Her parents and all of their friends are socially unbearable, but Gretchen’s brother Chad will save the day. Even if this were not a major birthday, she and Chad have long understood, as most children raised by Money do, the unspoken, nonnegotiable requirement that they put in an appearance anywhere to which their parents extend an invitation. It is the old-money equivalent of aspiring Mafiosos kissing a ring.
Standing alone waiting for her brother to arrive, armed only with her second vodka tonic and leaning against a baby grand, Gretchen feels the anticipatory shiver of what she is about to do once Chad arrives. She feels like a spy with a secret, in a delicious way that temporarily eclipses the infuriating secrets Troy has lately imposed on her life. It thrills her to imagine how scandalized all the geriatric, Republican guests would be if they knew that she, in her sensible pantsuit, with her sensible accounting job and sensible mid-length bob, is planning to give her gay brother her eggs so that he and his (foreign-born! Latino!) partner can procreate. Her stomach tilts and pitches with the anxiety of her own heroism. Albeit, the intimacy implied by egg-gifting weirdly exceeds her actual shared history with her brother, which in childhood was comprised mainly of being shuffled around by separate nannies to their separately overscheduled activities. She is one year older and has no memories of Chad as a baby—her dominant recollection of his significance in her early life is speculating with her junior high friends as to when he would make a grand revelation of the obvious and come out of the closet. She began expecting this by the time Chad was eleven, and by the time it occurred, when he was twenty-two, even their father had figured it out, though their mother still cried as though being filmed by Candid Camera: Disgraced WASPs Edition.
Chad is late . . . typical of him, a workaholic, like their father once was, like Gretchen herself has become in an effort to avoid Troy. Signal her third drink, consumed alone, and with it, Third Drink Thoughts. Chad’s partner Miguel (they say “husband,” but let’s face it, their marriage is not legal—not that Gretchen agrees with that, but still, it’s not) thinks it is a secret that he believes Gretchen to be a lesbian, but it is nothing resembling a secret, and it annoys her. Gretchen is not a lesbian—is not even colorfully bi despite her athleticism and attendance at Wellesley, where being bi for a semester seemed part of the undergrad prereq curriculum for females in the late eighties. Lately, she barely feels heterosexual, either, however, and would classify her sexual orientation as Done With It, Frankly. If only Miguel knew the ferocity with which she once wanted Troy: a wanton, out-of-character lust that now feels embarrassing enough to strangle her. She imagines Troy laughing about it with his friends—Gretchen’s desperately whorish behavior during their courtship—but in reality, she doubts she ever comes up in his private conversations at all.
Recently, in Troy’s “personal” account, she found confusing credit card payments to what seemed to be an interactive Russian porn site. Her ire was raised, her righteous indignation sparked, and like a fool in a horror flick who doesn’t know when to flee the house, she went prying around in the figurative basement looking for the monster. Turns out, Troy has spent some four grand on an (specifically Soviet) escort service. Gretchen and Troy have not made love for more than two years. But . . . Russians? Where did that come from?
It is unclear how one should proceed in such circumstances. Gretchen does not have a prenup, though everyone told her to get one, even her mother, who never says anything that later proves true. When she and Troy met thirteen years ago, he was intimidatingly handsome and wickedly funny and made her yell things while coming that were worse than an all-pants wardrobe, manners wise. He was talented in bed the way Gretchen now supposes it benefits a sociopath to be. If she kicks him to the curb, he will take half her money and might sue for custody of Gray. She has meant to consult a shark attorney to investigate her options, but in order to find an attorney who would be suitable in her family’s eyes, Gretchen would have to ask around and get referrals, which would mean admitting her predicament to at least one other human being. Therefore, she has mainly just gone to work and crunched numbers, and taken copious amounts of Valium while drinking Ketel One on the sofa in her home office, in between chauffeuring Gray to his many overscheduled activities, all of which seem to go more badly for him than Gretchen recalls anything ever going for her as a child, or even for Chad. Other children do not like Gray, and Gray does not seem to like them, either. Toileting accidents are involved. Biting.
