Last Last Chance

by Fiona Maazel

  There is a long pause. “Is this what you called to say? Are these really the first words you want me to hear?” And then, “I don’t want to talk about this right now. It’s the middle of the night. I’m exhausted. If you want lunch, make an appointment with my assistant. I’ll tell him to expect your call.”

  This is the nastiest Kam has been to date. I guess she read the article. Maybe the overzealous fact-checker got in her face. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned her.

  I have not seen the whole piece, but I have spoken to said fact-checker, in whose yen for truth I got a look. I said I could not verify without context; she faxed me a column. Kam’s mention goes something like this: Lucy grew up with HSN mogul Anshu Yala-manchilli’s daughter. The friends went to elementary and high school together. Kam’s husband cut his teeth on Lucy. Lucy has no husband at all. Kam is a CEO, Lucy is not. Same past, two futures, one plague.

  “Lucy, are you there? Oh for God’s sake.”

  Eric gets on the line. Says he’s taking the phone into the other room. I hear the fridge open. He says, “Luce, what are you doing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You are driving Kam crazy.”

  “I know.”

  “Is that the point?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, what do you know?”

  “I want to see you.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Will you stop calling in the middle of the night if I see you?”

  “I’m sorry. You don’t have to if you don’t want to. Was just a thought.”

  “No, it’s fine. But Kam—”

  “Right, okay. Well, forget it. I just thought it’d be nice. To catch up or something.”

  “No, let’s have lunch. It’s no problem. When is good for you?”

  This makes me laugh. “Well,” I say, “between nothing in the morning and a date with nothing at four, I’m pretty flexible.”

  “I’ll call you,” he says. “G’night.”

  Seventeen

  We had five interviews. Girls wanting to offer their uteri to Stanley. He made me sit through them all. Needed my input, he said. Dicey business. I skimmed a template contract between surrogate mother, egg and sperm donors. There were boxes to check if the egg donor was married or single, if the sperm donor was married or single, if the donors were wed to each other, if the donors were anonymous, if the surrogate was married, if all parties were of sound mind and over eighteen. Course, there was no box to check if the egg donor was dead. Or if the sperm donor was dead. Or if the sperm was to be extracted from a dead person. Apparently, this can be done. Fertility law is a nightmare. I asked Stanley if he needed his wife’s consent to use her eggs postmortem. He said he had no idea. There was no mention of them in her will. I asked if he’d heard about that kid a few years back who was ruled Without Parent by a judge in California. Stranger sperm and egg unite in surrogate who delivers baby to couple that are divorced. Wife wants child support, husband refuses, and the court says the baby has no parents. Who would want to go through this?

  Stanley, it seems. And he told me his story.

  He and Sylvie met when they were teenagers doing summer penance at a roller rink in Pittsburgh. He worked the concession stand, she doled out the skates. It was 1970. They heard “Do the Funky Chicken” twenty times a day. They heard “Sex Machine” twenty times a day. Nachos were in, which had liquid cheese all up in Stanley’s hair. Sylvie smelled of Lysol. A few legs were broken each month.

  On break, they’d sit in the back and smoke cigarettes. He wanted to go to college. So did she. He’d ask if she could afford college. She’d say no. Could he? Nope. Bottom line? They’d be working the Monongahela Rink-a-Dink for the rest of their lives.

  When Sylvie’s mother died, Stanley went to the funeral. Open casket, striking resemblance. When Stanley’s brother died at Khe Sanh, Sylvie went to the wake. And to the after-wake. Stanley got drunk and said he had flat feet and if not for his flat feet, he could have been in Vietnam and died, too.

  They’d work the weekend shift, and then the week. It was better to be with each other than anywhere else.

  Stanley said his mother cried all the time. She took pills to sleep and pills to wake. His father had no say because his father was broke.

  Sylvie said living with her aunt was martial law. Lights out at ten and none of that hippie music, you hear?

  They went to the bank together. If they pooled their savings, they’d have just enough for a month’s rent and a marriage license.

  Best part of any day? One sleeping bag, two beloveds.

