Risking It All

by Nina Darnton

  “Fiction or nonfiction?”

  “Either, if it’s good. Why don’t you see what’s around or what you can suggest to the right author. If you bring in something promising, you can edit it.”

  Julie beamed and Marcia began dictating the letter. After that there were the e-mails and calls to return, agents to mollify or bargain with, and meetings to attend. The work distracted her and she didn’t start worrying again until she was walking from the subway to her apartment. She had a clear idea of what she wanted to happen and she was nervous about achieving it, going over in her mind what would be the best way to recruit Jeff.

  He was already home when she arrived. He’d had an afternoon meeting that ended later than expected, so instead of going back to the office, he had come straight home. He suggested they go out for dinner and she readily agreed. They walked arm-in-arm to Broadway, heading for their favorite restaurant where, in spite of its popularity, they could usually get a table. Today was no different. Dave, the maître d’, met them with an effusive greeting and, shaking his head at how busy they were, checked his reservation list. He assured them that hard as it was, he could probably do something for them, as Jeff slipped him $20. When they were seated, Jeff ordered a vodka martini and Marcia asked for a glass of Pino Grigio. She wasn’t much of a drinker, but she reached for it and took a deep swig. Jeff smiled affectionately. “Don’t drink it too fast, honey. You know how quickly it goes to your head.”

  She smiled back. “Yeah, I know. It’s usually enough for me to just smell the cork, right? Cheap date.” Their eyes met in appreciation of their old joke. She felt ready to tell him what was on her mind.

  Like most scenes set up in someone’s imagination beforehand, this one didn’t go exactly as planned. After the first course arrived, she couldn’t hold back her excitement a moment longer. She launched into a long explanation of how her thinking about surrogacy had developed and changed after their dinner in Woodstock, how she had researched the subject and found how often it worked successfully, how she had read dozens of stories and was now convinced that, when the surrogate was chosen correctly, the process had great benefits for both families. She had contacted an agency, she told him, she had studied applications (“Applications, Jeff. I mean, they seek out these opportunities. These women aren’t victims, they are lining up to do this.”) and finally had found one she thought would be perfect and would obviate all his fears about it. Did he want to see what the woman wrote? She reached into her briefcase and took out Eve’s application and thumbed through it, looking for the essay, but not looking up at him. If she had, she would have noticed that he appeared surprised and disturbed. He had let her tell the whole story without a single interruption but now he said softly but firmly, “No. Wait, Marcia. We have things to talk about.”

  He had stopped eating and now pushed his plate to the side. “I thought you had finally come around,” he said. “I mean, I knew you were still disappointed about not having a baby and I knew that day in Woodstock was a setback, but you seemed okay. I mean, we even joked about it together. I believed you were facing reality and realizing that we were just not meant to be parents. I don’t understand how you could let me think that when all this was going on.”

  She put the essay on the table and looked at him in disbelief. “How could I know what you were thinking? I never joked about it. I didn’t imagine you would think I would just let go of something this big just like that, without even telling you.”

  “You were planning and plotting to do something you knew I was against without even telling me.”

  She reached for his hand and covered it with her own. He didn’t withdraw it. “No, darling, no, that wasn’t it. I just didn’t want … no, I just wanted to come to you with all the facts, with my own mind satisfied, before I brought you into it. I never meant to deceive you. I love you. This is for both of us. All I want is for us to do this together, both of us ready for this great moment in our life, and I knew you were more reluctant than me so I wanted to have some answers for you. Please don’t feel betrayed. It’s the opposite. I promise.” Her eyes were moist with tears she was trying not to shed but he could see them and it was impossible to deny the strength of her feeling or her sincerity. He squeezed her hand and patted it before withdrawing his own, and he seemed calmer.

  “Okay, okay. It just took me by surprise.” He called over the waiter and ordered another vodka and another Pino Grigio for Marcia. She looked so sad.

  “Another moment parfait ruined—right?” he asked softly.

