The Offering (18 page)

“Ultrasound today?” the receptionist asked, her glance cutting from me to Marilee. “Do you want your little girl to go in with you or stay in the waiting room?”

Grateful that the ultrasound machine was working, I looked at my daughter and smiled. Maybe this would be a great way to describe what would be happening in the coming months. Marilee might not understand exactly how I came to have another couple's baby in my belly, but as the weeks passed I could explain the situation bit by bit.

“I think I'd like to keep her with me during the scan. She can wait out here during the exam.”

I sat and listened as Marilee told me about her day until a nurse called me into the ultrasound room. I took Marilee's hand and walked in with her, then asked her to sit in a chair with her storybook while the lady examined my belly. Without asking any questions, Marilee sat, but her book remained closed as I climbed onto the table and unzipped my jeans.

“Mommy, is something wrong with your tummy?”

“No,” I assured her. “But though you can't see it yet, there's a baby in my belly.”

Marilee's brows drew into a frown, but she didn't say anything as the ultrasound technician entered and sat on her stool. “And how are we feeling today?” she asked, squirting gel onto my mostly flat stomach.

“Pretty good.” I tensed as the chilly goop raised gooseflesh on my skin. “Except for a few days of major morning sickness.”

The tech smiled at Marilee, then clicked the keyboard at the ultrasound machine. “Your second time around?” She pressed the transducer against my abdomen and rolled it back and forth, searching for the fetus. After a moment, she paused and glanced at my chart. “How far along are you?”

“Fourteen weeks.”

“Congratulations on making it through the first trimester. But are you sure about the date?”

“Absolutely. I'm a gestational carrier, and the embryo was transferred March 15.”

“Excuse me a minute, please.”

I frowned as the technician stood and left the room, leaving me alone with my daughter.

“Are you okay, Mommy?”

I shifted my gaze to Marilee, who was holding tight to her book. “I'm fine, sweetie. I'm sure the lady just had to check something.”

Marilee nodded. “Maybe she needed to go potty.”

“Maybe.”

I lay in the silence for a moment, then the door opened again. The technician reentered, followed by Dr. Hawthorn. “Good to see you again, Mandy.” She walked over to the table and smiled at me, then turned to greet Marilee. “Oh, my. Is this the little angel I helped bring into the world?”

“That's her.” I smiled as Marilee stared up at the doctor with wide eyes.

“She's growing up into a beautiful little girl. Now—” The doctor turned and focused on the ultrasound monitor. “Let's see how this new little one is coming along.”

The ultrasound technician didn't speak, but her lips drew into a thin line as she pressed the transducer to my abdomen.

I tilted my head and watched the monitor as the doctor pointed toward a small, nebulous shape. “Okay—there's the fetus,” she said, concern lacing her voice as the technician probed more firmly with the transducer. “I see eyes . . . and an earlobe. The fetus is small, but everything appears normal.”

I shivered in a sudden tremor. “What do you mean by
small
?”

“Somebody might have mixed up their numbers. Or this baby might be a bit of a slow starter.”

I caught my breath as ripples of alarm began to spread from the spot where the transducer pressed against my skin. If this baby was undersized, there ought to be a reason—a logical, innocent reason.

“The intended mother told me the egg donor was petite—the woman's like, five feet or something. Very tiny.” I knew very little about the biological mother, only what Simone had reluctantly shared. The donor—twenty-four, young, and desperate for ready cash—had been healthy, brunette, blue-eyed, pretty, intelligent, and only five feet tall.

Dr. Hawthorn tilted her head. “I suppose that could explain it. Because this is a tiny baby.” The technician tapped on her keyboard and snapped a picture, then another, as I lifted my head again.

“There's the heartbeat—see it beating?” The doctor stepped aside so Marilee could see the pulsing on the screen. The technician turned a knob and we all heard the quick, squishy thumping of a heart perfectly synchronized to the tiny glowing image. “That's a nice strong rhythm.”

“See that, honey?” I smiled at Marilee. “There's the baby growing inside Mommy's tummy.”

