by Nina Darnton
When she called them to the table twenty minutes later, after finding enough to do in the kitchen so she didn’t have to reappear right away, they seemed to be deep in conversation.
Grace looked at her sympathetically as she sat down.
“Jeff’s been telling us about your problems getting pregnant,” Grace said. “I’m so sorry.”
Marcia turned toward Jeff. Two scotches or not, he felt the heat of her glare and knew he had made a mistake. Mike caught the look and stared at his plate.
“This looks delicious,” he said, glancing nervously at his wife, who barreled on, oblivious.
“He says you tried everything, but, I was wondering, have you thought of surrogacy? I have a friend who just brought home a beautiful baby girl from a surrogate in Tennessee.”
Jeff stiffened. There was an awkward silence.
“Grace, honey, maybe Marcia doesn’t want to talk about this. It’s kind of private.”
“I’m sorry,” Jeff said to Marcia, clearly nervous. “I should never have—”
Marcia got up abruptly and walked briskly back to the kitchen, her jaw tight. The kitchen was a large, loft-like room, separated from the dining area by a granite-topped counter. No curtains adorned the floor-to-ceiling windows so she could clearly see the full moon casting a soft light in the night sky as she prepared the vegetables. The effect was soothing as she tried to calm down. Jeff’s telling these people whom she hadn’t even seen for months their most intimate disappointment was a huge betrayal. But she realized she might be able to use their support in her ongoing argument with Jeff. She heated the asparagus and arranged it on a serving platter, adding lemon slices and a few drops of melted butter. She could hear her guests turn to less sensitive subjects. Grace was describing how amazed she and Mike were at the competitive challenge of getting a three-year-old into nursery school in New York City. She came from Madison, Wisconsin, where you simply signed your kid up. The only challenge was having enough money to pay tuition. But in New York, the schools started testing kids at three to see if they measured up. Stephie had frozen at the interview and didn’t interact with the adults at all. They’d asked her to string beads and she balked, picking up another toy instead. “I mean, she’d been stringing beads since she was two,” Grace said. “She was bored by it.”
Marcia took the bread out of the oven, placed it in the breadbasket and picked up the asparagus platter, which she passed around. Grace was talking about people in Woodstock who refused to vaccinate their children. Grace felt they were putting all children at risk. Mike said that as a pediatrician he had been asked to appear as an expert witness in the case of an immune-compromised boy who had caught measles from a child in his nursery school class who had not been vaccinated. The unvaccinated child had recovered, but this boy had died and the parents were suing the family and the school.
They all expressed their outrage, both at the parents who refused vaccinations and the school for not insisting. “Will you do it?” Marcia asked Mike.
“I will. And I’m very sympathetic to the family, of course. But I’m not sure if they’ll win.”
The conversation segued into other interesting cases. “Remember Mary Beth Whitehead?” Mike said. “The surrogate mother who wouldn’t give up the baby?”
There was a tense silence and he seemed embarrassed, remembering this was a sensitive subject. He looked nervously at his wife and they all looked at Marcia. She held both hands up in protest. “Please, I’m so sorry to have made you uncomfortable. I know you were being kind, Grace. It just took me by surprise, that’s all. It doesn’t mean surrogacy is a taboo subject. Actually, now that you’ve been inducted into our private life, I might as well confess that I’ve been trying to get Jeff to agree to look into it with me.”
Now it was Jeff’s turn to abruptly leave the table. He returned with the salt and pepper.
“That’s a wonderful idea,” Grace said. “Aside from the friend I mentioned earlier, I also know someone in L.A. who had three children through surrogates and it worked out fabulously. I think it all depends on finding the right surrogate. But you can; there are women who really want to do it and agencies to help you locate them.” She looked at Jeff, who had just sat down. “Why do you have to be convinced?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “it just feels wrong.”
“How so?” Mike asked.
