“So we’ll know where she went.”
“But not where she is. I mean, say she went to Topeka. She could have bought a ticket in the airport from there to Los Angeles. Or Paris. Or Cancun. She could be. .”
“… anywhere by now,” I said. The house phone rang. A minute later, the housekeeper, looking apologetic, was at my side.
“Missy Bettina? Sorry to interrupt, but this lady’s been calling for Mrs. Croft. She says it’s important.”
I lifted the phone to my ear. “Yes?”
That was when I first spoke to Leslie Stalling of the Princeton Fertility Clinic. She apologized for bothering me during such a difficult time. She told me she was sorry to be adding to my worry and stress. Then she said it was imperative that she get in touch with India Croft.
“You and me both, sister,” I said. Leslie Stalling sucked in her breath. “I’m sorry,” I said. “We haven’t seen or heard from her in days, and now I’m here at my father’s house, and I think. . it’s kind of unbelievable, really, but it’s looking like she left town.”
“Oh, dear,” Leslie Stallings said. “That’s what I was afraid of.” She paused, a little three-second break to serve as a transition between life as I’d known it, ending forever, and life with a baby beginning. Then she’d told me about the arrangements my father and India had made.
Three weeks later, Rory was born.
I’d met Annie, the surrogate, in the hospital in Pennsylvania, and was shocked that she was so young. Annie was exactly my age, although that was where the similarities ended. Annie wore a wedding ring, but when I arrived there was no husband or kids in the hospital room, just a skinny woman with a sour look on her face standing beside the bed. “I’ll give you two some privacy,” she’d said, and shut the door harder than she had to, leaving me and Annie alone.
“My sister,” said Annie. Her light-brown hair was pulled back from her face in a ponytail, and her voice got higher and higher as she asked me questions. “You haven’t heard from India?” she’d asked, looking so hopeful that I felt sick when I shook my head
“I’ll be fine,” I said firmly, with much more confidence than I felt. At least I’d been around a baby somewhat recently, my niece, Violet, but the truth was that because my brother and sister-in-law had been so determined to chronicle every moment of their great adventure, setting up a Flickr account and a Facebook page, blogging about the pregnancy and the labor and, God help us all, live-Tweeting the birth, I’d ended up ignoring as much of her infancy as I could, because paying attention meant, according to Tommy, being bombarded with close-up shots of my sister-in-law’s nipples. (“Can’t I just sign up to see the baby pictures?” I’d asked, and Tommy had shaken his head and said, “Slippery slope, man.”)
“She’s a sweetheart,” said Annie, and turned her face toward the window. I could hear her sniffling. It made me feel wretched. She hadn’t done anything except what she’d been paid to do, and I couldn’t imagine how she was feeling, thinking she’d been making a baby for a happily married trophy wife and instead handing it over to the trophy wife’s twenty-four-year-old stepdaughter, who’d never had so much as a pet goldfish and who killed every plant she’d ever owned (although I hoped no one had told her that part). I put the car seat down and put one hand awkwardly on her forearm, the one that didn’t have an IV needle stuck in it.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “This was all a bit of a shock, but I’ve got plenty of resources. I’ve hired a doula, and India left all kinds of things for the baby.”
This, at least, was true. Even I had to admit that the nursery was exquisite, with a crib and an antique rocker and a rug with a pattern of flowers around its border. The dresser and the closet were both loaded with everything a very fashionable baby could possibly need. There were clothes in sizes newborn, zero to three months, and three to six months. India had arranged for a diaper service and had bought about a thousand scented aloe vera baby wipes and a wipe warmer. The white wicker toy chest was filled with stuffed animals, lambs and bears and kittens, and the bookcase was filled with fairy tales, books by Maurice Sendak, Sandra Boynton, and Dr. Seuss. There were two business cards stuck to the refrigerator, one from a pediatrician and one from a doula, both of whom, it turned out, were on standby, just waiting to be notified about the baby’s arrival. The doula turned out to be a kind of hippie-fied, glorified baby nurse, a woman from Park Slope with a wild tangle of curls and a calm, earth-mother presence who’d been hired to be on duty for the first twelve weeks of the baby’s life. The pediatrician was the woman three blocks away who’d taken care of me and my brothers when we were little.
Standing in front of the refrigerator, looking at the shopping list written out in India’s neat hand: greens and lean meats, ground turkey and fish and fresh fruit — I thought about how I’d told India I would ruin her. I didn’t know what she’d done versus what she’d paid other people to do to get ready for Rory’s arrival, but she’d done a lot, and, certainly, her preparations didn’t hint that she’d planned on bolting, or that she was using the baby as a prop, or a means to an end. But she’d left. . and no matter how pretty the nursery’s flowered curtains, how cunning the crib bumpers and the embroidered pillow reading
There were a million things for me to do and read and buy and figure out. I’d need more formula. . and baby food. . and a high chair, and one of those crazy little vibrating bouncy seats that had always made Violet look like she was being electrocuted. I’d also have to find other babies for Rory to be friends with. There was, I knew, at least one woman in my dad’s building with a smallish-looking baby. We’d exchanged hellos in the elevator a few times, and while it was true that I hadn’t noticed whether her baby was a boy or a girl, I would make a point of asking the next time I saw them.
Annie wiped her eyes while I signed the papers. “You know how to work the car seat?” she asked. “Are you sure you’ll be okay?” I told her I’d be fine with the car seat and that I was positive I’d be fine. I was almost out the door with the baby in my arms when she said, “Oh! My milk!”
“Pardon?”
She pointed to a scary-looking machine next to her bed. Clear tubes ran into funnel-shaped suction cups that were screwed into bottles with ounce markings on their sides. “I was going to overnight India my breast milk for the first month. Should I still do that?”
“That would be very nice.” The baby was getting heavy. I shifted her from my left arm to my right. Her head flopped back alarmingly, and I adjusted it fast, hoping Annie hadn’t seen. “Do I pay you by the bottle, or how does it work?”
She shook her head. “You don’t have to pay me anything. India set it all up. I’ve got a FedEx account. They’ll stop by in the morning with the dry-ice packs and the boxes, and you should have it every day by noon.” She reached onto the bedside table, where she had two of the little bottles, each one full and labeled with a strip of tape indicating, I supposed, the time she’d pumped it. “Here. This will get you started.”
What do you say to a woman who’s just handed you four ounces of her breast milk? One of the bottles was still warm. I shifted the baby again, trying not to cringe as I put the milk into the diaper bag. “Thank you. We’ll be in touch.”
“Send pictures,” she said. I could tell that she was getting ready to cry again, so I quickly set the baby into the car seat, fumbled the buckles shut, and hurried to the exit, where Manuel was waiting.
That had been seven days ago, and the baby seemed to be doing well, so far. If she sensed that she was at the center of a storm, being cared for by people who were not her biological parents, she gave no indication. “She’s good-natured,” Tia the doula told me, pointing out that Rory cried only when she was hungry or wanted to be held or rocked. That might have been true. . but if it was, she was hungry or lonely for most of the time she was awake. Worse, she wasn’t cute. To my eyes, not only did she not resemble anyone in my family, but she didn’t look like she was completely through being formed. Her eyebrows were so faint they were almost invisible. She had stubby lashes, mottled pink skin, and an unfortunate case of acne. . but she was filling out a bit, losing some of her scrawniness and starting to look a little more like the plump pink babies I’d grown familiar with from diaper commercials.
I gave her car seat another gentle push with my toe, then glared across the conference table. “Why didn’t they tell me I’d be the baby’s guardian? When did they decide?” Leslie pulled a fresh tissue from the box and pressed it underneath her right eye.
