Then Came You

by Jennifer Weiner

  Kimmie bent down, picking up her backpack, brushing it off before slipping it back on. Then she smiled, showing me her tiny, even teeth. “You’re making a spectacle,” she said. She squeezed my hand. “What’s the baby’s name?”

  “Rory.” I walked close enough to her that our hips bumped as we made our way back toward her apartment, holding her hand, toward the tiny metal-walled elevator, the hallway that smelled like air freshener and chicken soup. The evening would unfold in its ordered, wonderful familiarity. We’d cook something, noodles and stir-fry or meatloaf and mashed potatoes. We’d spoon ice cream into mugs and snuggle on the couch, watching the shows we’d taped, and I would tell her about Bettina’s call, about the grand apartment, about the baby. In bed with her, I’d feel safe in a way I’d once been at the dining-room table with my father, working on my homework, knowing that he was there to help. I smiled, wondering what I’d done to deserve her, to deserve such happiness.

  ANNIE

  My train got into Philadelphia just after eleven o’clock in the morning. It was noisy in the echoing station, where the floors were made of marble and the ceilings soared thirty feet high. The air that August morning was still and sticky, smelling like hot pretzels from a stand set up in front of the information board. I stepped off the staircase, and there was Frank, standing next to one of the curved wooden benches, waiting for me. Instead of his work clothes, he wore a clean pair of khakis and a short-sleeved jersey shirt, with sneakers, instead of heavy workboots, on his feet. PHILADELPHIA AVIATION ACADEMY, read the logo on his shirt.

  I walked toward him slowly, wondering what it meant that he was here. Normally Nancy picked me up, with the boys in the car, and took me home. The house would be clean, the bed I’d shared with Frank would be neatly made, but there would be no sign of him. We’d agreed, in a terse conversation, to keep things as normal as possible. Frank would spend time with the boys during the daytime, when he wasn’t working, and he’d stay for dinner, if he was home. Then he’d slip out once they were sleeping and go to his parents’ house for the night.

  We hadn’t told the boys anything, because there didn’t seem to be much to say: we were in limbo, separated but still technically living together, married but leading separate lives. For the time being, I’d told Frank Junior and Spencer that the baby I’d had in my tummy was in New York with her parents, and that I was helping to take care of her while she was still little. They had accepted this without question or comment. I suspected that Frank Junior thought that because the baby was a girl, she would naturally require more care than he had.

  Frank stood up when he saw me. “Hi,” he said shyly, looking me over as I approached him. I set my duffel bag by my feet and sat down on the bench, and he sat beside me. “You look pretty.”

  I touched my hair, wondering how I really looked to him. I hadn’t gained much weight with the pregnancy — being too upset to eat for much of the third trimester had helped with that — and I was only a few pounds away from being back to where I’d been when this whole thing had started.

  “Were the boys good for you?”

  He grinned. “Spencer used the potty all day.”

  “He did?” I was delighted. He used the potty for me, but I usually put him in a pull-up before I left for the city, and I’d assumed that’s what Frank was doing, too.

  “How is the baby?” Frank asked.

  “She’s beautiful. An angel.” I felt my throat thicken, a hint of the sadness that came over me when I nursed and held the baby that wasn’t really mine, that there were no daughters in my future.

  “Rory,” he said. “I like that name.”

  “Me, too.”

  “So,” he said, and settled his hands on his legs. “You like New York?”

  “It’s fine. I miss the boys when I’m away. But the money will help.” Bettina had insisted on paying me a thousand dollars for the day and night I was up there, much too much money, I told her, but she wasn’t taking no for an answer.

  “I miss them, too. At night.” He pressed his lips together like he wanted to suck the words back into his mouth. Then, he said, “I miss us being a family. I miss you.”