  Midspring, they were headed for the rink. They were asking for a raise.

  You go first. No you. Her teeth were red from a Starburst. His Rink-a-Dink cap was askew. You go first. No you. There was laughter. And a candy passed from her lips to his.

  Outside the office, he cleared his throat. She curtsied. If they did not get a raise, they could not have this baby.

  She kissed him on the cheek. He went first.

  After, she said, What happened?

  He took her by the hand and marched them out of the building.

  What happened? she said.

  Nothing. We’ll find other jobs. Better jobs.

  Stanley, you’re hurting me. Just stop and tell me what happened.

  At home, he said he was going out. Don’t stay up.

  She unzipped their sleeping bag and asked him to stay.

  He was not at the bar down the street or the next one over, though he had been to both. She waited by the phone. And waited some more. She called her aunt, who said, Sweet Jesus.

  When Stanley got in, she asked what happened.

  He was drunk. Said, Let’s name the baby Felix. I always liked that name.

  Stanley, I’m going to make an appointment. Aunt Claire said she’d pay for it.

  She was on a stool, he on the floor. He wept into a leg of her jeans. We were fired, he said.

  But why?

  I don’t know.

  In every marriage, the one lie.

  Next morning, he found her cornered on the bathroom floor. He said he would file for unemployment. She said she’d lost the baby. How do you mean? I don’t know. In the toilet. Should they go to the hospital? No. Was she okay? Yes. We’ll have another, he said. We’ll get settled and secure and we’ll have another. I promise.

  I ask did Sylvie ever find out what happened at the rink. He says, “She knew that night. A girl who worked concession with me called the house.”

  “So she knew?”

  “She knew.”

  Stanley owed the Rink-a-Dink three thousand dollars. Three K’s worth of liquor. He had thought no one would notice. With ten bottles of Jack under the bar, who would miss one? Or even two? Someone had ratted him out and because that cheap tramp of a shoe clerk was his girl, the boss had fired them both.

  I ask why Sylvie never left him.

  “She was my life,” he says. “I wouldn’t let her.”

  “How many times did she try to get pregnant after that?”

  “Four. Four miscarriages. One in the seventh month.”

  “Oh, God.”

  I flip through the resumes of women coming to see us. The load of having to help Stanley vet a surrogate just got huge.

  First one in the door: Natalie Threadgold, twenty-seven. Married with one child. A daughter. Hails from Virginia, lives in Midtown, works a perfume counter at Macy’s. She takes a seat. Declines a drink.

  Stanley says, “So, tell me a little about yourself. I see from your letter that you have a full life.”

  Natalie’s glasses are convex. Don’t think I’ve ever seen that before. Her eyeballs look stuffed.

  “It’s not as full as it used to be,” she says. “Just got sacked. Downsizing, I guess.”

  The glasses come off, her eyeballs retract. I find myself squinting in sympathy.

  Stanley offers her nuts from a crystal bowl. She extends her arm and gently begin
s to probe the air until she hits glass.

  “But it says you only just started.”

  She nods in his direction.

  I ask if she wears her glasses to work. She says, “No, of course not, why would I?”

  “Contacts?”

  “No.”

  Stanley asks about her husband, who is an entrepreneur. Does he make money? Does he take good care of her? Is he good with the whole alien baby in the sack part?

  She says yes, only with an air of having taken offense.

  Stanley gets up. “And why do you want to do this?”

  She blinks and orients her face in his general direction. “Your ad was sweet. I lost my first husband and always wonder if only we’d had a child.”

  “What else?” I say.

  “Ten thousand dollars and health insurance for me and my family. If the superplague hits New York, I want to be covered.”

  I point out the false economy of seeking health care to fund treatment for a disease that has no cure.

  She retrieves her glasses and this time when her eyeballs swell, they have the disconcerting affect of a woman with powers.

  Stanley says we’ll call her, and thanks for coming. One down, four to go.

