He Gets That from Me

by Jacqueline Friedland

  A laugh escapes me at the ridiculousness of his suggestion. Of course it’s Nick. So I wonder what the real reason is, why I want to wait so long. Maybe I’m just not sure he knows who I am yet. Other than being the mother of his child, I could still be anyone at all.

  Chapter 8

  DONOVAN

  FEBRUARY 2007

  We’re back in the office of Melanie Collier, the surrogate matchmaker, with multiple files open in front of us, and we have narrowed the candidates down to three. My favorite is the Jewish twenty-four-year-old from Arizona. The woman has one child and lives with the child’s father, which means that she has a support system at home. He’s a moderately successful chef in Phoenix. She herself works as a cashier and has said that her reason for answering our ad was because she is saving to go back to school and become a teacher. I love the idea that our needs could align with another person achieving her own dream, too.

  Chip likes a thirty-seven-year-old woman from Florida who has three children of her own and has already acted as a surrogate for two other families. I’m concerned that the Florida woman is too old. Chip is worried that Arizona has dicey laws about surrogacy; he’s more comfortable going with someone from Florida because the regulations there seem more favorable to surrogacy arrangements than they do in Arizona. He is also giving a lot of weight to the fact that this woman seems to be a career surrogate—less potential for drama, he thinks.

  Melanie also showed us the paperwork for an applicant from Colorado, a thirty-year-old woman with twin daughters whose husband recently passed away, leaving her strapped for cash. Colorado has no specific laws pertaining to surrogacy, but the courts there generally rule favorably to intended parents in these situations. However, all three of us are concerned that this woman might be in a precarious emotional state after losing her husband. Not to mention, she lacks the emotional and physical support of a partner at home to help her through the pregnancy. I’ve watched my sister Gina muddle through three pregnancies. I remember the way she relied on her husband, Pete, during the first two, and also how taxing it was on her when Flora was born so shortly after Pete’s death. I don’t want to be a part of another birth where a woman might still be grieving.

  “Let’s get rid of Colorado,” I say, closing the manila folder and pushing it to the side of the conference table. Truth be told, none of these applicants seems perfect. It would have been great to find someone from a place like California, a safe-haven state as far as surrogacy laws go, but I suppose not everyone is amenable to carrying a baby for nine months and then giving it up, no matter how much money you might be offering them to do so.

  “We can run the ad for another month,” Melanie offers as she begins collecting the folders in front of us, “see what else comes in.”

  “No,” Chip says. “Let’s work with what we’ve got.” He looks at me, and I nod.

  “Can we do the phone calls with both of them, then decide?” I ask Melanie.

  “Absolutely,” she says, making a note in the journal beside her.

  “Let’s start with Amber, the one from Florida,” I say—trying to be a team player, giving Chip’s vote the first opportunity.

  “I’ve got a good feeling about Amber.” Chip winks at me. He unbuttons his cuff and starts rolling up one sleeve, then the other, like he’s getting ready for battle.

  “You have a good feeling about everything.” I swat at him, hoping that this time, his eternal optimism is well placed.

  Nine days later, I find myself nearly shrieking at Chip in our apartment, “I can’t give you more specifics, I just got a bad vibe!”

  We are attempting to enjoy Vietnamese takeout together, a Wednesday night ritual we’ve created for no discernible reason, but we cannot stop arguing about which surrogate to choose. Amber, the woman from Florida, Chip’s first choice, said all the right things on the phone. She talked about how she loves helping to build families, how special it is for her to know that a parent has a child to love because of her help. She said her husband’s job as an electrician is sufficient to support their family, but that her ability to serve as a surrogate periodically supplements their income, allows them to add to their savings. They even used a portion of the payment from her last surrogate pregnancy to fund a family trip to Orlando. But when we asked her about her attitude toward same-sex parents, she stumbled. Putting aside the fact that she hesitated, her response—“It’s just not my business what you do in your home”—rubbed me really, massively, upside-the-head wrong.