  “No. This is different.” When they first met and early in their relationship, they had talked about enjoying beautiful times together, perfect moments that they seemed to fall into so naturally that the reality matched their most romantic fantasy. Later, when they would argue or disagree about something, one of them would accuse the other of ruining a perfect moment and, somehow, probably because Marcia was studying French at the time, they started referring to it in French, a button each could press without succumbing to a full apology. “Remember our moments parfaits?” one of them would ask, and usually, especially when the actual disagreement was solved, it would be enough to bridge the gap.

  “I know it is,” he said. “Please, show me the essay.”

  In the end, she prevailed. Although he was disturbed by the high cost, he resigned himself to the necessity of taking it on if all his other reservations could be satisfied. He was mollified by Eve’s strong desire not to continue any relationship with them or the baby after the delivery, and he agreed in principle to keep investigating surrogacy as a solution. He even agreed to accompany Marcia to L.A. to meet Eve.

  Later that night, as Marcia was brushing her teeth, it struck her that Jeff was not only ambivalent about the surrogacy, he was ambivalent about having children at all. She also knew that for her, the latter outcome would mean she would always feel this ache, this hole inside her. She felt a wave of immense gratitude that he was willing, against his own inclinations, to go along with this for her. And she was sure that once they had the baby, he would love it as much as she would. He would be grateful that she pushed so hard to make it happen. She rinsed her toothbrush, swallowed her nighttime vitamins and climbed into bed, snuggling up against him. He turned and pulled her to him. They made love without the need for it to produce anything other than their mutual enjoyment. And it was good.

  7

  Eve Russo lived in Los Angeles’s East Side, a neighborhood that Marcia discovered was more than 96 percent Hispanic. This surprised her because Eve was Caucasian, of Italian-Irish extraction. But like most of the people who lived in East L.A., Eve was poor and everyone knew where to find the poor side of town. She had moved to this neighborhood with her Mexican husband, Jorge, and had stayed after he’d left, bringing up their son, Danny, alone.

  Jorge had loved East L.A., where legal immigrants from Mexico and other countries in Latin America mingled with the many illegals. Known to outsiders as a section of violent gangs, drugs and rampant crime, it was home to the people who lived there who filled it with their missed culture and delicious Hispanic food. The bodegas and mercados in the neighborhood transported patrons, at least in their imaginations, to the streets of Antigua or Mexico City. Here shoppers could find the delicacies they loved from their home countries—pigs’ feet, empanadas, líuidas, burritos, pan dulce, mixed in with the sugary American products they favored. Jorge relented when Eve insisted they give their baby son an American name, but he wanted Danny to be part of his Hispanic culture and just living where they did accomplished that. Eve liked it at first too. Even though her mom was Irish way back and her dad said he was Italian, neither had any ties to those countries anymore and were pretty much homogenized American. Jorge and his world were foreign and exotic, and she appreciated and encouraged Danny’s dual heritage. She learned Spanish and made sure Danny spoke it too, even continuing to use it occasionally at home after Jorge disappeared. But as her boy grew, Eve began to understand the downside of th
e neighborhood. She worried constantly about how to protect him from drugs and crime. This made her ambitious and she was working on her GRE to finish high school, hoping to graduate from housekeeper at the care home to nurse’s aide. Sometimes she even dreamed of studying to become a nurse. That wouldn’t have been so far-fetched if she hadn’t run off with Jorge years before. Her father was a construction worker. Her mother worked at Walmart. She was their only child and they wanted her to go to school and make something of herself. But after she met Jorge they went crazy, she often said. They forbade her from seeing him, just because he was Mexican (and in the country illegally), she bitterly told her friends. Finally, she got pregnant, ran off to California with him and married him on her eighteenth birthday. She wanted to reconcile with her parents, she’d tried a few times, but they wouldn’t speak to her. She figured they’d come around eventually, but three years later, it was too late. A car accident ended both their lives. Eve was alone.

