The Surrogate, page 9
I didn’t have time to deal with the installation, so I loaded all the pieces (and the instructions) into the backseat and slammed the door. “What am I doing?” I said to myself, angry that I’d wasted ten minutes. “I won’t need the car seat for two more days!”
I ran back into the house and searched for the birth plan, but it wasn’t on the dining room table where it had been, not in the living room, not on my bedside table or in the nursery or in any of the other obvious places. I ran to my desk and searched for my journal, pulled out some of the folded papers stuffed inside. Which one was the most recent version? I wanted to have it with me in case the nurses hadn’t gotten a copy like they were supposed to. I couldn’t tell which was which, so I picked the one that looked complete, jammed it in my purse, and grabbed my coat. My hands were shaking as I struggled to fit the key into the ignition. I adjusted the rearview mirror but then adjusted it back. I hit the garage door opener too soon, and it nearly came down onto the hood.
A block down the street, I remembered I had forgotten the video camera. Turned around and raced back, parked in the driveway, and left the car door open with the warning bell ringing as I ran into the condo and grabbed the camera case and tripod from the closet near my desk. Ran back to the driveway and into the car and felt for my purse, making sure my wallet was there, and my glasses.
At the stoplight, someone honked at me. I drove forward, turned left and a different car honked. For the first time in a long time, it seemed like everything I did was wrong.
Later that morning, when Cally and I arrived on the maternity floor, the nurses checked her in and checked her over. They got her hooked up and comfortable in a birthing room. I draped my coat on one of the guest chairs and piled my camera equipment and purse on top. The nurses had pointed out the free coffee and water station for me, and fortunately, the vending machines accepted credit cards. I showed the nurses the crumpled-up copy of the birth plan and reminded them that they should also have a copy in their file.
I went out to the nurses’ station and told everyone who’d listen, “I’m the intended mother. Cally Scott is the patient. She’s our surrogate. We have a birth plan.” I went down the hall to get a cup of water. I walked as gently as I could, as if my footsteps might disturb all the unborn babies and cause added pain to all the birthing women nearby. When I returned to Cally’s room, the door was open, and I peeked in. She was nowhere in sight. I felt my throat tighten as I tried to contemplate what this meant. Then I heard voices. In the bathroom. A flush and the door opened. Cally shuffled out, the nurse beside her. “There you are,” I said, relieved.
“Yeah. Can’t really go too far,” said Cally, waddling toward the bed, a strained look on her face. The nurse had two hands on Cally, guiding her. Cally was wearing a hospital gown and white tube socks.
“How’s it going?” I sat in the guest chair that wasn’t overloaded with my stuff.
The nurse smiled at me briefly, then helped Cally sit and swing her legs onto the bed. The nurse fussed with the sheets, pulling them up and covering Cally’s midsection. “It’s okay,” said Cally. “Kind of scary.”
“Are you having contractions?” I asked, wanting so much more information than I was getting.
“Yep,” she said.
“I’m just about to check her cervix,” said the nurse, picking up a pair of latex gloves and putting them on. “Can you come back in a few minutes?”
“Oh, yes, of course,” I said, getting the hint. “Cally, I’ll be right down the hall.”
“Okay,” said Cally. “Is Hal here?” She always seemed to be looking for him, asking about him, and I wondered if her reason was because, like her, he had the biological connection. He was the father of the child inside her.
“He’s coming from work,” I said. “He’ll be here soon.” Maybe saying it would make it true.
HAL
When I got to the hospital, it was late afternoon and, as I had predicted, Cally was still in labor. I stopped at the visitors’ desk and sensed, as I was filling out my name tag, that the receptionist was flirting with me.
“My wife’s already upstairs,” I said, putting an end to the receptionist’s little game.
“Good luck,” she said with a smile.
“I’ll take it,” I said, rapping on the desk as I left. This was a habit I’d picked up from my first supervising attorney, a man who would become a mentor of mine. Funny how we pick things up without always being aware.
