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“You’re right. This is a bad idea. Sorry, I just—”
“You just want to be a mom,” Kate said, holding my hands tighter. “Listen, I still think you should talk to Ben before you go meet any sort of potential baby mama, but if you really want to go through with this first, I’ll come with you. I don’t want you going by yourself.”
“Thank you. But... I should never have sent that email. I can’t shut Ben out of this, no matter how much easier it might be.” Kate gave me a small, sad smile. “I’m going to cancel.” My phone’s alarm went off. “Gotta run. I need to be at the restaurant by ten.”
I stood and hugged Kate tightly. “Thanks for talking me off the ledge.”
“Thanks for the latte. I needed it. You gonna be okay?”
I nodded. “Fine. You know me—I’m not a quitter.”
“No,” Kate said, shaking her head. “You are not.”
“Let me know if you need a hand with the girls after school, okay? You can put your feet up and I can make dinner.”
“Deal,” Kate said. A minute later I was waving at Kate as she stood in her doorway, heading toward the BART station. Fifteen minutes later while I waited for my train, I pulled out my phone and checked my messages. One from Ben, wanting to take me out for dinner tomorrow night; one from my mom, making sure I wouldn’t forget to call my uncle George after his gallbladder surgery; and another one from Lyla, confirming our meeting the next afternoon. Ignoring the messages from Ben and my mom for the moment, I hit Reply and told Lyla I’d see her there and was looking forward to it, then got on the train trying not to feel guilty about lying to everyone.
11 (#ulink_3663b100-3f38-5077-88ea-ba2d0d45792e)
HANNAH
As I stood in the coffee line, secretly observing Lyla—who was engrossed in something on her phone—all I could think about was how tiny she was, her hips narrow and legs so short her feet only just grazed the floor when she was sitting down. I had good hips for pregnancy—wide and sturdy. I was also, at five-eight, on the tall side for a woman and so assumed that when Ben and I had a child he or she would probably end up tall—perhaps a volleyball player like Ben had been, or a rower like me.
I still hadn’t allowed myself to really consider what I was doing here—that this woman, waiting for her green tea latte and cinnamon coffee cake, was prepared to use her own eggs and body to carry a child for me, a complete stranger. Lyla looked up and smiled, and I smiled back, face flushing at being caught staring.
The guilt that swept through me was deep and swift, and I had the sudden urge to run back out through the coffee shop’s front door and pretend like I hadn’t agreed to this. Or better yet, I wished I could go back and erase that first email I’d sent Lyla, finish my ice cream and go back to bed instead of hitting Send. I should have told Ben—I had lied to him about something important exactly once in our relationship, back when we were still figuring out who we were to each other, and had promised him at the time I wouldn’t do it again. That was not who we were. My stomach knotted, and I felt sick.
“Fourteen seventy-five,” the young guy at the cash register said, and I had the feeling based on the tone of his voice that it wasn’t the first time he’d told me what I owed.
I mumbled an apology and fished a twenty out of my wallet, handing it to him with a smile. He gave me my change and the place card holder with my number, and I went back to our table.
Lyla looked up as I sat down and I noticed her eyes were brown, flecked with amber highlights that almost looked like there were tiny lights behind her irises. They were pretty. I had accepted that if we were to go the surrogate route, the baby would not look like me. Lyla was quite fair skinned, so at least Ben’s coloring would shine through. For some reason that mattered to me—that the baby looked like one of us—though I knew I should have let go of that ages ago.
“They’ll bring it out to us.” I placed the numbered card on the edge of our table.
“Thank you,” Lyla said, her voice exuberant and her smile wide. “So, Hannah, why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself?”
Her forwardness caught me off guard, until I remembered this wasn’t the first time she’d sat across from a woman she was considering carrying a baby for. I hated that I was the inexperienced one—the desperate one. The one who needed something and who had so much to lose.