“It feels exploitive,” Jeff answered. It annoyed Marcia that he kept saying that when she knew his real opposition was the fact that it wasn’t “normal” in his view, or traditional.
“I’m not so sure,” Mike countered. “Maybe some women really like being able to do it. I think there’s basic altruism, but it must also feel good that they can do something these rich women can’t.”
“And think of the power these surrogates have,” Grace added. “For nine months, how they eat, what they drink, how they behave, suddenly becomes vitally important to a group of wealthy people who never thought twice about them before.”
“Well, that might be,” Jeff said. Before anyone could say more, he got up and opened the door to the deck.
“Let’s step out for a minute,” Marcia said. “It’s such a beautiful night.”
They all made their way outside. The sky was cloudless and the constellations stood out clearly. At first Grace and Mike couldn’t make them out, but Marcia knew them all and described them, until, slowly at first and then with a sudden flash of recognition, the others could see them. “First you find Polaris, the night star,” Marcia said, explaining how it was the brightest. Then she pointed out the Big and Little Dippers because they were the easiest, and finally Orion, the Hunter; Ursa Major, the bear.
A cool breeze stirred the air and Mike put his arm around Grace’s shoulders as she slid hers around his waist.
“This is beautiful,” Mike said, “but I’m afraid we have to get home. You know the drill—we’ll have to pay the babysitter, take her home and try to get some sleep before Stephie gets up early tomorrow.”
Marcia and Jeff led them back into the house, where they collected their things and said good night. Afterward, Marcia suggested they leave the dishes for the next morning and Jeff gratefully agreed. She put the butter and other perishables in the fridge, and he went around the house turning off lights and locking doors. She put on her nightgown and got into bed.
“I hope I didn’t ruin tonight,” he said as he joined her. “I’m really sorry. You did a good job of covering it, but I know you were upset.”
“I got over it.”
“So, we’re okay?”
She smiled as she leaned over to kiss him on the cheek, the warmest gesture she’d made in a week. “Yeah. Of course. I just felt embarrassed. I mean, we were just starting to reconnect.”
“Did you do that with Grace?”
“I don’t know. She’s different. Did you notice that from the moment they arrived, their one topic of conversation was their child?”
“I did. People with kids always think everyone is as interested in them as they are. Especially her. That’s all she could talk about; it’s like the rest of her mind has totally turned off.”
“I won’t be like that if we have kids, don’t worry. But if we don’t have kids, something like that is going to keep happening, Jeff. We’ll always be the couple listening to stories about other people’s children. It will never get easier.”
“Maybe we’ll just have to make other friends.”
She settled into her pillow. “I haven’t given up yet,” she murmured. “But I’m falling asleep. Let’s turn off the light.”
He reached up and switched it off, then leaned over and kissed her lightly on the mouth. “We’ll figure it out. I love you.”
“Me too,” she murmured.
She turned to get into her sleep position, lying on her side with her back to him. Her mind was racing and she knew she wouldn’t sleep. “Good night,” she said.
“Good night.” He turned over too. In a few minutes she could
hear the deep, regular breathing that indicated sleep, and a few minutes after that it was confirmed by loud snoring. She lay awake thinking well into the night.
5
Marcia awoke early. Her bed faced a picture window through which she could see the woods and, beyond them, the mountains. Well, she thought as she admired them, not high mountains, not like the Rockies or Mount Rainier, but high enough for her and beautiful in the morning light. She tiptoed out of bed to put on the coffee. She didn’t want to wake Jeff because this early morning solitude was important to her. She loved watching the cardinals and finches stop by the bird feeder, scattering husks on the ground in their enthusiasm as they pecked greedily at the seeds. She often enjoyed watching the hummingbirds, furiously beating their little wings as they drank the pink sugared water in their own feeder a few feet away, but today they were absent. She brewed the coffee and took her cup onto the back porch. It was a little chilly so she wrapped a shawl around her and luxuriated in the stillness of the morning. She thought about the previous night and wondered if the discussion had made an impact on Jeff. He’d had a chance to hear other people say surrogacy was a good idea and tell about friends who had done it. All in all the conversation had made surrogacy seem less controversial, less strange, and that, she knew, would be important to him. She returned to the house and refilled her cup. She heard stirring in the bedroom so she stood at the door and asked Jeff if he was ready for coffee. He was, so she brought it to him. He smiled his thanks.
