Forbidden

by R. R. Banks

  I slipped out of the conference room before she saw me and was fully prepared for her when she got into the office for our interview. As soon as she perched herself on the edge of the seat, pressing her breasts forward toward me and crossing her legs so that just enough of her skirt lifted up to make it seem incidental when I knew very well it wasn’t because I had already seen it three times that morning, I started asking her questions.

  “What is your favorite planet and why?”

  “If you were an ice cream sundae topping, which would you be?”

  “How many roller coasters have you ridden in your life and did you keep your hands up the entire time?”

  “Don’t you know that that’s dangerous?”

  “A cat and three dogs walk down an alley and see a bowl of food. What color collar was the animal that got the food wearing?”

  After watching her squirm through a few minutes of this, I dismissed her, returning her resume and application to her before she walked out of the office. I hadn’t had any intention of giving her a real interview. Anyone who snuck into a conference room that she wasn’t supposed to be in and spent that much time polishing herself up for what was supposed to be an honest conversation wasn’t someone who I wanted working for me. I hoped that the barrage of questions and my deadpan reactions to whatever nonsensical answers she could spin as I asked them were enough to convince her to be a little more authentic next time she was meeting someone. If she was to get anything out of this interview, I wanted it to be that I was hiring an employee, not a Barbie. I didn’t want to look at her thighs and then pull a string and listen to her scripted spiel.

  That experience had completely changed the way I saw every other hiring process that I encountered, and as cold and impersonal as it sounded, that was what this was. I was hiring a woman to do something that I couldn’t do on my own and that Flora had learned only months ago that she couldn’t, either. It was a job like any other that I hired for, but with responsibilities far more pressing and valuable than anything that had ever happened in any of my businesses. Choosing the wrong candidate wasn’t just an inconvenience or a frustration and amending that mistake wasn’t so simple as firing the person and starting the process over again. If we went through with this and found a few months down the line that the woman we chose was awful in some way, there was really nothing that we could do about it. We had to be sure that we chose a woman we would be able to not only entrust with our child in its most delicate form for the months before it was born, but also who we would be able to tolerate throughout those months as well.

  “Richie, what are you doing?” Flora whined from the doorway.

  That was something that she was exceptional at, I had become more and more aware of in the months since we started talking about having a baby. Whining. I drew in a breath, reminded myself for what felt like the hundredth time that day that this was the woman I was supposed to be sharing my life with, and smiled at her.

  “Darling, I really want to see this.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  That was completely true. There was something about this woman that was different than all of the other woman who had gone through the interview process already, and it went beyond just the clothing that she was wearing, not that that hadn’t gotten my attention as well. The goal of this phase of the screening was to let me see how the women conducted themselves when talking to someone who wasn’t technically the person who was hiring them, and then how they behaved when they were alone and didn’t know that anyone was watching them. I knew in the back of my mind that there was a bit of a shady element to how I was doing this, but the stakes were too high for me to take any chances.

  When this woman walked into the office and Ellery asked her why she was considering being a surrogate she looked totally taken aback. She stared at my assistant with wide eyes and a slightly open mouth, absolutely still and silent for a few seconds. It was an unexpected reaction, but it was also something that I had been looking for in every other woman who had come into the room…authentic. Ellery’s eyes widened to match hers and the change in his expression seemed to snap the woman…what was her name...out of her shock.

  “Babies,” she suddenly said. “I’d do it for the baby.”

  I covered my mouth to muffle the laugh that was bubbling up.

  “Well, yes,” Ellery said. “That would be why anyone would be a surrogate. It’s the entire purpose of the process. Beyond the actual carrying and birthing of the child, why would you consider carrying my clients’ child?”

  The woman quieted again, but this time she didn’t seem startled. Instead, the expression on her face seemed more like she was looking into her mind, seeing something that was difficult for her and that she was trying to put into words that the stranger across the desk would understand. Finally, she let out a sigh and met his eyes.

  “My father died recently and there are things that I need to take care of,” she answered confidently.

  “So, it is a financial motive?” Ellery asked.

  I had heard him ask the same question to two other women, both of whom had been completely tripped up by it and stumbled through fairly meaningless justifications. This woman, though, seemed unfazed. She kept her eyes strongly trained on Ellery, unflinching, not intimidated by him.

  “Absolutely,” she said. “This is a business transaction, is it not? There is a fee to be paid?”

  “Well, yes,” Ellery said.

  It was his turn to seem put on the spot now and I found a bit of strange enjoyment seeing this usually unflappable man flustered.

  “If this was a charitable act that a woman was doing purely out of the good of her heart, that wouldn’t be the case. As it is, this is a service that is to be fulfilled in exchange for money. That in of itself establishes a financial motive. Any woman who tries to say that there isn’t one is lying at worst and flattering herself at best.”