“Well, let’s see,” I said, chewing one of my cuticles—a nervous habit I had been trying to break since I was a girl. You could always tell the state of my anxiety or stress based on the shape of my cuticles. “I’m thirty-five, grew up in Marin—Mill Valley, specifically. I’m a recipe developer at Femme magazine, which means I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, cooking and eating, so as you can imagine it’s a great job.”
“Oh, I love the recipes in Femme,” Lyla said. “I don’t know how you stay so thin, having to eat everything.”
I smiled at the compliment and wished I could record it for my mother. “Well, we have a little industry trick. We don’t swallow most of what we taste—we spit it out. It sounds gross I know, but it’s the only way to avoid buying a new wardrobe every year. I gained about ten pounds the first six months I was at the magazine until I learned the taste-and-spit trick.”
“Huh, I never even thought about that, but it makes sense. What about your family? Are they here in San Francisco?”
“My dad died when I was ten,” I said, then thanked her when she told me she was sorry to hear that. “My mom lives over in Pacific Heights with my sister and her husband.” I cleared my throat and looked over to the coffee bar, hoping our drinks were on their way. The nervousness in my belly was increasing with every word.
“Are ya’ll close?” Lyla asked. “You and your sister?”
I looked back at her. “Claire’s five years younger than me, but yeah, I guess we’re close? Or as close as you can be when you have that many years between you.” Claire was an associate partner at her husband Peter Todd’s law firm and expected to make full partner within the next year—which would make her the youngest partner at the firm. And it had nothing to do with nepotism. She worked hard; she got what she wanted. As for me, I liked my job—a lot most days. I got to work with food—my first love—and it was the sort of work that allowed room for motherhood, too. But careers and age difference aside, the truth was that Claire and I were different in every way we could be—she was ambitious and confident, petite and pretty, while I was less so in all areas.
Lyla nodded. “I get that. My two boys are quite close in age, but have very different personalities. Luke is the oldest, and a risk taker—he’s going to turn my hair gray soon. Jason, my husband, says we’re going to spend a lot of time in the ER with Luke.” She smiled. “And Johnny is only fifteen months younger, but he’s an old soul. He’s a very quiet and responsible boy.”
“Do you have a picture?” I asked.
“I do!” Lyla shifted her chair to come beside me. She smelled like lavender and mint, and I took a deep breath in, the scent pleasant and relaxing. “Here’s Luke last year in the school play.” I looked at the screen on her phone, seeing a boy—around six or seven I guessed—dressed in a brown sheet cinched at the waist with a belt and sandals, a huge smile on his face—Lyla’s smile. “He played Joseph.” I nodded and murmured how sweet he looked, glancing at the next picture she pulled up. “And this is Johnny, also last Christmas.” Johnny sat in front of a fully decorated Christmas tree. He wore glasses and smiled, though he showed no teeth.
“They’re very handsome,” I said. “And really look like you.”
Lyla looked at the photos, still smiling. “I get that a lot.”
My stomach dropped, thinking again that no one would ever say that about my child—if I could even find a way to have a child. I pushed the sadness away and focused on my coffee and brioche, which had just arrived.
Lyla went on to say she and Jason had just celebrated their ten-year anniversary, and had moved from Texas to San Francisco a year ago to move in with his mother, who was ill. Jason was working as a security guard but wanted to become a police officer, and while Lyla had worked as a medical receptionist in Texas, she was taking care of Jason’s mom and the boys now. I commented how tough it must have been to make the move, and she shrugged, saying that she wasn’t close to her own family and Jason’s mom was like a mother to her.
“So why are you looking into surrogacy?” Lyla asked.
I was suddenly uncomfortable—as much as I knew this was the conversation we needed to be having, I didn’t want to be having it.
“Oh, well, wow. Where do I start?” I laughed, but it came out sounding forced, and Lyla gave me a sympathetic smile. “We’ve been trying for six years, which when you say it out loud seems like way too long, doesn’t it?” I shook my head and took a deep breath, hoping it might relieve the tension sitting in a band across my chest. It didn’t. “I’ve been pregnant three times but miscarried very early on. And other than that, no luck. We’ve been working with a fertility specialist for about four years now.”
