Motherland

by Amy Sohn

  In the interest of securing clients, she had made several targeted calls to mothers from P.S. 282 and the Garfield School, such as Jane Simonson and Cathleen Meth. She didn’t tell them about Seth’s special skill, focusing on his ability to help his clients “let go of old feelings.”

  She had told Seth that he was to offer his special services to every woman, regardless of how he felt about the feet. This was a business now. Though initially resistant, he agreed.

  In the day since the posts went live, she had fielded dozens of calls and e-mails from mothers wanting to know more—could he improve postpartum lower-back issues? Could he fix diastasis? Was he certified in prenatal? Yes, yes, yes. So far she had five bookings.

  “What would you say your main issues are?” Karen asked the woman on the phone, who said her name was Cecilia.

  “I guess lower back.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, he is particularly good at lower-back issues. I’m not just his booker. I’m also a client. So the rate is one-forty for a seventy-minute session.”

  “One-forty? Really?”

  “I completely understand if it’s out of your range,” Karen said. She was proving to be better at salesmanship than she had thought. You had to make them feel that you didn’t need their business. If you were desperate, they picked up on it and didn’t want anything to do with you.

  “No, no, I—I guess I’ll—I’ll do it.”

  “Wonderful. How is tomorrow at one?”

  “I think that works.”

  “If you can get here five minutes early, it would be great. The address is 899 Carroll Street, Apartment Two.”

  “Eight ninety-nine Carroll?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s my friend’s building.”

  Karen’s stomach lurched. She had forgotten the degrees of separation in Park Slope. “Oh, who’s your friend?”

  “Rebecca Rose. She lives in Apartment Three. Have I met you before? What’s your name?”

  “Karen Bryan.”

  “Oh, I did meet you. I was over for Benny’s first birthday party, and I bumped into you in the foyer.”

  “Right, right.” Karen hoped this Cecilia woman wouldn’t tell Rebecca about the visit. She didn’t want the neighbors to find out she had started a business in her apartment. It violated the coop’s proprietary lease. “He’ll see you tomorrow at one, then.” She hung up the phone. When it rang again, she thought it would be another customer, but it turned out to be Matty.

  “She left me,” he said, his voice choked and hoarse.

  “Who?”

  “Valentina. I came back from work and she was gone. She took my iPad, my laptop, the flat-screen television, and a lot of cash.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “We had a joint account. There was about thirty grand in there, and she withdrew it all. We had a credit card together, and she’s already spent twenty-six thousand on that. She’s in South Beach. I can’t say it was fraud because she was a signer.”

  “You gave her a credit card?”

  “She was my girlfriend. I trusted her.”

  “She’s a whore!”

  “She’s not a whore!”

  Karen felt like the floor was sinking slowly into the coop’s basement and down in the earth. This was exactly what she had feared. How could he have been so stupid? It wasn’t smart to shack up with a prostitute, dick or no dick. Valentina had known right off that Matty was an easy mark. She’d probably been planning this all along. Now he’d never get that money back, and he was going to use the theft to make himself seem even poorer on his net worth statement. Karen felt like one of those Madoff victims, outraged, with no chance of retribution.

  “I messed up, Karen. I never should have left you. I want to come home.”

  She had a vision of them visiting Linda Weinert, MSW, together. She would scream at Matty in front of the therapist so he would finally understand how deeply he had hurt her. For the first time he would feel real, deep remorse and become a better husband than he’d been before—attentive, romantic, and spontaneous. He would take newfound interest in fatherhood. The three of them would go on family vacations again. Darby would become more obedient, more placid, the way happy children were. They could send him to private school, Poly Prep or Berkeley Carroll, or that one in Bay Ridge.