  “Not everywhere is SoHo,” Chip argues as he takes the container of lemongrass-spiced vermicelli from the coffee table and begins ladling more noodles onto his plate. “They live in rural Florida. Flo . . . ri . . . da.” He draws it out slowly that second time like perhaps I didn’t understand the first time he said it.

  “Yeah, I get it,” I snap back. “Our country is full of bigotry. It doesn’t mean I want one of those people carrying our children. Even if she thinks she’s openminded, clearly, she is not. It’s not like we don’t have another choice.” I walk over to the white granite countertop that separates the living room from the kitchen, lift the other file, and wave it in his face, causing one of the papers inside to fall out and float to the floor. “How could you not love this one?” I reach down to retrieve the paper, which turns out to be the handwritten letter the woman in Arizona sent us. Her flowery note explains that she squandered her opportunity to attend college, dropping out of UC Irvine after less than a single semester. She’s gotten her act together, she says, and is now trying to find a way to finance her education.

  “I know.” Chip puts his plate back on the coffee table, leaving his glistening noodles to linger, untouched. “She sounds perfect. Except for where she lives, and that’s kind of a big deal. We can’t just ignore it.”

  “It’s not like there haven’t been successful surrogacy arrangements out of Arizona before,” I push. “She’s not going to back out. You could just tell. Couldn’t you just tell?” He doesn’t answer, so I keep going. “Every last detail about her is right. A former East Coaster with liberal political views, open-mindedness. She’s even a Yankees fan, for God sakes.”

  This is the third day in a row that we are having the exact same fight. We might as well have just recorded last night’s argument and watched it back tonight.

  I can’t keep going back and forth like this.

  “Look,” I say, “let’s get Melanie to find us more applicants. I just can’t with Florida. If Arizona makes you too nervous, let’s see who else is out there. These can’t be the only two women in all of America who are willing to do this for us.” I haven’t offered this concession before.

  Chip rises and walks to where I’m standing. He reaches out to take the Arizona file from me and then puts his free hand to my cheek with a sigh.

  “Let’s not wait,” he says. “I love that you are trying to work with me, that you always try to meet my needs. What I need most, I think, is to be a father with you.” He kisses my lips lightly and pulls back. I can see that he has arrived at some sort of conclusion in his mind. I brace myself for whatever he is going to say next.

  “Let go with Arizona.”

  Chapter 9

  MAGGIE

  APRIL 2007

  It’s nearly 7:00 p.m., and Wyatt and I have just finished baking muffins for tomorrow’s breakfast. I’m wiping down the kitchen counter while he plays with his action figures in the living room. My goal is to have him tucked into bed in short order so I can shower and brighten up my appearance a bit before Nick comes home. Our rhythm has been off recently. If I’m honest, it’s been shaky ever since I decided to do the surrogacy.

  My old roommate Kiara thinks he’s right. She and I come from very different backgrounds, and as much as I love her, when she gets all “God this” and “God that,” I kind of just tune out. She thinks God didn’t intend for families to be created in many of the modern ways, like IVF and surrogacy. But I see no reason to spit in the face of science. If
God didn’t intend for these possibilities, why create people smart enough to dream them up? Wouldn’t God have thought about that too?

  Now that I’ve been matched with intended parents, Nick has become especially reticent. When I try to tell him about Donovan and Chip, he clams up, tightens his lips into a line, and starts staring off into space.

  “Wyatt, buddy,” I call into the other room. “Time for bed!” I toss the batter-stained dishtowel back onto the counter-top and head to the living room, where Wyatt is maneuvering a figure of Captain America into the Batmobile. He’s muttering something in his version of Captain America’s voice, but his speech is still fairly primitive, and I can only make out the word “protect,” which he says a couple of times in a row.

  “C’mon kiddo.” I lift him up and toss him over my shoulder.

