Rick put his thumb and forefinger under his reading glasses to wipe his tired eyes, and when he glanced up, standing in the doorway was his uncle Bobo.
"Two weeks in a row you jilt a guy and don't even tell him why? What in the hell's the matter with you?"
It was true. For the two weeks Rick had been in this room, he hadn't thought about anything or anyone but the baby. Bobo was leaning on a cane, frowning at Rick.
"Uncle B.! How did you get here?"
"I called your house twenty times. Finally I get the baby nurse, and she tells me where you are. So I hired a kid to drive me over here. One of the volunteers at the home. He's waiting for me downstairs."
"I'm sorry," Rick said. "I should have called you."
"What's that you got there?" Bobo asked.
"A storybook. The doctor said he can hear me. So I talk to him, and I read to him."
"What am I? Chopped liver? I can't talk to him?" Slowly, with the help of his cane, Bobo walked to the crib where the baby lay silently. "Davidel," the old man said, "it's your favorite relative." Bobo's own hearing problem always made him talk too loud and Rick was afraid this intrusion on the other families would be upsetting. "I'm gonna tell you a story about your daddy when he was just a baby. Not as young as you are now. Maybe two or three years old."
The oriental couple was looking over now. Bobo turned to Rick and said as an aside, albeit in the same loud voice, "Jesus Christ, he looks like hell." Then he turned back to the baby. "Your daddy was always a smart little guy. And his mommy and daddy, God rest their souls, they were crazy about him."
"Uncle Bobo—" Rick started to interrupt him, but Uncle Bobo lifted his cane and waved it at Rick with a gesture to remain silent.
"Well, your grandpa Jake, my brother, he was Jewish, but your grandma Janie, she was gentile. So in their home, they celebrated all the holidays. Easter and Passover, Christmas and Hanukkah."
Now Rick noticed that the sickly looking woman in the bathrobe was listening, and the round-faced redheaded day nurse had walked in carrying a chart but was now stopped in the door from the nurses' station, listening to Bobo.
"Now you probably remember that the dish I cook the best, after my famous chicken-in-a-pot, is potato latkes. Right? And as soon as you get outta this place, I swear to God I'm gonna make some for you. So every Hanukkah it was a tradition that I would come to your grandma and grandpa's house and cook up a batch for all of us to eat."
Rick sat back in his chair now. There was no stopping Bobo from telling this story, and even the California couple, the wife holding the baby, were facing him, listening to what he was saying to the inert David.
"Anyway, this particular year, Hanukkah and Christmas came close together, so the Christmas tree was up and the menorah was lit, and your grandmother, a stunner, a gorgeous and wonderful girl, asks your dad, 'Ricky sweetheart, can you guess who's coming to our house tomorrow to make potato latkes?' And your dad looks at her with big wide eyes and asks, 'Santa Claus?' "
All the adults in the room laughed. Especially Rick. And when he looked over at the door of the room which led to the nurses' station, there were now three nurses there who had stopped to listen to the story. They were all laughing big hearty laughs that cut through the tension in that room for a much-needed respite.
Bobo. God bless him for coming here. Rick stood now to hug the old man, and when they both turned to look at David, for the first time in weeks the baby moved his free arm toward his chest.
"He moved," Rick said.
"What do you think?" the old uncle said. "I always keep them rolling in the aisles."
"He moved," Rick said to the nurse.
"So," Bobo said to Rick, "you'll call me tomorrow and tell me how he's doing?"
"I will," Rick said and they embraced again. Then Bobo, with a wave of the cane to his fans, went to find the driver to take him back to the home.
After that, David's progression began to be visible. Within days he was able to move his arms and legs on his own. Weakly, but Rick hung on to every shred of hope. Rick had lost thirty pounds during the endless days of not even thinking about food, and only eating to refuel himself for more hours near his son. To be around to hear the statistics about blood oxygen, and the oxygenation of the baby's skin, and the numbers on the heart monitor, and which of the baby's veins would best hold a change in the IV tube.
