone among the redwoods. But something had happened to me in the wake of getting that letter. I wasn’t being myself.
    I fixed dinner for Tara. She had turned eleven recently and had taken to eating only certain foods, although it was hard to determine which ones. She claimed to be a vegetarian, but once, at aChinese restaurant, she sneaked a piece of mu shu pork from Jenny’s plate when she thought we weren’t looking. For the past month, she’d been eating little else but Kraft macaroni and cheese. I don’t like macaroni and cheese, but I made a big pot of it anyway.
    â€œWhere’s Mom?”
    â€œAt work,” I said. “She’ll be home soon.”
    â€œShe better. She promised to help me with math.” Tara dipped her finger into the pot and dropped a gob of melted cheese into her mouth.
    â€œI can help you with math.”
    She shook her head. “Mom knows fractions, and you don’t.”
    I considered defending my knowledge of fractions, but thought better of it. “Well, she’ll be here soon.”
    It was hard to predict how Tara would act, especially when the two of us were alone. She’d become more difficult since I’d moved in, although, when the move had become official, she’d been a big advocate of mine, decorating the apartment with Welcome signs. Several times before drifting off to sleep, she had murmured “I love you” in a state of semiconsciousness. She’d even told me that she preferred me to her father, although it was hard to know what that meant, since she saw him only once a year.
    But she could be abrupt, turning sharp-tongued toward Jenny and me. She locked the door to her bedroom. Sometimes at dinner she placed a bandanna over her eyes, as if to say she didn’t want to see us. She kept her CD player on loud late at night when she was supposed to be asleep, when Jenny and I thought she was asleep, Soul Asylum blasting through the apartment at eleven o’clock.
    Still, I loved her. I’d courted her too when I’d first met Jenny, taking them to the circus and the San Francisco Exploratorium. I’d given Jenny white roses and bottles of French wine and bought comic books for Tara; I’d watched cartoons with her on Saturday mornings. On weekends, she and I had gone to museums, and to long animated movies in which hairy creatures beat each other overthe head. As we sat at the back eating strands of red licorice, I worried about Tara the way a father would, all that violence, even in cartoons.
    But I wasn’t her father. Sometimes I wished he’d come and