The Surrogate Mother

by Freida McFadden

  I can’t believe it.

  “This is incredible!” I exclaim.

  She nods happily. “I didn’t think it would happen so fast. I guess I’m really fertile, huh?”

  Her words are a quick jab in the gut, but I push it aside. She’s doing this for me—she’s just excited at how quickly it all happened. “I guess so. Hey, I’m going to text Sam, okay?”

  “Of course.”

  I whip out my iPhone, which of course doesn’t recognize my thumbprint because my fingers are all sticky from baby food. I punch in my passcode, which is my birthday. Yes, I know—it’s not very secure. But I don’t think anyone is plotting to steal information from my phone. Half of what’s on there is text messages with my coworkers. Mostly between Shelley and me, complaining about Denise.

  I type a quick text to Sam: Monica’s pregnant!

  After I type the words, the iPhone suggests a pregnant lady emoji, which I add in, even though I know Sam is not a big fan of random emojis. Oh well.

  “What did he say?” Monica asks, casually leaning over my desk to see the screen of my phone.

  Sam’s reply comes a second later: Wonderful.

  It’s hard not to imagine a touch of sarcasm in his response. Even though Sam has been on board throughout this process, he’s been noticeably reluctant the whole way. When he left to give the sperm sample, he gave me this look and said, “Here I go.” And then he waited, like he was hoping I might tell him to forget the whole thing. I didn’t.

  “He said, ‘Wonderful!’” I say.

  Monica beams. She doesn’t need to know I inserted the exclamation point myself.

  I look down at her stomach, which is flat as a board. We agreed she’d work until she was showing, but it doesn’t look like that will happen any time soon. “How are you feeling?”

  “Good!”

  “Any nausea?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Tired?”

  “Just a bit.” She holds her thumb and forefinger a centimeter apart. “But not too bad.”

  She doesn’t look like she feels tired or nauseous. She looks… great, actually. Like she’s glowing.

  “You’re taking the prenatal vitamins, right?” I ask.

  She nods.

  “Two a day,” I remind her. “The recommended dose is two pills per day.”

  She smiles. “I know.”

  I squeeze my hands together. “And you have to avoid cold cuts. And sushi. And, well… alcohol is supposed to be okay in moderation, but—”

  “Don’t worry, Abby,” Monica says in that calm voice of hers. “I’m not going to drink at all. I promise.”

  I hear a knock on the door, and before I can say anything, Denise is standing in the doorway. She never waits for a reply before barging in. She peers at me, a noticeable lack of a smile on her lips, but that’s nothing new. She regards Monica briefly, but chooses not to even acknowledge her with a greeting.

  “Abigail,” she says. “Have you found a slogan yet for Cuddles? I just got a call from them.”

  “Um…”

  Cuddles baby food—tastes fifty percent less sickening than the other leading brands.

  “Not yet,” I say.

  Denise eyes the baby food containers on my desk. Too late, I notice Monica’s pregnancy test is still lying there. I put my elbow in front of it, hoping Denise doesn’t notice. Aside from Shelley, I haven’t told a soul here about my arrangement with Monica, and I don’t intend to. Nothing good can come of that. She’s going to leave the company before she’s showing, so really, it’s none of their business.

  “We’re meeting with them tomorrow,” Denise reminds me. “I hope you’ll have something by then.”

  “Absolutely.”

  She frowns at me. “Don’t disappoint me, Abigail. This is an important account.”

  Yes, I know this is an important account. Despite my success with the diapers campaign, you’re only as good as the last thing you’ve done. If I screw this up, I’m finished. Why else would I be sitting here, eating this disgusting baby food?

  “Don’t worry,” I say. “I’m on it.”

  I let out a breath when Denise breezes out of my office. I’m dreading the conversation where I have to tell her I need twelve weeks of family leave after all. But what can I do?

  Wow, this baby thing is really going to happen.

  I’m going to have a baby.

  I can’t believe it.

  “I better prepare for this meeting,” I say to Monica, who kept her head down the whole time Denise was berating me. “But… well, I know I’ve said this before, but I can’t say it enough: thank you. This is… incredible.”

