Then Came You - Jennifer Weiner [8]
My mother perked up. “What’s going on?”
“Give me a minute.” I got the boys set up in front of the TV in my mother’s living room, telling myself that a half hour of something educational was a necessary evil. Normally, I tried to limit their TV time and get them out and moving in the fresh air as much as I could. You’ve got to run boys like dogs, my mother had told me when Frank Junior was just two. I’d thought it was a terrible thing to say. Once Frank Junior started walking I understood, but in my parents’ condo complex there was nowhere to run. Most of the residents were older, and the tiny rectangles of deck off their kitchens were all they had. The playground was just sad, with a rusted swing set, a broken teeter-totter, and a single basketball hoop. There was a pool, but the one time we’d tried to use it, the lifeguard had yelled at the boys for running, for splashing, for cannonballing, and for improper use of the water aerobic teacher’s foam noodles, all within ten minutes of our arrival. We’d never gone back.
Back in the kitchen, my mother was pouring coffee. Nancy sat at the table, which was draped in one of my mother’s paisley-patterned tablecloths. In the center of the table there was a bouquet of dried roses (“Explain to me the difference between ‘dried’ and ‘dead,’ “ Frank had said after noticing my mother’s dried-red-pepper wreath) and ceramic salt and pepper shakers in the shape of Minnie and Mickey Mouse. Nancy had her legs crossed, one pointed toe of her leather boot turning in small, irritated-looking circles. “So what’s the big announcement?” she asked.
“I’m going to be a surrogate.” This was not exactly true. What was true was that, that morning, I’d gotten a phone call saying I’d been accepted into the Princeton Fertility Clinic’s program. My information was now available to their clients on their website. Hopefully, soon a client would click on my profile, read the essays I’d worked so hard on and the pictures I’d cropped and retouched, and ask me to have her baby.
“Huh,” said Nancy, fiddling with the zipper on her boot. My hopes of my family’s being happy on my behalf were dwindling. My sister, as usual, looked bored and slightly hostile, and my mother, as usual, looked confused.
“It means,” I began, before Nancy jumped in, leaning forward in her best college-graduate-sister-giving-a-speech mode, which had only gotten more obnoxious since she’d married a doctor and felt qualified to lecture about all things health-related.
“It means she’s going to have a baby for a couple that can’t have one.”
“Or a single mother,” I said, just to stick it in Nancy’s face, to show her that she didn’t have all the answers. “Or a gay couple.”
“Oh,” my mother said. “Oh, well, that’s sweet.”
“She’s not doing it to be sweet,” said Nancy. She pulled her iPhone—one of the new ones—out of her bag and started tapping at the screen with one painted fingernail, like a bird pecking for feed. “She’s doing it for money.”
“That’s not exactly true,” I said. My tone was light, but inside I was furious. Leave it to Nancy to make it sound like it was all about the fifty thousand dollars I’d be paid . . . and, also, to be right. For years I’d been trying to find a way to earn money while staying home with the boys, clicking on every “Make Hundreds of $$$ at Home” ad that popped up on the Internet, figuring out whether I could sell makeup or Amway during the ninety minutes three days a week when Frank Junior was at school and Spencer was asleep. I’d filled out an application to be a teacher’s aide at Spencer’s preschool, but the job paid only eight dollars an hour, which, between gas and babysitting meant I’d be losing money if I took it. “Yes, I’ll be getting paid, but it’s not just that. I really do want to help someone.”
“That’s nice.” My mother had drifted toward the sink. She picked up a roll of paper towels, each sheet printed with a row of pink-and-blue marching ducks. I wondered if she was trying to figure out how to make it cuter somehow, to stitch