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Fourth of July with the Family

What do you say to someone you’ve never met, who doesn’t speak English, and whose brain is approximately the size and consistency of a lump of personal pizza dough? Add to that the fact that you won’t be speaking to them directly but rather through the protruding belly skin of a woman you’ve known for less than a year. And go!

I had decided to record a message for Tiffany to play to my kids so they would know my voice. Suddenly, though, I’d found myself with a severe case of Daddy’s block. I couldn’t steal the Goodnight Moon thing. I’d feel like a fraud to my own kids. What else was there? Green Eggs and Ham? The libretto to Miss Saigon? At least I knew that one by heart. How about that paper I wrote for my college Shakespeare class on the notion of nothingness in King Lear? That was a solid A-minus, if I remembered correctly. It’s not like it mattered what I said anyway. The kids wouldn’t understand the words. The idea was that they would find comfort in the sound of my voice. My squealy, whimpering nerd voice. I tried to forget how much I hated the sound of it on tape and just hit “Record.”

“Well, hewwo there, everyone! It’s your Daddy! How’re my wittle fwiends today?”

Stop. Ugh, did I just do that? Baby talk? Erase! Time for a new take.

“This is a message for the two best babies in the whole wide world!”

Stop. Yuck. Pandering. These fetuses are going to walk all over me if they hear me talking like that. I needed to sound more natural.

“Yo! Daddy here!”

Stop. Just stop. I didn’t need to talk down to my kids just because they were roughly the size of gerbils. Even their precognizant mush brains deserved a little respect.

Nothing I said sounded right. I didn’t want to force my kids to listen to me rambling nonsense night after night, much less my sister-in-law and my surrogate. They’d think it was sweet at first, but after a few weeks, it’d be a regular nuisance. Ugh, time to play the tape again. Susie and Tiffany would probably work up an impression of my baby tape and crack each other up by doing it. “Yeah, Tiff, you really nailed his awkward pause that time!” Together, they’d swipe my heartfelt sentiments and turn them into catchphrases to use behind my back. Why not? It’s what I would do.

My baby tape would be only one of dozens of things bonding Tiffany and Susie. From the sound of things, they were getting along famously. When Drew called his sister to check in, she always had a ton of stories to share, usually with Tiffany guffawing in the background.

For years, Tiffany had been making Eric a thermos full of coffee to keep him awake during his night shifts. When they were out of cream, she grabbed the closest thing she could find—Bailey’s Irish Cream. She didn’t realize until Susie pointed it out that her dairy substitute was 17 percent alcohol. Of course, Eric never complained.

Tiffany would tease Susie constantly about finding her a boyfriend. “You’ll make a great wife someday,” she assured her. “You’re so homely.” She had meant to say “homey,” of course, but by misspeaking, she provided them with one of their favorite running jokes. They’d also discovered the computer game Plants vs. Zombies and would kill hours together by killing the walking dead.

“Did you get to the ones who ride dolphins yet?” Tiffany would ask.

“No, I’m stuck on the pole vaulters.”

“Block them with the giant nuts!”

Nothing was more entertaining to the stars of Wombmates than their wacky neighbor, Mrs.—well, nobody actually knew her name. Nobody knew much about her at all. She was ghostly and rail-thin—or maybe she was morbidly obese. She was in her late seventies or eighties, or perhaps she was only thirty-five. It was hard to tell much about her when all anyone ever saw was the faint glow of her irises peeking out from behind her curtains. All anyone knew for sure was that she was obsessed with the Irelands. Though she never spoke to them, she watched them the way other recluses watch QVC. Instead of ordering herself a lot of cheap crap, she sent the cheap crap to her neighbors.

Every few days, she’d drop off some bizarre gift on the Irelands’ doorstep. A plate of donuts, a can of off-brand cola, a dying potted plant. When Tiffany’s belly started to show, the goodies took on a prenatal tone. One day, it would be a trial-size can of Similac, the next a handful of newborn diapers or a set of feeding spoons rubber-banded together. She left a coloring book, presumably for Gavin, about being a big brother. Who knows what she thought of Susie. The gifts were unwrapped, save for a plastic Target bag. There was never a note or card. She didn’t ring the doorbell. Her packages would appear when the Irelands were away or in the backyard, as if by magic.

When we first met Tiffany, she reminded us deeply of Susie. Now the few differences they’d had seemed to be melting away. As Susie grew closer to our surrogate, so did we. Tiffany told us about her frustrations with work and how she was dreading turning thirty. To qualify for surrogacy, a woman has to agree that she’s not planning to have any more kids of her own, but Tiffany confessed to us that she really wanted another baby. Eric didn’t. If we’d known that before we chose her, it might have given us pause. At this stage, though, we trusted her fully with our kids.

