A Palm Beach Scandal--A Novel

by Susannah Marren

  “I’ve not had an entire family in my ultrasound screenings before.” She sighs. “I’m going to have to ask that two people leave, for the moment. There can be places traded in a few minutes, but four at once is disruptive.”

  James’s attention is obviously diverted, perhaps influencing Dr. Lieber’s decision. He shuffles his weight; he’s listless in a packed room with a screen and churning sounds.

  “It is crowded with four, not two, of us,” Elodie agrees. “James, if you want to get some air, I’ll find you in the waiting area later.”

  “We should go, Elodie, you and I,” James says.

  “Elodie, please stay,” I say.

  “James hates the sight of blood,” my sister says.

  “No one is bleeding.” Dr. Lieber is back on track.

  She moves the wand. Baby Grace’s face looms closer.

  “The room is too close, too warm—that could be the problem.” James is at the door, still watching the screen. “Not enough circulation.”

  Elodie walks over.

  “Tyler, maybe both of us should leave,” James suggests.

  “Sure,” Tyler replies, but he is transfixed. “That’ll do.”

  “I don’t know what’s come over me,” James says.

  “It happens, doesn’t it, Dr. Lieber?” Elodie composes herself.

  “Well, on occasion.” Dr. Lieber is gliding the wand.

  “Elodie?” James is at the door.

  “I’ll step outside with James,” Elodie says. “I’ve had a good look. I’ll come back in. Swap places with Tyler.”

  My sister comes to me, puts her mouth by my ear. Aida and Dr. Lieber bristle; she ignores them.

  “Our baby is everything, isn’t she?” I whisper to my sister in that strangely pitched voice we concocted when I was five. No one else could know or understand why we do this.

  “I hope so,” Elodie says.

  I hope so?

  Elodie is watching the screen. “She is incredible.”

  She squeezes my hand, then she walks to James.

  * * *

  The baby that is our baby, no one’s baby, everyone’s baby, keeps at it. So like a ballerina that Tyler is enraptured.

  “Smitten, are you?” Aida asks.

  “That we are,” he says.

  As if directed, the baby somersaults onto the screen, her eyes similar to ET’s. Her tiny fist clutches the other fist. In this frame, no one counts except the three of us.

  CHAPTER 25

  ELODIE

  An hour after Aubrey’s ultrasound, James and I aren’t able to speak in the car. In silence, he drives us to the Gardens Mall. I have never been here with him, although several times I have come with Mimi.

  When he parks, he turns to me. “What are we doing?”

  I’ve told him already, but we’re both so thrown by our baby on a screen, I want to be patient, considerate of both of us.

  “Papier Bliss to get the proof for the baby shower. My mother said it can be sent or emailed, but since we would be nearby, she asked me to stop in.”

  “Why is it crowded on a weekday?”

  I want to shout, Stop talking minutia. Let’s talk about what happened at South Palm, why you left the room. Instead, I speak slowly.

  “Retail shopping is popular. It’s a nice mall. Your mother likes to come. She doesn’t mind driving up here. She walks through the anchors and the smaller shops. She says it cheers her up.”

  I admit, it’s fun to go with her. We usually get frozen yogurt with walnuts at Bloomingdale’s.

  “Okay, fine.” James turns off the engine and we get out without slamming our doors. He squints in the sun, maybe at how large the place is, and we start walking into Nordstrom. “I’ve got to get to ANVO. How long will things take?”

  Air-conditioning and muzak blast at us. James reads the directory as fast as possible. “C’mon,” he points.

  I’m following him, he won’t even walk in tandem.

  “What is it, James?”

  “Yes, I’m fine,” he says. As if we don’t know each other and there’s no reason he needs to be polite or friendly. I want to cling to him, ask for an emotion, say it’s not my fault that my family is spilling everywhere. That the ultrasound might have freaked him out for reasons I’d like to learn is a separate issue. Although it adds to the utter chaos, triage of the Cutlers.

  A woman who works at Papier Bliss is expecting me.

