Give, a novel

by Erica Carpenter Witsell

  He sounded so serious that Jessie had to smile. “Yeah. But—”

  “But what?”

  “I think they’re mad at me.”

  “Mad at you for what? Oh, wait, I know. Mad because there wasn’t any alcohol at the wedding—”

  “Can’t you be serious for a second?” she snapped. “This matters to me.”

  Heath’s eyebrows shot up, taken aback by her tone. “Okay.”

  He said nothing for a moment, and Jessie put her face in her hands. Now he would be mad at her, too.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, not looking at him. “I’m sorry I snapped.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I can take it. But seriously. Why are they . . . Why do you think they’re mad at you?”

  Jessie was silent for a moment, and then she spoke quickly, not wanting to give him time to misunderstand, to joke. “Because of the eggs I gave Laurel, Heath. Because of Liza.”

  Heath let out his breath in a rush. “Are you sure? I mean, maybe they’re just out of town or something.”

  “I’ve called their cell phones, too, and they don’t answer.” Jessie shook her head sadly and met his eye. “And remember what happened at the wedding?”

  Heath nodded. “I know that Emma said that your mom . . . that Sarah had figured it out because the little girl looked so much like your sister used to. But did she . . . Did Sarah say anything to you about it?”

  “No. That’s the point. They aren’t talking to me.”

  Heath said nothing for a moment; the kitchen was silent except for the drumming of his fingers on the table.

  “Well,” he said at last. “Maybe it’s for the best. You didn’t mean for it to stay a secret forever, did you?”

  “No, but . . . Oh, I knew this would happen. I knew that as soon as they found out, I’d be on the outs again. That I’d feel like . . . Like I do now.”

  “But why? Why do they care what you do with your eggs? It’s your decision, isn’t it? I can understand them not approving . . . Hell, my parents don’t approve of half of what I do. But this has nothing to do with them. Why would it make them angry?”

  “They probably think it does have something to do with them. That little girl—she’s the first grandchild, if you want to think about it that way.”

  Heath sighed. “I suppose.”

  “But I don’t think that’s it, really. I think it’s a question of allegiances. By giving those eggs to Laurel—”

  “Well, technically you gave them to Sue—”

  “They wouldn’t see it that way. By giving those eggs to Laurel, it’s like I’ve aligned myself with her. Like I’ve chosen her over them. Again.”

  Jessie’s throat tightened as she spoke, so by the end she was barely able to get the words out. She lowered her head into her arms on the table, heard Heath’s chair scrape the floor, then the heavy clomp of his boots on the linoleum. She felt his arm come around her shoulder.

  “Hey. So what? So what if they’re angry? You know, I was joking before, when I said that about this being home. But I did mean it. This is your home. This is our family now. They don’t . . . They shouldn’t matter so much anymore.”

  Jessie nodded without raising her head from the table. “I know. But they do.”

  Jessie didn’t believe him. After all, Heath was an only child of parents who were still happily married; there was no way he could understand what she had felt—that insidious unease of not belonging, the constant tension of torn allegiances. Still, she appreciated that he meant to comfort her, and he was a comfort, really. Just the solid bulk of him next to her in bed, the way his weight on the mattress created an inevitable downhill slope, so that she couldn’t help but slide toward him until her side pressed tightly against his.

  Jessie appreciated Heath’s solidity. She knew, without needing to test it, that it would take a momentous force to rock him. Unrelentingly restless, Jessie had always thought that she needed someone who would match her unabated striving, her nonstop pace. Instead, she had stumbled upon a rock. Heath was her counterweight and her anchor, the solid shore onto which her restive soul could beat again and again and again. In those early days of their marriage, she found herself sighing with relief at random times throughout the day, grateful almost to tears that she had found him.

  On Tuesday the following week, Jessie sat in her favorite armchair reading Science. She kept glancing up at Heath, who was disassembling his camping stove at the kitchen table. He was leaving tomorrow for an environmental impact study in eastern Washington, where they were planning to build a highway through an old burial ground. He wouldn’t be home until Saturday.

