Chapter One

 

She was perfect. Too perfect.

That should have tipped me off. I should have known the second that I saw her that things weren’t going to turn out the way that any of us were saying that we expected them to. I should have realized the minute that I looked at her too perfect blond hair, too perfect blue eyes, and too perfect pout on her too perfect lips that something was strange.

But we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves…

 

Rue

 

“There have been many sage voices who have spoken on the topic of love and its influence on the human condition. One of the greatest of our time illustrated this in the most powerful and poignant of ways with the words ‘If you want to be my lover, you’ve got to get with my friends. Make it last forever. Friendship,” Tessie looked at me solemnly and wagged her finger slowly, “never ends.”

I stood in the kitchen of my tiny apartment cooking brunch as one of my two best friends read me the opening excerpt of her new novel, the tenth or so that she had started in the time that we knew each other, and the tenth or so that she was going to write five pages of, shove into a drawer, and never finish. My stirring had been brought to a stop by her words and I stared at her, ready for her to get to the joke, but she didn’t. Instead, she brought her notebook down from where she had been holding it high in front of her face and clutched it to her chest.

“That’s it?” I asked.

Her dark eyes snapped to me and she nodded.

“What do you mean ‘that’s it’?” she asked, sounding deeply offended by my question. “Didn’t it touch something inside of you?”

Yeah, the same thing that it touched inside me in 1996.

“I’m just not sure that that is the best way to start your existential novel on the sexual awakening and pair-bonding rituals of today’s woman and its over-arching impact on life in the context of the human condition as a whole,” I repeated, trying to remember the exact order of the words that she had used to describe this most recent endeavor when she arrived at the apartment that morning.

Tessie nodded, a faraway look in her eyes that I imagined she thought was the same type of look that the great Greek philosophers had when they were penning the great truths and musings of their time.

“You’re right,” she said. “It’s too much. It’s too hard of a hit for the very beginning of the book. I need to give my readers the opportunity to gradually warm up to the intensity of the ideas that I’m presenting to them.”

I reached out and patted her on the back.

“You’re a kind and compassionate intellectual overlord,” I said.

Tessie nodded, a tear coming to her eye as she contemplated just how misunderstood she was and the travesty that was her brilliance being wasted on such a dark and emotionally devoid world. I gave a short laugh and turned back to the butter sauce that I was stirring. It was nearly finished when I heard a knock on the back door. I looked at Tessie quizzically. No one came to the back door. Most people didn’t even realize that my apartment had a back door, and those who did were unlikely to actually climb up the winding fire escape to get to it. I moved the curtain that hung over the small window in the door to peek out and saw Christopher standing on the stoop, his hands grasping the wrought iron railings on either side of him like they were giving him life.

“It’s Christopher,” I said, letting the curtain fall back in place and going to work releasing the series of locks on the door.

“What’s he doing on the back porch?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said.

When all the locks were open I opened the door. The third in our group, and my friend for even longer than Tessie, Christopher never ceased to amaze me with his unpredictability. No matter how long I knew him, I never knew what was going to come out of his brain. That was definitely true now as I took in the electric blue and neon purple striped bike shorts that left virtually nothing to the imagination and matching rollerblades that he was wearing. I had never known Christopher to rollerblade except for his brief foray into roller disco during its resurgence several years back, and his lack of experience was showing. Both knees were turned in toward each other and his ankles were shaking. This explained why he was gripping the railings and appeared several inches taller than he usually was when I looked at him through the window.

I reached out a hand to Christopher and he took it, allowing me to pull him into the kitchen. He glided across the linoleum floor and grasped the back of one of the stools against the wall.

“Good morning,” Tessie said.

“Hi,” Christopher replied.

“Want to tell me what’s going on here?” I asked, closing the door.

“Scavenger hunt,” he said.

“Of course, it is.”

“Want to tell me why you’re half naked outside in November?”

“Rollerblading is a good cardiovascular workout?”

“Right.”

And has absolutely nothing to do with the others who might be participating in the scavenger hunt.

“I’m almost done, but there are a few more things that I need.”

