"We should have done it in the crib," Mitch said, "just to bless it," as the phone rang again.
Lainie turned over on her stomach and slithered to the phone to pick it up. It was Larry Weber.
"Hi, Larry," she said, feeling happy and playful and glad she'd gone along with this plan. In a few days they were going to go and pick up their baby, Joey De Nardo, and she would hold him and kiss him and raise him as if he were from her own body.
"The baby has something wrong with it, " Larry Weber told her. "A heart defect. They don't think he's going to make it." Lainie closed her eyes. Mitch was nuzzling her back and moving his hands under her to her breasts. A baby. Forty-eight hours ago she was okay about never having one, then suddenly she was about to have one, and now she felt as if she'd been kicked in the teeth.
For some dumb reason the crib and changing table were all she could think about. Why did we ever get the crib and the changing table? That's why something bad happened and now we'll have to send back the crib and the changing table. She felt her whole body racked with a terrible wrenching misery. Stop, she thought. You can't fall apart over this. This was a baby you've never even seen. But she couldn't speak, so she handed the phone to Mitch.
"Hello?" he said into it. "Yeah? Yeah? Ahhh, that's too bad, Larry. Is the little girl okay? Uh-huh. Well at least she's okay. Yeah. Thanks." Mitch put the phone down and took Lainie in his arms. Naked against his nakedness, she could feel his chest heaving as he tried to hold in the sadness.
For months after that, Lainie's dreams were filled with babies. Babies that talked like grown-ups, faceless babies; one dream that recurred was about the sound of a crying baby. In the dream she would walk through some unidentifiable empty house, trying to find the baby, whose cries became more urgent as Lainie became more frantic. Maybe, she thought, I should go to a psychiatrist.
But how would she find the right psychiatric help? It was something she could never discuss with her mother, who didn't believe in talking about her feelings with people she knew, let alone some stranger. Yet she had to do something about these feelings of anguish and loss and fear. A fear that she would lose Mitch, a fear that her barrenness was making her ugly to Mitch. And that any day now he would leave her for somebody else, and the somebody else would become pregnant within weeks.
She would think about those things and work herself up into an anxious state, and then anything Mitch said felt like a dismissal to her. If he hung up the phone too quickly with her when she called him at the store, or if he was too critical of the way she handled a customer, she felt afraid that any minute he would turn to her and say, "That's it. I'm leaving you."
One night, after they were both warm with the satisfaction of their lovemaking, Mitch moved himself up on one elbow and looked at his wife's face.
"Lainie," he said, "I've got something serious I want to talk about. Do you think you can handle it?"
Lainie felt a flutter Of fear. This was it, the moment she'd been dreading. What else, after all they'd been through, could he mean by something serious? He was going to tell her he was leaving her.
"Sure I can," she said, her brow furrowed.
"Laine, all these years when we thought we'd never have kids, I was okay about it. But when the adoption question came up, the reason I grabbed it was because I figured maybe it was God's way of telling us we needed a kid, and then when the poor little baby died, I didn't know what to think. Now something's in my head, and I want you to know that if what I'm going to tell you isn't okay with you, then I'll drop it. Forever. I swear. Because you're everything to me, you know that? Right?" Lainie touched his arm lightly and nodded, relieved at hearing all the affirmations of his love, and ashamed of herself for doubting him because of her own feelings of inadequacy.
"You have done so much for me, Laine. When I met you I was just some hotshot with a new business, floundering around with no personal life at all, but you, with your sweetness and the full-out way you love me so completely, gave my life meaning, and I'll never stop being grateful to you for that.
"A big reason our store is such a success is because of your devotion to it. I probably would have thrown the whole thing in the garbage fifty times, like after the flood when we didn't have insurance and all the clothes were ruined. You found that little cleaner downtown who specialized in suede, and stood over him till he made those jackets look like new, and then we sold them all. We made it because no matter what happened, you were always there with your patience saying, We'll work it out. I think you're a miracle. And that's why now I want it to be my turn. Now, I want to do something that I can do for us. I want to call a lawyer and have him help us hire a woman to have a baby for us."
