“Block them with the giant nuts!”
Nothing was more entertaining to the stars of Wombmates than their wacky neighbor, Mrs.—well, nobody actually knew her name. Nobody knew much about her at all. She was ghostly and rail-thin—or maybe she was morbidly obese. She was in her late seventies or eighties, or perhaps she was only thirty-five. It was hard to tell much about her when all anyone ever saw was the faint glow of her irises peeking out from behind her curtains. All anyone knew for sure was that she was obsessed with the Irelands. Though she never spoke to them, she watched them the way other recluses watch QVC. Instead of ordering herself a lot of cheap crap, she sent the cheap crap to her neighbors.
Every few days, she’d drop off some bizarre gift on the Irelands’ doorstep. A plate of donuts, a can of off-brand cola, a dying potted plant. When Tiffany’s belly started to show, the goodies took on a prenatal tone. One day, it would be a trial-size can of Similac, the next a handful of newborn diapers or a set of feeding spoons rubber-banded together. She left a coloring book, presumably for Gavin, about being a big brother. Who knows what she thought of Susie. The gifts were unwrapped, save for a plastic Target bag. There was never a note or card. She didn’t ring the doorbell. Her packages would appear when the Irelands were away or in the backyard, as if by magic.
When we first met Tiffany, she reminded us deeply of Susie. Now the few differences they’d had seemed to be melting away. As Susie grew closer to our surrogate, so did we. Tiffany told us about her frustrations with work and how she was dreading turning thirty. To qualify for surrogacy, a woman has to agree that she’s not planning to have any more kids of her own, but Tiffany confessed to us that she really wanted another baby. Eric didn’t. If we’d known that before we chose her, it might have given us pause. At this stage, though, we trusted her fully with our kids.
Three weeks into Susie’s stay, we all decided that she’d earned a weekend off. Drew and I arrived on Saturday morning to pick her up. She would be gone only a day and a half, but from the way she hugged Tiffany good-bye, it was as if one of them were being deployed overseas. They were verging on inseparable.
I hopped in the back of the minivan, and we waved to the Irelands as we drove off.
“Woohoo! Weekend off! Let’s party!” I shouted, but nobody shared my enthusiasm. In the front seat, Susie had her head in her hands, trying to keep from sobbing.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
Drew rested his hand on her shoulder. “You’re miserable, aren’t you?” It was then that whatever tears Susie had been holding back came out in a flood. “Oh, honey . . . ,” Drew said.
Was it possible I’d misread the entire situation? Clearly, Drew knew his sister better than I did. He’d seen through her brave face when I hadn’t. She was a champion at masking her pain, just like her brother. No wonder he knew she was faking it.
“Is she mean to you?” I asked.
“No!” Susie insisted. “Tiffany’s great.”
“Are you homesick?” She shook her head. Susie took a moment to collect herself, then she told us the part of the story she never felt comfortable sharing in Tiffany’s presence.
Many of her complaints were typical new job gripes. She was feeling overworked and underappreciated. With Tiffany always on the couch, Susie never had a moment to put her feet up. She was constantly mopping, scrubbing, changing diapers, playing board games, and, most exhausting of all, trying to stay upbeat. One night, Tiffany and Eric teased her about a lackluster dinner she’d prepared, and afterward, she closed the door to her room and bawled. Susie was also struggling with standard roommate issues—a lack of privacy, differing schedules and interests. Even Plants vs. Zombies had become a trial. It turned out Tiffany was hypercompetitive, turning each Flash-powered game into a showdown on the scale of Ali vs. Frazier. All Susie wanted to do was to slaughter zombies. Tiffany wanted to slaughter her new houseguest—and rub her face in it.
But the real problem wasn’t her—it was him.
“He hates me,” Susie confessed through her sobs. “He doesn’t like anything I do. He barely talks to me. I know he doesn’t want me there.”
