Jennifer Weiner: Then Came You

“It’s just strange,” said Nancy. . and she sounded truly confused. I hadn’t heard that tone much since she’d gotten skinny and gotten married and gotten the idea that she knew everything there was to know about everything. “I saw a TV special about these women in India. Women in America hire women there to carry their babies — mostly because they can’t have kids of their own, but sometimes just because they don’t want to. They don’t want to gain weight or have stretch marks or be inconvenienced. It just seemed wrong. Women shouldn’t use each other that way.”

“Well, I’m not being used, and I won’t be having a baby for someone who just doesn’t want to be inconvenienced,” I said, even though I wasn’t completely sure if this was true. The clinic’s literature said I’d be helping an infertile couple— fertility was, of course, right there in the place’s name — but I could imagine some rich woman saying she was infertile and getting a surrogate just because she wanted to wear a bikini that summer, or didn’t want to miss out on a wine tasting or a ski vacation. Or, I thought meanly, a squash trip. “I’m going to be helping someone.”

There was a wooden bowl full of apples next to the salt and pepper shakers. My mother took one and started peeling it with a silver fruit knife with a mother-of-pearl handle that she’d ordered from QVC, a channel she affectionately called “the Q.” Only your mother, Frank had said, has pet names for her favorite stations. “Do you think you can do that? Have a baby and then just hand it over?”

I looked past her into the living room. The boys were on the couch, their crumb-laden napkins on the coffee table. Frank Junior was holding Spencer’s hand, the way he did when his little brother got scared at the movies. My boys. I thought about the bicycle Frank Junior wanted, a red Huffy in the window of the shop downtown that he would visit every time I took him on my errands with me. I thought about being able to sign Spencer up for sports readiness at the Little Gym, where classes cost four hundred dollars a semester. I thought about buying new winter coats and boots, instead of scouring the cardboard boxes at the church’s winter swap for hand-me-downs, and not worrying if they lost a mitten or if Frank Junior tore the sleeve of a sweater that I’d been planning to pass down to his brother. “I think I’ll be sad. But it won’t be my baby. It’ll be theirs. The intended parents.” Intended parents was a term I’d learned from the surrogacy websites. “As long as I can remember that, I should be fine.”

“And Frank?” My sister, I’d thought more than once, was like a woman on a long car trip with her finger pressed against the stereo’s “search” button, scanning up and down the dial, looking not for music but for trouble. “Have you talked to him about this?”

“We’ve discussed it.” In my head. In fact, this discussion was my rehearsal, my trial run for how I’d tell my husband what I’d done.

“I think it’s great,” my mother said.

“I think it’s crazy,” said Nancy.

“You’re entitled to your opinion,” I said stiffly, and got up from the table. But Fancy Nancy wasn’t done yet.

“I know you,” Nancy said. “You’re tenderhearted.” The way she said it— tenderhearted —it was like she was telling me I had bad breath, or hepatitis C. “They’re going to give you that baby to hold and you won’t want to let her go.”

“Why do you think it’ll be a girl? I only have boys.” The words came out more ruefully than I’d intended. I’d always wanted a girl, and I’d hoped, privately, that Spencer would be one, and that I could dress her in all the beautiful little pink things I’d looked at when I was buying Frank Junior his tiny jeans and sweatshirts. I’d felt a little sad when they’d told me I was having another boy, because two was our limit, unless Frank won the lottery or I found a way to change his mind. I would have loved a big family, but we couldn’t afford one.

“Especially if it’s a girl,” said Nancy. I sighed. We’d shared a bedroom until she left for college. She’d watched me dress up my Barbies in outfits I’d sewn myself and cook cakes for Roxie, the cocker spaniel next door, in my Easy-Bake Oven. If anyone in the world knew how much I would have loved having a daughter, it was Nancy.

“I’ll be fine,” I said, and looked at my mother. “Want to take the boys for pizza? I told them we’d do Chuck E. Cheese.”

“Oh, right. Let me get my coat.”

I turned to my sister. “You’re welcome to join us.”

Nancy rolled her eyes. “Those places make me feel like I’m going to have a seizure. And you know I don’t eat wheat or dairy.”

Or anything else. “Okay, then. See you soon.”

I got the boys back in the car, feeling as if a thundercloud had settled in my chest. All I’d wanted was for someone to be happy for me — happy with me, straight-up happy, not happy with questions, or happy with reservations, or happy but confused, or not happy at all. . and there was no one in my life, including my husband, who fit the bill.

Imet my stepmother — not that I would ever dignify the bitch with that title — the spring of my senior year at Vassar. My father placed the call to my dorm room himself, instead of having his assistant call me, and then making me wait on hold until he could come to the phone. Big news, I thought. Important. “Tina,” he said. “There’s someone special I want you to meet.”

He sent a car to take me home for the weekend. As usual, I asked Manuel to collect me at the coffee shop downtown, even though I wasn’t fooling anyone — in the era of Google and Gawker, all of my classmates who cared to make the effort of typing my name into a search engine knew exactly who I was.

Manuel drove me to Bridgehampton. The two of them, my father and India, were waiting for me in the doorway of the gray shingled house, like an ad for Cadillacs or Cialis, or for one of those Internet dating services for old people. When I saw him standing there, his arm around her narrow waist, I knew. “This is India,” my father said.

“The subcontinent?” I asked. India had laughed like she was reading words off a script: “Ha… ha… ha.” Then my brothers arrived, Trey pulling up in the minivan he’d bought when his daughter was born, Tommy slouched in the seat beside him, like he was ashamed to be riding in such a desperately unhip vehicle. My father beamed and dispensed hugs and introductions, and we all went in for dinner.

I sat quietly, observing, in the big kitchen with its white-painted floors and blue-and-white-striped cushioned benches. My parents had bought the place when I was ten, and my mother had decorated in a nautical theme, all crisp blues and whites and windows shaped like portholes, with canvas slipcovers for the couches and sisal rugs on the floor. I wondered if India was already dreaming of the improvements she’d make, the addition she’d build, the bedrooms she’d annex for her Pilates equipment and her clothes.

Once the meal was finished and my father and India — quote-unquote — had adjourned to the living room (India in her heels and fancy jeans and the fringed tweed Chanel jacket that she’d worn to pick at a meal of hamburgers and Carvel ice-cream cake), my brothers and I excused ourselves, then snuck through the butler’s pantry and out onto the back porch. Tommy pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and gave one to me and one to Trey. My classmates would have howled to see me smoking — to them, I was Bettina the straitlaced, Bettina the pure. The truth was, I only smoked with my brothers, and I only did it because it was one of the rare times they’d let me into their circle and talk to me like a person.