This not having eyebrows thing is surely not going to help.
Her anticipation and the vodka have morphed from titillation into full-on roiling nausea.
Enter Chad.
Gretchen sees Chad’s and Miguel’s shirts before she sees them, exactly. These shirts are all French cuffs and collars that do not lie down in the traditional manner; they boast thick stripes and paisleys of untraditional hues. They are pretty garments, but the boys should not be wearing them on the same day: there is something Teletubbies about it. Both Chad and the usually subdued Miguel seem unfeasibly delighted to see her, which hints that they may have been discussing the egg matter all the way from the city. They hug her and beam, as though something wildly interesting will be said, though Gretchen is not a cornucopia of fascinating tidbits, and Miguel, while known to mutter amusingly snide comments, usually does so low under his breath so that no one else can hear.
Fine then, if it is all but a foregone conclusion, Gretchen will be interesting. Finally, she has something to say.
“So, I’ve thought it over,” she begins with pep-squad-level cheer, “and why not? I don’t see why not! You want some of my eggs, you can have them—they’re yours.”
But Miguel’s brow furrows in confusion. It is immediately clear that his only context for “eggs” involves Sunday brunch. Chad, on the other hand, is tearing up.
“This is so incredibly generous of you,” Chad says, hugging her again. “Honestly, Miguel, can you believe this? I don’t even know what to say, Gret—you’re amazing! Thank you! Isn’t she amazing, honey?”
“She’s amazing,” Miguel concurs, deadpan. “But. Uh. What are we supposed to do with an egg? Build a laboratory in our house and hatch it?”
“Oh, there are gestational surrogates, honey,” Chad says, his eyes catching light like small marbles. “Surrogates?” Miguel snorts. “You mean, like, impoverished people renting their wombs because it’s illegal to actually sell your organs?”
Disappointment bubbles in Gretchen’s throat, blindsiding her. Her goofball brother came with a hand out for her eggs, without even mentioning it to the other baby daddy? Jesus, her family. Though honestly, when Chad first brought this up on the phone a week ago, it never occurred to Gretchen that she would agree. The matter struck her as one it was only polite to feign thinking on for some time, as a show of seriousness, yet then to decline as simply being “too much”—something surely no one, even her brother, could begrudge. But stealthily in the ensuing days, an axis shifted. Why would she deny her sweet brother a chance to be a father? Why would she deny Gray the chance for other children in the family? Why would she deny herself the chance to do something useful—something unusual and positive and colorful—for once? As quickly as desire assaulted her, however, Miguel has nixed it, and Gretchen feels alone in a hallway all over again, inconsequential, a replay of her morning. She gulps the dregs of her drink in confusion and shame.
“Chad only said eggs,” she explains to Miguel haltingly. “He never mentioned anything about the rest of the nine yards. He never said anything about . . . carrying it. I mean . . .” She remembers the phrase: too much. Maybe everything is clicking into place as it’s meant to—this was a crazy thing to want, even momentarily.
“Chad only said?” Miguel repeats. “Like, as in, Chad asked? Chad . . . asked for your eggs, and never . . . thought to tell me?”
“There’s nothing disreputable about surrogacy,” Chad says as though Miguel isn’t speaking. “Women who aren’t able to carry a pregnancy to te
rm hire surrogates all the time. It’s a perfectly legitimate way to bring in extra income.”
“Wow,” Miguel says. “Somebody’s been doing his homework on the sly.”
“So I take it you guys have never talked about this,” Gretchen says, feeling her head bobbing in a nod. “Um. Having children?”
“We’ve talked about it,” Chad says at the exact same instant Miguel says, “Why would we have talked about that?”
“Well,” Gretchen says, louder than her usual voice. “This isn’t awkward at all. I’m so glad I brought it up.”
Miguel seems to come to his senses. She watches something pass across his dark eyes and ease his highly arched and decadently sensual brows. He is too handsome to strike her as entirely trustworthy, the irony of which is not lost on her since she, too, married an untrustworthily handsome man. She is not sure what she thinks Miguel might be up to, but a face like that is often attached to something nefarious.