  I didn’t answer. I’d done the hardest work of my life, the thing none of the clone-girls in that story I’d read had done. I had broken free from my destiny. I had taken myself to the city, found money and a place to live. I could stay — Bettina hadn’t come right out and said it, but I knew if I offered to work as a nanny, she’d hire me, and I could bring the boys to New York and find a place for us there. I could have people like I’d had back in high school, people to talk to, to eat with. The whole world lay open before me. . and now Frank probably wanted me to turn away from it, to come home and be what I was before.

  “You weren’t wrong to be upset with me,” said Frank. Startled, I turned to look at him. His eyes were narrowed, his body stiff. “I wasn’t being the husband you deserved.”

  This was unexpected. “Maybe I was wrong, too,” I said.

  Frank shook his head. “You were trying to help us. And if I hadn’t been so stubborn about letting you work. .” He dropped his voice until I could hardly hear him over the drone of the crowd, the noise of people coming and going. “I guess maybe you were lonely.”

  I nodded, almost unconsciously. Frank kept talking. “We can sell the house, move to Philly. Spencer’s starting nursery school in the fall, so you’ll have some time. You can go to college, if you want.”

  I felt a pressure inside of me building, a sob or a shout, I wasn’t sure yet. “You love that farm. It’s all you ever wanted.”

  “I want you more. And I got a new job,” he said.

  “With the airlines?”

  “Nah. Teaching.” He took my hand. “I did so well in my classes they asked me to stay on. I’m still part-time at the airport, but it’s good money. Good benefits, too.” He paused, like he was steeling himself. “I looked it up online. Community college has classes online, or in Center City.”

  I looked down at our fingers entwined. I’d thought about giving him back my engagement ring — it had cost almost two thousand dollars and was by far the most expensive thing outside of his truck that Frank had ever bought — but I hadn’t taken it off yet. I wondered if I would have made different choices, if I could have gone back in time, knowing what I knew now. Part of me thought I would have undone the surrogacy in an instant, wiped the slate clean, done anything to keep my marriage intact. Another part of me thought that I’d done just the right thing, that the pain of leaving him was the cost of a new and better life.

  “Come home,” said Frank, his grip on my hand tightening. “Stay with us.”

  I sat there, not answering. Rory was getting bigger, filling out, holding her head up with her clear eyes open, taking in the world. I could send breast milk by FedEx and visit the baby on the weekends. I could start taking the classes I’d planned on — an English course, and one on computer programming — but I could do them at home, online, instead of in New York. I could give my boys the world of the city, the museums and the plays and the galleries and the musicals — but keep my house, and my husband. I could have a bigger life, like Nancy, like what I’d come to want in the last few years, only I could have it with Frank. It almost seemed like too much to hope for, but I smiled at him, then reached for his cheek, pulling him close.

  BETTINA

  One Wednesday morning in early August, when I was interviewing the third nanny of the morning, the telephone rang. “Someone’s here to see you,” said Ricky, our doorman.

  “Send her up,” I said, looking at my watch. If it was the fourth applicant, she was twenty minutes early, and if it was the first girl, the one who was supposed to have been here at nine, she was two hours late.

  “She says she’d rather meet you in the lobby,” said Ricky. “It’s your. . it’s Mrs. Croft.”

  “Excuse me,” I said to the applicant currently perched on the couch. I’d already decided not to hire her. True, her French accent w
as lovely, and her references were solid, but anyone who’d show up for a job interview wearing jeans with the words HOT STUFF spelled out in sequins across the back pockets was not someone I would be employing to care for a child.

  I stuck my head into the nursery to make sure the baby was asleep. Then I tucked the baby monitor into my pocket, told the chef and the maids where I was going, then pressed the button for the lobby.

  India was waiting for me behind the doorman’s desk. “Hello,” I said, having rejected Well, look who’s here on the way down. She was casually dressed and she was tan, which infuriated me. I imagined her lying on a beach somewhere while I’d been handling the details of her husband’s funeral and her baby’s birth. “Did you have a nice vacation?”

