Then Came You (38 page)

“Did your boyfriend forget to call?” he smirked, thumbs in his suspenders, monogrammed cuffs flapping.

“My girlfriend,” I said coolly. It was out of my mouth before I’d known I was going to say it. Rajit’s mouth hung open for a gratifying instant.

“Oh, my,” he said, almost to himself. “Well. That’ll give me something to think about this weekend.” Normally I would have ignored him, but today I straightened myself to my full height, which was at least three inches more than Rajit’s.

“You’re disgusting,” I said pleasantly. “I just want you to know that. You’re a horrible human being, and I’ll bet your parents would be ashamed if they knew how you treated people.” Then I turned off my computer, shouldered my bag, and, head held high, walked out the door to a smattering of applause and a single wolf-whistle.

It was seven o’clock, still light, but getting cooler. I wondered
how long it had been since I’d left the office before the sun set. Most of my colleagues wouldn’t make it home for hours. I took the subway uptown and dashed up the stairs two at a home, stationing myself in front of Kimmie’s building’s front door. I had a key, but it didn’t seem right to use it. After about twenty minutes I saw her round the corner in her black tank top, with her backpack bouncing on her narrow shoulders and her hair tucked up into a twist. I ran to meet her.

“Hey.”

She looked up, then quickly looked down and kept on walking. “Hi,” she said, so quietly that I almost didn’t hear it.

I caught up so that I was walking alongside her. I’d lost my father. I’d probably torpedoed my job. I didn’t have any real friends in the city, just colleagues and acquaintances, same as it had been in college. I’d been so lonely, lonely for years until I’d met her. I couldn’t bear the thought of being that lonely again.

So I did the only thing I could think of. I grabbed her by her upper arms, and spun her around, and kissed her.

Her backpack slipped off her shoulders. My bag fell onto the sidewalk. Somebody hooted, and someone else yelled, “Get you some!” but I didn’t care. Her lips were stiff underneath mine, but they softened as I held her.

Then she pushed me away. “What was that about?”

“I don’t want to lose you,” I said. “I couldn’t stand that. I’m sorry I’m so... so slow about these things, but I just . . . I really . . .” I blurted out the only thing I could think of at that moment. “There’s a baby. From my egg. The baby’s half sister got in touch with me. They’re here, in New York.”

Kimmie bent down, picking up her backpack, brushing it off before slipping it back on. Then she smiled, showing me her tiny, even teeth. “You’re making a spectacle,” she said. She squeezed my hand. “What’s the baby’s name?”

“Rory.” I walked close enough to her that our hips bumped as
we made our way back toward her apartment, holding her hand, toward the tiny metal-walled elevator, the hallway that smelled like air freshener and chicken soup. The evening would unfold in its ordered, wonderful familiarity. We’d cook something, noodles and stir-fry or meatloaf and mashed potatoes. We’d spoon ice cream into mugs and snuggle on the couch, watching the shows we’d taped, and I would tell her about Bettina’s call, about the grand apartment, about the baby. In bed with her, I’d feel safe in a way I’d once been at the dining-room table with my father, working on my homework, knowing that he was there to help. I smiled, wondering what I’d done to deserve her, to deserve such happiness.

M
y train got into Philadelphia just after eleven o’clock in the morning. It was noisy in the echoing station, where the floors were made of marble and the ceilings soared thirty feet high. The air that August morning was still and sticky, smelling like hot pretzels from a stand set up in front of the information board. I stepped off the staircase, and there was Frank, standing next to one of the curved wooden benches, waiting for me. Instead of his work clothes, he wore a clean pair of khakis and a short-sleeved jersey shirt, with sneakers, instead of heavy work-boots, on his feet.
PHILADELPHIA AVIATION ACADEMY,
read the logo on his shirt.

I walked toward him slowly, wondering what it meant that he was here. Normally Nancy picked me up, with the boys in the car, and took me home. The house would be clean, the bed I’d shared with Frank would be neatly made, but there would be no sign of him. We’d agreed, in a terse conversation, to keep things as normal as possible. Frank would spend time with the boys during the daytime, when he wasn’t working, and he’d stay for dinner, if he was home. Then he’d slip out once they were sleeping and go to his parents’ house for the night.

