The Stork Club

by Iris Rainer Dart

  "Mrs. O'Malley, I'm going to give you a light local anesthetic on the spot from which I'll extract the amniotic fluid. You'll feel a slight ping and that's all," the doctor told Jackie.

  "What about when you put the big needle in?" Jackie asked, her voice sounding almost childlike.

  "That shouldn't hurt," the doctor told her.

  "Easy for you to say." Jackie laughed nervously.

  The doctor didn't react.

  "Laine?" Jackie said, picking up her head to look back at the spot where Lainie sat.

  "Yeah?"

  "Could you move a little closer and like . . . hold my hand?"

  "Sure," Lainie said, looking at the doctor to ask if that was all right with him. And when he nodded, she moved close to the table and gently took Jackie's hand in hers. While the doctor extracted the amniotic fluid and Jackie squeezed Lainie's hand, the two women looked into each other's eyes and talked about maternity clothes, and which store they would go to when the amniocentesis was over.

  An hour later, they were in Lady Madonna in Encino. For so long, Lainie had averted her eyes in the mall every time she passed a maternity store. Now she stood right in the middle of one, turning a rounder that held tops and slacks as she tried choosing some clothes for Jackie.

  "In gray I look like the Goodyear blimp," Jackie shouted from the dressing room. "In pink, more like Petunia Pig."

  "Black is supposed to be slimming," Lainie called back, picking a large black T-shirt and some black pants with an elastic panel front and bringing them over to the curtained dressing room. When the slightly parted curtain revealed a naked Jackie with enormous breasts that sat on top of her huge abdomen, Lainie started to back away, but Jackie opened the curtain wider and puffed herself out proudly.

  "Is this a shocker?" she asked. "And this is only at seventeen weeks. We could be having an elephant, Mother."

  The ten-thousand-dollar surrogacy fee didn't include a budget for maternity clothes, so Mitch agreed to give Jackie "a few hundred dollars extra" to cover that cost. He thought it was fine that Lainie went along to shop with her.

  "I love your taste," Jackie had said, "please come and help me, so I don't get stuff that makes me look dumb."

  The black two-piece outfit was perfect, and so were a white sailor top with red pants, a sundress and a few T-shirts and some maternity jeans, four new bras, and half a dozen pairs of underpants. Everything was so expensive. Jackie said she didn't need nighties because she slept in some extra-large men's T-shirts. "Unfortunately without benefit of the extra-large men," she added laughing.

  When Lainie pulled the cash out of her wallet to pay for everything the saleswoman seemed surprised.

  "We get so few people paying cash," she said, almost suspiciously.

  "That's because she isn't allowed to leave any traces," Jackie said, grinning, giving Lainie a friendly little poke in the side. Lainie hated this part. The secrecy. Being unable to tell Jackie about certain aspects of her life. While the saleswoman was putting the new clothing in bags, Lainie looked around at all of the display outfits, which had been stuffed with padding to create the effect of pregnant bodies, and tried to imagine how she would have looked in them if this had been her own pregnancy.

  "Looks like you're buying her a whole wardrobe," the saleswoman said, making small talk. "Is she your sister?"

  Lainie shook her head no.

  "Cousin?"

  Lainie shook her head no again.

  "No relation?"

  "No."

  "Amazing. The resemblance is so strong. Except for the fact that she's . . . "

  "Pregnant," Lainie said.

  "Fat," Jackie said, and the three women all laughed. The saleswoman handed the package to Lainie who handed it to Jackie, and the two women went off to lunch.

  When Jackie was in her sixth month, Lainie decided it was time to tell her mother what was going on. So she drove to Beverly Hills and met her for lunch in the Bedford Café, a tiny little corner restaurant she knew her mother loved. It was near the law office where she worked, and most days she would go there alone and read the newspaper while she ate the meat loaf, which was a specialty of the place.

  "I know it's strange, and I can appreciate your having some doubts about it, but believe me, everything has been handled very carefully, and if we can have a healthy baby that comes from Mitch, I'll be a happy woman."

  "Mmm-hmmm," Margaret Dunn said, her face tense with disapproval.