“You’re up early,” he said.
“Yes. It’s a lovely day. I so enjoy these morning hours when we don’t have to rush off to work and we have time together.” She crept back into bed beside him, propping herself up on pillows. “And it’s so beautiful here. I love the city, but we’re lucky we have this too.”
“I know,” he said. “This is the kind of thing I was talking about the other day. Imagine how different it would be if we had a kid. We’d miss all this quiet private time together.”
She smiled. “Yes, we would. But we’d have it again someday and we’d have so much more. It would be worth it.”
“Maybe.”
He stretched, then sipped his coffee. “Remember what we were talking about last night?” His voice was amused, teasing. “I noticed you were less angry I confided in them when they approved so much of surrogacy. Did you plan that somehow?”
“No, but I was grateful. I hope you listened to what they were saying.”
“I heard them,” he answered, noncommittal.
“They had friends who’d done it three times. And no one backed out and they said it was a big success. That could be our story too. If we went ahead with this, we could still be parents, Jeff.”
“Whoa. I didn’t mean to open up that subject again,” he said good-naturedly. She snuggled up next to him.
“If we ever did have a baby, I’d want him to have your thick, unruly black hair and your deep brown eyes. I’d want him to be tall like you are and inherit that cleft in your chin,” she said. “But I wouldn’t mind leaving out your resistance to the modern world.”
He grinned and played along. “I’m an old-world kind of guy. I thought that’s what you liked about me. And if we’d been able to conceive the old-fashioned way, I’d have wanted our daughter to be stubborn and compulsive like you. Then you’d see what a hero I am for putting up with you all these years.”
“Hey!”
He laughed. “And I’d have wanted her to inherit your beautiful hands, and your long brown straight hair and hazel eyes,” he said. “That’s why I don’t want to adopt. I don’t want some stranger’s short curly hair, however pretty it might be.”
“You don’t inherit long hair,” she said, laughing too. “You just let it grow.
“Whatever.
“Remember that famous Bernard Shaw quote?” he asked, clearly ready to move on. “He was at a party sitting next to a beautiful actress. She turned to him and said, ‘Mr. Shaw, we should have a baby together. With your brains and my looks, it would be a triumph.’
“‘Ah, madam,’ he answered without skipping a beat. ‘But what if it had your brains and my looks?’”
She laughed again. “We’d have fun trying to figure out what the baby inherited from whom,” she said.
“I wish it could have happened, honey. I know how much you wanted it. But you’re okay, right?”
“Yeah. I’m okay. Sort of.”
The rest of the day passed happily. They went for a bike ride and stopped in town for lunch. At home, Jeff read the paper and puttered around the house and garden while Marcia worked on a manuscript she was editing. On the way back to the city, they bought a basket of apples at the farm market and some fresh eggs from a neighbor who kept chickens. Surrogacy didn’t come up again, but she felt she’d brought him a long way toward agreeing to it and she decided she would register with the agency and tell them she was ready to see applications.