  By the time Marcia and Jeff had made arrangements to meet her and landed at LAX, Eve and her ten-year-old son were living alone together in their own two-room apartment down the street from a market that sold the Hispanic food Eve had learned to prepare and Danny loved. Marcia and Jeff took a taxi to the address she had sent them and noticed how the neighborhood deteriorated as they got closer. The houses were smaller, the yards, when they existed, less cared for. Eve and her son lived in a shabby two-story building that housed four apartments. It was Saturday, usually a working day for Eve, but she called in sick. Eve’s job paid minimum wage but she found she could scrape by doing overtime and working two shifts twice a week and one on Saturday. Since public transportation was almost nonexistent, she needed a car and couldn’t afford one—even one as old and beat-up as the one she’d managed to procure—without the extra work.

  Marcia rang the bell, but it didn’t work, so she knocked on the door. When Eve answered, Marcia nervously extended her hand. Eve took it awkwardly and smiled shyly at her. They entered and the women silently examined each other. Eve saw a tall, stylish woman with hazel eyes that seemed both anxious and kind. She had long chestnut hair that was swept up on the back of her head and was wearing a navy and white dress with a matching jacket. She looked to be around thirty, even though Eve knew she was actually thirty-nine. Eve also saw that the woman was rich, so wealthy she could afford to pay more than $100,000 to have this baby. She had smooth skin, few lines and a strong body. Her soft white hands had never scrubbed floors. She probably goes to a gym to work out, Eve thought. She doesn’t have to worry about having enough money to take care of this kid she wants so much. She didn’t look too closely at Jeff except to note that he was tall and well dressed. Her husband comes with her, she thought. He helps her. No wonder she has no wrinkles.

  Marcia was looking and appraising too. She saw a thin pretty woman with long blond hair pulled into a ponytail and straight bangs. She looked more like a girl of eighteen than a woman of twenty-nine and was wearing clean, khaki pants and a short-sleeved yellow flowered blouse. Her home was bare—only a couch and a table with three unmatched chairs in the first room and two twin beds and two dressers in the second. But everything was spotless. A bat and glove lay on the floor in the living room, and a small Star Wars Legos set was on the dresser in the bedroom. Apart from that, Marcia didn’t see any toys or games. There were no bookcases. A kid’s backpack was on the floor near the door, and some notebooks and a few baseball cards lay on the table.

  After greeting each other, Eve presented her son, a short, black-haired boy with large round dark eyes, high cheekbones and smooth light brown skin, clearly inherited from his father. He was wearing a Dodgers T-shirt that had been washed many times and a pair of jeans. “This is Danny,” Eve said proudly. Danny mumbled hello, looking embarrassed.

  Eve offered them coffee and they accepted. Danny took an iPod from his backpack and disappeared into the other room. Ah, thought Marcia. He doesn’t need other toys. He plays with that instead. She was determined to strictly limit the “device time” for her child, having read several articles about how harmful too much screen time could be for young children.

  It was a little awkward at first. No one seemed to know how to begin or what to say. “I see your son likes baseball,” Marcia began.

  “Yes. He loves it,” Eve said, nodding. “He wants to play all the time. He’s good too. He got on the travel team. But I have to buy the uniform. It’s expensive.” She shrugged. “Everything is expensive. That’s why I want to do this.”

  Jeff said, “But you obviously care so much for your son. Won’t it be hard to give your baby away after it’s born?”

  Eve’s eyes flashed and her face colored slightly. She stared straight at him. “I would never give my baby away. Never.” She turned away and spoke more softly. “This is not my baby. This is your baby. I will eat right and take care of myself and give you a healthy baby but otherwise, this baby is nothing to me.”

  Marcia was a bit taken aback by the ferocity of her response. “Eve, is it all for the money? I mean, do you have any other feelings about it we should know?”

  Eve shrugged. She looked straight at them, directing her remarks to both of them. “Look, you seem like nice people. I’ll be happy to do this for you, to give you this gift. But if you ask me would I do it for free, the answer is no.”

