Her Daughter's Mother

by Daniela Petrova

  Not me. I would walk in, take a seat at the bar, and pick my guy. One drink, two max, then we’d go to his place. No games, no pretense, and, most important, no strings.

  Josh was looking at me intently, his head tilted. “You’re not worried about going to a stranger’s house?” he asked. “I mean—”

  “Oh, I know what you mean. I’m a girl. That worry is ingrained in my bones. But I have bigger fears.” I saw Josh open his mouth to ask about it, and I rushed to stop him. “Don’t you worry. I carry Mace just in case.”

  He frowned, clearly unimpressed, but I ignored him. “Anyway, guys are so funny,” I said. “The look on their faces when I tell them that if they want us to hook up again that’s great, but I’m not going to waste my time on dinners.”

  Josh stirred on his chair. “You find dinners a waste of time?”

  “I can eat dinner with friends. Or while I’m studying. Why pretend? Let’s just get straight to the point.”

  “You don’t want to spend time with—”

  “God, no! I don’t believe in the whole romance bullshit. Love is an elaborate excuse to have sex.”

  He chuckled. “How come?”

  I shrugged. “Sexual desire is considered too base or something. Especially for a woman. But if you are in love, oh well, then you can—”

  “What I mean is,” he said, interrupting me, “how come you don’t believe in romance?”

  “It’s like asking me how come I don’t believe in illness. No, thanks. I don’t want my heart broken.”

  “Falling in love means getting your heart broken?”

  “There is no ‘happily ever after.’ I haven’t seen it anyway. Have you?”

  He scribbled in his pad, then looked up at me. “Tell me more.”

  I hated it when he did that. Sometimes, there just wasn’t anything more to say. I told him so, but he gave me one of those eyebrows-raised looks as if to say: This is not one of those times and I’m not that stupid, so go on and tell me more about it.

  I smiled. I liked men who didn’t let me get away with shit. Josh got extra points for being subtle about it. And playful.

  “Take my parents,” I said. “My mother broke my father’s heart. Literally. He died of a heart attack at thirty-eight. Thirty-eight. I was five. By the time I turned six, my mother had remarried and had another child with her new husband. You do the math,” I said, the familiar anger rising up in my throat.

  “I didn’t know you have a half . . . sister or brother?”

  I stared at Josh as it hit me that I’d let out more than I’d wanted to. “Had,” I said quietly. “Alex, my baby brother, died when he was three.”

  Josh bit his lip. “I’m sorry.”

  “The point is,” I went on before he could ask more about Alex, “my mother had been cheating on my dad for months. I didn’t know better back then. I thought it was my fault. My father’s heart attack, I mean. I thought I’d upset him because I hadn’t been good or something. I always got in trouble for breaking things, getting my shirt dirty, sneaking an extra cookie—you know, kid stuff. My mother made a point of telling him all the trouble I’d gotten into each day when he got home from work. He would laugh in response and pick me up and whisper in my ear not to worry, that I was Daddy’s girl no matter what.”

  I put my face in my hands, my elbows pressing against my knees. “Sure, he had a heart condition,” I continued after a while. “My mother told me all about it. But what a coincidence, right? He finds out his wife’s cheating on him and, bam, his heart condition kicks in that very evening.” Josh opened his mouth to ask a question, but I raised my hand to stop him. “Years later, my aunt told me that my father had actually caught them together that day.”

  I closed my eyes and leaned back against the couch. “So there you have it. And it’s not just my parents. I see it all around me on campus. People hurting each other. It’s endless. No, thank you. Not for me.”

  * * *

  I barely recognized him when he walked out, the hood of his jacket pulled low over his face. He headed across campus toward the Broadway exit, looking at his feet as he went around the puddles, keeping a brisk pace. The rain had stopped but strong cold winds whipped through the branches of the trees. I stepped out of the building’s shadow. “Josh.”