Lainie's throat tightened as if someone were choking her.
"It will mean that instead of adopting a baby that was the product of two strangers, like we almost did, at least this way we'll know that half of this baby is a De Nardo. Part of us. I'm not asking this on a whim, Laine. Since your surgery I've been trying to figure out what I could do, and this seemed to me to be something that I can offer to us. Bring to the partnership. Because God knows, we've been good enough together all these years for you to believe what I believe. I mean that you and I are one. Remember we saw that old woman on television who said that marriage is two horses pulling in one yoke? Well, let this part, the part about making a biological child for us, be my part of the yoke."
"Mitch," she said, hoping she could get through this without crying, "it's a bad idea. You know what's happened historically in cases like this. This isn't as if we're putting part of me and part of you into some woman to carry for us. Whoever we hire is going to be having a baby that's yours and hers. And when the time comes for her to part with it, she's going to be giving up her own child. What if she changes her mind? Are you going to let her keep that baby? And never see it? Or share custody? Or are you just going to say, 'Oh well,' knowing that out there somewhere is your son or your daughter and you gave it up because the surrogate decided she couldn't handle it?"
She could tell by the look of surprise on Mitch's face this was not the response he'd anticipated. She was surprised herself at the power of her outburst. "Believe me, Mitch, I'm desperate to have a baby, but I won't do it that way."
"Lainie, don't decide now. This is a knee-jerk reaction and you ought to take time to think about it. What happened in the cases you're talking about was because those women weren't properly tested or adequately screened. We could sidestep that by making sure she took a battery of every kind of test, we could meet the kids she already has and see how healthy they are. Hell, we can afford to have ten different psychiatrists check her out. In fact, my sister Betsy knows about a place—"
"Betsy! I knew this had something to do with one of your meddling sisters: What did she do? See it on 'Oprah'? No, this sounds more like 'Geraldo.' 'Women Whose Husbands Impregnate Strangers.' " Lainie heard herself shout at her husband for the first time in their years together. Heard her voice shrieking and sounding like some shrew. Like Elizabeth Taylor in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? But she wasn't sorry. She was pulsing with anger. "Betsy and those other two witches can mind their own business and get their noses out of my life."
"You're being a selfish little brat."
"I'm being selfish? If you want a baby so much and you're not being selfish, why can't we try to adopt again? We'll adopt a son and he'll carry on the precious De Nardo name. What in the hell do you think is so great about your genes that the world can't live without them?"
"Lainie, don't provoke me, goddammit. I'm getting really angry at your attitude about this. This idea makes sense for us." She heard the hot anger rising in his voice, and she knew her temper was no match for his, but this was too much. She was not going to back down and give in to this insane request. "I want to have my genetic child," Mitch said, fuming. "And it can be done. People are still doing it all the time, and without problems. I've made calls to find out. I've talked to the best lawyers and the best psychol
ogists, and they all assured me we can cover every possible loophole."
Lainie was having a hard time breathing. "Mitch, don't you ever accuse me of being selfish again. I had my insides taken out because they were riddled with cancer. There isn't a day that I don't drive by the park or see a woman pushing a stroller that I don't have to look away with tormented envy that I can't give you a baby!" Those last words choked her and she had to turn away. "If it sounds petty or selfish or small, then that's what I am! But I am telling you I could never look at another woman who had your baby inside her body."
"But it would be our baby," he said. "Yours and mine. Don't you want that?"
"More than anything," she said. "But I can't do it the way you're describing. I'm sorry."
"Change your mind."
"No."
"Grow up, Laine. If we adopted a baby it wouldn't come from your body. This way at least we know about one of its genetic parents. You say I'm narcissistic? Get your own ego out of it."
"The subject is closed."
