"So," I wound up, "I've shot the entire film, but now, thinking it
over, I've decided there's one last thing I need to do. As I go through
the story, at every step of the adoption process I want to cut to an
interview, just talking heads, tight shot, of somebody who actually
went through it. Nonfiction. The real-life happy ending. And that's
where you come in."
What I wasn't telling her was, I was increasingly concerned the picture
might be slightly hollow without this punch of real life.
"Well," Carly declared with a grin, "my ending couldn't be happier."
"Okay, want to get started?" I looked around at Arlene, makeup, who
always seemed to have more on her face than in her bag. I kidded her
about that a lot. But she was actually the one who had found Carly,
bumping into her at a gym in the Village.
"Hey, let's go for it." Arlene grinned.
I turned back to Carly. "So how's about we prep a little while you're
getting the 'natural' look?"
In the back of my mind I knew what I wanted for the interview.
Something like the feeling I remembered from _The Thin Blue Line_,
where people engaged in Hamlet-like monologues that told us more about
them than they themselves knew, that let us really know their secrets
and their fears. The interviewer was never seen or heard.
Arlene ensconced Carly at the dining room table, a weathered country
French, where she'd already unfolded and plugged in a mirror with
lights.
"Having Kevin has been wonderful," Carly began. "He's changed my life.
Sure, being a single 'supermom' makes for a lot of bad-hair days, but
no matter how much I complain, it's worth every burp."
I thought momentarily about having her hold him during the interview,
but instantly decided it would be too distracting. Kevin and his
wonderful eyes would commandeer the camera. A kid this cute in a scene
was nothing less than grand larceny.
He came toddling in now, dragging a stuffed brown bear. Then he banged
its head and tried to say its name. "Benny." His funny, awkward walk
reminded me a little of Lou Crenshaw after a couple of drinks. God, he
was fantastic.
"Come here, sweetie." I picked him up, inhaling his fresh baby scent,
and wanted to hold him forever--while he slammed the bear against my
face. This child, I thought, is too good to be true.
He was wearing a small bracelet around his left ankle, a tiny little
chain, with a small silver medallion attached. It looked like the face
of a cat. Funny. Carly didn't have a cat, wasn't a cat person, so why
the little bracelet? And the back had a bunch of lines and dots, like a
jumbled-up Morse code.
Ask her about that, I thought. But later.
Now Carly was caught up in the sound of her own voice and on a roll.
While Arlene continued with the makeup, moving to her eyes, she bubbled
on.
"Like I told you on the phone, I tried and tried to adopt, through a
whole bunch of lawyers, but it was a nightmare. One guy even helped me
put ads in newspapers all around the country, but nothing worked. I
kept getting scammed by women who wanted thousands of dollars up front,
then backed out at the last minute." She was getting up, looking
intense. "Let me have a minute. I want to make coffee for everybody."
I followed her into the kitchen, which was the "country" type with a
faux granite counter and lots of copper-bottomed pans hanging from the
ceiling.
She was right about the pain of adoption, which was why her story was
such a burst of sunshine. As part of the start-up research for my
picture, I'd actually gone to meet an adoption attorney out in
Brooklyn, a sleazy-looking guy named Frank Brasco. I'd been pretending
to be a client, to find out firsthand how tough it really was. What I
heard was chilling.
"I don't want to get your hopes up," he'd declared for cheery openers.
"Finding a healthy, Caucasian, American baby is virtually out of the
question, so naturally we focus on foreign-borns. All the same, it can
take years, and there's incredible paperwork. Passports for the kid, an
extended visa for you while you go there and then wait around to
process everything in triplicate. Bribes, corruption, you can't
imagine." He sighed and adjusted his toupee, as though the very thought
made him weary. "And that's just the foreign end. Here you have the
INS, the Immigration and Naturalization Service. They give
bean-counting paper-pushers a bad name." He examined me closely. "Not
Jewish, I take it. 'Cause if that's what you're looking for, you may
have to wait for the Messiah."
