Risking It All Read online

  She looked a little sheepish, but not apologetic. “I know it’s a lot, but when I was researching this I saw that many surrogates are paid between twenty-five and fifty thousand dollars. I think the agency was short-changing her. We can add a little more to the loan. It won’t make that big a difference to us each month and it will change her life. It will mean she will be extra willing to eat the proper diet and go to the right doctor and share everything with me. It will be good for us and for her. This is a racket for the agency. She doesn’t get enough. It’s up to us to make it fair. I mean, won’t you feel better if the birth of our child also means that her child will have better prospects? I know I will.”

  He gave her a half smile and put his arm around her. She was impulsive, generous, enthusiastic, all the qualities he fell in love with, but sometimes, for those very same reasons, she was exasperating.

  8

  In the months that followed, Marcia and Eve found an obstetrician and as soon as the pregnancy was viable, they started monthly visits. Marcia read everything she could find about pregnancy and prenatal care and shared it with Eve, who promised she was eating nutritious meals, taking her prenatal vitamins and not drinking or smoking. In the fourth month they discovered, to Marcia’s delight and Jeff’s panic, that Eve was carrying twins, a boy and a girl. Marcia carried a copy of the ultrasound photo in her wallet and showed it to her friends. She was working hard because she wanted to accomplish a lot before the twins were born, when she planned to take six months off. But sometimes, in the middle of reading a manuscript or returning from a meeting, she would take a break, ask Julie to bring her a cup of coffee, and pull out the ultrasound photo to stare at. She could see that one twin had a high forehead and the other seemed to have a slightly bigger nose. Was that possible or just the angle of the photo? She didn’t know. She didn’t care, really, but she liked imagining what they would look like, be like. She didn’t mention this to Jeff because the idea that they would soon have two crying, hungry, needy babies in the house made him anxious and she was trying to give him time to get used to it.

  She concentrated on the pregnancy and wondered if they should switch to a physician who specialized in high-risk deliveries. But Eve was happy with her doctor and resisted change. The doctor himself told Marcia that a high-risk specialist was not needed in this case, so she relented. But she worried about the possibility of the babies being premature and she insisted that Eve stop work in her eighth month so she could rest and take care of herself. Since Marcia and Jeff had agreed to make up Eve’s lost salary, and since her company agreed to the time off, Eve went along with it.

  Usually, Eve scheduled her prenatal visits on a Monday. Marcia would take a plane Sunday morning and spend the day with Eve and her son. It enabled her to monitor the way Eve lived. An unintended but pleasant consequence was that she and Eve found that in spite of their huge cultural, educational and class differences, they had enough in common to become friends. It wasn’t just that they shared this pregnancy, although clearly that was part of it. The excitement, the utrasounds, the first detection of the heartbeat, the first kick, all these were experienced together largely because of Eve’s generosity, her ability to understand how much Marcia wanted to be a part of the pregnancy and how Eve could satisfy that desire. But they spent so much time together that soon they also spoke of other things. At first it was Eve who wanted to talk. She seemed hungry for a friend and confided stories about her childhood, her regret over her parents, her love of her son, her desire to become a nurse and some of the problems at her job. Marcia would listen and try to advise her, much as she did her assistant, Julie, and little by little, she began to feel protective of her.

  Once, when Marcia came for the monthly visit to the obstetrician, she offered to pick Eve up at the care home after work to drive her to the appointment. When she arrived, Eve wasn’t ready. A colleague came out to meet Marcia. “Eve said she’s really sorry, but she can’t come right now. Please wait.”

  “But we have an appointment with the doctor,” Marcia said. “How long will it be?”

  The colleague laughed. “Oh God, I don’t know. Sometimes it’s really quick and sometimes it seems to take forever, but Eve won’t go till it works.”

  Marcia frowned, annoyed. “Till what works?”

  “Mrs. Thomisson. She’s the lady with really bad dementia. Sometimes she just starts crying and moaning and rocking and nobody can do nothing for her. Unless they give her a shot of something and the doctor isn’t always here to order that. So the psychologists come. The social workers. They all don’t know what to do. Mostly the nurses just leave her alone until she gives up and stops on her own. But Eve can’t stand to hear her like that. And she can calm her. She just goes in and does her magic and after a while Mrs. Thomisson quiets down.”

