Mixed Blessings

by Danielle Steel

  Pilar talked to them for a while, and told them she would be happy to work on it if they wanted her to. She could research precedents throughout the state, and let them know. But they said they’d like her to wait and they’d call her. They wanted to think it over first. But when they left the office, Pilar knew they wouldn’t be calling her again. They were looking for someone to promise them the moon, and she just wouldn’t do it. After they left, she sat thinking about them for a few minutes. The Robinsons had seemed so lost and so desperate, and so hungry for their unknown baby. They had never even laid eyes on her since her birth, and yet to them she was Jeanne Marie, someone they thought they knew and loved. It seemed odd to Pilar, but she was still sorry she couldn’t help them. The case intrigued her and she was staring pensively out the window when her associate, Alice Jackson, poked her head in her office door with a grin, and then an intrigued expression.

  “Uh oh, counselor … looks like a tough one. I haven’t seen you look like that since the P.D.’s office, whenever you got a defendant charged with murder one. Who did this one kill?”

  “No one.” Pilar smiled at the memory of their days as public defenders. Their other partner, Bruce Hemmings, had worked at the public defender’s office too. He and Alice had gotten married years before, and they had two children. Pilar and Alice had always been good friends, although Pilar didn’t confide in her as extensively as she did in Marina. But for the past ten years she had been wonderful to work with. “This isn’t a murder beef,” Pilar said with a pensive smile, beckoning her to come in and sit down. “It’s just so damn strange.” She briefly explained the case to her as Alice shook her head in wonder.

  “Don’t even try to make new law on this. I can tell you right now, the best you’ll get from any judge is visitation. Don’t you remember? Ted Murphy had a case like this last year, the surrogate refused to turn over the child at the last minute. It went all the way to the State Supreme Court, and the father still only got technical joint custody, the mother got physical, and he got visitation.”

  “I remember it, but these people were so …” She hated to say it, but they had been pathetic.

  “The only case I’ve read about where the judge wasn’t sympathetic to the surrogate was when she was implanted with a donor egg from the potentially adopting mother. In that case, I can’t remember where it was, but I could look it up for you,” she said seriously, “the judge ruled that there was no blood relation to the surrogate, that the sperm and the egg were donated by the adopting parents. And she gave the kid to them. But in this case, you don’t have those circumstances going for you, and the guy was a real fool to make a deal with a minor.”

  “I know. But sometimes people do crazy stuff when they’re desperate to have kids.”

  “Tell me about it.” Alice sat back in the chair and groaned. “For two years I took hormones that I thought were going to kill me, They made me so damn sick, I felt like I was having chemotherapy instead of hormones to have a baby.” Then she smiled up at her associate, looking young as she shrugged her shoulders. “But I got two great kids out of it, so I guess it was worth it.” And the Robinsons had gotten nothing. A baby they pretended to call Jeanne Marie, whom they had never seen, and maybe never would.

  “Why do people go to those lengths, Ali? Sometimes you can’t help but wonder. I know, your boys are great … but if you hadn’t had kids, would that have been so awful?”

  “Yeah”—she said softly—“to me … and to Bruce too. We knew we wanted a family.” She threw a leg over the arm of the chair as she looked earnestly at her longtime friend. “Most people aren’t as brave as you are,” Alice said quietly. She had always admired Pilar for her certainty and her convictions.

  “I’m not brave … How can you say a thing like that?”

  “Yes, you are. You knew you didn’t want kids, so you built your life in a way that worked for you, and you never had them. Most people would be too afraid that that wasn’t the ‘right’ thing to do, so they’d have them anyway, and secretly hate them. You have no idea how many mothers I meet at boy scouts, at karate classes, at school, who really don’t like their kids and never should have had them.”

  “My parents were like that. I guess that’s what’s always made me so sure. I never wanted a child of mine to go through what I did. I always felt like an outsider, an intruder, a terrible imposition on two people who had more important things to do than talk to a little girl, or maybe even love her.” It was heavy stuff, but she had talked about it before. It wasn’t a startling revelation, but it saddened Alice anyway. And it made her sad, too, to know that Pilar had intentionally deprived herself of children, which Alice felt was one of the few things in life that really mattered.

