by R. R. Banks
Though I would normally barely even notice Flora’s fit, somehow this time I couldn’t shake it. Reminding myself that things were going to get better soon, that when our baby was born we would have the life that we both wanted, didn’t take away the frustration that I was starting to feel. I walked into the living room and stared down at her where she sat.
“I don’t understand why you’re acting like this,” I said.
“Acting like this?” Flora said, her voice low as though I had said something incredibly offensive. “What is that crack supposed to mean?”
“You are so angry that I agreed to let Rue contribute an egg so that we can have our baby. It doesn’t make sense. You agreed to surrogacy when you found out that you can’t carry children. What’s changed.”
“I agreed when I thought that maybe somehow I would be able to use my own eggs,” she said. “I didn’t think that I was going to be completely separated from this whole experience. That you were going to find some other woman to go through the experience with and that I was just going to be on the sidelines.”
“You aren’t on the sidelines,” I told her, sitting on the couch beside her. “You are going to be just as involved every step of the way as I will be, and then when the baby comes, you will be so in love with it that you won’t even think about any of this. It will be our baby. Nothing else will matter. We’ll be a family and spend the rest of our lives happily together.”
I tried to smile at her, but Flora didn’t look convinced.
“What if you don’t see me when you look at the baby?” she asked.
“Of course, I’ll see you. You will be the baby’s mother and you will be wonderful at it.”
“Maybe it’s time for us to talk about adoption,” she said.
“Adoption?” I asked.
I felt a flicker of discomfort in my stomach. When we first started talking about having a child and learned that Flora wouldn’t be able to carry it herself, adoption was something that I was more than willing to consider. Now, though, the thought made my heart sink a little. It was different now. Something had changed.
“Yes,” Flora said. “Don’t you think that we could be great parents to a child even if it wasn’t yours biologically? You’re asking me to raise a child that belongs to someone else, but you aren’t willing to do the same?”
She was spiraling into anger again and I wanted to stop the progression. The door opened, and the housekeeper scuttled in, lowered the tea tray to the table in front of Flora, and then left without saying a word. I met her eyes as she turned to shut the door, hoping that she could see the gratitude in my face. Flora paused to take a sip of her tea and eat a cookie. It seemed to bring her back to the still-elevated but at least controlled mental place and I took the opportunity to respond to her.
“I’m not asking you to do anything that you don’t want to do,” I said. “If you want to consider adoption, we’ll talk about it. But it could take years for us to get a baby. I thought that it was important to you to be able to raise our child from its first day. I know that there are children out there who need families, and maybe one day we will open our home to one, or even a few, but we talked about this. You said, and I agreed, that at least for our first child we wanted to go through the pregnancy experience and raise a newborn.”
I could see Flora’s eyes flickering slightly back and forth as if she was thinking hard about something. The color in her cheeks had faded and the tension in her muscles was responding to the calming properties of the tea. Finally, she set the cup on the tray again and looked into my eyes.
“If this is so important to you, then I will go along with it,” she said. “We’ll move forward with the surrogacy.”
Relief flooded through me and I threw my arms around Flora, pulling her close to me for a hug. Her hands touched my back and I felt her pat me cordially. I wished, not for the first time, that there was more warmth in the way that she touched me, or even in the way that I touched her. I hoped that it would come, that the experience of bringing a new life into the world and raising it together would help us to rediscover, or possibly discover for the first time, the depth of love that I saw in others but often felt that we had never really had.
****
“I can’t ask you to do that.”
“Of course, you can.”
“No. I really can’t.”
“If she says that she can’t, she can’t.”
I looked at Flora, who stood with her arms crossed over her chest. She had taken to not even sitting down at the meetings and as much as I thought that I should, I realized that I didn’t even care. Since we agreed to move forward with the plan, she had seemed distanced and I had had to come to the decision that I wasn’t going to let her force me into the same response. I wanted to be as invested and committed to this as I possibly could, even if that meant that I had to ignore how difficult she was being. She would get over it eventually and I couldn’t waste any step of this process waiting for her.
“There’s no reason that I can’t help her.”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with the contract,” Rue insisted. “You can’t be responsible for my personal expenses.”
“Part of the agreement was that I would provide for your expenses throughout the agreement period, and that includes housing.”
“Yes, housing. Like covering rent payments. That doesn’t count moving me. That’s something that I decided to do on my own.”
“I don’t want you having to be stressed about anything,” I said. “I don’t want you to worry about having to pack and load a truck and do all of that before the procedure and especially not after.”
“I wouldn’t be doing it on my own,” Rue insisted. “I have friends that would come help me.”
“This is something that I am happy to do for you,” I said. “I can make sure that the whole thing is over and done with in one day. That way you can get settled in, relax, and get ready for next week. Please say you’ll accept.”
Rue seemed to think about my offer for a few moments and then nodded.
