“Are we seeing what we expect to see? The C-shaped embryo? The arms and legs beginning to sprout? What’s the length of it?”
Before addressing my queries, Dr. Kapoor asked Neal to step out and had Naira remove her skirt and underwear. “Let me try a vaginal scan. It gives a clearer image and...”
“Why didn’t we do that in the first place?” I slapped my hands on my pencil-skirt-clad hips.
“Because your husband would want to hear the heartbeat too,” said the doc.
Oh, brother. “Forget him. Let’s not even consider him from now on and let’s just do what’s best for Naira and the kid, okay?” I said. Naira opened her eyes then, and even more tears spilled out. “Stop that. Do you want to give birth to a crybaby?” I said, intending to make her laugh.
The vaginal ultrasound didn’t fare any better. We didn’t hear a heartbeat, but the embryo was C-shaped and about an inch long as expected. Dr. Kapoor asked us to come back in a week to do another ultrasound. Then she patted Naira’s hand and left the room, leaving us to deal with the riot brewing inside our minds.
This was not cool, I thought, as our solemn procession headed home. This was so not cool, Big Man Up There. I was doing this for them. This was not a selfish act. You cannot do this to us.
These days, I met with my therapist no more than three or four times a year, which meant I had a lot of ground to cover, and as such our sessions usually leaked past their prescribed hour.
I’d begun seeing Dr. Louis Barr when I was thirteen years old, after I’d been caught several times—sometimes red-handed, sometimes after the fact—executing various delinquent acts, the mildest of which had been shoplifting. Mostly, the Judge had managed to pay off the victims of my mischief or convince them not to report me to the authorities, and I’d walked away every time. He’d eventually sought outside help to sort me out.
Therapy had worked in that I understood myself better. Not that my issues had magically disappeared. My destructive need to self-annihilate, to disregard and mistrust every opinion except my own had been diluted to the point where I no longer felt that all of humanity was against me, or that I was better off as an island unto myself, rigid and unfeeling as stone. The Judge had been my stalwart champion. He’d believed in me, and for an orphan and a reject, that unshakable belief had been enormous. It had been everything. From then on, I’d never let him down by being anything less than what he’d expected—an upstanding citizen, a civil servant and a sensible individual.
While the Judge had built up my self-worth, Dr. Barr had helped me understand my nature, my triggers, my motivations. He’d already been an old man when I first started seeing him, now he looked ancient. His skin was like creamy paper that had been balled up and smoothed out. His posture was bent, his knobby shoulders poking up to his ears, probably from years of sitting in his high-backed chair, raptly listening to the troubled minds of his patients. But his mind, which was the only thing that mattered to a psychiatrist, was still as keen and sharp as a brand-new shiv. He was a man of few words—well, I supposed he had to be, at least with a patient—but when he did speak, his words usually hit their mark.
“Have you thought about why you’re doing this?”
“I haven’t thought of anything else in months.” I was sprawled on a recliner angled away from him, facing a large picture window that showcased a row of prewar brownstones across the street. I loved this recliner. I’d bought one just like it for the apartment. I loved lounging in my recliner, reading, wondering or simply watching the clouds change shape high up in the sky. Sometimes giants fought battles up there, or horses grazed in meadows or raced across them. Sometimes Neal and I would share the recliner and imagine a whole world up there, our own Elysium.
And sometimes the clouds felt like prison walls I couldn’t escape from. Dr. Barr had taught me a meditative technique to calm myself down when I felt like that.
But today I wasn’t agitated. I was happy, despite the craziness at work and everything else.
“We were in LA over the weekend to attend a fund-raiser benefiting an orphanage in Nepal. Neal’s friends, the Wilsons, were on the committee,” I said abruptly.
My sessions usually went like that. He’d ask a question and I’d answer in my own time, or take the conversation in another direction. Eventually, he’d nudge me back to where he wanted me to go.