Susie had a new nemesis, and he was only three feet tall. She may have been a hero to us, but to Gavin, she was Lex Luthor, a devious villain intent on taking over his world and destroying his hero, Mommy. Susie made scrambled eggs for him, changed his diapers, and played trains with him—all the things Mommy was supposed to do. She put him in time-out when he misbehaved, told him when to go to bed, and she made his peanut butter sandwiches all wrong. Mommy no longer did much of anything for him. When Gavin wanted something, Mommy’s response was, “Ask Susie.”
Our unique plan for making a baby had confused a lot of people, but none more than the little man whose life had changed the most of all. He could point at Mommy’s belly and say, “Drew and Jerry’s babies!” But when he pointed at Susie, he’d shout, “Go home!” To his two-year-old mind, Susie had been brought in to replace Mommy, and he was going to fight her with every weapon in his arsenal—tantrums, tantrums, and super-tantrums.
Gavin was at the age where he’d perfected that ear-piercing squeal only toddlers, teakettles, and suffocating dolphins make, the one that makes grown-ups give in instantly just so they’ll stop. That excruciating sound was just about the only thing Susie ever heard from him. That and “I don’t want you here!” More than once, he dragged her suitcase with all his might to the front door and demanded she leave his house, now. “Bye!” he’d shout.
“Gavin, I’m not . . .”
“Bye! Bye, Susie!” Then he’d shove her so hard she’d almost fall over.
The hardest part for Susie was that Tiffany did very little to stop Gavin’s defiance. It wasn’t just that she was bedridden and unable to chase after her kid. On some level, Tiffany must have appreciated the attention. With all the bed rest restrictions, she wasn’t even allowed to pick her son up or get down on the floor and play with him. The two fetuses she was carrying came between her and her favorite job, being a mother. Gavin’s fierce loyalty to her was one of the few things she was still able to enjoy. She never noticed how much it was hurting Susie.
Susie’s status among our friends had now eclipsed sainthood. She had taken on the aura of a mythical superhuman-like creature and was revered with goddess-like devotion by everyone we knew. Everyone except Rainbow Extensions.
“Well, good for her, but I would never do anything like that for my brother.” Our caseworkers may have changed, but their cluelessness was one constant we could count on.
I called them to make sure they were taking care of Tiffany financially. I knew how unreliable their accounting department was and how reluctant Tiffany was to complain. It seemed wise to step in.
“We haven’t paid her anything,” caseworker number 4283 told me. Not surprising, but what did shock me was the reason. “She hasn’t asked. In fact, I was going to ask you if you’d heard from her. She won’t return our calls.”
Tiffany had confessed to us before that she couldn’t stand Rainbow Extensions. They phoned her regularly to check in, but the calls were awkward and forced. They never knew what to say to her, and she never knew how to respond. When she saw Rainbow Extensions’ number pop up on her caller ID, she sent the call to voicemail, then deleted the message without listening to it.
We’d always been slightly amused by her attitude toward them, mostly because we wished we could do the same thing. Now, though, we were worried. She was losing a huge amount of money on bed rest. The Irelands may not have been destitute, but they weren’t rich either. Losing Tiffany’s salary was a big blow to them. How were they getting by?
We realized we were going to have to have a very uncomfortable talk with Tiffany, about the one subject surrogates and intended parents were never supposed to discuss: money. I knew why it was off limits. It devalued the whole arrangement to acknowledge the price tag. On some level, Drew and I were con
sumers purchasing a service from Tiffany, but it was better to talk about the other levels—the sacrifice, the goal, the gift of life. Pregnancy inspired happiness. Money inspired cynicism.
“Are you doing okay?” we asked Tiffany in her kitchen one day. “You know, financially?”
“Oh yeah. I’m fine, thanks for asking.”
“It’s just that Rainbow Extensions told us you never asked for your lost wages compensation.”
“Oh, I don’t want you guys to have to pay that.”
“But we want to!” Drew insisted. “You’re making babies for us. We want to take care of you.”
“You deserve it,” I added.
“If you don’t like dealing with the agency,” Drew said, “we can pay you directly. I’ll write you a check right now.”