  Suddenly she thought of Heath’s words, “This is home now,” and, for the first time, she felt the truth in them. This was her place, her home, her little family. It felt unequivocal, final. Jessie felt something settle inside her at last.

  The sense of peace lingered all week; her days had a new tranquility. On Friday afternoon, just as she was about to turn off her work computer and bike home, she hesitated. She sat down again at her desk and opened Google, then typed “florist” and “Bakersfield” into the search field. From the heights of her new serenity, it wasn’t hard to humble herself. “I know you’re angry,” she typed into the message box. “Please forgive me.” There was an extra charge for Saturday delivery, but she clicked on the “Complete Purchase” button before she could change her mind.

  The next day she was on edge. She checked her phone constantly to see if she had somehow missed their call. With Heath away, the house seemed quiet in a way it never had when she’d lived alone, and she was grateful when, close to five, she heard his pickup in the driveway at last.

  “I can’t believe it,” she said into his chest that night in bed. “What else can I do?”

  “They’ll come around,” Heath said, stroking her hair behind her ear. “You’ll see.”

  The next morning her phone rang while she was clearing the breakfast dishes from the table. Her stomach lurched as she reached for it.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello?” her father’s voice said. “Jessie?”

  “Hi, Dad. It’s me.”

  “Oh hello, Jessie,” he said. There was a click on the line and for a second Jessie thought the call had been lost. Then she heard her mother’s voice.

  “Hi, Jessie.”

  There was a moment of tense silence.

  “I just—” Jessie began.

  “The flowers came late yesterday, just as we were leaving to meet some friends for dinner,” Sarah said. “They’re beautiful. Thank you.”

  “Oh,” Jessie said. “You’re welcome. I—”

  “Jessie,” said her father. “We appreciate the flowers. And, uh, your words. I suppose . . . I suppose you sensed some coolness from us.”

  Jessie nodded, forced herself to speak. “Yes.”

  “And do you know why?” her mother asked slowly.

  “I suppose,” Jessie said, borrowing her father’s word. “I suppose it was because of the eggs? Because of Liza?”

  Jessie tried to sound contrite, but even she could hear the note of belligerence that had crept into her voice. Because didn’t her parents have something to answer for, too? You couldn’t just treat someone like that, with not one word of explanation. You couldn’t treat your daughter like that. As soon as the thought formed, she stumbled over it. What if Sarah and Len no longer thought of her as a daughter? What if they had already written her off, but hadn’t had the courage to tell her so?

  For a moment, there was silence on the line. “Well?” Jessie asked at last. “Am I right?”

  “Yes,” they said, in unison.

  Jessie sighed. “Look, Mom. Dad. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I should have, I know.”

  “It’s not about you telling us or not telling us, Jessie, although you put your sister in a terrible position, you know.”

  “Is that what you’re angry about? About Emma? Emma and I . . . We’re . . . We’re fine.”

&n
bsp; Jessie heard her mother sigh.

  “I just can’t believe that this is about Emma. What is this really about, Mom?” Jessie blurted out. She heard the exasperation in her voice and cringed. This was not how she spoke to her parents.

  “Jessie,” Sarah said, and the way she said it—cautionary, almost reprimanding—made Jessie feel twelve. But she wasn’t twelve. She felt something inside her loosen, then break free. She didn’t try to stop the words that came.

  “Is it that Laurel and I are close? Is it that we are close enough that I would want to do something like this for her? Is that it? You two could never stand it, could you? You could never stand it that I might—heaven forbid—actually love Laurel. That I might love my mother. That I might love her and want her to be happy. I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry, Dad, that I put your grandchild into the world without consulting you. If that’s what this is about, I can see how—”

  “That child has NOTHING to do with me,” Len snapped. “Nothing!”

  “Then what? It was my choice, wasn’t it? It’s my body. My eggs. If I want to give them to God-knows-who, what difference does it make to you? You said it yourself. Their daughter—she has nothing to do with you. So . . . why should it matter to you so much? Why is it such a big deal to you that you have to . . . that you want to shut me out?”