  "Mother, you and I both know I could have died, but I didn't. And now I feel that I'm blessed for every day I live on this earth. Imagine how lucky I am to be able to have a baby too. Please be happy for me."

  "Dear, I'm happy you're getting what you want. But I'm afraid it will never work out properly. This way of having babies is a way to please men," she said in a strained voice, and her gaze was over Lainie's shoulder. It was where she always looked during those rare times when she had any meaningful conversations with her daughter.

  "What does that mean?" Lainie asked.

  "It means there is no way on God's earth that either of the two women will ever be able to feel one hundred percent good about it."

  Lainie looked at her mother, then at the waitress walking toward them carrying a meat loaf plate for her mother and a turkey sandwich for her. "It will be okay, Mother," Lainie said. But what she was thinking was, You're right, Mother, you're absolutely right, but it's too late now.

  By the time Jackie was at the end of her seventh month, most of Mitch and Lainie's friends knew about the surrogacy. Some gasped when they heard, and several of the women said, "I could never do that. You're so brave." Some of the salesgirls at the store insisted that on a Sunday afternoon in May they wanted to give her a baby shower at Carin's house in Laurel Canyon.

  "Who else should I invite?" asked Carin.

  "Well, there's my mother, and my three sisters-in-law, and a few girls from school."

  The day of the shower was uncharacteristically clear, and Lainie thrilled at the sight of the cake shaped like a bassinet that sat on a white-clothed table. Next to the table stood a real white wicker bassinet, which was one of Betsy's many gifts for the baby, and piled high inside it were the ribboned and frilly packages from the other sisters. The three of them sat together and chatted among themselves, and at one point Lainie thought she overheard Betsy ask Carin, "Is the surrogate coming?"

  "Oh, no!" Carin said in a tone that sounded as if she was shushing Betsy.

  Sharon, who was an old friend of Lainie's from Northridge, was pregnant herself.

  "I've been layette shopping for me, so I just got one of each for you."

  "Oh, thank you." Lainie was delighted with every T-shirt and diaper pin.

  Sharon, puffy-faced and swollen around the ankles, had to sit. "I am so tired of carrying this baby. If you want my opinion, you're the one who's doing this the right way."

  Lainie was grateful to her mother, who chatted amiably with everyone and put on a social face Lainie had seen her use at the law office or on special occasions. The sweet small talk and supportive faces of the girls from the store made Lainie feel warm and expectant. As she opened each gift, the squeals that rose from the group and the tiny delicate baby things in her hands moved her. According to the amniocentesis, the baby was going to be a girl. Rose Margaret De Nardo. After Mitch's late mother, Rose, and of course Margaret Dunn, whose friendly attitude at the shower may have been the result of hearing the news of a namesake.

  Carin, who was a sometime artist, had bought the baby a tiny chair in unfinished wood, which she painted pale pink. On the back of it in darker pink flowery letters she had painted ROSE MARGARET DE NARDO. Faith, the seamstress at Panache, had made a needlepoint pillow with a looped ribbon at the top so that it could hang from the doorknob of the nursery. The words on the pillow were Shhh! Rose Margaret De Nardo is asleep.

  Lainie held each gift up for the others to see, then held it close to her chest. There were tiny smocked dresses and baby-size ballet slipp
ers. White baby socks trimmed with satin ribbons and the smallest pearls she'd ever seen. After the gifts and the cake, all three of Mitch's sisters gave reasons they had to leave, said their good-byes, and were gone. The closer friends who knew all Lainie had been through to get to this point in her life moved around her, and each of them hugged her. Lainie wept for joy and some of them cried along with her.

  Her mother helped her carry the gifts to the BMW. And before she got into her own old Chevrolet, she said to Lainie, "It was a nice party, a good start. Let's pray it all goes well."

  It took three trips back to her car to get all of the gifts inside the condo. Just as Lainie closed the door to the garage for the last time, the telephone rang. It must be Mitch calling from the store, where he was doing some paperwork, to find out how the shower went. No, it was Jackie's line. Jackie. Lainie grabbed it.

  "Hi!"

