The Stork Club (39 page)

"I guess there's no denying that she is the baby's mother," Rick said matter-of-factly, and Lainie looked as if someone had kicked her.

"Explain why you said that, Rick," Barbara said, noting that the light feeling among them was gone.

"I don't mean to sound like all the dumb people in the world, and I didn't say 'real mother,' but that woman has a biological connection to that baby. And from what you're saying, an emotional one too. I'd worry like hell if it was my baby about disconnecting from her. Her genes and her history are very much who Rose is, and who she is going to grow up to be. Listen, I don't really know Mitch at all," Rick said. "In fact, from the little I've come to know him in here, I didn't particularly like him. But I'll bet there's something in him that says the genetic mother should have a relationship with the baby. And he may have handled it poorly, but I think his instincts are right. Please don't in any way take this personally, Lainie, but I think the concept of surrogacy is a disaster. I believe that just as adoption is a way of solving two problems, surrogacy creates not just problems but potential tragedies."

"That's what I think," Lainie said, trying to stay collected. "I mean, that's what I think now. But when it was happening, I didn't know what to think. I felt as
if I had to do something and do it fast, because so much time had gone by with me trying to have babies and then being sick, and Mitch wanted it so much. I felt that if I couldn't give him a baby I was worthless. But now I know I never should have said yes to any of it."

"I understand the confusion," Judith said, "because I don't know how anyone could not want to relate to their own genetic offspring. To know that somewhere out there was a product of you, and not feel related to it, not needing to know it, just doesn't make sense. Don't get me wrong, I think Mitch is a bum for doing anything behind your back.''

"What about your sperm donors?" Rick asked Judith. "You want them in your life?"

"Believe me," she shot back defensively, "I wish they were available for baby-sitting. No, seriously, I only wish I had an important relationship in my life. But I don't. So I started without that elusive him."

"I think Lainie's problem right now has more to do with the idea that there was a deception after such a carefully thought-out plan about how to conduct the surrogacy. Mitch seems to have changed the rules on her without telling her what the new rules are, and breached their trust."

"The shit," Judith said.

"Can't you fix it? Talk about it?" Ruthie asked.

"I'm still too raw," Lainie answered. "I'm still beating myself up for agreeing to do it in the first place, and jealous and sick with shock that he could lie to me. I'm trying to find a way to understand his behavior. Right now it feels to me as if we had a good life together, but somehow we've managed to turn it into something that can never be right."

"So change your definition of what's right," Judith said. "That's what
I
did. Don't get bogged down in the
idea that there's only one version of family. If family to me was only for husbands, wives, and babies, I'd still be waiting for the phone to ring. There's got to be a way to make it okay. To work something out about the surrogate that you and Mitch and the surrogate can live with."

Lainie thought about it. "I don't know if I'm capable of being as big about all of this as all of you are in your lives. In fact I know I'm not. I had some boundaries inside me I set up for the way behavior was supposed to be, and Mitch crossed them. So something tells me this is as far as I can go with him." Her pretty face looked long and pale and pleated with the furrows of pain. "Please let's let it go, please let's talk about somebody else's problems."

Barbara looked around to see who wanted to speak next.

"I got a call from a part of my son's extended family and need to talk about that in here," Rick said. He was planning to tell them about his conversation with Bea Cobb, but in order to make the impact more clear he backed up and told them more about how he and Doreen came together. He was surprised at the way his voice shook when he talked about the day he met Doreen and Bea Cobb at the airport, and now how worried he was about what sounded like Doreen's fragile mental state, and where she might have gone. It had been days since Bea's call and he hadn't had one more word.

"You're dealing with some very complicated emotions," Barbara said. "Doreen is probably and will always be grieving for the loss of David. Adolescence can be pretty traumatic under the best of circumstances, and a classic time for running away, but she's had to deal with the added upheaval of an unwanted pregnancy and a separation from the baby. And of course we don't
have any idea what she's been through with school and friends and boys, not to mention the other members of her family. Clearly she has a lot to overcome.