  There was a heavy clunk on the line, and with a start Jessie guessed that her father had hung up. The clunk was followed by silence, and Jessie’s stomach dropped. Maybe they had both hung up. Could it really happen like this, she wondered. Could she really lose her parents over the phone?

  “Mom?” she said. “Mom? Are you still there?”

  “I’m here,” she said. “Your father is not.”

  Jessie took a deep breath. “Oh.”

  “He’s very angry, Jessie. And so am I.”

  “But why, Mom? Why? I’m trying to understand this from your perspective, I really am. But all I end up with is that you’re punishing me for doing this for Laurel, and that just doesn’t . . . seem right. I mean, it doesn’t mean that I don’t—”

  She was going to say, “It doesn’t mean that I don’t love you,” but she didn’t get the words out in time before Sarah interrupted.

  “Are you going to give me a chance to answer, Jessie? You want to know why we’re angry? I’ll tell you why. Your dad and I spent so many years trying to keep you and your sister safe. We were newlyweds, Jessie. We were in love. We were like you, now, overjoyed to be starting our own family. But we couldn’t just be joyful, because there was always Laurel, always something to worry about. Your dad was always terrified he was going to lose you, did you know that? But worse even than that was worrying about how we could possibly keep you safe when you went up there. There was always Laurel, leaving you with that so-called babysitter who took you to jump off the top of dams and God knows what else . . . And that was the least of it. Do you remember the things you girls used to tell us when you’d come home? ‘Mommy loves Cactus because he likes it when she sits on his face.’ God, Jessie, it was enough to make me sick, imagining you girls up there by yourselves, without one responsible adult looking out for you. We could never just be happy, your dad and I, the way you are now with Heath. There was always this specter hanging over us, waiting for the letter demanding custody, waiting for June when we’d have to put you on that plane.

  “But we got through it, Jessie. We held onto you and Emma. We spent what should have been the early, happy, carefree years of our marriage trying to keep you safe. So can’t you see why this would upset us? Why it might make us angry? We tried so hard to keep you girls safe. And now? Now there is another little girl. Another little girl with Laurel for a mother and absolutely nothing we can do about it.”

  Sarah finally stopped. She took a deep breath. “So, technically yes, you’re right: she has nothing to do with us. But maybe now you can see why it . . . why it upset us, learning what we did about how she came to be. And maybe we should have called sooner. But we were very angry, Jessie, and you just got married, remember? We thought we should let you try to enjoy this time without—”

  Jessie opened her mouth to protest and found she couldn’t speak. It took her breath away, to hear her time at Baymont described like that—like a gauntlet of horrors she had narrowly escaped, with Laurel as an irresponsible demon of a mother, hanging over her parents’ lives like a dark shadow they couldn’t shake. The picture her mother painted was so unlike her own version of her life that she could hardly believe they were talking about the same thing, the same person.

  “That’s not how I remember it,” she managed at last.

  “Of course not,” Sarah said, her voice gentler than before. “You were a child.”

  “And Laurel. She’s not like . . . She’s not like the person you describe. She’s different now.”

  Sarah laughed dryly. “Not Laurel,” she said. “Laurel won’t ever change.”

  “Mom! You don’t even know her. You’re basing this on, what? What happened over twenty years ago. People change. She’s not . . . She’s different from how you remember her. She just wants another chance to have a family.”

  “No, Jessie, I don’t think she has changed. For Laurel, no one will ever be as important as Laurel.” She paused briefly and drew a breath. “And do you want to know why I am absolutely certain that that is still true?”

  “Yes!”

  “I know that it is true because I do not think that any mother who was thinking of someone other than herself would ask her own daughter what she asked of you.”

  For a moment neither of them spoke. Sarah seemed to be waiting for Jessie to say something. When she didn’t, Sarah went on.

  “Yes, I am angry with you, Jessie. I think you were very foolish to agree to this. But I am angrier with Laurel. What kind of mother asks her own daughter to give up her eggs? To give up her child?”

  “Liza’s not—”

  “Yes, she is. She is your biological child, whether you choose to see it that way or not. Laurel wasn’t thinking of what was best for you when she asked you for your eggs, I guarantee it. She was thinking of what was best for Laurel—just like she always has and always will.”