  “Sack of potatoes!” he demands, and I oblige him by maneuvering his body in such a way that he slides down behind me and hangs against my back, his head dangling comically low, just above my rear end, as I keep a secure hold on his feet. He erupts into fits of laughter, as he always does when I get him into this position. I start turning in circles, escalating his hysteria, and I realize I feel more relaxed in this moment than I have in weeks. As we spin, I’m hit by a fresh wave of love for this kid. When I think of all the awful things I did when I was using, I can’t believe I’ve been given the gift of this fresh, perfect little person.

  He has been a pleasure from the day he was born. Which is a good thing, because I was not ready to be a mother. Sometimes, when I least expect it, I hear my mother’s no-nonsense voice inside my head—“Who said anything about ‘ready’?” She’d probably say in response to my thoughts, “You just get in there and do it.” If my defunct relationship with my own mother is any indication, I clearly still have lots to learn, but with Wyatt helping to guide me down this path, parenthood has started to feel just right, like it’s exactly what I was meant for.

  A couple of hours later, I finally hear Nick’s key in the door. I’m nestled into the corner of the sofa, a latch-hook rug open in my lap and a near-empty bottle of Amstel on the table beside me. When he steps inside and sees me there, multiple emotions flash across his face, the final effect being one of guardedness.

  “Hey,” he offers half-heartedly before heading to the kitchen. I can hear how tired he is from his voice, the one word filled with more air than timbre. There’s a muted hiss from the other room as he opens the refrigerator door, and then the sound of plastic crinkling as he shoves leftovers onto a shelf. As usual, he’s brought something home from Lexington Grill, the steakhouse where he’s just been promoted to sous chef. I smile when I hear him open a beer; I know that it means he’s coming to sit with me so I can help attempt to take the weight of the day off his shoulders.

  “There was a bachelor party that came in tonight.” He rubs a hand across his forehead as he comes back into the room and lowers himself onto the recliner chair across from me. “Only six guys, but they ordered every dish on the menu. Literally everything.” He sniffs the palm that had been rubbing his face. “Garlic.”

  “On a Wednesday?” Usually it’s mostly businessmen at the restaurant on weeknights, maybe a few families. The more boisterous crowds don’t typically show up until the weekends.

  He shrugs. “Wyatt’s good?”

  “Miss Sue says he made a new friend at daycare. A little girl named Poppy.” We just started sending Wyatt to a full-day program so I can begin hunting for a higher-paying job.

  My first interview was for an administrative assistant position at a law office. The listing said a bachelor’s degree was “preferred.” The frizzy-haired interviewer should have just admitted that she wouldn’t hire anyone without a college degree rather than interrogating me about my life choices for the forty-seven minutes I spent sweating in her office.

  I had another interview this morning, this one at a large medical practice. The posting was for an office manager, which was described as “an individual who can staff the front desk and help with filing and office organization.” Based on my days at SunMeadow veterinary, I felt pretty confident heading into that interview. I explained to the interviewer, a middle-aged woman named Brenda, that I left my job at the animal hospital when I got pregnant with Wyatt because I wasn’t supposed to be around cat feces all the time during pregnancy. Brenda got very emotional, telling me about how she had to give away four cats of her own when she was carrying her first child because she developed a sudden allergy to their dander.

  I fold up the latch hook I’ve been working on and start tossing the round clusters of yarn back into the cardboard box. This hook-rug kit is a project I began when I was pregnant with Wyatt. It’s a two-foot-by-three-foot mat with a picture of a mama bear and her cub beside a blueberry bush on it. I only progressed as far as the mama bear’s eyes before Wyatt was born, and then this project, along with so many other parts of my life, fell by the wayside. Maybe having babies on the brain again reminded me about it—or maybe I’m just ready to be a person who finishes what she starts.

  “It went well at that gastroenterologist’s office today,” I say, and Nick nods encouragingly as he takes another sip of his beer. “I think I bonded with the office manager.” I laugh. “It was all about cats and pregnancy.”