"It sounds to me from this very distant vantage point as if she's got some difficult times to get through. This running away is a cry for help. It sounds as if you and this girl forged a very powerful attachment. But for the long term, I believe you're going to have to have faith in that inner strength you told me she has to get her through this. Has the family called the police?"

"No," Rick said, holding himself in check for fear that by facing this he would fall apart right there. "And it worries me. The padrone of the family is the husband of the eldest sister, and I don't trust this guy. I don't know, maybe I'm crazy but I have a terrible feeling he . . . " Ruthie moved to one side of Rick and Lainie to another and they each put an arm around him. "If anything happens to that little girl . . ." he began, but he was too choked with emotion to finish the sentence.

"We're going to need to focus on what both Lainie's and Rick's dilemmas bring up," Barbara said, "which is what your obligations and agreements are to the extended families of these children, and when and if you let these needs affect your lives. It's a topic that's affecting all of you."

"Not us," Ruthie said.

"Well, I don't know," Barbara said. "Suppose the time came that one of you found a romance, a mate?"

Neither Ruthie nor Shelly knew what to say to that. A long uncomfortable time passed during which there was only the squeaking of chairs and a sigh or two.

"Good God," Judith said. "It's all so painful."

"But worth it," Ruthie said, looking out the window at the children playing. "Being a parent is definitely worth it." The others sat in quiet agreement.

He
is
handsome, Barbara thought, looking at Ryan Adler across the dining room table, and I can sure see why Heidi is so attracted to him. He's also very good at charming. Big smile, polite, deferential to Stan, to me. And my poor child is falling all over him. Her voice is shrill and she's trying too painfully hard. She jumps with terror every time he gestures in her direction and when dinner is over they're leaving here and going to a hotel to spend the night. I can't stand it.

"Get ahold of yourself, honey," Stan said to her when he carried the last of the dinner plates through the swinging doors to the kitchen.

"Why?"

"Because," Stan said, "you look as if you're ready to cry out there. This is supposed to be a joyous occasion, remember?"

"I hate him," Barbara whispered. "I've forgotten everything I ever learned about psychology. I want to pour hot coffee in his lap and push his face into the ice cream."

"Would anybody have been good enough for her? And remember, mothers know nothing. Gracie hated me."

"Present tense, honey. Hates, hates."

"There you are, and I'm a goddamned prince on horseback. So maybe it's time for you to let it go."

"You're right," she said, hoping the classical music coming out of the speakers in the dining room was preventing Heidi and Ryan from hearing her. "I should let it go, I'm going to let it go. But can I poison him first?"

Stan laughed and picked up the coffee tray and went back through the swinging doors into the dining room. Barbara said a quick prayer for strength and followed.

"Should we start talking about dates?" Stan asked, putting a cup in front of Ryan. "I mean, I have a pretty full calendar for the rest of the year so I thought we should go over some possibilities. What are we talking about in terms of time?"

Heidi and Ryan answered at the same time. She said December and he said next summer, and then they each looked at the other with disdain.

"That's too soon, sweetheart," he said. Barbara's stomach tightened.

"What are we waiting for? Neither one of us is in school," she whined.

"Honey, what's our hurry?" Ryan asked her as if he were talking to a child. And he is, Barbara thought. "This way your folks will have more time to get it all planned." He patted her hand, but she pulled it away. Barbara knew her so well that before a pout was even on her daughter's lips she could tell that Heidi was furious.

"I don't want to wait until the summer," Heidi said, getting edgy in a way Barbara recognized, and though she would never admit it, she liked the direction the conversation was taking. It escalated from there. Heidi got whinier and Ryan got more supercilious. Barbara tried to remember later what the exact moment was, maybe when he used the word
childish
, or just after she said snidely they'd have to make the plans fit in with Ryan's mother's schedule, but Heidi jumped up from her chair and ran upstairs in tears. When she was gone, Ryan looked at Barbara and Stan with a shrug grown-ups frequently use with one another that meant, Kids. Who can understand them?

Barbara wanted to go upstairs and put a bureau against the door so Heidi wouldn't come back down again.

"She's not easy," Ryan said. "As I'm sure you already know, but I adore her."