“I will,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Good. Just pack a bag with anything you might want for the first night that you are in your new home and then the crew will be there to handle the rest for you.”
“Oh, it’s not a new home,” she said.
I looked at her questioningly.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s actually my grandmother’s house,” she said. “I’m just going home.”
I smiled. That sounded wonderful.
Two days later I arrived at Rue’s apartment to check in on the progress of her move. I carried a to-go cup of coffee to cut the chill that had settled firmly into the air and a box of pastries. Rue was standing in the middle of the sidewalk, staring at the door to her apartment in stunned silence. I walked up to her side and she jumped slightly at my sudden presence. I held out one of the cups of coffee and she looked at it for a moment before taking it.
“Thank you,” she said.
I was about to offer her some of the cream and sugar that I had in a small bag, but she took a long swig of the strong brew black and I smiled.
My kind of woman.
I shook my head slightly. That wasn’t a thought that I should be having.
I opened the box of pastries and held it out to her. She peered inside and then lifted her eyes to me.
“I thought that I was supposed to be on a strict diet,” she said.
There was a hint of suspicion in her voice as if she thought that I was perhaps testing her. I laughed and leaned forward slightly so I could speak to her in a conspiratorial whisper.
“It’ll be our little secret,” I said. “That diet is mostly Flora’s doing, anyway.” I straightened and took a long sip of my own coffee, sighing happily as the heat slid down my throat and started to ease the tension in my muscles that the cold had put into them. “We’ll call the coffee a farewell. No more caffeine after next week.”
“To getting through nine months on only the high of life,” she said, lifting the cup as if in a toast.
“Almost ten months, technically,” I said.
“I’m going to need at least two pastries,” she said, lifting her cup a little higher.
I lifted my cup with a laugh and we both took deep sips before she selected her first pastry.
“How is the move going?” I asked.
Rue nodded as she chewed.
“Unbelievably fast,” she said. “In fact, I think that they’re almost finished. I was all geared up to sleep here tonight, but I don’t have a bed anymore.”
“I told you it would be finished in one day,” I said.
“I was just planning on staying so that I could take care of the cleaning and stuff. I’ve heard that this landlord is a beast when it comes to security deposits, and I’m determined to be the one who cracks her.”
I laughed.
“Well, I already have a cleaning crew on call, ready for when the moving crew has emptied out the apartment. I can assure you that they will leave it cleaner than when you came in. And if there are any damages, I can get somebody in to fix those the next day.”
Rue looked back at her apartment with a contemplative expression.
“There is that spot on the ceiling where Christopher tried to make popcorn and the broken French door from Tessie’s Tai Chi phase.”
“Those shouldn’t be a problem,” I said, even though in the back of my mind I was really in need of a bit more information about these two people and the tragedies that had apparently befallen Rue’s apartment.
She turned back to me and held up her cup again.
“Here’s to getting security deposits back.”
“Here’s to getting security deposits back.”
I tapped the rim of my cup against hers and smiled as we both took sips again and watched as the moving crew carried the last few boxes out of her apartment and piled them into the moving trucks lined up along the road. When they were finished, I turned to Rue.
“Would it be presumptuous to ask to come along with you to your new place and make sure you get settled in alright?” I asked.
Rue looked uncomfortable, her eyes sliding toward her apartment as she hemmed-and-hawed for a few moments.
“Well,” she said, her voice trailing out as though she were trying to take as much time as she could so that she could come up with something to say. “It’s just that…I was planning on meeting up with Christopher and Tessie later.”
I could tell that she didn’t want me to go along with her, and though that made me want to even more, I knew that I couldn’t force her to let me accompany her. I nodded.
“That’s alright,” I said. “Maybe some other time. Could I at least interest you in a warm car and the rest of our coffee and pastries?”
She smiled, her eyes lighting up with relief, and nodded.
“I’d like that.”
Chapter Eleven
Rue
Dear Baby,
Are you in there? I wish I knew. The procedure was only three days ago so I have a little bit of time before I’ll know for sure. I hope that you are. Somehow, it’s like I can feel that things have changed. I think that I can feel you there. At least, I hope that I am.
The procedure wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable as I thought it was going to be. It was incredibly awkward, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that there is any way that anybody could go through something like that without it being awkward, especially considering I knew that Richard, your daddy, was sitting right outside in the waiting room. It went so fast, though, and the doctor was so gentle, I had to ask if it had actually happened and I was all finished. The one really good thing about us deciding to use my egg instead of another donor’s was that there was no need to do an extraction and go through all of that. The doctor just had me track my ovulation and then come in when it was time. That did mean that this all happened much more quickly than I think that I really had in mind.