  Marcia thanked her and sat down, amazed. Thirty minutes later, Eve came out, rushing through the lobby, apologizing profusely.

  “Did you calm her down?” Marcia asked.

  “What? Oh yeah. I sang to her.” She smiled. “‘Michael Row the Boat Ashore’; for some reason that always works.”

  Marcia frowned, startled.

  “Why that one?”

  “I don’t know. Danny learned it at school and I tried it once and it worked. It’s old. Maybe she heard it when she was a young girl.”

  Marcia had a flash of remembering singing that song with her own mother when Marcia was about seven years old—before her mother got so sick and everything changed. After the sickness set in, whenever her mother would have a seizure, Marcia would sing that to her, hoping to bring her back, but was never sure it mattered.

  Eve’s ambition and compassion were more than Marcia had expected, and she soon found herself wanting to help her change her life. She spent hours at home looking on the Internet for programs that would allow Eve to study nursing while working at her job and then pass the information on to Eve, urging her to follow up. She’d ask her every time she visited how Mrs. Thomisson was doing, and when one day Eve told her with tears in her eyes that Mrs. Thomisson had died, Marcia choked up too.

  This was not a development that pleased Jeff. He wanted things to go smoothly, of course, and amicably, but he didn’t want attachments that might be likely to continue after his children were born. One day in Eve’s fifth month of pregnancy, Marcia told him another of her “Eve stories.” “She saw a new resident coming into the home bent down so badly with osteoporosis that she could look only at the floor,” Marcia recounted. “She was just coming out to meet me but first she ran up to this lady, bent down very low so that her face looked right into the face of the woman, actually made eye contact with her, and smiled so sweetly and said, ‘Hello. You look beautiful today.’ And then she kind of sprinted on. That’s how she is. She is really special. I feel like we’re lucky to know her.”

  “Yeah,” Jeff said, but he didn’t look happy. He waited a minute or two and then, with worry lines creasing his face, he said, “Honey, you’re getting so close to her. I hope that isn’t going to be a problem. You know we agreed we aren’t going to stay in touch after the baby is born. Will you be okay with that?”

  She reassured him, though that thought had occurred to her too and she wasn’t at all sure how it would work out. Still, she assumed she’d be so busy being a real mother after the twins came that her maternal feelings for Eve would diminish. And Eve had wanted the separation too, so maybe their relationship would fade naturally. Still, it continued to grow and both enjoyed it. They’d hang out together during the monthly visits when Marcia would take Eve and Danny out for dinner, or accompany Eve to her doctor’s appointment. Over time, they grew even closer. They admired each other. Although Eve barely had time to read, she knew education was the key to success and she was in awe of Marcia’s executive position in the world of books. And Marcia was impressed by Eve’s kindness and empathy, which reminded her of her own years of caring for her mother. She valued Eve’s ambition, her determination to carve out a better
life for herself and her son against punishing odds.

  Marcia also came to like Danny, the source of all of Eve’s hopes and plans. Eve worked so many hours, she wasn’t around much to supervise him, but she was proud of how independent he was. He did his homework every night and left it for her on the kitchen table. She’d look it over when she got home, even the two nights a week she did a double shift and didn’t arrive home until eleven. She didn’t check it for accuracy—he already knew the subjects as well or better than she did—but she liked to see his neat hand, the papers lined up on the table, ready for her signature, which the teacher required. When she wasn’t there, she’d leave his dinner out for him, or money to go to the mercado for an empanada. Marcia dropped by the market with him once. It was bustling, with stalls of fresh fruit and vegetables and staples of Hispanic cooking. Danny knew the vendors—he must go there often, she thought—and also ran into neighbors whom he greeted politely. One of her visits fell a week after his eleventh birthday and she brought him a book about the history of baseball for a present. She could tell he wasn’t thrilled with it, but he thanked her politely. She tried, as she had on other occasions, to start a conversation with him, but it was difficult. He was shy and polite but distant, a little suspicious. She noticed that with his mother, he was boisterous and affectionate, full of stories about his day. When it came to his mother’s pregnancy, however, he was clearly not interested. Once, when Marcia was visiting, one of the twins (or maybe both of them) started to kick. “Come, Danny,” his mother called. “Put your hand on my stomach. They are moving around inside me.”