“I’m sorry, Hannah. That must be real difficult for you and Ben.”
“Thanks, yeah, it hasn’t been...easy. But I’m lucky. He’s amazingly supportive.” Except he has no idea I’m here talking with you, and I’m not sure what that says about me. About us.
“Are ya’ll married?” Lyla’s tone was casual, but the way she looked at me suggested otherwise.
“Yes! Didn’t I mention that? Seven years.”
“Oh, good,” she said, stirring her latte and sucking some of the green-tinged foam off the spoon. “Sorry if that sounds strange, but that’s real important to me and Jason.”
“Of course, I understand completely.”
“Do you and Ben belong to a church?”
I had been dreading this, knowing it was important to Lyla, and wasn’t sure how to answer. I went with the truth.
“No, we don’t.” I took a bite of my brioche and left it up to her to decide what to do with that.
“That’s okay,” Lyla said, forking her cinnamon cake and popping the piece into her mouth. I waited while she chewed and swallowed. “I just need to let you know I won’t do any genetic testing with the baby or anything like that and I’m pro-life.” She said this casually, as if we were discussing a new restaurant opening or the weekend weather forecast.
I sat there with my mouth open for a moment, surprised at how quickly we were at this stage of the conversation. “Of course,” I said again, swallowing hard. I hadn’t thought any of this through, and it was becoming clear I had not been ready to hit Send on that email.
“Do you have any questions for me?” she asked, pressing the back of her fork into the sugary crumbs that dotted her plate. She licked her fork and looked at me expectantly, her face open and friendly.
Yes, Lyla, I have no fewer than a million questions for you. Like, why are you doing this? How does this whole thing work? Do we pay you in one lump sum or monthly? Will we get to come to all the ultrasounds and be at the delivery? Will you agree to take a multivitamin every day and never drink a sip of alcohol? Will you talk to the baby while it grows, tell it about us?
“A few,” I said, trying to decide the best way to ask her the questions that overtook my mind, certain I couldn’t find a diplomatic way to ask the most important question: How will you place this baby into my arms, knowing it is part of you? “But how about another piece of cake first?”
12 (#ulink_a5743d65-f47b-587b-bb4f-44e801507c37)
KATE
David and I were sitting in the gym’s parents’ lounge—really a well-used room with plastic orange chairs and fluorescent lights that made the purple walls practically glow—watching the girls at their weekly gymnastics class and drinking bad coffee from the café next door. Every time I sat watching one of their classes I felt grateful for my mom, who had endured years of thrice-weekly dance classes and competition weekends throughout my childhood and teenage years, never complaining about uncomfortable plastic chairs or bad coffee or the time it took away from her having her own hobbies.
I took a sip from my white plastic take-out cup and grimaced. “Next time, why don’t we make coffee at home and bring it?” I silently thanked my mom again. “Oh, almost forgot. I’m meeting Hannah for a drink tomorrow night. That okay?”
“Sure. How is she doing?”
I paused. Long enough for David to swivel in his chair and look at me.
“She’s okay.”
“And?” he asked.
“And nothing.” I gave Josie a thumbs-up after her unassisted cartwheel and smiled big.
“Kate, what’s up? I know that look.”
“What look?” I asked, but then sighed and took a deep breath. “Fine. She was planning to meet with a surrogate.”
“A surrogate? Where?”
“Here. In town.”
David let out a low whistle. “I didn’t realize they were at that stage of things.”
“Well, they aren’t exactly at that stage of things.” I shrugged, then looked back at the girls. “It’s been six years and they’ve basically tried everything. I don’t blame her, but I’m worried for her.”
“What do you mean by they aren’t at that stage of things?”
I kept my eyes trained on the girls, even though they were doing nothing but waiting for their turns on the balance beam. “She didn’t tell Ben about the surrogate meeting.”
“What? Really? So, she was just going to go by herself? Without Ben?” David’s eyebrows rose along with his voice.
