I can’t even talk on the phone with my own mother.
“You know my father was never a hero, don’t you?” I ask Mr. Armisted, because somehow it’s important to show him I don’t have anything left.
“Your father?” Mr. Armisted repeats. “But he—”
“Did Mom tell you the story?” I interrupt. Suddenly, I’m not sure if Mr. Armisted really knows or not. But I want him to. “My father’s unit was going to be deployed to Afghanistan. It was the night before they were supposed to leave, and a bunch of them went out partying. One last time. And one of Dad’s buddies was driving, and he’d had too much to drink, and—”
“I know what happened,” Mr. Armisted says. There’s steel in his voice now. “We knew your parents then. Your mother was already pregnant, carrying Avery.”
It’s that word, “carrying,” that gets me. It makes my mother sound like a pack mule.
“Oh right, you were already using my mother,” I say. I have never been so bold before in my life.
I have never been so angry before in my life.
Mr. Armisted bolts upright. He slams his glass down against the patio table.
“Don’t,” he says, and the word is like granite. He leans forward, his angled jaw dividing the shadow and the light.
“You can hate me,” he says, in a quiet voice that’s somehow even meaner and angrier than shouting. “You can hate my wife. You can even hate Avery, when she’s not being nice. As a family, you . . . you’ve not seen us at our best.” He gulps. “But you do not dishonor what your mother did. What she did—and it was her choice; she wanted to help us—that was the most kind, loving, generous thing I’ve ever seen anyone do in my life. And she did it for strangers. She picked our profile out of the agency listing, and she told us she wanted our family to have the same joy in having a child that she and your dad had, with you. . . .”
His jaw trembles. Or maybe it’s just that my eyes have gone blurry.
Over at the dance club, there’s a song blaring about someone turning around, someone falling apart.
“Your parents are both heroes,” Mr. Armisted says. “Your father was willing to die for his country. He knew that was a possibility, signing up. That’s a lot more than I was ever willing to do. The only thing I ever risked was money. And your mother . . . Do you know sometimes women die in pregnancy or childbirth? It wasn’t likely, but . . . she was willing to risk that for us. For Avery to exist. For my wife and me to be happy . . .”
Across the street at the dance club, a new song has come on, someone asking again and again “Don’t you want me, baby?”
Mr. Armisted turns his head like he’s noticing the music too. He lets out a wail and buries his face in his hands.
I sit frozen, watching Mr. Armisted weep.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he moans, attempting to wipe his eyes. “That was an important song to my wife and me. Years ago. But this is probably quite upsetting to you. You’re probably not used to seeing a grown man cry.”
I am, actually. At the nursing home, it happens a lot. Men come in wearing John Deere caps or Harley-Davidson jackets, and they look so tough and strong. And then you see them a little while later crouched in the hallway outside their mother’s or grandmother’s rooms, and they’ve got tears streaming down their faces. You can tell they aren’t really used to crying; they don’t know how to handle it.
When I was little, sometimes I’d go up to those men to silently offer them boxes of Kleenex. I heard one man swear there was an angel of mercy roaming the Autumn Years, and it turned out he was talking about me. But I’m pretty sure he was drunk or high or both, so who knows what he thought he saw.
When I got to be a teenager, Mom pulled me aside and told me she was glad I was trying to help, but I really should stay away from strange men crying in the nursing home hallways. Because they might want different things from teenagers.
But those men were always crying about death, or approaching death. I know all about that. I know about men in Harley jackets who aren’t as tough as they look.
I don’t know anything about rich men like Mr. Armisted, crying over music.
“Sometimes it helps to cry,” I finally tell Mr. Armisted.
He doesn’t answer. I’m not sure he heard me. I’m not sure he even remembers I’m there.
After a few moments, I get up and slip back into the apartment.
Avery, in a Nightmare
I fall asleep. I can still feel the tears on my face; I can still hear slivers of music when someone opens or closes the door out to the balcony. And I think it’s that music from the dance club across the street that wraps itself into my dreams.
Don’t, don’t you want me . . .
