“Alright, no problem. Could you shoot me your address again?”
“Sure.”
“You’re not at the dorms anymore, are you?”
Lili shakes her head. “No, grad students don’t really live on campus.” She refrains from reminding Jane that she hasn’t lived in the dorms since freshman year. Once she moved to New York, she stayed—never spent summers in California, never visited; a real offer from Jane and Robert was never really extended to her—so she had to find housing, a tiny one-bedroom walk-up in Morningside Heights with Jackie, before they moved into their Williamsburg place senior year. She supposes it’s not the most important information.
“You graduate in the spring?”
“December, actually. Maybe. My adviser thinks it’d be a good idea.”
“Political science, was it?”
“Um, no—economics, remember?”
“Right, yes. And you’re enjoying it?” On the other end, she hears motion, like Jane is multitasking, setting a table. It’s around dinnertime, she guesses. They always ate early.
“I am.” Lili nods, biting her nail. “How are things in your world? How’s the garden—”
“I’m coming, I’m coming, just a minute—Lili, listen,” Jane says, “I know it didn’t work out this summer, to have you visit. I’ve been thinking, though, let’s talk in the fall, maybe winter? It’d be better, things will be much calmer around here. It’ll be just us in the house, empty nesters.”
“What?” Lili frowns, confused. Their little yellow house is never empty. Jane is usually fostering at least four children at a time, short-term placements cycling through every few weeks, longer-term kids staying for a couple months. “Empty, how come?”
“That’s right, I don’t think we’ve told you. Not sure when we last spoke, it’s probably been a little while”—Literal months, Jane,Lili thinks, a bit uncharitably—“but we’re winding down, with the fostering. Our last kid—Tobias, you didn’t cross paths, he’s a sweet boy, we’re helping with his transition to independent living—he’s heading off to college soon, and the toddlers—June and Ezra—their adoptions are underway. Mickey’s already left—she was staying with us again; I don’t know if you knew that? The placement with her aunt didn’t work out, sadly. But she’s graduated, she’s backpacking in Europe, I think her older half sister goes to school inIreland. Matter of fact, I told her to reach out to you, said you could offer some good advice about colleges and whatnot—”
“You’redone?” Lili interrupts, aghast. “Why?”
Jane laughs, a little worn. “Well, we’re getting old,” she says, good-naturedly. “Ezra, no, settle down please—I just hit sixty, Robert’s pushing seventy. We’re not as young as we used to be. My joints hurt on rainy days. And I’d like to travel a little, maybe head down the coast to Mexico. Who knows?”
“I just—I suppose I never thought of you two, like,notfostering,” Lili says, at a loss.
“Ah, well—change is inevitable, I suppose. Let go of what’s familiar, welcome what might be new and wondrous, all that. Maybe that’s why you’ve been on my mind, too. Reflecting back on the last years, that manner of thing. You were with us the longest, you know—Ezra, can you please get your sister—”
“Jane, why did you never adopt me?” Lili blurts out, suddenly.
A pause, and then: “Oh, wow.” Jane laughs, a little chuckle. “Now that’s a question.”
It’s almost disorienting, how it feels to have it out there, this question that’s been so heavy, weighed her down so much. “Was it just not a fit?” Lili insists.
“Well, no, not that. I mean, you know my philosophy: help as many kids as we can. Benefit the many, not the few.”
“Yes, but—but youkeptme,” Lili presses on. She feels like she’s teetering.
“Well, I suppose we got fond of you,” Jane says. “Adopting isn’t our approach. I always think it’s best for kids to be reunited with their birth families, you know that. Help be a stepping stone, don’t take up the whole pond. After you came to us, the state kept trying to find your other family members for a while, but nothing viable came through—I think we told you this, even though you were a little young for all the details, the death from the war—so in the end, we thought, let’s keep things as is. Why break what was working, you know?”
“So, adoption was never an option?” Lili whispers. “Not even elsewhere? No one else wanted me?”
“Oh, I think we had our own fondness to blame there, too, a little,” Jane admits. “We liked having you around. If we’d ever had a kid, or decided to adopt, we’d have wanted a child like you: so smart, so sweet, so quiet, so considerate.”Quiet,Lili thinks;not one person I know today would call me quiet.“Your social worker agreed—Rebecca, remember her? Lovely girl. I think she actually asked you what you wanted, once the immediate family checks had been run, you’d been with us for about six or seven months by then. And according to her, you said you wanted to stay. So, that was that, on our end. You took to the forests so well, it was good to keep you close to San Francisco, not inject too much change. You were always reading, always taking care of yourself. Very independent.”
“Right,” Lili manages. Never wanting to be a burden—the refrain of her childhood.
“I guess we could have formalized it, but it didn’t seem necessary,” Jane acknowledges. “And we’d been burned in the past, too.”
“Burned?”
“Oh, nothing all that dramatic. But when we first started, we got too attached to each child we fostered—wanted to adopt everyone, wanted to heal the whole world. It’s not really how it works. Financially, too, it’s not sustainable—you get support from the state for fostering, not the same for adoption. You can help more kids. Be a safe space for them to pass through, whether for a few weeks, like most, or years, like you. And you turned out well, look at you: Ivy League, lives in the big city, doing a master’s—you did so well.Kids, dinner’s ready—Ezra, no, go get your sister,”Jane calls out on her end, muffled as if she’s tilting the phone so as not to yell directly into it. “Anyway, I won’t keep you any longer, we’ve got dinner ready here.”
“Oh. Okay.”
