“Palm Beach? Social pressure? No, it comes from me, from James. I see friends who have been at parenting for five or ten years and I want the chance, I want to love like that.” Elodie seems crumpled.
“I’m not sure about being married, kids. My world is about singers, travel, bookings.”
“I know, Aubrey. James and I have been together so long, we want to have a family.”
“Why don’t you find a surrogate? I’ve read the ads—they pop up online, advertising for donor eggs. Someone Ivy League, with fine features. A gestational carrier, whatever the recipe is. Someone out of town.”
“We don’t want to hire a stranger. James wants this child to have our genes. His and mine, which means yours and mine—half our DNA is the same.”
“What about you? Is the DNA that important?”
“Well, at first I thought it wasn’t, that James seemed to be overstating it. Then I kept asking myself if I would rather have you or someone I don’t know, her genes, not yours, meaning ours. Then there’s the Veronica and Simon part of it. Dad, I suspect, would totally want this if possible. I’ve come around to seeing it matters.”
Elodie’s nose is running. She takes a handkerchief out of her purse. Our mother gave each of us one this past Valentine’s Day, from Maltese on the Avenue. The embroidered hearts and flowers on hers are faded—she uses it.
“Wait, I’m supposed to do this for you and James and Mom and Dad?”
“That isn’t what I said, Aubrey.” She pats at her nose.
I put my hands on my thighs and notice how tight they are. A dancer’s body, that’s what people say. They ask, “Are you a dancer?” Out of nowhere, Elodie appears old to me. No wonder she is putting me in this position, asking me to surrender myself for a year—from start to finish. To be the family savior.
Elodie sighs, shifts her weight around. “I don’t know, are you hesitating because of our past? Is it that I didn’t want Mom to be pregnant with you, I wanted to be an only child? That’s why you’re saying no. Maybe you remember, subconsciously, how I wasn’t always so nice to you.”
“No, Elodie, this isn’t some irrational form of punishment. You were fine, I idolized you. You took care of me, protected me. You even dressed me up like a live Raggedy Ann when I was three,” I say.
“How about when you were in second grade and wanted to be the Pink Ranger for Halloween and I convinced Veronica it was okay to let you do it. She wanted you to be a witch or Sleeping Beauty,” Elodie says.
“The real problem was Uhura from Star Trek—wasn’t that the next Halloween? Mom so didn’t understand. She thought it was too sexy or something.”
We both smile for a second, then remember why we’re hiding out at a swank shopping plaza.
“Listen.” I speak softly. “I don’t want to be pregnant. Not with my baby, not with yours. Or with James’s.” I almost gag when I say the part about it being hers or James’s.
I tug at the locked door. “I wish I could do better. I doubt I’ll change my mind.”
“For a day or two, promise you’ll think about it. Please. We would be infinitely grateful,” Elodie says.
Does she understand? I can’t have her baby because she wants me to. What Elodie has asked changes us. Like we’re underwater and could be washed away.
“Aubrey?”
I half nod. My escape depends on it. My sister unlocks the car and I open my door. The air rushes at me. I know I’ll say no.
CHAPTER 7
AUBREY
I park at South Lake Drive and Peruvian to begin the Lake Trail. The western side of the island feels less demanding, quieter in terms of beauty and the open views of the Lake Worth Lagoon. Since I was a girl, I’ve loved the giant Kapok tree with roots that sprawl strangely and the bougainvillea and ivy—requisite wherever one goes. Within minutes I spot my mother revving up for her “power walk.” She’s doing body stretches, flinging her arms to the left and then to the right. Next she runs in place, with her fists gently pummeling an unseen punching bag. She starts scrunching her shoulders, then letting them down. She takes breaks to wave to each woman on the trail as she fast-walks or lightly jogs past. Already the scenic path is brimming with those who walk, run, or bike along.
“Mom! Mom!” I march to where she faces the Intracoastal.
She swivels around to beam at me and stops her routine. Beyond her the palm trees and pink hibiscus appear lush. It has been less than twenty-four hours since I escaped Elodie’s car. Hellish hours.
