Her Daughter's Mother

by Daniela Petrova

  “What a surprise,” I blurted. Between my mother’s experience with men and Tyler’s betrayal, I’d turned into quite the cynic. Robertson gave me a knowing look and I felt my neck flush with embarrassment. I rushed to change the topic. “So you think Katya might have pulled off something like that other Columbia student?”

  He straightened his back. “There are many similarities here. Your friend has been missing classes. She didn’t show up for a couple of her finals.” I nodded. She’d been Rollerblading in the park and spending an afternoon at the Met when she should have been studying. “She has nearly emptied out her dorm room,” Richardson continued. “And, just a few days before the two of you went dancing, she withdrew most of what she had in her bank account.”

  I stared at him. And I had been worried about her. Losing sleep over it.

  “It was a substantial sum,” he added, wrinkling his brow. “She didn’t pay off her student debts with it, I can tell you that much.”

  Of course. The money from the donor cycle. The money I had paid her. It could last her for a long time if she lived cheaply enough.

  “What makes this case even more interesting,” Robertson went on, “is that she’s an international student and has to leave the country when her student visa expires. She could get a year’s extension if she secures the right job, but she hasn’t.”

  I remembered how adamant Katya had been that she wasn’t going back home after graduation. At the time, I’d thought about my own experience, how I hadn’t wanted to go back to Chicago after college. But it hadn’t occurred to me that Katya couldn’t just choose to stay in New York the way I had.

  “But why not get her degree and then vanish?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “That I can’t tell you. But if she’s planning on changing her identity, she’ll have no use for a diploma under the wrong name.”

  It made sense; still, I had a hard time accepting it. “So you’re saying that she doesn’t want to be found—”

  “I’m not saying anything. It’s a working theory in the absence of any signs of foul play.” He closed the pad and put his pen in his shirt pocket. “There are so many undocumented immigrants in this city using fake social security cards. Just walk into any restaurant. It’s not that hard to disappear in New York, let me tell you.”

  “Do you think you’ll find her?”

  He pursed his lips in a dismissive frown. “If the missing person doesn’t turn up within a few weeks, the precinct will hand the case off to Missing Persons. But I must say, unless there is evidence pointing to an involuntary disappearance we just file paperwork.”

  “So that’s it?” I said, more to myself than to him.

  “Look, individuals over the age of eighteen legally do not have to return home. If your friend wishes to quit college, take all her money, and start a new life away from friends and family, she has the right to do so. It’s a different story if and when she overstays her visa—she has a sixty-day grace period after graduation—but then she won’t be my problem. As I’m sure you know, there is a government agency that deals with illegal immigrants.” He got up and extended his hand. “Thank you for your help. We’ll be in touch if we have more questions.”

  I walked out of the station and hurried to the subway. It was a beautiful spring morning—blue skies, sparrows chirping in the bushes, kids laughing on their way to school—not that I was in the mood to enjoy it. I’d been upset that Katya hadn’t called me back. But to stage her own disappearance was like not returning my calls times a thousand. I couldn’t believe I’d been worried about her. That I was going to be late for work because of her. I felt so stupid to have fallen for it. Duped. Maybe that was why she’d insisted I go dancing with her. I’d thought it weird at the time that none of her friends were around to go with her. Turned out, she hadn’t wanted any friends around. A stranger wouldn’t spoil her plans. A stranger wouldn’t report her missing.

  But she was not my concern anymore. My ultrasound was tomorrow and I needed to relax, take care of myself and my baby. Focus my attention where it mattered.

  21.

  KATYA

  THEN

  My nightmares intensified as December rolled around and the end of the term approached. Most people dream of being chased by killers. In my dreams, I am the killer. In my latest, I was killing a woman. I didn’t know who she was or why I was doing it. I’d never seen her in real life. But in my dream, I was at once explosively angry and bone-chillingly terrified. It was like I was watching myself from the ceiling as I was cutting her in half with a dull kitchen knife. Not horizontally at the waist. Oh, no, that would have been too quick and easy. I was going vertically, the long way, right down the middle of her face and chest. I woke up screaming in a pool of sweat. Luckily, I had a single room this year.