  Then she thought about Wesley. On Thursday they were going to dinner again, to The Vanderbilt. She had heard good things about their Fleisher’s meatballs, grass-fed from a butcher in Kingston. She and Wesley had been e-mailing a couple of times a day to talk about nothing and everything. At drop-off, her heart leaped when she saw him, though she was trying to keep things hush-hush so the other mothers wouldn’t gossip. Wesley saw something in her that she hadn’t ever seen in herself, even in the flush early days of her marriage to Matty. He believed in her.

  “This isn’t your home anymore,” she said.

  “Yes, it is. I pay for it.”

  “That’s what we’re going to work out with our lawyers.”

  “Come on. You want Darby to have his parents together. I know you do.” She did want him to grow up in an intact family, and she was bonded to Matty, would be forever, by virtue of having a child and their good years together. “We can do couples therapy. I’m open to anything. I’m not the same person I was a year ago.”

  “I don’t think I love you anymore,” she said. “You lied to me, and you left me for someone else. I don’t know that I could forgive you. Plus, you’re probably gay.”

  “I told you, it’s a third sexuality!”

  “I’ll never be as attractive as Valentina, and I’ll never have what she has.”

  “But we have a son together.”

  “You’re just going to find another Valentina. It might not be tomorrow or next week, but if I take you back, you’ll do the same thing you did before. It’s an addiction.”

  “I love you, Karen. Give me another chance.”

  She had always imagined that the moment she would know she was over Matty would be victorious and uplifting, like in Singles, when Matt Dillon tells Bridget Fonda, “Janet, you rock my world,” and she nods and grins.

  But Karen had been wrong. There was no victory, only sadness. “I don’t think I want to talk to you right now,” she said. With that, she hung up. The phone rang again, but she flipped the little switch on the side to silence it. Then she sat there watching the red light flash as it continued to ring without making any noise.

  Rebecca

  On her way home from Seed, Rebecca found herself walking down Second Street, lost in thought. Stuart had been calling her every day to ask when she was moving in with him. He had sent orchids to the store and a package of clothes for Benny, all well chosen, not overly cute. He sent her texts saying “I love you” and “I need to see you.” She wasn’t sure what to do. She felt they could build something but worried that it was stupid to move in with a celebrity. She wanted Benny to know his real father but was afraid to uproot her life. And yet there was a part of her that wanted a change of scene, wanted to live in Manhattan and socialize with famous people, make new friends, even take the kids to new playgrounds. She had been in a rut beginning with Abbie’s birth, and Stuart could get her out of it.

  As she always did on Second Street between Eighth Avenue and Prospect Park West, she turned her head toward David Keller’s garden. It was a masochistic reflex she had honed over many years. She would peer through the gate at his landscaped garden, feeling worthless. David had bought this house with his talent. His garden was bigger than her entire apartment. He loved to throw parties in his backyard, and she had often seen celebrities there—a motley crew of New York Somebodies, including Chace Crawford, Lewis Black, Jonathan Foer, Nick Swardson, Alan Cumming. And the women: Mia Moretti, Blake Lively, Morgan Murphy, Mindy Kaling, Amber Rose, Miranda Kerr, even Beyoncé once.

  She heard loud laughter from the garden, a chorus of male and female. From the middle of the sidewalk, she turned. She made out four figures sitting around a l
ow table: David Keller, Emma Stone, Amanda Seyfried, and Theo.

  It had been Theo she had seen on the street with David. They were friends somehow, though he hadn’t told her. She was aware of a strong smell of marijuana wafting from the garden. It wasn’t even five o’clock. Theo was supposed to be at work. Was this what he did every day when he was supposed to be at work—smoke pot in David Keller’s backyard?

  Amanda Seyfried laughed at something Theo said and put her hand on his face. Rebecca felt like an idiot for worrying about that Téa Leoni–esque architect in his office when Theo was getting facial touches from Amanda Seyfried. She had made the worst mistake a woman could: underestimating her husband’s sex appeal.