"No it's not."
"With me it is."
They didn't speak for days. They slept in the same bed, but with their backs to each other. They worked at the store where they were cordial to the employees and the customers but when the two of them were alone in a room they said nothing to each other. Lainie's fears of abandonment were out of control. Lodged in her brain and in her heart, so that no matter how much makeup she put on, or how pretty an outfit, the woman she saw in the mirror looked like an ugly jealous hag.
She alternately thought about packing her bags, going away somewhere, anywhere, and never coming back, or begging Mitch's forgiveness and doing whatever he asked. The estrangement was unbearable. One night when everyone had gone and they were alone in the store about to lock up, she touched his arm.
"Mitchie."
"Yeah?" He didn't look at her.
"I'm not saying yes. But I'm willing to talk about it some more."
He moved close to her and held her silently. The scent of him so close after even a few days apart made her want to cry with relief. From the day they met, there had always been something irresistible to her about the way Mitch smelled. She loved to snuggle against him and bury her face in his warm neck, tasting and smelling him. This was the best man God ever made. A blessing in this world of too many divorces, and too much cheating, and all those stories about wife-beating she read about in magazines. This was a man who treated her like a queen, romanced her as if they were still courting, never failed to be there for her in ways that amazed their friends.
At his thirty-fifth birthday party so many people had stood to give toasts to Mitch's loyalty, big heart, and generosity that at one point Mitch had stood and said, "Wait a second, this is so good, I think I'd better check to make sure I haven't died."
Lainie remembered all that as she held her husband in her arms. How could she refuse him anything?
16
YOUR HUSBAND was right, Mrs. De Nardo." The psychologist at the surrogacy center was an attractive gray-haired man in his late forties. Lainie and Mitch sat with him, and with Chuck Meyer, the surrogacy attorney. Mitch had dressed that morning in his best suit as if, Lainie thought with a stab, he were thinking the better he looked, the better his chance was of getting some surrogate to want to have his baby. "The press loves to blow things out of proportion. The cases that are worrying you are the sensationalized ones, and they're very rare. The truth is that ninety-nine percent of the surrogates don't change their minds. That's a much better statistic than you'd ever have with open adoption where the birth mother is usually a young unstable girl who suddenly finds herself pregnant and is frequently ambivalent about having the baby in the first place.
"The women with whom we work are grown-ups. They're educated, middle-class women who want to do this for their own reasons. And the reasons aren't financial. In fact, the most recent research proves that the women who are surrogates aren't doing this for the money. As far as the psychological issues are concerned, aside from the tests, which are numerous and demanding, we're here to ask them the tough questions. And believe me we do.
"I don't hesitate to ask if they're willing to give up sexual relations with their husbands from the time they sign the contract. Or what they're going to tell their own parents who will feel that this baby is their grandchild. We give them months to think it over. And during that time we talk to the other people in their families who are going to go through the experience with them. We see their spouses, their children, to find out if there will be anyone who might make it difficult for them, or create a problem.
"We reject eighty-five percent of the women who apply. We tell them we simply cannot have them in our program if there's the least indication that a problem might surface. And still we never lack for applicants. I understand your reluctance, and I'll be glad to ask some of the very happy families who have worked with us to contact you and share their experience. Or to have you meet the surrogates, get to know them, and feel free to come to me at any time and say, 'This isn't for us.' "
Lainie could feel Mitch looking at her. You don't have to decide now, but the sooner you do, the sooner we can have a baby was what his look was saying.
They chose the third surrogate they met. Her name was Jackie. She was blond and blue-eyed, and kind of chunky in a cute round way. Lainie liked her better than the others because she was warm and easy to talk to. When Lainie and Mitch walked in on the day of their meeting, Jackie stood and hugged her. It was startling, but a very sweet gesture, and an embarrassed Lainie was overwhelmed by the cloud of Jackie's perfume, which she recognized as Shalimar.
