The Baby Merchant Page 17

  “She always did love candy.”

  “Yeah.” Luellen doesn’t know whether Sasha loves candy or not but again, she loves to make him smile at her. “It had to be her.”

  “You know what?” He makes a heart of his hands and cups her face. “You’re wonderful.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “No, you’re a really lovely girl.”

  “Oooh maaan, thank you.” At her back there is a disturbance behind the stained glass restaurant door: the rest of the Newlife party bunched in the vestibule, fixing to come out.

  He sees it too. Quickly, he kisses her on the forehead and releases her. “And thank you. You go have a wonderful baby, OK?”

  Luellen is beaming. “Don’t worry, I will.”

  “It’s been nice talking, and by the way.” He folds a bill into her hand before he goes. When she unfolds it later, it’s a fifty. “As soon as you’re all thin again, go buy yourself something nice.”

  18.

  “Hi,” Maury murmurs, low, so not even God will hear her. She doesn’t want to jump the gun but now that Jake has somebody working, she needs to practice. The voice you keep for your own baby has to be special, she thinks. Not like any other. She gathers up all the love in her and says gently, “Hey.”

  Where she ought not to hope too much, it’s all she thinks about. Who can possibly understand the hunger, or why it’s so intense? No matter how hard she tries to take her mind off it, the hope inside her blazes, burning away everything but want. It’s all that’s left of her now. Jake says there’s a baby out there for her. He’s coming soon! If only she knew how, or when.

  “I found a guy.” Jake’s promises are bright but fuzzy. Hard to get a grip on.

  Ask him who, or how, and he gets all red and says through his teeth, “Just let me do this.”

  When he first got back from Atlanta he fell into a paroxysm of planning. He was half fairy Godfather engineering a gift and half vulpine Conscience of Boston, tracking fresh quarry. On the day of the big meeting she begged to go with him. At the door he threw a look over his shoulder. It lodged in her like a tomahawk, stopping her dead. She wanted to go; she was afraid to go; what if she couldn’t control herself and started sobbing? What if she begged and the arrangement blew up because she’d handled it wrong?

  Her voice failed her. She barely managed, “Take care.”

  That night Jake came home grinning. “Hug me. Fall down and worship me. We’re getting a baby.”

  Her heart said: when? Her head made her ask, “Just like that?”

  “Not exactly. But hey, I brought it off!”

  “How?”

  He avoided her eyes like a bad little boy. “It’s complicated.”

  Maury’s seen this kind of bright evasiveness in clients. In plaintiffs in a case she is defending. She said carefully, “Is that all you’re going to tell me?”

  “We’re getting a baby, Maur. That’s all you need to know.”

  “No it isn’t. Whose baby, Jake, which organization, how …”

  “Don’t worry, we’re in good hands. Takeout, or shall I cook?”

  “That isn’t an answer, Jake.”

  “Don’t go all lawyer on me, Maur.”

  “I don’t even know his …”

  “Don’t.” The look Jake gave her then was charged with past history: all Maury’s miserable failures, from her first miscarriage to her … never mind. He slid a big, gentle hand down her jaw and said, “Let’s don’t jinx this one by picking it to death, OK?”

  She wants to trust him and be patient, but the hunger is getting worse. Sometimes she has to bite her knuckles to keep from gasping, but she goes to the office every day; she does her job. She eats lunch at her desk because the park’s not safe for her.

  There are too many babies with beautiful, wet eyelashes and faces like blown flowers, too many infants buckled into Snuglis or strollers, tidy and smug: just think, this time last year I didn’t even exist. She has to clamp her elbows to her sides and hurry past to keep from touching them. Those tiny collisions with other women’s children fan the fire and only make it worse. Better to work. The hunger enhances concentration. Arguments snap into place with amazing clarity; in meetings, she speaks with force. At work, sometimes she can forget.

  In what little spare time she permits, she struggles to keep from setting up the baby’s room— again. She remembers all those sad dismantlings after all those sad pregnancies. She actually gets through the days without going to Baby Gap or Babies Us, but nights, she breaks down and buys equipment on the Internet.

