twenty-five

I had an exceptionally high tolerance for dirt, but I could not accept filth. Dirt was merely wrapping paper, an exterior coating easily removed to reveal a treasure. Filth implied continuous neglect, a ground-in lack of care or concern. I think people would be surprised to discover that recycling centers are clean, well-maintained facilities. Garbage isn’t left to rot but rather processed and moved along quickly for further uses.

The hallway leading to Lizzy James’s apartment, conversely, was filthy. The carpet was stained in colors I’d only associated with bodily functions, and the torn wallpaper revealed splotches of lung-threatening mold on the exposed plaster. My toes curled in disgust, and I practiced breathing through my mouth and out my nose. Thank God I didn’t have asthma. If my kid had breathing problems in this environment, it wasn’t from my gene pool.

“Gross,” I coughed.

“I’ve seen worse,” Frank replied as he stopped halfway down
the hall.

“What’s your plan?”

“She’s got three kids, but they’re twelve and under.” Frank looked over his shoulder. “Your child needs to be older.”

“Correction. My child and your niece or nephew needs to be older. That’s one of our issues: your inability to accept that you’re related to this child.”

“Okay, you win,” he conceded. “I’m wondering if Ms. James has been lying about the oldest one’s age. That’s why I want to get into the apartment,” he said as he knocked on the door. “Or she’s got a child she’s never reported.”

A hidden child? What if my undocumented child were sitting in this apartment watching television and drinking a Slurpee? I wasn’t sure I could do this, but Frank had already knocked on the front door.

No response.

He knocked again. “Follow my lead.”

Do I have a choice?

We waited longer than I could control my breathing exercises. Filth filled my nostrils.

“Whatta you want?” a voice called through the closed door.

“Ms. James?” Frank said, lightening his tone to increase his sweet quotient. “I’m here from Sound View Laboratories. It’s been years, but it turns out there’s an unclaimed paycheck for you.”

Money, as they say, opens doors. In this case, it flew off the hinges to reveal a plump, full-breasted woman with a cigarette stuck precariously to her bottom lip.

“Bullshit,” she snarled, pulling a wad of dry, damaged hair into a loose bun while she took a puff on her cigarette. “Dr. Prentice cut me off years ago.” She threw her head back and stared at me under heavy lids, strands of limp locks falling back to her shoulders. “You’re the daughter.”

It wasn’t a question. Lizzy James knew exactly who I was, because as my mother had noted yesterday, my father didn’t hire stupid people. I watched as she walked back into her apartment. Her jeans were snug and traces of a swagger that twenty years ago might have turned a few lab assistants’ heads sashayed across the room. She left the door open.

“I read in the paper about that crap he pulled last year.” She extended a tobacco-stained finger toward Frank. “I recognize you.”

“I’m a cop.”

I shot a look at Frank as if to say, That’s the lead I’m following?

Lizzy James blew smoke out of the side of her mouth, sat back into her couch, and crossed her shapely ankles, the only part of her that didn’t appear bloated. She nodded for us to sit. “For the record, I loved that job, and I was really good at it.”

I glanced back over my shoulder, eyeing Lizzy’s soiled recliner. I held my breath and took the plunge. The chair’s springs were loose, sending the slider back a few inches. Lizzy laughed as I pulled myself out of the spongy hole in the seat cushion. “So why did you leave?” I asked as I looked around the room hoping to spot a Sear’s family portrait with a child that looked frighteningly like me.

“Dr. Prentice offered me something better,” she said, and then corrected herself. “At least, I thought it would be better. Fewer hours, no commute, more money. Turned out the job was temporary.”

Frank’s wheels were churning. I could see, as his jaw rotated, he wanted to turn the conversation toward Lizzy’s personal life and a reference to her children, but Ms. James was moving in a decidedly different direction.

“What was the job?” Frank asked.

Lizzy held her hand out, palm up, requiring Frank to reach into his pocket for a stack of twenties. With the agility of a card dealer, the cash disappeared into Lizzy’s cleavage. I had always wanted to do that, jam a roll of bills in between my breasts and actually have it stick. We waited while Lizzy adjusted her blouse.

“Surrogate,” she finally said.

I jolted, causing the recliner to roll backward about a half a foot. Had I heard correctly? Because it sounded as if my father had paid this woman to carry my baby. I glanced at Frank to see his Adam’s apple bursting from his neck.