The minute they sat down Jackie pulled out pictures to show both Lainie and Mitch of her teenage son from a youthful failed marriage. The son was a tall, handsome, confident-looking young man.
"I'm on Weight Watchers," Jackie assured them when the meeting was winding down. "And I always get a little blubbery before my period, which is now. So I hate to sound like I'm doing a commercial for myself, but if you pick me, we can start right off in two weeks and two days. I run as regular as a clock."
There was nothing threatening about her. The first candidate had been a pretty, redheaded former actress, who said she wanted "to live this and then put it into my work." The second candidate, busty and dark-haired, seemed inappropriately taken with Mitch. Jackie was Irish, funny, looked kind of like a heavy-set version of Lainie, and she said everything she was thinking. Or as Mitch said, "She has no filter between the brain and the mouth."
Their plan was that Lainie would meet Jackie at each doctor's appointment. She would bring them the sperm she'd lovingly coaxed from Mitch less than an hour before. On the morning of the first insemination, at home Lainie realized she'd forgotten to get a specimen jar from the doctor, so in the dishwasher she sterilized a small jar that had once held Cara Mia marinated artichoke hearts.
Mitch laughed so much when she handed him the funny little jar, he was afraid he wouldn't be able to perform. When he finally ejaculated, he grinned, and then in his off-key imitation of Mario Lanza, sang, "Cara mia, mine. Say those words divine. I'll be your love till the end of time." Lainie was still chuckling about it in the car all the way to the doctor's office.
"Tell me all about Mitch," Jackie asked her while they were waiting for her to be called in by the nurse. Lainie didn't know where to begin, what to tell her.
"Well, he's from an Italian family, his mother died young and he was raised by his sisters—"
"And now he's real close to them. Right? Italian men and their families. They get all hooked in. Italians are like the Irish, you know. They cry at commercials for the telephone company. Right? A few bars of that song about touching someone and they're bawling like idiots. Right? I'm like that too. A total sob sister."
The door from the doctor's office opened.
"O'Malley?" the nurse asked.
"Me," Jackie said, standing, then turned to Lainie.
"Hold a fertile thought," Jac
kie said and followed the nurse.
The doctor's office was in Century City on the eighth floor of the medical building. Lainie looked down from the waiting room window at the bright blue swimming pool across the street at the Century Tower apartments, where a lone swimmer swam laps. Dear God, I'm waiting here for a woman I met two weeks ago to be impregnated with my husband's baby. A baby I'll take from her and raise as if it were his baby with me.
Jackie had passed every test, had health statistics that were enviable to Lainie with her own history of diabetes. Jackie's IQ was high and her scores on the psychological testing had been as high as possible. There was, of course, no way to know what the hormones of pregnancy could do to anyone's mental state, or how she'd react to the sight of the biological baby she'd promised to give away.
"You have to be prepared, Mitch," the psychologist had said, "in the worst-case scenario to give up the baby. Do you think you can do that?" Lainie had looked over at Mitch. It was during one of the many sessions they'd spent with this man who probed and pushed at difficult issues in a way Lainie was glad to know he used with the surrogates, but uncomfortable with when they were used on her and Mitch.
"First you tell me she's the picture of mental health, then you tell me she could change her mind," Mitch said defensively.
"We all need to be clear that anything can happen, and you have to be prepared for what you plan to do in every eventuality," the psychologist said, turning to Lainie, who noticed that Mitch had never answered the question he'd been asked. "And will you be able to deal with seeing another woman heavy with your husband's child? I don't want to scare you away, and you don't have to answer me right now. But answer that for yourself."
After nearly an hour, Jackie emerged from the gynecologist's office. "He made me lie there with my feet up for a long time to give everything a chance to do its work. And this will kill you: after he inseminated me, I asked him, 'Was it good for you?' It cracked him up.'' Then she squeezed Lainie's arm. "Say a prayer, girl," she said.
The Stork Club Page 15