  Danny made a face and picked up his iPod. “That’s gross,” he said, slipping into the bedroom and closing the door.

  “He doesn’t like me to be pregnant,” Eve said.

  “Maybe it’s because he knows the babies aren’t going to stay. That they’re not his.”

  Eve looked thoughtful. “Yeah. Maybe. I think I look funny to his friends. He doesn’t know how to explain why I got babies inside me but no father around. He told some of them we were selling them and said he was taking offers.” She laughed. “The parents got all upset. I got mad and told him to stop talking so much. He stormed off. It’ll be better after we go back to normal.”

  Marcia nodded. “I know. We are all waiting for that day.”

  Jeff came with Marcia for one of the last visits to the doctor, a month before the due date, which was June 10. He stayed in the waiting room when the two women went in and was relieved when they told him everything looked good. There were about four weeks to go, and the doctor was hopeful the babies would go to term, unusual for twins. In fact, he said, he didn’t want the pregnancy to go past term and would induce labor if the twins didn’t come on their own by the due date. They had a plan, though they recognized it was tentative. If they were going to induce, Marcia and Jeff would arrive a day earlier. Marcia would go into the delivery room with Eve, and she and Jeff would stay with Danny a day or two, until Eve came home from the hospital.

  After the doctor visit, they picked up Danny after school and drove to a park. Jeff parked the car a few blocks away and they all walked together. Danny brought his glove and ball, and Marcia encouraged Jeff to play catch with him.

  “I’m not dressed for it,” he said.

  “You’re fine. You’re wearing slacks and a shirt. It doesn’t matter. It’s just catch.”

  “Isn’t it too hot for catch?” he asked.

  “I guess they’re used to it in Los Angeles,” she said.

  He frowned, but he got up and threw the ball to Danny. Danny missed but he ran for it, and the two moved away and continued playing. Marcia smiled, imagining Jeff playing ball with their own children one day. She and Eve watched them for a while.

  “Eve, what happened to Danny’s father?” Marcia asked gently.

  Eve shrugged. “He died.”

  “I know. But how?”

  “He was illegal, you know? He went home to see his mother and stayed for her funeral. He thought he could just pay the smuggler and come in again the same way he did the first time. But I don’t know. Something happened. Everyone told me he left Mexico but he never showed up here. Then one day the police came. They said they found a dead guy in the desert. It was his DNA. They think he hurt his foot and couldn’t keep up and the smugglers just left him there. It was hard.” She rubbed her eyes and turned away. A few seconds passed. “Anyway,” she said more brightly, “things are getting better now.”

  They looked back at Jeff and Danny but they were no longer playing catch. Danny had thrown his glove and ball on the ground and was running toward home, his shoulders slumped, his head down. “Danny, que pasa?” Eve called after him. Marcia had noticed that Eve, true to Jorge’s wishes, had tried to maintain the connection to his Mexican heritage, even by occasionally saying a few words to him in Spanish. When she shouted after him, he slowed down but kept walking. “You come back here and pick those up right away or I will leave them and you know you won’t get new ones,” Eve shouted. Danny stopped and without looking at her ran back and sulkily picked up the bat and glove. “I wanna go home, okay, Ma?”

  “Yeah, okay. What happened?”

  “Nothin’. I just don’t wanna play no more.” Marcia noticed that he was purposely using street grammar when he usually spoke perfectly.

  Jeff had reached them by now and they all headed to the car. Jeff and Marcia lagged behind.

  “What was that about?” Marcia asked.

  “Nothing. I threw an easy ball a little high. He just had to jump for it but he was too lazy so he missed. I told him he should have caught it and he got mad, threw his glove down and walked away. Not even a thank-you.”

  “He’s just a kid. He probably felt bad he missed it and then you hurt his feelings. Forget it.”

  “I already have.”

  “He doesn’t have a father to play ball with him, Jeff. He doesn’t know how to behave. Be nice.”

