Three Black Swans (24 page)

“That’s brilliant,” said Allegra. “Jillions of people are desperate for kids. And who has better genes than we do?”

Allegra began her leave of absence early so nobody would see her become size-triple huge. She didn’t want anybody to know that two out of three babies were being given away. If only she had ended the pregnancy the instant she suspected! Any of her friends would have gone with her and been supportive. The same friends, however, would be appalled that Allegra was getting rid of her babies
after
they were born.

Ned and Allegra lived on Long Island, where Ned had grown up. To carry out the plan, Allegra announced that
her
baby must be born in Connecticut, where she had grown up. They rented a tiny furnished apartment, where Allegra lived like a swollen plant, waiting for the births that nobody would witness. Nobody would know she was coming home with one third of the set. Ned commuted between both places and they were on their cell phones all the time, missing each other. Back then, a cell phone was the size of a brick, and hardly anybody else had one.

Together, they went to the doctor in Connecticut whom
Allegra had seen from her teens until her marriage. Yes, Dr. Russo had said. I know couples eager to adopt.

Pick the best families, Allegra told him. I want the best for them.

Dr. Russo stared at her. She knew what he was thinking: the best would be their biological parents.

She and Ned held hands. So they were unpopular with Dr. Russo. Who cared about him? They’d be
very
popular with the adopting parents. Ned and Allegra would go back to Long Island and never see Dr. Russo again, and he could never talk about them or about their decision because of privacy laws.

“The first baby,” said Allegra, “will be ours. The others go to whatever mothers you choose. I don’t want a trail back to us. I want total privacy. Privacy is my right. I don’t want social workers and people who interfere.”

“Do you want to know anything about the family? Do you want an open adoption, where you continue to visit your babies?”

“No.”

“Do you want the girls adopted as twins?”

“Separately,” Ned said. “Twins might want to know their background more. Twins would have twice the questions. Twins might find us. We don’t want a paper trail or an electronic trail. We take one baby, we’re out of there and you find places for the others.”

Then came childbirth. Pain and fear, which doctors were supposed to prevent, were intense. The first one out was
beautiful, which surprised Allegra until she remembered that she and Ned were beautiful. It was small and screaming. The staff wrapped it in a white blanket edged in pink and blue stripes. A tiny white hat with a tiny pink and blue pom-pom covered its little head.

The second one was impossibly small. It looked more like a fat red spider than a future human. Allegra would have thrown up if she hadn’t been so busy delivering the third baby, which took its time coming. Allegra never looked at it. She fell asleep. By the time she woke up, Ned had handled the situation.

Twenty-four hours later, she and Ned left the hospital with the first one.

Dr. Russo had lined up parents. Baby Three was healthy, and its parents took it immediately. Allegra and Ned lived through the interviews and the paperwork and the signing off. Baby Two, however, was very sick. Its adopting parents didn’t want it after all, because their sole criterion was a healthy baby.

Back on Long Island, Baby Genevieve was not a good sleeper and not a good eater. There was nothing she didn’t cry about—grating sobs that pierced the night and lasted throughout the day. There were parades of visitors. Ned’s grandmother and his brother Alan and his sister Dorothy and their spouses of the moment came. Everybody oohed and aahed. Nobody said, “Oh, by the way, did you happen to have a litter? Was there a runt? Who took them?”

Allegra let everybody hold baby Genevieve as long as they wanted. She begged Ned’s grandmother to pay for a nanny, but
Grandmother Candler just laughed and said the best way for Allegra to become an experienced mother was to do the mothering herself.

Dr. Russo telephoned from Connecticut. Would Allegra and Ned care to visit the sick baby in Intensive Care?

Dealing with baby Genevieve was as intensive as Allegra could stand. No, she would not care to visit an even more intensively demanding baby. She wanted to go back to work.

People in their set did not use day care; they shelled out for a nanny, which was expensive. Allegra and Ned would have to sell one of their cars, stop going to restaurants and wear last year’s fashions.

Again they approached Ned’s grandmother. “Nonsense,” said the older Genevieve. “Like everybody else, you’ll juggle career and baby. You’ll sacrifice joyfully to do what’s best for your little girl.”