  “Your mother called; she was very specific. You must be Elodie,” she says, handing me the proof.

  She’s in her fifties and blond, with rimless glasses. I am too loaded down to conjecture her life, her passions, as I usually do with strangers. I’m absorbed with what to say next to my husband. In a numb manner, I thank her and carry the envelope outside to where James stands, reading his iPhone.

  “Want to look with me?”

  He shakes his head, and I know he is working with his office. I walk back inside and sit at the table, where people look at samples of countless invitations and announcements. I’m too queasy, too upset to check the proof. Veronica will need to see it in any case; a pass from me won’t matter. Again I leave the shop, nodding to the woman, whose name is Mary.

  James isn’t right beside the storefront anymore. I spot him wandering through the main corridor. Could a shopping mall be adding to James’s odd disconnect, how desensitized he is? When he looks around, I smile cheerfully and signal that I’m coming to where he is.

  “Ready?” James asks. “It’s very busy at my office.”

  His upper lip has a line of perspiration. His jawline, which I admire, is undefined; his entire affect is flat. Maybe carrying on a conversation is too burdensome, too demanding. I check my phone. A message has come in from Veronica.

  “Wait, we have to stop at Nordstrom’s. My mother said to look at the layettes there.”

  “The what?”

  “The layette. What you need for when the baby comes home from the hospital. It gets preordered. Baby blankets, towels, infant clothes, sheets. What the baby wears for the first few months.”

  Our baby, our daughter. We ought to be celebrating.

  Would he care more about it if I were carrying our baby? Don’t most husbands know by this stage of their wives’ pregnancies what a layette is?

  “Can we make it fast?” His face is still slack; his voice has no cadence.

  “Sure, why not.”

  * * *

  The only person working in the baby department is busy on the other side of the floor. Although we see her, James and I find a love seat near the stuffed animals and bassinets and sit together.

  “Want to shop a little since we’re here?” I ask.

  “Not today,” James says.

  Up close, I realize he has a few gray hairs at his temples; his one dimple isn’t as deep as it used to be. Or he isn’t smiling like he used to.

  “Wasn’t it amazing seeing our baby?” I ask, ever hopeful that I can reel James in.

  “It was. I didn’t expect it to be so graphic. It made me queasy.”

  “Queasy, okay.” I pause. “James, it’s a girl. A girl! Now we can choose pink, today, pink!”

  In the lag that follows, I recollect what we were like before we planned our baby. I wait for him to speak. There are no windows; the overhead lights make the room too ashen, the color of oyster shells.

  “We should go. Both of us need to get to work,” I say. “I can do the layette online. Or Aubrey will. Lately she loves baby clothes and nursery decor.”

  “Does she?” James crosses his legs. I don’t believe he cares what my sister likes.

  “James, what’s going on?”

  “I don’t know. Are you nervous?” he asks. “You know, about having a baby, a child?”

  I pivot. “Nervous? No. But something. I am observing Aubrey and it’s the oddest thing. She’s carrying our baby; she’s my little sister. She doesn’t say much about the pregnancy. I guess to protect me, in case I feel like I’m missing out.”
<
br />   “Do you think you are missing out?”

  “No, actually,” I say.

  “I get that. Who could have predicted how we would feel, how much there is to plow through? From the women in town, the perceptions, Aubrey becoming more and more pregnant.”

  “At least both our mothers are fairly decent,” I say. “At the moment.”

  James starts laughing, the laugh he had when we went on a trip to Berlin and we drank too much lager. I begin to laugh, too.

  “I’m grateful for that.” I run my hands through his hair.

  “Do we have a name for our daughter?”

  “We have a list,” I say. “At home. Remember, we like Lila and Isabella—no, wait, we nixed Isabella. India is on the list.”

  “What if it’s more complicated than it looks?”

  James, the strong man, James the rock.

  “Oh, James, please, don’t say that.”

  If he only knew how my father stood in his own living room yesterday, crushed. If he only knew my father’s lie, a double lie, one for me, one for Aubrey. I’m like my father, the one who isn’t related, expected to fill the chair. Our baby daughter’s precious face, my father’s pain. “Your father loves you,” Mom keeps saying.

