The Baby Merchant Read online

Jake raked his fingers down her arms as she pulled away. “But I was counting on you.”

  “I’m the wrong person.” Bright woman, senior partner, but she has a history. “They won’t see me sitting down with them, all they’ll see is my files.”

  “Oh,” Jake said, and she thought she heard his heart crack.

  She murmured, “I’m so sorry.”

  He dropped his bags and kissed the pale insides of her wrists. “Oh, my sweet one.”

  She waited until she was back at the Park and Fly to lock herself in the car and cry. So Jake is alone in Atlanta, pursuing their last hope. Sweet Jake with his great gravelly voice and that disarming grin and the things he’s willing to tell you about himself to get you to unbutton. When they were twenty, Jake got Maury on board, no problem. The coolest guy at the party. Spilled his beer and picked her up so her feet wouldn’t get wet, so nice! He convinced her to marry him right out of college. The man can sell anything, charm strangers out of their deepest secrets, expose liars and have them thank him for it, could sell snake oil and make people believe it really cured them.

  Maury thinks bitterly, And I can’t even have a baby.

  Interesting and terrible, what failure does to you. Whatever you thought you were when you started out, you are only this now. The sum of what you have tried and failed to do. Of course you have to go out and show yourself to the people, dress like a winner and smile like a champ, but it won’t change what you are feeling. The worse you feel, the better you have to look. Believe it. Put on that grin— lady, accessorize!— and hope to God that nobody knows that inside you are hung with gauze and shadows, a shrine devoted to everything you’ve lost.

  She isn’t depressed, exactly. She’s just in mourning for something she knows she should have had.

  If only they’d gotten pregnant when Jake first brought it up. First-year law student, what did she know, she was only a kid! Her Jake was breaking into TV news— weekend anchor; it was small town TV, but, hey. Not bad for a go-fer just out of college. Charismatic Jake shmoozed his way into a terrific story. His pals at town hall suspected that the town clerk was shooting kiddy porn with a city camcorder. Jake brought him down. He dug up the tapes, which he duped and turned over to the police. The angry parents even let him interview the kids involved for the first-ever Jake Zorn Expose. Now he’s famous for them; the Television Conscience of Boston. These days the Jake Zorn Expose airs nationwide.

  After that first show Jake ran the tape obsessively, looking for—what? What turned him on? It wasn’t vanity, she doesn’t think. She thinks it was a passion to— what, transmit his image, sending part of himself hurtling into the future, to live on and on. She came in and found him on his knees in front of a freeze frame, fixed on his close-up. Still kneeling, he looked up at her with a bright, amazing smile. “Oh, Maury. What if we had a baby?”

  It rolled in from out of nowhere. Stricken, she blurted, “We’re too young!”

  “But look at us. Wouldn’t he be beautiful?”

  Her mind ran ahead to the real question: could she have a baby and still make the Law Review? Men get to the top however, but for any woman who cares about what she does, professional life is like climbing a wall. You cut hand holds and notches for your feet, hacking them out of solid rock. It’s hard work, the climb is slow and you can’t let down for a minute or you’ll start to slide. Keep at it long enough and in the end all you want is to reach the top so you can rest. If she told Jake, he’d think she was weak.

  She punted. “What makes you think it would be a boy?”

  With a foolish, loving, confident grin, he said, “Trust me.”

  “You want me to quit law school?” Oh, Jake.

  Standing, he hooked his arms around her, drawing her in. “Just for a little while. How long could it take?”

  When a couple has a baby, it’s the woman who pays. Maury set her jaw. “Try eighteen years.”

  Professionally, they were both hanging on by their fingernails. She argued the parallels, which Jake refused to recognize; they had a fight.

  “’s OK,” Jake said in the end, with a new smile that she didn’t understand at the time but has come to know by heart, like a Top-Ten song that you keep hearing long after the guy you thought you were in love with has dropped you. TV has taught Jake exactly how to modulate the voice so viewers buy everything he says without wondering whether it’s true or not. Her skull vibrated as he put his mouth to her temple, rumbling, “We have plenty of time.”