  "Hi. I've been trying to get you all afternoon," Jackie said, sounding a little annoyed. "I wanted you to meet me today, because my son's in town, back from his dad's, and I told him about you, so I thought maybe we could get together."

  "Oh, Jackie, I'm sorry. I'd love to meet him," Lainie said.

  "Well, maybe another time," Jackie said. It was clear she was feeling hurt. "Where were you?"

  Lainie was about to burst out with the happy answer, but something made her take a deep breath first so that she would sound calm when she said, "At a baby shower."

  "For our baby?" Jackie asked.

  Lainie bit her lip. "Yes."

  "Wow," Jackie said, sounding excited now. "How was it? Who gave it? What presents did you get?"

  "My friend Carin gave it at her house. And everything looked so beautiful and pink, and the food was great, and I couldn't believe the things they bought and made. I had no idea there were such cute clothes in the world!"

  "Oh yeah," Jackie said wistfully. "Girls' clothes are a million times cuter than the ones they make for boys. Tell me about everything."

  Lainie looked over at the dining room table where she had piled the gifts. As she looked at each package, she remembered what was in it and described it in detail to Jackie, who reacted with giggles on the other end of the phone.

  "And the chair," Lainie said, high on reliving her perfect afternoon. "The smallest chair you ever saw, painted pink, and in darker pink letters it says across the back Rose Margaret De Nardo. Can you picture that? Her name on the back of a—" Lainie stopped cold. The last name she'd kept secret for so long was now out in the open. She'd blurted it out in a dumb attempt at bragging. Mitch would be furious. Dumb, dumb. How could she be so damned dumb?

  "It's okay," Jackie said after a while. "I've known your last name for a long time. Even before I was pregnant. Way back in the beginning of all this, I snooped around in the doctor's office when the nurse went to the can. I even know about your store. In fact, the funny thing is, I realized then that I once applied for a job at the old store in the Valley, upstairs from a restaurant. Mitch interviewed me, only he didn't hire me. I thought I recognized him the day we all met. Pretty funny, huh?"

  Lainie felt flushed with embarrassment and discomfort and didn't speak.

  "Don't worry, Lainie. The reason I never told you I knew was because it was so important to you two to keep it a secret, and if I told you I knew, you would worry. But you don't have to be afraid, because I'm going to live up to this bargain, believe me."

  "I do believe you," Lainie said. But this news pulled away her safety net and made her afraid. "I believe you."

  "Good," Jackie said. "That's real good."

  21

  BY FOUR O'CLOCK Rick was in Doreen's hospital room holding his son, David, in his arms. Somewhere far back in his mind, he knew he'd lost Robert Redford for his film, but it just didn't matter. In fact, to keep Doreen occupied while they readied her for the delivery, he told her the story of his exit from the meeting, and as he did it sounded like something that had happened to someone else, or in a dream. Certainly not earlier that same day, to David Reisman's father. And David was surely the best-looking baby ever born. He had a lot of red hair, and big green eyes, and a cleft chin, and a little dimple just above the left side of his mouth.

  Doreen, uncomfortable after the delivery, couldn't stop smiling from where she sat on the bed watching Rick, who was wearing a sterile blue gown, sit on a nearby chair and make gurgling sounds at the baby, lost in the awe he felt for this sleepy infant.

  "Is that nurse you hired gonna work out?"

  "I hope so. She seemed nice. Annie's her name."

  "She looks like Nell Carter."

  Rick smiled. "She's been a baby nurse for nearly thirty years, so I guess she knows her Pablum, or whatever they eat."

  "They don't eat anything at first. They drink formula." She looked out the window when she said, "They gave me a shot that would keep my milk from coming in."

  A nurse breezed into the room.

  "How are you doing?" she asked Doreen.

  "Good as I can be," Doreen answered.

  "I need to take the baby just for a few minutes, Mr. Reisman," the nurse said. "Dr. Weil is going to be making rounds, and wants to see the little guy in the nursery. If either of you cares to talk to Dr. Weil, I'll send him over here."

  "I do," Rick said, carefully handing the nurse the baby. "In fact, I'll walk down to the nursery."

  The nurse placed David in the Plexiglas crib, which she wheeled out the door.