  “You’d never have been that kind of parent, Pilar. Maybe now that you’ve married Brad, you should rethink your options.”

  “Oh, please … at my age?” Pilar looked amused. Why was everyone so anxious to know if she and Brad were going to have a baby?

  “The world of hormones could be yours too,” Alice teased as she stood up and looked across the desk at her. They were good friends, and both women knew that they always would be. “Actually, with your luck, you’d probably get pregnant the first time you tried. And don’t give me that shit about ‘age.’ You’re only forty-two. I’m not impressed, Grandma Coleman.”

  “Thanks. But I think I’ll spare myself that little headache anyway. Poor Brad … he’d be stunned … and so would I.” She grinned at her law partner and stood up as she glanced at her watch. She had a lunch date with her stepdaughter, and she was going to be late if she didn’t hurry.

  “Do you want me to do some digging about surrogates?” Alice was always a good sport about doing research. “I’ve got some time this afternoon and tomorrow morning.”

  “Thanks, but I wouldn’t spend the time on it. I don’t think they’ll call back. I’m not even sure they’re going to press for visitation. I think they want the whole shot or nothing. I could be wrong, but I think they’re going to find someone cheaper than we are who’ll promise them the moon, and wind up offering them visitation, if they’re lucky.”

  “Okay. Let me know if they call.”

  “I will … and thanks for the offer.” The two women exchanged a smile, and Alice went back to her own office across the hall. She was less busy than Pilar, less intense, less inclined to do litigation. She liked the interesting cases that involved unusual points of law. If she had been a doctor, she would have done research. And she only worked part time now. She stayed home two days a week with her kids, which didn’t bother Pilar. They had their own styles, and Bruce did more than his share of work. He liked the civil suits, the corporate cases that went to court. He loved dealing with the institutions, and Pilar loved the people. They were a good team, and on really tough cases they often conferred, and when necessary they hired on assistants. It was exactly the way Pilar had always wanted to practice law. She felt capable and independent and free to choose the cases she wanted to take on, and she liked the people she practiced law with. She liked Brad’s associates on the bench too. They had an interesting circle of friends, even though once in a while she complained that they never saw anyone except judges and lawyers. But the truth was, she loved it.

  Pilar couldn’t imagine a life without work, or the law. As she drove downtown to meet Nancy, she found herself wondering, as she always did, how her stepdaughter could stand an idle life, without working. She hadn’t had a job since she’d gotten married the year before, and Pilar thought she should. But Brad insisted that his children had to lead their own lives, and Pilar did her best not to interfere, or contradict him. But it wasn’t always easy. She had her own opinions too. Her own list of things she believed in, and work was high on that list. But apparently not on Nancy’s.

  When Pilar got to the Paradise, she was ten minutes late, and Nancy was already waiting for her, wearing a dark knit dress and boots and a red coat, her long blond hair brushed back and held with
a velvet ribbon. And as usual, she looked very pretty.

  “Hi, darling. You look great!” Pilar swept into her seat, glanced at the menu, ordered as soon as the waiter came, and turned her attention to Nancy. She had the vague feeling that something was bothering her, but she didn’t want to pry, and she decided to wait and see what surfaced during lunch. But she was in no way prepared for Nancy’s news, which didn’t come until dessert, which was a large piece of chocolate decadence with whipped cream and chocolate sauce. Pilar was impressed by her choice when she ordered, and even more so when she saw it. Nancy was certainly in good health and eating well, but at least it didn’t show, she was as thin as ever.

  “I’ve got something to tell you.” Nancy grinned as she ate great goopy forkfuls of the cake and whipped cream while Pilar watched her.

  “I’ve got something to tell you too. If you eat enough desserts like that, you’re going to weigh three hundred pounds by Christmas.” She was mildly horrified but amused, too; in some ways Nancy was still such a little girl. And she looked like one as she grinned impishly at Pilar and devoured another huge glob of cake and whipped cream, and then another.