Marilee's eyes widened as she stared at the ghostly picture. “I don't see a baby.”

“It's still very small, but it's going to grow. Soon my belly will get big, and that's how we'll know the baby is growing, too.”

Marilee abandoned her book and walked over to the exam table for a closer look at my stomach. “How'd the baby get in there?”

The technician shot me a curious glance, but I'd been anticipating the question. I smiled and squeezed Marilee's arm. “Some doctors put the baby inside. It belongs to a mommy who can't grow babies in her own belly, so one day we'll give it to her.”

Her lips pursed. “Why can't we keep it?”

“Because it doesn't belong to us. You know how sometimes you spend the night with Mama Isa? She takes care of you, right? I'm doing the same thing for another mama. When the baby runs out of room in my belly, it will be born, and its mama will come to pick it up, just like we pick you up from Mama Isa's house.”

Marilee studied my stomach with a look that told me her brain was working hard to decipher the situation. “I still want a baby of our own,” she finally said, meeting my gaze. “A little brother would be okay. Or a puppy.”

“One day Daddy and I will have another baby. Maybe a brother, maybe a sister. But definitely someone you can play with.”

Marilee shifted her gaze to the screen and the amorphous flickering blob. “That doesn't look like a baby.”

“I know, honey, right now it looks more like a sea monkey. But one day it will look like a baby.” I met my doctor's gaze. “Can you see enough to determine the sex?”

She peered more closely at the screen. “I'm afraid this one's not feeling cooperative today. Maybe next time.”

I drew a deep breath and tried not to be disappointed. I knew Damien wanted a son, but he'd accept a daughter because he and Simone had other frozen embryos. If this pregnancy produced a boy, however, I wasn't sure Damien would want other children.

So what would happen to the frozen babies he had stored in a tank?

None of my business.

I squeezed Marilee's shoulder again and turned to the doctor. “So . . . we're good?”

“We're good, but we're not finished.” She gave me a paper towel to clean the goop from my skin, then turned and spoke to Marilee. “Sweetheart, my nurse is going to walk you to the waiting room while I take some measurements and talk to your mommy for a few minutes. Can you wait out there for your mom?”

Marilee's dark eyes darted toward me, then she nodded slowly. The ultrasound tech stood and took Marilee's hand, then led her out of the room.

As I slipped out of my clothes and into a gown, Dr. Hawthorn asked routine questions that I answered as best I could. Then I got up on the exam table while she measured the distance between the top of my pubic bone and the top of my uterus. “A lot of doctors don't bother to measure the fundus anymore,” she said, “but I'm old-fashioned and I'm concerned about the baby's size. Charting the fundal height will give us reliable evidence the baby is growing as it should be.”

I bit my lip, remembering her concerned expression as she studied the ultrasound. “Did you see something . . . wrong?”

She gave me a reassuring smile. “Not wrong, just small. So be sure to take your vitamins and eat a balanced diet. I'd like to see you in another month, so we can be sure the tadpole's developing properly.”

“I can do that.”

“You have decent insurance?”

“Tricare.”

“Ah—the best. See you in a month, then. Take care of yourself.”

I sat up and gave her a wry smile. “I will—I have all kinds of people looking out for me.”

As the doctor left the room, the technician came back in. As I dressed, she printed copies of the photographs for me and promised to email copies to Simone.

I planned to hang my copies on the refrigerator for Marilee's benefit. If she could see the baby's gradual growth, maybe the situation would begin to make sense to her.

Right after we arrived at home, I went into the living room and called Simone. She had already received the photographs, and while she was thrilled with the picture of her baby, she shared my disappointment in learning I was definitely carrying only one child.

“Twins would have been wonderful,” she said, “but one is what we truly wanted. We are delighted, and perhaps we will do better with only one child in our lives. He or she will have our undivided attention.”

I told her that one child could certainly keep a mother busy, and promised to check in as soon as I received any other news.

But for now, I assured her, everything looked perfect.