The day a nurse was able to come in and briefly disconnect the baby from the respirator, Rick held him in his arms and rocked him, singing, crooning, begging him to get well. And Annie held him and told him how she missed him at home, and when they reconnected him and Annie sat down in the chair, Rick walked as far as the hospital cafeteria for dinner, realizing it was the first time in over a month that he'd left the hospital floor.
With agonizingly slow progress, David Reisman became more and more animated. There were a few days of testing the baby on what the doctors called "sprints," which were short periods of turning off the respirator, while he breathed on his own. One day they asked Rick and Annie to leave the ward while they removed the tube so the baby could begin to breathe on his own permanently.
For the next few days Rick held him close. His suck reflex was coming back, and he was able to take food from the bottle Rick fed him tenderly. Every burst of bubbles that rose in the bottle gave Rick a sense of triumph, because it meant that David was now getting sustenance from his formula.
"We're going to go home in a few days I think," he said to the tiny face. "And I'm real glad. I'm glad because it means you aren't sick anymore, and that makes me very happy . . . because I love you, little guy. I love you a lot."
The baby's little eyes blinked, and then a flicker of a smile crossed his little face, around his bottle. It made his father smile too as Dr. Weil and Dr. Solway walked into the ward to tell him that tomorrow morning they were releasing David to go home.
"There's something I'd like to suggest you look in to," the serious-faced Dr. Solway said to Rick the next morning, as he was packing the few toiletries and clothes he had kept in the hospital room. She had knocked on the door and said she wanted to come in to say good-bye. He thanked her again and again for her swift diagnosis which had saved David's life. Always her response was a slight nod and a wave of the hand to dismiss him.
"Whatever you suggest is good by me," Rick said today.
"I know about a group that's starting," she said. "A support group for families who have come by their babies in unusual ways. I think it's safe to say that you and David fall into that category."
Rick smiled. "There's an understatement."
"A very gifted child psychologist I know is organizing it, and I think you and David would benefit from it. I'd like to call her and ask her to include you."
"Doctor," Rick said, "I haven't been to my office in nearly two months. My career is on a roller coaster that's frequently on the downhill slope. I have been consumed with worry and guilt and anguish and thought about nothing and nobody but this baby for so long that earlier while I was waiting to pay the exorbitant bill I owe this hospital, I discovered that I was standing there rocking back and forth, because I'm so used to doing that with the baby that now I even rock when he's not with me. And you're telling me you think I should take even more time away from my work to sit in a room with some shrink and a group of other people who got their babies in strange ways and shoot the bull about problems?"
"Yes" was all the pediatrician answered.
"I'll be there with bells on," he said.
26
ALL OF THE PARENTS in the new group were invited to sit outside and watch as their little ones dug in the sand or pushed themselves around on the rolling toys or splashed at the water table. The activities were set up in the yard adjacent to the large playroom where the adults would meet. Barbara's intern Dana was the child-care assistant.
"Looks as if your son is going to be a pulling guard," Shelly said to the familiar-looking man. He knew he'd met him before, and he was pretty sure
it was at some event having to do with the business. Goddammit, he thought, why did I come here? I'm not going to sit around and participate in some kind of a true-confessions therapy group and tell everyone my problems. He wasn't ready to tell a group of strangers he was HIV-positive and watch them recoil. He would let the people who needed to have the information have it, but for now that was all.
"I'm Rick Reisman," the man said, extending a hand for Shelly to shake.
Oh, God, that's who he was. Rick Reisman, of course. Shelly had seen him earlier in the parking lot across from the building, struggling with the Aprica stroller, a moment Shelly knew only too well himself, but he hadn't been able to figure out why he looked so familiar. Now he realized they'd met at a fund-raiser at Barbra Streisand's house in Malibu.
"Shelly Milton," he said. "We've met."
