Then Came You

by Jennifer Weiner

  With no job, he had no benefits. With no benefits, he couldn’t afford the hundreds of dollars of medications he took each month for the depression and anxiety they’d diagnosed in rehab, the conditions that I believed had started him drinking in the first place. Without medicine, he started drinking again, and ordering painkillers from Mexico and Canada on the Internet, and eventually moving on to the stuff you can buy on the street. One of the first times I’d visited, looking underneath the bathroom sink for more toilet paper, I’d found a crack pipe, an airline-size vodka bottle split in half with a glass pipe duct-taped into the seam. I’d dropped it like it had burned me… then I’d put it back.

  I don’t make excuses. I know what he’s doing is illegal. I know that he’s a drain on taxpayers’ resources, that people who work hard at their jobs are the ones paying for his apartment and his food, for the cops who bust him and the counselors who hand him pamphlets about AA and methadone. I know that the radio talk-show shouters would hold him up as an example of everything wrong with America — how we’re entitled, how we’re weak, how instead of facing our troubles we lean on the crutches of chemicals. But he’s my father. . and I don’t believe that it’s his fault. It’s not like he’s lazy, some privileged rich kid trying to escape from some imaginary heartache or chasing some feel-good high. He takes drugs so that he can feel something close to normal, and I believe that normal is all he’s after.

  “You ready?” I asked. From his apartment complex, it’s a short trip to a strip mall, with a diner and a barbershop. I walked closer to the traffic. My dad walked beside me, his gait a little unsteady, his eyes on the ground.

  We went to the barbershop, where I paid for my father to get a haircut, flipping through Sports Illustrated while the barber made small talk, then sprinkled talc on the back of his neck. Back in the apartment, I straightened up some more while he made coffee and read the paper. At one-thirty I handed him the plastic bag, my haul for the month.

  The shaking in his hands had gotten worse, I saw, as he opened the bag and rummaged inside, pulling out four paperback novels, a razor and a can of shaving cream, a jar of Kiehl’s moisturizer, and three bars of Dial soap, all of which I’d scavenged from campus. It was easy: my classmates were constantly leaving their buckets of toiletries in the bathrooms, their clothes in the dryer, their bookbags and backpacks everywhere. Sometimes I would slip into the boys’ bathroom and slip out with a razor and a canister of shaving cream in my bathrobe pocket, or I’d hang around the basement laundry room and wait until it was empty and I was alone with a dryer-full of men’s clothing. It wasn’t as if the boys at my school couldn’t spare a little soap or a copy of whatever book it was fashionable to tote around that semester. Because of my job, I knew who had money and who, like me, was on work-study, and I was careful to take stuff only from the ones I knew could just buy more, in the unlikely event that they even noticed what was missing. I was, I told myself, like Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and entitled and careless, giving to my father, who needed it more than they did.

  “What are you reading?” I asked him. This was a safe question, because he was always reading something.

  “Great Expectations,” he answered. “It’s spring.”

  “Oh, I loved that one,” I said, not taking the bait, not mentioning that he’d taught that book every May. “Magwitch was my favorite.” Magwitch, Pip’s mysterious benefactor. Someday, I thought, I would like to be somebody’s mysterious benefactor, too; giving gifts to someone who didn’t know me; watching, from a distance, their delight.

  I looked out the window as my father went into the back of the apartment, where I’d never been, to put the soap and shaving cream away. The kids who were playing soccer had taken their ball and gone home. Now there was a woman in a bright orange sari outside, standing behind a baby slumped in the plastic cradle of a swing. She pushed him back and forth as the chains creaked. The baby sat quietly, its brown fingers gripping the edge of the black plastic, its face stoic, as if swinging was a punishment it was sentenced to endure. When I heard the honk of my mother’s horn, I couldn’t lie, even to myself, about the emotion that flooded through me. It was relief.

  Twenty thousand dollars. I thought about it as I ate pot pie, as I dried my hair in the bathroom, where the shelves were filled with products my mom had bought at cost at her salon. Twenty thousand dollars, I thought, lying on the bed. Twenty thousand dollars could pay for rehab. It could buy medicine. Twenty thousand dollars could save him. . and, with that thought, I finally fell asleep.