I found Cally’s room. Ruth was sitting in the side chair, holding a crumpled copy of the birth plan. She was clutching that paper so hard, I thought it might disintegrate. The birth plan indicated that, to the extent possible, the parties preferred a natural delivery, with as little medication as possible. This was Ruth’s idea. If it’d been up to me, I would’ve deferred to Cally and the doctors, but this was Ruth’s baby, possibly her only child, and I wanted her to have everything she wanted. The prevalent factors guiding medication decisions were to be (in this order): health and safety of the baby, health and safety of the birth mother, comfort of the birth mother, and desires of the intended parents. Ruth wanted me to cut the umbilical cord, which I’d done with both of my boys. That was fine. A tradition of sorts. And it gives the father something to do. The plan then instructed that Ruth would be the first to hold the infant, to facilitate bonding.
However, that didn’t happen. That got lost in the heat of the moment. In the shocking way that a baby’s birth seems to make time stand still, we forgot. Suddenly, there was a new person in the room and nothing else mattered. So what happened was the doctor placed the baby on Cally’s chest, and Cally put her hand on the wiggling little creature. The nurses wiped her off a bit and then prepared for me to cut the cord, which I did. It was a minute or two before Ruth got to hold her. And those two minutes probably felt like hours to Ruth.
But later, after Ruth had recovered from her disappointment, she was floating on air, completely taken with the new child, and she described that moment in her signature poetic manner. She said it was as if a galaxy had landed in the room. And it was true.
The birth was a marvel, and I wished my boys could have been there. Cally had asked that we keep the group of witnesses small and discreet, and who could blame her. And I don’t actually think Jake and Caleb would have wanted to see a live birth even if they’d had the chance. They’re great guys, and of course I love them to death, but they aren’t always as mature as I might like. Even so, this was a family event and I wanted them there. To meet their sister. Well, their half sister.
After the nurses washed and wrapped the newborn, we took turns holding our little bundle, passing her back and forth like a good-luck charm. We were, all three of us, in awe of her.
She was beautiful, and we must have taken a hundred pictures of her. When Ruth snapped a shot of the proud father, she compared me to a photo she’d seen of a gorilla cradling a fallen bird. I took it as a compliment, although I already knew I was a natural. Even Cally said so.
Ruth and I sat there grinning at the sleeping baby and lost all track of time. We were in love, in love with time itself, in our own new world. It could have been storming outside or flooding inside, and we wouldn’t have noticed. We had our little girl.
And then they kicked us out. Politely, of course. The nurses said the birth mom needed her rest, and they’d soon be moving her to a recovery room. They suggested we get a bite to eat and come back in a couple of hours. But since we both had a car at the hospital, I suggested we drive home for supper and then return in one vehicle. Which was what we did.
RUTH
Later that evening, back at the hospital, we found Cally in her new room, the recovery room. She was groggy, but she smiled at us when we tiptoed in. We lifted our daughter out of the bassinet and sat in the visitor chairs. I placed her on my lap for a good look.
I had expected the baby to be more awake and less wrinkly. Her eyes were squinted shut, as if the world was too much, too soon. For some reason, I’d imagined her nose to be more like a tiny rosebud, like in commercials. But hers seemed a bit big for her face, like a mushroom, and she had no chin. Her forehead was low, and she had so much black hair. Overall she looked like a shrunken-up miniature weight lifter. Her skin was purplish red and uneven, blotchy. She had pimples on her face, a bruise-like stain on her neck, and a smaller one on the back of her left hand.
“Strawberries,” the nurse had explained. “Very common. They’ll fade away, and her complexion will clear up.”
“How soon?” I asked.
“Usually within the first few weeks,” said the nurse.
Otherwise, she was perfect. Ten toes. Ten fingers. She was sweet. I don’t know how long I’d been studying her when Hal came and took her away. He said it was probably time for us to leave and that Cally needed to rest. I didn’t hear the nurse say that. I couldn’t think of any good reason we should leave. But Hal was convinced we should get out of their way. “Fine,” I whined, picking up my coat and purse.