  She smiles, showing off a row of pearly white teeth. “I’m happy to do it for you.”

  She looks down at the positive pregnancy test lying on the table in front of me. She starts to reach for it, but I shake my head. “I can throw this away for you.”

  “Oh, no.” She snatches it off my desk and holds up it, admiring the two blue lines. “I want to save it. You know, as a keepsake.”

  She wants to save it? She wants a keepsake from a pregnancy she’s going through just to get a ticket to art school? Is it just me or is that odd?

  If anyone should want to save the pregnancy test, it should be me. And I don’t want it. I mean, it’s got urine on it. But I don’t want to make a big thing of it. So I don’t say a word as Monica carefully tucks the pregnancy test back in her purse.

  Chapter 11

  Today, Sam and I have been married for eight years.

  We’re going out tonight to celebrate, to a nice Spanish restaurant in midtown that serves really good paella. Most nights we stay in and cook or else get takeout, because I’m always so busy, but we always go out on our anniversary.

  Sam finds parking a few blocks away from the restaurant, which is something of a miracle. The major bonus of his refusal to lease a spot in a parking garage is he has become amazing at parallel parking. I’m certain he’ll never squeeze the Highlander into that tiny little spot, but he insists he can do it. As he attempts to maneuver his car into the space, a small crowd of pedestrians gathers to watch.

  “You’ll never make it, buddy!” one guy yells out.

  “Watch me!” Sam yells back.

  When he makes it into the spot (as if there was any doubt), he’s met with a smattering of applause. I’m still not sure how he did it. There’s no more than a couple of inches of give on either end of the vehicle. Sam always says the eternal goal is to have zero space on either end of the car.

  As we walk the short distance to the Spanish restaurant, Sam reaches for my hand. He always holds my hand when we walk—he did it when we were dating, and he does it now, after eight years of marriage. It’s sweet.

  “I’m glad we’re married,” he says as he squeezes my hand.

  I laugh. “Good to know.”

  He’s not just saying it because it’s our anniversary—it’s obvious Sam is truly glad to be married. The first couple of years we were together, before the fertility stuff went off the rails, he would say it constantly. I’m really glad we’re married. Or, I’m so glad I have a wife! Or sometimes, Thank God we’re finally married. I don’t think he liked dating very much. He said it was exhausting.

  That’s probably why we got married relatively quickly after we started dating. Shelley started dating her husband Rick at around the same time I met Sam, but Rick was always squeamish about commitment. Sam was the polar opposite. We quickly fell into an exclusive relationship with an implied date every Saturday night and several weeknights too. While Rick had a freak out when Shelley left a toothbrush at his apartment, Sam—unprompted—cleaned out a drawer for me in his bedroom and made me a copy of his key, and soon after, said, “Wouldn’t it be easier if you just moved in with me?” Shelley and I were both in our late twenties with marriage on our minds, and she was dying of jealousy.

  Then when we were living together, he started making comments that began with, “When we’re m
arried.” For example, “When we’re married, we can file our taxes jointly.” Or, “When we’re married, we should get a two-bedroom apartment.” Granted, they weren’t super romantic statements (like, “When we’re married, we should honeymoon in Paris” or “When we’re married, we should buy a villa in Milan”) but there was something sweet about his assumption we’d end up together. Eventually, I started making “When we’re married” statements too.

  One day, we were passing a Zales, hand-in-hand, and I commented, “When you propose to me, you better get me a ring from Tiffany’s.”

  Sam got this odd look on his face and my heart sank. He’d been making so many statements about marriage, I’d thought it was okay. This was entirely his fault!

  Finally, just when I was about to stammer an awkward apology, he leaned over and murmured in my ear, “And what if I got it from Kay’s?”

  I frowned at him. “Huh?”

  That’s when he reached into his pocket and pulled out the little blue box. My mouth fell open. We’d only been dating a year and a half, and even though we were living together, I hadn’t expected this. “Oh,” I breathed. “I didn’t expect…”

  He blinked at me. “Well, I love you. Why wait?”