  ANNIE

  My husband and I have fights, like any other couple: about money, about whether we’re spending too much time with my family and not enough with his, about whether or not to spank the boys — but we have always gotten along in the bedroom. From the first time I was close to Frank, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on him, and feel his hands on me. I loved the muscles of his chest and his legs, the tightly curled hair on his chest and around his penis, the look of our hands entwined, his dark skin against my pale fingers.

  That night I got the call from the clinic, saying that I’d been approved as a surrogate, I waited until the boys were sleeping. By nine o’clock they were both dead to the world, full of pizza and worn out from an afternoon of Skee-Ball and table hockey. I lit a candle, zapped the TV into silence, took Frank by the hand, and led him upstairs. In the bedroom he looked around, blinking. The bed was neatly made, the pillows plumped and smooth; the laundry and toys were stacked and folded in their baskets, and I was wearing a tight red Phillies nightshirt that ended about eight inches past my panties. I thought it made me look like a link of chorizo, but it was, I knew, his favorite.

  Frank stuffed his hands into the pockets of his work pants and looked me over. “Did you get in another accident?”

  “No, silly. I just missed you,” I said, not wanting to bring up that I’d only ever been in one accident, and it had happened because someone had parked too close to me at the supermarket. I knelt on the bed, resting my hands on his shoulders, so close that my shirt brushed against his chest. He untied his heavy black shoes, then took me in his arms, nuzzling my neck with his stubbly cheek as I giggled and squirmed against him.

  “Well, hello there,” he said, brushing his palm against my stiff nipples.

  “Hello,” I said, and kissed him, first lightly, then more deeply, opening my mouth and feeling his tongue slip inside like it was part of me, like it belonged there. “Hello.”

  Frank had been a virgin when we’d started going out. I hadn’t learned that until later, of course. I’d slept with my first boyfriend, Brian Blundell, when I was fourteen, and then, after Brian dumped me for my friend Laurie Zimmer, I’d slept with Brian’s best friend, Fritz, although “slept with” wasn’t exactly right, because we’d had sex just once on the basement stairs and I wasn’t even sure it counted because I didn’t think he’d actually gotten himself inside of me before he finished.

  Frank had wanted to wait. He was religious — he and his family were Baptists, and he went to church every Sunday morning and to Youth Fellowship meetings on Wednesday nights, and he’d taken a pledge to stay pure until he got married. His resolve lasted until our fifth date, when we were lying together on the long backseat of his father’s car, after forty-five minutes of kissing and grinding, after my bra and his shirt lay in a tangle on the floor and I was too turned on to feel self-conscious about my jiggly thighs or the stretch marks on my breasts. I’d pushed myself upright and straddled him, unzipping his jeans as he tried (not very hard) to push my hands away, and pulled his penis out of his boxer shorts, stroking it gently. Penises were so strange, in my limited experience, ugly, odd-looking, veiny things, but Frank’s was smooth and brown, hot-skinned and silky, and it felt just right in my hand, like Goldilocks’s bowl of porridge, or the bed she’d eventually settled on: not too hot and not too cold, not too big and not too small. I rubbed it up and down experimentally, tugging the loose skin over the cap. “Oh, Annie,” he
groaned. “We shouldn’t. .” Then his arms were on my shoulders, and I was on my back, one hand in my purse, groping for the condoms I’d bought that afternoon at the drugstore, just in case.

  Seven years later, in our bedroom in the house we’d bought, a room with high ceilings and bare floors and no furniture besides a mattress and the Tupperware bins where we kept our clothes, it was just as thrilling, just as sweet. I knew the place on the small of his back where he liked me to brush my fingertips, and he knew to put his mouth right up against my ear so I could hear his breathing change as his hips sped up, then stuttered to a stop. His sounds, his taste, the feel of his forearms in my hands, his head tucked into the hollow between my neck and shoulders, every inch of him was so familiar and so dear.

