A Little Help from Above (32 page)

Actually, God answered mine, too.

It was a quiet, contemplative flight home. This time both Matty and Shelby felt nauseous, having nothing to do with turbulence or pregnancy. It would take a long time to recover from their twisted fate and the knowledge that their own mothers had conspired against them.

And yet they also knew it was their common bond. Both had spent their childhoods in the throes of turmoil and confusion. Both had been forced to grow up long before they were ready. And both had spent their lives struggling to understand a deep, unexplainable void that permeated their core.

“I guess Warner is right,” Shelby explained. “It’s all karma, baby. Learn the lesson, get the reward. Then destiny takes over, and you end up where you were supposed to be in the first place.”

Suddenly Matthew understood. Their “chance” meeting on the highway might not have been chance at all. Destiny might have separated them, but it could also bring them together. And in light of that revelation, for the first time in years, his path was illuminated.

“I want us to live together,” he proposed to Shelby over a tray of rubber chicken.

“I want us to live together, too. But where? You need to be in Westchester to be close to Emily, and I need to be in Manhasset because of Lauren and the babies.”

“I know, but I might have a great compromise. I have a friend who’s been trying to sublet her co-op on Madison and Eighty-fourth. It’s a beautiful building. It’s one block from Central Park and the Met. And it’s halfway between Westchester and Long Island!”

“That sounds incredible,” Shelby clapped. “Plus it’s a quick cab ride to the office for me. You’re a genius.”

“No. Desperate.” He kissed her hand. “I so want this to work. But before we go ahead with our plans, I want to get Larry and Roz’s permission.”

“Whatever for?” Shelby protested. “I’m a big girl. In fact a very big girl.” She looked down at her enormous belly. “We don’t need their approval.”

“Fine. Then we’ll ask for their blessing. I just need to know they accept me and my unusual circumstances.”

“Are you crazy?” She laughed. “Given my circumstances, they would pay you to get me off their hands. Besides, you know how much they’ve always loved you.”

Shelby was right, of course. When she and Matty drove over to the Transitions Center for Rehabilitation, they welcomed him with open arms.

“When the time is right, I promise I’ll make her an honest woman.” He hugged Larry.

“Is that a marriage proposal?” Shelby jumped into his arms.

“Not yet.” He laughed. “Is she always in such a rush?” he asked his future father-in-law.

“Since the day she was born.” Larry slapped him on the back.

“Anyway, my top priorities are to find a brilliant divorce attorney, and to do something I’ve been thinking about for years. I want to legally change my name back to Lieberman.”

“Fantastic!” Larry laughed. “Because with that schnozola, you sure didn’t look like a McCarthy or McGillicutty, or whatever the hell your name is now.”

“I love the idea, too.” Shelby clapped. “Then my initials would stay the same and I could keep all my monogrammed towels.”

“That was my first thought, too.” Matty laughed. “Saving money on towels.”

Once Shelby and Matty figured out all the logistics and made arrangements to sublet the apartment in the city, Shelby hoped everything else would fall into place. Particularly with the babies. Now in her second trimester, if she wasn’t feeling hot and tired, she was complaining about swollen ankles, indigestion, frequent trips to the bathroom, looking like a small baboon, and suffering through those humiliating visits to Dr. Kessler’s office. “You’d think the Messiah was coming every time I had a weight gain!”

But the real problem was not with the surrogate, it was with the mother. Rather than being doting and attentive, and catering to Shelby’s every need as she’d promised, Lauren was spending most of her time at Danny’s house watching Jordan, slowly working her way into their lives.

“Not for nothing, Lauren, but don’t you think you should be
spending less time over there and more time getting ready for your own children? You haven’t even started picking out the layettes yet.”

“I know. I will,” she said. “I’ve just been so busy.”

Busy my ass, Shelby thought. She could see what was happening. With Avi, the quest for children was the glue that had kept them together. But once he was out of the picture, even though Lauren looked forward to motherhood, the urgency dissipated. She wanted a family, but the timing had to be right.

When she met Danny, for the first time in her life she was involved in a tender, loving relationship that made her feel safe and nurtured. Unfortunately it was with a man who was adamant about not wanting the responsibility of a large family at this stage in his life.

“I’m not sure what you’re doing,” Shelby pressed. “I’m due in a few months, yet you’re getting more and more involved with a guy who doesn’t want kids. Where does that leave you?”

“I don’t know.” Lauren bit her lip. “I don’t know.”