"Of course, Shelly," Rick said, recognition filling his eyes. "I met you at that party. You were with your writing partner . . . "
"Me!" Ruthie said, walking over. "Ruth Zimmerman," she added, putting her hand out and shaking Rick's.
"So you adopted a baby?" Rick said, his eyes moving from Shelly to Ruthie.
"No," Shelly said. "Sid is our biological child."
Rick tried not to react. Zimmerman and Milton were a well-known comedy-writing team. But Shelly Milton was gay. Rick remembered when Davis Bergman, a married man, a law partner at a big-time entertainment firm, came out of the closet to have a long love affair with him. It was gossip all over town.
"Artificial insemination," Shelly said, knowing what Rick was thinking, and longing to grab Ruthie by the sleeve and drag her out of there. The group hadn't even started and already he was feeling defensive. No, this wasn't going to work.
"We did that," the pretty blond woman said. She was dressed in a chic cream-colored pantsuit and was kneeling on the ground where she diapered her baby daughter on a plastic pad. Ruthie couldn't believe that anybody who had a waist that small had ever given birth. "Only we used a surrogate." Aha! Ruthie thought. I knew it. The blond woman's darkly handsome husband was inside the playroom looking at the children's art push-pinned on all the walls.
"Now that's something I want to hear more about," Ruthie announced, "because if I ever have another baby, this time I want someone else to be in labor and then tell me about it. In fact, I'd prefer that they didn't tell me about it."
The blond woman was unsmiling and tense. She gathered the dirty diaper and the soiled wipes, put them efficiently into a Ziploc bag and tossed the bag into a nearby trash bin, then carried her daughter over to be with the other little ones.
David dropped shovels full of sand into a yellow bucket, and Sid pushed a Tonka truck along with one hand and held his Mickey Mouse bottle in his mouth with the other. Barbara Singer came outside and sat on the side of the sandbox, watching and encouraging the play. As she saw Lainie put Rose down in the sandbox, she noticed Mitch come out to look on lovingly as Rose joined in the play.
"My daughter's a party animal," Mitch said.
Lainie felt a heaviness fill her chest. Yes, she thought. Just like her mother. Jackie.
"That little baby Rose looks like a clone of you," Ruthie said to Lainie, who tried to force a smile. "And not one drop like her father. What does the surrogate look like?"
Lainie waited for Mitch to answer that.
"Beautiful," he said. "Like my wife."
Lainie worked hard to keep the smile on her face. "We're Mitch and Lainie De Nardo."
"Hi there" came a loud shout from inside. "Sorry I'm late!" It was Judith Shea. Her pretty auburn hair was flying. Her alert round-faced baby girl was in a papoose carrier on her back, and in her arms she carried her toddler daughter, whose chubby little legs were wrapped around her waist. "Say hi to everyone, girls," Judith urged.
For Barbara the explosive warmth was a welcome contrast to the nervous expressions of the others. "Two more little honeys for your group," Judith said, putting her daughter down, freeing her hands. "Judith Shea . . . inseminatee," she said with a laugh as she walked around to the others introducing herself.
Rick looked her over. Sexy as hell, a little thick around the middle, but then she'd just had two babies. Pretty little Jillian joined the group in the sandbox, and now that everyone had arrived, Barbara walked over and spoke to the toddlers.
"While all of you play with Dana, I'm going to go right inside that door with your mommies and daddies and Jillian's baby sister, and we're going to have some coffee and get to know one another better. So if you get lonely and want to come and say hello, you can just walk right in that door, and that's where we'll be until it's time for snack."
None of them even looked at her, but what she said seemed to register on their faces. The parents walked inside, where each of them sat on one of the toddler-size chairs she'd placed in a circle near a small table containing the electric percolator, which was now exuding the rich dark odor of freshly brewed coffee.
"I'd like to open by requesting that we get some larger furniture," Rick said, "since these chairs were obviously made for munchkins." The others laughed.