  When we were done, he fell asleep almost instantly, sprawled facedown, naked on the bed. He had a better body than any of the movie stars in People, a muscular back that narrowed to a slender waist, a gorgeously curved bottom. Curled against him, breathing in the scent of his sweat and skin. I let myself doze for a few minutes. Then I settled the comforter over his back and collected my panties and nightshirt from the floor. Frank was so tired these days. He’d work an eight-hour shift at the scanner, examining the X-rays of carry-ons or beckoning travelers through the metal detectors, dealing with people who screamed and cursed and even spat at him, taking out their frustration with the nightmare air travel had become on the most convenient target. After work three days a week, he’d spend three hours more in a classroom, where he was training to do airplane maintenance. Those were union jobs; the pay started at thirty dollars an hour, plus benefits and three weeks of paid vacation. We’d agreed that the time and money he spent was worth it. By the time he graduated the airlines would be hiring again, but it meant that he left the house before seven most mornings, and on nights he had classes he rarely came home before ten.

  I crept into the kitchen to empty the dishwasher and surf the Internet, looking at surrogates’ stories, pricing home renovations and wall-to-wall carpet and new couches, trying to figure out how to continue the process I’d started upstairs, the marital magic of not only getting Frank to agree to let me be a surrogate but also making him believe the whole thing was his idea.

  I thought about it while I drove Spencer to nursery school, while I swept the floors or weeded the garden or folded a load of laundry, imagining the feeling of being someone who could give instead of someone who was taking. I would picture the look of gratitude on the new mother’s face as I placed the baby in her arms. Oh, thank you, Annie, we can never thank you enough. It would be so different from the look I saw on our pastor’s face when I was rummaging through the church swap bins for winter boots or the one I imagined the credit-card representative wearing when I called to explain that our payment would be late again.

  For weeks, I’d been working on Frank, but carefully, the way I’d learned to do it. Instead of bombarding him with requests or giving speeches, I’d casually slip something into a conversation: “Did I tell you Dana Swede from Vacation Bible School had a miscarriage? It’s her third, poor thing.” He’d give me a look and I’d ladle another scoop of tuna casserole onto his plate and tell him I was baking Dana a pie. When the actress from his favorite TV show was on the cover of People magazine with her baby twin girls — they’d been carried by a surrogate in Minnesota — I snuck the magazine out of the pediatrician’s office and onto our coffee table, where I could be sure he’d see it. When Good Morning America did a piece on military wives making extra money carrying babies, I inched the volume up. When the toilet broke and we had to call the plumber, I allowed myself one small sigh over the bill, and I permitted myself another sigh when the doorknob on the front door came off — again — in my hands, and I’d had to send Frank Junior in through the kitchen window to open the door.

  That was Part One of my plan. Part Two took place in the bedroom every night that Frank didn’t have class. Instead of collapsing on the couch as soon as I’d gotten the boys down and rinsed their toothpaste out of the sink and re-hung their towels, I’d put on something Frank liked — a pair of lacy panties or a tight tank top, the negligee I’d bought for our honeymoon. I’d light that candle and stay up in bed, waiting. Most nights I didn’t have to wait long.

  On one Tuesday morning — a week after the Good Morning America story — I loaded the dishwasher, turned off the TV, and said casually, without looking at him, “What do you think about it? That surrogacy thing?”

  Frank Junior and Spencer were at the table, fighting over the last piece of toast. I put the orange juice back in the fridge, shut the door with my hip, then looked at my husband. His dark-blue shirt, with the TSA patch on the shoulder, was neatly pressed, his shoes were shined, and he was freshly shaved, but he already looked tired. His ID badge was in his pocket. He hated that badge, which let the angriest passengers use his name. It was always the last thing he put on and the first thing he took off. “I don’t know. It’s interesting.”

  “They pay a lot. I could look into it. What do you think?”

  He looked at me closely. “You want to do that? Have a baby for someone?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe find out more about it.”

  “You mean it?”