Every now and then Dr. Russo called. Baby Two had survived after all and had been given to a different set of adoptive parents. In spite of all the paperwork and painful invasive interviews even when Allegra had specified that she didn’t want to do any of that, it seemed that Allegra and Ned had not surrendered their parental rights to baby number two. It turned out they had to do it for
each
child. Dr. Russo wanted Allegra and Ned to come to Connecticut. “You promised to handle it,” Allegra snapped.

“And I have, Allegra. But you have to meet the social workers, there has to be a court judgment, it has to be legal.”

“I won’t be judged!”

“It isn’t like that. They won’t judge you. But a judge has to be involved.”

Allegra stopped answering his calls.

To their surprise, little Genevieve grew on them. The difficult infant became a beautiful toddler, laughing and eager and quick to learn. They began calling her Vivi, which suited her—she was full of life. It was fun to have a little girl who was good at things, and it was especially fun to shop for her clothes. Vivi was a whirlwind, racing through each day. Thankfully the nanny dealt with her Monday through Friday, and would often stay for the weekend.

When she entered school, Vivi loved it. She loved study. She loved new fields of study. “Oh! Spelling!” little Vivi said excitedly in second grade. “Oh! History!” she cried in third. “Oh! Geology!” she exclaimed in fourth, wanting to be driven to view cliffs and rock formations along the Hudson River.

Allegra signed Vivi up for flute lessons, because the flute was silvery and delicate and made pretty sounds, but the band director begged Vivi to play trombone, because he didn’t have any trombones, so Vivi played both and for years carried the awkward trombone around and practiced at annoying times. She became a fine swimmer, which wasn’t fun, because you couldn’t tell who was who at swim meets and the humidity at pools ruined Allegra’s hair.

Vivi loved knowledge. By tenth grade, she was in High School Bowl instead of something with bragging rights like tennis. She visited her annoying great-grandmother constantly, and when the old girl ended up in a nursing home, Vivi trotted
by after school, willingly spending time with other wizened old women as well. When her great-grandmother’s house was sold, Vivi kept the contents of her library, and was always reading books by dusty old authors that GeeGee had loved three-quarters of a century earlier.

Allegra often had the disorienting thought that
she
was the one with the adopted child.

It was about this time that the children she had not kept began to grow in Allegra’s mind, like weeds in a garden. When Allegra glanced at Vivi, she would see shadows of the others. Those others were growing up somewhere. They had personalities of some kind. They played a sport and were good in some subjects and not others. They were fun or grumpy, interesting or annoying. They were people.

People Allegra did not want in her life.

Now they had popped up on a YouTube video like spam. And Vivi had found out. Allegra had never wanted anybody to find out.

How creepy that the multiples had been identical. You would not have guessed at their birth. Well, not that Allegra had looked at the third one. But that second one, the shriveled red one. It was difficult to fathom that the Claire or the Missy in this video had been that shriveled red one.

What a relief when Ned grabbed the knife from her hands. Allegra hated the thought of being hurt, let alone hurting herself. Telling the truth would also hurt. What would Vivi swallow? I rehearse presentations for work, she thought, staring at her implacable daughter. Why didn’t I rehearse for this?

“I was selfish, Vivi,” she confessed. “I was worried about my career. I knew that parents who yearned for a child would be better at it than I would be. And you were just right for us. You were so smart and fun and easy and pretty. I loved fixing your hair and buying you dresses and watching you learn.”

Allegra could not tell what her daughter was thinking. Probably she was better off not knowing.

“How did you come to that decision?” asked Genevieve.

Easily, thought Allegra. But even she knew not to say it out loud.

Discarded identical triplets would be a scandal. Boyd sent his video links to everybody he knew, so thanks to Boyd, Allegra’s life was ruined. She imagined taking early retirement. Moving to the Carolinas. There was a lot of golf there. Allegra and Ned loved golf. She’d never have to see what other people thought of her. She could just enjoy herself. This house was worth a bunch, even though it was tiny, because it was in a terrific neighborhood. Somebody would bulldoze it and build a mansion in its place.