  It was obvious. I didn’t need Josh to interpret it for me. I might not have known the woman, but I knew the anger. And I knew the fear. The woman might have represented my mother or myself. It didn’t matter. The point was I was about to start my last semester at Columbia and was petrified of having to return to Bulgaria, where my demons awaited me. To stay in the States, I would have to find an employer willing to sponsor me for a work visa.

  Josh was right, I thought as I paced up and down the dorm’s corridors at four in the morning trying to calm down after my nightmare. I should have been sending out résumés and focusing on my classes. But I felt paralyzed. Like I was having stage fright, just that the stage in this instance was my own life. Instead, I went out. Every night at first, and then I added afternoons when I didn’t have classes. Before I knew it, I’d started skipping lectures, too, spending my days at bars and lounges.

  Damian and I had been hooking up for close to two months, which was as steady as I’d ever gone with anyone. We weren’t exclusive or anything. Damian might be the jealous type, but he certainly wasn’t the settling-down type. He’d made sure to tell me so right off the bat. God forbid I got the wrong idea. That, of course, worked out brilliantly for me. We saw each other a couple of times a week and he never insisted that I stay after we’d had sex. I couldn’t have asked for a better deal.

  On my “evenings off,” I hung out in Coogan’s, an Irish place in Washington Heights. I liked the bartender there, Nick. He was a cool guy with gorgeous tattoos all over his arms and upper chest who wasn’t trying to be anything special—a great relief from my classmates’ anxieties and ambitions to conquer the world. Come to think of it, he was the exact opposite of Damian—young and easygoing, not a sharp edge about him.

  We’d been friends with benefits for a while before it occurred to me that I was now steadily hooking up with not one but two guys.

  The other night, I was at Coogan’s when Damian texted. He’d gone on a business trip to London earlier that week and I had no idea he was back in the city. He wanted me to go over to his place, to which I texted back: Fat chance. In response, he phoned. It was two in the morning and he sounded drunk. Clearly, a booty call. I told him that I was hanging out with friends in a bar in Washington Heights and there was no way I would go downtown at this hour. He was pissed.

  “What’s so good about that fucking place that you can’t leave?”

  I explained, again, that I was here with my friends, that he and I didn’t have a date so I’d made other plans.

  “What’s the name of that bar?” he asked, and I told him.

  “It’s a simple Irish pub,” I added. “Not your kind of joint.”

  He must have taken that as a challenge because in a little more than half an hour he walked in through the door in his Hugo Boss black wool coat. His hair was dusted with snow and when I looked out the window, I saw big fat snowflakes swirling in the golden light of the streetlamp.

  It was just past three on a weekday and the place was nearly empty. I was sitting at the bar, chatting with Nick and a med student, Chris, who, like me, was a regular. The TV s
creens were on mute, tuned to a soccer game somewhere in Europe. Beyoncé’s Lemonade album was playing over the speakers. Chris and I were both nursing Coronas.

  “Hi, babe,” Damian said with a big drunken smile. He took my face in his hands and kissed me, staking his claim just in case anyone had any wrong ideas. Nick knew about Damian, obviously, but Damian didn’t know about Nick.

  “So these are your friends?” Damian said, and took off his coat. He had that crisp winter smell to him even though he must have just run up to the door from the taxi. I brushed the snow off his hair and introduced him to Nick and Chris. He barely nodded in acknowledgment.

  “Hey, man,” he said to Nick as he draped his coat over the back of the stool, “give us two raspberry Stolis.”

  I looked at him. “I don’t like vodka, remember?”

  “Oh, sorry, babe, I forgot.” He turned to Nick again. “And give the lady another . . . beer,” he said, scoffing at my Corona bottle.