  He stopped and turned. “Katya?” His expression went from surprise to excitement, but he quickly collected himself and put on a concerned face. “What are you doing here?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  He cocked his head. “Has anything happened since I saw you?” I’d been his second-to-last patient.

  “Not exactly.”

  “What’s the matter, then?”

  I smiled and pulled up the collar of my jacket. “How about we grab a drink? It’s really cold out here.”

  In the yellow glow of the campus lights, I could see the temptation that washed over his face. He shook his head but he couldn’t hide the struggle. It came through in his voice when he finally said, “You know the rules.” It was as if he were speaking to himself.

  I batted my eyelashes exaggeratedly. “Please. Just this time.”

  He shook his head again. His lips were pursed with the effort. “If you need to talk,” he said, “come in tomorrow during office hours.”

  “But this can’t wait until tomorrow.” I considered touching his arm but worried it was only going to scare him off. “I’m feeling like shit,” I said. “We ended at the wrong place today. Our conversation only made me feel worse.”

  I saw the distress in his eyes and pressed on. “I haven’t slept for days, Josh. I can’t spend another night . . .” I let my voice trail off as I looked at him, teary-eyed.

  He was nodding, thinking, the concern loud on his face.

  I bit my lip. “I don’t know what I might do . . .”

  “In that case,” he said, and held out his phone, “I’ll call the emergency room.”

  “Oh, no, no.” I pulled back. “I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to talk to you.”

  “You leave me no choice.” The phone lit up in his hand as he unlocked it and started punching in numbers. “I have to report any cases—”

  “You don’t understand!” My voice rose with alarm as I realized I’d taken this bluff too far. “I just meant . . . It’s my last year and I’m starting to panic that I have to return to Bulgaria. The thought of facing my mother—”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Katya, but we can talk about it at length tomorrow in my office. Good night.” And he walked off. Just like that, he walked off on me. The bastard.

  I stood there, in the middle of the walkway, glaring at his back until he vanished around the corner. Students hurried past me on their way to the library or the dorms, huddled in jackets and hoodies. The wind blew my hair. My hands and ears felt raw with cold, but I was too pissed to care.

  I was the wrong girl to turn down. Josh would pay for it. Sooner or later.

  10.

  LANA

  NOW

  We met at a tiny restaurant on the Lower East Side not far from the club. The place was loud and crowded and served weird paleo fare, including a bone marrow dish that Katya ordered. To my horror, it was served on the bone. She insisted that I try it, scooping up some of the slimy stuff in her spoon. I gagged just looking at it, which she found hysterical. Katya seemed to be in a great mood, prattling about Bulgarian food and music—the two things she apparently missed from home. But I felt uneasy. I picked through my roasted chicken over a bed of spinach, thinking: What the hell am I doing?

  “Before we go,” Katya said at the end of the meal, “let’s come up with fake names and jobs.”

  “What?”

  “Just in case someone decides to stalk us.” She gave me a sideways look.

  I gripped the table. Could she know who I was?

  Katya mu
st have seen my discomfort, because she laughed and said: “Don’t worry. Nobody is going to stalk us. I’m just kidding. But don’t you hate it when people ask you all the time what you do? It’s like a part of greeting someone. Hi, I’m So-and-So. What d’you do?”

  I shrugged. The only parties I’d been to in the last few years were with Tyler’s or my colleagues, hardly ever any new faces to ask that question.

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll be Natalia, then. It’s my mother’s name, easy to remember. And I’ll be a teacher.”

  “Boring.” Katya looked at me, eyebrows pulling together. “Think of something absurd. That’s the whole point. To rub in how stupid the damn question is. I love saying that I’m a gold digger.”

  “A gold digger? How’s that a job?”

  “Exactly. People totally freak out. Men eventually get it and start laughing. ‘Funny one,’ they say. Women tend to get angry with me. They feel threatened or something.” Katya smiled at me. “That’s why I like you. Maybe because you’re Bulgarian—okay, your mother is—but I don’t get that catty vibe from you.”

