“Yes,” said Suzette. “I will be there.” She would be there for the surgery, though not for the post-op care. It was a delicate procedure, closing a hole in a plum-size heart. She utilized a needle as thin as an eyelash.
“If he’s…slipping away, if he’s going to die,” said Camillo’s mother, staring intently at Suzette, her brow a nest of lines, “I just want to ask you to say, just to whisper to him, to Camillo, just whisper, May the angels show you the way to Heaven.”
“Oh,” said Suzette, sitting back in her chair. She thought, Really? Angels? Suzette’s mother had always talked about angels.
“Tell him I’ll be there as soon as I can,” said Camillo’s mother.
Suzette was overcome. She believed in none of it—not angels, not God—she believed in working your ass off and never making mistakes. But Camillo’s mother’s penetrating gaze, the strength of the baby’s hold on her finger.
“I promise,” she said, uncomfortably.
—
“Dr. Kendall?” said Brendan. Suzette blinked, brought herself back to the present. “Are we ready, Dr. Kendall?” said Brendan.
“But Hyland said it’s important,” Leslie repeated, raising her eyebrows. “We can page Dr. Liebovitz if you need to go.” Leslie had often (and inappropriately) sent Suzette emails about “finding time for yourself” and “nurturing your marriage.” A single woman with twin cats, she was inordinately concerned with Suzette’s personal life (or lack thereof). Did she send Phil Liebovitz emails about nurturing his marriage?
Suzette swallowed. “Tell Hyland I’ll call him back,” she said, and she turned and walked toward Camillo. “Led Zeppelin II,” she instructed Pam.
“All right,” said Brendan approvingly.
Suzette ignored him. She closed her eyes and breathed in once, allowing herself a moment of worry—Hyland said it’s important—and then breathed out, focusing completely on the task at hand. Robert Plant’s voice overwhelmed her, shut down her chattering mind, as she knew it would. Time stopped, and Suzette’s instinct took over. “We ready to go?” she asked.
“I’m good,” said Brendan.
“Start time 0754,” said Suzette. She picked up the knife and cut deeply into Camillo’s chest.
Suzette and Pam worked quickly, exposing Camillo’s thumping, maroon heart. Pam, as always, was steady and calm. The main pulmonary artery would give Suzette a good approach to the VSD, working across the pulmonary valve. With the tiny tools—Hyland had once joked that Suzette repaired hearts with tweezers—she inserted cannulas, tubes that would direct Camillo’s blood out of his body to the heart-lung machine that would take over for the course of the operation so that Camillo’s heart could rest and his lungs deflate.
Suzette fixed tourniquets to hold the cannulas in place, then sliced into the left atrium.
“The vent is on?” asked Suzette.
“The vent is on,” said Pam.
Suzette could see bright red blood coming back from the left atrium. As his body cooled, Camillo’s heart decompressed and stopped bleeding. Suzette made a hole in the main pulmonary artery so she could look down the valve and identify the VSD.
Camillo’s heart slowed and grew still. Suzette always felt a sense of awe seeing a heart in this state: so vulnerable and easily manipulated. Pam suctioned carefully. Suzette pushed the valve leaflet out of the way, using stitches to hold the pulmonary artery. Splayed open, Camillo’s heart was a pale orchid.
Carefully, Suzette lowered the endoscopic camera into the valve. While Suzette examined the images, Pam silently neatened the tools.
It was time to patch the VSD. Suzette stitched rapidly, using a running suture. “Ramble On” began playing, the slow strumming a perfect accompaniment to her work. She had to be careful—so careful—not to touch the aortic valve leaflets.
Ah, sometimes I grow so tired. Suzette let herself be carried by the song, by the precise movement of her fingers, almost as if they controlled her and not the other way around. This was the key to being a good (even great?) surgeon: not allowing yourself to know how much was at stake with every movement, the ability to become a perfect machine. In fifteen minutes, the hole was patched, all the leaflets still moving freely. Suzette breathed out. “Begin rewarming the patient,” she said.
She took out the stay stitches, released the tourniquet to fill Camillo’s heart with blood and de-air it. Suzette massaged air out of the pulmonary veins gently, Camillo’s organ saggy and cold under her fingertips.
