Sinter: How are you?
Fiona: Same as ever. Tired
Sinter: I believe it. Hey, would you agree to a video call?
Fiona: Why?
Sinter: We’re getting down to the wire and I need to make sure you’re ok. And find out what the plan is
I fidgeted, picking at a sliver of fingernail for the minute it took her to answer.
Fiona: I suppose that’s wise. Call now if you like
I set up the call on my computer, on the secondhand kitchen table I had picked up. Fiona’s image materialized. She sat on a sofa, framed posters behind her, bright summer light streaming in from a window. When my brain processed her features, I blinked in surprise. I’d been expecting some dreadful change: bloated face, sleepless eyes, misery lines etched in her skin. But she looked … beautiful. Somber, yeah, but man, they were not kidding about the “glow.” Her cheeks and lips had the same lovely flush that used to fill them every time she stepped up to kiss me in the studio corridor. Her hair was longer, loose and wavy, but otherwise, she basically hadn’t changed.
“Hey,” I said. “You look great. Seriously.”
She smiled a little. “Thank you. You’ve cut your hair.”
“Yeah. To fit a wig over it, for a play. Yours is longer.”
“They say it grows faster when you’re pregnant.”
“Other than that, you honestly don’t look any different.”
“Well, from this angle …” She stood and turned halfway, and there it was: a bump the size of a beach ball under her yellow top. Fiona smoothed her hand down the curve, then sat again with a dispassionate shrug.
“Wow,” I said. “So that’s her.” Kind of an idiotic thing to say, but I hadn’t seen any belly pictures so far, so this was my first semi-direct glimpse of my kid, other than the cryptic ultrasound.
“Kicking me under the ribs many times daily.”
I smiled. “Ouch. Are you at home?”
“Yes.” She glanced aside. “This is my flat. You’ve never been here, I suppose.”
“Guess not.”
We’d never even been to each other’s flats in London. Our relationship had been as insubstantial as that. It had produced some major consequences nonetheless.
“So.” I peeled a piece of masking tape off the edge of the table and looked down at it, folding it on my lap. “What’s going to happen? I’m getting mixed signals.”
She looked down too, fussing with the folds of her top. “You’re getting mixed signals because I’m a mess. This has turned out the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and if I’d known it would be like this, I …” She shook her head.
My hopes were teetering, collapsing like an imploding building. In my research, I had read about cases like this. The mother who had been planning to give up her baby to a waiting couple (or a single parent) found herself wanting the child after all, and kept the baby. The court usually sided with her—assuming the other side had the energy and money to go to court at all, which I wasn’t sure I did. Fiona and I hadn’t brought lawyers into it so far, because (I assumed we had tacitly agreed this) we were friends, we knew each other, we could trust each other.
But if she changed her mind, where would this leave me? What would I choose?
Getting ahead of myself. Work this out one step at a time.
I spoke in the most patient voice I could conjure up. “You’re changing your mind? About custody?”
“No,” she wailed. “That’s never been it.”
I blinked. “Oh. It—what is it, then?”
“I have never, ever wanted to be a mother. I still don’t.” She looked into the camera, nostrils reddening. “Isn’t that dreadful? A woman who can’t summon up the feelings she’s supposed to feel for her own child? I want to know how she turns out, I’m sure I’ll approve of her from afar, but feeling like a mother—I just don’t, at all.”
“Oh,” I said, finally understanding—or starting to. “No, God, no. You’re not dreadful. It’s okay to not want kids.”
“But other people want them. Normal people like you.” She sniffled and rubbed her nose. “My older sister keeps telling me, ‘There’s such a strong bond between mother and baby, you’ll feel it, you’ll change your mind, it’s only natural.’ So I’m horrible, apparently, because I still don’t feel it and don’t think I ever will.”
“But that’s okay. It really is.”
“And even feeling this way, I thought—I thought I could go through with it, help someone else, be a hero.”
“You are. That’s exactly what you’re doing.”