"I'll try to find bigger chairs by next time," Barbara said, looking around. Four families. Five little ones. It was a good start, she thought. Enough people to get some good talk going, and small enough to be intimate. "I want to welcome all of you. This is a very unique group, specifically designed for families with children whose birth circumstances were unusual. I believe in the necessity for this group, because modern technology is creating, and our society is embracing, extraordinary and wonderful ways to bring babies into the world. No one knows that better than all of you. But because these babies are so special, they and their parents bring with them a special set of needs and problems for which there is no precedent.
"These needs create situations never faced before, and require answers which, if we find them in our group, will not only help these special children through their lives but maybe can serve as pathfinding information we can pass on to other families." Every now and then she could hear her voice sounding exactly like Gracie's. And for a minute she had the odd feeling that somewhere in the room, just outside her peripheral vision, Gracie was perched, smoking a cigarette and saying, "Well said, dear girl."
"Each of you has taken a risk to have a child in an unorthodox way. Now those children are growing and developing, and soon they'll be out in the world with other children, and they'll have questions about their origins. We're here to deal with your responsibilities to your children, and how much you're prepared to tell them about themselves. How you'll present the information, and how you'll talk about their specialness at different stages in their lives. We'll also work on the way your particular baby or babies came into the world and how that continues to affect you and your spouse, or significant other, and other members of your extended families, parents, siblings, et cetera.
"So when Sid and Rose Margaret and David and Jillian and even little baby Jody are asking, 'Where do I come from?,' we'll have prepared loving responses. Responses we'll figure out together. And I mean that literally, because I certainly don't know what they are yet myself. But I think the important thing is to treat them and their questions in a way that helps these children to grow up feeling loved, loving, and confident."
"How can there be any answer to 'Where do I come from' besides the truth?" Rick asked.
Judith's baby was whimpering. Judith took her out of the carrier and rocked her against her shoulder. "I guess," she offered, "it depends on how comfortable you are with the truth. I don't particularly want to tell my daughters, 'Your dad was a number on a vial of sperm.' I'd like to make it sound better than that."
"Truthfulness for young children doesn't have to mean you tell them the whole story all at once. There are certain ways to give information that are more age appropriate than other ways, and you give them the information in stages. Broad strokes that are honest instead of details that they might not be able to handle," Barbara said. "And, Judith, I think wanting t
o let your daughters know that there was a living, breathing person who donated that sperm is a great idea. Because once they understand that they're a part of him, they'll want to think of him as someone special."
That made Lainie think about Jackie. About Mitch and Jackie, and she nearly jumped with surprise when she felt Mitch take her hand and hold it gently. Why is he holding my hand? Trying to make everyone think we're happy. Trying to make me think that.
"The method I used to get a baby was open adoption," Rick said. "David's birth mother actually lived in my house for the last few months of her pregnancy.''
"Does she still see the baby?" Lainie asked.
"She hasn't seen him since we left the hospital."
"Where is she?" Shelly asked.
"In Kansas."
"Nice and far away," Judith said.
"I have no problem with her being around David. I think of her as his mother. He has her feisty ways, and her pink skin, and her blood flowing through his veins. And she's a terrific, bright human being. When he can understand, I want him to know she's his mother."
"You think that because you're single," Ruthie said. "If you had a wife who wanted to mother him, I'll bet things would be different."
"Maybe," Rick said.
"These are the kinds of complicated things we'll get into in this group," Barbara said. "I suspect that involvement with a birth parent can probably get touchy down the line. Particularly, Rick, if you chose to get married someday."
"No chance of that," Rick said.
"Are you gay?" Judith asked Rick.
"Not that I know of," Rick answered. "Want to step into the other room and find out?"
"Are you homophobic?" Ruthie asked Judith.
"Hell no," Judith said. "I was just wondering why an attractive single man is so adamant that he won't marry."
Ruthie changed the subject. "Do the two of you have any continuing relationship with the surrogate?" she asked, looking at Lainie and Mitch. Lainie's heart beat faster. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Barbara stiffen.
The Stork Club Page 24