Three weeks into Susie’s stay, we all decided that she’d earned a weekend off. Drew and I arrived on Saturday morning to pick her up. She would be gone only a day and a half, but from the way she hugged Tiffany good-bye, it was as if one of them were being deployed overseas. They were verging on inseparable.

I hopped in the back of the minivan, and we waved to the Irelands as we drove off.

“Woohoo! Weekend off! Let’s party!” I shouted, but nobody shared my enthusiasm. In the front seat, Susie had her head in her hands, trying to keep from sobbing.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Drew rested his hand on her shoulder. “You’re miserable, aren’t you?” It was then that whatever tears Susie had been holding back came out in a flood. “Oh, honey . . . ,” Drew said.

Was it possible I’d misread the entire situation? Clearly, Drew knew his sister better than I did. He’d seen through her brave face when I hadn’t. She was a champion at masking her pain, just like her brother. No wonder he knew she was faking it.

“Is she mean to you?” I asked.

“No!” Susie insisted. “Tiffany’s great.”

“Are you homesick?” She shook her head. Susie took a moment to collect herself, then she told us the part of the story she never felt comfortable sharing in Tiffany’s presence.

Many of her complaints were typical new job gripes. She was feeling overworked and underappreciated. With Tiffany always on the couch, Susie never had a moment to put her feet up. She was constantly mopping, scrubbing, changing diapers, playing board games, and, most exhausting of all, trying to stay upbeat. One night, Tiffany and Eric teased her about a lackluster dinner she’d prepared, and afterward, she closed the door to her room and bawled. Susie was also struggling with standard roommate issues—a lack of privacy, differing schedules and interests. Even Plants vs. Zombies had become a trial. It turned out Tiffany was hypercompetitive, turning each Flash-powered game into a showdown on the scale of Ali vs. Frazier. All Susie wanted to do was to slaughter zombies. Tiffany wanted to slaughter her new houseguest—and rub her face in it.

But the real problem wasn’t her—it was him.

“He hates me,” Susie confessed through her sobs. “He doesn’t like anything I do. He barely talks to me. I know he doesn’t want me there.”

Susie had a new nemesis, and he was only three feet tall. She may have been a hero to us, but to Gavin, she was Lex Luthor, a devious villain intent on taking over his world and destroying his hero, Mommy. Susie made scrambled eggs for him, changed his diapers, and played trains with him—all the things Mommy was supposed to do. She put him in time-out when he misbehaved, told him when to go to bed, and she made his peanut butter sandwiches all wrong. Mommy no longer did much of anything for him. When Gavin wanted something, Mommy’s response was, “Ask Susie.”

Our unique plan for making a baby had confused a lot of people, but none more than the little man whose life had changed the most of all. He could point at Mommy’s belly and say, “Drew and Jerry’s babies!” But when he pointed at Susie, he’d shout, “Go home!” To his two-year-old mind, Susie had been brought in to replace Mommy, and he was going to fight her with every weapon in his arsenal—tantrums, tantrums, and super-tantrums.

Gavin was at the age where he’d perfected that ear-piercing squeal only toddlers, teakettles, and suffocating dolphins make, the one that makes grown-ups give in instantly just so they’ll stop. That excruciating sound was just about the only thing Susie ever heard from him. That and “I don’t want you here!” More than once, he dragged her suitcase with all his might to the front door and demanded she leave his house, now. “Bye!” he’d shout.

“Gavin, I’m not . . .”

“Bye! Bye, Susie!” Then he’d shove her so hard she’d almost fall over.

The hardest part for Susie was that Tiffany did very little to stop Gavin’s defiance. It wasn’t just that she was bedridden and unable to chase after her kid. On some level, Tiffany must have appreciated the attention. With all the bed rest restrictions, she wasn’t even allowed to pick her son up or get down on the floor and play with him. The two fetuses she was carrying came between her and her favorite job, being a mother. Gavin’s fierce loyalty to her was one of the few things she was still able to enjoy. She never noticed how much it was hurting Susie.

Susie’s status among our friends had now eclipsed sainthood. She had taken on the aura of a mythical superhuman-like creature and was revered with goddess-like devotion by everyone we knew. Everyone except Rainbow Extensions.

“Well, good for her, but I would never do anything like that for my brother.” Our caseworkers may have changed, but their cluelessness was one constant we could count on.

I called them to make sure they were taking care of Tiffany financially. I knew how unreliable their accounting department was and how reluctant Tiffany was to complain. It seemed wise to step in.

“We haven’t paid her anything,” caseworker number 4283 told me. Not surprising, but what did shock me was the reason. “She hasn’t asked. In fact, I was going to ask you if you’d heard from her. She won’t return our calls.”