  Ella Norcross, thirty-three, professional surrogate. Has birthed four to date. One more and she can make a down payment on the boat. The SS Freedom, because that’s what she’ll have. She has come with letters of reference from previous employers and a character assessment from the president of the American Dental Association.

  Stanley has her out of there in ten minutes. “Too smooth,” he says.

  I gather he’s hatching standards as we go.

  By the third interview, I am whupped. Can I sit this one out? No. As it happens, the interview is pretty quick. Sabrina Roy, twenty-six, versed in current events and, No, I’m not here about the baby, I’m actually studying journalism at Columbia, my thesis project is about a pair of seven-year-olds suffering from massive anxiety who, from my vantage, represent a generation of children for whom tension, nerves, ulcers are the new ADD, so part of my project is to interview people, people like you, who live in, how should I put it, a nexus of anxiety, to ask how they manage and what advice they can impart.

  I smile hugely, thinking: Agneth, you are but a servant’s quarter away. I tell Sabrina that my nana blossoms with advice, and would she come with me. Sabrina says she wants to be a foreign correspondent one day, so why not. I hardly think the unease of following me into the bowels of our apartment trains for the Afghan-shanty trip, but why argue. As is, Agneth opens her door looking a touch warlord (mask and robe), and every bit a teacher of men. I shut the door on them and return to Stanley, who’s been ensorcelled by candidate number four. Victoria Olivetti. Thirty-five, never married, no children. She’s wearing black leather gloves. The diamonds round her neck could put us all through college. Her pumps are two-tone.

  Stanley says, “So, if you like, if it’s okay, please tell me a little about yourself.”

  “I live alone in a Park Avenue penthouse. I am independently wealthy, I want for nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “I am bored. I’d like to write a book.”

  “About being a surrogate?” I say.

  “No, about Iran-Contra.”

  Is this deadpan? It’s not. Stanley offers her nuts from the crystal bowl. The bowl is becoming a litmus of sorts. She draws a macadamia. Gloves and all.

  I suggest being pregnant can tax the brain. Morning sickness can last for months.

  She asks about Stanley. What does he do? What did his wife do? She is the first to probe his bio. He seems delighted.

  “A traveler,” he says. “Been all over the country.”

  His vocation? Pluckhouse supervisor at ZOG Kosher Chicken.

  “ZOG?”

  “Zalman Ofer Guildenstein. A father-and-son team.”

  Victoria asks him to stand up and turn around. She asks me to stand up and turn around. I say I’m not involved. She says, “Then never mind.”

  Watching her pluck macadamia nuts from the bowl has me questioning her character. Sort of like how at every bonfire, there are those who toast their marshmallows with concern and those who just combust the skin and pare. I am of the latter school. I imagine Victoria is not.

  “We are offering four thousand dollars,” Stanley says. That we is noticeable. Also, he’s skimmed a grand off the top.

  Victoria nods. I think she’s had lard injected into her lips.

  Do we have a contract drawn up? No, we have not gotten that far. Do we have a lawyer? No, we have not gotten that far. These questions percolate with a goal in mind, I just can’t tell what.

  She says she will call us with her decision. And even as I sense voodoo mind trick, I am also worried about my outfit. Is this skirt too casual? Did I impress?

  Stanley says he looks forward to hearing from her and thanks for her time.

  After, we sit across from each other with heads in hand. I don’t think she liked me, he says. Me, either. I should have given Wanda as a reference. Yeah.

  It occurs to me that perhaps Victoria has a Baby M thing in mind, but I’m too demoralized to give it much thought. This does not bode well for the experience of our last interviewee. I don’t read her resume. I do not care. When the bell rings, I tell Stanley to get it, only Hannah gets there first. It is her friend Indra, with mother in tow.

  Indra has the misfortune of growing in spurts. She is always feet shorter or taller than everyone else in her class. These days she is taller. And her hands, they are huge. I never saw such big hands in my life.

  “Come on,” Hannah says, taking her arm.

  They make for Hannah’s room. As per, I can hear the lock click from here.

  Indra’s mom continues to stand in the foyer. Am I to invite her in? “I’m Connie,” she says. “You don’t remember me.”