I told him about the gala, which I assumed had been a resounding success judging from the sheer number of people I’d seen there. Neal had wanted all of us to go, to take our mind off the disastrous ultrasound. Naira refused to come. She hadn’t wanted to fly until after the next ultrasound.
It had been good for Neal and me to get away. Be alone.
“I didn’t overreact this time when I saw the children.”
I hated it when organizers of such events put the orphans on display to garner sympathy and larger donations. Even RiM made trauma victims turn their guts inside out for the audience. If they had a meltdown on the podium, even better. It was simply how it was done. I used to think it was the most brutal form of exploitation—I still did—but now I also knew that it was the only way to get the funds. Even altruism was all show and not just tell.
“Hmm,” Dr. Barr hummed noncommittally since I hadn’t really answered his question.
I grinned. I would get there, but I had so much else to tell him. “Guess who got offered a job at the US Attorney’s Office?” Then I disgorged everything that had happened since Naira came to town.
“Even Lily thinks I’ve poked a tiger. Can you explain to me what that means? Does she mean Neal? Is he the tiger or is it fate? Oh, and she and I didn’t spend either Thanksgiving or Hanukkah together. How did that even happen?”
I told him about the witches of Macbeth, and their reactions to the surrogacy. “Minnie has grudgingly bestowed her blessing. She’s no longer badgering us. Thank God as we’re seeing the clan in Courchevel in two weeks for the annual ski trip. Seriously, how much bonding time do the Frasers need? Also, they take way too many vacations—just saying. Good thing my boss is so understanding.” Would I get the same freedom at the USAO?
I hashed out the pros and cons of a potential job transfer, including my toe-to-toe competition for the spot with my nemesis. It turned out that Jeff Chang hadn’t exclusively approached me for the position: he’d also asked Jimmy Anderson to consider applying.
“I’m sure Anderson is going to play some nasty games and ingratiate himself with Jeff Chang.” The rat bastard.
“What happens if he gets picked over you?” asked Dr. Barr.
A year ago, the very thought of it would have made me lose my shit. I’d have done everything in my power to come out on top. I wouldn’t have left any stone unturned to leave my competitor in the dust. Now, if I got it, great. And if I didn’t get the job—I shrugged—I loved being an ADA anyway.
“I won’t kill myself to get it,” I said, shocking even myself that such words had come out of my mouth. I wanted to slurp them back immediately. But I didn’t. I left them there, floating in the air, letting them bounce about like the phantom shapes of clouds.
“I’m not giving up. I’m still going to be in the race.” I couldn’t seem to help justifying it. “I’m just not going to get hassled about it.”
Dr. Barr smiled. “You seem content.” He didn’t say “finally,” but I heard it anyway.
Was this contentment that I felt? Whatever it was, I liked it. I decided I liked doing things for other people for a change, giving them what they wanted, with or without an ulterior motive. I was making my husband happy. I was helping my best friend recover.
Please, God, we couldn’t fail at this. We just couldn’t.
“And there’s nothing in it for you?”
I hated when he did that. When he wouldn’t let me leave it simple.
“Of course there is.” I let out a frustrated growl when he continue
d to peer at me under his bushy eyebrows. I could see him from the corner of my eye.
“Fine! I want to be in control of the situation. In control of my marriage, my life.” I’d felt it spiraling out of control, with Neal traveling more and more, going farther and farther away from me. And there had been that frisson between us about children, which would have grown into a chasm eventually. So, I’d found a way to bridge the gap and make us airtight again.
There were things in life you couldn’t control like your birth and your death, like falling in love. But there were things you could control, like the direction your marriage should take, or your career, or the genetics of your baby. And by God, I’d control the shit out of whatever I could control.
“What if it’s me? What if it’s my genes that caused the heartbeat defect? If it’s a defect. I can’t stop thinking about why it would go wrong. I planned everything so carefully. The best blastocysts were used. What more could I have done? I cannot fail in this. I simply cannot.”