“Infuse the catheter with carbon dioxide,” said Suzette. “And turn off the music.”
Pam shuffled to the stereo, stopped Robert Plant mid-yowl.
The only sound in the room was the oximeter, its beeps like the final drops of a thunderstorm. Oxygenated blood entered Camillo’s coronary arteries. Suzette lost her focus—just for an instant, thinking of Hyland, of Dorrie’s eager smile. But then she shook her head and watched Camillo’s chest. Pam had carefully folded navy blankets and laid them over his body, leaving only his sleeping face and the raw square around his surgical site exposed.
They waited. Camillo’s heart was dark and silent.
Please, thought Suzette. It wasn’t like her, and she wasn’t even sure whom she was pleading with. She had a sudden memory of her mother, hysterical, covering the windows with black construction paper and telling Suzette to be silent lest they be caught and punished. Please, Suzette had prayed then as well, a girl just hoping for someone to please save her from her mother.
There was no need to pray. Suzette had performed the surgery without a flaw. And there—there! The baby’s heart beat once, and again, and again. Suzette had brought him to the brink of death, then back to brilliant life.
Oxygenated blood turned Camillo’s heart pink. Suzette removed the cannulas, put a warm sponge on Camillo’s heart so it would not dry out while he rewarmed. She told Pam to call the echo team and confirm the repair.
“Cardiopulmonary off,” said Suzette.
“Cardiopulmonary off,” confirmed Pam.
Suzette used stainless-steel wire with an anesthetic catheter to sew Camillo’s chest closed. When she was finished, she sighed audibly.
“Nice work,” said Brendan.
Suzette did not answer. She exited the theater, rushed into her office, and called Hyland. He picked up on the first ring. “Where’ve you been?” he said.
“In surgery,” said Suzette. “What is it?”
“Well,” said Hyland. “Well, it worked. On the first round. She’s pregnant. Dorrie’s pregnant. We’re pregnant. Suze. We’re having a baby!”
8
Why in God’s name had they chosen Chez Nous for their celebratory dinner with Dorrie? What with the candles, the low music, and the mustachioed waiter who made every dish sound sexy, Suzette felt as if she was watching her husband on a date. A date with a young woman carrying his baby. Because, in point of fact, she was watching her husband on a date with a young woman carrying his baby.
Dorrie looked around the plush restaurant, eyes shining. “You know what?” she said, putting her small, plump hands on either side of her bread dish. “I think it’s a girl.”
“A daughter!” cried Hyland. His gaze locked with Dorrie’s as he spoke, but he recovered quickly after the momentary lapse, planting a kiss on his wife’s cheek.
“Well, nothing’s for sure until the sonogram, of course,” said Suzette. Hyland glared at her. “But a boy or a girl would be great!” she added, her tone so awkward and high-pitched in her ears that she wanted to cry.
“A daughter,” said Dorrie, her fingers near Hyland’s on the red tablecloth, her eyes upon him.
“Someone is having a baby?” said the waiter, sidling up. (He pronounced it with an accent: Zomeone eez having a bébé?)
“Yes, we are!” said Hyland.
“Félicitations,” said the waiter, his eyes darting from voluptuous Dorrie to Suzette, her hair up, diamonds in her ears. “Lucky man,” the waiter said, shrugging.
“So lucky,” said Hyland. He wasn’t a dope, but he thought Suzette was more self-confident than she was.
“I’ll have another kir royale,” said Suzette.
“Of course,” said the waiter. “And for the…?” He halted, still unsure of the relationship geometry. “And pour vous?” he said, pointing to Dorrie.
“Sprite,” said Dorrie, “thanks.”
“If your hunch is right, and it’s a girl,” said Hyland, “what if we name her Eloise, after my sister?” Suzette had seen pictures of the serious girl, eleven when she was killed. She’d been a gifted ballerina, apparently.
“That’s a pretty name,” said Dorrie tepidly.
Suzette couldn’t think of one thing to say. She always thought if she had a daughter, she’d name her Amelia, after Amelia Earhart.
