by Haylen Beck
“She’ll attend a clinic in her area to have the procedure. It’s very simple, completely painless, she’ll be in and out in an afternoon. Then in about two weeks, we’ll know if she’s conceived.”
Libby’s anger faded away, replaced by a welling joy that made her giggle.
“And you know,” Dr. Sherman continued, “with such a close resemblance, there’s really no reason for anyone to know you didn’t carry the child yourself. Not unless you choose to tell them. All I need is your signatures on the final agreement to execute the contract, the next-stage payment, and we’re off to the races.”
He drew the papers from his briefcase and said, “I assume a bank transfer will be the easiest option?”
Mason spoke, his voice ringing loud with anxiety. “Can you leave those with us? Just so we can talk it over one more time.”
Dr. Sherman looked to Libby, eyebrows raised.
“We don’t need to talk it over again,” Libby said, the anger back and burning. “We’ve talked it over a hundred times. The decision has been made. We have the perfect candidate, everything’s in place, there is no reason not to do this.”
He looked back to Dr. Sherman and said, “Forgive me, but I’m still hazy on the legality of what we’re discussing here. I know we’ve been over this, but—”
Dr. Sherman smiled and nodded. “Absolutely no need to apologize for being confused. It’s the lack of clearly defined regulations that causes the confusion. First of all, please be assured that neither you nor I are proposing anything illegal.”
“But it is illegal,” Mason said. “New York State doesn’t allow paid surrogacy.”
“That’s correct. But the surrogacy will take place in another state, one where paid surrogacy is perfectly legal. The clinic is merely acting as a facilitator.”
Mason pointed to the papers in Dr. Sherman’s hand. “But here, where we live, those contracts aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. Same as whatever agreement you have with the birth mother. If she changes her mind after we have the baby, then what?”
“That’s why we keep a barrier between the birth mother and the intended parents. You will never know her identity, and she will never know yours.”
“She could take you to court,” Mason said. “A judge could order you to hand over that information.”
“Well, she’d have a fight on her hands,” Dr. Sherman said with a forced chuckle. “And, quite frankly, the clinic can afford better lawyers.”
“That’s pretty cold,” Mason said.
“It’s reality, that’s all. Please remember, you’re paying a premium price for a premium service. You’re not dealing with a front for some baby farm in Mexico or India. Your child will be carried to term under the best of care, let me—”
Libby pressed her fingertips against her temples. “Enough. We’ve been over and over this. Every question has been answered. I want to sign the papers now.”
Mason reached for her and she resisted the desire to slap his hand away.
“Libby, honey, it’s such a big step, I don’t see the harm in giving it one more day to—”
“One more day? One more…how about another week? Another year? Jesus, Mason, we’ve been trying for this since the day we got married. We are not backing out now.”
“There’s still the adoption route.”
“We’ve been on the waiting list for nearly four years now. How much longer do we give them?”
Mason clenched his hands together, held them in front of his face for a moment, then lowered them. He inhaled once through his nose, exhaled through his mouth.
“Dr. Sherman,” he said, “please leave the papers, and I’ll mail them to you tomorrow.”
Libby got to her feet and hissed, “Goddamn you.”
She walked to the stairs, climbed them, and slammed the bedroom door behind her.
* * *
—
LIBBY FELL ASLEEP at some point. It had been light outside when she lay down, but when she opened her eyes, the room was inky dark and cold. A wintry shower pattered against the window, wet drops that weren’t quite snow flattening on the glass and sliding down. She listened for a while, wondering if Mason was still in the house, or if he’d gone to the range like he often did when stressed. Shooting relaxed him, he said. He had tried to interest her, even bought her a small pistol of her own, but she didn’t like it. Whatever he got from pulling the trigger and hitting a target, it was lost on her. She never told him how pathetic she found it all.
They should talk, clear the air, but in truth she hoped he’d gone. She had no will to fight again. They’d done so much of that over the last few years, since she was finally diagnosed with endometriosis. Tissue from her womb drifting up into her fallopian tubes, the gynecologist had said, relishing the details. That explained the suffering brought on by her periods, which had returned in full force when she stopped taking the contraceptive pills. Even though she now had an explanation, confirmation that it had never been her fault, the guilt still bore down on her.
But as infuriatingly understanding as Mason was, he still remained hesitant about their only real solution. She knew each of his arguments by heart.
Will you love the baby like it’s your own?
It will be my own, she countered. And it’ll be yours.
What if there’s a problem with the pregnancy, a miscarriage, an abnormality?
That’s the same risk every parent takes. Why should we be any different?
Why not wait a little longer for the adoption agency?
But we’ve been waiting so long for them already. If we wanted a troubled seven-year-old, we’d be at the front of the line, but we don’t.
It’s not legal, and the contract can’t be enforced. The birth mother can claim the baby anytime she wants, dragging us through the courts to get it back.