We hadn’t told the boys anything, because there didn’t seem to be much to say: we were in limbo, separated but still technically
living together, married but leading separate lives. For the time being, I’d told Frank Junior and Spencer that the baby I’d had in my tummy was in New York with her parents, and that I was helping to take care of her while she was still little. They had accepted this without question or comment. I suspected that Frank Junior thought that because the baby was a girl, she would naturally require more care than he had.

Frank stood up when he saw me. “Hi,” he said shyly, looking me over as I approached him. I set my duffel bag by my feet and sat down on the bench, and he sat beside me. “You look pretty.”

I touched my hair, wondering how I really looked to him. I hadn’t gained much weight with the pregnancy—being too upset to eat for much of the third trimester had helped with that—and I was only a few pounds away from being back to where I’d been when this whole thing had started.

“Were the boys good for you?”

He grinned. “Spencer used the potty all day.”

“He did?” I was delighted. He used the potty for me, but I usually put him in a pull-up before I left for the city, and I’d assumed that’s what Frank was doing, too.

“How is the baby?” Frank asked.

“She’s beautiful. An angel.” I felt my throat thicken, a hint of the sadness that came over me when I nursed and held the baby that wasn’t really mine, that there were no daughters in my future.

“Rory,” he said. “I like that name.”

“Me, too.”

“So,” he said, and settled his hands on his legs. “You like New York?”

“It’s fine. I miss the boys when I’m away. But the money will help.” Bettina had insisted on paying me a thousand dollars for the day and night I was up there, much too much money, I told her, but she wasn’t taking no for an answer.

“I miss them, too. At night.” He pressed his lips together like he wanted to suck the words back into his mouth. Then, he said, “I miss us being a family. I miss you.”

I didn’t answer. I’d done the hardest work of my life, the thing none of the clone-girls in that story I’d read had done. I had broken free from my destiny. I had taken myself to the city, found money and a place to live. I could stay—Bettina hadn’t come right out and said it, but I knew if I offered to work as a nanny, she’d hire me, and I could bring the boys to New York and find a place for us there. I could have people like I’d had back in high school, people to talk to, to eat with. The whole world lay open before me . . . and now Frank probably wanted me to turn away from it, to come home and be what I was before.

“You weren’t wrong to be upset with me,” said Frank. Startled, I turned to look at him. His eyes were narrowed, his body stiff. “I wasn’t being the husband you deserved.”

This was unexpected. “Maybe I was wrong, too,” I said.

Frank shook his head. “You were trying to help us. And if I hadn’t been so stubborn about letting you work . . .” He dropped his voice until I could hardly hear him over the drone of the crowd, the noise of people coming and going. “I guess maybe you were lonely.”

I nodded, almost unconsciously. Frank kept talking. “We can sell the house, move to Philly. Spencer’s starting nursery school in the fall, so you’ll have some time. You can go to college, if you want.”

I felt a pressure inside of me building, a sob or a shout, I wasn’t sure yet. “You love that farm. It’s all you ever wanted.”

“I want you more. And I got a new job,” he said.

“With the airlines?”

“Nah. Teaching.” He took my hand. “I did so well in my classes they asked me to stay on. I’m still part-time at the airport, but it’s good money. Good benefits, too.” He paused, like he was
steeling himself. “I looked it up online. Community college has classes online, or in Center City.”

I looked down at our fingers entwined. I’d thought about giving him back my engagement ring—it had cost almost two thousand dollars and was by far the most expensive thing outside of his truck that Frank had ever bought—but I hadn’t taken it off yet. I wondered if I would have made different choices, if I could have gone back in time, knowing what I knew now. Part of me thought I would have undone the surrogacy in an instant, wiped the slate clean, done anything to keep my marriage intact. Another part of me thought that I’d done just the right thing, that the pain of leaving him was the cost of a new and better life.

“Come home,” said Frank, his grip on my hand tightening. “Stay with us.”

