She is definitely part of the herd this morning as she starts her ritual, adjusting her sun visor, adding more sunblock to her cheekbones.
“Have you spoken with Elodie?” I ask.
“I speak with her every day. What’s wrong, Aubrey?”
Mom takes in deep breaths, exhales in this very style. Her cobalt blue baseball cap has PBLS (Palm Beach Literary Society) across it in white stitching. Although she has always been pretty, today her face is angular; her neck has cords that weren’t there a few months ago. Among her friends, my mother is the only one who has skipped any plastic surgery. “Botox here, filler there, but not under the knife,” she likes to say. Meaning she is undaunted in a clutter of face-lifts, new ones, old ones, redos. Still, her methods could be failing her—isn’t that what happens? Whatever, to me her face is always beautiful.
“Let’s start,” she says. “We’ll talk on the trail.”
We angle toward the water’s edge. Ahead, mothers are jogging while pushing those three-leg strollers. A couple laugh together, pushing their double stroller. Children who look about three or four hold on to the hands of their caregivers—mothers, a few fathers, nannies, grandmothers. What are their fertility stories? Did these women go to bed and wake up pregnant, or were they shot up with fertility drugs and frantic? Regardless, here they are with the morning light like a halo over them. My sister’s sadness must trickle into her every move in a place where nothing unpleasant can ever happen. Having not lived here since college, I’ve forgotten how to work on being perfect. My time in South Beach has blocked it out.
My mother and I fast-walk behind the fancy houses; they keep tumbling toward us, one after another. Moving at a clip, we’re almost at the yachts. More sunlight dipping across the Intracoastal, more strangers gesturing at my mother, stopping to speak. Hello, Eleanor, will your family come for Christmas? Rosalie, how are the grandchildren up north? The responses quick and short as each party keeps on the trail. Another baby, perhaps six months old, dressed in a pink bonnet, is being wheeled along, her feet dangling. It is her big sister, about seven, who pushes the stroller, while her relaxed mother and father smile radiantly as they pass.
“I read you every nursery rhyme,” Elodie tells me to this day, “I pushed you on your first swing, your first carousel ride.” I know she did—life was divided into when Elodie was there and when she wasn’t. Later she handed me a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone before any of my friends knew about it. She took me for my first highlights at Posh Salon, my first pair of stilettos, arranged impressive fake IDs. I wish that she had never asked me to be her surrogate.
“Dad was late for his Thursday game this morning. Can you believe it?
“Oh? Golf or tennis?”
“Tennis.” Mom sounds a bit annoyed. “That’s why James plays, before he goes to ANVO. You do know that most of the men who go to work start early—”
“Of course.” I wait. “Mom, why I’m here, this is sort of urgent.”
“Urgent?”
She stops our fast clip. She knows nothing.
“What has happened?” my mother asks as she motions for us to park ourselves on a quasi-carved bench situated along the water. The wood is smooth and heavy; it reminds me of marble. Contorting her upper body, she looks to the left and to the right. Once she is sure that everyone else on the trail is far off, she leans closer.
“What is it, Aubrey?”
The wind from the west tosses the gulls; they lift higher into the air. It reminds me of being in a plane over Palm Beach, ready to land, just as the announcement comes on about gusts and turbulence.
“Everything is okay.” I sort of draw out okay.
“Meaning what, Aubrey? Is it about Tyler? Your work?”
“No, no. Not Tyler, work is fine.” The swiftest flash of Tyler kissing me in the kitchen at dawn. He was holding our agreement with a playlist, dancing a slow one to “All of My Love’” by Led Zeppelin, to celebrate. Right after a sleepless night, when I decided I had to drive up to see my mother. Tyler didn’t press for any details, but he did walk me to my car. That’s what makes the Elodie request more complicated: Tyler.
“Does Elodie know we’re at the Lake Trail together?”
My mother looks out at the gulls over the docks. “Have you girls had a fight?”
I wish. I wait, count to ten like we’ve been taught.
“Elodie wants me to be a surrogate for her.”
“I’m sorry?”
Mom is frowning beneath the sunglasses and baseball cap.
“A surrogate, a traditional surrogate for her—and for James. I’d be impregnated with James’s sperm, I’d—” I stop.
Mom waits.
“I’d be impregnated at Dr. Noel’s clinic.”
“Dr. Noel does not run a clinic, Aubrey,” my mother says.
“That’s what you’re concerned with, Mom? That it’s an office, not a clinic, because clinics are for those less fortunate?”
“I am clarifying, that’s all,” Mom says.
She’s nervous, deflecting, focusing on the wrong part of the conversation.
“Okay. At Dr. Noel’s office.” I shudder at the very idea of Dr. Noel’s anything. “I’d be pregnant for Elodie.”
“For Elodie? I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You know, my egg, James’s sperm. Because Elodie’s eggs are too old.”
My mother’s mouth twists, as if she’s about to tell me there’s been a death in the family—a distant cousin from Pittsburgh or Ithaca, someone she’s always loved but hasn’t seen in twenty years. She can’t persuade our father to travel to the funeral, it matters to her. She has to figure it out.
“Your egg, James’s sperm.”
She twists her mouth again. “What made you decide on this?”
“Oh, I didn’t. I never would have. It was James’s idea. The DNA thing, that the baby would be genetically linked to Elodie.”
“Is that his reasoning?” Mom sounds angry.
“Totally. He’s into the plan. He says it really matters.”
“Does he? Doesn’t he know how complicated that would be for you and your sister? DNA isn’t the only factor.”
I shake my head. Mom pats my shoulder.
“The idea of a baby and Elodie’s despair and my being the one, I don’t know. Like I’m covered in this layer of…” I say.
“Defeat,” Mom says.
I can’t admit that yesterday I googled morning sickness six times, only to be sidetracked by the aftermath of pregnancy. Descriptions of the forking over of oneself (with saggy breasts, cellulite, and stretch marks) for a sleepless infant, a marriage that becomes sexless. That’s the known deal—one’s selfishness traded in for a baby to love.
“Yeah, okay, defeat. I mean, I don’t want to be pregnant. I’m not sure that I want my own children, Mom.”
“Oh, honey, you don’t know for certain. You might change your mind. It isn’t a decision for today.” My mother stops.
“If I do this, I’d be the aunt to my own baby—it’s awfully hard to wrap my mind around it. Then I see how heartbroken Elodie is. I can’t stand that she’s like that, either. Every part of it makes me very upset.”