The wheels were set in motion. I was on my way to carrying the Straubs’ baby. The embryo transfer was to take place in the middle of May. The hormones and steroids that I took leading up to it were debilitating. I felt sick most of the time, nauseous and bloated, but the physical side effects weren’t as taxing as the anxiety—the buzzing undercurrent of fear that it might not work. Amelia would lose faith in me quickly if I wasn’t successful. She would move on to another surrogate or birth mother. Her adoration would vanish if I failed her.
I’d had several unexpected visits from Ian since I moved. If he was dropping off plans for Amelia and Fritz, he’d ring my doorbell. At first I found it intrusive. But after a while I kind of got used to it. We’d have coffee or a drink, depending on what time of day it was. He never stayed for very long. Fortunately, he’d stopped asking about Jasper, but I could still see the question behind his eyes.
In early May he came by late in the day and suggested we go to dinner at a pub in Brooklyn Heights. We sat in a booth and ordered hamburgers, fries, and a bottle of red wine. He told me about the estate he was designing in New Jersey. Then he told me about a pied-à-terre he was designing in Rome. We talked about symmetry, asymmetry, light, shadow, focus points.
The waiter delivered our burgers. CNN was playing on a television behind the bar.
“I have to go to Rome next week,” he said. “Will you come with me?”
His invitation was the last thing I was expecting. “No.”
“Just for a weekend.”
I didn’t want to go to Rome. Not with Ian. “I have an obligation.”
“Are there rules about Rome?” He tried to laugh.
I looked down at my plate to put ketchup and mustard on my hamburger, then arranged the lettuce and tomato. “I can’t.”
My “relationship” with Ian, if you could call it that, was supposed to be on a slow track. His request felt like a trick.
“You’re trying to live someone else’s life,” he said, “when your own life could be terrific.”
Ian wanted to believe that he understood me better than I understood myself.
In reality, he didn’t have a clue. Not a clue.
The following day, Eliza greeted Natalie at the front door. My cat was growing used to Natalie’s visits. Natalie knelt on the ground next to her. She stroked her behind her ears.
“My mom says she’s allergic to cats. She used to say she was allergic to dogs. One day my dad brought Itzhak home. He said he’d return him if she sneezed. And she didn’t.”
I hadn’t told Natalie about Itzhak biting me, and I gathered Amelia hadn’t either. I felt it was unnecessary information, especially since the dog’s behavior toward me had returned to normal, and I was doing my best to put the incident behind me.
Eliza purred contentedly and licked her paws.
Natalie walked down the hall toward the back of the apartment. “Your apartment has personality already.” She picked up a framed photo of Jasper at the beach that I’d placed on one of my end tables. The prior evening, I’d chosen to place three pictures of Jasper in inconspicuous places: my bedside table, an end table, and my desk, as if I didn’t want anyone to see them. “That picture was taken at the beach in Venice.”
“How often do you talk to him?” she asked.
“Isn’t he beautiful?”
“He has black hair.” She traced his form in the photo with her finger. “He doesn’t look like you.”
“We have the same nose.” I’d noticed that and been pleased about that trait that I shared with my Jasper.
“Do you miss him?” She traced my form with her finger. She was studying the photo so carefully. Even though I believed in the photo, the same way I believed in my son, I had a few moments of anxiety, wondering if she would detect anything unusual about the picture that would lead her to question its verisimilitude.
I sat on the sofa and leaned back against the cushions. “This morning, I went to the grocery store. Everything I saw reminded me of Jasper.” I crossed my legs and adjusted a pillow behind my back.
“When’s he coming back to live with you?” She looked around the apartment. I had carefully arranged Jasper’s belongings. Not a lot of them—a teddy bear and several children’s books had yet to be unpacked. The objects didn’t look staged. They looked natural. I had a drawer full of his clothing and a futon for his bed.
“Do you know?” she asked.
I could see Jasper in Venice by the boardwalk. I could see him playing baseball with his father. He had a head of dark curls, roses in his cheeks, and glowing olive skin. I was tempted to tell her that it was a matter of weeks.
The reason he was still in California … his father and I had decided that he needed a male role model, a strong man in his life. I felt the loss of Jasper.
