A Southern Girl: A Novel

3: Elizabeth

Confluence 25 The lieutenant and his wife apparently had decided on Tong Soon and filled out forms before leaving. I thought I heard them discussing names, but the interpreter had gone and I could not be sure. In my heart, I sang a song, a lullaby, for Tong Soon. The lieutenant and his wife seemed like good people. Their attraction to him had been immediate and heartfelt . Perhaps a perfect match, as sometimes happened. And who could say what lives, present and future, had been altered in the radiance of that angelic smile and that heavenly coo. And I wondered if I did right by Soo Yun. I had to be honest, didn’t I? My position demanded it. But by disclosing the medical concern at the outset, I had effectively sealed her in the security of the home. Perhaps that was my intent. Soo Yun was special. The lieutenant and his wife would make good parents to Tong Soon if it all worked out, and he would be fortunate to have them. But they were not special. j 3 i Elizabeth I fixed a nice dinner and I waited for just the right time to bring up the subject because I knew Coleman wanted to avoid the subject, which was the only thing I’d been able to think about for weeks, the subject being the adoption of a Korean girl who may or may not even have been alive when we all—that would be Josh and Steven and Coleman and me— sat down to dinner that evening. Really, I felt like I was pregnant again, with that anticipation you get as the delivery draws nearer and you truly focus on the fact that one day soon you will have another little person in your life, and that feeling came over me all during the holidays and kept coming so that it was all I could do to address Christmas cards and stuff stockings and play Mrs. Clause to Josh and Steven. One night just before Christmas I was sipping some wine and was tempted to tack an old stocking to the mantel with a big question mark where the name should be, and I’ll be the first to admit that was a bit obsessive but I get that way when I want something as badly as I wanted her. A Southern Girl 26 By the time we sat down to dinner that evening we had scheduled the appointment with Social Services for the interview, and that seemed a perfect segue from Josh’s indoor soccer practice to the subject, so I reminded Coleman in my sweetest and most diplomatic voice that the meeting with Monique Hunter was at 4:30 p.m. and that he needed to be there and when he rolled his eyes the way he sometimes does I knew we were going to have a words on the subject we’d had quite a few words on in recent months and while I was under no illusions that he had embraced her like I had, I thought I had brought him around so that if he was not totally convinced we were doing the right thing he was at least less convinced he could possibly talk me out of it and therefore had become reconciled to the idea. Did I expect him to be counting down the hours like I was or perusing catalogs of girls’ clothing or scouting the neighborhood for girls that might be close to her age, whatever that age turned out to be? No. But did I want him to embrace the concept and then, in a day or two, embrace her? Absolutely. Granted, some people will question my desire for an international adoption when we had two biological boys and could have more if we chose, my husband being one of those people. He had cross-examined me on the subject several times and, being a trial lawyer, cross-examination was something he did well. But I thought I held my own, thank you very much, because I refused to concede the idea was some “altruistic daydream ,” a phrase he liked to use in these “discussions.” I reminded him that tens of thousands of couples adopted children every year and that many of those adoptions came from places like Korea where strict social customs prevented adoption there. He acknowledged I had a point but countered with a supposition that most of those couples were childless or unable to...