“Only it’s awful being pregnant. All the aches and fatigue and symptoms, and everyone assuming when they see my belly that I’m delighted to be a mum, telling me how much I’m going to love it. I’m so tired of explaining, tired of the whole thing.” She was fighting to talk through the tears in her voice.
A lump rose in my throat too. “Hey, I—I get it. People are …” I laughed humorlessly. “They’re assholes. Believe me, I know. I’m realizing that when people see me with a baby, they’re going to ask, ‘Where’s Mommy?’ and I’m still not sure what I’ll say. And if I ever get up the nerve to come out, to be with Andy or some other guy—well, then they’ll still ask that question, and I’ll have to come out to strangers. Daily. And when my own parents won’t even have my back on this … yeah, I’m scared.”
She winced in sympathy. “It’s the twenty-first century, and this is still what we’re dealing with. Prejudice against something as harmless as being gay or bi.”
“Or finding it weird for a woman to be a film director,” I said, remembering some peculiar remarks from journalists interviewing me about the film.
“Or considering it normal if a man doesn’t want to raise his child, but if a woman doesn’t, she’s a monster.”
“Hey. You are not a monster.” I reached out to splay my fingers around the edge of the screen, trying to send a reassuring touch through cyberspace. “Gender norms are stupid.”
She laughed a little. “You say such sweet things. How could I not love you?”
My heart twisted. “You’re amazing. I wish I could’ve been what you wanted.”
She removed her glasses to dab her eyes. “Oh, but you were. I just wasn’t what you wanted.”
“That was always because of my issues. Never because of anything wrong with you.”
And I wasn’t what Andy wanted. Because of my issues. Not because of anything wrong with him.
I dropped my gaze, aching.
“That’s made it especially hard, though,” Fiona said. “I didn’t want the baby, but I did want you. How can I get over you as I should, when you’ll be linked to me forever? Even if I’m not involved with her life, I’ll be thinking of you both, and would like to hear occasional news of how you’re doing.”
“Even so, you’ll get over me. Most people have found it pretty easy.”
“God knows I’ve been going about it all wrong, writing that sequel, then trying this latest project, which …” She sighed. “Sebastian mentioned it to you?”
“About two guys in Britpop, he said?”
“Yes. I think I was trying to ‘ship’ you and Andy, as they say in fandom. Make myself happy for you being together. But …” She polished her glasses wearily with a fold of her shirt. “Dismal failure. I only made myself miserable. Also I’m not sure the world needs a soundtrack full of Blur and Oasis covers.”
“I’d totally buy that soundtrack,” I defended. She only smiled a moment. “Anyway,” I added quietly, “Andy and I aren’t … like that anymore. He’s fed up with my problems. Who could blame him?”
“Oh, love. You’ve known each other for years, haven’t you? You’ll work it out.”
“Maybe. I hope.” I put on a smile and said, “Speaking of. You know Sebastian’s in love with you, right?”
She scoffed and put her glasses back on, but the glow in her face seemed to deepen. “Rubbish. He’s too cool for someone like me. He’s just a good friend.
”
“Are you kidding me? Nuh-uh. He so loves you. Treat him nice, okay?”
“Of course I treat him nice. He’s … he really has been kind.” Her voice turned thoughtful, like she was maybe starting to realize I was completely right.
“You could talk to him about the stuff bothering you, if you wanted. He’d understand. I gather he’s gone through some interesting changes himself.”
Fiona tilted her head. “You know, I’ve never asked him about that. The transition. I felt it’d be nosy.”
“I bet he’d talk to you about it. Got to be an interesting story there.”
“Undoubtedly. Perhaps one I could even write, in some fashion, if he didn’t mind.” She sounded tired rather than truly inspired, but the note of interest did hum beneath her words. “Wouldn’t even have to be a love story. Could be about … I don’t know, becoming free.”
“Free. I like that.”