I’m glad that it is done, though. I think that if it was to keep stretching on that my nerves would get the best of me. This way, the scariest part is finished. Well, maybe the second-scariest part. The really scary part is going to be taking the test to see if the procedure worked and you are actually in there. The doctor said that we’re waiting for implantation. Essentially, if you are in there right now, you aren’t snuggled up in place yet. So, if you are, stay safe on your travels and get comfortable soon. We’ll know in about a week.
The timing seems very appropriate. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I can’t think of anything that I would like to be more thankful for this year than to know that you are coming and my Grammyma’s home is safe and secure. I’ve been back in the house for almost two weeks now and I feel like I might be starting to get used to being here again. I think I’ve already told you that the house is in my hometown, a tiny little place called Whiskey Hollow, but now that I’m hoping that it will be your home for the next nine, almost ten, months, I thought that I would tell you a little more about it.
They say that the area got the name Whiskey Hollow when a group of convicts escaped from the chain gang by spiking the guard’s water bucket with the prison alcohol that they had made in their cells and smuggled to the worksite by soaking the cuffs of their shirts and then wringing them out into the bucket as they walked by. The alcohol was so potent that the guard was drunk after two gulps, gulps that must have been so big and fast that he didn’t even notice the taste, which I can’t really imagine was anything but horrible. Once he was teetering around, they got their chain slithering so it looked like a giant snake and confused the guard into trying to chase it, which just made him woozy. Soon he tipped over and ended up spread out in the middle of the road, letting the convicts steal his keys. They unlocked themselves and ran, ending up in a cute little valley pretty far from anything. At least, that’s what they thought.
The truth was that they had only just gotten over one hill and were only a couple of miles from the prison when they stopped. Even then, they probably could have gotten away with it all if they hadn’t decided that the liquor that they had given the guard was the greatest thing ever made and a gift from the Almighty. Unfortunately, this is what led them to deciding they were going to bless the world with as much of it as they possibly could and sent them into the moonshining business. Now, moonshine is one of those things that’s just going to happen around these parts. It just is. Some of it is pretty extraordinary. A lot of it isn’t. This wasn’t. The moonshine these men made might very well be the reason for lunar eclipses. But soon it was flowing through the valley and drawing people from all kinds of other little villages and towns who had been living dry and were ready to get a little damp.
Any time there is that much unregulated liquor going around, there is going to be some drama. Well, this drama came in the form of two of the original escaped convicts having a disagreement over the direction of their moonshining business. This turned into having words and that turned into one of them dancing naked on the roof of the old chapel that had been in those parts for goodness knows how long, twirling torches he had soaked in the most recent batch of his rival’s moonshine. The details of how exactly that happened are a little fuzzy, but what happened after isn’t. Once the man had been dancing for a while, the fumes of the moonshine torches got to him and he ended up falling off. The rest of the people who had started forming up the little village had no choice but to go for help and this meant that outsiders had to come in. The doctors came to scoop the man up and try to piece him back together and noticed that the whole place was full of moonshine. Like, seriously. Bathtubs. Buckets. The odd baby bottle. It was everywhere.
Of course, the police swarmed the place and started gathering up the escapees and the other moonshiners. Most of them went fairly easily considering they had been drinking in vigil for their fallen comrade. Literally fallen, not dead. He was p
ulling through pretty alright, though I hear that the fall caused a few injuries that made it far less likely that he was going to be doing any kind of naked dancing any time thereafter. A couple of those who were a bit more capable of handling their moonshine tried to fight off the posse, but all they had was a bunch of several-day old loaves of bread. They threw them and then tried to use them as swords. Clearly, this didn’t hold them off and the police had to take them in quite literally kicking and screaming. Around these parts, this is what’s thought of as the real Whiskey Rebellion. From then on, this little area was known as Whiskey Hollow.
The Hollow might not be quite that adventurous anymore, but it’s still got its color. The vast majority of the people who are born there, stay there. It makes for some interesting characters. I’ll try to tell you about them some other time. I don’t know how much I can really say without your parents getting upset with me. Maybe I’ll run some of the stories by them before I tell you. Maybe. At this point I’m still not sure if I even want either of them to see the Hollow. I don’t think they’d understand it. They might also worry about this being the first place that you call home, even if you’re contained safely within me and won’t have the chance to meet the likes of Sue Ellen Berry or Jeb Montaigne.
I’ll be thinking about you tomorrow. Christopher has been called home for Thanksgiving, which is completely strange since his parents have spent the holiday on a cruise for the last 10 years, so of course they would choose this year to decide to give Norman Rockwell a run for their money. Tessie and I were invited to join them, but frankly the stories I’ve heard about that family make the Hollow look calm and sophisticated, so I don’t think that I’m prepared to handle it. Instead, Tessie is supposed to come here, and we’ll eat and then usher in the Christmas season with some movies and approximately a gallon of egg nog. In honor of the potential of you, and since Christopher will not be there with us when the movies start, I won’t be adding any rum. Or moonshine for that matter.