“Is that when he bought the forest painting from you? Woods?” I ask.
“I was asking two fifty,” Mara says. “He said my price was too low. He gave me twenty-five hundred for it.” Her arching eyebrows tell me she still can’t believe the amount.
“Did you wonder, like, who is this guy?”
“Totally,” Mara says. “But as far as I could tell, he was completely legit. He handed me a check right then and there. I didn’t want to cash it right away. I remember just staring at it for days. It meant so much, more than just money. And believe me, I needed the money.”
“Then what? He took the painting and left?” I say.
“He gave me a big hug.” She drops her gaze, fixes on a spot between us. Then, peering up with a brave smile, she says, “I didn’t realize how much I’d been starving for it.”
“The hug?”
“The reassurance,” Mara says. “Someone to say, ‘Good job, keep going.’ My parents wouldn’t pay for art school. They never really got it, you know.”
I know how powerful it can be when someone puts his faith in you. I’m trying to find the right words to say next, but the waitress arrives and shatters the moment.
I order fries for the table, just to get something in our stomachs, even though we both claim not to be hungry, then excuse myself to the bathroom. I rinse my face with cold water but it doesn’t help. It doesn’t wake me from what feels like a dream. Sydney had forged an entire relationship with this person and though I was aware of it peripherally, I had no appreciation for how substantial the bond was or how much was riding on it.
I wasn’t prepared for Mara the person either. She’s bright, witty, humble, thoughtful, and, from what I can tell, solid. I should’ve known that Syd wouldn’t have devoted so much time and energy to someone who wasn’t really worth it. But I just didn’t expect the woman who had built a secret partnership with Sydney without my knowledge or approval to be so likable.
There are so many questions that only Syd can answer, about his mind-set and intentions and emotions. But all I have is Mara’s one-sided narrative. I suppose I should be used to it by now, after doing it so many times with Joan. Still, hearing about Syd only makes me wish all the more that I could hear from him.
I return to the table and find the fries there already and Mara hunched over her phone. Not merely passing the time, but dealing with something. She puts the phone away, resets in my presence.
“I’m glad we’re doing this,” she says, almost confessing it.
“Me too.”
She’s once again hypnotized by the spot between us. It’s not the table she’s focused on. She’s staring at my wrist. At Sydney’s bracelet.
“I just feel terrible,” Mara says. “The whole thing didn’t go how I thought it would.”
It’s a reminder. No matter how her story unfolds, the ending will always be the same.
A few weeks after purchasing her painting, Syd called Mara. He was planning to return to New York in late February and wanted to meet up. Syd claimed he had an easy photography gig for her, that he’d pay twice her daily rate at the gallery if she could take the day off from work. She said she would.
He met her at the corner of Charles and Washington. Mara brought along her camera. They found Claire, the broker, upstairs.
“Syd wanted me to take photos of the space,” Mara says. “He said they were going to be used for a brochure or something.”
I can only assume Syd invented the job for her, because as far as I know, nothing came of the pictures. Yes, he hoped we’d eventually move to Manhattan and was interested in finding us the right property, but it seems his prime objective that day was simply to spend more time with Mara.
“He took me out to lunch afterward,” Mara says. “He handed me an envelope with five hundred dollars cash. I started tearing up.” She looks down at her lap, as if still clutching the envelope all these months later. “It had been a rough couple of weeks. Even with two jobs, I was barely covering my bills. The money he’d given me for the painting was already gone. And again, it wasn’t just about the money. I had been working so many hours, I hardly had time to be creative, and that’s always been a release for me, you know?”
“I do.”
“And here I was, getting paid just to take a few photos, something I would’ve done for free. It was like he came to see me at the perfect time, just when I was thinking about moving back here to New Hope, which I really didn’t want to do. It felt like admitting failure or something. But he helped me put it in perspective. He asked me what was more important, living in Brooklyn or being an artist? I knew the answer, but it took a few more months before I could really accept it.”
She finally grabs a French fry from the plate we’ve both been ignoring. Now that she’s partaken, I follow suit, lifting a lukewarm fry and inserting it dispassionately into my mouth. We each stop after the one.
“We went for a walk after,” Mara says. “I don’t know what it was, maybe just the fact that I had opened up to him at lunch, but all of a sudden he started telling me everything that was going on with you guys. All the baby stuff.”
It feels like the French fry is caught in my throat, even though I’m certain I’ve swallowed it. I listen as Mara rattles off all the troubles Syd and I were facing. The lack of control a couple has when neither party has a uterus. The inconsistent laws from state to state. The sifting through databases, having to judge egg donors based solely on short videos and résumés. The fact that we (really, Syd) had already exhausted the obvious donor options, namely, family members (at least one of them, Veronica) and friends (Paige, possibly others). And, finally, our desire to have a satisfactory answer when our child asked about his or her mother, the peace of mind we could offer if we had a person who wasn’t a mystery but someone with whom we had an intimate bond.
“I could see how much it meant to him,” Mara says. “He looked so tortured. I wanted to comfort him the way he always comforted me, but I wasn’t sure what to say. And then at one point, I don’t remember when, he just asked me straight out if I’d ever thought about donating my eggs.”
It’s exactly what Paige advised him not to do. Just hearing it secondhand makes me squirm. “What did you tell him?”
“The truth,” Mara says. “The thought had never crossed my mind.”