“Do you love him?” Shelby held her breath.

“I think I do.”

“And does he love you?”

“He says he does.”

“So then what’s the problem? If you love each other, you get used to his kid, he gets used to yours. What’s the matter? He never heard about the Brady Bunch?”

“Oh, he’s heard of them,” Lauren cried. “He just doesn’t want to be them.”

“You have a major problem, Lauren.”

“Ya think?”

Monday, June 14, was a day like any other. Except at the Lazarus home, where friends and family were gathering for an all-day barbeque to celebrate the joyous release of Roz and Larry from rehab and the return to their home. One year to the day of the accident.

To commemorate the couple’s miraculous recovery, Newsday ran their picture on the front page, and included an emotional sidebar by their daughter, famed journalist, Shelby Lazarus.

Roz complained about all the unnecessary publicity, but Larry was loving the attention, particularly when he found out the gardener who hit them planned to offer them a lifetime of complimentary landscaping services. “What some people will do for free publicity,” Larry observed, laughing as he and Roz posed with Mr. Juan Pedro Martinez under their weeping willow.

“Can you believe it’s a year already?” Lauren asked Shelby as they watched the photographer from Newsday shoot footage on their front lawn. “It just breaks my heart to know Daddy’s going to walk with a limp for the rest of his life.”

“Get real. At least he’s got a rest of his life.”

“I know you’re right.” She nodded. “Hey. In your wildest dreams, did you ever think you’d be back in New York, pregnant, and living with Matty?”

“Truthfully, no. I didn’t see that coming.” Shelby chuckled.

“Maybe we should name one of the babies after Juan Pedro Martinez. I mean obviously if it wasn’t for him…”

“No way! You can’t name your child after the man who mowed down your parents.”

“Here you go.” Matty returned from the bar with a tall glass of iced tea for Shelby. “Sorry, there was a run on cherry Kool-Aid…”

“Have you seen Danny?” Lauren looked around.

“Last I saw, he was trying to coax Jordan out of the pool to eat.”

“Maybe I’ll go give him a hand.” Lauren smiled. “Jordie always listens to me.”

“Whoa! Not so fast, Tonto.” Shelby grabbed her hand. “I have to talk to you.”

“Not now, Shel.”

“Well when would be convenient for you? After the babies are born, and they’re lying in the nursery waiting for their mother to pick them up?”

“Hey, guys.” Danny joined them, unaware he was interrupting a broadcast in progress.

“Later?” Lauren pleaded with her eyes. “Please?”

“No, now,” Shelby fumed. “This is the perfect time to talk. We’re all assembled.”

“What’s up?” Danny, the resident shrink and ever intuitive one, asked.

“It’s nothing,” Shelby gritted. “We’re just having some technical difficulties.”

“What kind of difficulties?” Danny rubbed Lauren’s arm. “Anything I can help with?”

“I don’t know.” Shelby massaged her belly, now an automatic reflex every time the babies kicked. “That depends on how you feel about having twins.”

“Shelby, stop it!” Lauren’s breathing became uneven. “This is between you and me.”

“Not anymore. Look around.” She pointed. “You’re involved with someone, I’m involved with someone…Are you hyperventilating? Do you need a bag?”

“No.” Lauren took a couple of deep breaths and slowly exhaled. “I’ll be okay.”

“If I could throw in my two cents here.” Danny put his arm around Lauren. “I love your sister, Shelby. But we’ve discussed this whole thing ad nauseam, and she knows how I feel.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass how you feel,” Shelby hissed. “This is not about what you want, or what you need. Almost nine months ago, against my better judgment, I agreed to conceive a child for
my sister and her husband, and now that child is twins, her husband is shtupping some Israeli chick in the army, and Lauren is playing nanny to your child, which is a fabulous deal for you. You’re saving a few hundred a week on a salary, and she’s throwing great sex into the deal. I don’t blame you for not wanting to mess with the formula…”

“Shelby, what are you doing?” Lauren looked as if she was going to pummel her. “You have no right to speak to Danny like that. He has done nothing to you…”

“Except give you an easy way to shirk your responsibilities and commitments…”

“I have done no such thing. And this isn’t the time or place to…”

“No! Sorr-eee,” Shelby gritted. “Time’s up. Buzzer’s sounded. What is my due date?”

“July 13.” Lauren’s eyes welled up. Shelby could be so impossible.

“And when is that?”