“I think that’s what I want, really. I mean, I wanted you of course. Then I wanted to do something heroic by having this child and giving her to someone. But when that all turned out to be so hard … well, now I just want to be done with it.” She smoothed back a strand of hair. “Free to choose my next tyrannical obsession and sink my jaws into it.”
“That’s the spirit.”
We both smiled, cautiously.
“So,” she said, “shall I be seeing you in September and handing off an infant to you?”
“Yes. I would love that.”
“In that case, I’ve a birth plan to write up.”
Fiona sent the birth plan to me the next day. This isn’t legally binding or anything as custody goes, she wrote in the email, but the hospital should act in accordance with it and thus will let you in to see the baby and such.
I opened the attached document. It covered her wishes for labor: the pain relief she wanted, the positions she preferred to be in, the possibility of episiotomy, how placenta delivery should go … my squeamish eyes wanted to jump over this stuff, but I slowed down and made myself read every word. If I was going to be responsible for the bodily health of a female human, now was the time to get over my qualms.
I looked up the details I didn’t understand, and felt myself go a little paler at some of them, but I came away feeling more like an adult. If a scared adult.
At the delivery, she wrote, she only wanted her mother and Chelsea with her, aside from medical personnel. Then the birth plan went on to say:
I intend to give up custody of the baby to her father, Sinter Blackwell, so I wish to have her removed from the room after she is born, and to have no interaction with her. I would like for her to be taken care of by hospital staff until Sinter arrives.
As I read those words, the duplex seemed to spin around me. Even if it wasn’t legally binding, the fact of my becoming a father had grown more concrete with this document on my screen and in the hands of the hospital team. Changing my mind at this point would be an actual problem for Fiona and her doctors and nurses.
I sent one last wistful look at my life of bachelor freedom, then sighed in farewell and set myself toward the future—exciting, scary, and full of cute, fuzzy purple baby outfits.
I emailed her back:
Thank you so much. I am standing by to fly over whenever it’s time. My phone will be on 24/7 the next few weeks. Now that you’ve written all this, I think it’s time for me to choose a baby name already. Take care and talk to you soon.
CHAPTER 35: TRUE
OVER THE MONTHS, I’D COME UP WITH LOTS OF IDEAS FOR NAMES, OF COURSE, BUT IN LOOKING THEM UP online, I found some of them were too popular already (you don’t want to have five other people in your homeroom with the same name), while others had a meaning I didn’t particularly like.
I hauled my ginormous Complete Works of Shakespeare out to the shade in the duplex backyard and began flipping pages. I vetoed tragic names: no Ophelia, Juliet, Cordelia. That said, Portia, Rosalind, and Viola weren’t quite doing it for me either.
My fingertips stilled over a title. The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Two gentlemen: the party who should have been making this decision instead of one gentleman. All the same, the city’s name charmed me. I murmured it, liking how it flowed through my mouth.
It was mentioned elsewhere in Shakespeare too—including Romeo and Juliet, my first stage play as an actor. In fair Verona where we lay our scene.
“Verona” also rhymed with “Fiona”: a way to honor her.
I googled the name and found that, according to some interpretations, Verona meant “true image” or “honest image.” The irony: a guy living in cowardly silence on too many fronts being drawn to a name meaning truth and honesty. I could at least set up my daughter to become a stronger person than me.
And for a middle name? A flash of inspiration hit me, and I closed the Shakespeare volume. I’d honor the character who had brought Fiona and me together, and who had an androgynous name—another feature I liked.
I went inside and wrote it on notebook paper the way I had never actually done with my crushes’ names in school, whisked it off quickly in cursive to make sure it looked good as a signature, said it out loud in various stage-quality voices, and typed it on the computer screen to picture it on business cards.
Verona Taylor Blackwell.
A name for my girl. Despite everything else I lacked, at least I had this.
Late in August, I approached Kam and Chris at the café and told them I was going to be away for a couple of weeks sometime in September, but I would like to have my job when I came back, if they’d be so kind.
“Where you going?” Chris asked.
