“Once you show, you don’t leave the house; maybe you don’t leave the property from the moment you arrive, except for medical business. You’ll sign something promising to keep the secret of your participation, or you can be sued to return the money.”
“I don’t think it’s something I would talk about anyway,” I said.
“I don’t imagine you would. I’d appreciate your not mentioning this talk with me to anyone at work, even if you should decide against it.”
“Of course,” I said.
“That’s it, then.” Leo slapped his knees and sat back. “If you agree to listen, Samantha and her husband can be here to see you as soon as tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“It’s quick, I know, but if you want to do it, you could do it in baby steps. Meet with her, listen, meet with the doctor, listen, and if everyone’s satisfied, visit their mansion, where you would live for nine months or so, and then make a final decision. That’s the way they explained their procedure to me.”
“I still don’t quite understand this. Has she lost a baby, miscarried, maybe more than once?”
“No. My daughter would know if that had happened, and she would have told me.”
“Then why would she want someone else to carry and deliver her baby?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Now you’re asking me to explain a woman’s mind. I think it’s easier to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.”
I didn’t laugh, didn’t even smile.
“Look, there are other women like Samantha Davenport, women who for one reason or another don’t want to be pregnant, don’t want to go through it and lose their figures, whatever. Neither my wife nor your mother would think like those women, for sure, but as someone once told me years ago, one person’s problem is another person’s good luck. I’m sure you’ll learn more when you meet her, if you do.”
“I don’t know what to say, Leo. After hearing this, I feel like I am going over Niagara Falls.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Go sleep on it, and let me know if you want to hear more about it. Seventy-five thousand dollars, all your debts paid, no living expenses for nine months or so, and your apartment kept. I’d tell you to talk it over with family, but I doubt you’ll do that,” he said.
I nearly laughed at that idea.
And then I thought for a moment and nodded. “Actually, Leo, my father might compliment me on getting a good deal.”
He nodded, looking sympathetic. Then he smiled. “Think of it this way, Emma. You’ve been trying to become an actress, a musical one, for sure. There’ll be no orchestra, but you’ll be in a different setting, and there’ll be a limited audience, but you can imagine yourself playing a part, I suppose.”
“The part of a soon-to-be mother?”
“I suppose. With a little more than a nine-month run.”
“And casting starts tomorrow?”
“If you want it to,” he said. “If not, no problem with me. I’ll still be rootin’ and tootin’ for you, no matter what you do, Emma. Hey, it wasn’t as easy as it might seem to you for me to call you in and suggest this, but I kept askin’ myself, what if I didn’t and you ended up packin’ your bag, feelin’ like your life was over, and went home with your tail between your legs? I’d feel sicker than a hot dog with no mustard.”
I nodded. “Okay,” I said. “Thank you.”
I rose and left to do just what he had suggested, sleep on it, only I didn’t envision getting much rest thinking about it. Meanwhile, as if he somehow had sensed my life in New York had reached another crisis point, Jon Morales called that evening.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been to the restaurant, called, or dropped by to see how you were doing,” he began. “I was away for a while, visiting my family in Puerto Rico. How are things?”
“Not much different,” I said. “No breakthrough, if that’s what you mean.”
“I’m sorry. You are going to keep trying, aren’t you?”
“I’m not sure,” I confessed. “I’m giving everything more thought.”
“You mean you might return to England?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure about the next hour, much less the next day.”
“If I can help in any way… if you need someone to bounce ideas off…”
Of course, I wouldn’t mention my conversation with Leo and the proposal. Despite what I had promised, I could talk it over with Marge, I supposed, but she was working so hard to keep herself and her child safe that the idea of someone having one as if it was just a means to an end, with no real feeling for the child, surely would be off-putting. I was afraid of what her opinion of me would be simply by my suggesting I might do it.
“Do you have any free time this week?” Jon asked.
“I might,” I said.
“Saturday night, perhaps?”
“As Marge says, ‘Let’s pencil it in,’ ” I replied.
He laughed. “I will. I’ll call you on Friday or drop by the restaurant for lunch, maybe. You should know by then, right?”
“Right,” I said.
“Hey, everything’s going to be fine,” he said. His excitement did give me a little relief. “Don’t worry.”
“Okay. I’ll put it on the back burner.”
He laughed again. “See you soon.”
At least I made one person happier tonight, I thought.
Afterward, I sat by the window and looked out at the street and the lights, watching people hurrying along up and down the sidewalk, most everyone appearing like someone who knew where he or she was going. I envied them, envied people who were so clearly focused on their purposes in life, even their daily routine, as boring or as monotonous as it might seem to others. If they had any fantasies about their futures, those fantasies came with lightning speed, like a flash of their names in lights and then a laugh at how silly that was. No real disappointment lingered. Depression didn’t rain down around them in the same way it did for me, as cold and dreary as an English winter’s day.