Allegra fantasized about a house with a golf course view and a better climate.

*  *  *

Ned’s heart sank when his daughter’s eyes fixed on him next. He said nervously, “We hadn’t planned on children, Vivi. We were spoiled brats. But when we got pregnant, we knew we could rise to the occasion. And your great-grandmother was
thrilled when we named you for her. You just know her as an old lady with a walker, getting meals on a tray, but seventeen years ago, Vivi, she was a corker.” Ned began a funny story about the older Genevieve.

“Save it,” said Genevieve. “Go back to the day my sisters and I were born.”

Make it sound fun, Ned told himself. “I remember when they brought you to me,” he said fondly. Ned had not been in the delivery room. The whole thing made him ill. He waited in the family room on a vinyl couch. “You were so pretty, Vivi. Your dark eyes were open and you were squalling. You were swaddled in a soft tiny blanket and wearing a sweet tiny cap. We saved the cap.”

He remembered the rush of emotion when he held his daughter for the first time. He knew that if he held the other two, he would feel the same rush. If Allegra wants them after all, he decided, I’m okay with it. But Allegra never mentioned the other two, so he didn’t either.

“And the decision?” asked his daughter. “To discard your other daughters?”

“We didn’t discard them. We gave them to adoptive parents. Our family physician, whom we knew and trusted, found excellent families.” He wanted his daughter to love him. He certainly loved her. Okay, he wasn’t home much. Plenty of parents weren’t home that much. It had nothing to do with love. “Every day, every month, you were more delightful, Vivi. You taught us how wonderful it is to be a parent.”

It wouldn’t end here. Vivi would demand more knowledge. She was a file folder for facts. But Dr. Russo was deceased. Nobody knew about all his phone calls over the years. Nobody knew about his ceaseless demand that Ned and Allegra return to Connecticut to surrender parental rights to the last baby or else bring her home.

Ned had made an error in judgment back then. He had said to his wife, “Vivi’s an unbelievable amount of work and noise, but I’m kind of crazy about her. If I see the other baby … I don’t know if I can surrender it after all.”

So Allegra had never agreed to a trip to Connecticut, because she knew Ned would cave.

Ned glanced back at the computer. His brother Alan was on Boyd’s e-mail list. Alan was probably staring at this video right now. He was probably laughing. Phoning their sister Dorothy. They couldn’t forward the video to the older Genevieve, because their grandmother did not use a computer, but they would make sure the old lady saw it.

“What did you mean by haunted?” asked Vivi, facing Allegra.

Ned hoped Allegra wouldn’t cry again, because Vivi would not feel sorry for her.

“I didn’t hold them, you know,” said Allegra. “I didn’t want to bond. I think any parent who gives up a child is haunted. Hoping it’s okay.”

Ned did not think Vivi would fall for this. A woman who hoped her children were okay would not have grabbed a knife from the drawer and pretended to end it all.

He thought of Boyd’s e-mail. Boyd sent his stupid attachments to everybody. Neighbors would know. Golf partners. Tennis partners. Cruise companions.

His boss.

*  *  *

The secret that makes them exchange Dark Looks, thought Genevieve, is that they are
not
haunted by Missy and Claire. Even now, they’re not referring to Missy and Claire as their daughters. Even now, they’re saying “it,” not “she.”

She looked hard at her father. “So Mom didn’t hold the other babies. Did you?”

He shook his head.

Genevieve was trembling. Her father was a bystander in his entire world. He didn’t even really work at his own corporation—he did a task on the edge of it. He had been a bystander at the birth of his own three children; he had not held two out of three. “I don’t see how you could have separated identical triplets, let alone given two away.”

“You weren’t identical when you were born,” said her mother peevishly. “You were totally different when you were born. The second baby was in trouble and I believed it was my fault for thinking bad thoughts. I kept my eyes closed and let professionals help her. Besides, the obstetrician kept placing demands, and it hurt, I don’t care what anybody says, it hurts, and then came the third one, and I was too exhausted to think
about the others. Maybe I had too much anesthesia or something. I didn’t want to get involved.”

Emma had said that Genevieve had the least involved parents in New York State.