  I tried to get a conversation going, involving Nick and Chris, but Damian turned his back on them and after taking a sip of his Stoli, he interrupted me. “Come here,” he said, and leaned over and started kissing me, his hands digging under my shirt. I could smell the vodka on his breath.

  He’d barely been there for fifteen minutes when he whispered in my ear, “Let’s take this party to my place.”

  I pushed him away and told him I was going home tonight. I had a class tomorrow morning, which was true. I should have been in bed long ago.

  “Oh, c’mon, babe, you can’t do that to me. I’ve come all the way here to whisk you away from this dump.”

  “I didn’t ask you to, did I?” He was really starting to piss me off.

  He kissed me on the neck in response and wrapped his arm around me. The two of us and Chris were the only customers left at this point.

  “Seriously, babe,” he said, slurring his words. He’d already downed the first of the Stolis and was working on the second. “You’d rather sit here with these boneheads when you can come home with me and have the sex of your life?”

  I pulled away from him. “Damian, which part of no don’t you get? I’m going home, end of story,” I said, and got off the barstool.

  That was when he snapped. “You fucking bitch!” he yelled, and grabbed me by the arm. “I came all the way to fucking Washington Heights for you and you’re telling me that you’re going home?”

  I was so startled and embarrassed that I didn’t see Nick come out from behind the bar. He looked almost scrawny next to Damian’s buff chest and shoulders, but at six two, Nick towered over him.

  “Get your hands off her,” Nick said as he grabbed Damian’s free arm and twisted it behind him.

  Damian cried out and let go of me. His face went red, nearly purple with anger.

  “You motherfucker!” he said, and tried to pull himself free, but he was too drunk to figure out a way to stand on his feet, let alone fight back.

  Still holding Damian’s arm twisted behind him, Nick grabbed his coat with his free hand and walked him to the door. “Time to go home,” he said as he pushed him out. “And don’t come back.”

  The red neon BAR sign on the window flickered. Snow fell steadily, quietly outside. Kiss up and rub up and feel up, Beyoncé sang. Like a scene in a movie, I thought as Nick locked up and flipped the Closed sign.

  “So now I have two guys willing to fight for me,” I told Josh at my next session.

  Josh, being Josh, frowned back at me. “So you’re going to continue seeing Damian?”

  “He might act like a pig sometimes, but sex with him is steaming hot,” I said, and winked at Josh.

  How could I explain that Damian made me feel wanted, desired, like nobody before? There was a certain intensity about him, passion that felt primal. Something in me responded to it. It made me feel alive. Or maybe it was because I was in such a bad place at the moment and I needed all the distraction I could get. Anything to keep me away from the nightmares.

  22.

  LANA

  NOW

  Dr. Williams walked in with a smile. “How are you feeling today, Lana?”

  He was a tall man with thick black eyebrows and gray hair. His bedside manner was impeccable. I’d chosen my first reproductive endocrinologist solely based on gender. If I was going to have someone poking and prodding inside me, my legs spread and propped up on metal holders, it had better be a woman. By my third in vitro cycle, I couldn’t care less who was doing it. All I wanted was a baby, and Dr. Williams was rumored to be one of the best in the country. Couples traveled across the globe to do a cycle with him.

  Dr. Williams looked at my record on the computer screen. “I see Dr. Bouchard found a subchorionic hematoma last week,” he said, and spun on his chair to face me. “Have you had any more bleeding?”

  “Just some spotting. On and off.”

  “Okay, let’s see what’s going on.”

  I gripped the sides of the table and began praying as he inserted the magic wand. I had many reasons to be worried, not least the fact that I hadn’t kept my promise to tell Katya the truth about who I was.

  “Here it is,” Dr. Williams said. I held my breath as I stared at the black kidney bean on the screen that kept changing shape as he moved the stick inside me. He finally chose a frame and zoomed in.

  “You see this flicker?” he said, pointing with his finger at the screen. “That’s the heartbeat.”

  I exhaled, my legs weak from the postrush of adrenaline.