In my dream, I see Mom and Dad dancing. They’re young. And somehow I know that they’re still in college, and they’ve just met, and though there are lights flashing around them and people with Mohawks and safety pins in their noses, Mom and Dad are only looking at each other.
And then they’re their real selves—middle-aged—and they’re yelling at each other, Dad screaming, “Supportive? Come on—I’ve underwritten your little hobby business for years!” And Mom sneering, “You’d be nowhere without me! You wouldn’t even know which fork to use—when I met you, you didn’t even know there were different forks!”
Don’t, don’t you want me . . .
And then they’re fighting over a doll wrapped in a blanket, each of them pulling the arms in opposite directions. No, it’s not a doll. It’s a baby.
Me.
And then another woman walks into the room, and she takes the baby away from both of them—they let her take the baby away. They both give up. They step back and fade away, and then it’s just the woman and the baby. It’s like the woman is standing on a stage, in front of everyone I know.
“You know this baby was mine all along,” the woman says. “And now I get to keep her. Now I have two. Avery and Kayla.”
I wake up gasping. And even though I know the air conditioner isn’t working very well, it’s like I feel a huge wave of cool air flow over me. No, it’s not air—it’s relief.
That was only a dream, I realize. Nothing bad really happened. I just had a nightmare.
That relief lasts a millisecond before I remember what’s real.
Mom and Dad are getting divorced.
Kayla’s mom gave birth to me.
Mom and Dad have been lying to me my entire life.
They were probably lying about ever loving each other, ever loving me, I think. Now I’m just wallowing.
But I can see where my dream came from. It’s so obvious.
Mom and Dad did meet in college, when they were both out dancing, each with their own set of friends. It was the 1980s, and Dad laughs about how there were a few people trying to bring a punk-rock vibe to Ohio State University.
“I was straight off the farm,” he always says, when he tells the story. “I’d never seen anyone use safety pins as jewelry before. I was trying so hard not to stare. Then I saw your mother, and I forgot everything else.”
When Mom’s in a good mood, when Dad’s telling that story, she always says, “But I had to go ask you to dance!”
Their first dance was to this song called “Don’t You Want Me,” by a group called the Human League. Sometimes when I was younger and he was being silly, Dad would make up different words to the tune and sing them to Mom: I was working as a fry cook at a Ma-ac-Donald’s/Then I saw you! Or I was working on the li-ine/At the chee-eese curd plant/And I stunk to highest heaven/Before I met you . . .
It’s kind of all true, I guess. Dad had to work a lot of crappy jobs to pay for college.
One time last year when Mom and Dad were fighting, I heard Mom say, “Do you realize that first song we danced to was actually a breakup song? And we didn’t even notice? I looked up the lyrics online. We were doomed from the very beginning!”
Now that I think about it, I haven’t heard Dad sing “Don’t You Want Me” to Mom ev
en once since she said that.
Tears stream back into my eyes. I missed so many clues that Mom and Dad were going to get divorced. I should have paid more attention. I should have known—so I could brace myself.
So I could just hate both of them from the very start.
So I wouldn’t care.
How many clues did I miss that they aren’t even my real parents?
Lying down is making my head feel like it’s filling up with tears and snot. I sit up, but that just means that all the tears and snot roll down my face, and that’s even worse. I wipe it all away.
I’ve got to get ahold of myself. I, Avery Nicole Armisted, just wiped my nose on my bedsheets—the same bedsheets I’m going to have to sleep in tonight, because we don’t even have a maid here.
And the washer doesn’t work, anyhow.
“Facts,” I tell myself firmly. “Facts, not emotions.”
I’m like a drowning person clutching at one of those rings lifeguards throw. “Facts, not emotions” is what my eighth-grade science teacher always said we should be guided by. Lots of people said Mr. Dandridge was really mean—because he was a hard grader, and he took points off for the tiniest mistakes. But when I was going through a spell last winter where Lauren and Shannon were kind of fighting with each other, and I was caught in the middle (and Mom and Dad were fighting at home), it was always a relief to sit in Mr. Dandridge’s class and know that all I had to think about for that hour was facts.