  They honestly thought they did. It was a sweet lie, but it was still a lie. Taut with waiting, Maury says to the empty courtroom, “You only thought you had time.” She is her own prosecutor now.

  Maybe she should have given in after she passed the bar. That summer Jake caught the suburban cops taking bribes; he got it on tape and the exposé won him an award. THE CONSCIENCE OF BOSTON SCORES AGAIN. The headline ran the same day Judge Aylward offered Maury the clerkship; she could hardly wait to get home. Laughing, she and Jake hugged and squealed like high school cheerleaders after the big touchdown. He took her out to celebrate.

  Then her lover, her husband, wonderful guy, wrecked the celebration. What did he see in her eyes? Maury, or only himself reflected? “The plaque plus twenty K,” he said— so proud! “Now you can afford to quit.”

  “Is that all you think about?”

  “We’re great together. With a kid, we’re our own corporation. You and I and Jakey.”

  “I can’t yet.” Why do you want a child so badly, Jake? Am I not enough for you? “I just can’t.” Maury doesn’t know why, she can’t explain it. You just aren’t ready until you are. Having a baby is such a big thing, especially when it’s your body. “Give me time,” she begged, unless she was praying.

  Wistful, he took her hands. Her Jake. Terrible in hope, he was pleading. “OK, honey, but let’s do it soon.”

  Privately, she set her timer for thirty-five. It’s perfectly possible for a woman to stay on the pill without the man in the house knowing. Thirty-five seemed like a safe number, partly because it was so far away. Forty looked even better to her. Hell, women in their fifties have been known to conceive— with a little help. The biological limits expand all the time. At the back of Maury’s mind there was the knowledge that when she did get pregnant, her professional life would roll onto a siding while Jake’s roared ahead full steam: It isn’t fair. In spite of his pointedly not badgering— in spite of his wistful, insistent charm, they let it rest. When you’re young and running hard you think you have plenty of time. Idiot bitch, Maury thinks, despising her stupidity, you thought life was like business. Wasn’t having a baby supposed to be like an arraignment or a court date that you could schedule and bring off by the numbers? One. Two. Three.

  Hard-driving, high-jumping Maury. So organized. She landed a job with a top firm. She made partner. She cleared her calendar. A thirty-fifth birthday present for Jake. A surprise.

  Nothing happened. Now, that was a surprise. Fine, all those years on the pill, don’t expect results right away.

  It took her more than a year to conceive.

  Once you get committed to a thing, it’s all you think about. Every disappointment is like a little death.

  The first disappointment was exactly that. A little death. She had a miscarriage so sudden and dramatic that it was over before the airport paramedics reached her. Her fault, she thinks, for running hard when she should have laid back as advised, but she was in the middle of a copyright matter that couldn’t wait. Her plaintiff was a Boston novelist who had been ripped off: his novel to their major motion picture, opening next month in a theater near you. He could prove it, line for line; they needed a settlement meeting before the opening, while they had the power to keep it out of the theaters. The studio said we meet in Los Angeles or forget it. Maury never knew whether it was the stress that did it, or the rough flight in bad weather or some tragic biological flaw, but she flew from Boston to Los Angeles in her first trimester and she lost the baby. She won he
r client a six-figure settlement but she lost the baby. Her baby. Jake’s. It happened— this was so awful— in Chicago on the way home. The cramping started at LAX, but what did she know, she’d never been pregnant before. She hemorrhaged as she was running to make her connection in O’Hare.

  Jake flew to Chicago to take her home. He brought white flowers and a white plush Teddy. “Oh, honey!”

  They were both crying. You always do. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s OK, this isn’t the last baby in the world.” Careful, Jake. That which you don’t know enough to fear is closer than you thought.

  They had no way of knowing what was coming. All Maury knew was what you did to get past it. Pick yourself up, girl. Attend to your look! She felt something new on her face. A few more miscarriages and it solidified, like a layer of makeup that won’t wash off. The chronic failure’s carefully constructed smile. “It’s OK, Jake, I’m OK.”