  “I’m going to get fat anyway,” she said wickedly as Pilar sipped her coffee.

  “Oh, yeah? How come? Too many bonbons and TV? I keep telling you, even though your father says I should mind my own business, that you should go to work. Do something … even charity work … get out of the house … get busy …”

  “I’m having a baby,” Nancy interrupted softly, smiling at her stepmother victoriously. It was like a great mystery she had solved, or a secret that only she had, as Pilar watched her in amazement.

  “You are?” Pilar hadn’t even thought of that. She was such a baby herself that she didn’t seem ready for a child of her own, and yet she was twenty-six, the same age Pilar had been when she met Bradford, sixteen years before, almost half a lifetime. “You’re pregnant?” Why did that seem so incredible to her? she wondered afterward. But it did. It seemed absurd. And impossible to imagine.

  “The baby’s due in June. We wanted to be sure everything was okay before I told you. I’m three months pregnant.”

  “Wow!” Pilar sat back and stared at her. “I’m speechless.” Babies were so much not a part of her life that she never even thought about them, or she hadn’t, until that morning. “Are you happy, sweetheart?” Or scared? Or mad? What did one feel? What was it like? She couldn’t even imagine it, and had never wanted to. She had never been able to understand that particular craving. If anything, her earnest desire had been not to have them.

  “I’m very happy, and Tommy’s been just terrific.” Her husband was twenty-eight years old, and working at IBM. He had a good job, and he would probably be a very good father, but to Pilar and Brad, they always seemed like such children. In some ways, even Todd, her younger brother, always seemed more mature than they did. “It’s really wonderful. Except in the beginning I was sick, but now I’m fine,” she said simply, polishing off the last of the chocolate decadence as Pilar watched her in fascination.

  “Would you like another one?” Pilar said in jest, and Nancy nodded in answer.

  “Sure.”

  “Nancy Coleman, don’t you dare! You’ll weigh two hundred pounds by the time you have the baby.”

  “I can hardly wait.” The younger woman grinned, and Pilar laughed as she reached for the check, and then leaned over to kiss her.

  “Good for you, sweetheart. I’m happy for you both. Your dad is certainly going to be impressed. This is his first grandchild.”

  “I know. We thought we’d come by and tell him on the weekend. Don’t say anything to him till then, okay?”

  “Of course not. I wouldn’t spoil the surprise.” But it struck her odd that the little girl who had once so vehemently objected to her now told her her most intimate secrets. There was some kind of symmetry in that, or irony at least. They had indeed come full circle.

  They left each other outside the restaurant, and Pilar went back to her office after that, grinning to herself. People wanted to know if she and Brad wanted kids, and instead they were having a grandchild. Eventually, she forgot about Nancy’s news and concentrated on her work.

  It was a long, tiring day, and she was relieved when Brad picked her up and offered to take her out to dinner. She left her car in the garage, and she was grateful not to have to go home and cook. They had a quiet dinner at Louie’s Restaurant instead, and he was in an excellent mood as he ordered their dinner.

  “What happened to you today?” she inquired with a wry smile, as she sat back in her seat and began to unwind. It had been an odd day for her, filled with hard work, endless demands on the part of her clients, some strange moments, and some unfamiliar feelings. She still couldn’t get over Nancy’s news, or the prospect of her baby.

  “I ended the longest case in recent history today, and I could dance, I’m so relieved.” He had had a case in his courtroom that had gone on for two months, and it was tedious and sometimes incredibly boring.

  “What happened?”

  “The jury acquitted the defendant, and I think they were right.”

  “He must be a happy man tonight.” It brought back memories of her clients when she was a public defender.

  “I am a happy man too.” Brad smiled at her, looking immensely relieved. “No homework. What about you? Looks like today was a long one.”