  “I’m nice. But in a few more weeks, I’ll be buying a baseball glove for my own little boy and all this will be behind us.”

  She smiled and put her arm through his, hugging it as they walked. “I know. I can hardly wait. You know, you might be buying that baseball glove for your little girl too.”

  Eve walked ahead of them, trying to catch up with her son, who was charging toward the car. She had grown very big and her body swayed back and forth as she walked. It was hot and she was panting. Sweat dripped down the sides of her face. Marcia quickened her pace to catch up with her. She put her hand on Eve’s arm to slow her down. “Don’t rush like that, Eve. It’s too hot.”

  Eve slowed. “I want to catch up with Danny.”

  “I’ll do it. You walk slowly. You’ll see him at the car.”

  Jeff walked with Eve, and Marcia ran ahead. She saw Danny a block away and called for him to stop, but he just kept running. He was quiet and sullen when they reached the car, and when they arrived home, he was the first to run in. He was already in the bedroom with the door slammed by the time they entered the apartment. Eve went in after him, and Jeff and Marcia, hanging back uncomfortably in the living room, heard his voice, whining and angry and then tearful, followed by Eve’s, soft and comforting, soothing him, until he calmed down.

  9

  They got the call at two in the morning a week later. Although she’d been sleeping, Marcia picked up on the first ring, immediately fearing some calamity. “These kids of yours, they don’t wanna wait,” Eve said, her voice faint on the other end of a scratchy line.

  “Eve. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry. I’m having a little trouble breathing ’cause these babies are pressing on my lungs but I’m fine. My water broke so I’m on my way to the hospital. I’ll call you after I see the doctor.” She hung up.

  Marcia shook Jeff, who was still sleeping. “Wake up. It’s begun. Her water broke. She’s already left for the hospital. We have to get ready to go.”

  Labor had begun earlier than e
xpected, but the doctor had reassured them during the last visit that Eve had already passed the time when prematurity would be dangerous. Although it would be better if the babies had gone to term, Marcia knew that would have been unusual for twins. Not waiting for Jeff, who had turned over and put the pillow over his head—she wasn’t even sure he had been awake enough to hear her—she used her cell phone to check flights and was relieved to see they could get on a direct one to LAX at 8:00 A.M. Her bag was packed—she had taken care of that just last week—so she brushed her teeth and threw her cosmetic bag into her suitcase. They’d need to be at the airport by seven so they’d have to leave the house at six, she calculated, realizing that she could sleep a few more hours. But she knew there was little chance of that.

  Her thoughts raced around the last-minute preparations she had made. She silently checked them off in her mind. She had the newborn diapers, the receiving blankets, the onesies in pink, yellow and blue. She walked to the nursery and stood in the doorway, taking it all in. She noted how still the apartment was, how perfectly quiet, maybe for the last time. Once the babies were there, she thought, their presence would fill the place, even when they were asleep. She looked approvingly at the two white cribs, neatly made up with the bunny-print sheets, one in pink, the other in blue. She had stocked the room with everything they would need, at least at the beginning. She and Jeff had pasted stickers on the walls next to the cribs—rainbows and bunnies and fairies and ballet dancers on one wall, basketball hoops and soccer balls and racing cars and robots on the other. “This is pretty sexist,” Jeff had said as they peeled the ballet dancers off the backing and pressed them on the wall near the pink bunny sheets. “Unless we put the boy in this crib and the girl in the other.” He was joking, but she knew he was right. This was how she had always imagined it, though, so she didn’t let it worry her too much. She told herself that she was flexible and if their kids developed differently, so be it. She’d adapt. In the meantime, she would just assume her daughter would be somewhat like her, and she had loved fairies and magic and ballet as a child. Her eyes moved to the corner of the room where Jeff had just yesterday put together the Duvalier glider she’d bought to sit in while she fed the babies. She and Jeff would both be using it, she thought, one of the advantages of her inability to nurse. It would give him a chance to share the nurturing right from the start. She smiled. She had thought of everything. She fired off an e-mail to Julie telling her the day had arrived and setting in motion the work plan she had composed for her absence. She was ready.