  She started to move toward the gate. How had he gotten to know David? Was it the pot—everyone who smoked knew everyone else who smoked, like the Jews? Whom had she married? It was hard to imagine staying married to her husband when he seemed like more of a stranger than Stuart Ashby.

  As she moved down the sidewalk toward the gate, the foursome rose, turning toward the house. Theo and David were laughing about something. Should she call out to them? David’s arm was draped over Amanda’s shoulder. A couple passed Rebecca on the street and gave her a curious stare. She was struck by the awareness that she looked like an idiot, a gawker, an outsider, her face pressed against the gate of a rich man’s backyard.

  Amanda and Emma went in and then David and Theo. At the door Theo turned his head toward Second Street. It seemed like he had seen her but she wasn’t sure. His look read like a combination of resignation and disdain. Just as she was about to call to him, he turned his back and the two men, her first love and her husband, disappeared inside.

  Gottlieb

  Gottlieb was in his hotel room, Googling “Jed Finger fistfight.” It was noon. It had been a week since that awful call from Topper, and he was still in L.A., not entirely sure why. Andy, convinced their project was dead, had flown back to New York days ago. Gottlieb had told CC he was taking a couple of meetings, but it was a lie. He hated the idea of going back to the playgrounds, back to 321 drop-off. He didn’t want to face the questions from CC, their friends, his employees at Brooklyn Film School, everyone who knew about their project, which seemed like the entire neighborhood.

  A link came up with an exclusive interview from an unnamed source at the hospital where Lars Nielson had been treated. Gottlieb didn’t need to read it; why was he torturing himself? It was over.

  He shut the browser. Then opened it again. He typed “Empire Cryobank” into the search field. The letter was gone, the room garbage cleaned, but how could he forget the name—so New York, so aspirational? The website was corporate and slick, with pictures of adorable babies. This was porn to single women.

  He found the number and dialed. He listened to the menu options until he came to “post-conception services.” The phrase had stuck in his head from the letter, though he could no longer remember the name of the man who had sent it. A woman answered.

  He started to speak, and his voice cracked a little, so he cleared his throat. “Yes, I received a letter in the mail? I don’t have it in front of me, but it was about a donation during the nineties?”

  “Yes,” said the woman, as though used to calls like this. You were nervous when you called to donate, and you were nervous when you called again twenty years later. These people trafficked in discomfort, they could handle it, like phone sex operators or the Bangladeshi guys who used to take his money at Show World.

  She put him on hold. A man came on. “Brian Smith.” His voice was generic and devoid of any regional accent.

  “Mr. Smith? It’s—uh, Danny Gottlieb. You sent me a letter about a donation?”

  “Yes,” Smith said. “Yes, Mr. Gottlieb. Thanks for getting back to me.” Gottlieb could hear typing in the background. “How do you spell your last name again?”

  “G-O-T-T-L-I-E-B.” Gottlieb felt conscious of its Jewishness.

  “And the bank?” Smith asked.

  “It was Eastern Cryobank then.”

  “Okay, I’ve found you,” said Smith. “I just need to verify your identity. Can you tell me your complete social and date of birth so I can check it against my records?” Gottlieb felt like he was talking to a customer service rep at Visa as he rattled off his information. “Excellent. You are the donor we’ve been looking for. As you gathered from the letter, I work in post-conception services here. We promise our donors total anonymity should they request it, as you did back in what we now refer to as the dark ages of AI.”

  “AI?”

  “Artificial insemination. It turns out that a child who resulted from your donor insemination has written us requesting to meet you. I should make it clear that you are under no obligation to meet the child. We contact all of our donors in situations like this, but the ultimate decision is up to them. Should you want to remain anonymous, that is your prerogative.”

  “Can you tell me how many children I have?”

  “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. This is the first who has reached out to us. In the days when you were doing AI, there wasn’t as much of an effort made to track successful pregnancies. Now there is.”

  “Is it—do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?” That suddenly seemed important. He felt like he would go if it was a girl, but not a boy.