  Being childless and in want is bitter. Knowing the baby you need is coming but not knowing how or when is worse.

  At night, she and Jake meet in the kitchen like a pair of expectant fathers in a hospital waiting room: bonded even though they don’t know each other very well. Tonight he’s trimming his nails under the Tiffany shade. Instead of saying, Don’t, she takes his hand. The conversation begins the way it always does. “Any news?”

  “Not yet.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “When I know, you’ll know.” Jake sweeps the cuttings off the table and into the trash. The sweet, craggy man she’s been in love with since they were kids is aging; Maury is surprised by the white hairs glinting in his rusty hair, which looks thinner under the kitchen light, changed by intimations of the scalp.

  “I hate soon. I’m sick of it.” She shouldn’t be hard on him, he’s doing this for her, but she can’t quit, she’s starving. “Can’t you do any better than soon? He ought to at least have a due date.”

  “It’s not like he said a week from next Thursday, Maur. This kind of thing takes time.”

  “That’s not good enough!” Yes they are having a fight. This conversation has gotten so old that their responses are reflexive. Words that mean more than face value, personal shorthand as a timesaver. Usually Maury can fight and figure out what they’re having for supper at the same time.

  “It’ll have to do.”

  They’ve had this fight so often that Maury’s mind goes scurrying around a new corner: “No. Let me talk to him.”

  The response that pops up is one of Jake’s macros: the easy sound byte people drop into place so they won’t have to think. No matter who uses it, this one is laced with hostility. “Why would you want to do that?”

  “I’m sick of getting everything filtered through you. It’s my baby too.”

  “What do you want from me, Maur? What do you want from him?”

  “A straight answer, for one.”

  “You think I’m not capable of getting a straight answer?”

  “I think you’re too close to it, Jake. Like, personally involved.” This is not what she means. She means: your ego is tied up in this. When he gets this invested in something, Jake loses track of results. All he cares about is winning the encounter.

  He slaps the nail clippers down on the table. “Be careful, lady, or there won’t be any answers at all.”

  There are several bad things about the conversation, not the least of which is that they are having it with her standing and him sitting. As if he’s making her, not his guy, the enemy here. She slides a can of peanuts across the table. Yes it’s an offering. “Honey, please. If I meet him, I can tell if he’s on the level.”

  “That’s out of the question.” He pushes the can away.

  “I can’t do business with somebody I don’t know!” Angry, she goes into the freezer. Steak for dinner, maybe. Thaw in the microwave. A salad. We can eat by eight.

  “You’re not doing business with him, I am.”

  She tries out a smile that doesn’t quite make it. When did all their encounters turn into Family Feud? “Jake, I’m serious. This is us we’re talking about, something we’ve worked for and, OK, prayed for.” She gulps. “Or I have. There are things we need to know.”

  “If you have questions, print them out. I’ll run them past him next time we talk.”
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  Fuck him, she’ll nuke something. “Don’t condescend to me, Jake.”

  “Maury, he’s on it! Now get off my back.”

  Forget dinner. Is she mad at Jake for being secretive and high-handed or mad at her faulty body for bringing them to this? “You’re so fucking close mouthed. You haven’t even told me his name.”

  “It’s not important.”

  “It is to me. Where is he, anyway? Why hasn’t he come for the home visit?” She thinks about the smile she would give him. “The interview?”

  “We took the meeting.” He’s so pissed at her that he forgets he refused the peanuts. He gnashes angrily. “We had the interview.”

  “No. You did. These proceedings always start with the mother.”

  “This isn’t a proceeding.”

  Alarmed, she asks, “Is there something different about this one?”

  “Maura!” Jake slaps the table. “Do you want this baby or not?”

  “Of course. Don’t yell at me.”

  Like that, he softens. “Then back off and let him do his job.”

  Maury is not stupid. She’s a lawyer, one of the best. She proceeds cautiously, putting a question she can’t necessarily afford to have answered. Sushi, she’ll call Keiji’s for sushi. “Jake, is there something about this that you don’t want me to know about?”