“Aubrey, darling!” We hug. She smells like Clinique Broad Spectrum Mineral sunblock. Because she is in sneaks, she seems shorter than when she is dressed up in at least a two-inch heel. No matter what she wears, it seems that my mother’s shrinking.
“Why did you drive up early?”
“To be with you, Mom. The two of us.”
“Before my holistic Pilates,” she says. “Which has gotten very popular.”
“Very popular” translates to “too crowded,” but my mother wouldn’t say that—it sounds negative, willful, fussy. I shiver for a second. I’m dreading the conversation although I’m the one who asked to meet. Again in Palm Beach and not at my desk.
“So why are you visiting at what must be an ungodly hour if you were out late last night ‘covering a band’? Isn’t that what you call it?”
Sometimes when I’m alone with Elodie, we laugh about what we call our mother’s “rubric.” “She’s nothing without it,” Elodie used to say. Meaning without Dad, without us, without Mothers and Children and her hard work there, without yoga and swimming. Until Mom surprised us by changing the formula after years of straddling two worlds. Announcing it was time, she left her nonprofit six months ago. Instead of being in the field four days a week, visiting families in need, she delved into a rarefied social life. That’s when Elodie added, “And the Palm Beach doctrine, especially in season.”
She is definitely part of the herd this morning as she starts her ritual, adjusting her sun visor, adding more sunblock to her cheekbones.
“Have you spoken with Elodie?” I ask.
“I speak with her every day. What’s wrong, Aubrey?”
Mom takes in deep breaths, exhales in this very style. Her cobalt blue baseball cap has PBLS (Palm Beach Literary Society) across it in white stitching. Although she has always been pretty, today her face is angular; her neck has cords that weren’t there a few months ago. Among her friends, my mother is the only one who has skipped any plastic surgery. “Botox here, filler there, but not under the knife,” she likes to say. Meaning she is undaunted in a clutter of face-lifts, new ones, old ones, redos. Still, her methods could be failing her—isn’t that what happens? Whatever, to me her face is always beautiful.
“Let’s start,” she says. “We’ll talk on the trail.”
We angle toward the water’s edge. Ahead, mothers are jogging while pushing those three-leg strollers. A couple laugh together, pushing their double stroller. Children who look about three or four hold on to the hands of their caregivers—mothers, a few fathers, nannies, grandmothers. What are their fertility stories? Did these women go to bed and wake up pregnant, or were they shot up with fertility drugs and frantic? Regardless, here they are with the morning light like a halo over them. My sister’s sadness must trickle into her every move in a place where nothing unpleasant can ever happen. Having not lived here since college, I’ve forgotten how to work on being perfect. My time in South Beach has blocked it out.
My mother and I fast-walk behind the fancy houses; they keep tumbling toward us, one after another. Moving at a clip, we’re almost at the yachts. More sunlight dipping across the Intracoastal, more strangers gesturing at my mother, stopping to speak. Hello, Eleanor, will your family come for Christmas? Rosalie, how are the grandchildren up north? The responses quick and short as each party keeps on the trail. Another baby, perhaps six months old, dressed in a pink bonnet, is being wheeled along, her feet dangling. It is her big sister, about seven, who pushes the stroller,
while her relaxed mother and father smile radiantly as they pass.
“I read you every nursery rhyme,” Elodie tells me to this day, “I pushed you on your first swing, your first carousel ride.” I know she did—life was divided into when Elodie was there and when she wasn’t. Later she handed me a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone before any of my friends knew about it. She took me for my first highlights at Posh Salon, my first pair of stilettos, arranged impressive fake IDs. I wish that she had never asked me to be her surrogate.
“Dad was late for his Thursday game this morning. Can you believe it?
“Oh? Golf or tennis?”
“Tennis.” Mom sounds a bit annoyed. “That’s why James plays, before he goes to ANVO. You do know that most of the men who go to work start early—”
“Of course.” I wait. “Mom, why I’m here, this is sort of urgent.”
“Urgent?”
She stops our fast clip. She knows nothing.