  As soon as I say the word pregnancy, I regret it. It’s been several weeks since Nick purported to accept my decision to serve as a gestational carrier, but his body language is still saying otherwise. He argued that with his new salary, I can return to school, but the fact is, between raising Wyatt and keeping food on the table, we have enough expenses as it is. And I want to be responsible for my own success. I have a perfectly good uterus that has no other occupants at the moment. I see no reason why I shouldn’t rent it out for a little extra cash.

  Now that I’ve killed the mood, I figure I might as well go for broke and tell him the other news of the day.

  “I booked my flight,” I tell him tentatively. “They’re paying for it, obviously. But I’m flying out to meet them next Thursday. I’m going to bring Wyatt. Tess said she can look after him while I have my meetings, and it’ll be nice for him to see his auntie.”

  Nick nods, his Adam’s apple bobbing, as he takes another long sip of beer. But then he rolls his eyes. “You’re really doing this?” He sounds equal parts annoyed and surprised.

  “Nick.” I don’t want to have the same argument for a third, or seventh, or nineteenth time.

  “Look, I get it.” He holds up his free hand in a gesture that might be surrender, or at least an indication that he doesn’t feel like having another fight. “I said I’m okay with it. All the parts you haven’t thought about, even, I’m okay with those too. Like when other guys congratulate me after seeing your stomach, and I have to be like, ‘Nah, man, it’s not my kid, but thanks.’ I’ve been preparing myself for that. But seriously, two guys? I thought maybe you’d move on and find a hetero couple. You really want to help bring a kid into the world so that it can be raised by two dads?”

  Hold up. This is the first time Nick has said anything like this. “Wow.” I swallow and blink a couple of times before I’m able to continue. “I completely did not realize I was living with a homophobe.”

  “I’m not a homophobe,” he says loudly, but then he stops, probably remembering Wyatt sleeping nearby, and he starts again more quietly. “I just think it’s really fucking selfish. Of you. Of these two dudes. Everyone wants what they want so badly, and no one is thinking about what it’s going to be like for that kid. You want your money, these guys want a baby. So fuck it, who cares if a child has to spend his whole life getting ridiculed not only because he’s a test tube baby but also because he’s being raised by two gay guys in a world that just isn’t as accepting as you think it is.”

  I’m stunned. I’ve been so delighted by the idea that I am going to be part of creating a family, bringing a child into a world of love, and helping two people build the life they’ve dreamed of. If I’m honest, I
’ve been a little proud of how progressive the whole thing is, too. The world is changing, and there’s an increasing number of families with same-sex parents out there now.

  “Science and society are evolving together, Nick!” I shout back, unable to keep my volume on low. “It’s people like you who are going to be left in the dust. Shame on you.” I stand up, frowning. “Like it or not, a homophobe is exactly what you are, and you need to adjust your attitude, starting now.”

  A bulb flickers in the ceiling above Nick’s chair, which feels appropriate, as my entire view of him is suddenly precarious. “I have no problem with gay people,” he argues. “What I have a problem with is giving them a baby, or two babies, who didn’t get the luxury of choosing that life.”

  “Nobody gets the luxury of choosing their life! Did you choose your parents? I sure as hell wouldn’t have chosen to end up with parents who valued my accomplishments over my well-being, parents who were so controlling that I can’t even speak to them anymore. These guys in New York sound like amazing people, full of so much love to give a child. If they are who they seem to be, any child would be lucky to be raised by them.” Spit flies out of my mouth as I finish this tirade. I’m so incensed that I can’t even figure out where to put my hands right now.

  Nick looks up at me from where he is still attached to the velvet armchair, and something in him seems to deflate. “Yeah,” he says, more subdued now. “I guess we just have to agree to disagree.” He stands to take his empty bottle back to the kitchen, and all I can do is watch as he drifts farther away from me.