Now, almost a year and a lot of experience later, I knew full well how
right he was. Which was what made Carly's story so fantastic.
"So how did you manage to get Kevin? You said it only took a few
months?"
"Well, to go back to the beginning, I didn't start out wanting to
adopt. But when the guy I was planning to marry got cold feet--after
four and a half years, the louse--and there was nobody else on the
horizon, I decided to just have a baby on my own. You know, find some
smart, good-looking hunk, seduce him, and get things going the
old-fashioned way, or if that didn't work, then I figured I'd just go
to a sperm bank. Who needs an actual man, right?"
She took out a white and green bag of coffee beans, labeled Balducci's
on the side. I was still holding Kevin, who threw Benny onto the floor,
then began to sniffle and point.
But Carly seemed not to notice as she shook the coffee beans into the
grinder. "Well, getting a baby the fun way turned out to be moot,
because it seems I have some kind of uterine condition--which meant I
couldn't get pregnant, or even do an in vitro. Bottom line, if I wanted
a baby, I had to adopt."
She pressed the button on the coffee grinder, sending a blast of
whirring through the kitchen. In seconds it was over and she was
tapping the batch into her Braun. "So that's when I started on the
attorney thing, got worked over good trying to adopt as a single mom,
and finally heard about Children of Light."
"The adoption organization? What do you know about them?"
"Tell you the main thing," she said, "they're the place that can make
it happen." She reached over and poked Kevin's tummy. "Right, big guy?"
Sure looked that way. What a cutie.
By now the spacious living room had been turned into a mini film set,
with two 35-mm Panaflex cameras set up, windows blanked out, lights and
filters in place, and a video camera and monitor. Having tested the
boom mike and the tape recorder, Tony and Sherry were ready.
Carly announced to everybody that coffee was available, and I handed
Kevin over to Marcy. Then together we marched into the living room.
"Okay," I told her, "we're going to be filming, but ignore that fact.
Just look into the back of the camera and talk to it as though it were
me."
"Hey." She grinned. "You're dealing with a pro. This is my thing."
I looked around at the cameras and the grips. "Okay, guys. Roll sound."
There was a retort as the clap stick used for synching whacked out the
start of the shoot. "Scene one, take one, Carly Grove interview."
She proceeded to hit the ground running, recounting in great detail her
story of many disappointments. She finally got to the point where she
was trying to adopt the baby of a woman in a Memphis jail, and then
even that fell through.
"Which was when my main lawyer, Chuck, just gave up and recommended I
hock the family silver, take a Valium, and try this place called
Children of Light. Where you go when all else fails. So I gave them a
call."
"And what happened?" It sounded too good to be true. "Did they seem . .
. in any way unusual?"
She looked at me, as though puzzled by the question. Then she shrugged
it off. "Well, first they tried to get me to check into their
clinic--it's this place up the Hudson--to let them see if my
'condition' could be cured somehow, using his special techniques."
"His?"
"Goddard. Dr. Alex Goddard. He's a kinda spacey guy, but he's the
big-shot presiding guru there." She remembered the camera and turned
back to it. "I told his staff I didn't have that kind of time, and
anyway nothing could be done. They were pretty insistent, so I
eventually ended up talking to the man himself. He sort of mesmerizes
you, but I finally said, forget it, it's adoption or nothing. So he
just sent me back to the peons. Checkbook time."
I stared at her, hungry for details, but she didn't notice, just
pressed on.
"The money they wanted, I have to tell you, was staggering. Sixty
thousand. And believe me, they don't give revolving credit."
I thought about the figure. It was the highest I'd heard for getting a
baby, but it wasn't totally off-the-wall. Terrific babies don't drop
from trees.
Carly was still going strong. "It took me almost half a year to
scrounge it together. A lot of credit lines got maxed. But when I
finally did plunk down the loot, sure enough, I had Kevin in less than
three months. I don't even know where he came from. They took care of
all that, but I do know it was probably out of the country, because of
the blank INS forms I signed. But then, who cares? With a deal this
good, you don't press for details, right?"