“What has happened?” my mother asks as she motions for us to park ourselves on a quasi-carved bench situated along the water. The wood is smooth and heavy; it reminds me of marble. Contorting her upper body, she looks to the left and to the right. Once she is sure that everyone else on the trail is far off, she leans closer.
“What is it, Aubrey?”
The wind from the west tosses the gulls; they lift higher into the air. It reminds me of being in a plane over Palm Beach, ready to land, just as the announcement comes on about gusts and turbulence.
“Everything is okay.” I sort of draw out okay.
“Meaning what, Aubrey? Is it about Tyler? Your work?”
“No, no. Not Tyler, work is fine.” The swiftest flash of Tyler kissing me in the kitchen at dawn. He was holding our agreement with a playlist, dancing a slow one to “All of My Love’” by Led Zeppelin, to celebrate. Right after a sleepless night, when I decided I had to drive up to see my mother. Tyler didn’t press for any details, but he did walk me to my car. That’s what makes the Elodie request more complicated: Tyler.
“Does Elodie know we’re at the Lake Trail together?”
My mother looks out at the gulls over the docks. “Have you girls had a fight?”
I wish. I wait, count to ten like we’ve been taught.
“Elodie wants me to be a surrogate for her.”
“I’m sorry?”
Mom is frowning beneath the sunglasses and baseball cap.
“A surrogate, a traditional surrogate for her—and for James. I’d be impregnated with James’s sperm, I’d—” I stop.
Mom waits.
“I’d be impregnated at Dr. Noel’s clinic.”
“Dr. Noel does not run a clinic, Aubrey,” my mother says.
“That’s what you’re concerned with, Mom? That it’s an office, not a clinic, because clinics are for those less fortunate?”
“I am clarifying, that’s all,” Mom says.
She’s nervous, deflecting, focusing on the wrong part of the conversation.
“Okay. At Dr. Noel’s office.” I shudder at the very idea of Dr. Noel’s anything. “I’d be pregnant for Elodie.”
“For Elodie? I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You know, my egg, James’s sperm. Because Elodie’s eggs are too old.”
My mother’s mouth twists, as if she’s about to tell me there’s been a death in the family—a distant cousin from Pittsburgh or Ithaca, someone she’s always loved but hasn’t seen in twenty years. She can’t persuade our father to travel to the funeral, it matters to her. She has to figure it out.
“Your egg, James’s sperm.”
She twists her mouth again. “What made you decide on this?”
“Oh, I didn’t. I never would have. It was James’s idea. The DNA thing, that the baby would be genetically linked to Elodie.”
“Is that his reasoning?” Mom sounds angry.
“Totally. He’s into the plan. He says it really matters.”
“Does he? Doesn’t he know how complicated that would be for you and your sister? DNA isn’t the only factor.”
I shake my head. Mom pats my shoulder.
“The idea of a baby and Elodie’s despair and my being the one, I don’t know. Like I’m covered in this layer of…” I say.
“Defeat,” Mom says.
I can’t admit that yesterday I googled morning sickness six times, only to be sidetracked by the aftermath of pregnancy. Descriptions of the forking over of oneself (with saggy breasts, cellulite, and stretch marks) for a sleepless infant, a marriage that becomes sexless. That’s the known deal—one’s selfishness traded in for a baby to love.
“Yeah, okay, defeat. I mean, I don’t want to be pregnant. I’m not sure that I want my own children, Mom.”
“Oh, honey, you don’t know for certain. You might change your mind. It isn’t a decision for today.” My mother stops.
“If I do this, I’d be the aunt to my own baby—it’s awfully hard to wrap my mind around it. Then I see how heartbroken Elodie is. I can’t stand that she’s like that, either. Every part of it makes me very upset.”
“I realize that,” Mom says. “I mean, what if you did this, let’s say you wanted to for Elodie, and then you fell in love with the baby. It’s a big danger. You know, like Baby M.”
“Baby M?”
“Baby M—the Mary Beth Whitehead case. Have you never heard about it?”
I shake my head.
