Bringing in Finn by Sara Connell Page B

spoke. My father’s head faced forward, eyes fixed on the road. My mother, too, had remained looking straight ahead in the front seat during my report. I don’t think I could have had the conversation had we all been looking at each other, or outside a moving vehicle. I was holding my breath. I watched the back of my mother’s head for signs of combustion, but she was as alive as she’d been ten minutes ago before I’d started speaking, her hair puffy from the humidity, her neck that had the same slope as mine. I could hear the tires roll on the road, the whir
of the engine. The blowing sound of the air conditioner. When they finally spoke, they didn’t say much. My mother said she wished it hadn’t happened.
    â€œHow can you forgive something like that?” she asked, keeping her head locked forward, looking at the highway.
    â€œThey were probably abused, too,” I said, sharing one of the insights I had come to in my forgiveness work.
    â€œNot them,” she said, still not moving her head. “Us.”
    Having the conversation was what I had wanted. I saw no need for further forgiveness. The moment she’d spoken, I’d melted into the seat. I’d spoken of these events, and she hadn’t died. Neither of us had.
    I felt elated afterward, struck by the lightness that accompanied my confession. My mother had stayed with me; neither parent had said it was my fault. What I did not anticipate was that the acknowledgment they gifted me with was, for a time, a one-time thing. I didn’t know how strange it would feel afterward when, for a period of several years, any reference I made to the abuse would be greeted with silence, as if the conversation in the car had not taken place, my words falling like snow.
    After the experience, I’d moved closer, calling more regularly, sharing more of Bill and my life in the UK. But I’d kept a buffer of space, not venturing too close, proceeding cautiously in reconnecting.
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    Bill and I arrived at the Reproductive Medicine Institute (RMI), Dr. Colaum’s practice, at 10:01 AM. The office was located in a small, grid-shaped brick building on Ridge Road that looked like it had been built in the ’70s. The lobby was small and unremarkable. The air was stuffy and hot. June had descended upon Chicago with a burst of heat that seemed to have been saved underground all winter and was now being released in a long, ferocious exhale.

    The air conditioner, if there was one, appeared to be broken. While we waited for the elevator, I fanned my face with the folder of information the office had sent in advance of our appointment. We rode to the second floor and walked down a short hall to suite 205. The waiting room was cool and serene, with low lighting and furniture from the federalist period. Whoever had decorated had done so with care, and with a love of Frank Lloyd Wright, apparently; framed works of his art and architecture hung on the cream-colored walls.
    We were the only people in the waiting room when we arrived. I signed in with a receptionist, a heavier-set woman who introduced herself as Lorelai. Bill picked up a brochure from the table. “Did you know this?” he whispered, pointing at the bio page for Dr. Colaum.
    Dr. Colaum’s brochure photo revealed a grandmotherly woman, perhaps in her early seventies, with gray-blond hair wrapped into a bun. Bill was pointing at the copy under the photo. “Dr. Carolyn Colaum, MD, is the mother of ten children.” The brochure went on to detail an impressive career as a researcher and clinician of reproductive endocrinology.
    â€œDo you think they’re all hers, biologically?” Bill said, our heads leaning over the brochure.
    â€œThey are,” Lorelai interjected from across the room. “She conceived and delivered each one naturally, too. It was before the days of IVF.”
    â€œThat’s pretty amazing,” Bill said.
    â€œI like the