  But Jake’s a born overachiever. He took it as a challenge. Nobody beats us. “As soon as you’re all better we can try again.”

  They’ve been trying for ten years.

  When things go wrong the woman always pays.

  Maury and Jake have tried everything: obsessive temperature taking, hers; hormone-sensitive paper strips, hers, because in these matters it is she who bears the burden; breathless midafternoon meetings in downtown hotels because all signs indicated that her cycle was high, followed by the hours Maury spent on her back willing the sperm to ignite. There would be days of hope followed by ambiguous home pregnancy test results followed by the blind, rising excitement no woman can stifle followed by her period, which was only late, followed by the next attempt. The next.

  Too late, they turned to technology: the flurry of sperm counts and comprehensive ultrasounds and exploratory procedures and, when it was indicated, courses of clomiphene, with Jake stifling her worries with that ruthless, hopeful smile. “So what if we end up with triplets? Cheap at the price.”

  When things go wrong the woman always pays.

  Now they are at the end of the trail.

  Alone in the echoing courtroom, Maury Bayless checks her silent cell phone and flips it shut. Then she bows her head over her knuckles, gnawing until the blood comes. She won’t cry. She won’t! She can’t call Jake and she can’t change or prevent whatever is happening from happening.

  Now that she and Jake are at the bottom line they will do anything to get a baby. Anything.

  ii.

  Your source tells you Tom Starbird’s mission is placing unwanted babies with people who are sick with want. You gulp because this so perfectly describes your situation.

  The want part of the equation is key to him. It explains the psychiatric evaluation before the first meeting. If you want to be his client, you have to prove you’re more than a high ticket consumer bent on the next acquisition. If you’re shopping for a baby the same way you score cars and beach condos, he will know it. Babies aren’t furniture. They aren’t Beemers or trinkets from Bulgari. A baby is by no means the porcelain. your decorator brings in to complete a perfect picture. If you think you’re securing your own little hostage to posterity, he will know that, too. One false note and he’ll walk away. You have to want the baby for itself.

  And the unwanted part?

  You won’t know precisely what “unwanted” means. Ask and a raw, sad look streaks across his face like a storm over the surface of the moon. “Just somebody who’ll be better off with you.”

  Unwanted. You think of babies dropped in high school toilets or left in dumpsters or on church doorsteps, but that’s the sentimental view. They are no more. The government’s taken care of that, thanks to the march of science— elements added to the water in low-income projects, gum they hand out in the public schools; it’s in the pills kids pick up like candy at the bar in every club. Babies are hard to come by, but the government doesn’t want just anybody to have a baby. Ironic that you, who would make a perfect contribution to the national gene pool, can’t get pregnant, while there are still a few in the. Um. Undesirable demographic.

  In your ignorance, you thought of “unwanted” in terms of babies by the thousands stuck in Dickensian orphanages, holding out their arms to you, begging, take me, take me. As if you could walk in and pick and choose.

  By the time you meet Tom Starbird, you know better. If there were still orphanages, you would not be sitting here pleading for his services. You have no idea what he means when he says, “unwanted.” You want to ask. You’re afraid to ask.

  After all it is you, not Starbird, who is under scrutiny here.

  Smile as he looks up from his keyboard, studying you. Smile and look him straight in the eye, even though his scrutiny frightens you. Remember, he can help you. If he approves your application.

  3.

  Tom Starbird

  Now, my mother thought she was a poet, and I paid for it. She was so deep into art that she lost track of life. It made me hate illusion. I never talk in figures. I deal in truth and truth only.

  What I see is what you get.

  The truth? I steal children. I am very good at what I do. I’m willing to tell you more, but when you engage my services you don’t want to know, not really.

  No, don’t back off and don’t for a minute think that this is in any respect creepy. My motives are pure. I fill a need and in the process, I’m saving disenfranchised kids. The ones turned loose in the world unchipped, which makes them ciphers in this country. I pull them out of bad situations and drop them into good ones, for which, believe me, I am highly paid.