  Why, indeed.

  “Hang on, let me get down on one knee,” he said. And then he did, like he was following some proper procedure for proposing to one’s girlfriend that he read in the relationship manual. He opened up the blue box and the ring was… well, I’m not going to lie. It was tiny. Sam had only recently finished his doctorate and wasn’t making the big bucks in his postdoc program. But still. It was perfect. “Will you marry me, Abby?”

  I said no.

  I’m just kidding. Obviously, I said yes. A very vehement yes. Because otherwise, why would we be sitting at table, waiting to enjoy paella, going into our ninth year as husband and wife. I have never for one moment regretted my decision to marry Sam Adler.

  Although sometimes I wonder if he feels the same.

  But there’s no trace of regret on Sam’s face as he watches our waitress place the large pan of piping hot rice and seafood down in front of us. He grins at me over the steam rising off our food.

  “What do you think?” the waitress asks us.

  “Looks great,” I say.

  She places a white hand with red nails on my husband’s shoulder, “And what do you think, cariño?”

  Our waitress has been flirting shamelessly with Sam since we arrived. This sort of thing always happens—I hardly even notice anymore. And he never notices. You’d think his wedding ring and the fact that he’s here with his wife would be deterrent enough, but apparently not.

  “Yep, looks good,” he says, but his smile is directed only at me. It’s amusing to see women try to flirt with him while he completely ignores them. That will never get old.

  The waitress gives up and leaves us to our paella. It’s really good. It’s costing us a fortune, but money has never been something I worry about. I’ve always felt a need to strike out on my own, even with my trust fund sitting in the bank, but between my salary and Sam’s, it would be hard to live in Manhattan without that nest egg.

  “This is really good,” I say as I pop a piece of sausage in my mouth.

  “I don’t know,” Sam says. “I think the paella I made last month was pretty good too.”

  It wasn’t. It really wasn’t. Sam is not getting any better at cooking.

  “Well, that wasn’t technically paella,” I say. “It was Spanish rice with pieces of sausage and shrimp in it.”

  “Yeah, and what is this?” He digs some of the socarrat off the pan. “Same thing. Rice with sausage and shrimp.”

  “You don’t have the crackling part at the bottom.”

  “Sure I do.”

  I grin at him. “Burning it at the bottom is not the same thing.”

  “It was just a tiny bit burned.”

  “It was black.”

  “Hmm. I think it was brown.”

  I roll my eyes. “I will say, I do like that you put fresh tomatoes in yours. Tomatoes are my all-time favorite vegetable.”

  He gasps. “Abby! Tomatoes aren’t vegetables! They’re fruit.”

  “No way.”

  “Way,” he says firmly. “It’s got seeds on the inside. That makes it a fruit.” He winks at me. “It’s a savory fruit.”

  “That doesn’t sound right.”

  “It’s right. Trust me.”

  No… is it?

  I whip out my phone to Google it and… wow, it turns out tomatoes really are fruit. Damn. “I can’t believe it! How could tomatoes be fruit?”

  “What I can’t believe is you didn’t know tomatoes are fruit.”

  “Yeah, well.” I give his shoe a gentle kick under the table, which makes him smile. “You didn’t even know Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston broke up.”

  “So I don’t follow the recent tabloid news. So what?”

  “That’s not recent—their divorce was over a decade ago! Since then, he got married to Angelina Jolie, they adopted a bunch of babies, and then they broke up! You’re one full marriage behind.”

  “You sure know a lot about Brad Pitt’s love life,” he says as he kicks me back under the table.

  And then we’re kind of playing footsie under the table. I slide off my shoe and get it up his pants leg, and he reaches down to grasp my bare calf. Our eyes meet across the table, and the smile he gives me makes me tingle all over. Shelley always talks about how her husband doesn’t “excite” her anymore, but I can’t relate. Sam still gets me all hot and bothered. I can’t imagine that ever changing. I’m even looking forward to him getting old because I think he’ll be sexy with lines around his eyes and silver hair.