  She’s the one.

  I wanted to just clear the building of the rest of the candidates and tell this woman that she had the position, but I knew that I couldn’t. There were more steps to be taken, and as much as I thought of this phase as being one of compulsion, I couldn’t let that control me entirely. I meant to use those gut feelings to trim down the field of applicants, so I could then focus on them each more intently.

  As if that thought had beckoned him, Ellery made some excuse and got up from the desk, hurrying out of the office and closing the door behind him. A second later he appeared at the door to the office where I was. His face was high with color and he looked somehow ruffled, like a little angry bird. Flora was still standing by the door, her arms crossed over her chest and her hip cocked now, and they exchanged glances as if they were wordlessly expressing the same thought. He took several long strides across the office toward me.

  “Can you believe her?” He asked.

  “No,” I admitted. “I can’t.”

  “Then I will just go in there and tell her that she’s dismissed, and we aren’t interested.”

  “’We?” I asked. “I didn’t know that you were going to be involved in the gestation of my child, Ellery.”

  The color on his cheeks deepened and he squeezed his lips together to try to hold back whatever he was going to say.

  “Did you see her?” he asked.

  “Of course, I did.”

  “Then surely you see that she is totally unsuitable.”

  “I told him the same thing,” Flora steamed, “but he won’t listen to me.”

  “All I can see is that she didn’t put a lot of thought into her clothes today,” I said.

  “And if she showed up for your next agent position looking like that, you wouldn’t turn her away instantly?” Flora asked.

  I knew she was right. If someone came into one of my offices in a sweat suit with her hair looking like a cinnamon bun on her head, I wouldn’t even think of her twice. Something about this woman, though. She was different.

  That
word again. Different.

  “Maybe we should appreciate the fact that she wants to be comfortable with us,” I said. “This is a very intimate relationship we’re going to be in together, and being comfortable with each other is going to be important.”

  “A very intimate relationship?” Flora asked. “What do you mean by that?”

  I looked at her.

  “She is going to be carrying our child inside of her and giving birth to it. I can’t really think of many things that are much more intimate than that.”

  Without worrying about their reaction, I turned my attention to the computer screen to see how the woman there was handling her sudden isolation.

  “What’s her name?” I asked, not taking my eyes from her.

  “Rue,” Ellery told me.

  I nodded.

  In the office next door Rue was still sitting in the chair where Ellery had left her, staring at the chair that he had vacated almost as though there was still someone there. She didn’t move for several seconds, and then suddenly flung herself forward, her head dropping down between her knees and her arms dangling down by her sides, so her hands grazed the floor. Once in this position, she let out a long breath. As she hung there, I heard her muttering to herself. I wished that I could hear what she was saying, but the thick layers of grey cotton now blocking her mouth muffled the words.

  “Invite her back,” I said to Ellery.

  He looked at me with wide eyes.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Very,” I said. “Invite her back for another interview next week.”

  I closed the computer on the image of Rue still folded over in the chair and stood up. I tucked the computer into my briefcase and crossed the office to the door where I grabbed my jacked from the coatrack and slipped into it.

  “Where are you going?” Ellery asked.

  “Lunch,” I said. “I have some very important appointments later this afternoon, but I will be taking the next couple of hours away from the office. Please continue with the screening and take notes if you’d like.”

  “You aren’t going to stay to watch the others?” Ellery asked.

  “No,” I said, not feeling the need to justify myself any further.

  I opened the door and allowed Flora to walk ahead of me out of the office. Ellery followed, and I looked back over my shoulder to watch as he went back into the office, wondering what Rue’s reaction would be when he asked her to come back for another interview.

  Half an hour later Flora and I were sitting at our usual table at our favorite lunch restaurant. She sipped white wine with delicate discrimination as if it wasn’t the exact same wine she ordered every time we came. I watched her, suddenly wondering if she had, ever in her life, worn a sweat suit. It was a strange thought and I shook my head to get it out, instead turning my attention to the menu in front of me.

  “What’s looking good to you this afternoon, Darling?” I asked.

  “I know what looked good to you,” she retorted.

  I looked up from the menu and narrowed my eyes at her.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I saw the way that you were looking at that woman,” she said, her icy eyes glaring at me from across the table.

  “I wasn’t looking at her in any way,” I said.

  Was I?

  “Oh please, Richie. I know that look. Remember, I used to be the one who was on the receiving end of those looks.”

  I couldn’t honestly believe that I would ever have looked at Flora in any way that I would look at Rue. They were just too different.

  Different.

  I reached across the table and took her hand, pulling it close enough to lean over and kiss it.

  “Listen to me. I wasn’t looking at her in any other way than as the potential carrier of our child. That’s it.”