“It was a court case that took place in the mid-eighties. About the rights of a surrogate. The woman who agreed to be a surrogate fell in love with the baby, called ‘Baby M.’ She didn’t want this baby to go with the parents who had hired her. It was tragic; people saw both sides of the story. She felt it was her baby.”
“What happened?”
“The court ruled that the surrogate, Mary Beth Whitehead, was the legal mother, the contract didn’t hold up. Then there was the ‘best interests of the child’ application and the father—his name was William Stern, I think—got custody and Whitehead got visitation.”
“Jesus. Okay. You see how loaded this is.”
“Oh, I do, I do. It’s too much to ask.” Mom shifts her position on the bench, as if she’s stiff from sitting there too long.
I pull my hair out of the scrunchie, pause to let it fly around in the wind before I tie it back neatly. I look down at my lime green Converse sneakers, my yoga pants. I’m neither a twenty-four-year-old babe nor a forty-year-old woman. What is it like for Elodie, with her mansion-to-be and her poetry series, her shoes—she has a collection, a museum of shoes. In Palm Beach it means something. She’s interviewed four interior designers, including Kimberly Shawn, and decided on Griselda Derrick. Elodie is written up in the Daily Sheet at least once a week for her programs, fund-raisers. She and James, a young Veronica and Simon Show, go everywhere. In theory it is already a fine life.
“It’s strange. We’re sisters; that’s why she likes it. The DNA thing. James totally cares about that part.”
“We know that Elodie has had a hardship. She wants a baby,” Mom says, “and hasn’t gotten it. That’s the other side of the situation.”
A loneliness blankets me, a kind of hollow feeling that I’ve known at low points in my life. Except this is coiled with my sister’s loneliness.
“You’ve never been married, never wanted a child. I can’t tell you what to do, Aubrey,” my mother says in a tone I’ve not heard since I decided to attend Bard instead of Cornell. Filled with opinions that go unspoken.
“Mom, what are you saying, that I’m the solution? The only remedy?”
She comes closer on the bench; suddenly we are more fine-spun than usual, our faces close enough that we skip the whispering. Talking softly works.
“Aubrey, I’m an only child. I never had to share with anyone. I raised you and your sister to be there for each other, to do anything for each other.”
Our mother is out of her league, too. She is searching herself. She says in a studied voice, “Aubr
ey, you know, possibly, I’m not sure, but possibly, you could do this.”
A cool breeze circles around us—and no one else on the Lake Trail. The air temperature has dropped, as if a private storm is moving up the coast. Now my mother needs to save Elodie, not me? She starts searching in her tote for the foldable sweatshirt she carries.
She holds up her hand. “Of course, I know how complicated it would be. The entire thing, the result of this favor.”
Life has become loaded with requests from the people I love most—those who ordinarily expect little from me. Before this, Dad would simply ask me to show up at a family dinner, to recommend a joint birthday gift for our mother, to choose either Chez Jean Pierre or Café Boulud, then drive north for the occasion.
The Southern Boulevard Bridge is being raised and cars are stopped while boats line up beneath. It must be fifteen after, since the bridge lifts every quarter of an hour. We haven’t been together enough time for our conversation to weigh so much.
“Until Elodie asked me this hugest favor, I liked being younger,” I say.
“I believe you, Aubrey. Then again, to be asked, to be chosen. Maybe you could at least think about it. How it is about being the sister, the one. It isn’t James alone, Aubrey. Elodie has been through so much, without a result. When I look at the children—at the Breakers Beach Club, the Harbor Club, those Sunday-night family barbecues—I realize how much I want to be a grandmother. It’s been so long since you girls were small. Dad wants to be a grandfather.”
“Does he?” I ask.
“We do. He and I do.”
A flipper—she’s flipping. Similar to a friend or a boyfriend who cannot be trusted. My mother’s take on it is confusing, surprising. If I wait, maybe she’ll flip back, consider my side once more, and stop believing that being a conduit is simple, without consequences.
Taking my hands in hers, she glances toward a Hatteras yacht moving slowly along the Intracoastal. Like she’s imagining someplace beyond my sister or me.
CHAPTER 8
AUBREY
A Palm Beach Scandal--A Novel Page 6