Tiffany smiled and waved him off with her hand. “I don’t need it. I filed for disability.”
“You can get disability? How come Rainbow Extensions never told us that?”
Tiffany shrugged. “Because they’re idiots.”
Not wanting to deal with the agency, Tiffany had found her own solution to the problem, one that paid her 100 percent of her lost wages and saved us thousands of dollars. After all our worrying, it turned out she was the one taking care of us.
I realized that by sidestepping the subject of money, we had only been allowing the cynicism to flourish, to suppress our discomfort at the thought that when Tiffany looked at us, she saw dollar signs. It didn’t feel that way any longer. Now I knew for sure that we were on the same side.
We spent Fourth of July weekend with the Irelands, doing all the things people do on the Fourth of July. We cooked hamburgers on the backyard grill. We sat on lawn chairs and waved tiny American flags. We watched from a safe distance while Eric set off fireworks at the bottom of the driveway.
For weeks, Tiffany had been talking about how much the babies kicked. One time, Bennett wailed on her so hard she expected to see his foot poking through her skin. They just never seemed very mobile when I was around. Somewhere amid all the revelry and the crackling of M-80s, Tiffany reached out and nearly yanked my hand off my arm. “Now!” she shouted. “Here they go!”
She pressed my palm hard against her belly. I waited and waited but felt nothing.
I started to pull my hand away, convinced I had missed the tossing and turning once again, but Tiffany wouldn’t allow me to let go. “Wait!” she commanded. She laid back and relaxed, like she was trying to will the babies to move with her mind. A moment later, there was a rumble, like a tiny earthquake with an epicenter at her belly button. Then I felt it—a forceful thump rippling beneath my palm. Thump. Thump. The baby seemed to appreciate the resistance my hand created, because the first kick was followed by two more.
“Did you feel that?” Tiffany shouted.
“Holy crap, yes!”
Tiffany laughed. “That’s Bennett.”
“You can tell which one is which?”
“Yeah, he’s the kicker. He wakes me up at night.”
“Wow, that was Bennett! I can’t believe I just felt Bennett kick.”
“What are you waiting for?” Tiffany asked. “Talk to him!”
She was right. This was my chance—not to lay down some overly thought-out, rehearsed-sounding diatribe but just to chat with my kids. They were definitely paying attention. I leaned over Tiffany’s midriff.
“Hi, Bennett. Hi, Sutton. This is Daddy. Well, one of your daddies. The other daddy thinks it’s dumb to talk to a belly. Maybe you’ll think so, too, but too bad. You’re stuck in there, so you’re going to listen. I really can’t wait to meet you guys. I promise I’m going to love you no matter who you turn out to be, and I’m going to let you figure that out all on your own. Personally, it took me a while. Hopefully, you’ll get to it a little quicker.
“Just hang tight in there. You’ve been doing a great job these last few months, and I know it hasn’t been easy, but it’s all going to be worth it. Just keep taking care of each other, because that’s what a brother and sister should do. Oh, and Bennett, I know it’s fun to kick, but take it easy on Tiffany.”
I looked at Tiffany, and she smiled back at me in a way that affirmed exactly why she’d chosen to become a surrogate in the first place. I turned back toward her belly, correcting myself.
“Aunt Tiffany,” I said. “That’s what you guys should call her.”
23
One Last Peaceful Sleep
There’s no perfect time to have a baby, but if there is an absolute worst time, it has to be during summer movie season. No matter how old Drew and I got, the deluge of heavily promoted blockbusters that arrived on a screen near us between Memorial Day and Labor Day could always turn us back into giddy, Sno Cap–addicted kids. As we approached our due date, we started marking time not by how many weeks our children had been incubating but by what box office smashes we’d managed to cross off our must-see lists. As much as we were dying to see Bennett and Sutton, we were really hoping they didn’t mess up our plans to see the new Harry Potter.