“His father has enrolled him in a school there.”
Natalie eyed me. “You said he was coming back soon.” I heard derision in her voice.
“It’s a special school and we’ve decided it will be best for him.”
“What’s wrong with you?” She scowled at me.
“I’m looking out for him.”
“Does your kid even exist?”
My throat tightened. “Yes. Of course.”
“Why aren’t you more upset?” Natalie said. “You should be really upset.”
In Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, there’s an imaginary child who dies. It was one of the few plays I’d seen, and I only saw it because years ago I’d dated a second-rate actor who’d performed in an inferior production of it.
“Maybe you feel neglected and you assume that Jasper feels neglected too. But I assure you he doesn’t.” An image of Jasper locked in a closet played over in my mind. An image of Jasper’s nose bleeding and his wrist broken. My little boy. It was my job to protect him. I wouldn’t allow any harm to come to Jasper.
“You’ve abandoned him,” she said. Natalie’s opinion of me was slipping. I would have to work hard to regain her trust.
I adjusted the pillow behind my back again. “I’m doing what’s best for him.”
She returned the picture to the end table and stepped away from it, like it was poison. “You’re a liar.”
“My ex-husband remarried. Jasper has a stepmother and a father in California.” I stood and reached out to take her hand, but she pulled away. “I’m putting his interests first.” Tears filled my eyes. I’d always been skilled at crying on cue, when the situation called for it.
“But you’re his mom!”
“I send him a letter every day. I FaceTime with him once a week.”
“You told me you FaceTime every day.”
“It’s as often as possible.”
In my heart, I knew I was telling Natalie the emotional truth of the situation. I wasn’t certain who was responsible for Jasper’s injuries. Who was responsible for his scars. Was it me? Was it his stepmother? I forced myself to conjure the image of his stepmother. I used one of my clients, a well-dressed dermatologist, because it was the first one that came to me.
Natalie slumped onto my living room sofa in a despondent fashion. I noticed the chartreuse nail polish on her fingernails, a purposefully ugly color. She picked up my Canon DSLR that was resting on the coffee table and studied it in a distracted manner. Several minutes passed. I remained silent.
Finally she spoke. “It sucks to be young.” She removed the lens cap of the camera in her hand. “What are all the buttons and dials?”
She looked through the viewfinder.
“Photography is about light,” I said. “Different ways to control the amount of light you want to allow through. Most times you don’t have enough light. Occasionally you have too much light.”
“How do you give a photo more light?”
“Three camera settings: ISO, aperture, and shutter speed.” I pointed to the adjustment for each, respectively.
“Can I take your picture?”
“Look through the viewfinder. Slowly squeeze the shutter until it fires.”
She pointed the camera toward me.
“You are beautiful,” she said.
It was true that I was beautiful. But I didn’t want to be more beautiful than Natalie. Rather, I didn’t want her to think I was more beautiful than she was.
She handed the camera back to me and I looked at the photo of myself.
“It’s a little dark,” I said. “Turn the shutter speed to sixty.”
She took the camera. “I went on your website,” she said. “I saw the pictures of Lucia in the maternity section.”
I experienced a mild burning sensation in my chest. “Did you like them?”
“I didn’t know you were in touch with her. I didn’t know you took pictures of her.”
“Mm-hmm.” Yes, I’d taken pictures of Lucia. Of course. I’d taken pictures of most people in my life. I was a photographer, after all.
“Weird that her boyfriend reappeared.” She snapped several photographs, then stopped taking photos and looked at me directly. “Don’t you think it’s weird?”
“You never know what people will do.”
Natalie shook her head. She studied my camera and adjusted several of the dials. We played some of the photos back. She had no interest in glamour. She went out of her way to find the moments when I’d divorced myself from my appearance.
“Natalie. I’m amazed by who you are. And astounded by your generosity and your talent.”
I opened the door to the patio. It was pleasantly cool outside, a breezy spring afternoon. She followed me out.
“Photography is always better outside,” I said. “The sun does the work. Energy is added, not subtracted.” Natalie asked me to sit on the chair opposite her and she continued to photograph me. When she played the photos back, I looked over her shoulder to see the images.
