“What are you doing?” James says, dumbfounded, unable to believe it was me who took Laurel’s baby. “How can you keep her in a . . . a box? In this musty room? Is this how you intend to keep her?”
Anne Elise, ignoring the bottle, butts her head against my silk robe. She’s become more headstrong over the past day. What she wants is warm mother’s milk, and she’s learned from Laurel where warm mother’s milk comes from, and yet she can’t understand why I’m not offering her my breast. I shake a few drops of formula out of the bottle’s nipple onto her pink lips, a trick I learned from an internet video. I’m not ashamed to admit my parenting knowledge comes from the YouTube videos I’ve streamed over the past day. The drops of formula I’ve shaken onto Anne Elise’s lips whet her appetite. She licks the drops, and then, when I lower the bottle back to her mouth, her lips pucker around the bottle’s silicone nipple, working it like a pump.
“You’ll never get away with this. This is kidnapping.”
“Honey, you’re mistaken. This isn’t kidnapping.”
“What is it then?”
“Surrogacy,” I say, invoking the word that’s haunted my nightmares and preyed on James’s mind ever since my father introduced us to it. Surrogacy has hovered over our marriage like a noose, strangling the love we have for each other. Surrogacy has let James’s mind wander to other wombs to impregnate. Surrogacy has humiliated me. “Laurel’s obligation to Anne Elise ended the moment of her delivery. We contracted Laurel to bear us a child. And now we’ve got Anne Elise. Don’t you see? Laurel’s nothing more than a surrogate mother.”
James is stunned. Flabbergasted. He crosses his arm. “Are you crazy? Laurel’s no surrogate.”
“My father will advise us on lawyers who are comfortable backdating papers.” Cradling Anne Elise in my arms, I tickle her. James turns to her as she giggles. This plan is all coming together in my mind. Together, James and I will raise Anne Elise as our own, in wealth and comfort, offering her greater opportunities than Laurel could ever provide. “We’ll craft a story of how, months ago, we contracted with Laurel to bear our child. We’ll make it look as if everything was signed last April or May.”
“You’re crazy. That’s . . . that’s . . . that’s unethical. Laurel’s not going to go along with this.”
“Sure she is. I’ll offer to pay her legal fees.”
“Legal expenses? What are you talking about?”
I explain for James’s benefit the circumstances of Laurel’s episiotomy. Doctors had erroneously calculated Anne Elise would be so large that Laurel’s health would be jeopardized by a natural vaginal delivery. They performed an episiotomy to lessen the risk of serious tearing. Although once practiced with great frequency, the medical community now realizes, in general, that episiotomies cause more complications than they alleviate; hence, there’s been a widespread and well-documented effort to minimize the use of episiotomies in the delivery room. To complicate matters, the doctors angled their incisions incorrectly, increasing the likelihood her postdelivery wounds wouldn’t heal correctly. On top of that, the hospital let an infection set in. They did not treat her with the right antibiotics. Or enough of them. They did not inform her of alternate treatment options or otherwise advise how to minimize the risk of complications. Added to all this, a hospital staffer endangered her child by providing a near-total stranger with a security bracelet that allowed that near-total stranger the opportunity to steal her baby.
James listens with exaggerated patience, but lacking my cunning, he merely blinks when I finish, unsure if there’s a point to my explanation.
“Don’t you get it?” It seems so obvious to me. A slam dunk. “Medical malpractice. I’ll pay her legal fees to file a lawsuit. As incompetently as the hospital acted, Laurel will walk away from this with a multimillion-dollar cash settlement.”
“She’s not going to agree to this.”
Having thought out all possible obstacles to my plan, I shrug. “Should Laurel contest this, we’ll testify against her in court. It’ll be two credible witnesses against her. We’ll tell the court her refusal to acknowledge the facts as we present them owes to her desire to shake us down for more money. We’re respectable people. She isn’t! We’ll prolong the case for years with delaying tactics and watch as she bankrupts herself to pay for her legal costs. She can’t afford a protracted lawsuit. We’ll simply dispossess her of her child.”
“You forgot one thing.”
James squints at me, his beady eyes giving me a small fright. Is it possible I forgot something? The incandescent light bulb above us in this ancient room fizzles out with an ominous crackle, discharging a burst of ozone into the air. I flip the light switch on and off until some connection reestablishes itself to let light again flow from the light bulb, but when I look at James, he sneers at me. He hasn’t shaved today, and his cheeks are lined with a coarse stubble, giving him a more intimidating appearance. Again I wonder if, by some small chance, he has detected a chink in my surrogacy plan.
James lifts Anne Elise up. Hard to believe, but she’s already hungry for more formula. About an ounce remains in the bottle I set down beside her box. He picks it up and begins to feed Anne Elise, filling the room with the sound of her sucking on the bottle. It amazes me how he knows how to do this all by himself without a woman henpecking him to do it. Has he watched the same YouTube videos as me? Looking into her eyes, he makes a funny face, sticks out his tongue, arches his eyebrows, the two of them transfixed in each other’s expressions. “So what did I forget?” I ask.
“I love Laurel. That’s what you forgot.”
The admission pierces me like a knife. My throat tightens. I imagine them in bed together, James fondling Laurel’s breasts, drawing her into an embrace, their hearts pounding with lust. I see him as he must have been when sticking the Debauve et Gallais box in her suitcase, the expectation in his face, the soft, encouraging words syrupping out of him as he drove her to the hospital.
“What if I don’t go along with your plan, Trish? What if, instead, I pick up the phone and call the police?”
“You wouldn’t do that, James. That wouldn’t be wise.”
“Why not?”
“Simpkins.”
James’s eyes narrow upon mine. It’s like I passed gas, so immediate is his reaction. “What about Simpkins?”
“I know you’ve stooped to passing off counterfeit money to pay off your debts. That’s how low you’ve sunk. People don’t enjoy having counterfeit money sprung on them. Simpkins is angling to kill you—that’s how angry he is. He told me so himself.”
“He did?”