My body tightened in preparation for one of Dr. Barr’s flinch-worthy but sage observations that would poke holes in my claims of having control over anything whatsoever. But, all he did was smile at me and wish me, “Happy Holidays.”
That’s right. Easter and Passover were upon us. Where had the months flown?
* * *
It was a miracle I survived the week without killing Neal, whose mood had gone all Darth Vader after LA. Naira wasn’t handling the wait between the ultrasounds any better. She holed up in her apartment and prayed the whole time.
I still hadn’t told them my “good news” about the potential job upgrade. Except Lily, who’d been over the moon because her daughter as an assistant US Attorney was a feather in her cap too. Lily was good friends with the state attorney general—they were patrons of the same Scrabble club and now Lily could gloat about me even more.
Would Neal consider it good news? The new position would certainly increase my work hours if not my caseload. It might also mean that I’d have to travel for work at times.
How had I put myself in a position where my goals were suddenly inconvenient to my life? This was not what I’d envisioned when I’d endorsed the Big Idea. I’d thought my responsibility would end there. But there were doctor’s appointments and prenatal yoga and discussions with midwives and reading up on trimesters and—a whole fakakta of things I had no interest in.
And then there was Naira describing every minute change in her body. Her breasts were bigger and sore. She had morning sickness—which was a good thing because it meant that the pregnancy hormones were elevated. But when I said as much to Naira and Lavinia, I got dirty looks for my trouble. Fine, then, if they wanted to take everything I said negatively, I wouldn’t say anything at all. Let them worry themselves sick. Let them be consumed by guilt and thoughts of failure.
Naira gave me a long hug. “It’s okay to talk about your feelings, Paris. Not just the biology of it.”
I disengaged from the hug in a huff. “Feeling what? I’m not worried. The literature on baby heartbeats says it’s normal not to hear one at six weeks.” So, nothing to worry about.
The day of the follow-up ultrasound, Neal and Naira picked me up from work in the Tesla. I was back at One Hogan Place as my work with the task force was complete. It was up to the chief prosecutors to battle it out in court now.
I got into the car and nearly had a bout of teatime sickness myself. Gasping, I quickly lowered the tropical temperature inside the car to temperate. How bloody hot was it in here?
“Leave it on seventy-five,” said Neal. “It’s cold outside.”
I shot him a gimlet-eyed stare, taking in his checkered shirt and dark jeans. No coat. Since when did he feel cold? He was usually a chugging furnace. I was the one who shivered because he liked the bedroom and car temps to rival Siberia.
“It’s okay. I’m not cold now,” said Naira, and it all fell into place. The pregnant lady was the priority. He was only following my directive.
I raised the temperature again, turned up the chanting music and shrugged out of my peacoat.
This time, the fetus passed the heartbeat test with flying colors. Hadn’t I said not to worry? The clinic’s exam room resounded with the sounds of heavy furniture being tossed—that was what a fetal heartbeat sounded like. Ba-dum-ba-dum, ba-dum-ba-dum.
We were all rejoicing in the symphony, and Neal had bent his head to kiss me, when Dr. Kapoor exclaimed, “Hang on. What’s this? Oh, marvelous. Congratulations, Mommy and Daddy, it seems you’re having twins. We have two hearts beating here.”
Twins were a normal result of an IVF pregnancy since typically multiple embryos were inserted into the womb—with the gestational mother’s permission, of course. Even so, when Dr. Kapoor gave us the news, I’d felt as if a stun gun had hit my spine.
I could. Not. Deal.
I couldn’t go home and listen to Naira cry happy, stunned tears. Neal had teared up at the doctor’s office and continued to shoot me sappy, exultant looks. I didn’t have to go back to work, it was nearly five in the evening. I’d left the office with the understanding that I’d take the rest of the day off. Still, I asked Neal to drop me back to work, and told them not to wait for me for dinner. I’d be very late coming home.