“Take pictures of Eliza,” I said. “That’s one of the most challenging things. Animals keep moving. Same with small children. And they can’t help their honesty.”
She knelt on the bluestone patio and photographed my cat. Eliza was champagne colored with very dark gray accents on her paws and streaks everywhere, which made for some interesting abstract photos.
For the next two hours, she photographed the patio, the cat, the apartment, my shoes, my face, my sofa. The sun began to set.
“Your parents are going to want you home soon.”
“Just a minute.”
She was enjoying herself. I went to my camera shelf and looked at my collection. I had two relatively new DSLRs and two mirrorless cameras. I also had an early, but very good, Sony digital, my first camera, that I didn’t use anymore.
I handed her the camera, along with its charger and memory card. “You can keep this one and practice.”
“What?” Her face expanded with surprise.
“I don’t use it.”
She was trying not to smile, but I could tell how pleased she was. “It’s too big a present. My mom will tell me that I can’t have it.”
I put my arms around her frame and kissed her warm cheek. “Tell your mom it’s a loaner.”
Eyes shining, she put the strap around her neck and placed her hands on the Sony in a proprietary manner. I was her mentor now.
On an unseasonably warm afternoon, I was editing on my computer when I heard a dripping sound. I looked in the bedroom and saw a puddle on the floor. Some karmic retribution. I sent Fritz a text and a few minutes later he came down to check it out. It appeared to be a leak from the AC.
While we were waiting for a return call from the HVAC repair company, I offered Fritz a drink. “I was a bartender in a former life.” Actually, I’d never worked as a bartender. Over the years, I’d noticed that experimenting with cocktail recipes made alcoholics feel better about themselves, as if consuming an alcoholic drink had more to do with the taste than anything else.
“OK. Surprise me.”
I mixed a drink and set it down in front of him on the kitchen counter. “It’s called a Silk Panty martini.”
Fritz’s face colored. He took a sip. His eyes widened, and he took another sip. “You can return to your career as a bartender anytime you want.”
I smiled.
He swished his drink in front of him, in a small circle. “Are you having one?” Then he appeared to read my mind. “You’re not pregnant yet.”
I made myself the same drink, then sat next to him at the counter.
“Here’s to Silk Panties.” He clinked my glass. “It’s delicious, by the way.”
I tried to laugh, but the mood had shifted into something harder to manage.
“Natalie’s so happy that you’ve moved in here,” he said. “I hope she’s not crowding you.”
“Never,” I said. “And you? Are you happy I’m here?”
He took another sip. “Of course I am.” I noticed beads of perspiration on his forehead.
I was wearing a cream-colored dress with a low V-neck. I ran my fingers down my neck and along the neckline of the dress, lingering at the bottom of the V.
Fritz took his glasses off and cleaned them with his T-shirt, a familiar behavior that often seemed to accompany some nervousness on his part. He replaced them on his nose.
Various scenarios ran through my head. Rationally, I understood that sex with Fritz could have negative consequences. Even if Amelia didn’t find out, such an action would complicate my position as the Straubs’ surrogate. Still, my desire persisted. If I had sex with Fritz, I would be separating Amelia and Fritz from each other, just slightly, so that I would have a more primary position with each of them.
“Is there anything I can do for you, Fritz?” I said.
His cell phone rang. It was Amelia calling.
May 14: The embryo transfer took place at Krasnov’s office in the early morning. I was scheduled to return in ten days to find out if I was pregnant.
That afternoon, Ian stopped by. He came into the living room and sat down on the sofa. He had an odd expression on his face.
“I met your son.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about. I laughed.
“Really,” he said. “I met Jasper.” He was smiling with his mouth wide open, like a silent laugh. He had a manic look in his eyes.
“What do you mean?” A feeling of nausea made its way from my stomach to my throat.
Ian stood and paced back and forth across the living room. “My college roommate was in town. He invited me over to his cousin Robert’s place for brunch. Robert’s son is Jasper. Jasper’s mother is Alexis.”
My mind raced for a way out of this situation. I was doing my best to control my breath. “It’s a funny coincidence,” I said, “that the child’s name is Jasper. But my son is in California.” Long, slow inhalations and exhalations. I needed to appear unfazed by his story.