  “I’ll start the sound for you,” he added.

  Tears flooded my eyes as my baby’s heartbeat filled the room.

  “Good strong beat,” Dr. Williams said. “One hundred fifty-three bpm.” He did a few more measurements while I wiped my tears with the back of my sleeve and tried to compose myself.

  “Now, here is the hematoma,” he said, indicating a small dark mass next to the gestational sac.

  He pursed his lips, nodding to himself as he measured it. Finally, he looked at me. My heart sank as I saw his concerned expression. “I’m sure Dr. Bouchard has already explained to you that most clots resolve on their own by twenty weeks of pregnancy. What causes me concern here is that it’s measuring bigger than last week. And what we want is for it to be getting smaller.”

  I clenched my fists. “So what do we do?”

  “Look, I’m not going to lie to you. With a clot this size, it can go either way. There is nothing to be done but wait and see. Hopefully, it stops growing and eventually it either bleeds itself out or your body absorbs it.” Dr. Bouchard had said the same.

  “But is there anything I can do? Should I try to stay off my feet?”

  He shook his head. “Later on, we might need to put you on bed rest but let’s see how it goes. We’ll monitor you weekly.”

  I nodded, blinking my tears back.

  “And don’t panic if you get a heavy bleed. The baby could still be okay even if you have a hemorrhage.”

  With his full head of gray hair, rosy cheeks, and friendly face, Dr. Williams had the aura of a grandfather. Everything about him—his low voice, his mild energy, the way he looked you in the eye—inspired confidence. His presence alone usually helped me relax, knowing he’d take good care of me. But not this time. He could perform miracles in the lab, but there was nothing he could do about my blood clot except monitor it and hope for the best.

  At the door, he stopped and turned. “Try not to read the horror stories online. Focus on the positive ones.”

  * * *

  I took my time walking the ten or so blocks to the Met, hoping the cool morning breeze would freshen my face and help erase the signs of crying. But the tears kept coming, my eyes growing puffier with each step. All my previous problems had resulted from chromosomal issues in the embryo due to my aging ovaries. Finally, I was pregnant with a healthy baby from the egg of a youn
g woman and a damn blood clot was threatening to destroy it.

  I stopped at a small coffee shop a few blocks from the clinic. Tyler and I had made a habit of getting a treat there after our appointments. I ordered a decaf latte and a croissant and took a seat at a table facing the window. Maybe because I was conscious of my red eyes, I had the feeling someone was watching me. I kept turning and looking around to make sure nobody I knew was here. I shouldn’t have stopped in a place so close to the museum. Or maybe it was because this was part of my routine with Tyler and it felt weird to be here alone now, to be facing the uncertainties of the future without Tyler holding my hand, telling me that it would be okay. I considered texting Angie, but I knew she’d call me right away and I wasn’t ready to talk about it without breaking into sobs. Calling my mother was out of the question. I hadn’t even told her I was pregnant.

  If only Katya were still around.

  I could see why she might want to go “missing.” I understood she was an adult and could choose to disappear if she so desired. But she’d stormed into my life, laughing, dancing, swirling me along with her, only to then vanish just as suddenly. I could hear Angie’s voice in my head pointing out that maybe if I hadn’t stalked her, I wouldn’t have a reason to complain now. True. It was all my damn fault. And I was okay with that. If only I hadn’t made that foolish promise to tell Katya the truth in exchange for the welfare of my baby. How was I going to keep my end of the bargain now?

  Dr. Williams, of course, would think I was crazy to even entertain the thought that my pregnancy could depend on telling someone something. But I’d rather be superstitious than powerless. Because there is nothing worse than being at the mercy of chance. The belief that there is something you can do—if only I prayed hard enough, if only I eliminated sugar from my diet—can help regain a sense of control. My pregnancy might be in God’s hands—or random chance or whatever one believes in—but coming clean to Katya about it was something I could do even if I had to search door-to-door to find her.