“Next month…”

“Exactly. And yet there seems to be a holdup. I told you to order the layette, and you didn’t. I told you to line up a Lamaze coach, and you didn’t. I told you to start thinking of names…”

“Oh sure. Now all of a sudden you’re acting like the babies are my responsibility,” Lauren started to cry. “But up until this point, you never let me forget you conceived them, you carried them, and you were going to call the shots…”

“What are you talking about? I did everything possible to include you.”

“That is so not true.” Lauren’s whole body shook. “From day one you made me feel like I didn’t matter…When I asked you not to go to Dr. Weiner’s funeral, what did you say? You said I was being ridiculous, and as far as you were concerned, it wasn’t my decision to make. Oh, and then yesterday? You didn’t even tell me you had an appointment with Dr. Kessler.”

“Because you were too busy playing Jordan’s mother to show up for the last two visits. So I figured the hell with it. I’m not even going to tell her I’m going.”

“Well why should I bother going when you act as if I’m not even there? When I told Dr. Kessler I wanted to know the sexes, you went nuts like, no way, forget it, we’ll find out in the delivery room, we
don’t need to know that. But you never even asked if that was okay with me!”

“I didn’t want you to know because I was afraid if you found out and were somehow disappointed, then you’d lose interest.”

“Lose interest? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. When you got pregnant, it was like a dream come true for me. But then you acted like I didn’t even exist. It was all about you.”

“How could you even think that?” Shelby glared. “This has been the most unselfish act of my life. I had to get over my phobia of doctors, I had to stop dieting, I had to deal with excruciating back pain and swollen ankles, and still make it in to work. I have indigestion every night, oh and what about the fact I resemble a baboon? I mean I finally find Matty and look what I look like. And now you have the nerve to tell me I haven’t been considerate of you?”

“That’s right.” Lauren took a deep breath. “Not considerate, and not honest, either…I know you didn’t start out wanting anything to do with the babies, but that’s not how you feel now. It seems to me, you’ll be the one who is devastated if you go home empty-handed.”

Shelby stared in disbelief. “You’re just saying that so I don’t accuse you of being fickle.”

“It has nothing to do with me, Shel. I’ve seen that sad look in your eye when strangers ask you your due date, or the names you’ve chosen. I’ve seen how you can’t stop smiling when the babies kick. I’ve seen you rubbing your belly, always so loving and caring. If we’re being perfectly honest, then I think you have to admit that you’re the one who changed her mind. Not me.”

Shelby’s jaw dropped. Was Lauren right? Was she so emotionally vested now, she was going to have a hard time parting with the babies, just as Matty had predicted? Admittedly, as her due date approached, she had gotten a little glum whenever she thought about the babies she’d nourished and safeguarded leaving her protective womb.

“Look,” Danny ventured into the arena again. “I know this all started by your wanting to help Lauren, but you have to face the facts. They’re not legally or even biologically hers.”

“Oh, give it up already,” Shelby cried. “We all know where you stand, so you can stop trying to pawn them off. Maybe you should face the facts. If it wasn’t for you, everything would be going according to plan.”

“Maybe it is,” Matty said softly.

Shelby, Lauren, and Danny stopped bickering.

“The truth is, we’re all here right now due to unforseen circumstances. No one expected Avi to leave, or Lauren to meet Danny at a dance that occurred on the very same day, or Shelby to find me on a highway…but that’s exactly what happened. Maybe with good reason.”

“What’s your point?” Danny asked.

“That I’ve thought of the perfect names for the babies.”

“Well, what good will that do?” Shelby put her hands on her hips. “That’s like offering to clean the deck chairs on the Titanic.”

“Maybe,” he persisted. “But I still think these names would suit them perfectly.”

“So what would you call them?” Lauren asked sweetly.

“I was thinking”—he hesitated—“that they should be called Liebermans.”

“What?” Three heads turned.

“Are you crazy?” Shelby shouted. “Honey, these aren’t cute little puppies you take home from the breeder, and if it doesn’t work out you bring them back.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“What are you saying, Matty?” Lauren’s face lit up.

“I’m saying rather than arguing over who did what to whom, we should take a step back and see that everything is unfolding the way it was meant to. These are Shelby’s biological children, and if Lauren and Danny’s future together would have a better chance without the burden of caring for two infants, then I say they should be raised by their mother…and me.”

“Oh my God.” Lauren and Shelby clutched hands.

“Do you really mean that?” Shelby’s heart pounded.

“Yes, I do.” His eyes welled up.

“But how could we possibly do this? We’re in a tiny one bedroom apartment, and…”

“You could live here,” Lauren jumped in.