Both Barbara and Stan were silent.

"Dinner was lovely," Ryan said, standing, "and I think what I should probably do now is make my way back to the hotel, and hope she's feeling a little bit better about all of this when the dawn breaks."

Barbara's back teeth were tightly clenched as she and Stan both stood. They all walked to the front door, passing the wall of family pictures, and Barbara caught sight of a picture of Heidi at three years old in which she had the same expression on her face as she had had a moment ago when she'd rushed upstairs.

When Ryan was gone, Stan took Barbara in his arms and asked, "How do we tell her it's not going to happen?"

"Unfortunately, we don't," she answered. "We just wait for her to figure that out on her own."

34

W
ITHOUT MITCH IN HER LIFE, Lainie lived each day by rote. She took care of the baby's needs, and in the evenings when she had school, she dropped Rosie off with her grandmother Margaret and went off to class. Mitch called and left apologetic messages on the answering machine, messages in which he begged her to call him back and talk to him, see him, promising her he could make her understand.

She would lean against the wall, still holding her books from school, listening to the long speeches he made to the answering machine, alternately hating him and longing for him. Sometimes she would rewind the machine and play the messages again just to hear the parts where he swore his love to her. Rosie, sitting on the kitchen floor, would hear his voice, look up, and gleefully shout, "Daddy!"

Within a week, Mitch's messages went from pleading
to annoyance, and then from annoyance to anger, and from anger to rage. "Pick the fucking phone up, Laine, and call me back, or you'll hear from my lawyer." She'd never heard that tone of voice from him, and there was a part of her that was glad to hear him so overwrought.

"Yes, Mitch," she said on the night he said that, picking up the phone and turning off the answering machine, relieved that the baby, who had now taken to repeating every word everyone said, was asleep.

"You've got a lot of balls, Lainie. I have every right in the world to our home and to my daughter." It wasn't her imagination that he emphasized the word
my
. "What can you possibly think you're doing by ignoring my phone calls? I've been too nice to come over there and break the door down, but believe me I will if I have to. I'll come over there and take the baby the hell out of there."

"No, you won't, Mitch. Because you love her and you know you're doing the best thing for her by letting her stay with me. Not you and not Jackie."

"Hey, I told you I've got nothing going with Jackie."

"Not anymore since I broke up the party."

"Lainie, I can't change any of it back to the way it was. I wish I could. But now is now and I want to see my daughter and you'd better stop trying to get in the way. So come up with a time that's good, and I'll pick her up and bring her back later. Then we can start talking about the issues around her custody."

"You work all day every day, sometimes until late at night. I'm at home and have been her primary caretaker since the day she was born. I may not be her biological parent," she said, still not believing that she was having this conversation, "but with the possible options, my availability and dependability and history with her make me the best candidate for solid parenting genes or no genes."

"We'll see," Mitch said. "When will she be ready?"

"At ten in the morning." Lainie's own rage was bubbling in her chest. She knew that was Mitch's busiest hour at the store, but Mitch rose to it.

"I'm there," he said, and hung up.

Seeing her husband sitting nervously in their living room was unquestionably odd. They had chosen every piece of furniture, every picture on the wall in that room together, and now he was an outsider. She missed him so much that if he'd said, "I love you. This is dumb," she probably would have said, "You're right. Go get your things and move back in while I fix lunch." But he didn't ask to come home. Instead he sat with his hands folded, as if he were a prom date being looked over by the parents of the teenage girl.

The baby had been up at five
A.M.
, and was still down for her morning nap. Mitch was quiet for a long time. When he finally spoke, it was in a voice so constricted by pain it was almost unrecognizable. "I want to see her every day. If she so much as coughs, I want to know about it. I'm not happy about her living anywhere but with me, but right now I'm knocking myself out to keep the business going and I've got to be in the store so much that what you said last night was right. It wouldn't be any kind of a life for her." It was like a speech he'd rehearsed, as if fearing that once he tried to be spontaneous, he'd lose control. And when he turned to Lainie she saw the passion behind the exterior, and more anger than she'd ever seen him express with anyone.