  As soon as we’re done eating, Sam wants to exchange presents. He’s more excited over this than an adult should rightfully be. I’ve got his present stuffed into my purse, and presumably, my present is in his jacket pocket. Which means it’s something small. Maybe jewelry.

  I hope it’s jewelry.

  Sure enough, he pulls a rectangular box from his coat and slides it across the table to me. He smiles when he sees the square box I hand him. He lifts it, evaluating its weight.

  “This doesn’t feel like electronics,” he says.

  “It’s not.”

  “Is it… socks?” He grins. “You know how much I like socks.”

  He’s joking—referring to a time when we went to my parents’ house for Christmas, and their gift to Sam was a pair of fancy socks. This was, I suspect, my mother’s not-so-subtle way of saying she wasn’t excited about our upcoming nuptials. I was mortified by that one, but he thought it was funny. He still wears them. He calls them his Christmas socks.

  “Yeah, but they’re nice socks,” I say. “Prada socks.”

  “Ooh, Prada socks. This I gotta see.”

  He rips off the wrapping paper and pulls off the lid to the box. His eyes widen when he sees what’s inside. “It’s… a tank top?”

  “It’s an apron!”

  “Oh…” He pulls it out, holding it up in the light. The apron contains a bunch of mathematical symbols, including the square root of negative i, two to the third power, a summation symbol, and pi. I would never know this, but the website assured me that this reads… “I ate some pie?”

  “Right.” I beam at him. “Cool, right? For all the… you know, cooking you do.”

  Not that I want to encourage him in his cooking or anything. But since I can’t discourage him, I may as well buy him an apron so he doesn’t have stains on every last piece of clothing in his closet.

  “Yeah, this is great,” he says, although it’s hard to tell if he means it. “I’ll be like Euclid meets Martha Stewart.”

  “You hate it.”

  “I don’t hate it.”

  “You obviously do.”

  “No, I don’t. I love it.”

  “You definitely don’t love it.”

  “I do!”

  “Liar.”


  “I love it so much,” he says, “I’m going to put it on right now, because I can’t wait to wear it.”

  “Okay, okay…”

  “No, watch…” And then he stands up, and in front of the whole restaurant, puts the strings of the apron over his head. He makes a big thing of tying it, until I’m laughing into my palm. People are starting to stare at us, but I don’t care. “How do I look?”

  “Sexy as hell.”

  “Well, that goes without saying.” He grins at me. “Okay, now you open yours.”

  I pull the lid off the box of what is clearly jewelry. Sam doesn’t buy me jewelry much, but when he does, he’s actually decent at picking it out. For a guy.

  But this isn’t jewelry. It’s a long silver object with diamonds on the handle and the name “ABBY” engraved on the blade.

  “It’s a letter opener,” he says. “I got sick of listening to you complain about all your papercuts.”

  I do complain about papercuts a lot. “It’s beautiful,” I say, and I mean it. The handle is absolutely exquisite. I can’t say I wouldn’t have liked a necklace, but this is thoughtful. It’s something I don’t have and that I need, and whenever I use it at work, I’ll think of Sam. He always gets me really thoughtful presents.

  “I’m really glad you like it,” he says. “You’re not going to impress the Cuddles people if you’ve cuts all over your hands, right?”

  I pull it out of the box, admiring the design. It really is beautiful. The blade catches the overhead light and I notice how sharp it is. Well, I shouldn’t have any problem opening letters anymore.

  An hour later, we’re walking hand-in-hand back to the Toyota. He’s removed the apron, and he looks really handsome in his dress shirt and slacks. He only had one small glass of wine because he’s driving, but I’ve had two, and somehow it’s enough to make me tipsy. What can I say—I’m a lightweight. So holding hands quickly degenerates into me hanging onto his arm, and then he’s got his arm around my shoulders, pulling me close to him as we walk.

  I stumble over a crack in the pavement, which is more a symptom of my high heels than the amount I’ve had to drink, but Sam thinks it’s hilarious. “Are you drunk on two glasses of wine, Abby?”