My sister, Julia, whom I had never looked to as a role model or someone I would aspire to be like, suddenly seemed so right in the way she had gone about planning and living her life. She was contented with who she was. Except for what she confronted at work, her daily life had so few serious challenges. Yes, her happiness was limited, her world of satisfaction so much narrower, smaller, in comparison to mine, but so was her world of dissatisfaction. How many weekends since I had been here struggling did she sit with friends and laugh while I obsessed about my failures? She had enjoyed a birthday, Christmas, probably been with fellow teachers on New Year’s Eve. She thought about me from time to time, for sure, but her rage at my defiance had kept her from shedding a single tear. She would always take our father’s side; she always had. It shielded her from sorrow in ways I now coveted.
None of them, not even my mummy, would fully understand how deep my defeat would go if and when I showed up on our doorstep. Their pity for me would be restrained, if not totally absent. In their way of thinking, it would all be my fault, anyway. Probably the worst thing of all would be how mute I would become. I’d never sing another note in public. No matter what the song, I wouldn’t be able to sing it without tears streaming down my face. Go home, I thought, and say good-bye to whatever wonderful feeling blossomed inside me when I saw the appreciation on the faces of my listeners. Good-bye to that as well as the self-satisfaction I once enjoyed. Good-bye to dreams. Accept failure like bitter medicine.
Buy that ticket home and say good-bye to Barbra Streisand. Turn off the music, stop humming, even begin to hate the songbirds. I’d be as good as deaf.
On the street below, I saw a girl who resembled me. She was walking at a good clip, but she paused, almost as if she could feel my eyes on her, and turned to look up at me. She smiled. I’d swear to that, and then she walked on, went around a corner, and disappeared forever. That was the amazing thing about New York City, probably all cities like it: you’d see someone, someone you thought for one reaso
n or another was extraordinary, and then he or she would get into a taxi, board a bus, or go around a corner and disappear forever and ever. It was almost as though this was truly a city of ghosts.
I vowed not to become one of them, even though I was in great danger of becoming one.
I rose to my feet.
Who was I kidding? I didn’t have to sleep on it.
I marched myself down the stairway and knocked on Leo’s door.
He stood there looking out at me, the answer so clearly written on my face.
“I’ll call her first thing,” he said. “You’ll meet her here in the mornin’. I’ll leave you two and find some errands I’ve been puttin’ off for one reason or another.”
I turned and walked back up the stairs.
Amazing, I thought. I hadn’t spoken a word. It was truly as if all of it was destined to be. Leo and I, and soon Samantha and Dr. Davenport, were players in a performance begun years before we had thought of it. Sometimes, you meet someone, and the connection between the two of you is so strong you both feel like you’ve known each other for a long time, if not all your life, or maybe even in a previous one. There’s that sense of destiny.
I certainly felt that way about Samantha Davenport the following day, and from the look on her face, the delight in her eyes, I sensed she did, too, when we confronted each other. We met at ten in the morning in Leo’s apartment, and as he had told me he would after he had introduced us, he left to do some shopping. He had made a pot of coffee and had some nice biscuits on the coffee table in his small, austere, but neat living room. Pictures of his wife, children, and grandchildren surrounded us, a proper setting for the discussion Samantha Davenport and I were about to begin.
Despite her being six years older than I was, she looked six years younger, her features perfect but childlike, as was her soft smile, full of an innocent trust, her laugh melodic but fragile. I saw immediately that she realized her own beauty and catered to it. Her makeup was subtle, with just enough eyeliner to highlight her soft blue eyes and with just a brush of lipstick on her full, perfectly shaped lips. She had a slight cleft in her chin that looked more like a perfect dimple. If my grandmum had set eyes on her, she would have told her what she had told me often: “Your perfect features should be captured in a cameo.”
It wasn’t only our dainty features that recommended us to each other. We had similarly willowy figures, our features diminutive but well proportioned. I imagined she was often teased about having no hips, just like I was. I could easily slip into what she was wearing at the moment. I had recognized it immediately as a Versace ruched mesh dress, because I had seen it in a storefront on Fifth Avenue. It was a popular spring-summer dress for those who could afford it.
Samantha had chosen a hairstyle for her light-brown hair that complemented her features. It was shoulder-length, sleekly cut, with layers and mid-length bangs. Her hair hid her modest diamond stud earrings, but her engagement and wedding rings made Clara’s look like a pebble.
“Thanks to Leo,” she began, “I feel like I’ve known you forever. I can’t wait to hear you sing.”
“Apparently, the rest of the world can,” I said dryly.
She smiled so softly at my sarcasm that I immediately felt bad sounding bitter.
“Where we live, you can burst into song at any time and let your voice carry over the hills and fields like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.”
That made me laugh. I really liked her, and so quickly, perhaps because I saw my own earlier innocence in her. When you had a life that rivaled our royals’, most of the uglier things in life were unseen. Everything was viewed through rose-colored lenses, but what caught my interest and made me feel comfortable was how easily relaxed she was with me, a stranger, despite what we were here to do. I felt no tension, no embarrassment, and no prying eyes. We were like two long-lost friends eager to catch up with each other.
“I can just see my father’s reaction to that. Whenever I sang in the back of our house, he was horrified, afraid I would draw the ire of neighbors who wanted nothing more than silence at the end of a day’s work.”