  “I still don’t understand why you didn’t just tell her to leave,” she said.

  “I can’t really explain it,” I said. “But you can trust me when I tell you that I am thinking of nothing but finding the absolute perfect woman. Just a few more interviews and meetings and we will have that woman, and with any luck in a month or two we will have a baby on the way.”

  “Are you sure this is what you want?” she asked. “I mean, really sure?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Flora reached across the table with her other hand and took mine in both of hers.

  “I just want to make sure that you are absolutely sure that you want to go through with this. It’s a really big decision.”

  “I know that,” I said. “We’ve talked about this. I thought you wanted to be a mother.”

  “I do,” Flora said, nodding. “Of course, I do. I want nothing more than to raise a baby with you, it’s just that…”

  “That what?”

  “When we found out that I can’t have children, I just thought that having a baby was off the table, at least for right now.”

  “I know,” I said, squeezing her hands comfortingly. “I know that was so hard for you, but then we talked about surrogacy. We can still have our baby. It’s not the same thing as you being able to be pregnant and carry our child and deliver him or her, I know, but it will still be such a beautiful experience and we will be able to raise our wonderful little family together.”

  She gave the hint of a smile and nodded.

  “You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m just having more trouble with this than I thought that I would. I’m really not sure about that woman. Please tell me that you’ll keep looking.”

  “Of course,” I said. “I told Ellery to keep interviewing the other women and there are a few from before Rue that I asked him to invite back for the second round of interviews. We’ll narrow those down further with another talk with Ellery, and then you and I will get a chance to meet the final few to choose the one who is really right for us. I promise everything is going to work out perfectly.”

  “Alright,” she said, looking slightly happier now.

  “Alright.”

  I picked up the menu and started reading the specials, my minds already drifting into the future when I would finally be able to hold my baby in my arms. It was something that I had wanted for so long, and now that it was so close to happening, it was all I could think about.

  Almost all.

  Chapter Four

  Rue

  Dear Baby,

  You aren’t there yet. I honestly don’t know if you are ever going to be, but just in case your parents do choose me, I wanted to have a chance to tell you a little about myself and let you know why I’m doing this. It seems so strange to even talk about “your parents” when I might be the one who grows you inside of me. I know that that doesn’t make me your mother. It doesn’t mean anything except that I happen to have a body that does something that’s useful. It sounds so cold to put it that way, but that’s the way that I have to see it. Do you understand? It’s what I have to do to make sure that I can go through with this.

  I don’t know if I’m ever going to get a chance to really meet you. I know that we’ll be pretty well acquainted since we’ll get to share the same body for 40 weeks, give or take a couple of weeks. Don’t take too little, though, OK? You need to stay right in there and make sure that you are fully done before you come out. The world is a pretty exciting place and I’m sure that you will have an amazing life, but it’s not worth rushing. I wouldn’t want your mama and papa to have to put you in baby layaway because you get here early. I might need to remember not to call it that if that does happen. NICU just sounds awful to me. Saying that just sounds like you are admitting that there’s something wrong with the baby and it needs to be taken care of, that it might not make it through. Baby layaway, though, that’s just temporary. That’s just like picking out a shirt that you really want for the next season, but it’s not time to wear it yet so you put it in layaway until the weather changes and then you go get it out. They put a baby in the baby layaway until it’
s ready to go ahead with life and then their parents can get them out.

  I’m going to be meeting with your mama and papa tomorrow to talk to them more about the possibility of me carrying you for them. I just realized that I’ve been calling them “mama and papa” the way that I called my parents when I was growing up. Well, what I called my father. My mama has been gone since I was very, very little. I don’t remember her. I hate to admit that. All I ever heard about her was that she was so beautiful and kind, and that she loved me more than anything in the world. When I turned 18 Papa gave me a scrapbook that my mama had started for me even before I was born. It was full of pictures and doodles and notes. She even included the hospital bracelet from when I was born and a letter that she wrote to me while she was in labor. She had meant to keep building on it as I grew up so that by the time I was grown I would have a chronicle of my childhood. Looking at all of the empty pages in it always made me so sad when I was younger. I knew that I had done things and lived days that should have filled those pages. I just didn’t have Mama around to record them for me. It was almost like they weren’t as real, like they didn’t happen as much because she wasn’t there to see them. Does that make sense? On the front of the book she had written “I love you more than the moon and the sun and all the stars in space.”

  I know that your mama is going to just love you so much. I wonder what you’ll call her. Maybe Mommy. Maybe you’ll have a Mommy and Daddy rather than a Mama and Papa. You sure are going to be raised differently than I was. No one who grew up in Whiskey Hollow would be able to afford the surrogacy fee that they are offering. That’s wonderful for you, though, Baby. At least I hope it is.