  She didn’t take the bait. “I had some thinking to do.”

  I stood there, waiting, looking her over. If she was wearing makeup, I couldn’t tell. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail, and her roots were badly in need of a touch-up. I saw an inch or two of drab dark brown at her scalp before her hair made the transition to glorious caramel bronze, and there were wiry silver hairs threaded through the brown. She wore jeans — probably they were the six-hundred-dollar kind they sold at Saks, but they were still jeans — and a plain short-sleeved T-shirt. No earrings, no jewelry at all, except for her wedding ring.

  “I loved your father,” she said.

  “Which is why you didn’t bother showing up for his funeral.”

  India flinched. “I have a hard time with. . well. I was having a hard time with all of it.”

  “Oh, really? Because I thought it was a total picnic. Do you have any idea what I’ve been dealing with? Any idea at all?” I was shouting, I realized, and Ricky was staring, although he was trying not to, and so was my neighbor Mrs. Schneider, collecting her mail, with her little Yorkie riding in her purse. I took India’s arm — it was, possibly, the first time I’d touched her since a brief, obligatory hug at her wedding — and dragged her back toward the service entrance. There was no way I was letting her come upstairs.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She’d followed me willingly enough, and now she met my gaze steadily, not fidgeting or flinching. I wondered if she was on heavy-duty antidepressants, or if she’d spent the last few months sitting on a beach, hanging out in a sweat lodge, doing yoga. Maybe she’d met up with my mother in New Mexico, sampled some of the Baba’s offerings. That thought made me even angrier.

  “You’re sorry. That’s great. That’s a big consolation. I got a call from your fertility clinic because your surrogate was freaking out. She hadn’t heard from you, nobody knew where you were, and, in case you were confused, having a baby is not like ordering a pizza, then deciding you’d rather have Chinese. You can’t just decide you don’t want it.”

  “I know.” No ducking, no tears, no excuses. . just that same strange, narcotized steadiness. “I didn’t do the right thing. But I’m back now, and I won’t run away again.”

  “I don’t believe you. Why should I believe you?”

  She didn’t answer me. Instead, she asked, “Have you met Annie?”

  “I have. She’s been staying here. Helping with the baby.”

  This, finally, caused a crack in India’s placid exterior. She blinked rapidly. “What?”

  “We didn’t know where you were. I had people looking, but we didn’t know if you’d turn up in time, and even if you did, we didn’t know if you’d want to be a mother. Annie’s been staying here, and Jules — she’s the egg donor — and her girlfriend, Kimmie — they’ve been babysitting.”

  Now India was blinking even faster. “What? I don’t understand. You met the egg donor? How could that be?”

  “I needed all the help I could get. Annie and Jules have been great. They wanted to help me,” I said, letting her fill in the blank of and you didn’t all by herself.

  “Listen,” she said. This time she put her hand on my arm. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “You have no idea what I’m thinking.”

  “You’re thinking,” she continued, “that I’m going to be a terrible mother.”

  “I don’t even think you planned on being a mother at all. I think you just wanted a baby to make sure you’d inherit my father’s money. I think that’s about the worst reason for having a baby in the world. I think you’re a bigamist, and I think…”

  “I think,” she said, interrupting me, “that you have no clue what my life was like.”

  “You mean before or after you were arrested? Or before you married my father without bothering to get divorced?”

  She almost smiled. “It wasn’t that I didn’t bother to get divorced. I served David with papers. He never signed them. And by then, I’d changed my name. .” Her voice trailed off. “You’re not entirely wrong. Money did have something to do with it. But mostly…”

  She paused. I waited.

  “Mostly,” she said, “I wanted your father and me to be a family. To have something that was ours. I think that’s why I couldn’t handle the funeral. Why I left. .” Now her voice was cracking. She looked away, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “I couldn’t stand to think that the baby would be mine, not ours.”

  “And you’d be stuck with it,” I added.