  I could see how women her age would hate her. Between her looks and her blunt manner, they must find her insufferable.

  “So if I’m Irina, the gold digger,” Katya said, playing with the pen she’d used to sign her credit card slip, “you’re Natalia, the . . . ?”

  I tried to think but my brain was still trying to catch up with the exercise.

  “C’mon. The most absurd thing that pops into your head.”

  I looked out the window and my eyes focused on the tall glass-façade building punctuating the skyline to the west. “How about a window cleaner? You know, the ones who rappel outside skyscrapers?”

  “Perfect,” she said, and put the pen down. “You can add that you have a fear of heights. But you avoid looking down.”

  We laughed. I hadn’t laughed like that in years.

  * * *

  Walking around the Lower East Side with Katya made me feel as if I were the foreigner and she the local. I hadn’t been to this part of town in a couple of years and had missed the transformation it had undergone. Trendy clubs, bars, and restaurants lined the small streets packed with young people. New residential buildings had sprouted everywhere, replacing the old walk-ups. I wondered if most people over thirty-five eventually stopped going out and retreated into their small worlds or if it was just me, caught in the whirlwind of infertility.

  You wouldn’t have known there was a club behind the red metal door if it weren’t for the line of people waiting to enter. Inside, the action was spread over two floors. Upstairs, people danced to a Gypsypunk band that Katya told me was Bulgarian. Downstairs, there was a DJ. The most popular attraction was the ice chamber where people donned what looked like Soviet uniforms to get smashed on vodka shots. Or maybe the outfits were Bulgarian. I’d only been to the country once. My mother had taken me there soon after the fall of Communism. The streets looked grim; the buildings, gravely dilapidated; the people, miserable. But in Sofia’s pubs and bars, people drank and danced like they had not a worry in the world. I felt the same exuberant vibe in Mehanata. The only thing missing was the thick cloud of cigarette smoke.

  Mehanata was clearly popular with the cool crowd. Unsure what anyone wore these days to clubs, I had put my jeans aside in favor of black slacks and a gray-blue sleeveless silk shirt. But next to all these girls decked out in short, sparkly dresses, I felt dull and ugly. I fought the urge to bolt. What was I thinking going clubbing with Katya? I didn’t belong in this trendy place full of beautiful young people.

  Katya managed to look glamorous in a plain red spaghetti-strap top and skinny jeans. It was something about the way she carried herself, the way she walked with her back straight, her eyes—green and sparkling—sweeping the room like she owned it. And she did. I watched the other girls give her dirty looks and, for the first time, appreciated my age. It was much easier to have fun when you weren’t competing for the attention of men. My ego didn’t take a hit when the young men who joined us ignored me, focusing entirely on Katya. I could pull back and watch, even laugh at, the mating game that unfolded, like an anthropologist witnessing the interactions of an exotic species.

  From what I could tell, dancing these days consisted of jumping or endless grinding, hips locked onto hips. Just in case it wasn’t sexual enough, there were three dance poles downstairs and women weren’t shy about using them. The music blasted, so any meaningful conversation was out of the question. The swings at the bar upstairs—simple wooden planks hanging on ropes from the ceiling—were my favorite feature. Katya and I managed to claim one and she snapped a selfie of us. The swings apparently weren’t the only creative design element in the place. According to Katya, the urinals in the men’s room were made of red ceramic and looked like open mouths. The sink was a matching red statue of a naked woman bending down with the bowl sitting on top of her lower back so that you had to stand behind her to wash your hands. I wondered how Katya knew what was in the men’s room but had no chance to ask her because a group of three guys approached us and asked what we would like to drink. I didn’t see Katya alone again for the rest of the night.

  We tried our fake names and jobs on two guys from New Jersey. They laughed heartily while Katya and I exchanged conspiratorial looks. “Are you sisters?” one of them asked. It was the greatest compliment I’d ever received. Before I could shake my head, Katya said, “Yes, of course,” and winked at me. She went on to explain that I’d lost my accent because I’d been in the country five years longer than her.