  "Would you like to meet the pediatrician?" Rick asked Doreen.

  "What's the point? After this week I'll never see him again. He doesn't need to get to know me." It was said in a sensible tone, without anger.

  "What are you going to do?" Rick asked, walking toward the bed. Doreen wouldn't look at him.

  "Get a job somewhere in the Valley till I'm feeling like I'm ready to go home."

  "You know I'll keep supporting you until you do."

  "I know," she said. "Even though you're not supposed to. It'll just be a few months. I promise."

  "Take as long as you need. You can make it six months or eight months."

  "I don't want to go back looking fat and tired."

  "That's how I always look," he kidded.

  "I'd like to get a tan and a little sun bleach in my hair and tell all the kids at home I was on a long vacation."

  "Good idea," he said, and patted the blanket over where her foot was sticking up. "I'll be back in a few minutes."

  When he got to the door, she called him.

  "Rick!"

  He turned.

  "I've got to tell you something. I've been thinking a lot about this and I'm worried about leaving the baby with you." He tried not to show his concern.

  "Why is that?" he asked.

  "For the simple reason that you walked out on Robert Redford. Which proves to me that you are truly and sincerely dumb." Then she laughed that hearty open-mouthed laugh that he had come to love.

  Two days later, he arrived at the hospital with the baby nurse to take David home. The law stated that in order to prove abandonment, Doreen couldn't leave the hospital and go to the same place as the baby, so Andrea came to the hospital that morning to take Doreen back to the apartment in the Valley where they'd lived together before the hemorrhaging.

  In the parking circle at Cedars, before Annie placed the baby in the infant seat, a pale Doreen kissed the little pink boy, and Rick could see the tension in her face. But when Rick hugged her doughy little body, she lost all control and shook with sadness as the sobs took over.

  "I don't know if," she began, then sobbed another sob, "I don't know if I'll miss my baby more . . . or if . . . I'll miss you most of all." She sniffled and he held her very tightly, this little round cherub of a girl. "Promise me one very important thing," she said, looking up at him.

  "Name it."

  "That you'll read to him. He's used to it now, because he's heard lots of stories. I left all the children's books at your house. They're in the nursery in the closet."

&n
bsp; "I'll do it," he said.

  "He's all set, Mr. Reisman," Annie said quietly.

  Rick, Doreen, Annie, and Andrea all peeked into the backseat at sweet little sleeping David, dressed in a pale yellow going-home suit that Bea Cobb had crocheted for him and mailed from Kansas two weeks before.

  "Well, then, I guess we shouldn't keep him waiting," Rick said. He gave Doreen a last hug and helped her into the passenger seat of Andrea's car, and stood next to Annie, the nurse, waving as Andrea drove off into the hot California day.

  For weeks he awakened with the first sounds of the stirring baby, then followed Annie from room to room, watching her techniques. He insisted that she, in turn, watch him critically when he fed or burped or bathed or changed David, to make certain he was well versed in every aspect of his son's needs.

  And to keep the promise he'd made to Doreen, he held the tiny little bundle of boy on his lap and read from the books Doreen had left for him. The Runaway Bunny and Little Bear, Make Way for Ducklings and The Little Red Hen. Sometimes both he and the baby would lie on their backs while Rick held the book above them and the baby looked up at the colorful pictures, kicking his feet and waving his arms wildly.

  There were a few other actors interested in the part for which he had lost Robert Redford. There were other projects that were looking promising, and soon his schedule was filled with back-to-back meetings. But he always made sure to return early in the evening to be there in time for David's dinner. Annie would put the little guy in his infant seat on the kitchen table, and Rick would spoon some of the newly permitted rice cereal in, then watch most of it dribble out. When David smiled, Rick would laugh out loud. Many times Rick would be feeding the baby and on the phone at the same time, in order to justify rushing home so early in the day. That way he could do business and tend to the baby simultaneously.

  And of course there were his visits to Bobo.

  "Look who's a father, I can't believe it," Bobo said. Two of the old man's women friends were with him, gathered around Rick and the little baby in the dining room of the lodge at the Motion Picture Home. Rick held the bottle expertly and watched his son chug down ounce after ounce of Similac.