6
The first thing that attracted Marcia to the woman who would become her surrogate was her name: Eve. It was perfect. Eve, the mother of us all, would be the birth mother of her child, she thought. Wouldn’t that be appropriate? She had slogged through dozens of applications with slightly discouraging results. While there was something good about most of them, there was something wrong with most of them too. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she felt she had to go by instinct, and her instinct told her that she had not yet found the right person. One seemed excellent—a stay-at-home mother of four whose husband was recently laid off and who needed money to support her family until he found another job. I don’t have a job or a career, she wrote. But one thing I know how to do is push out babies and I’d be happy to do that for someone else for a change. She sounded clear-headed and even had a sense of humor, but she lived in New Jersey, much too close if there was to be little chance of contact after the birth. Another said outright that she needed the money and that was her main reason for applying. While Marcia appreciated the honesty, she recoiled from the cold, business-like tone and doubted the woman, who had not had her own child, had a full appreciation of how her emotions might factor in. Another applicant waxed on poetically about wanting to give joy to others. Her application was well written and movingly expressed, but Marcia feared she was a romantic who might find the reality of bearing and then relinquishing a baby traumatic. Eve’s application, however, stood out. She seemed realistic and able to balance a sense of service with her own need. She was a widowed mother of a ten-year-old boy whom, she wrote, was the joy and purpose of her life. She had a limited education and worked as a housekeeper in a nursing home in Los Angeles, far enough away, Marcia thought, to discourage any impulse for contact after the baby was born.
She read the application several times, especially the essay, which read: I want to give my boy a better life. He has nobody but me in this world and I want to put away something for him. He’s a good boy and he is smart, but our neighborhood is rough. I want him to go to a decent school. I want to live where there is not so much drugs and gangs. In response to the question of whether she thought she would mind giving up the child and whether she would want an ongoing relationship with the family, she answered:
I liked being pregnant. I had no problem. I won’t mind doing it again. I want to give this feeling of love I have for my boy to someone else. I want to see a woman who thought she could never have a baby smile the first time she looks at her child and knows her life will never be the same. But I do not want to carry my own baby. It must be the egg of the baby’s future mother. And I don’t never want to see the mother or father or baby ever again after. I will do this. I’ll do it right. But it will end when the baby is born.
She was exactly what Marcia had been looking for. Of course she had to meet her and see if they got along, but this was the first application that felt like a distinct possibility. The woman sounded strong, sure of what she wanted, nobody’s dupe. She seemed smart too, regardless of her minimal education. Marcia bri
efly considered going to L.A. to meet Eve before talking to Jeff, but she quickly rejected that idea. She was ready to present her case to her reluctant husband and then, if all went well, he would come to L.A. with her and they would go through every additional stage of this life-changing adventure together: the choice of the surrogate, the development of the fetus (she would fly there every month for doctor appointments, she resolved) and the birth. She could already picture sharing the ultrasound photos of the baby in utero, and choosing names together and decorating the nursery. But she was getting ahead of herself. Tonight she would read Eve’s application to Jeff. She returned to the manuscript on her desk, a quasi-historical novel that fabricated a love life for Jane Austen. It wasn’t easy to concentrate. She tried several times, before calling Julie and asking her to take a look at it. It would have had to be very good to engage her attention at this particular moment and, frankly, she thought impatiently, it wasn’t. Maybe that was a good way to judge a book’s commercial appeal: Did it grab you when you were obsessively involved with something else?
She packed up the rejected applications, put them in a file cabinet in her bottom drawer. It was already eleven and she hadn’t done much work yet, though she had been up till one the night before, reading the new novel of an author she had great hopes for. She had made notes all over the manuscript and now called Julie in to dictate an editorial letter. Julie arrived carrying two cups of coffee, and handed one to Marcia before sitting down on the black upholstered chair across from Marcia’s.
“Have you seen the sales figures on the adoption book? They’re awesome,” Julie said.
Marcia smiled. “Julie, please, you work in a literary establishment, don’t say ‘awesome.’”
Julie colored slightly. “I’m sorry. I just was excited because it’s doing so well and I know it was one you particularly championed.”
“I’m joking, Julie. Even about this being a literary establishment. Our fiction is usually more what I like to call ‘faux literature.’ But now and then … when we’re lucky, we get a commercial success that’s also a good book. I’m very pleased. In fact, I’ve been thinking about commissioning a surrogacy book. What do you think?”