I reach for my iPad and open Safari and type, “Babies born from surrogate mothers.”
Mr. Dandridge would be so proud of me. Really, so would all my teachers, and Mrs. Chiu, the Deskins Woods Middle School librarian. I skip past Wikipedia. I skip past the entries marked “Ad”—though, how could there be so many people searching for surrogate mothers? Or for families who want to use surrogate mothers?
I’m looking for the driest, most boring link I can find. I want this explained the way my eighth-grade health teacher, Mrs. Stubbins, taught all year—she made talking about sex mind-numbingly dull. Egg. Sperm. Embryo. Done.
I remember some of the boys snickering anyway and muttering about things they’d seen online.
Mrs. Stubbins would fix them with a cold stare and lecture, “You cannot believe everything you see online. This is how all of you came into being. Show some respect.”
Something hits me: Mrs. Stubbins was wrong. We did not all come into being the way she told us.
I didn’t come into being like that.
The tears start up again, and I tap randomly on a site I can barely see.
“Surrogate Mother Sues to Keep Baby. . . .”
I tap back out of that one so fast I almost drop the iPad. I sit there panting for a moment.
If Kayla’s mom were going to try to keep me, she would have done it when I was born, I tell myself. It’s not like she’s going to do anything now.
But it’s too much like my dream, too much like what I imagined.
Dad and Mom are rich, I remind myself. Kayla’s family’s poor. They can’t do anything.
I blink away the tears and tap on a different link, one that looks like the WebMD of the United Kingdom. I’ve noticed that being in Spain means we see different websites, too. More from England. Not so many from the United States.
This UK site is as dry as Mrs. Stubbins’s health class.
I find out that there are really two different types of surrogate mothers. With a host surrogate mother, she’s not genetically related to the baby she carries at all; the baby comes from somebody else’s egg. She’s just a gestational carrier.
With a gestational surrogate mother, it is her egg. The baby is genetically hers.
Daddy says I am genetically his and Mom’s, I remind myself. Completely. He says I’m not related to Kayla’s mom at all. She was only the host. She’s got nothing to do with me.
I know this is a lie. She gave birth to me. That’s something.
I make myself keep reading, and it helps calm me down. I read about contracts, agreements, rights, birth plans. And it feels like none of this actually does have anything to do with me.
Then I come to the line, “It is illegal to pay for a surrogate mother arrangement in the UK.”
What?
I start new searches, looking for lists. Surrogacy is illegal in lots of places. Some places consider it baby buying if any money changes hands. Some places just think it’s immoral: rich people taking advantage of poor women; children created like lab rats.
Spain is one of the places where people like me aren’t supposed to exist.
I’m an outlaw, I think. A science experiment. A total freak.
This can’t be me. I’m Avery Armisted. I’m rich. I’m pretty. I’m good at school, good at soccer, good at managing my friends. Everyone always wants me on their team.
No. Not anymore. Not if they really knew. . . .
I throw the iPad on the floor and bury my face back in the sheets.
Maybe I was made wrong. Because I am nothing now but snot and tears.
Kayla, on Her Own
In the morning, the apartment is dead quiet. I don’t hear Mr. Armisted tiptoeing down the hall or talking on the phone or starting coffee in the kitchen. I don’t hear Avery rustling around her room, pretending for her dad’s sake that she’s getting ready to go to Spanish class with me. I’ve been in Spain for barely a week—I didn’t realize how much I’d gotten used to those sounds every morning. I don’t know what to do without them. For a while, I just lay in bed watching the numerals click forward on the digital clock. Seven forty-five. Seven forty-six. Seven forty-seven.
When the clock gets to eight fifteen, I know it’s too late even for me to go to Spanish class.
Did I want to?
Nobody there knows my family or Avery, anyhow. I could have gone and sat there for hours not thinking about anything but Spanish. And maybe thinking about some Bulgarian kids too. . . .