Only if she finds us. She won’t know who we are, and we won’t know who she is. The baby will not be taken from us. She can’t find us. There’s no way. It could never happen.
Never.
But there was one argument she couldn’t push back against, the one that always ended the discussion: the baby won’t fix you. In that strange way of his, he drilled down into the soul of her, finding that live nerve. You think this baby will heal you, he’d say, and it won’t.
Libby always walked away at that point, closed the door behind her. And he never followed her, knowing to push further would be to risk everything.
She sat up and stretched her arms, working her shoulders and neck loose. The house was quiet, covered with the stillness of being alone. Mason wasn’t here, she was sure of it. She had asked Mira, their cleaner, not to come today. They would pay her anyway, but today they had needed privacy.
Libby got out of bed, opened the door, and listened again. Nothing but the wind against the gable wall and the sleet against the windows. Cold drafts swam up the stairs to brush against her skin. She pulled her robe tight around her and went downstairs.
The contracts still lay on the coffee table, three copies, only a name on a line between her and the life she desired so badly. She stared at them for a time before walking to the dresser, where her cell phone rested.
The last call had been from Dr. Sherman, early this morning, to tell them he was on his way. She found his number in the recent-calls list and tapped it with her thumb. The dial tone sounded and she wondered if he’d gotten back to New York yet. When he answered, the sound of his voice resonating inside a car answered her question.
“Dr. Sherman,” she said, “can you talk?”
“Yes, certainly. I’m stuck in traffic, but I have you on speaker.”
“It’s just, I wanted to ask a question.”
“Yes?”
“The final agreement,” she said. “Does it have to be signed by both the intended parents?”
A pause, the noise of distant traffic, horns blasting.
“Not necessarily,” he said.
22
“GOOD NEWS,” DR. HOLDSWORTH SAID. “you’re pregnant.”
It was not news to Anna. She had felt the change within days of the procedure. It wasn’t something she could define with words, even if she had been good with such things. The best way she could describe it was that it felt as if the world had shifted somehow, changed around her, so that the air smelled and tasted different, that her skin felt new textures, her eyes saw new light.
Her mood had changed too. She had never been quick to anger, which was how she’d stuck with waitressing so long, but over the last two weeks she had found her temper growing shorter and shorter. Just yesterday she had snapped at a cashier in the supermarket, and two days before that, while she had traveled to the clinic for the blood test, she had given another driver the finger for not letting her merge. It was an odd feeling, like standing on one foot, ready to fall at any moment.
Dr. Holdsworth was an older woman who spent more time looking over her spectacles than through them. When Anna had arrived for the procedure at Dalton Gynecology and Obstetrics, she had been relieved to find it would be carried out by a female doctor. There’d been no pain, as promised, but it sure as hell was uncomfortable. That had been two weeks ago.
“So what now?” Anna asked.
Dr. Holdsworth smiled and said, “What now is you go home and relax. Eat well, rest well, use your common sense. Any pain, any bleeding, call me immediately, don’t wait. But right now, everything seems good.”
A question had been nagging at Anna since she’d arrived at the clinic, and now she felt she could ask it. “When will I get the next payment?”
Dr. Holdsworth dropped her gaze, as if the question shamed her. “I’m afraid I don’t deal with that end of things. If you’ve no other questions, I’ll see you in a month.”
As Anna returned to her car in the clinic’s parking lot, her mind turned to the thing inside her. A cluster of cells, she reminded herself. Nothing more. The drive from Pittsburgh back to Superior took hardly any time at all, the midmorning traffic moving freely. She thought of Betsy and whether she should call her and tell her the news.
The news.
As if this were her baby, and she would breathlessly call friends and loved ones to share in her excitement. But it was not her baby.
Just a cluster of cells. That’s all.
23
LIBBY CRIED WHEN DR. SHERMAN called to tell her the news. She was at her desk in the office she shared with three other members of the department’s admin staff. Nadine looked up from her computer terminal, mouthed the words, What’s wrong? Libby shook her head, smiled, and waved away her concern.
“How long?” she asked.
“Counting from the candidate’s last period, it’s four weeks,” Dr. Sherman said.
Libby covered her mouth to stifle a giggle. Her eyes brimmed. Nadine watched her, a mix of worry and bemusement on her face.
“Everything looks good at the moment,” Dr. Sherman said, “but please remember, it’s early days. There’s no guarantee we’ll make it to twelve weeks. The first trimester can be tricky. A lot of women miscarry in the first few weeks without even realizing they were pregnant.”
“A lot of women?” Libby asked, the smile falling from her mouth. “What’s the risk? I mean, how likely is it—”
“Libby, Libby, Libby, don’t panic. Everything appears fine right now. I just want you to be aware that there’s always a possibility. And if it happens, which it probably won’t, then we can try again. Now, stop worrying.”
“Okay,” she said in an expulsion of air. “It’s just…I’ve wanted this so much for so long, you know?”