  I couldn’t believe how much fun I was having with a girl who was seventeen years my junior. I barely knew her, but I felt an almost familial affection for her. The sister I’d always wanted. According to her records, Katya was also an only child. It occurred to me that it might be great to have her in our lives (I was already thinking in plural about my baby and me). I pictured pushing the stroller with Katya by my side, chatting while the baby slept.

  While I’d been with Tyler, I hadn’t wanted anyone encroaching on us. Having a donor who knew us felt threatening, a third wheel wedged into a perfect union. But things had changed. My baby and I would be a family of two. No uncles and aunts, no cousins. A grandmother all the way in Chicago. I would be a single mom without much of a support network other than Angie and a few of the other women from Group. Katya could be the cool auntie. Why not? I’d read somewhere of a woman who, years ago, had had a baby from a sperm donor. At twenty-two, her son decided to find his biological father. It turned out the guy had a wife but no children, and the two families became close, getting together regularly on holidays. I’d thought it was absurd when I’d first heard of it, but I was beginning to see the appeal.

  Katya started dancing with an imposing dark-haired guy in a suit who looked like he’d come straight from the office. He couldn’t quite move in time with the music, but that didn’t seem to bother him, judging by the confident eyes he trained on Katya. I stayed at the bar, watching them, wondering how soon was too soon to make my escape. A tan young man with close-cropped hair and a lazy smile caught my attention and started making his way toward me. I suspected he was going to ask me about Katya, but he didn’t seem interested in talking. He began dancing in front of me, his face only inches from mine. To my surprise I smiled back, my body responding to his charm before my brain could process it. He grabbed me by the waist and pulled me in. I put my glass of club soda on the bar, among the flickering candles, and hesitantly started moving my hips along with his. I hadn’t danced in years and was amazed at how easily—eagerly, even—my body responded to the music’s throbbing rhythm and his touch. The place was so packed, my back was rubbing against the bar as we danced. He was strong and taut and sure of himself. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d danced with someone other than Tyler. Why on earth was I thinking of Tyler right now?

  I chased his image away and focused on the
guy in front of me. His hand at the back of my waist kept moving lower until it rested on my ass. He pulled me closer and I felt his erection against my pelvis. Before I had time to be shocked, he leaned forward and started kissing me. His tongue felt warm and huge in my mouth and I arched my back with unexpected pleasure. Still holding my ass with one hand, he slid his fingers down my jeans into my panties with the other. The world around me vanished. All that existed was his tongue in my mouth and his hand in my underwear.

  Slowly, as if through a fog, I became aware of the smell of burnt flesh. “Your hair!” a woman next to me screamed, and started patting my head with her hands. I jolted forward, shoving the guy off and pulling my hair away from the candle. Luckily, the woman had already killed the flame. I mumbled, “Thank you,” without looking at her or the people around us. My cheeks were burning with embarrassment. I glanced at Katya in the middle of the dance floor, but she was busy kissing her partner and didn’t seem to have seen anything. I pulled my hair over my shoulder and smoothed out the burnt ends.

  “You okay?” my dance partner asked. I didn’t bother answering.

  What was I thinking? I was pregnant. I had no business going to a nightclub, dancing and kissing a stranger, let alone letting him prowl around in my panties. I should be home, relaxing, curled up on the couch with a book or watching a show. The baby growing inside me needed me in top shape.

  “I have to go,” I said, and started to make my way through the crowd toward Katya.

  He grabbed me by the arm. “Where are you going, beautiful?”

  I pulled away. When I looked back a few steps later, he was already dancing with another woman.

  Katya and her partner had stopped kissing. He was strikingly handsome from up close—angular face, olive skin, and caramel eyes that shone like a panther’s in the pulsing light. The two of them made quite the couple, even if he was closer to my age than hers. Older men seemed to be her type. I tugged on her arm and she turned.