  “We’ll be fine,” I say to buoy us both.

  The salesperson is coming to our love seat, carrying a tablet and a pen, ready to record our layette shopping order.

  “Can we get the hell out of these shops?” James asks.

  “At once,” I say.

  We jump off the love seat with a spring in our step. Suddenly I understand Veronica’s debacle, how it must have been to bring me, and then Aubrey into the world. How it is to shore up one’s husband first.

  CHAPTER 26

  ELODIE

  When I walk into our kitchen, it is past seven o’clock. James is at home, playing Neil Young from the album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. We kiss on both cheeks, as if we’re in France.

  “Veronica and Mimi have been on the mother-in-law group text for hours about a baby girl,” I say.

  “That’s indisputable,” James says. “Simon weighed in once and seemed pleased.”

  “I saw that, too.” I gulp. My father had to do that, didn’t he?

  Standing like he’s at a weight machine at the gym, James appears much more himself than he was this morning at the ultrasound. Shoulders back, stomach in, buff. He has to know about the DNA—for my sake, for his. At once. I can’t stand that he doesn’t. Unless I leave the night alone—then it could belong to us, we could recover from the shock of the ultrasound, we could share the hours. I might simply practice how to announce the news in front of a mirror and reveal it later. After I clear it with Aubrey. Instead, I keep running it through my head, how to frame this for my husband. Honey, sit down, here’s what really happened in my family. My father was infertile, Aubrey and I are donor-inseminated daughters. Two donors, a double lie. Half sisters.

  The song “Cowgirl in the Sand” is playing. Twice we went to see Neil Young perform together. Why can’t I be the person who talks about that—about how his music is part folk, part country, with that hard edge in some of the songs. I might not know what Aubrey and Tyler know, but I know about musicians we were raised on. Funny that James chose a favorite of Veronica’s. My mother and husband, in sync on music, the new house, Palm Beach in season. And the baby.

  “Are you thinking about the baby?” he asks me. “Since we know the sex.”

  “I am,” I say. “It’s exciting.”

  “Names. I looked up some on the Internet. Let’s not do one in the top ten or twenty, okay?”

  “I agree.”

  The baby should fill my head nonstop, including the roster of girls’ names, Eleanor, Lila, India, Annabelle. I shouldn’t be lost in our sperm-bank story, wondering how one finds her bio father.

  “You know, I like Tyler, he’s a good guy,” James says. “He makes Aubrey happy. He’s a sport—look at what’s going on with the pregnancy. How he…”

  I nod too emphatically. “He is so there, for Aubrey and the pregnancy.”

  “Exactly,” he agrees.

  “James, before we get ready, before we go tonight,” I begin.

  “The barbecue at Longreens?” James checks his watch. “You know, we don’t have to go. But your mom called and started with that rhetoric about it being ‘casual.’ Corn on the cob, thin-crust pizza, shrimp cocktail, steak that’s blue in the middle. Piled onto one plate.”

  “I don’t know, it’s been a long day. I’d have to change.”

  The thought of friends, members, finding the right clothes, bangles, earrings—it overwhelms me. Is this what depression is? What unspeakable grief feels like?

  James stands, stretches. “We haven’t had a night at home in weeks.”

  We are more teamlike than we’ve been for a while.

  “I don’t know how to do this.” I start pacing. James eyes my back-and-forth steps; I am not the pacer in our relationship.

  “Do what?”

  He’s looking in the pantry for something to eat and opens a box of macadamia nuts, then a box of Carr’s water crackers.

  “I want to tell you what has been uncovered.” I stop myself. There’s the promise that Aubrey and I made to our father, there’s that. To our mother. A pact that we would not share this. Except it is our story, too. We are the result of their narrative. How can Aubrey not tell Tyler tonight? How can she resist?

  Something about my face, the lighting, the grave loss of what I believed my entire life. Where did I read that learning your father isn’t your bio father is like being hit by a Mack truck?