“You’ve shown me more than ten pictures of Jasper. I saw one of those pictures in their apartment.” He looked around my apartment. On an end table, he spotted a framed photo of Jasper at his birthday party, blowing the candles out on his cake. He picked it up. “I saw the exact same photo on their bookshelf. Same kid, same T-shirt, same cake with a picture of a dog on top. They hired you as their family photographer.” He waved the photo in the air. “You know, I memorized Jasper’s face because I cared about you, and I imagined, one day, maybe I’d take the kid to ball games. Maybe I’d help him with his homework.” He smiled again with the same manic look.
“My son is in California.” I kept my voice low and calm.
Ian’s smile disappeared and his face turned dark. “For Christ’s sake, have you ever told me the truth about anything? Who are you?”
“Shhh.” I was worried that the Straubs would overhear him.
He pointed upstairs. “Tell them the truth.”
I sat down next to him on the sofa, analyzing the various ways in which I might be able to neutralize the situation.
I took his hand in mine and closed my eyes. “I do have a son.” Tears spilled down my face. “His father took him to California when he was six months old, and I haven’t seen him since.” My whole body shook with heaving sobs. “I don’t know if he’s safe. I don’t know if my little boy is OK. When I met Jasper at his birthday party, he looked like I imagined my son might look. It was comforting to me, just to tell myself that someone was looking after him.” I folded onto Ian’s shoulder. He pushed me back and stood up.
“Get away. Get away from me.” In a moment he was out the door.
May 18: six days left.
Natalie arrived at my apartment in blue jeans and a thin almost transparent T-shirt that highlighted her skinniness. It said Normal people scare me. It was an indication of low self-esteem. She wore high-heeled wedge sandals. It was essentially the same outfit she’d worn the previous day and the day before that. She was pushing the envelope in her sophistication and maturity and had turned up the volume abruptly. But her personality was still vulnerable.
I consciously chose not to discuss my potential pregnancy, unless Natalie brought it up—though not a minute passed that I wasn’t thinking about it, analyzing every physical sensation in my body, every twinge, every cramp, hoping for clues. I’d been having little conversations with the baby, alone in my apartment, and I believed the baby heard me.
Natalie pulled her Sony out of the camera bag. She turned it over, setting and resetting the dials. “In seventh grade, photography’s one of the electives at my school.”
I detected a hint of enthusiasm, which was unusual for her these days.
“I’ll definitely take photography when I’m in seventh grade.”
“What kind of photography subjects interest you the most?”
“People.”
In the background, we could hear the peaceful hum of the dryer. I’d never had laundry in my own apartment before.
“There are all the pictures where someone says ‘smile’ and everyone smiles,” Natalie said. “But I want to take pictures of people acting like they really act. When they’re sad or angry or scared. Sometimes I look at my mom and I want to take a picture of what she looks like when she’s not performing. She’s performing most of the time.”
Natalie was looking to unmask. It was dangerous to take a photo of someone without their permission, with the intention of catching them unaware and exposing something inside them that they never intended to show to the public. Natalie didn’t seem to care.
Later that day I received a text from Ian: Tell Amelia and Fritz the truth.
I wrote back: give me time.
May 24: The implantation failed as a result of poor embryo quality. When I learned the news, I felt a heavy weight bearing down on top of me, almost as though I might have trouble staying aboveground. It was Amelia’s failure. Not mine. It had nothing to do with my uterus. I was angry with Amelia. But, even so, I worried that she would find a way to blame me.
So I was surprised at her reaction to the news. “Delta, darling, please, please, please … Please try again. I know we can do this.” She shone all her light on me.
There was no recrimination. No criticism.
“Of course, Amelia.”
“I love you,” she said.
Even if I’d wanted to, there would have been no way to resist her entreaty.
I called Ian’s mother that evening. We had spoken a few times since she’d moved to Florida. She said the recovery from her hip surgery was slow and painful.
“I’m just pathetic, Delta.” Paula laughed. “I still can’t drive, not even to the grocery store.”
“Tell Ian you need him there to help you.” I waited for a response. “Paula?”
She sighed. “OK. OK, fine.”
“If you were to fall and no one was with you, Ian would never forgive himself.”