“God,” Miguel says. “I’m being a total jerk. Gret, you’re a rock star, it’s unbelievable of you to offer us your eggs, it’s, seriously—it’s the nicest thing anyone has ever . . . I mean, who does that? You’re amazing—” He draws in breath jaggedly, like someone whose ribs are broken. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation for why Chad attempted to reproduce without consulting me. Probably just a small crack addiction or something—a minor annoyance—nothing that can’t be cured by a stint in . . . where do you people go? Hazelton?”
“Well, Silver Hill is better,” Gretchen says earnestly.
Chad elbows her.
“I’m just not sure I get it,” Gretchen continues, stepping away from Chad. “You guys had more guests at your ceremony than Troy and I did. What was all that for if not to signal to the world that it’s all right to have kids? Why else would anyone get married?”
“Plenty of people get married and don’t have children,” says Miguel, who is from someplace in Latin America that Gretchen can never remember and has probably never met any such person in his entire life.
“But,” Chad bursts in, “we’ve never had an opportunity like this before, either. We always assumed we’d have to adopt, and one of us would have to pretend to be a single straight man or something, and probably be investigated as a potential pedophile running a sex-slave racket—it’s not like we can just walk into any agency and say, ‘Hi, my husband and I would like to adopt a desirably young and healthy infant,’ waving a rainbow flag. We never really considered it because it seemed like a really . . . uphill climb.”
“That’s why we didn’t consider it?” Miguel asks. He doesn’t sound sarcastic anymore. He sounds genuinely confused.
Gretchen waves her empty glass subtly. There is a bar, but if she waves her glass like so for a while, someone will appear and take it from her hand and reappear with a fresh vodka tonic. She has a feeling that she should be uncomfortable, but what Chad is saying makes so much sense that she just turns to Miguel and lays a reassuring hand on his arm.
“You have to understand,” she explains. “You may not realize this because of how driven he is at his job, but on a very fundamental level, Chad and I were taught that we would never have to work at anything. If something seems like it would be a lot of work, it must be the wrong direction, clearly, and you should just give up now and redirect.”
“That’s not what I meant!” Chad protests. “What are you, Emma Goldman—you’re always acting like we’re so psychologically challenged just because we didn’t grow up with dirt floors like Miguel. What you’re saying isn’t true at all.”
Miguel, though, nods. He places his hand on Chad’s arm so that they are standing there, a chain of people with reassuring hands upon each other’s arms, and empty drink glasses dangling from the hands not busy with reassurance, waiting for automatic refills. “Yeah, Chad,” Miguel says, smiling almost sweetly. “It really, really is.”
MIGUEL
How does a man decide to become a father, when for as long as he can remember, fathers have been everything he hates and fears?
If fatherhood is nothing Miguel is practiced at, seething he has made his life’s art. He starts with Chad, of course. Entitled, feckless Chad, who understands nothing of the wildly infinite variables of things that can go wrong in life, who barrels forward, who never asks. Chad, who was raised by a parade of nannies his eccentric (read: batshit) mother often fired for reasons having to do with an irrational belief that they were moving her furniture around, and yet he seems to have emerged unscathed. This always baffled Miguel in a good way—proof of Chad’s elementally positive nature—but now it enrages him.
“You work ninety hours a week,” he rails, unprompted, in the middle of The Daily Show. “You’d be a plantation daddy. Who do you think is going to raise this fictitious kid of ours?”
Chad regards him like a floor where the shards from a recently broken glass have been swept up, but you never know what may still lurk, too small to be seen. “Um,” he counters, hedging, “because the thing is, lots of parents have . . . jobs?”
Miguel can’t pin down the language for his minefield of emotions. As the days pass since Gretchen’s offer, he oscillates between taciturn and snarky, withholds sex like a 1950s wife, makes biting comments about Chad in front of others. He is an asshole. He is obsessed.
He wants the baby. He is terrified of the baby. He has never been around a baby in his entire adult life. Everything else in his midst has become porous and insubstantial.
