The car is closing in, suffocating. I hit the button to take down the window, then bang it because it isn’t working. Elodie shakes her head. “I’ve locked it. We have to keep it quiet.”
“I need to breathe.”
My sister lowers her window an inch, turns on the engine, pushes a few buttons. She’s almost whispering.
“Let me at least explain. You would carry our baby, be artificially inseminated.” She stops, stares at me. “I know. It’s outrageous, right—beyond terrifying?”
“I need air,” I say.
“Aubrey, listen.” Elodie opens my window an inch, too. I sit up in my seat to catch the breeze.
“I know, I’m worried someone might hear us. Like I said.” Elodie looks at the dashboard when she speaks, not at me. “At work I’ve been looking at these four-year-old children at Reading Hour. Sometimes I get to watch them for years; they move up, to different-age events. I have my favorites. This year there’s a little girl named Charlotte, who is four, and boy twins called Gabriel and Aaron, who are in first grade. I sometimes wish one or two were mine.”
“Please don’t, please,” I say. “You do see how confusing it seems. I mean, yours, mine, and James’s baby? You are lucky, you have a great life. I mean, in New York or in L.A., I don’t think everyone has to have a baby. Do you think this has to do with your friends, Mom and Mimi—with living here?”
“Palm Beach? Social pressure? No, it comes from me, from James. I see friends who have been at parenting for five or ten years and I want the chance, I want to love like that.” Elodie seems crumpled.
“I’m not sure about being married, kids. My world is about singers, travel, bookings.”
“I know, Aubrey. James and I have been together so long, we want to have a family.”
“Why don’t you find a surrogate? I’ve read the ads—they pop up online, advertising for donor eggs. Someone Ivy League, with fine features. A gestational carrier, whatever the recipe is. Someone out of town.”
“We don’t want to hire a stranger. James wants this child to have our genes. His and mine, which means yours and mine—half our DNA is the same.”
“What about you? Is the DNA that important?”
“Well, at first I thought it wasn’t, that James seemed to be overstating it. Then I kept asking myself if I would rather have you or someone I don’t know, her genes, not yours, meaning ours. Then there’s the Veronica and Simon part of it. Dad, I suspect, would totally want this if possible. I’ve come around to seeing it matters.”
Elodie’s nose is running. She takes a handkerchief out of her purse. Our mother gave each of us one this past Valentine’s Day, from Maltese on the Avenue. The embroidered hearts and flowers on hers are faded—she uses it.
“Wait, I’m supposed to do this for you and James and Mom and Dad?”
“That isn’t what I said, Aubrey.” She pats at her nose.
I put my hands on my thighs and notice how tight they are. A dancer’s body, that’s what people say. They ask, “Are you a dancer?” Out of nowhere, Elodie appears old to me. No wonder she is putting me in this position, asking me to surrender myself for a year—from start to finish. To be the family savior.
Elodie sighs, shifts her weight around. “I don’t know, are you hesitating because of our past? Is it that I didn’t want Mom to be pregnant with you, I wanted to be an only child? That’s why you’re saying no. Maybe you remember, subconsciously, how I wasn’t always so nice to you.”
“No, Elodie, this isn’t some irrational form of punishment. You were fine, I idolized you. You took care of me, protected me. You even dressed me up like a live Raggedy Ann when I was three,” I say.
“How about when you were in second grade and wanted to be the Pink Ranger for Halloween and I convinced Veronica it was okay to let you do it. She wanted you to be a witch or Sleeping Beauty,” Elodie says.
“The real problem was Uhura from Star Trek—wasn’t that the next Halloween? Mom so didn’t understand. She thought it was too sexy or something.”
We both smile for a second, then remember why we’re hiding out at a swank shopping plaza.
“Listen.” I speak softly. “I don’t want to be pregnant. Not with my baby, not with yours. Or with James’s.” I almost gag when I say the part about it being hers or James’s.
I tug at the locked door. “I wish I could do better. I doubt I’ll change my mind.”
“For a day or two, promise you’ll think about it. Please. We would be infinitely grateful,” Elodie says.
Does she understand? I can’t have her baby because she wants me to. What Elodie has asked changes us. Like we’re underwater and could be washed away.
“Aubrey?”
I half nod. My escape depends on it. My sister unlocks the car and I open my door. The air rushes at me. I know I’ll say no.
CHAPTER 7
AUBREY
I park at South Lake Drive and Peruvian to begin the Lake Trail. The western side of the island feels less demanding, quieter in terms of beauty and the open views of the Lake Worth Lagoon. Since I was a girl, I’ve loved the giant Kapok tree with roots that sprawl strangely and the bougainvillea and ivy—requisite wherever one goes. Within minutes I spot my mother revving up for her “power walk.” She’s doing body stretches, flinging her arms to the left and then to the right. Next she runs in place, with her fists gently pummeling an unseen punching bag. She starts scrunching her shoulders, then letting them down. She takes breaks to wave to each woman on the trail as she fast-walks or lightly jogs past. Already the scenic path is brimming with those who walk, run, or bike along.
“Mom! Mom!” I march to where she faces the Intracoastal.
She swivels around to beam at me and stops her routine. Beyond her the palm trees and pink hibiscus appear lush. It has been less than twenty-four hours since I escaped Elodie’s car. Hellish hours.
“Aubrey, darling!” We hug. She smells like Clinique Broad Spectrum Mineral sunblock. Because she is in sneaks, she seems shorter than when she is dressed up in at least a two-inch heel. No matter what she wears, it seems that my mother’s shrinking.
“Why did you drive up early?”
“To be with you, Mom. The two of us.”
“Before my holistic Pilates,” she says. “Which has gotten very popular.”
“Very popular” translates to “too crowded,” but my mother wouldn’t say that—it sounds negative, willful, fussy. I shiver for a second. I’m dreading the conversation although I’m the one who asked to meet. Again in Palm Beach and not at my desk.
“So why are you visiting at what must be an ungodly hour if you were out late last night ‘covering a band’? Isn’t that what you call it?”
Sometimes when I’m alone with Elodie, we laugh about what we call our mother’s “rubric.” “She’s nothing without it,” Elodie used to say. Meaning without Dad, without us, without Mothers and Children and her hard work there, without yoga and swimming. Until Mom surprised us by changing the formula after years of straddling two worlds. Announcing it was time, she left her nonprofit six months ago. Instead of being in the field four days a week, visiting families in need, she delved into a rarefied social life. That’s when Elodie added, “And the Palm Beach doctrine, especially in season.”