“Perfect,” said Hyland. He didn’t seem to notice Suzette’s silence. The drinks arrived, and Suzette tilted her glass and filled her mouth with currant-flavored bubbles, then swallowed, waiting for some sort of euphoria to kick in.
After a trio of desserts, Hyland paid the bill. Outside the restaurant, he opened the driver’s-side door of Dorrie’s car, repeated his thanks, and said, “See you at the clinic for the sonogram?”
“OK,” said Dorrie, smiling up at Hyland. “I’ll see you then.”
When she had driven away, Hyland took Suzette in his arms. “It’s really happening,” he said, kissing her tenderly. “I can’t believe it. It’s really happening.”
Suzette tried to breathe in deeply, to “breathe through her fear,” as her meditation cassette tape advised. She told herself her panic was misplaced, that she was safe, that everything would be fine. In Hyland’s arms, she was warm.
They watched Dorrie’s taillights grow smaller as she drove along Southmore Boulevard. She put on her blinker, waited. When the light changed to green, she turned left on San Jacinto, which fed to 59, then Interstate 45, heading south.
And then she vanished.
Part Two
1
Dorrie
Why did I do it? This seems a fair question, and believe me, I’ve asked it of myself a million times. Why did I sign up to be a surrogate, to lease my body, growing a child to sell to Hyland and Suzette Kendall? The clinic tells you, by the way, that you will be compensated for your time and care…not for the baby. But it’s the baby you’re being paid for. Your baby.
You.
The answer is so simple it seems impossible: money, and all that money meant to me. It meant I could get off of Galveston Island, and I wanted this more than anything. It meant I could move away from my mother and her dull disappointment, away from stories about my deadbeat dad. It meant a bigger life: college, a chance to be amongst other people for whom books were more important than food.
When I saw the billboard advertisement for the Fertility Clinic of Houston, I was working at Sea-O-Rama feeding penguins. It was as awful as it sounds, standing inside a chilled glass enclosure shoveling iced fish from a barrel to the ground, spreading the carcasses around so every ravenous penguin could have a taste. The memory of waking up with that manky smell of penguins in my hair—no matter how many times I washed it—still makes me queasy.
The Fertility Clinic of Houston told me I’d trade nine months of my life—nine months of reading in bed and eating healthy foods, which some intended parents would even pay for—for $35,000. It was enough for one year at absolutely any college in the state (Rice University!), and four years at some. I’d earned $5.60 an hour at Sonic, where I worked all through high school. I earned $8.40 an hour at Sea-O-Rama. My mother, who had sold concessions to aquarium goers for nine years, made $12 an hour. I added it up on my desk calculator: it would take two years to earn the same amount—521 days (working five days a week) of fending off those vicious, feral rats of the sea (as I called them in my mind). Four thousand one hundred and sixty-eight hours. And by the way, an hour of feeding penguins feels like 17 million hours.
Or I could sign the papers, give the gift of life, and be free. The equation seemed simple and life-changing. I signed.
And then, as planned, you were conceived after many painful shots and one round of clinical injections. You began to grow inside me. Almost instantly, I understood that the equation had been wrong. I had forgotten the most important factor, and that was you.
I loved you months before I felt your fluttering kicks, before I saw your fierce, red face. I loved you more than the idea of college, more than the scraps of possible lives I’d allowed myself to imagine. All of these future selves—Dorrie the professor, in a shaded office lit by a single lamp; Dorrie the writer, living in a California cottage; Dorrie the librarian, shelving books on cool, rainy days—they would all be ruined without you.
It sounds melodramatic, I know! I was so young, you have to understand, only twenty-one. My mother might have been capable once, but discontent had turned her sour, made her into someone so unhappy it hurt to be in the house together. I had tried to help her, planting pamphlets about treating depression and making healthy meals. Nothing seemed to do any good. I couldn’t change the fact that my father had left, taking her zest for life right along with him.
I knew it was you I’d been waiting for from the very start, from the first morning I felt deeply ill and understood. But you didn’t belong to me; the papers I’d signed were clear. In the state of Texas, you could never be mine.
Maybe running away was the truest thing I ever did. Maybe it was the worst mistake of my life.