I blink. With everything else that’s happened, am I really going to get upset about not learning Spanish? Or about not hanging out with kids who don’t even speak the same language I do?
At eight thirty, I give up on waiting for Mr. Armisted or Avery. I get up and tiptoe to the kitchen. There’s nothing but fruit left for breakfast—Mr. Armisted said something a few days ago about making another food order, and he asked Avery and me what we wanted.
But I guess he hasn’t actually ordered anything yet. Or it hasn’t been delivered.
I remember Avery saying I could eat whatever I wanted, and I get mad all over again.
Well, yeah, after my own mother gave birth to you . . .
I grab a handful of grapes and an apple and slip out to the balcony.
Mr. Armisted is still sitting at the table. Or he’s sitting there again. He has a cup of coffee in front of him, but it’s got that dead-looking sheen that coffee gets when it’s been sitting out for hours.
“Oh, um, sorry,” I say.
Mr. Armisted turns his head, and it seems like it takes a full minute for his eyes to focus on me.
I turn around, like I might be able to squeeze back inside before it really registers with Mr. Armisted that I’m there.
“No, no, there’s room,” Mr. Armisted says, drawing his coffee cup closer to his side of the table.
Hesitantly, I put my plate of grapes down on the table. Mr. Armisted rubs his hand against his jaw and winces. He’s got stubble.
“I’m not going in to work today,” he says. “I couldn’t sleep. I’ve been out here since three a.m.”
“I missed going to Spanish class too,” I say, like I’m apologizing. “I mean, Avery and I missed it.”
Mr. Armisted stares past my ear.
“One of my employees used to call this ‘taking a mental health day,’ ” he says vaguely. “I ended up having to fire her.”
I don’t like this new drifty, vague version of Mr. Armisted. He’s almost making me feel sorry for him, and I don’t want to.
I’d
rather stay mad.
He shakes his head like he’s trying to wake himself up.
“Did you read your mother’s e-mail?” he asks. “She was going to send you an e-mail. Explaining.”
“No,” I say. “I did not read my mother’s e-mail. I’m not going to. And you can’t make me.”
It’s like I’m channeling Avery. I don’t say things like that.
I half expect Mr. Armisted to snap, That’s it! I’m sending you home!
But he just tilts his head and says sadly, “No, I can’t. I can’t make anyone do anything.”
Avery, Immobile
It’s morning. I keep expecting Dad to come into my room, to tell me what to do. He’ll have a plan. He’ll make me get up, make me take a shower, make me get moving. He won’t let me lie around in snotty, tear-soaked sheets all day.
Or . . . maybe he will. He doesn’t knock on my door. Nobody comes for me.
That’s a fact too, I want to snarl. Sometimes facts are the enemy. Sometimes it’s facts that make you cry. Did you ever think of that, Mr. Dandridge?
Kayla, at Loose Ends
It looks like Mr. Armisted is going to sit out on the balcony all day, not drinking his cold coffee.
It looks like Avery is going to lie in bed all day.
So what? Let them, I think.
I do not like how much I sound like Avery today.
But it looks like I’m going to spend the whole day thinking, Maybe I should read Mom’s e-mail. I wouldn’t have to answer it. I wouldn’t even have to read the whole thing. If it bothers me, I could stop any time I wanted. Maybe . . . And then instantly my next thought is, No! I am not going to read that! Mom kept everything secret my entire life! I don’t owe her anything!
I have a harder time not reading Mom’s e-mail when I don’t have anything else to do. And when Mr. Armisted’s iPad is sitting right there on the kitchen table. Tempting me.
Avoiding Mom’s e-mail means I can’t even let myself pick up the iPad to watch YouTube.
I make myself find things to do. I brush my teeth and take a shower and rinse out yesterday’s clothes in the sink, because the repairman still hasn’t come to fix the washer. My Crawfordsville High School T-shirt has that stiff, crusty feeling that clothes get when they haven’t been rinsed right. I let the water run over the shirt again and again and again, even though I know it won’t really do any good.
The Summer of Broken Things Page 15