The Baby Shower

by Tasha Blue et al.

  “You need the right contacts for that business darling,” her father said. “It’s all about who you know. Everything is always all about who you know.”

  Elena didn’t bother pointing out that her parents had those very contacts, and perhaps her troubles would be a little lighter if they would make some casual introductions, but Elena knew her parents. Sculpting was not the career path they wanted for her, and because of that, they would never help her make it successful or want to admit it to their sophisticated friends.

  “True,” Elena replied passively, “maybe I need to try a little harder.”

  “You know darling,” Louis said reasonably, “sometimes the best thing you can do is to admit that a change of path is what is necessary to change your luck.”

  Elena sighed tensely. “By that you mean, give up sculpting?”

  “I simply mean that you have given three years of your life to this… to sculpting. It hasn’t gone as you planned and it’s alright to admit that, because once you do, you might be brave enough to try an alternate method.”

  “What alternate method is that, Dad?” Elena asked.

  “Oh, there are so many options available to you,” said Louis grandly. “I have already spoken to a number of my colleagues, each of whom are more than willing to employ you in their companies.”

  “You’ve already spoken to people?” Elena asked, trying to keep the irritation from her voice.

  “Yes, of course, darling,” Louis replied. “We’re having a little party tonight, you’ll get to meet some of them.”

  “Oh, but don’t worry, Elena,” her mother cut in, “it won’t be all business. I have a few nice young men I want you to meet, too. It’ll be easier to set you up with a nice boy once you move back in with us; we entertain at least once a week.”

  Elena was feeling her tolerance and her calm slip away slowly. It didn’t help that her perfect twin sister sat opposite her, nodding along with their parents. She wanted to remind her whole family that she had not decided yet whether or not to move back in with them. Realizing the fruitlessness of such an attempt, Elena decided to shift the focus off herself.

  “So, Emily,” she said pointedly, “how are things with you? We didn’t get to catch up much the last time.”

  “I believe that was your fault,” Emily said light heartedly, but there was an edge to her warmth.

  Elena inclined her head in grudging acceptance. “Yes, I suppose it was.”

  “Oh, don’t apologize,” Emily said, ignoring the fact that Elena had made no apology, “we know what a hard time you’re going through.”

  Again, Elena had to grit her teeth together to keep from retorting.

  “Are you sure you don’t just want to try the juice, Elena?” Bridget cut in. “It’s so good. A new blend.”

  “I said I wasn’t in the mood, Mom.”

  “It won’t hurt you to try new things,” her mother persisted.

  Elena sighed. “Alright. Pour me a glass.”

  “Anyway,” Emily continued easily, ignoring the interruption, “to answer your question Elena, I’m doing fabulously. I just booked another event for the coming week and I have two more meetings with potential clients. They’ve been to some of the events I’ve managed, so they know what discriminating standards I have.”

  “Your standards are very discriminating,” Elena threw in.

  Emily seemed to consider whether or not Elena was being sarcastic. She seemed to decide against it, so she paused only a moment and went on with her monologue. Bridget set down a full glass of juice for Elena, who took a distracted sip.

  “And in other news,” Emily said with barely contained glee, “I’m engaged!”

  Elena was momentarily stunned by the news. She hadn’t even realized that Emily was seeing someone. She took a quick glance at her sister’s hand but there was no ring. Emily seemed to notice the direction of her gaze, because she supplied the answer immediately.

  “Oh, Donald wants to take me ring shopping this weekend,” she said, “so I’ll have a ring on my finger by Monday.”

  Elena smiled tightly. “That’s great news Em, congratulations, I didn’t realize you were even seeing someone.”

  Her sister’s smile seemed to tighten, but she replied in the same tone, “Donald and I have been together for almost a year.”

  “Yes,” Bridget said delightedly, “such a wonderful boy, darling. You already know how Daddy and I feel about him. No doubt you will come to love him as much as we do, Elena.”

  “You never mentioned you were seeing anyone,” Elena said, ignoring her mother’s fluttering.

  This time, Elena was conscious of Emily’s forced smile. Her tone was slipping too.

  “Well, let’s be honest,” she said, “you were never very interested.”

  Elena willed herself to remain calm. “I just returned the favor.”

  “Meaning what?” Emily asked, dropping her smile altogether.

  “Meaning that none of you exactly supported my life choices,” Elena said, abandoning her efforts to remain unconcerned.

  “Really, Elena,” Bridget’s voice was annoyingly stoic, “there’s no need to take that tone, or to throw unwarranted accusations in our faces.”

  “They’re not exactly unwarranted, Mother,” Elena insisted. “You and Dad didn’t even attend my graduation.”