Carly Grove had a mutual love affair with the camera. The footage was
going to be fabulous. The only problem was, it sounded like an
"infomercial" for the adoption miracle wrought by this doctor named
Goddard.
When the interview began to wind down, losing its punch, I suggested we
call it a day. With the time pushing two o'clock, I wanted to get the
film to the lab, get it developed, and take a look at the rushes. I
also had a doctor's appointment, not to mention a meeting with David to
bring him up to speed on what I was doing. But surely he was going to
be pleased. The interview, with Carly's honest intensity, would give
the picture spine and guts. Just as I'd hoped.
You could always tell by the reaction of the crew. Even Roger Drexel,
who usually hid his thoughts somewhere in his scraggly beard, was
letting his eyes sparkle behind his Panaflex. Scott was also grinning
as he struck the lights and Cafiero ripped up the power lines, now
taped to the floor. Everybody was in wrap mode, flushed with a great
shoot.
I followed Carly into the kitchen, where Marcy was feeding Kevin some
Gerber applesauce. The time had come, I thought, to spring the next big
question, out of earshot of the crew.
"I hate to put you on the spot, but do you know any other women like
you, single, who've adopted through Children of Light?" I decided to
experiment with the truth. "God knows, depending on what happens in my
own situation, I'm . . . I'm thinking I might even want to check them
out for myself."
"What do you mean?" She gave me a quick, concerned look.
"Maybe I'd like to talk to them about adopting too." I realized I was
babbling, my usual prelude to obsessing.
Carly's worried gaze eased up a bit, but she started twisting at her
hair.
"Well, I might have another name. When my lawyer first told me about
them, he gave me the name of another woman who'd adopted from them, and
I talked to her a little about how they worked. She'd just gotten her
baby, so I guess she was about six months ahead of me in the process.
Her name was . . . I think it was Pauline or Paula or something. She's
probably not the kind of person who'd take their 'no disclosure' crap
all that seriously. She was adopting a girl, and she lives somewhere on
the Upper West Side."
"Any idea how I could find her?"
"You know, she wrote kids' books, and I think she gave me her card. In
case I ever needed somebody to do some YA copy. Let me go look in my
Rolodex. I filed her card under 'Y' for Young Adult. Right. It'll just
take a second."
The woman, whose name was Paula Marks, lived on West 83rd Street. The
business card, a tasteful brown with a weave in the paper, described
her as an author. The address included a "suite" number, which meant
she worked out of her apartment.
"Mind if I take down her phone number and address? I'd really like to
look her up. To see if her experience was anything remotely like yours."
Carly gazed at her fingernails a second. "Okay, but do me a favor.
Don't tell her how you got her number." She bit her lip, stalling.
"It's one thing for me to talk to you myself. It's something else
entirely to go sticking my nose into other people's business."
"Look, I'll respect her privacy just as much as I respect yours." I
paused, listening to what I'd just said. The promise sounded pretty
lame. I'd just filmed her, or hadn't she noticed? "Look, let me call
Paula, see if she'll agree to be interviewed on camera. I'll keep your
name entirely out if it, I promise."
She reached down and plucked Kevin out of his high chair, kissed him on
his applesauce-smeared cheek, then hugged him. "Sorry. Guess I'm being
a little paranoid. I shouldn't invite you here, then give you a hard
time about what you're going to do, or not do. I can't have it both
ways."
In the ensuing tumult and confusion of the wrap, I did manage to get
one more item from Carly Grove. The address and phone number of
Children of Light. But I completely forgot the one thing I'd been
meaning to ask about. That little amulet, with the strange cat's face
and the lines and dots on the back. Why was Kevin wearing it? And by
the time I got to the street, surrounded by the clamor of crew and
equipment, it seemed too inconsequential to go back and bother with.