“Oh, you must tell me everything about your family, your life in England, all of it. We’ll talk until we’re both hoarse, late into the night. And there must never be secrets between us. My house, Wyndemere, nurtures secrets, pounces on them, and quickly makes them part of the decor. Whispers echo down the long corridors, and the walls capture nasty thoughts like fishermen catch fish with nets. My in-laws can tell stories about the original inhabitants so accurately that you just know they put their ears to the walls and hear those words exactly as when they were spoken decades ago.
“I don’t. I don’t care to know anything unpleasant. I hate when my mother-in-law describes the dead as if they were standing in the room with us. I walk right out. I won’t even listen to the weather report if it doesn’t suit me,” she added, and laughed.
How nice to live in a world where you could ignore anything that displeased you, I thought. I was intrigued. Would I live this way for the next nine months or so?
“Now, don’t ask me specific and technical questions about it all,” she said, tightening her face into as serious an expression as she could manage. “I leave that all to the doctor to explain. I’m sure I would get it wrong, anyway. To me, it’s simply magic.”
She put her fingers over her mouth, as though she had uttered something disgusting or forbidden. Then she smiled.
“My husband hates me to say that about anything medical, because he can tell you in detail why this is that and that is this. I was never good in science. I love poetry and music. I drift; he ponders. We complete each other. It’s not good when a husband and wife are too similar, you know. There’s no… completing.”
Brilliant, I thought. Out of the mouths of babes…
“My mummy and father are certainly quite different,” I said.
“ ‘My mummy’? Oh, I love it. You must say all your English expressions whenever you want. We were in London as part of our honeymoon, but Dr. Davenport wouldn’t do tourist things, so I missed a lot of it. He had been there many times.
“Am I talking too much? I haven’t given you time to ask a single question,” she said.
“Why do you want to do this?”
She didn’t lose her smile, but there was just a slight tick of surprise. Then her eyes widened and brightened. “I am so glad that was your first question. My fear was that whoever Leo recommended might be interested only in the money she’d be getting.”
I nodded slightly. That was most of what I was interested in, but I didn’t speak, so she’d know I was waiting for real answers.
She laughed. “The short reply is I’m simply too vain. Now that there is a proven and safe medical way to have your child without going through pregnancy and having the toll it takes on your body, why not do it? That’s what came to my mind first. I’m a bit of a coward, too, I suppose. The thing is, my husband doesn’t love me any less for my faults, and to be sure, I do admit that they are faults.”
She was quiet a moment, her smile gone.
“My mother had a very troubling pregnancy,” she continued, as if any silence between us was painful. “She nearly miscarried with me twice; both times involved serious bleeding.” She paused and looked more serious than ever. “She never hesitated, nor does she hesitate even now, to tell me how much trouble I was. One result that convinces me what she says is true is the fact that I’m an only child. After going through delivering me, she was determined never to go through it again. My father was disappointed. He wanted a son. What father doesn’t?”
Oh, how true about mine, I thought. He’d have put me on the shelf.
“My husband is willing to do all this, but he insists on being in full charge of it all, meaning you would have to live with us during the pregnancy. He will have a close friend, another doctor, perform all the necessary tests and monitor you right up to the delivery and for a while after. There is one other thing, which
might spook you,” she added.
“And that is?”
“As far as the world will know, I will be delivering the child. Some women can go into their seventh month without showing all that much. I will, shall we say, avoid being in public so much, if at all, during the last six weeks. Someone is going to help me look pregnant anyway, and voilà,” she said, lifting her hands, “the baby will be born at Wyndemere. No one, except very trusted employees and my in-laws, of course, will know the truth. Once you deliver and you’re done, you can bury the experience as deeply as you want. No one, you see, will reveal you did it. I imagine that might please you.”
“It was something on my mind, yes, but Leo explained that I had to keep it secret.”
“If you want, you can keep it a secret from your own family, especially since they are in England. Less ears, less tears.”
“What?” I smiled.
“My mother-in-law’s expression. She despises gossip unless it originates from her lips, which works fine for us. But don’t worry. We’ll do whatever you need done to protect you.
“Now, before we go too much further, I must tell you that you will meet my husband after I report to him. He might want to see you this afternoon, in fact. Not that he doesn’t trust my judgment, you understand. He’ll be looking at you from an entirely different perspective, a doctor’s first, a father’s second.
“If it all goes well, we’d like you to leave with us tonight, and he’ll arrange for you to be examined by his close friend tomorrow, go through the required tests to be sure of everything, and then enjoy being at Wyndemere with me until the magic is done in the laboratory. Again, don’t ask me any questions about it. He’ll go into the details. He’s very good at explaining complicated things in a way that almost anyone can understand. I suspect, however, that you’re brighter than average.
“So. Enough about all this. Tell me about yourself,” she said, and finally poured herself a cup of coffee.
“Tonight?” I said, astounded.
“There is success with what he calls stage one. My husband believes time is the enemy. It makes us older and weaker, susceptible to disease, and if there is something that needs to be done, time might get wind of it and speed up, making it too late.”
Whispering Hearts Page 14