  He waits, then asks, “Uncovered?”

  That’s where I am, hit by that Mack, on the open highway, splat out while suffused with the truth. I wait before I speak. Why do I pity the men—Tylor, James—and not the women? Already my heart hurts for my husband.

  “Simon is not my father. I’m someone else’s daughter—a sperm donor’s daughter.”

  James spits the nuts out of his mouth, into his hands. He walks to the sink and runs water over his hands, splashing it onto his face. When he twists around, his mouth is twisted, too.

  “What are you saying, Elodie? You and I, we’ve been together for years. Where is this coming from? I know your father.”

  “Simon is not my biological father. He isn’t Aubrey’s, either. Plus, Aubrey and I have different donor fathers.”

  I’m making peculiar sounds in my throat. Even my voice is not mine anymore; nor is it the voice that Aubrey and I pitch together. It’s just foreign.

  James leans against the wall next to the kitchen door and freezes up, immovable. He waits for me to explain.

  The room is too glary. I’m dizzy. I breathe in, out.

  “We weren’t ever supposed to know, not ever. The secret, my parents’ secret, was supposed to go to the grave. Some kind of covenant. Then we took the DNA tests. And what I believed, what my sister believed, our entire lives…”

  I stop, unable to go on. Whatever I said to my parents and Aubrey this afternoon has left me depleted. I have to stay with it, telling James is my panacea, part of being let out of the cage, isn’t it?

  These pictures in my mind, my parents laughing together, inebriated. Christmas suppers, New Year’s Eves, opening dances, dinner parties, theirs, others’. My mother’s teeth always show; his are always covered. I think how Aubrey is grateful and astonished, while I am curious and astonished. Longing for more information, I am unforgiving before I am beholden.

  “I’m not sure I want to believe you, Elodie,” James says.

  “I know, I know,” I say.

  Then James comes over to me and begins to cry. I have not seen James cry since he told me about his father, who died. Our arms around each other, we stand in the middle of our kitchen.

  “I’m so sorry, sorry for you and for your sister. For Simon,” James says. “What can I do?”

  “Nothing, that’s the thing. Nothing can be done,”
I say.

  The room isn’t lit enough and the sun has set. There are sharp shadows. James keeps crying in that mannish style.

  “Is it because he’s not my real father?”

  “Everything.” James holds me tighter. “That he’s not your biological father, that Aubrey and you are only half sisters—that it makes you less related to our baby.”

  “I thought of that. Another blow, another shocker. I’m absorbing that, too.”

  “He and Veronica tricked you in some way, they tricked you and Aubrey.”

  “Well, I’ve suffered and I’ve thrived,” I say. “I’m like him about our baby—the great steps taken. How he wanted us to be his but he couldn’t do it. Kind of like me.”

  “That’s the irony, isn’t it?” James says.

  The songs shift and loop around. “Cowgirl in the Sand” comes on again. Have we been talking that long? James and I lurch together toward our new de facto existence.

  CHAPTER 27

  AUBREY

  “Mom, it’s fine, it’s all right,” I say, although my mother has parallel-parked more than eighteen inches from the curb on Worth Avenue. I would offer to re-park, except she’s on edge. Lately I find it easier to agree with my mother or Elodie about almost anything. Plus, in the past two weeks I’ve realized that getting behind the wheel to drive is more of a trick than fitting into the passenger seat.

  “Great.” Mom turns off the engine, pulls down her mirror, and starts primping. Sunlight hits her chin and the right side of her nose. She bends her head in the other direction.

  “I’m delighted that you can come with me this afternoon, Aubrey. Going to Vintage Tales always gives me a lift.”

  “Well, sure, but I have a conference call in an hour,” I say.

  A call about Celeste, who since her gig in Miami is being invited to perform everywhere.

  “This could be our big break,” I said to Tyler last night. We were on the road to the Music Scene, a live band venue for local talent in Fort Lauderdale. “We can sit at our desks and book everywhere, not only local spots.”