“We’ll see you tomorrow,” said Hal, taking the baby over to Cally’s bed and setting her down gently, like an extra pillow next to Cally’s head. Cally reached over and put her hand on the baby, keeping her from falling.
“I thought you said Cally was gonna rest?” I said to Hal. “Why’d you give her the baby? You should have put her in the bassinet.”
Hal frowned at me and shook his head as if I were talking nonsense. I’d been overruled. He smiled at Cally, and she weakly waved goodbye.
As we rode home together that first night after meeting our baby, we were alone in the car and silent. This was supposed to be the best night of our lives, the night our child was born, but Hal had ruined it. He didn’t even know what he’d done wrong. He had no clue how he was acting. Or how I was feeling. I leaned toward the passenger window and turned away from him. I wanted to get as far away from him as I could, and I didn’t want him to see my face.
“What a night,” he said finally, at a red light.
“Yeah,” I said without enthusiasm.
“She’s perfect, isn’t she? Just perfect.”
“Yeah.” My breath fogged up the cold window. I didn’t mention the pimples or the splotches or any of the things I’d noticed about her that weren’t perfect. Her nose. Her massive head of hair.
“What is it, Poppy?”
I could sense him looking at me. I didn’t know where to start. While I was holding her, he’d decided my turn was up, and he’d taken the baby out of my arms and given her to Cally. He’d touched Cally’s shoulder. And I didn’t like the way he’d looked at her: it was like she was the mother, not me. Like he was saying, Good job. The simple fact was that he’d made a baby with this woman, not with me, and I was supposed to be happy about it.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just tired.”
“Well, you’d better get your rest,” he said. “Soon you won’t be getting much.”
“Mm-hmm,” I said. Hal loved to complain about the sleep disruption.
“Just think,” he continued. “In thirty-six short hours, our little angel will come home with us. We’ll become our own family.”
“I thought we already were,” I said as quietly as I could.
“What’d you say?”
“Nothing.” I closed my eyes and leaned back. My cheek touched the cold leather headrest. One of these days, I thought, I should quit my lonely habit of going silent when I’m hurt. Hal wasn’t curious enough to ask me how I felt. He wasn’t perceptive. Or aware that I was sad. Had he really not known that I wanted to hold the baby longer? And that he shouldn’t have handed her over to Cally like that? He would have made a terrible journalist, I thought. And I wondered whether he was any good at parenting. If I’d misjudged him. Maybe this had been a mistake. I turned my head to peek at Hal. He was tapping on the steering wheel like a drummer, playing some song in his head. This was one of his habits of which he was not aware.
“Can you please stop that tapping?”
“Sure,” he said, and started whistling.
We seemed to catch every red light on the way home. I peeked at each intersection, vaguely recognizing the places we’d driven past so many times. They looked different now. Empty parking lots ready for tomorrow’s shoppers. I couldn’t think of a single thing I needed to buy. Nothing that I wanted in any of these stores.
“I can’t wait to call the boys,” Hal said. “And bring them over to meet their new sister.”
“Yeah,” I murmured, trying to sound like I was excited for them. “But Jake’s up north snowboarding, remember?”
“Oh yeah,” said Hal. “But when he gets back, he’ll be so excited.”
I wasn’t sure about that. Neither of Hal’s sons seemed particularly jazzed to be getting a half sibling. They weren’t thrilled with having a stepmother. To be fair, this whole thing had been foisted upon them, and it’d been rather a whirlwind. Hal and I had met, dated, married, and had a baby all in the span of five years, which is fine if you’re in your thirties and your stepkids are toddlers. But when you’re fortysomething and your husband has teenagers and an ex-wife, things are more complicated. Things take more time.
Hal’s boys had been fighting tooth and nail to get out of being there for the transfer ceremony. So when Hal informed me that Jake had a big snowboarding competition on the same weekend, I wasn’t surprised that Hal had given Jake permission to miss the ceremony.