How can it be that he has gone forty years without the slightest inkling to parent—without the most cursory interest in babies—and now this? His desire can only be likened to what it felt like to long for male bodies in the 1980s as a closeted high school student: dark, dangerous, all-consuming, bottomlessly hungry. Babies are pink- and blue-clad, powdery-smelling, tender things, but the teeth of Miguel’s need are sharp. This is proof (why is this proof? Being gay certainly turned out nowhere near as catastrophically as he feared) that he should avoid fatherhood altogether, that he doesn’t have the proper wiring.
Guerra men are crazy. Guerra men are violent. Miguel is the last Guerra man standing. Guerra men should not attempt to raise any defenseless beings just to fuck them up; the lineage should die with Miguel altogether.
Of course, the fictional baby could be a girl. But Guerra women aren’t much better. Mami’s all right, but that’s because she’s not a Guerra by blood. Miguel is sandwiched between two women of epic demons: Isabel, his elder sister, and Angelina, aka Lina, Miguel’s younger sister . . . sort of.
Chad shows attempts at understanding. “I know you didn’t have the happiest childhood.” His hand rubs circles on Miguel’s back and it is all Miguel can do not to buck him off. “I know your father died young and you never really had a male role model. I know a traditional nuclear family was never anything you wanted, exactly.”
Miguel seethes in his thrashing, unnamed wanting. The mountain of truths Chad does not know, forever looming in their distance, can only be called Miguel’s fault.
The family’s progression to dirt had been in stages. First, when Papi worked, there were cracked stucco walls, crumbly concrete floors, dirt only on the roads. But by the time Miguel started school, Papi slept during the day, and floors and roads had become indistinguishable. Mountains lay forever on the horizon, no matter where they moved: San Felipe, Caracas. “Chicago is flat,” Mami said over and over of the city where she’d been raised. She’d left to follow Papi—also an American, by way of Cuba—down to Venezuela, where some cousin wanted to go into business with him, before Miguel was even born. That short-term venture was far behind them now, lost in the dust of their perpetual movement. “Chicago is flat,” Mami always said, but their family never went to the mountains; peaks simply loomed like a taunt. People in the mythic Chicago were better off that they did not know the beauty they were missing.
Isbael, thirteen, and Miguel, nine, shared the tiny second bedroom, slept together in one bed. Isabel complained th
at Miguel slept too close, made her sweat in her sleep until her hair frizzed, but whenever he woke in the night, Isabel’s arm was slung over him protectively, and he loved the slick of her skin glued against his. Their bed was where he felt the safest. Lately, whenever Papi was home, Miguel had to sleep in the living room on two wicker chairs pushed together to make a bed, because Papi said Isabel was too old to share with a boy. When Mami was alone with the children, she did not care where Miguel slept. Her own bed had space, but Mami cried in the night, and Isabel told Miguel they needed the quiet of their own room so they could do well in school. Miguel knew they both found school an effortless refuge, were fluent in two languages and could see math inside their heads, so Isabel’s words were obviously a euphemism for some other reason they should not go into Mami’s room. Miguel had a dim awareness that children should not witness their parents’ tears, but Mami had been crying for so long that this seemed to him like something said in church, a pretty symbol that had no bearing on reality.
In the small yard out back, vegetables grew, but not well. Mami was an American city girl; the way her tomatoes bruised and caved in as if under a hex was the cause of many fights. Afterward, Isabel would say of Mami, Su piel se ha puesto como estos tomates—algun dia, el se la comera tambien. Miguel was afraid of this image of his father wolfing down his mother’s tendered skin in lieu of her faulty tomatoes, but he couldn’t concentrate on that fear because there were too many mistakes to work to keep from making, or he would become the target of Papi’s anger. Nothing he did was ever right. Papi railed at Mami that the house was a mess and beat her for it, but if Miguel tried to help his mother clean, Papi said Mami was making him into a girl, and hit them both. Only Isabel was unafraid of Papi. She provoked. When he passed out, she laid handkerchiefs over his face to watch them soar.
Every Kind of Wanting Page 2
