Detour

EIGHT

Hours after Paul had apologized to the police, the concierge, and Galina—in that order—then apologized to Galina again, just to make sure she understood how sorry he was, he lay on the bed with Joanna and wondered aloud if paranoia wasn’t part of the strange new province of parenthood.

“We’re in a foreign country, Paul,” Joanna said, and Paul couldn’t help thinking she was right figuratively as well. “We came into our room and our baby was gone. She didn’t tell us she was taking her. No. ”

In point of fact, Galina had told them that she was taking Joelle. She’d left a note tucked under the cream-colored ashtray in the bathroom—when they got back upstairs, Galina had gone in and retrieved it. Perhaps if they hadn’t been so quick to panic, they would’ve seen it. And known that Joelle had woken up from her nap just two seconds after Paul had closed the door. And that her forehead had felt just a little hot to Galina—not dangerously feverish, no, but a little hot, and that Galina wasn’t the type to take chances. And they would’ve known that among the things they hadn’t brought with them from New York was a thermometer. For which Galina had taken Joelle in search of a pharmacy. To purchase with her own money.

As it turned out, Joelle had a 101-degree temperature. Nothing to worry about with a baby, Galina reassured them, but something that had definitely needed to be checked out.

Galina forgave them, yet he noted an unmistakable glimmer of hurt in those soft gray eyes. Even anger. Something that said even saintly patience has its limits.

THE NEXT DAY PABLO TOOK THEM TO THE U.S. EMBASSY.

When they entered the outer gate, where they were forced to walk through not one, but two metal detectors, they passed a familiar face coming the opposite way.

The bird-watcher. The somnolent man who’d patiently sat for eighteen hours on the plane with them.

“Hello,” he greeted them. He was already wearing the uniform of the bush. A safari shirt with large pleated pockets, khaki knee-length shorts, and thick brown hiking boots.

“Hello,” Paul said.

“Ahh,” he said, repositioning his glasses and staring down at Joelle as if she were a new species of Colombian finch. “Yours?”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “Her name’s Joelle.”

“Well, congrats,” he said.

“Thanks,” Paul said. It was nice to run into someone from back home—even if it was someone he’d known for eighteen hours. “We need to get a little paperwork done so we can take her home. How about you?”

“How about me what?”

“The embassy?”

“Oh, if you want to go into the jungle, you have to sign a release. They don’t want your next of kin complaining they were negligent and didn’t warn you. I think what they really don’t want is anybody suing them.”

“Well, good luck,” Paul said.

“Yeah. You too.”

When they entered the spacious anteroom, they passed under a portrait of a smiling George Bush. It didn’t really sound like an embassy, though, more like a nursery at feeding time. The room was crammed with couples holding, rocking, shushing, and changing a varied array of agitated Colombian babies. If running into the ornithologist was a welcome reminder of home, this was more like an actual homecoming. All the new parents were, of course, American. Joanna and Paul managed to find two seats next to a thirty-something couple from Texas. Paul assumed that they were from Texas because the man was wearing a T-shirt that said God Bless Texas. When the man said howdy, it was more or less confirmed. His wife was holding a baby boy with a noticeable harelip. Paul immediately chided himself, ashamed that his first impression of the boy hadn’t been whether he was big or small or shy or friendly, no—he couldn’t help zeroing in on the boy’s physical imperfection.

He was kind of disappointed in himself. But as he looked around the room, he thought it was possible that he wasn’t the only one doing some comparison shopping. Every parent seemed to be mentally taking notes. Perhaps it was the nature of being handed a ready-made kid.

They were called into a fluorescent-lit room where a dour-looking Colombian woman asked them for Joelle’s birth certificate. Which didn’t, of course, say Joelle on it. Paul hadn’t really known what the birth certificate said, since it was entirely in Spanish. Among the Spanish words was apparently the baby’s name—the one given to her by her birth mother.

“Marti,” the woman said as she scribbled something down.

The biological mother was a complete unknown to them. María Consuelo had offered them information about her, which they’d promptly and politely declined. It was a kind of denial mechanism, they knew, a sophomoric one at that. It went something like this: If they didn’t know about the mother, she wouldn’t really exist. And if she didn’t really exist, it would be easier to believe that Joelle was all theirs.

The woman asked them a few questions. Her manner was polite but aloof. Paul, on the lookout for any antipathy from the natives, was unable to read anything particularly malicious in her line of questioning. Still, he was relieved when the interrogation was over.

“YOUR BABY’S COMPLETELY HEALTHY,” THE DOCTOR SAID.

Their second stop of the day.

Adopted babies needed to undergo a medical exam before they were allowed to leave the country. Pablo had driven them to a pediatrician near the hotel.

Dr. Dalliego was middle-aged, balding, and coolly efficient. He weighed, poked, and prodded Joelle with machinelike detachment as Paul and Joanna stood by with mute anxiety. Was it possible the physician would find something wrong with her? Her modest fever had disappeared this morning as quickly as it had come, but was there something that the orphanage had missed? Something that would necessitate returning her and leaving Colombia empty-handed and brokenhearted?

Occasionally, the nurse would interrupt the doctor with a telephone call, and he’d hand Joelle back to Joanna while he patiently listened to some other baby’s mother or father pour out their fears. He’d calmly utter a few words of Spanish into the receiver, nod in a kind of affirmation of his wisdom, return the phone to the nurse.

Then back to the baby at hand.

After a while Paul grew tired of looking for clues in the doctor’s expression. He decided he’d simply wait for the final verdict.

Which was apparently first-rate. Your baby’s completely healthy, Dr. Dalliego said. She’s fine.

Which was more than you could say for her father.

Paul finally allowed himself to exhale.