“I told her I’d go with her, but she said she was going to cancel anyway.”
“Katie...”
“What? I couldn’t very well let her go alone. She’s...she’s definitely off-kilter right now.”
David sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Do not get in the middle of this, Kate. She needs to talk with Ben, period. You can’t go meet a surrogate with her. This isn’t like getting dragged to boot camp for moral support or something. This is no small thing, and it’s between them.”
“Don’t you think I know that?”
“Do you?”
I looked back at the girls, trying to mellow the irritation threatening to take over. “It doesn’t matter, because I talked her out of it.”
“I hope so. I would lose it if you did something like that without telling me.”
We sat in silence for a moment. “How would it even work?” David asked. “They don’t have embryos, right?”
“This surrogate would use her own eggs.”
“So the baby would be Ben’s and this other woman’s?” David gave his head a couple of quick shakes. “No way. I could never do that.”
“Why? It’s not really different from adoption when you think about it. Except at least Ben’s genes would get in there.”
“But what if this woman decided to keep the baby in the end? I mean, it would be her baby, right?”
“It would,” I said, frowning at the thought. “I don’t think Hannah really thought it all through.”
“Shit, Ben would flip if he knew she had propositioned this woman without telling him.”
“She didn’t exactly ‘proposition’ her,” I said, his choice of words grating on me; my need to defend Hannah boiling up. “It was more curiosity, or a reconnaissance mission, I guess.”
“Still...don’t you think he’d be open to it? He wants a kid as much as she does. But not telling him?” David shook his head again. “That’s a sure way to guarantee he won’t go along with it.”
“Well, she implied he wasn’t on board with the idea anyway.”
“That makes it worse,” David said. “I love Hannah, but she’s playing a dangerous game here.”
I pressed my lips together, pausing for a moment. “She’s desperate, David.”
“Desperate enough to risk her marriage?”
I shrugged. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about Hannah and Ben sticking it out if there was no baby—a relationship could only bend so much under stress before it snapped. And Hannah keeping this from Ben felt like a big crack in their happy marital veneer.
David nudged my shoulder, and I lifted my coffee cup to avoid spilling it on my legs. “For the record, if you ever kept anything big like that from me I’d be beyond pissed.”
“Noted, and ditto.”
* * *
“Are they asleep?” David looked at me from our bed, lying on top of the duvet in his boxers and an old hole-filled T-shirt from his days as a first aid instructor. He had plenty of shirts, including others from his instructor days, but for whatever reason this was the one I couldn’t get him to let go of. I filed it under things-to-ignore-even-though-they-drive-me-crazy-because-I-love-my-husband-more-than-I-hate-what-he’s-wearing.
“They are.” I got into bed beside him. Running my hands over his chest, feeling the softness of the fabric, I remembered back when we were as new as the T-shirt. Pushing it up, the black color now faded to a velvety gray, I planted a row of kisses around his exposed belly button. His abs flexed, and I looked up to see him smiling. “I’m going to lock the door,” I whispered into his stomach, kissing it again. I jumped to my knees and scrambled off the bed, my feet padding softly on the hardwood floor of our bedroom. With a quick twist of my hand, our bedroom door was locked—one of the best tips my hippie mother-in-law, a sex educator, had ever given me, even though I had been horrified at the time—and I was back in bed stretched out beside David.
“Do you think they’ll be okay?” I asked.
“Who?” His voice was low, his lips caressing my ear and whispering that I had too much clothing on. I obliged by lifting my arms over my head so he could do something about that.
“Hannah and Ben,” I replied, only half paying attention to what his hands were doing. “If they can’t have a baby, do you think they’ll stay together?” My heart beat faster, in part from David’s touch and in part from imagining the end of Hannah and Ben, which was unacceptable as far as I was concerned.
David propped himself up on an elbow and rubbed his thumb over my jawline. “They’ll work it out. They love each other. And, yes, they’ve been through hell with all of this. But they are stronger than that. You’ll see. It’ll be okay.”