“What are they?”

“A bobby pin in a color other than brown.”

“Got it,” Tessie said.

She reached into her hair and withdrew a lavender pin that she handed over to Christopher.

“That’s a start. Now, three paper clips.”

“I’ve got that,” I said, reaching into my junk drawer. “Does it matter what color they are?”

“Any will do, but I can get bonus points for multiple colors.”

“Here’s a red, a blue, and a rainbow. Bonus bonus points.”

“We’re on a roll! Alright, next is commonly found kitchen items reminiscent of the seven dwarves.”

“What?” Tessie and I asked in unison.

He looked down at the list that he had taken out of the waistband of his bike shorts and repeated the list item.

“Um,” I said, looking around. I went to the spice cabinet and grabbed out a bottle. “Ground black pepper? Sneezy?”

“That’s the spirit. Keep it going. Who’s got Grumpy?”

We scurried around the kitchen for the next several minutes gathering what we could find that made any link to the dwarves. I thought some of them were a little shaky in their interpretation, but I hadn’t been grocery shopping in a couple of weeks and our options were sparse. When I had packed everything into a bag that I hung over Christopher’s arm, I let out a breath.

“Alright, what’s next?”

I need to collect 247 readily distinguishable kisses. Again, bonus points for multiple colors.”

I rushed into my bathroom and grabbed out my makeup box. Digging through, I pulled out every tube of lipstick I could find.

“I knew I could rely on you,” he said.

I handed one to Tessie and smeared on a layer of the brightest red that I could find.

“Ready?” I asked.

Christopher gripped the back of the stool with one hand, opened out the other arm, and squeezed his eyes closed in preparation of the barrage.

“Do your worst,” he said.

Tessie and I went to work, pressing kiss marks over his shoulders, chest, arms, back, and stomach. We changed lipstick colors every few kisses until he was covered with several hues of lip prints.

“Is it enough?” Tessie asked.

I started on one shoulder and counted the kisses. Tessie started on the other and we met in the middle.

“You’re short by 7,” I told him. He looked crestfallen, but then an idea popped into my head. “Wait,” I said. I went to the drawer beneath the junk drawer and then back to him. “Open your bag.” I dropped seven chocolate kisses inside. “Two from Christmas, three from Easter, and two from the bank candy bowl. Five different colors in total.”

“You are the best scavenger hunter ever,” Christopher said.

“Is that all you need?” I asked.

“Yep, that’s it. On my way to Red Skelton’s house to show off my collection.”

“Isn’t he dead? Like…really dead?” Tessie asked.

“Not this one. His parents just had a little bit of a variety show fetish.”

“Ah.”

Christopher started scooting toward the door and then turned to look back over his shoulder at me.

“Could you give me a little push?” he asked. “I’m pretty OK once I’m rolling, but it’s the getting started that’s a struggle.”

I looked at Tessie.

“Pour the sauce into a bowl and start dishing up eggs. I’ll be back in just a minute.”

I followed Christopher as he carefully stepped his way down the stairs, keeping my hands held out in front of me just in case he slipped, and I needed to catch him.

“How did you possibly get all the way up there by yourself?” I asked as I grabbed onto his arm and scooped him up from certain disaster when one rollerblade rolled ahead of the other.

“Cautiously,” he said. “It took me almost half an hour. Really cut into my time.”

“Why didn’t you just come through the front door?”

“I was already behind your building, so I thought it would be easier. By the time I got to the second landing, I was pretty much already committed.”

I nodded.

We had gotten to the bottom of the fire escape and he was still alive, which I was going to count as a personal victory, and I eased him along toward the end of the alley behind the house.

“Which direction?” I asked.

He pointed himself and assumed a position that I could only guess was his official rollerblading stance, his back bent forward, his chin up, his arms tucked close to his sides, and his ass pointed back.

“Ready,” he said.

“Got your bag?”

He held it up without looking at me.

“Yep.”

“Alright. Godspeed.”