I walked out of the fancy French restaurant where the Kendalls had taken me for dinner. I put my hand on my stomach, which was still flat…you were only the size of a pea! I would have seen you on the sonogram at the next appointment—that would have explained a lot—but I didn’t need to know any more. My choice was plain: I could stay, and give you to Hyland Kendall (at the moment I decided, he was standing with his arm around Suzette, waving as I drove away. I knew he’d be a great father, that was never the question. And Suzette…what can I say? She was wound as tight as a fist, but she was not unkind). I could take the money and step forward into a life I now knew would be incomplete, a black hole at its center, the missing space of you. Or I could pack what little I cared about into a suitcase and run.
I took a deep breath. The Houston night was too bright. In many other states, the papers I’d signed would not be valid. I could get out of Texas and we would be together. You would never even need to know where you had come from. It was love versus money, in the end, my dear baby girl.
I chose love.
2
Suzette
On the morning of Dorrie’s sonogram, Suzette woke up to find Hyland at the foot of their bed, holding a tray with coffee and sliced melon. “Good morning!” he said. “I brought you breakfast! In bed!” His voice was both manic and thrilled.
Suzette sat up, rubbed her eyes. “I haven’t slept this late since our honeymoon,” she said. “What time is it? Eight? This is glorious. And breakfast in bed, thank you, honey.”
“Thanks for taking the morning off,” said Hyland.
Suzette nodded. It hadn’t been easy, but Hyland had made it clear how important it was that they both be in the obstetrician’s office when they saw the baby onscreen for the first time. Hyland radiated happiness, and Suzette felt…well…unsettled. And compounding her unsettledness was the sense that she should be radiating happiness, too. And she should be reading the books about motherhood that Hyland was leaving on her bedside table. And she should have opinions about the crib, the bumper, and the nursery glider, whatever the hell a nursery glider was. (Suzette had once held a sugar glider, a tiny flying opossum, but she knew the two were unrelated.)
In all honesty, although she was grateful for Dorrie’s egg and womb, Suzette was already growing weary of their complicated triangle. It wasn’t easy to see Hyland so joyous about creating a life with a younger woman (and one clearly besotted). Suzette wasn’t threatened, of course…although, OK, maybe she was. She was ready fo
r Dorrie to be wheeled out of sight, like a donor body after harvest.
Hyland gave Suzette the tray and then hovered nervously, reminding her that they didn’t want to be late.
“OK!” said Suzette. She showered and dressed, and they arrived at the doctor’s office ten minutes before their 9:30 appointment. Suzette sat down while Hyland went to check in. He returned, frowning. “She’s not here yet,” he said.
“Calm down.”
“Sorry. I’m just…Ugh, this is hard. Our child just…being driven around in a dented Mazda sedan.”
“I know.” She took his hand. Her pager beeped and she ignored it. They watched a morning news show. A woman in a bikini was teaching the anchor how to make a piñata. At 9:45, Hyland called Dorrie’s house (she didn’t have a cellphone). There was no answer, so he continued to call every ten minutes, reaching the morose answering machine each time: Hello, you have reached Patsy and Dorrie Muscarello. We’re not available right now. Please leave a message after the beep?
They stared at the TV. At 10:30, an old episode of The Love Boat began. “We’d better go out there,” said Hyland. “To Galveston.”
“Do you think?” said Suzette.
He stood. “I can’t just sit here,” he said. “Where the hell is she?”
Suzette looked at her watch. “I really should…” she said. She had a full schedule starting at noon.
“Go ahead,” he said. “I bet she just…slept through her alarm. Or forgot. Who knows? I’ll go see what’s happening,” he said.
“OK,” said Suzette. She felt calmer than she had in weeks. She kissed Hyland on the cheek and said, “Keep me posted.” He nodded, agitated, dialing Dorrie’s house again.
Suzette was scrubbing in for her first operation of the day when Hyland called. Leslie held the phone to Suzette’s ear. Hyland’s voice was small. “She’s gone,” he said.
“Gone?” said Suzette. “What do you mean, gone?”
The Nearness of You Page 4