I didn’t ever have much desire to see Unfaithful, truth be told. Mostly because I find Olivier Martinez utterly repellent, so the idea of ever seeing him nekkid was enough to send me scrambling for the remote whenever the movie makes its rounds on Encore. Still, one night, suffering from insomnia and stuck with the choice of infomercials, grating 1950’s TV variety shows, or Unfaithful, I managed to get through it. If you haven’t caught this one, its basic story is that Diane Lane’s character, a happily married suburbanite, has a chance encounter with an (allegedly) attractive stranger (the unctuous Martinez) in Manhattan that quickly turns into a passionate affair. Her husband, played by Richard Gere, just as quickly catches on and goes to confront the man banging his wife all over Manhattan. A scuffle ensues, and Martinez’s character ends up dead. Later, the couple confronts one another after police begin arriving at their home quite regularly once the body shows up in a local landfill. They waver back and forth over what to do, and the movie ends (sort of) with them parked outside a police station, presumably so Gere can turn himself in. It’s generally a forgettable movie, actually. Lane’s character is insipid and about as clever as a can of tuna fish. The love sex scenes were more creepy than anything, even if I discounted my bias against Martinez. Gere comes across as oddly bland even during the confrontation with his wife’s lover. Let’s just say Unfaithful is never going to end up in my personal DVD library.
However, there was one memorable scene for me. Just before the credits rolled, a dreamlike sequence showed Lane’s character not following the (allegedly) attractive stranger to his apartment after their chance encounter, but instead, waving him off as she hops into another waiting taxi, which pulls away from the temptation and steers her back to her happy and comfortable life. I think it was the character’s longing to go back in time and just make the other decision to drive away.
A single decision on her part, then, drastically altered the course of her life, the stranger’s life, and her husband and child’s life.
I always think of myself when I imagine that scene.
Not because I’m having an affair, of course.
I think of myself because if I had done things differently just one little bit fifteen years ago, my daughter would be with me. Instead, I bought into the idea that adoption was the answer. For her, for me, for everyone.
My daughter. The baby who grew in my belly. Who kicked and flipped so hard that she woke me very often. Born screaming with rage, red-faced with fury at having to enter the world. But who quieted when she saw me and reached out her hand to put it on my face.
“I know you,” she was feeling, perhaps.
And I? I gave her away.
Nothing I say or do or reason to myself or others can erase that. At the end of the day, you can call it whatever you like; but that’s what it boils down to. I can pretty it up and say I made a plan, I can say I didn’t know, I can say I was poor and young and in a bad relationship. I can say I was scared. Those things are all true.
It doesn’t matter, though. She was depending on me; she didn’t have any choices. I doubt being placed in another family would have been at the top of her list if she’d been able to articulate it. I should have picked myself up, dusted myself off, and been her mother. I should have fought for her. I should have done what I had to do. I should never have signed those awful papers. There was no family “waiting” for her; I cannot claim a couple pressured me, cried tears over me, sent me presents or crowded me in the delivery room.
There was no real coercion, but there was a sort of blindness to all that wasn’t positive in adoption. A woman I worked with, a supervisor actually, who had shown little or no interest in me at all prior to the adoption, suddenly had nothing but praise for me after she found out. She told me I had been an angel to people who couldn’t have children on their own. I remember clinging to that notion with everything I had: look at the good thing I’d done! I’d made this couple so happy! My Their daughter had the best of everything! I was a good, unselfish, compliant, quiet birth mother, a staunch cheerleader in support of adoption.
It seems highly likely that I brainwashed myself, I bought into every myth so eagerly. I had to believe that adoption was always best, always, always. Because what was the alternative? Owning up to the idea that I gave my child to someone else. Strangers.
In the dark night of my soul, I am constantly stuck in that hospital room, with the weak fall sun tilting in onto the cold white linoleum as I sat there alone. I can never go back and undo that morning. I can never march up to the nurses’ station and demand my baby. I play different scenarios over and over, thinking about what could have been, but the truth is always the same.
Whether I’m sorry or not, whether I meant to hurt her or not, whether she’s perfectly fine or not, whether my intentions were good and I couldn’t have known…I did it. This is part of adoption. For me, for her, for my son, for any future children I have, for the children she has in the future. Even in the best of circumstances there is pain. Loss. Regret. It never goes away. It can only be lived with.
My single choice changed it all. That is our reality.
