Then Came You - Jennifer Weiner [63]
“They were my eggs. I sold them.”
“Morally,” she said, “it’s your genetic material. You could make a case that you’ve got a right to know.”
I shook my head. “I signed my rights away. It’s none of my business anymore.”
She looked at me closely. “You really believe that?”
I sat up, pulling my knees to my chest. “I don’t know. Maybe there’s a way I could set it up so the kid could find me. I could watch over it. Like Magwitch in Great Expectations,” I said, thinking back to the conversation my father and I had shared the day I’d first mentioned rehab. “I could be its mysterious benefactor.”
Kimmie gave me an indulgent smile. “You live in an apartment with two other girls. You reuse plastic bags. How are you going to be anyone’s mysterious benefactor?”
She had a point. “Well, not now. But someday. I could send cards. Birthday cards. Everyone likes a secret admirer, right?” If I survived Steinman Cox, if I proved that I could endure the shouting and the smells and the stomach-knotting tension and the days that began before the sun came up and ended well after it went down, then someday I’d be in the position to be a mysterious benefactor. All of this would be worth something. It had to be.
I pulled her into my arms again. She giggled, then kissed my earlobe, then my neck. “You are so beautiful,” she said . . . and for the first time in my life, the words didn’t make me cringe or blush or feel like a fraud. For the first time in my life, I thought they could be true.
ANNIE
I spent a lot of time thinking about what to wear to the first meeting at the fertility clinic. My clothes, I knew, would make a statement. Too fancy and it would look like I was desperate—or, worse, like I didn’t really need the money; too casual, and it would look like I didn’t care.
I stood in front of my shallow closet, finally taking out a black dress made of a forgiving, stretchy material. It wasn’t, technically, a maternity dress, but it had enough give that I could wear it through the winter if things went as planned.
I slid the black dress off its hanger and sat on the bed with a sigh.
“Just put it on. It’s fine,” said Nancy, who’d agreed to watch the boys while I made the trip to the clinic, sparing me the sixty dollars a sitter would have cost. When I’d asked if she was sure she’d be okay, she’d snapped, “Don’t be silly. I like kids.” Instead of pointing out the ample evidence to the contrary, the way she always called Spencer “Frank Junior Junior,” instead of remembering his name, and declared that she and Dr. Scott were “childless by choice,” I thanked her, then asked her if she could come a little early and help me figure out what to wear.
“It’s not fine,” I said, holding the dress up against me. It felt like I was going on a date, only instead of getting dressed up, fussing with my hair and my makeup, hoping that the man I’d be meeting would like me and find me pretty and smart and interesting, here I was, seven years after I’d gotten married, doing the same thing, only it would be a woman doing the evaluating. And women, as any woman will tell you, are much tougher on themselves and on one another than men would ever be.
I slipped the dress over my head, slid my feet into the low-heeled black pumps I wore to church, and studied myself in the mirror. I thought I looked all right. Maybe this lady, this India Croft, would think that my woven straw handbag (ten dollars at Target with my employee discount) was deliberately whimsical, and wouldn’t guess that I’d picked it because it was the only purse I had that hadn’t been chewed on or spat up in, survived a spilled bottle, or housed a dirty diaper.
“You look fine,” Nancy repeated, and smoothed her own highlighted hair, giving herself an approving look in my mirror. My sister had arrived at the house that morning with Tupper-ware containers full of various organic and sprouted things. There were soy-cheese quesadillas, goji berries, a pomegranate and a protein shake, plus her very own plates and an aluminum