Tiffany had confessed to us before that she couldn’t stand Rainbow Extensions. They phoned her regularly to check in, but the calls were awkward and forced. They never knew what to say to her, and she never knew how to respond. When she saw Rainbow Extensions’ number pop up on her caller ID, she sent the call to voicemail, then deleted the message without listening to it.

We’d always been slightly amused by her attitude toward them, mostly because we wished we could do the same thing. Now, though, we were worried. She was losing a huge amount of money on bed rest. The Irelands may not have been destitute, but they weren’t rich either. Losing Tiffany’s salary was a big blow to them. How were they getting by?

We realized we were going to have to have a very uncomfortable talk with Tiffany, about the one subject surrogates and intended parents were never supposed to discuss: money. I knew why it was off limits. It devalued the whole arrangement to acknowledge the price tag. On some level, Drew and I were consumers purchasing a service from Tiffany, but it was better to talk about the other levels—the sacrifice, the goal, the gift of life. Pregnancy inspired happiness. Money inspired cynicism.

“Are you doing okay?” we asked Tiffany in her kitchen one day. “You know, financially?”

“Oh yeah. I’m fine, thanks for asking.”

“It’s just that Rainbow Extensions told us you never asked for your lost wages compensation.”

“Oh, I don’t want you guys to have to pay that.”

“But we want to!” Drew insisted. “You’re making babies for us. We want to take care of you.”

“You deserve it,” I added.

“If you don’t like dealing with the agency,” Drew said, “we can pay you directly. I’ll write you a check right now.”

Tiffany smiled and waved him off with her hand. “I don’t need it. I filed for disability.”

“You can get disability? How come Rainbow Extensions never told us that?”

Tiffany shrugged. “Because they’re idiots.”

Not wanting to deal with the agency, Tiffany had found her own solution to the problem, one that paid her 100 percent of her lost wages and saved us thousands of dollars. After all our worrying, it turned out she was the one taking care of us.

I realized that by sidestepping the subject of money, we had only been allowing the cynicism to flourish, to suppress our discomfort at the thought that when Tiffany looked at us, she saw dollar signs. It didn’t feel that way any longer. Now I knew for sure that we were on the same side.

We spent Fourth of July weekend with the Irelands, doing all the things people do on the Fourth of July. We cooked hamburgers on the backyard grill. We sat on lawn chairs and waved tiny American flags. We watched from a safe distance while Eric set off fireworks at the bottom of the driveway.

For weeks, Tiffany had been talking about how much the babies kicked. One time, Bennett wailed on her so hard she expected to see his foot poking through her skin. They just never seemed very mobile when I was around. Somewhere amid all the revelry and the crackling of M-80s, Tiffany reached out and nearly yanked my hand off my arm. “Now!” she shouted. “Here they go!”

She pressed my palm hard against her belly. I waited and waited but felt nothing.

I started to pull my hand away, convinced I had missed the tossing and turning once again, but Tiffany wouldn’t allow me to let go. “Wait!” she commanded. She laid back and relaxed, like she was trying to will the babies to move with her mind. A moment later, there was a rumble, like a tiny earthquake with an epicenter at her belly button. Then I felt it—a forceful thump rippling beneath my palm. Thump. Thump. The baby seemed to appreciate the resistance my hand created, because the first kick was followed by two more.

“Did you feel that?” Tiffany shouted.

“Holy crap, yes!”

Tiffany laughed. “That’s Bennett.”

“You can tell which one is which?”

“Yeah, he’s the kicker. He wakes me up at night.”

“Wow, that was Bennett! I can’t believe I just felt Bennett kick.”

“What are you waiting for?” Tiffany asked. “Talk to him!”

She was right. This was my chance—not to lay down some overly thought-out, rehearsed-sounding diatribe but just to chat with my kids. They were definitely paying attention. I leaned over Tiffany’s midriff.

“Hi, Bennett. Hi, Sutton. This is Daddy. Well, one of your daddies. The other daddy thinks it’s dumb to talk to a belly. Maybe you’ll think so, too, but too bad. You’re stuck in there, so you’re going to listen. I really can’t wait to meet you guys. I promise I’m going to love you no matter who you turn out to be, and I’m going to let you figure that out all on your own. Personally, it took me a while. Hopefully, you’ll get to it a little quicker.

“Just hang tight in there. You’ve been doing a great job these last few months, and I know it hasn’t been easy, but it’s all going to be worth it. Just keep taking care of each other, because that’s what a brother and sister should do. Oh, and Bennett, I know it’s fun to kick, but take it easy on Tiffany.”

I looked at Tiffany, and she smiled back at me in a way that affirmed exactly why she’d chosen to become a surrogate in the first place. I turned back toward her belly, correcting myself.

“Aunt Tiffany,” I said. “That’s what you guys should call her.”