I sank my hands deep into my jeans pockets. “London. So I can be there when my daughter’s born, then bring her home.”
I’d asked my landlady, Phyllis, not to mention it to anyone, including them, and apparently she had complied, because now I watched their jaws drop—literally. I could count teeth.
“Whaaaaaat?” Kam said.
I explained.
They demanded high-fives at the end of my spiel, and gave me sanction to leave (unpaid) and still have my job when I returned.
“And, dude!” Chris said. “Baby shower. Can we give you a baby shower?”
“Not before I get her for certain,” I said. “But if I do get to bring her back, then …”
“Then we are so baby-showering you,” Kam said.
“Do you have stuff?” Chris asked. “Crib, car seat, diapers, whatever?”
“Not yet. I have a list ready, but I don’t want to buy it all before it’s a done thing, and, like, jinx it.”
“Send us the list,” Chris said. “We will get your baby stuff for you and fill your place with it when you give us the call from London. You can pay us back later. I mean it, man.”
I came around the counter and hugged them.
I emailed my agent and gave her the story as well, and requested acting gigs that didn’t start until the end of September or thereabouts. Though I’d have less free time for a while there, on partial paternity leave of sorts, I would need jobs and could really use her help.
She emailed back a message of enthused congratulations containing several exclamation points, and promised to do her best to keep me employed.
It unsettled me, expanding the number of people who knew about the baby. The news seemed too likely to get back to my parents, though I had asked everyone so far to keep it on the down-low until I actually had custody.
Then again, my parents would have to be speaking to me in order to say anything unpleasant to me. Therefore, moot point. Sort of.
I hadn’t exchanged any messages with Andy in several days. The silence between us was unbecoming of best friends, I decided.
Sinter: Hey! Talked to Fiona. Seems like all will go according to plan, so I chose a baby name
Sinter: Verona Taylor Blackwell
Sinter: Cheesy? I don’t know, I’m liking it though. Anyway how are your plans going? When do you leave exactly?
It too
k him hours to answer. But at least he finally did.
Andy: Things are ok, I’m stashing a lot of stuff at Emma’s. Kind of spinning my wheels. Ready to leave. Flight is Sep 10
Andy: And I like the name. It’s pretty
Sinter: Thanks. Guess we’ll be at opposite sides of the globe at the same time, heh. Hope to see you before we both leave
Andy: Yeah, hope so
But he didn’t propose any actual plan. Neither did I.
CHAPTER 36: LOVE WILL TEAR US APART
ON THE HOTTEST DAY OF THE YEAR, AT THE END OF AUGUST, ANDY SHOWED UP UNEXPECTEDLY FOR THE Sunday matinee of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Seward Park. He sat with two women and a guy, on the grass beneath the trees, in the middle of the crowd. I recognized his companions as his coworkers, Dakota and two others whose names I forgot. He waved laconically to me when I caught his eye.
I couldn’t wave back, being on at the moment, but I cocked an eyebrow at him in acknowledgment. They watched me play Puck in my shiny green lipstick, pointed prosthetic ear-tips, and knee-length pants that looked like leaves. A pair of transparent insectoid wings was folded against my back, attached to a vest that glimmered like a beetle shell. Dominic had let my hair stay the way it was, having decided that blue, purple, and black hair suited a fairy, but he had me spike it up and stick some twigs in it.
After the performance, Andy’s group came up and congratulated me—his coworkers more enthused than Andy himself. I thanked them, all the while wondering if he had brought them to see me, or if they had suggested it and he couldn’t think of a good reason to refuse.
They waited while I signed programs for the few people who approached the cast in search of autographs, then they proposed we all go out to dinner. I declined, saying I needed to wash off my makeup and take care of stuff at home. Andy also turned them down: “Nah, I was going to head home. You guys go on. I’ll get a lift.” He pulled out his phone to call up a ride-sharing app.
“I can give you a ride,” I said. “It’s on my way.”
It was what best friends did, right? Give each other rides home?
All the Better Part of Me Page 21