  “It was. Long and strange. I had some people in my office this morning about a surrogate mother/adoption case. The husband foolishly paid a minor to bear his child, and ultimately she refused to give up the baby. The state brought criminal proceedings against him because of her age, eventually dropped them, but they won’t even let him see the child. They were a strange pair, there was a sad kind of quiet desperation about them, an unreasoning attachment to the child, whom they’ve never even seen, but call ‘Jeanne Marie.’ It was so weird and so depressing. I thought about them all day, and I really don’t think anybody’s going to be able to do much for them. Maybe some visitation rights eventually, but not much more than that, unless the birth mother abuses the child. I don’t know … it’s hard to imagine what they’re feeling. They were so desperate to have that baby. They tried everything they could for years to have a child, then tried all the adoption agencies, and finally this … It’s just a damn shame he went to a minor to do it”

  “He probably would have had problems anyway. You know how those things turn out. Look at Baby M, and I can cite you a dozen other cases like it. I don’t think surrogates are the answer.”

  “For some people, maybe they are.”

  “Why? Why not just adopt?” He loved talking to her, arguing with her, exploring ideas, and discussing cases. They were always supremely discreet, but discussing their work like that always reminded him of their years as opponents in the courtroom, and what a fine adversary she had been. Sometimes he really missed it.

  “Some people can’t adopt. They’re too poor, too old, whatever. And you can’t find babies that easily. Besides, these people really seemed to care that it was his baby. The woman almost apologized to me that it was her fault they couldn’t have kids.” It had been so odd watching her, and so pathetic. Everything about her seemed to reek of sorrow and failure.

  “You think you’ll hear from them again?”

  “No, I don’t. I told them what I thought about the case, and I don’t think they liked it. I told them it would probably take a long time, and that there was probably very little I could do anyway. I didn’t want to give them false hope, which would have been cruel.”

  “That’s my baby, sock it to ’em.” He laughed as they finished their first course, and she denied it, But he liked the fact that she was always honest.

  “I had to be straight with them,” she explained, knowing she didn’t really have to explain. He knew her so well. “They wanted that baby so badly. Sometimes that’s hard to understand.” It was hard to understand a lot of things, even Nancy’s obvious and tot
al pleasure about her baby. Pilar could see it, but she couldn’t imagine feeling it. And as she had watched her, she had felt like a stranger looking into a brightly lit window. She liked what she saw on the other side, but she hadn’t the vaguest idea how to get there, or if she even belonged there. All those feelings of pleasure about a child were totally foreign to her.

  “What are you looking so pensive about?” He was watching her and she smiled, as he reached out and took her hand across the table.

  “I don’t know … maybe I’m getting old and philosophical … sometimes I think I’m changing, and that scares me a little.”

  “It must be the shock of getting married,” he teased. “It’s changed me too. I feel about fifty years younger.” He had just turned sixty-two, and he was still the envy of the courthouse. But he grew serious as he looked at her. “What makes you think you’re changing?”

  “I don’t know.” She couldn’t tell him about Nancy’s baby until Nancy told him herself. “I had lunch with a friend. She’s pregnant, and she was so excited, she was like a little kid herself.”

  “First child?” She nodded. “That is exciting,” he went on, “but babies always are, even if you have ten of them, there always seems to be room for one more. And even if you’re less than thrilled when you find out, it’s always exciting when they come. Who was the friend?”

  “Oh, someone who worked for us at the office. Maybe it was just that I saw her after those people who’d lost the child to the surrogate. They all seem so sure, so anxious for a child … How do they know they want a baby that much? How do they know they’ll even like him when he grows up, or want to be friends with him? My God, Brad, it’s a lifetime commitment, with no reprieve. How do people do it?”

  “Just nature, I guess. You can’t ask too many questions. Maybe it’s easier for you that you escaped it.” In all the years he’d known her, she had never longed for a child, and he didn’t mind, he had his own. They had their work, their lives, his children when they saw them now. They had interests, activities, friends, they traveled to L.A. and New York, and Europe whenever they had time. It would have been more difficult if they had a child, not impossible, but harder to arrange. But he knew that Pilar had no yearnings at all in that direction.