  CHAPTER 49

  Six Months Later

  Jessie

  It was still dark outside when her telephone rang. Jessie could hear it ringing but clung to her dream, surfacing only slowly into consciousness. She saw first the black beyond the windows, then checked the clock: 5:12 a.m. The ringing had stopped, the call gone to voicemail. Jessie let her head sink back onto the pillow and closed her eyes. A moment later the relentless rings began again. Heath stirred beside her; Jessie roused herself and slipped quietly from the bed. She took her phone from the dresser and glanced at the screen. It was Laurel. She stepped into the bathroom as she answered it.

  “Hello?” she croaked into her phone, her throat dry from sleep.

  “Oh, you picked up. Thank God!”

  “Mom, it’s not even—”

  “I know, I know. It’s too early to call. But I had to talk to you. They’re gone!” Laurel’s voice was hysterical.

  “Who’s gone? Mom, wait a second. I really have to pee.”

  Before her mother could protest, she set the phone on the sink and used the toilet, then washed her hands and downed half a cup of water from a toothpaste-streaked cup.

  “Sorry,” she said, returning the phone to her ear. “But I just woke up and I really had to go. Now—what’s going on?”

  “They’re gone,” Laurel said again, urgently. “Liza! And Sue! They’re gone.”

  A jolt went through Jessie. “What? What do you mean gone? Have you called the police—?”

  “The police?” Laurel sounded puzzled. “No, it’s not like that. It’s Sue. She’s . . . she’s taken her.”

  “Taken her? What do you mean?”

  “When I woke up this morning, I didn’t hear Liza. I thought it was odd, because usually she wakes me up. But at first I didn’t
think much of it. I just thought she must still be asleep. And then I went downstairs and there was this . . .” Laurel’s voice cracked. “There was this note on the table—from Sue. She’d taken her.”

  Jessie’s head was spinning. She went quietly into the kitchen and sat down at the table.

  “Mom, slow down, please. I don’t understand. What did the note say, exactly?”

  “Here, I’ll read it to you.” There was no pause; Laurel must have had it in hand.

  “Did this just happen?” Jessie asked.

  “Yes, I called you right away.”

  “Well, what does it say?” Jessie’s heart began to pound.

  “Dear Jim and Laurel,

  I know that you will probably think it is cowardly of me to tell you this in a letter, and perhaps it is. But I wanted to avoid a scene, for Liza’s sake. I am leaving this house, and I am taking my daughter with me.

  ‘But why?’ I know you are asking, so I will tell you.

  Two weeks ago, when I dropped Liza off at daycare, they asked me, ‘Who will be picking her up today? You or her grandmother?’ Of course they meant you, Laurel, and all at once it hit me—this is what it will be like for her for her entire childhood.

  I love my daughter more than anything and I can’t do this to her. I don’t want her to have to explain all the time. Can you imagine how it will be for her? ‘Yes, I have two mothers. No, they’re not lesbians. Well, technically she’s my grandmother, but actually . . .’

  ‘I don’t want that for her. Please, don’t misunderstand. I want to be clear. It’s not that I think it’s wrong or immoral to try to do what we did. It’s not that I think there’s anything wrong with polyamory. Honestly, I couldn’t care less what or whom or how many consenting adults choose to love.

  But that’s not what it’s like in our case, is it? Because there’s no true love between us.

  ‘But we do love you, Sue!’ I can almost hear you say as I write this, and I know what you mean when you say it. There is fondness between us, respect, companionship. But it is not the love of partners.

  Maybe you two have that—I hope so, for your sakes. But I don’t have it. We always knew it, didn’t we? Only before, it didn’t seem to matter. I always thought I was happy enough. But now, with Liza, it does matter. It won’t be long before she begins to understand, and I don’t want her to see her mother as some kind of perpetual third wheel, someone who never really had love of her own. I don’t want to see myself that way. And I don’t want Liza to have to explain, over and over, about our odd family, to always have to live with that.