“What? In the guesthouse?” Shelby gasped. “I don’t think so.”

“No, I mean just this morning Mommy and Daddy told me they’ve decided to put the house up for sale because they’ll never be able to manage with all the stairs. So, now you could move in.”

Matty and Shelby looked at each other.

“How weird would that be living back on Majestic Court again, married with two kids?” Shelby cried.

“Actually? It would be awesome.” Matty smiled. “It’s like my mother was saying. We had to travel the world to discover what we really wanted was right in our own backyards.”

“Oh my God.” Lauren hugged Matty. “You are the absolute greatest. That way you’d be right here and I could see you and the babies every day, and I could baby-sit anytime you wanted…”

Shelby shook in disbelief. What has happening here? In the time it took to run a mile, the entire course of her life had just been rerouted. But is it what she really wanted? To be living in her old house, raising a family, and answering to the name Shelby Lieberman?

“What do you think, Shel?” Lauren eyed her cautiously.

“I don’t know. I guess it’s possible this is what I was hoping for.”

“Oh my God! I thought so.” Lauren hugged her so tightly. “I thought so.”

“You sure about this, man?” Danny asked Matty, relief written all over his face.

“Let me tell you something, Danny. With everything I’ve been through, between my painful childhood, a rocky marriage, and having a terminally ill child, getting a chance to start over with the woman I love would make me feel like the luckiest man alive.”

“What a sap you turned out to be, Shel.” Lauren sniffled. “For all the grief you gave me about playing Barbie dolls, you ended up buying the whole package.”

“That is so not true.” Shelby blushed. “I have never driven a pink convertible, and I’m sure as hell never going to see that size waistline again.”

“Yes, but it’s okay because you’re going to be a mommy,” Lauren cried.

“So I am.” Shelby joined her in a sisterly union of tears. “So I am.”

“Hi, Shelby. How are you today?” Warner wheeled his chair over to rub her belly for luck.

“Great. Terrific. Couldn’t be better. My ankles are the size of watermelons, I’m wearing a brace for my back, the babies are sitting right on my bladder so I have to pee if I even look at a glass of water,
I’m tired, I’m hot, I’m cranky, and I have another month to go. That’s how I am.”

“Oh bitch, bitch, bitch. But I know something you don’t know that will cheer you up.”

“Not now, Warner. I’m on deadline for a story Ian put me on, and look at all this fan mail I still have to answer.” She pointed to another sack on her desk. “It’s been a month since the DES story ran, and it’s still pouring in.”

“Well I can believe it, honey. It’s the first time the Informer has ever run a five-part series on a serious matter, and thousands of people were affected by it. They just want to say thank you.”

“It’s nice to be appreciated.” Shelby lifted the heavy bag of mail. “But how the hell am I going to respond to everyone?”

“Oh, pish tish. Stop kvetching. I have something very important to tell you, and I promise after I do, you’ll use all those letters for confetti.”

Shelby knew Warner would pester her until she played along, so to save time, she let him whisper in her ear. “Oh, my God!” she shrieked. “Are you absolutely positive?”

“Shhhh…no one is supposed to know yet. They’re not announcing it until tomorrow.”

“Oh, my God. I can’t believe it. How did you find out?”

“You must be joking. The great Warner knows all. I predicted this. Remember?”

“Actually, now that you mention it, you went three for three!” She began to shake. “You said my parents would survive the accident, that I’d reunite with a long-lost friend under very bizarre circumstances, and that love would soon be in the air, and now this…”

“Did I say never to question me?” He planted a juicy kiss on her cheek.

“Hey, everyone,” Shelby shouted. “Warner has a big announcement to make!”

“Wait, wait, wait. You know how Ian feels about people stealing his thunder.”

“Tough! It’s my thunder, and I can steal it if I want to!”

“Okay, Big Mama!” Warner stood up on his chair and whistled. “Yoo-hoo! Listen up every one. I have some big news to share.”

“Barry Manilow said hello to you in an elevator?” a veteran reporter yelled out.

“It so happens, Barry is a very good friend of mine, you jealous little jackass.”

“Tell them already.” Shelby was jumping up and down, not a pretty sight.

“Okay, class. Here’s the scoop,” he clapped. “Our very own Shelby Lazarus, who wrote that wonderfully compassionate series on DES that helped thousands of readers, is going to be named one of this year’s Pulitzer prize nominees tomorrow. Isn’t she groovy?”