  “Why not?” He frowned at the boys, at Spencer in particular, who had a pink crayon in his hand and was scribbling dreamily in his coloring book. “Sit up straight, men.” The two of them stiffened their backs, imitating the posture Frank had brought home from the service. I turned back to the sink. He didn’t look happy. I understood why: he wanted to be the one to provide for us, to give us the things we wanted. . and I suspected that seeing me walking around with my belly all big from another man’s baby would bother him, even though there’d be no sex involved, no cheating. But it had been so long since I felt like I was doing my part, and since I didn’t feel guilty pulling out my debit card at the grocery store or at Walmart.

  “I’ll see what I can find out,” I said. My hands were cold, the way they got when I was nervous or excited, or when I was telling a lie. My heart was breaking for Frank, but I was also excited, thinking about the money and how we could spend it, imagining, for the hundredth time, the moment of placing the baby into another woman’s arms, or even a man’s arms, although I doubted that would happen. My cousin Michael was gay, and he and his boyfriend were two of the kindest, gentlest men I knew, but Frank felt differently, thanks to all his years in church hearing about sinful this and sinful that, and I knew not to push my luck. I imagined, too, the look on Nancy’s face; the two of us walking together at the Franklin Mills mall, Nancy getting ready to pull out her platinum card as someone we knew from high school spotted us: Oh, Annie, I heard about what you’re doing and I think it’s just amazing. So generous. Maybe I’d take a few college classes, too, show Big Sister that she wasn’t the only smart one in the family. Maybe I’d take all of us on vacation, my parents, too, someplace that didn’t have a squash court, or maybe we’d stay on-site the next time we went to Disneyland.

  I kissed Frank by the door, handing him the lunch I’d packed. I gathered Spencer in my arms and loaded him into his stroller. He was getting too tall for it, his feet dangling almost to the ground, but he was still too little to manage the trip to the bus stop and back. I helped Frank Junior put on his backpack, then walked both boys down the hill to the bottom of our driveway, where we waited, counting the cars that drove along our quiet street until the school bus wheezed to a stop. Back at home, I put Spencer down in front of Sesame Street with a bowl of raisins and pretzels, a sippy cup full of apple juice, and the remote control, which, sad to say, he knew how to work better than I did.

  The farmhouse had a little room off the kitchen that had once been a cold pantry. Someday, I’d planned on turning it into an office, with shelves for canned goods and cookbooks and a desk where I could look up recipes. I’d painted the walls a creamy golden-white called Buttermilk, and cut out pictu
res of built-in desks and refinished flea-market chairs, but that was as far as I’d gotten.

  I turned on our computer and browsed around the clinic’s website, which I already knew almost by heart. It was full of video links and fancy flash effects, words that came swimming up to the top of the screen like they were surfacing from the bottom of a deep pool. CARING. COMPASSIONATE. DISCREET. The word MONEY never showed up, but money was what I sensed. For starters, the clinic looked more like the day spas I saw in magazines than like any doctor’s office I’d ever visited. There were bouquets of flowers in the exam rooms, tables draped in real sheets, not the flimsy paper that my doctor’s office used. The women in the pictures were nicely dressed — no sweatpants and Phillies shirts for them. All of them were pretty, too, which I guess made sense, because, when you get right down to it, who wants to go through nine months of pregnancy and then hand the baby over to someone who looks worse than you do?

  While Spence was singing along with “Elmo’s World,” I called up my application, trying to read it the way a woman looking for a surrogate would. Most of the questions had been fairly straightforward: Did I have a driver’s license? Did I work outside the home? Was I married? Happily married?

  That one had worried me, because the truth was, Frank and I had hit a rough patch a few years ago, the summer when Spencer was a baby and Frank had gotten furloughed for eight weeks. He got to keep his health benefits but didn’t get paid for all that time. At first it had been okay. There was plenty for him to do around the house. He’d set his alarm, same as always, and from seven in the morning until dinnertime he’d be busy, patching cracks in the ceiling, painting the dining-room walls, planing a door that had never closed properly, fitting the bathroom with a new showerhead, pulling the refrigerator out from its spot against the wall and vacuuming the coils clean. He washed and waxed the car, then used Q-tips to clean the air-conditioning vents and even shampooed the carpets. In the afternoons, when Frank Junior woke up from his nap, he’d take him into the backyard and teach him how to throw a football in a spiral.