“Where’s the child?” I asked, grabbing onto an end table for support.

“There is no child,” Lizzy said as if I didn’t understand the concept of a surrogate as a hired vessel.

“I know what surrogate means,” I snapped. “Who did you carry the child for?”

“I don’t know, but I can tell you they must have been pretty disappointed.”

“Why?” Frank asked.

“Because I couldn’t carry to term. The baby died at twenty weeks.” Lizzy stubbed her cigarette out. “Your asshole of a father fired me. Said I was a bad carrier.” She laughed raucously and pointed to the family photo I’d been looking for. Three kids all gussied up for Christmas stared back. “Bad carrier, my ass. Tell that to the rug rats.”

Frank stood up without fanfare and walked out. What was the point of staying if there was no baby? Obviously, this wasn’t what either of us had expected. As for myself, I’d played this moment over in my head so many times. I had cleverly constructed long and short versions of the Great Baby Reveal. In the long version, a well-meaning woman in mom jeans looks longingly at the baby she’d been raising and then unselfishly hands the infant over to me. In the short version, I’m hugging the most beautiful baby in the world while Ms. Mom Jeans fades conveniently into the background. Never, in any of my fantasy soap opera moments, did I expect to find out my child hadn’t survived to be born. Clearly, neither did Frank. For him, this was his only shot at a relative.

I dug deep into my short pockets. No money, of course; Freegans traveled light when it came to the green stuff. Instead, I snapped off the watch I’d rescued from a Dumpster a few months back. It was one of my better finds, requiring nothing more than some spit polish and a new battery. I handed it to Lizzy.

“I’m going to guess you were just as smart as those lab assistants.”

Lizzy’s eyes scanned over her squalid apartment. “I deserve this, don’t I?”

“Why do you say that?” I asked as I moved from my death-trap recliner to the germ-infested couch.

“Because I’m smart, and I screwed up.”

“Was it the drinking and the smoking? Is that why you lost the baby?” My baby, I wanted to say.

In an act of selflessness, Lizzy blew her secondhand smoke away from my face although the smell, strangely, was a pleasant relief from the stink of the apartment.

“No, I was completely clean. I wasn’t taking the drugs I stole.” She laughed at the memory. “I sold them, but your father caught me. He told me he had a better way for me to make money. The problem was that I had lied to get the first job managing the storage room in the lab. I told your father I was twenty-one when I was actually sixteen,” she said, shrugging her soft shoulders. “That’s why I lost the baby. I couldn’t carry because I was too young. Despite what you may think,” she said as she ran her hand down her curves, “my body wasn’t ready at sixteen.”

“You passed for twenty-one at sixteen?” I said in total amazement until I realized that Lizzy James currently passed for a woman in her forties at the ripe old age of thirty-two. I remembered what Jimmy had said earlier in the day about appearances. I had just assumed Liz James was older.

“I really wanted that surrogate thing to work out,” she continued, “because your father promised me twice the money for the next baby if I carried well the first time. Apparently, a good first pregnancy is a requirement for surrogates.”

You poor woman, I thought, practically a child when my father sunk his claws into you. Bright, savvy, healthy, and in need of money. What a find for my father. But like every scientist, he would have to put her to the test before she carried his prized possession—my egg and my brother’s sperm. He must have impregnated her with someone else’s embryo to test her viability before he risked implanting mine. If Dr. Grovit and Dr. Wilson were correct, Teddy and I had only supplied one fertilized embryo. He had to ensure the surrogate was viable. But Lizzy had failed. That meant the chance someone else had carried my egg still existed.

“Were there other surrogates?” I asked.

Lizzy rose and walked to a cluttered desk. From the bottom drawer, she located a folder and pulled out a wrinkled newspaper. “This is a newsletter from the lab, and this”—she pointed to a group photo on the cover—“is a picture of the lab assistants.”

I took the newspaper and stared at the faces. I recognized Dr. Wilson with his red hair, as well as Lizzy. She was quite a looker at sixteen. “This woman,” Lizzy said, indicating the woman next to her in the photo. “I don’t remember her name, but I think she organized the surrogates.”

I looked closely. Yet another woman’s face to evaluate, but again, it wasn’t anyone I had seen before. No matter. It was still a lead. I headed for the door, down one fancy timepiece but up a valuable clue.