With every film that we caught on the big screen, we relaxed a bit more. By the time we saw The Hangover, the nursery was set up. Sacha Baron Cohen’s Bruno took us past the point of viability. The only thing arriving with the same regularity as the big-studio releases were Tiffany’s false alarms. Just as often as we headed out to the multiplex, we found ourselves rushing down to Orange County to meet Tiffany in Labor and Delivery, only to get a call halfway there that she’d been sent home. We spent a couple of nights sleeping on the Irelands’ couch because Tiffany was convinced she’d be checking into the hospital by sunrise.
We never actually made it as far as the admission desk, but eventually, Rainbow Extensions decided it was time we visited the place where our babies would be born. They set up a tour right around the time Judd Apatow’s Funny People came out. Drew and I thought it was unnecessary. We’d been in hospitals before. It’s not like we would notice if this particular Labor and Delivery unit was missing some crucial piece of equipment we wanted them to have. “They call that a speculum? We’re outta here!” We certainly weren’t requesting anything out of the ordinary, like Tiffany giving birth into a vat of butter or a hollowed-out tree trunk or something. Drew didn’t even bother to come with me. There seemed like no point in both of us taking time off from work.
As I entered the hospital, it was just as I expected, perfectly hospital-like. People in white coats, people in wheelchairs, Purell dispensers aplenty. I stepped off the elevator and was greeted by Ann, the woman who conducted these tours. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Ann.” So far, this was totally skippable.
Ann showed me the waiting area. Age-old magazines, check. She took me to the nurse’s station. Politely smiling ladies, check. She allowed me to peek into the delivery room. A bunch of equipment I knew nothing about, check.
Then she explained the security band procedure. After a baby is slapped on the butt, sponged of goo, and has its umbilical cord tied off, he or she is fitted with a high-tech bracelet that lists their name, their parents’ names and a UPC code that can be scanned by hospital personnel. Any time a parent goes to visit an infant in the nursery, parent and baby both get scanned to make sure they match up. It was all a means of preventing baby theft, but it seemed funny to me that for their first forty-eight hours, my kids would essentially be treated like boxes of Cocoa Puffs at Shop Rite.
“You’ll need to decide whether you or your partner is going to wear the band,” Ann said.
“We’d each like to have one, actually.”
Ann shook her head. “Nuh-uh. Can’t do that.”
“What do you mean? I thought each of the parents got one.”
“We only have two bands, and the mom has to wear one.”
“Actually, there are two dads and a surrogate. There is no mom!” Over the last few months I’d come to sound like Wes
, the president of Rainbow Extensions, when someone brought up the M-word.
“She’s giving birth, so for our purposes, she’s the mom.”
“You can call her what you want. She’s not a legal parent and she’s not allowed to take the kids home, so she doesn’t need a band. Drew and I should have the bands.”
“The babies come out of her, so she needs to wear the band that matches them. It’s a security procedure. And that leaves us one band for either you or your partner.”
“So if she’s wearing a band, that means she’ll be able to visit them in the nursery?”
“Is that a problem?”
“No, but it’s a problem that my partner won’t be able to visit them because there aren’t enough bands for him.”
“We only have two bands.”
“We’re having twins. Do the babies split one band?”
“No, we’ll make two.”
“Well, if you can make an extra band for the kids, why can’t you make an extra band for the parents, too?”
Ann and I had reached a turning point in our relationship. I’d thrown an unwanted curveball into her well-rehearsed routine. She stared at me, wearily. “We can give your partner a visitor band,” she sighed. “He can visit the babies as long as he’s with you.”
She meant to placate me, but it only made me feel worse. On the night our kids were born, they would have one dad—and one visitor. It might only be a matter of procedure, but one of us would start off as a second-class father.
Things only got worse when Ann showed me the patient recovery rooms, where new moms would enjoy precious bonding time with their infants.
“Great,” I said. “Ideally, we’d like our room to be in the same wing as Tiffany’s, but not right next door, so she doesn’t have to hear our kids crying or anything. She’ll probably want to get some sleep.”
Ann gave me that look again. “You want two rooms?”
“Well, of course. Tiffany needs a room to recover.”
Mommy Man Page 22