  “We were in Florida, Elena,” Louis said, as though that excuse was valid.

  “I don’t care where you were,” Elena spat, “you should have done whatever it took to be there. You made the effort for Emily’s graduation, but I get it, you were trying to send me a message. You’ve always been ashamed of me.”

  Bridget shook her head. “You’ve always been so dramatic.”

  Elena stood abruptly. She looked around at all three faces. There was no understanding there. She wondered how she could be so different from all of them.

  “Excuse me,” she said with exaggerated restraint, “I think I’m going to spend the rest of the evening in my room.”

  There were slight protests, but Elena ignored them. She walked out and upstairs, into her room. She lay flat on the bed, glaring up at the ceiling as though it had personally offended her. After a while, she closed her eyes and tried to think things through logically. She had a big decision to make and this trip to see her parents had been a part of the decision-making process.

  Her parents were not bad people. Elena knew that. They had been raised a certain way and that had shaped their thinking. They were people of habit and tradition. There were things they expected; foremost among them was the desire that their children grow up to live the lives they themselves had lived. Emily had complied with this desire, but Elena had been unable to conform.

  She had wanted a different life for herself and that meant independence from her parents. It might not have been, were it not for the fact that her parents were not capable of simply allowing her opinions to be different, allowing her choices to remain her own. They couldn’t help trying to change and mold her. They kept trying to make her see that her life would be so much easier if she simply agreed to follow the plan they had set out for her life.

  She looked at her sister’s life. Emily had a career her parents were proud of, in fact, they were the ones who had suggested it and given her the necessary contacts to make it a success. This man she was marrying was no doubt a member of their circle, there was no other way they could be so happy about it. Elena knew how it would go. Emily would get married in a year in a lavish and tasteful ceremony, she would work occasionally, simply so that she could talk about her career at dinner parties she would be invited to on a weekly basis, and after a few years, she would have a child who would one day inherit her fortune, and she would spend the rest of her life molding that child so that he or she would grow up to follow the same path as his parents before him.

  She knew the path her sister’s life would take, but she knew more than anything, that she did not want that for herself. She wanted her life to be
a surprise. She wanted to be free and excited about things. She wanted to know different kinds of people, not just different variations of the same person. She wanted to travel, to backpack around the world. She wanted to create sculptures that she could one day exhibit in galleries.

  Elena knew that in order to achieve any one of those things, she needed to have financial independence, too. Her parents had made it clear that if she insisted on following her ‘own path’, as they called it, she would not have their help. Elena thought about what Neal had asked of her.

  She felt a wave of fear when she considering going through with it. Nine months of pregnancy. It was a huge favor to ask. Elena had never seen herself as a mother. She had never even seen herself married. When she saw her future, it included different countries, lots of different adventures and sporadic and temporary lovers. Elena reminded herself that she was not being asked to be a mother. She was being asked to ‘be an egg donor and a surrogate.’ The egg was hers, however, and that made all the difference.

  Elena sat in her room for the next few hours. She ignored the knocks on her door from her mother and her sister. They kept talking to her through her door, but she tuned them out and began humming to herself softly until they had given up and left her alone. She just lay on bed, watching as the light fled the room and was replaced with darkness, and the whole time, she thought and thought and thought.

  Her thoughts eventually moved from straight lines to erratic waves and her memory flexed and bent to include strange recollections from her childhood that she had long since forgotten. She remembered the parties she had been forced to attend, the boy she had loved in high school, the difference in the way her father looked at her compared with how he looked at Emily.

  At some point, she eventually started to drift off, exhausted from her incessant thinking. Just before she fell asleep, she remembered vaguely, the juice her mother had handed to her earlier that evening. She had really not been in the mood for juice, but she drank it anyway. That really was the only way to be left alone in this house.

  Chapter7

  “I’ll do it,” Elena said as soon as the door had opened.

  Neal stood opposite her, stunned into silence by her declaration. He realized that he had not expected her to say yes. Or at least, a large part of him had doubted that she would, but she stood there, her eyes strangely focused, her expression resolute.

  “You’ll do it?” Neal said, more than slightly shell shocked.

  She smiled at his expression and nodded again, slowly.

  “Well then,” he said, swallowing with huge relief, “you’d better come in.”

  Elena followed him inside. It was definitely a bachelor pad, she could tell right away. The kitchen was spacious and well designed, but the focal point of the room was the massive flat screen TV and the large cushy sofa that sat in front of it. To the side of the sofa was a large leather recliner, complete with a built in cup holder and a music-stereo combo. She could also spy a pool table peeking out from behind a half wall, set against the backdrop of an impressive system of shelves, but instead of holding books, they held DVDs. She wondered why men had such a complex with size.