  Understand, I don’t in any way get off on this; except for my few pro bono jobs, it’s strictly transactional.

  My clients’ motives must be equally pure. If you expect to do business with me this is a given. Our transaction depends on a complete absence of sexual baggage. I won’t tolerate anything overt or, trickier: anything latent. The screening you undergo before we meet is calibrated to pick up the slightest hint of corruption. If you are lucky enough to survive it and we arrange a meeting, look deep into the baggage that you bring to the table. If your desires are anything less than parental, I will know it.

  If you’re hiding anything, be warned. If I pick up the slightest hint that there’s anything funny about you I will not only drop you as a client, I will hunt you down and expose you for what you are. Then I will destroy you. Anything to keep this operation clean.

  My reputation depends on it.

  Now, as for you. Don’t for a minute imagine we are friends. This is a business arrangement and you are the client. Like the product, the client must be top of the line. If we are talking, it’s because you have survived the background check, scored high on the psychological screening and passed the physical. I want my parents-in-waiting young enough and strong enough for the long haul, which means no psychic breaks in the history and no physical ailments, congenital or otherwise. My clients have to be in shape to see it through. And what do you get in return?

  Early upheaval makes a man resourceful, resilient and meticulous. You are getting the best.

  The few clients I take are top drawer. You know the type.

  You are the type.

  You come to me in a time of great shortages. When you come you are all at some level grieving. I know this and I’m sorry, even though I don’t show it. I can’t get emotionally involved. You don’t want me to, not really. In fact, you think when this is over you can thank me and walk away. Of course you’re wrong, but we’ll get to that. You are, furthermore, embarrassed to be here; aren’t you supposed to have it all? You worked hard to get where you are, fast track careerists with high-profile jobs, so congratulations, you’ve made it to the top. I see it in the way you walk in here in your hand-tailored suits and your discreetly high end shoes. You have the big house, the weekend place, the cars; by the time you come to me, you have everything you want except the one thing you really want, and at this point I have to ask you, what went wrong?

  Is it something in the
water or the air that dried you up or did you hear your biological alarm clock going off and hit the snooze button one time too many?

  You have everything you want except the one thing you can’t have: the child who loves you more than anybody, beaming up at you like a worshiper looking into the face of God. You want to know that when you go, you’ll leave at least one person behind to cry for you.

  Now, who puts you in touch with me?

  Like any high end provider, I don’t advertise. This is for my security and yours. You come through someone I trust and you must come highly recommended, although if you are resourceful enough to find me on your own and consent to the forty percent surcharge I may consider you, and you? You have it on excellent authority that I can be trusted to deliver top value.

  You come to me because you know I’m the best.

  I never meant to get into this line of work. The first time was an accident, as in, I had no idea there would be money. It was a pro bono decision, you know? I did it for my best friends from college. Killing two birds, I guess— rescuing a baby for Jim and Marie. They had a baby long enough to fall in love with it and then it died. They were devastated. I would do anything to help them stop hurting, so … Where to start?

  With the screaming, I suppose. Every night I sat with Jim and Marie until I couldn’t bear their grief and every night when I came home I heard a baby crying nonstop. It came from the apartment across from mine; it was the hottest summer in years. We were in an old building and I kept the windows open because I could. Every night this pitiful wail went spiraling up the airshaft and every night I heard a man’s big, hard voice shouting, shut up, shut up. The more he shouted the harder the baby cried. Shut it up, he yelled at the mother— his girlfriend, wife, shut the fucking thing up. It cried, he yelled, the woman screamed: shut up you little bastard, shut up, shut up, I heard furniture crashing and I may have heard his fists thudding into her flesh; I know I heard the smack of a hand on bare skin and over everything I heard the phlegmy, rattling wail that comes out of a baby when somebody’s shaking it to make it stop crying and that just makes it howl louder because it can’t and they will do anything to make it stop.