And I wasn’t upset.
Nineteen
Cally
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2002
Morning
I remembered my dad telling me the story of how I was born. He liked to tell it every year on my birthday. Apparently, my mother was very strong. In high school, she ran track (because she loved to run), and at the meets, when the team had to do the field events, the coach convinced my mom to throw the shot put because no one else was any good at it. According to my dad, my mother had great running speed as well as upper-body strength. This was always the way my dad would start the story.
Then he’d say, “But she didn’t have a lot of common sense,” and that was the line I was supposed to laugh at, because we both knew what was coming. The story of her going into labor and not even realizing it, then nearly giving birth in the front seat of a Pacer (which was a small car my dad thought was funny) while being driven to the hospital by a stranger who had been a customer at the Perkins where she was working when she went into labor.
Where was my dad at the time? On his way to the Perkins to pick her up after her shift. What did he do when he got there and found out she was on her way to the hospital? He drove so fast he got pulled over for speeding, then talked his way out of a ticket because his wife was in labor, even though she wasn’t in the car. This was another cue for me to laugh, because, as my dad explained, driving a pregnant woman to the hospital was one of the very few ways to get out of a ticket. And even then it wasn’t a guarantee.
“There are no guarantees in life, Little Pea,” he liked to say. “So pay attention.”
And when my dad got to the hospital, it was too late. He’d missed my birth, but he was amazed by me and my speed at being born. He said he admired my fire to arrive in the world at exactly the moment when I wanted to arrive.
After hearing that story so many times, I knew I would have more sense, pay attention, and do it better than my mom had. Plus, I had Hal and Ruth breathing down my neck, especially during those last four weeks.
“You look ready to pop,” Ruth would say. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine. The same,” I’d say, and it was true.
She’d been coming with me every week for my check-ins with the doctor. He’d listen to the heartbeat and squeeze my hard belly, locate the baby, and give an estimate for the baby’s size. He’d feel inside to guess how ready I was for delivering.
“Any issues this week?” he’d ask.
“It’s hard to sleep.” It was also hard to get in and out of cars, put on shoes. I went to the bathroom a lot. I waddled. People stared at me.
“Any pain in your groin?” said Ruth.
“Not usually,” I said, but Ruth frowned. She couldn’t help herself. I was carrying her precious child.
The doctor smiled at Ruth and raised his hand to stop us from talking, then took off his glasses and explained how everything was normal, he wasn’t concerned and we shouldn’t be, either. The baby was in a good position and I was on track. He’d see us next week, and we should call if anything changed. Day or night.
I thought about my mother, what she’d have said if she could have been in the room with us, hearing that fierce heartbeat, watching my giant belly. Would she have approved of what I was doing? Or would she have said I was selling a baby, which was what Digger told me his mother had said behind my back. Maybe my mother would have been proud of me for making so much money. I didn’t know her well enough to guess what she’d have thought. I was too young when she left.
Ruth had taken me for a tour of the maternity ward, to see the rooms where women gave birth and those where new mothers recovered afterward. The facilities were homey but still hospital-like. Ruth thought it would be good for me to be prepared and to “visualize” myself in these rooms, so it would be less stressful when I got there for the big event. We saw the bathtubs where some women chose to give birth, but we both knew this was not for us, and we had a laugh about that. At one point on the tour, Ruth asked about getting a room for herself on the maternity ward, could she check in and stay there?
“This isn’t a hotel,” said one of the nurses. “The rooms are for patients.”
Ruth blushed. “Oh, I realize,” she said. “I’m just asking about the facilities for the parents. The family.”
“The family is free to stay in the room with the mother and baby.” The nurses showed us how the bedside chair reclined into a cot, how the padded window seat held pillows, sheets, and blankets, and how a small person could also sleep there. But I could tell that Ruth wanted her own bed where she could wear a hospital gown and check her blood pressure and order room service.
