For years James had talked about the things he’d pack for me in the event I’d need to be rushed to a delivery room in the middle of the night. These endearments filled our pillow talk after we made love. He pledged to pack Gillian Flynn and Mary Kubica novels, flannel bathrobes, calfskin moccasins, and Debauve et Gallais chocolates for me. “Debauve et Gallais chocolates? You’d give me Debauve et Gallais?” I’d ask, genuinely touched. Produced by a Parisian chocolatier, Debauve et Gallais chocolates were the creamiest, most luxurious chocolates in the world. Just thinking about them made my toes curl. Every time he said the word, I pictured the blue ribbon tucked around the corner of their trademark blue, gold, and gray embossed boxes and the pure chocolate aroma that would escape from the box when I’d break its seal and eat the first piece.
“Sure, Trish. Nothing’s too good for you,” he’d answer, kissing my nose.
The waiter returned and set a manhattan on the table for my father. Condensation beaded on the bowl of the stemmed cocktail glass. My father speared the cherry that bobbed in the drink with a swizzle stick, and then, after my father voiced approval of his cocktail, the waiter deposited drinks on the table for James and me—Scotch for James, a brandy alexander for me. While my father sat across from us sipping his manhattan, James reached over and held my hand. He squeezed it. “So what do you think, Trish? About surrogacy?”
“I don’t want to discuss this.”
“These days, surrogacy’s not outlandish anymore,” my father said. “No one looks down at the practice anymore. Or the people who are doing it. These days, everyone’s doing it.”
“Dad. Please. I don’t want to discuss this.”
“Be reasonable,” James said.
Sensing a disturbance, people at the surrounding tables peeked discreetly at us. I felt under attack. My father explained what surrogacy involved—as if I couldn’t figure it out for myself. I got up from my seat, threw down the cloth napkin I’d been fingering, and walked away. James and my father called out to me, beckoning me back to the table, but after retrieving my sable coat from the coat check, I hailed a cab home, alone.
Just as the cab let me off at my house, I spotted my closest friend in the whole world, Allie Carlson, crossing the cobblestone street with her triple stroller. We’d known each other since we were eight years old, having met while taking horseback-riding lessons in Rock Creek Park. We’d gone through elementary and high school together at Georgetown Day School, one of Washington’s exclusive private schools, all the while privately kibitzing about our aging instructors’ stunningly poor fashion sense.
As soon as I saw Allie and her stroller full of children, I burst into tears. Unlike me, Allie was a baby machine. She’d only been married five years but already had so many children.
Allie put her hand on mine. “What’s wrong, Trish? You can tell me.”
“Nothing,” I said, trying to hold back the tears. I’d burdened her so often with stories about my fertility problems that I couldn’t possibly think of telling her how much it hurt deep inside, at this particular moment, to see her beautiful, healthy children. Allie often said she envied me, being married to a man as handsome as James. In her way, she loved her own husband, Clive, but he was balding and nearing sixty. He chaired Georgetown University’s Art History Department and was always away on business for long stretches, traveling to one museum or another to lend his expertise on their holdings. Whereas I had James to comfort me, she had her children; decorum prevented me from admitting that, at times, I wished our positions were reversed—who wouldn’t trade a husband for a baby?
Gradually, I pulled myself together. Her three children—Ellie, Sebastian, and Stephen—sat inside the stroller bundled in cutesy panda sweatshirts she’d bought at a National Zoo fundraiser. Ellie, the youngest at barely two, looked up at me from the stroller’s front seat. In one hand was a lollipop and, in the other, a Raggedy Ann doll. How could one woman be blessed with three children and me, none?
“We’re going to the playground. Got time to join us?” Allie said. Usually, I loved going with them to the playground three blocks away. Allie and I would take turns pushing her children on the kiddie swings and entertaining them with stories of fairy princesses and hoary goblins.
I begged off, saying I had housework to deal with. Allie squinted at me. We’d known each other so long that she knew when I was lying. Her eyes lit up. “Is it trouble? Trouble with James? Is that why you’re so upset?”
The speed with which she formed these questions took me aback. Instinctively, I gathered what she was getting at. Most women would be supportive when they suspected a friend’s marriage was collapsing, and yet with Allie, I sensed schadenfreude.
I tried to laugh away her suspicions. The last thing I needed was my best friend spreading rumors about the state of my marriage. “That’s silly. What could possibly be wrong with James?”
Allie looked cross, as if disbelieving me, but then her expression brightened so quickly that I wondered if I had misinterpreted her earlier questions.
“That’s good,” Allie said, nodding. We made small talk for a moment longer, and then I watched as she pushed the triple stroller down the sidewalk toward the playground.
In the weeks and months that followed, however, I began to suspect Allie was right—trouble had entered my marriage. I had lost James at surrogacy. Wheels turned in his head in the months after my father brought up the subject. A woman knows these things. No longer did he tie his prospects for a child to the viability of my reproductive organs. I’d find him reading websites about choosing the right woman to carry your child and ensuring her adequate compensation. Once, while in line for complimentary steamed shrimp at a reception in honor of a newly opened exhibit of Mary Cassatt paintings, he leaned over my shoulder and asked, “What about her?” He pointed to a shapely young blonde attired in a full-length black dress and said, “Her. We could pay her to have our baby. Look at those childbearing hips!” I was shocked. I elbowed him in the gut and, drawing him aside next to one of Cassatt’s mother-and-daughter portraits, explained to him in no uncertain terms that I wouldn’t consent to surrogacy.
James started working later into the nights and taking long business-related dinners. He wouldn’t come home until after midnight, complaining the clients he wined and dined spent too much time wining and not enough time dining. Despite his long hours, his spirits were high. The extra work, he said, energized him. Normally solicitous and free-flowing with the flattery, he became even more so, which I enjoyed. What woman does not relish hearing that her husband finds her to be the loveliest creature on earth? Yes, the over-the-top compliments reeked of insincerity, but I appreciated the effort he made to be nice to me. What was I supposed to do—ask that he quit being pleasant?
One idyllic Saturday afternoon, Allie dropped by to see if I wanted to go to the playground with her and her children. James surprised me by asking to tag along. James, too, liked Allie’s children. He hoisted one child after another onto his shoulders and galloped around the playground giving them “horsey rides.” The children laughed. They couldn’t get enough of him. As soon as he let one child down to pick up another of Allie’s brood, the child would immediately tug on his chinos, begging for another ride.
“Don’t give up,” Allie said when she caught me looking at her. Although we hadn’t talked about my conception woes in months, I knew immediately what she meant. “He’s going to be an excellent father someday.”
James’s cheeks were pink with exhaustion from all his galloping. Ellie, Allie’s youngest, was on his shoulders, squealing at him to “go faster, horsey, faster!” One of James’s phones rang. He pulled it out of his pocket. It was a new red phone I hadn’t seen before, a cheap-looking flip phone unlike the two iPhones he carried with him at all times. Seeing some message flash across its screen, he seemed even happier. There was a delirious glaze to his eyes. He sucked in a breath, glided his tongue over his lips.
A wife knows what her spouse is thinking. I had seen that same lustful sparkle in his eyes many times over the years directed, thrillingly, at me. Seeing it directed at his phone, I panicked.
James stuffed his phone back into his pocket. “Something’s come up at the office.”
“On a Saturday?” I asked.