  Marcia shook her head vehemently. “No. Of course I wouldn’t ask you to do it for free. I think your attitude is perfect and it’s what my husband wants too. After the birth, we will go home and you will go back to your life.”

  Eve leaned forward. “I want to put some money away for my son. He has no one else to help him. My parents are dead, his father is gone, no sisters, no brothers, no aunts, no uncles. Just me. I must do what I can. I will try to have enough to rent a place in another neighborhood where there are better schools, nicer people, not so much drugs and gangs. This will help me.”

  Jeff shifted in his chair. Marcia glanced at him, then looked back at Eve. “I’m so sorry about your family. What happened to his father?”

  Eve shrugged. She walked to the bedroom, closed the door, returned to the table and lowered her voice. “He was Mexican—Danny looks just like him. He got to Phoenix, where I used to live, with a smuggler. You understand? He didn’t have papers. But he had ambition. He showed up at my high school one day and, well, we ended up together. But his mom got sick when Danny was still a little kid and he wanted to see her so he went back.” She looked down and pursed her lips. “Look, there’s no point talking about it. He died.”

  Jeff squeezed Marcia’s arm. He was uncomfortable.

  She joined Eve at the table and, reaching out, took Eve’s hand in solidarity. “I’m so sorry.”

  Eve withdrew her hand gently but resolutely. “Then choose me,” she said. “Give me a strong seed and I will grow a strong baby. And pay me.”

  “How much of the money we pay the agency goes to you?” Jeff asked, suddenly back in his comfort zone.

  “I don’t know what you pay them. They told me I’d get thirty thousand dollars.”

  “We will add another fifteen thousand, if all goes well,” Marcia blurted, “if we work together to make this baby healthy.” Jeff looked at her as though she’d lost her mind. “That will give you forty-five thousand. You can save some and have money for a better apartment and a security payment too.”

  Eve was stunned and, sensing Jeff’s reluctance, she spoke directly to Marcia. “I’ve been trying to save for this and I have some put away. But it’s hard. Just when I think I’ll soon have enough, something happens. Two months ago, Danny needed to have four teeth pulled. It cost three thousand dollars. That was all I had managed to save.”

  “Don’t you have health insurance?” Jeff asked.

  She laughed and met his eyes. “I have it. But it doesn’t pay for this.”

  Marcia stood up and Jeff followed. “I hope this will be enough to make a difference for you. I know you understand the difference you will make in o
ur lives.”

  “I know. Then you have decided?”

  Jeff looked unsure. Marcia looked at him beseechingly and he put his arm around her and nodded. Marcia was overjoyed. “Yes, definitely. It’s you. And if it’s okay with you, I’d like to help you choose a doctor and come to your monthly checkups so it feels more as if the baby is mine.”

  “I’m good with that,” Eve said, smiling. She stood and embraced Marcia. “Thank you, Mrs.… I don’t remember your last name but I’m very happy.”

  “It’s Naiman, Marcia Naiman, but please, call me Marcia. I’m glad you’re happy about it. I am too, pleased and excited. We’ll be seeing a lot of each other in the next nine months.”

  Eve turned to call Danny, but Marcia reached out and touched her arm. “How will you explain this to him?”

  “I’ll tell him the truth. He’s a smart boy. He will understand.”

  She called and Danny came. “They’re leaving now,” she said.

  Danny nodded. “Bye,” he said, looking at the floor.

  “Bye, Danny,” Marcia said. “It was nice meeting you.”

  Jeff patted him awkwardly on the head. “Bye, Dan. See you soon.”

  They told Eve they would tell the agency they had chosen their surrogate and find out what the next step was.

  When they were alone together, Marcia was euphoric. Jeff gave her a moment to express her joy but he couldn’t resist saying what was on his mind. “What the hell did you do in there? You offered her fifteen thousand dollars more than she asked. Are you out of your mind? We have to take out an equity loan for the rest of the money and you just added fifteen thousand dollars more?”