  Oh, but I do. My memory is shot, but when a woman rips through Family Field Day, having swallowed a wasp and screaming murder, it tends to stick out. How do you swallow a wasp? You get overweight, attempt the potato-sack race anyway, and pant. I think I even saw the wasp fly down her throat.

  Stanley has come up behind me. “You’re Connie?” he says, and looks from me to her to me to her resume.

  “You’re here about the baby?” I say.

  She nods. “Indra told me about it. I had her when I was eighteen, I’m still in good shape.”

  Stanley is flabbergasted. And so am I. Hannah actually shares with her friends what goes on in this house? Why would Connie Denton want to surrogate a child? I wonder if Indra knows about Isifrid and the crack. I wonder if Connie knows about the crack.

  “Have a seat,” Stanley says. “Would you like something to drink? We’ll be right back.” He puts his hand on the small of my back and nudges me out the room.

  “What do we do?” he says.

  “It’s weird, right? She doesn’t need the money. She has a child already. Probably this won’t do much for her social standing.”

  “Seltzer?” he says loudly. “Or orange juice?” He turns on the faucet and whispers. “Yeah, fine, but what do we do?”

  “What do you mean? Interview her, I guess.”

  Stanley looks at me like I might be retarded. Then his face relaxes. “Okay, ha ha, but seriously.”

  I wait for more.

  “Are you kidding?” he says. “Don’t you notice anything weird about her?”

  “The lazy eye? You’re gonna rule her out because of a lazy eye? That’s obscene.”

  He ushers me to the other end of the room. “Notice anything about her skin?”

  “No.”

  “Are you blind? She’s black!”

  “She’s coffee.”

  “Whatever!”

  We return to the living room with a tray of drinks.

  Stanley fidgets with a cocktail napkin. “So tell us a little about yourself,” he says.

  I interject. “Actually, don’t bother. We’ve already chose
n someone else.”

  “Is it the lazy eye? I’ll just be carrying the baby, not passing on my DNA. Besides, I don’t think lazy eyes are inherited.”

  Stanley looks incredulous. “Hey, I didn’t even notice you had a lazy eye! How ’bout that.”

  “Is it that you’re spooked? Because a lot of people are spooked by the lazy eye.”

  “Mrs. Denton,” I say.

  “Call me Connie.”

  “Connie,” I say. “Does Indra ever talk to you about Hannah?”

  “Of course. They are best friends.”

  “Do you have any reason to believe Hannah is mean to her or treats her badly?”

  “Of course not. What’s this about?”

  Stanley so welcomes this digression, he prolongs it. “What Lucy is trying to say is—”

  “My sister spent the summer with psychotic fundamentalists exhorted by the Aryan Christ to exterminate the mud people. I think it might have turned her head a little.”

  “The mud people?”

  “The Jews,” Stanley says. “And I guess black people, too.” He looks to me for confirmation.

  Connie stands up. “Are you saying that sweet little twelve-year-old girl is a bigot?”

  Stanley nods aggressively.

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” I say. “I’m just worried.”

  “Indra told me you people were a mess. We’re leaving. Indra!”

  Stanley rushes to get her coat. Indra arrives with a tub of sourcream-and-chive dip. I think she’s been ladling the stuff with her thumb.

  “We’re going,” Connie says. “Get your things.”

  “Mrs. Denton,” I say. “There’s no reason to overreact. Hannah doesn’t have too many friends.”

  “Small wonder,” she says, and punches the elevator button. “Indra!”

  Hannah shows up red-faced. Whatever’s happened here, she knows it’s my fault.

  Stanley says, “Thanks for coming. We’ll be in touch.” He shuts the door, his relief is palpable. “Phew,” he says. “Man.”

  Meantime, Hannah is about to snap. I say Connie wasn’t a good fit for surrogacy, she didn’t take it well. I say it’s not so bad, I’m sure Indra will be back tomorrow. I say I’m sorry, but Hannah should not have told them about the ad in the first place. I say she is always screwing up this kind of thing, why was she always screwing up?