  “I’m not authorized to say. We like to let your donor child get into all of that with you. Mr. Gottlieb, you don’t have to respond right away. This is always a difficult decision. Our obligation is only to alert the donor that an inquiry has been made.”

  “What do I do if I decide, um, to meet the kid?”

  “You can call or e-mail me.” Gottlieb asked for Smith’s contact information again, the extension, the e-mail, scribbled it all down on a Sunset Tower pad. “And once I hear from you, if I hear from you, I can put you two in touch, and you can work out the rest yourself.”

  “Okay.”

  “Mr. Gottlieb, I wish you all the best, whatever happens. This can be a very emotional experience for people. Should you decide to meet the donor child, we suggest you get some counseling before and after so you can process everything in the best way possible.”

  After he hung up, Gottlieb spent a long time on the site. They had a feature called “Donors of the Month,” and when you clicked on it, you could read sample applications from the different guys, in Courier font displayed on index-card graphics. “Rock climbing tops 19754’s list of favorite sports, which also include track, soccer, swimming, and racquetball. Six feet with blue eyes and wavy brown hair, this dog lover is close to his parents . . .” There were photos, short essays, and profiles with race, religion, and blood type. Millions of these guys were out there now, all making better money than he had, giving samples coolly, as if they were giving blood. Sperm donation had become commonplace; it was a booming industry. But not one of these guys, not 19754 or 16742 or even 28746, had any idea what he was getting into.

  Melora

  Ray had told Melora to come at four so she could get to the theater for the performance. When she arrived at his house, he said nothing. He opened the door, wearing what appeared to be a burlap union suit, and led her upstairs to the bathroom. His wardrobe seemed to consist entirely of Geisha and Santa. Then he went downstairs and left her alone to her work.

  Fifth of July was in the final week of previews. Teddy was no longer critiquing her acting, but she hated the show and hated how she was doing it. There had been a few items on the theater blogs calling her performance “lackluster” and “phoned in.” Out of all the celebs in the show, she seemed to be the only one getting bad press.

  She had consoled herself with the thought that nothing mattered until the critics came. Ben Brantley from The New York Times and the other major critics were all coming to see the show tomorrow. She was nervous. Now that she had gotten to know Lulu, she was certain that Teddy’s instincts about Gwen Landis were wrong, but she was afraid of what he might do if she altered her performance. He seemed ple
ased or at least content with how she was doing it despite the leaked items—he hadn’t been giving her as many notes.

  On her knees, she crouched over the tub, applying the sponge with extra force, rubbing it in circles until all traces of grime were gone. She used the toothbrush on the tub rim and was surprised at the deep sense of satisfaction that she felt when she dislodged mildew.

  It took about forty-five minutes. Her knees were sore and her biceps ached from what she now understood to be the original meaning of elbow grease. She took her time with each stage of the process, going over the faucets two and three times to get rid of the streaks. She mopped twice to get the built-up dirt off the grout. She had learned from the last try: You swept toward yourself, not away, so as not to walk on the clean area. You did the inside of the sink last so you didn’t have to clean it again as you were rinsing the sponge gook into the drain. If you used paper towels for the mirror and worked in vertical lines, you could make sure you didn’t miss any spots.

  She lost track of the minutes, sweating, finding a focus she usually felt only while acting. At the beginning she ruminated on the show, her costars, the poor early press, her lines. As she worked longer and harder, the worries drifted away, and her mind wandered to her childhood in the Village; trips with her father to see musicals at Equity Library Theatre; a summer house they’d had in Woodstock before her parents’ divorce. She remembered skinny-dipping in the pond, the feeling of safety and security before it was all shattered.

  The bathroom was sparkling when she finished. She was shocked by how proud she was. “Ray?” she called out. She went down the stairs to the empty living room. The studio door was ajar. She knocked but didn’t go in.

  He came out, wearing a paint-smeared apron over his union suit. “Are you done?”