  “Sweetie, I’ve told you everything I can.” Now Jake turns. They are finally having this conversation face to face. He doesn’t hug her; he’s smart enough to know that won’t work. Instead he stands with his hands spread, to show her that he has nothing to hide. “If you love me, you have to trust.”

  Careful, Maury. Keep it light. Her voice trembles. “Tell me we’re not into some kind of black market baby thing.”

  Flashing that grin, Jake falls back on an old network macro: “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Like, this isn’t some shyster who ranches Peruvian immigrants or gets high school girls pregnant for pay.” She’s kidding, but she isn’t. She says, too fast, “Kidding!”

  “No,” Jake says. His look says, Don’t press. “Nothing like that.”

  “I’m glad.”

  He scowls. “Is that what this is about? You think I’m?”

  Careful, Maury. Notice he doesn’t complete the sentence. Smile and let it go. “I’m sorry, I just had to know.”

  “Well now you do.”

  “OK,” Maury says after careful thought. When you want a baby as badly as Maury Bayless does today, no matter who you are, no matter how intelligent and ethical and scrupulous, you are willing to overlook a lot of things. There are things Jake isn’t telling her and she understands they’re things she doesn’t really want to know. All she wants to know— the only thing she wants to know— is that soon she’ll be holding her very own warm, loving baby. Therefore details she would ordinarily track down like a prosecutor and examine under a microscope are not important to her right now. There are things you have to do to get what you most need and this isn’t a matter of morality, it’s a matter of survival. So what if Jake’s mysterious source isn’t completely on the level? In the darkest part of her heart she is too hungry to care. “OK.”

  “So will you back off?”

  “I promise, I won’t ask questions. I just want to see the guy!” She wants to look into this stranger’s face and know that he is on the level in one respect and one only. She wants to know he will follow through. That these aren’t empty promises. “Just once.”

  Jake warns: “He knows about the hospitalization, Maur.”

  It’s like a punch to the belly. “Oh!”

  “He knows you tried to kill yourself.”

  “Then I have to see him, Jake. He needs to see me. To prove I’m not …”

  “Crazy?” Now the Conscience of Boston departs from his collection of selected sound bytes and turns on his wife. This time he puts his hands on Maury’s shoulders to weigh her down and hold her in place. They are standing too close. “Look, he’s on our case and it’s going very well. And chill, it’s all aboveboard, and if I don’t want to pull you into a meeting? He … Agh. Look, he says the parents have to be stable.” Blushing, Jake coughs it up. “OK. What if he takes one look and decides you’re too crazy to have a kid? I love you, but you could sink the boat.”

  19.

  Caught in the current and rushing toward the falls, you know one thing is certain. That roar coming from the deep gorge ahead is indeed crashing water. There will be no last minute rescues or helicopter lifts for you, lady. You are going over the falls.

  Sasha cabs to the hospital in all confidence.

  The driver says, “We made it. Hope everything’s OK.”

  “I can’t wait for it to be over,” Sasha says.

  “Don’t worry, most babies are born in the middle of the night. Take care.”

  “Thanks a lot. I’ll be fine.” She can do this. She’s read the books. Without Luellen for a Lamaze partner, she’s practiced alone. Breathing, everything. She’s got it down. She knows what to expect. A little pain, nothing she can’t handle. A temporary inconvenience. Then she’ll be herself. She can pick up her life where she left off. In a way, it’s exciting, knowing she’s so close. They balk at the no insurance card; then they run her plastic. Given the credit balance they admit her, stat.

  She’s like a parachutist right before the jump or a skier at the top of a peak, ready to push off. Excited. Ready. OK, then. Let’s do this. Compared to the long climb this part looks simple. Fine. I’m going down.

  The rest comes as a shock.