Weeks flew by—long days and silent nights without Gideon. I left our laptop powered up on the kitchen counter in case he was able to Skype us, but sometimes the computer stayed quiet for days. I knew Gid and his men sometimes had to remain incommunicado for security reasons, but every day without hearing from him felt like torture.

How did other wives handle the silence? I asked another operator's wife when I saw her at the PX, and she said she didn't handle it at all. “I take all those feelings,” she explained, “and put them in a jar, and put the jar up on the shelf. Every once in a while, when I just can't stand it, I take the jar down and have myself a good rant or a good cry. Then I bottle everything back up and back on the shelf it goes.”

I don't know what a psychologist would say about her approach, but I preferred to find other ways to cope. Instead of looking around and feeling sorry for myself, I decided to look forward.

That's when Marilee and I began to play the New House game. The idea came to me one hot Saturday afternoon when I cleaned her room and saw her dollhouse sitting on top of the toy box. She had loved the dollhouse when she received it last Christmas, but she hadn't played with it in what seemed like ages.

I went into my bedroom to get my stack of folders packed with decorating ideas and paint chips. I carried them all into Marilee's room, then sat on the floor, opened the “dining room” folder, and tried to visualize the toy dining room painted in periwinkle blue.

Marilee dropped her storybook and peered over the top of the little house. “Are you playing dolls, Mommy?”

I shook my head. “I'm trying to see if I'd like this dining room painted in”—I held up the paint chip—“this color.”

“Oh!” Marilee came around and sat next to me, bending to look inside the toy house. “Why don't you paint the room and see what it looks like?”

I opened my mouth to reply that we couldn't do that, then stopped in midbreath. Why not paint the little room? Home Depot sold tiny paint tester bottles. And practically everything that could go into a real house had been reproduced in toy sizes. . . .

“Come on,” I told Marilee, “we're going shopping.” As we walked through the aisles of various toy and home improvement stores, I shared our dream with our daughter. “Very soon, when Daddy gets out of the military, we're going to buy a house of our own. You'll have your own bedroom, and we'll have a big backyard—”

“Can we get a puppy?”

I smiled. “I don't see why not.”

And as we painted and decorated and repainted and changed our minds again and again, I think I enjoyed the New House game even more than Marilee did. This was play with purpose, and by the time Gideon and I were ready to move, I'd have everything figured out. I'd know my colors, what furnishings we still needed to buy, and how many bedrooms our new home should have. If the new house had rooms proportionately sized like the dollhouse, I'd even know how to arrange the furniture.

Yet Marilee's dollhouse didn't offer everything we really needed. With only a living and dining room downstairs, and only two bedrooms upstairs, the dollhouse had no bathrooms, only a tiny attic, and no nursery.

And a nursery was the one room our new home simply had to have. Being pregnant—feeling the changes in my body and my moods—made me crave another child of my own. I hadn't begun to do anything so foolish as to covet the child growing inside me, but I filled a separate folder with all sorts of ideas for a little boy's room, a nursery done up in light blue with splashes of yellow.

When all this was over—my surrogate pregnancy and Gideon's term of duty—I wanted a son more than anything.

When my fat jeans officially refused to zip, I pulled them off and reached for the cardboard box high on my closet shelf. Natasha Bray had sent a check for maternity clothes after I entered the second trimester, but I'd saved the maternity things I wore with Marilee. Even though they were no longer the most fashionable style, I figured they'd be fine for wearing at work and at home. Besides, a lot of my ordinary clothes were roomy enough to wear throughout the second trimester. We were heading into the hottest part of a Florida summer, perfect weather for comfortable sundresses and loose-fitting cotton tops.

Marilee hadn't said anything about my growing tummy, even though I kept the ultrasound picture on the refrigerator and mentioned the baby several times a week. I wanted to be careful about what I told my daughter because I didn't want her to think all tummy babies had to be given away—what would that do to her sense of security? At the same time, I wanted her to know that giving a baby to someone else wasn't terribly unusual. In some ways, surrogacy was not much different from adoption.