Read Online God and Jetfire by Amy Seek - Free Book Online Page B

in college trying to untangle it all. I’d even broken up with Jevn over it, saying I needed to figure out God and to do that I needed to be free of Jevn’s influence. I thought it could be a touchy subject now, but it was important to me; I wanted my child to have space on reserve for such important questions.
    â€œI want them to be Christian,” I told him.
    â€œNot Bible thumpers,” he qualified, by way of agreement.
    Most of the things we wanted we didn’t really have to talk about. They were complicated and nuanced things, but it was basically just us, a little more prepared and about ten years older. We weren’t talking anymore about whether I could do adoption; we were just working hard to find a family we could do it with. Until we found them, the only decision we were making was that the baby was going to be born. There was still time to think about the rest.
    â€œThey should recycle,” I said.
    â€œOf course.”
    *   *   *
    By early February, I had no piles and maybe piles, Jevn-needs-to-look-at and Jevn-likes piles. But they mixed together in my memory and got shuffled around as I stepped over them in my apartment. The letters had much the same structure; in the About Him and About Her sections, couples described themselves in long lists of benign adjectives: romantic, wacky, tender, fun, forgiving, encouraging, likes to laugh, a friend to everyone, a heart of pure gold. They wrote of gratifying careers and told stories of how they met and became best friends. They shared dreams of apple-picking, cooking s’mores over the fire, and driving to the farm for balled and burlapped Christmas trees to be planted in the yard come January. The About Our Home section read like a real estate listing: three bedrooms, two and a half baths, on three acres and a cul-de-sac with a fully fenced-in backyard just waiting for a swing set!
    Photographs were strewn throughout—in Florida swimming with a dolphin, him backlit by the Planet Hollywood sign, her backlit by the Planet Hollywood sign, snowmobiling in Aspen, professional photos with his hand expressively positioned on her stomach, occasionally an idyllic picture of the Eiffel Tower or a beach in the Bahamas, with neither of them in the frame to suggest they were there to see it. Several couples shared their photos of the Magic Kingdom, all taken from approximately the same location. There were photographs shot in a single day by the kind of photographer who directs you to rotate your head on your neck in exceptional ways, who’d arranged the couple in various still lifes: beaming between the forked branches of a tree, sitting on rocks beside a small waterfall, donning different-colored raincoats and, inexplicably, sunglasses.
    There were zany photos of her, standing on her head in the living room ( Mindy has flipped! ); him leaning proudly against the hood of his stock car ( Vrrrrroom!) . Photographs had been cut out with pinking shears and surrounded with glittery stickers hand-stuck to the page. Captions were often handwritten with arbitrary capitalization, framed by thought bubbles, and more often than not terminated with exclamation points: Birthday time is Fun time! Margins featured baby rattles, stacked blocks, and teddy bears. In one case, an actual rattle was attached to the letter’s cover, securing its position at the top of the pile. Sometimes there were appendices, with letters of recommendation from mothers and fathers and good friends and siblings of the hopeful couple, vouching for their “constant, effortless, and plentiful smiles. What sweeter emotions could a child be given?”
    I was escorted in a jolly promenade through happy homes and histories, through a world rendered elementary, where quotation marks designated common phrases and important words were written in all caps. Todd likes to “kid around,” loves “TOOLS” and is quite handy around the house! Where