  “Can I offer you something to drink?” Neal asked cautiously.

  He was conscious of her eyes studying his living room. He wondered if she was wondering who had paid for all the luxuries that surrounded him. For a moment, he felt ashamed, knowing that few things in this house had been bought with the money he had earned himself. Most of it had been his own money, but it was part of his inheritance. From his sporadic bouts of employment, he had earned enough money for an expensive dinner or a random splurge that he really did not want. He rarely saved what he earned from those jobs because he knew his safety net was secure.

  “Water, please,” Elena replied.

  “Take a seat,” Neal motioned her towards the sofa, but she followed him to the kitchen.

  Elena took a seat on one of the bar stools that surrounded the center island as Neal poured her a glass of water and passed it over. She looked around the kitchen, admiring the clean surfaces. It looked like it was barely used.

  “I don’t really use it much,” Neal said, reading her thoughts.

  “I don’t cook much either,” Elena admitted, “but I wish I could, I just don’t have the patience.”

  Neal smiled politely, but he was really thinking of how the two of them were going to pull this off. This time, Elena was the one who read his mind.

  “How do we do this, Neal?” she said, businesslike all of a sudden.

  Neal poured himself a glass of water too and took a long sip before he replied.

  “We… need to get started immediately. I mean… truly speaking, you already need to be pregnant.”

  “And what are you going to tell the board?”

  “I’ve already mentioned, in passing, that George was seeing someone. I told them that you were distraught when you heard about the accident. As soon as you’re pregnant, we can make the announcement.”

  She bit her lower lip and thought for a moment. “Will they require a paternity test done?”

  “Yes, they will,” Neal answered. “I’ve got it covered.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The paternity test will cite George Hargrove as the father of your baby,” Neal said confidently.

  Elena understood. “How much money did that cost?”

  “A significant amount,” Neal admitted, “but if it helps me keep control of this company, then it’s worth it.”

  Elena took a deep breath.

  “I suppose we need to get started,” she said.

  Neal nodded, his confidence fleeing swiftly. Wordlessly, he led her to his bedroom. He realized with a start that he had not cleaned up. Elena had asked for three days, he had not expected her to come back with an answer so soon. He kicked himself internally for not being better prepared. He looked towards her cautiously, as she seemed to be panicking.

  “Elena –"

  “I… I don’t know if I can do this,” Elena replied shakily. “I want to, but…”

  Neal approached her slowly and put a hand on her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” he said sincerely, “this was the wrong way to go about it. Let’s go back outside and talk a little. Maybe watch a movie?”

  His tone was soothing. Elena felt herself relax a little. He smiled at her and she felt a little boost of confidence. He had kind eyes, she noticed suddenly. This thought was strangely comforting and she let him lead her back out to the living room.

  For the next five hours, Elena and Neal sat on the large, comfortable sofa, and talked. They spoke about generic things – music and movies, politics and architecture. They discussed what they had studied in college, their favorite lecturers and respective group of friends. Neal ordered some food and after it arrived, they moved to the kitchen island, simply for a change of scenery. They ate out of the containers and enjoyed the first bit of silence in almost five hours.

  “Who’d have ever thought we’d see each other again after that first meeting?” Neal said lightly, watching for Elena’s reaction.

  Elena smiled. “Not me. I hoped I’d never see you again.”

  “That was obvious.”

  Elena laughed.

  “But you know,” Neal said after a long pause, his tone turning serious, “you were right.”

  “About what?”

  Neal sighed. “A lot of things… maybe even everything. I don’t have any sense of what hard work means, and I do depend on my brother for everything.”

  Elena suddenly felt like she needed to justify her anger that night.

  “I’m sorry,” Elena replied. “I shouldn’t have said those things. I was just frustrated with my life, and I took it out on you. It really wasn’t about you at all.”

  “I think it was about me a little,” Neal said.

  Elena smiled and qualified, “Okay, maybe a little.”

  “Can I ask you a question?” Elena said cautiously.

&nbs
p; “Sure,” Neal replied, tensing a little.

  “Well… umm, I guess I’m just curious about why you live the way you do. Why not get involved with the business and help your brother?”

  “I told you –"

  “I know, I remember. You said you weren’t interested in the business… but that still doesn’t explain why you haven’t attempted to find a career that you are interested in.”

  Neal fell silent. He had never analyzed his decisions before. He did what he felt like, and didn’t dig any deeper than that. It was a comfortable way to live life, but today, with Elena sitting opposite him, he felt the need to want to explain, but the sad truth was, he knew he didn’t have a good enough explanation. It struck him suddenly, that he cared what she thought of him.