  “That was part of it,” she answered. “But I figured out a lot of things while I was gone.” She smiled. “And I got divorced.”

  “You know, you probably weren’t even legally married to my father. Which means you probably can’t inherit.”

  She shrugged, but didn’t answer. “I don’t care about the money. I don’t expect you to believe me, but it’s true,” she said. “I came back for my baby.”

  “You’re right. I don’t believe you. And, by the way, it’s not your baby, and she has a name. Rory.”

  She lifted her chin. “She’s not yours. I’m the mother.”

  “You don’t think,” I said, “that if I went to a judge and told him what you did, and told him what you were, that they’d give me custody?”

  Instead of answering, India asked, “Do you want a baby?”

  “Interesting that you’d care about that now, after you and my father decided to give me custody if something happened.”

  Another faint smile flitted across her face. “Your dad always thought that you were the responsible one.”

  That hurt, imagining my dad discussing me with his new wife; knowing I’d never hear him compliment me again. “I am responsible. And I’ll be responsible.” I gave her a hard look. “You should go.” I flicked my hand toward the doors, in case she’d forgotten where they were. “Go rent an apartment. Or move into a hotel. Wait for the will to be probated. You might not get it all, but I’m sure you’ll get something, and you can move to Majorca or wherever you want to go to catch your next rich husband. I can handle this.”

  “I’m sure you can. That’s why your dad and I picked you. But it isn’t fair.”

  She had to be kidding me. “None of this is fair!” I blurted.

  “It isn’t fair,” she continued, as if I hadn’t spoken, “that you won’t get to enjoy your twenties. That you’ll be stuck taking care of a baby who isn’t yours. When your father and I chose you as the guardian, we had no idea. .” Her voice was trembling, but she made herself finish. “We had no idea this would happen. We only picked someone because the clinic said we had to, and we thought if anything happened, it wouldn’t be for years and years. It was never our intention for you to have a baby to deal with at this point in your life.” She wiped her eyes. “That’s why I left my first husband. I was pregnant, and I didn’t want to be stuck. But you probably know about that already.”

  I shook my head. My inquiry into India’s affairs had revealed that she’d been raised by her grandparents, rejected by her mother, and married at eighteen, but not why she’d left her first husband. If she’d been pregnant and had an abortion, maybe that was why she wanted this baby — Rory — so badly. Not because she wanted to lock down my father and her inher
itance, but to make up for the baby she hadn’t had when she was young.

  I smoothed my hair again, buying time, thinking that India and I actually had more in common than I’d been willing to acknowledge. We both had mothers who’d let us down. We’d both gotten stuck with too much responsibility too soon. Of course, I’d gone to Vassar and she’d gone to a justice of the peace to marry her high-school drama teacher, but still. Minor details.

  “I know you don’t have any reason to trust me, and I know you don’t like me.” She was crying in earnest now, tears streaming down her tanned cheeks, not even bothering to try to wipe them. “But I loved your dad, and I swear to you. .” She rested her hand against her heart. “I’ll do the best job I can.”

  It would have been the easiest thing to say, Okay, fine, you take it from here, to tell Annie and Jules that the plans had changed, to tell Darren that my life had magically untangled itself, that I could be, again, just a regular girl, unencumbered, my nights and weekends free. Surprisingly, the thought made me sad. I liked the baby, the apartment full of women, even Annie’s little boys, the one time they’d come for the weekend. I liked feeling needed… and admired a little, too. No, that’s not her baby. It’s her half sister. Her father died before she was born, and now she’s raising her. Isn’t she amazing? More than that, I felt like I was on my way to building the thing I’d been missing after my mother left: a family of my own.

  “So what do you say?” India asked. She looked at me hopefully. “Do you think you could give me a chance?”

  “I think,” I said. “I think maybe the more hands, the better. I think I’ve got a good plan in place. But I think you can help.”

  Her smile vanished. “Help? What do you mean? I’m going to be the mother.”