I went into my office and got cracking on three of the cases that the chief ADA had dumped on my desk that morning. I’d argued about it being one too many then, but now I relished swimming in felonies and the bad apples of New York. This was normal. This was what humans were like naturally—greedy, filthy and savage. I understood these humans. I did not understand Neal and Naira or happy tears.
They were both the opposite of me. They were optimistic and courageous and shared their silver spoons so generously. They were clean—and I wasn’t talking about their OCD, but the purity of their hearts. They didn’t have ulterior motives. How had I even become friends with such people? Married one? What was it about me that they liked and admired?
I only hoped they never realized what a complete fraud I was.
chapter eighteen
Naira
I deliberately kept my pregnancy from my family—even my mother—until I crossed over into the second trimester over Memorial Day weekend. I did that because, one, the first trimester was always chancy and anything could happen as I’d previously experienced. And two, I didn’t want to get agitated by my family’s agitation as it could’ve led to point number one. Of course, the second I told my mother, she was on the next flight out with my father.
I surprised even myself by how cool and collected I was when they showed up unannounced at my doorstep. I hadn’t seen my mother in nearly eight months and wasn’t prepared for the explosion of need I felt inside me. I wanted her to take me in her arms, take me back inside the fortress of her womb and keep me and my babies safe.
Other than that, I was as serene as I could be with my father. My calm was another gift from Neal. I didn’t have words to express how wonderful he’d been since...well, since the beginning, even before the pregnancy. If he wasn’t traveling, he was present at every checkup along with Paris. But unlike her, he was curious and cheerful about the whole process and not obsessed with ticking off all the boxes on the pregnancy chart. He called me several times a day, and of late had been working out of his studio so I wouldn’t be alone in Liam’s flat for any length of time, where I was also working hard to put together a trial pop-up show for Fraser Bespoke. His simple support was a nice counterbalance for his wife’s policing and, of late, aloofness—which worried me, I admit—and I was coming to crave Neal’s attention like the strawberry shortcakes I’d started to crave with every meal. If Paris found out I was sneaking and lapping up nonorganic dessert, she was going to jail me for the rest of my confinement.
I’d been expecting the third degree from my parents and they didn’t disappoint, once they were done displaying sufficient horror at m
y increased waistline.
“What have you done, you stupid girl?”
Unbelievably, I didn’t quake or cry or look away from my father’s enraged eyes. That was how Zen I’d become. I told them the same story I’d told Neal and Paris months ago about the Great Embryo, the one my father’s mother had told me a million times. I couldn’t have explained my reasons to be a surrogate any more clearly, not without opening a can of worms I couldn’t—no, I refused to even go near, forget open.
“It’s done,” I said to close the argument before it even began. “I’m pregnant with twins and there’s nothing anyone can do about it now but to accept it.”
“You have ruined yourself and us by this harkat,” my father spat out. He was probably ruing the day he’d agreed to let me come to NYU. Or, even the day I was born.
I didn’t care to please him. Not anymore.
“No more than before.” I thanked my stars I’d fought him when I was eighteen, and fought him eight months ago.
Wasn’t that something? I’d fought my father twice now, and won both times.
“Who will marry you after this?” my mother lamented, still on her trip to find me a husband.
“A good man,” I answered quietly, thinking of Neal and Deven and Juan and all the good men I’d met in my life. My nasty brother-in-law, who my father favored now, didn’t hold a candle to any of them. “A redundant question anyway, Mummy, since I’ve told you I don’t plan to remarry ever.”
I had everything I’d ever wanted in life. Except Kaivan. But, I’d decided I wasn’t going to grieve for him anymore. I wouldn’t do anything that could upset the bairns. No more crying. No despondency or worry. I’d only allow myself to feel all kinds of great and bold things.
* * *
My father washed his hands of me—I’d expected nothing else—and flew home to the daughter who made him proud, and the son-in-law whose character he failed to recognize. But my mother stayed back to make sure I was fine and was keeping good health. She defied my father too, when she wanted to, I thought with a smile.
The Object of Your Affections Page 25