I sat there, not answering. Rory was getting bigger, filling out, holding her head up with her clear eyes open, taking in the world. I could send breast milk by FedEx and visit the baby on the weekends. I could start taking the classes I’d planned on—an English course, and one on computer programming—but I could do them at home, online, instead of in New York. I could give my boys the world of the city, the museums and the plays and the galleries and the musicals—but keep my house, and my husband. I could have a bigger life, like Nancy, like what I’d come to want in the last few years, only I could have it with Frank. It almost seemed like too much to hope for, but I smiled at him, then reached for his cheek, pulling him close.

O
ne Wednesday morning in early August, when I was interviewing the third nanny of the morning, the telephone rang. “Someone’s here to see you,” said Ricky, our doorman.

“Send her up,” I said, looking at my watch. If it was the fourth applicant, she was twenty minutes early, and if it was the first girl, the one who was supposed to have been here at nine, she was two hours late.

“She says she’d rather meet you in the lobby,” said Ricky. “It’s your . . . it’s Mrs. Croft.”

“Excuse me,” I said to the applicant currently perched on the couch. I’d already decided not to hire her. True, her French accent was lovely, and her references were solid, but anyone who’d show up for a job interview wearing jeans with the words
HOT STUFF
spelled out in sequins across the back pockets was not someone I would be employing to care for a child.

I stuck my head into the nursery to make sure the baby was asleep. Then I tucked the baby monitor into my pocket, told the chef and the maids where I was going, then pressed the button for the lobby.

India was waiting for me behind the doorman’s desk. “Hello,” I said, having rejected
Well, look who’s here
on the way down. She
was casually dressed and she was tan, which infuriated me. I imagined her lying on a beach somewhere while I’d been handling the details of her husband’s funeral and her baby’s birth. “Did you have a nice vacation?”

She didn’t take the bait. “I had some thinking to do.”

I stood there, waiting, looking her over. If she was wearing makeup, I couldn’t tell. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail, and her roots were badly in need of a touch-up. I saw an inch or two of drab dark brown at her scalp before her hair made the transition to glorious caramel bronze, and there were wiry silver hairs threaded through the brown. She wore jeans—probably they were the six-hundred-dollar kind they sold at Saks, but they were still jeans—and a plain short-sleeved T-shirt. No earrings, no jewelry at all, except for her wedding ring.

“I loved your father,” she said.

“Which is why you didn’t bother showing up for his funeral.”

India flinched. “I have a hard time with . . . well. I was having a hard time with all of it.”

“Oh, really? Because I thought it was a total picnic. Do you have any idea what I’ve been dealing with? Any idea at all?” I was shouting, I realized, and Ricky was staring, although he was trying not to, and so was my neighbor Mrs. Schneider, collecting her mail, with her little Yorkie riding in her purse. I took India’s arm—it was, possibly, the first time I’d touched her since a brief, obligatory hug at her wedding—and dragged her back toward the service entrance. There was no way I was letting her come upstairs.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She’d followed me willingly enough, and now she met my gaze steadily, not fidgeting or flinching. I wondered if she was on heavy-duty antidepressants, or if she’d spent the last few months sitting on a beach, hanging out in a sweat lodge, doing yoga. Maybe she’d met up with my mother
in New Mexico, sampled some of the Baba’s offerings. That thought made me even angrier.

“You’re sorry. That’s great. That’s a big consolation. I got a call from your fertility clinic because your surrogate was freaking out. She hadn’t heard from you, nobody knew where you were, and, in case you were confused, having a baby is not like ordering a pizza, then deciding you’d rather have Chinese. You can’t just decide you don’t want it.”

“I know.” No ducking, no tears, no excuses . . . just that same strange, narcotized steadiness. “I didn’t do the right thing. But I’m back now, and I won’t run away again.”

“I don’t believe you. Why should I believe you?”

She didn’t answer me. Instead, she asked, “Have you met Annie?”

“I have. She’s been staying here. Helping with the baby.”

This, finally, caused a crack in India’s placid exterior. She blinked rapidly. “What?”

“We didn’t know where you were. I had people looking, but we didn’t know if you’d turn up in time, and even if you did, we didn’t know if you’d want to be a mother. Annie’s been staying here, and Jules—she’s the egg donor—and her girlfriend, Kimmie—they’ve been babysitting.”