“Of course,” he said. “It’s an emotional time. In ten weeks, the candidate will come in for the first full scan and we’ll have a better idea of how things are progressing. In the meantime, try not to worry, all right? It won’t do you any good.”
“Okay. I’ll try. And Doctor?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you,” she said.
Dr. Sherman chuckled, said welcome, and goodbye.
Libby hung up and noticed Nadine still staring at her. Nadine got up from her swivel chair so fast it spun into her desk. She dashed across the room and hunkered down by Libby’s side.
“Tell me,” she said.
Tears ran down Libby’s cheeks. Nadine reached up and wiped them away.
“Tell me,” she said again.
A laugh escaped Libby, high and ringing. Nadine smiled now, her expression one of amused confusion.
“Come on, don’t do this to me. Tell me what it is.”
Libby sniffed back more tears.
“I’m pregnant,” she said.
* * *
—
“YOU SAID WHAT?”
Mason stared at her from across the kitchen.
“I told her I was pregnant,” Libby said.
He stood there, back against the fridge, mouth open, shaking his head. It was the first moment when she really, honestly asked herself if she still loved him. The question rang inside her like a fire bell, insistent, until she pushed the thought away. No time for that now. They had a family to build.
“Why did you do that?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, truthfully. “Does it matter? We’re going to have a baby in eight months. It has to come from somewhere.”
Mason hadn’t been as angry as she’d imagined when she told him she’d gone ahead and signed the agreement without him. He had come home from work that evening, two months ago, and told her he’d noticed the money gone from their savings account, and to whom it had been transferred. He had remained ferociously calm while she explained to him how she’d signed the papers and mailed them to New York and then made the payment.
“I guess I knew you would,” he’d said.
She remembered the emotions that crossed his face in those few seconds: anger, fear, regret, and more.
“It’s what we wanted,” Libby said.
He was about to argue, but she raised a finger.
“Don’t you say it isn’t. Don’t you dare. We talked about it every day for ten years.”
“I should leave you,” he said through tight, thin lips. “I really should.”
“But you won’t,” she said, knowing this to be true.
And he didn’t. Now, two months later, he stood ten feet away, and she could feel the turmoil in him from across the room. He held his hand out in a questioning gesture.
“So, what, you’re going to pretend to be pregnant for the rest of the year?”
“If I have to,” Libby said.
“How?” he asked, his voice rising in exasperation. “What, are you going to stick a pillow up your sweater? Wear a padded bra? How are you going to do it?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll figure it out. That’s not what’s important right now.”
“It kind of feels like a big deal to—”
“What’s important is we have a baby on the way,” she said, cutting him short. “We have to be ready. We need to learn what to do, how to look after it, all the things parents deal with. Because that’s what we are now. We’re parents.”
He shrugged, sneered. “Funny, I don’t feel much like a dad.”
“But you are,” she said, her voice softening, as she took a step toward him. “I might not be this baby’s real mother, but you’re its real father. It’ll be your flesh and blood. This baby is really yours, and you have no idea how much I wish it was mine.”
The last words splintered in her throat as the tears came. Timed just right, they filled her eyes. Through the blur, she saw his shoulders drop, then his hands, then his head. She saw him surrender, and silently, she rejoiced.
/> He crossed the room and she took him in her arms. She buried her nose and mouth between the hardness of his jaw and his shoulder, breathed deep, tried to find the scent of her love for him. Tried to remember the feeling in her belly, back when they were young, when he could make her quiver at his touch.
“I love you,” he said, the words hot against her ear. “You know I do. And you know I want to make you happy. But I’m afraid. Can you understand that? I’m afraid this won’t be what you need it to be. I’m afraid it’ll break you.”
“I’m already broken,” she said.
He said nothing because he knew she was right.
24
ANNA LEANED OVER THE TOILET and vomited up her lunch, holding on to the cistern to keep herself upright through the rolling waves of nausea. When the cramps in her stomach had subsided, she spat into the bowl, then flushed it away. She went to the basin and ran cold water from the faucet, scooped handfuls of it up to rinse her mouth.
Almost two thirty in the afternoon.
“Morning sickness, my ass,” she said to her reflection in the mirror.
She studied herself there. Her hair had thickened, had never looked so good in fact, but the benefit was offset by blotches and pimples around her chin and nose. She hadn’t experienced acne since she was a teenager, and she did not welcome it back. Turning, she examined the reflection of her stomach side-on. No sign of anything there, but she knew it was too early. Her bra felt tight and uncomfortable, and she tugged at the straps, thinking she should arrange a fitting somewhere.
The bathroom opened onto the bedroom of the apartment that had been provided for her. She’d been here almost three months and had enjoyed making it her own. Not that she had much to clutter the place up with, but she’d bought some cushions and throws. Nothing expensive. She had been frugal with her money so far, and most of the forty thousand dollars she’d been paid to date had remained intact. With no rent or utilities to pay, the living allowance more than covered her needs. She’d even managed to put a little extra away for the first time in her life.