  Sasha isn’t old enough to know the hunger. In fact, she’s here to tell you that if Maury Bayless thinks motherhood is glorious, she’s wrong. About the glories of motherhood: giving birth is not a woman’s crowning achievement, it’s scary and bloody and harsh. It hurts. You’re helpless in a painful, messy situation you can’t escape, just part of a process that is beyond your control. The sooner it’s over with the better, and anybody who claims otherwise is either lying or on crack. The joy of birthing is a myth that professional mothers float, she thinks, women who have nothing else in their lives to brag about inflating a hard, necessary but perfectly natural process into something they personally did. Childbirth as personal triumph. A magnificent feat only they could bring off. Coming on to you like Marilyn with wet sentimental mouths and misty sentimental eyes, what the fuck happened to them, did they forget?

  When Sasha gets back to the DelMar she finds Marilyn hovering, but instead of asking to see the baby— my baby!— she hangs in the doorway, muttering. “Don’t worry, I didn’t tell him anything.”

  Tottering with exhaustion, Sasha says, “What?” Why is she so wrecked, all she did was ride in a cab.

  “ … asking about you, but I just sent him away.”

  “Who?” It was a terrible ride, threading through dense downtown traffic in a taxi, bouncing on hard plastic seats. She was riding along on twenty-some fresh stitches, and Beattie Calhoun’s obstetrician signed her out at the height of rush hour. “I understand your finances are limited so I’m releasing you early,” he said nicely. Then her guts crawled as he added, “But you’re expected back Thursday for the chipping.” Now the infant is bleating— no tears, but he’s miserable, and Sasha is wild because this is a problem she has no idea how to solve. This puny, brand new human being is alive. He’s here and she’s in charge. It’s not the newborn’s fault that she is the way she is, weak and tearful and in no respect glad it is here. No, mother love did not kick in the minute they wiped it off and put it into her arms; like the fabled joy of squeezing out a baby without drugs to enhance the glory, this is a myth. Biology doesn’t make you a mother. She doesn’t know what does. Her brand new human is crying, it’s squirming weakly— is it OK? She’s scared to look. This is not the egg they gave you to take care of in high school Human Life class, which if you broke, there were eleven others in the box. It’s real. Until four this afternoon, she could hand this tiny living creature off to a nurse, but now …
giving bottles and changing diapers with a nurse there to fix anything that seems broken is one thing, but this is different. She and this brand new baby are on their own. This is her problem. It’s all hers, and she doesn’t know what to do. And here is Marilyn Steptoe leaning on the doorknob nattering about something somebody— a phone call, she thinks, but she’s too distracted to think. A phone call?

  “ … don’t you want to know what he said?”

  She’s terrified of dropping the baby. She’s weaving slightly—anesthesia hangover? What? “Somebody called?”

  “He came.”

  “Who?”

  “Oooh, is that your baby?” Marilyn reaches out. Sasha turns her shoulder protectively to block that fat hand with those shiny coral nails. “Oooh, she’s so sweet.”

  “It’s not a …” Something isn’t right here in her hideout at the DelMar, she doesn’t know what.

  “Let me hold her.”

  “It’s too soon!”

  “Oh look, she’s crying, poor little thing. Don’t worry, babies love me. Sweetheart, come to Marilyn, Marilyn knows what to do.”

  “No!” Instinctively, Sasha makes another half-turn with her shoulder raised to shield the newborn; the DelMar manager is so big, he’s so small. Then she gets it. Oh, fuck. Gary. “Was he kind of bulky with no-color hair?”

  Marilyn manages to touch the baby in spite of her. “Soft little … Who?”

  “Whoever came!”

  “Oh, him. Nice looking fella, nice ways.”

  “Marilyn, what did he want?”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s busy out. I don’t know what the fuck he wanted. Come here, sweet baby, you know who loves you.”

  “What?” Sasha whirls in another half-turn. It’s squirming, oh my God, what if I drop it, “or who?”

  “He didn’t exactly say. Just so you know.” Marilyn is serene in aquamarine today, with plastic Navajo turquoise strung around her neck. Instead of for God’s sake lending a hand or giving useful advice here, she is looking at Sasha through sequined glasses that magnify her eyes like night flowers. “If you were in trouble with the police you’d tell me, right, honey?”