I gave him a shove and watched as all 240 kiss prints glided away down the sidewalk into the distance. As I walked back toward the apartment, my mind was churning, trying to figure out how I was going to start the conversation I needed to have with Tessie. I had originally planned on telling both her and Christopher at the same time, but I had gone into such a panic just trying to come up with the right words that I decided it might be easier to divide and conquer. I’d take care of telling Tessie first, considering she was much more likely to find some sort of deeply meaningful commentary on the human existence in the whole thing. Then I’d use how that went to reevaluate my approach and tackle telling Christopher later.

Maybe. In all honesty, he might not notice.

When I got back into the apartment I engaged all of the locks and grabbed glasses of juice to add to all of the food that Tessie had transferred into the living room. There were days when I really loved this little apartment, the only one I had ever lived in since leaving my hometown. Then there were days when living in a postage stamp with no dining room or bathtub was a bit of a drag. This was one of those moments. It was hard to have a sophisticated brunch over which you planned to have a serious, potentially life-changing conversation when you were either sitting on the floor to eat off of the coffee table or balancing your plate on your lap on the couch.

I chose the latter, settling onto the couch and looking down toward where Tessie sat on the floor, her plate on the table in front of her. I offered her a glass of juice and she took a swig before setting it onto the glass top of the table. She took up a massive forkful of scrambled eggs and put it in her mouth.

How do I start this conversation? How do I start this conversation? How do I start this conversation?

“I’m thinking about becoming a surrogate.”

Well, shit. That probably wasn’t the best way.

Tessie looked at me with widened eyes and withdrew the fork from her mouth, still laden with eggs. She lowered it to the plate and pushed it a few inches across the table.

“You invited me over to your house for an egg-heavy brunch to announce to me that you are considering being a surrogate?” she asked.

I wriggled uncomfortably and put my plate on the table.

“Yeah, in retrospect that might have been a bit of a distasteful choice.”

Tessie took another sip of juice, the expression on her face telling me that she was trying to process my announcement. I felt that, much like her novel, I should have had a little more of a buildup. Since I didn’t yet have access to the delete button of life, there was no way that I could go back and try to fix how the conversation had gone thus far, so all I could really do was wait and hope that it smoothed itself out.

“What the fuck are you thinking, Rue?”

Nope. Not looking good for me on the smoothing-out front.

“What do you mean?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

“What do I mean?” she asked. “What do I mean? I mean what the fuck are you thinking? You’re just going to go bear some stranger’s spawn?”

“It’s not like it’s someone off the street,” I insisted. “The couple is extensively screened and provide full information to all of the applicants. There are tons of contracts involved and everything. It’s not as shady as you’re making it out to be.”

“I’m not making it out to be shady. I’m making it out to be weird as hell. You’re young, you’ve never had a child of your own, but you want to go through pregnancy for somebody else. What good reason could you possibly have to do that?”

“Grammyma’s house,” I said.

“What?” Tessie said, the horror and anger falling out of her voice. “What do you mean?”

“Grammyma’s house,” I said again. “The payments aren’t up to date and if I don’t catch them up soon, they’ll foreclose.”

“When did you find this out?” she asked.

Tears were forming in the corners of my eyes, but I didn’t want to acknowledge them. I tried to shake my head to convince them to go away, but this only seemed to encourage them, and they filled my eyes faster.

“When I went down there to finish settling up Daddy’s estate. I thought that everything was fine, you know?” I looked at Tessie and tried to offer a smile, but could only manage a weak trembling of my bottom lip. “I thought that he was taking care of the house and making sure that everything was fine. I thought that he was doing everything that he promised her that he was going to do.”

I was starting to feel angry, and I couldn’t let myself do that. I couldn’t let myself feel angry at him. His death was still so recent, and it still cut deeply into my heart every time that I thought about him. No matter how much it hurt, I didn’t want to start covering up those feelings with anger or blame. I knew that the longer I did that, the more those feelings would overshadow the wonderful memories I had of him, and I couldn’t let that happen.

“What happened?” Tessie asked.

“It’s really my fault,” I said. “It really is. I shouldn’t have put everything off like I did.”

“It was just too hard for you.”

I nodded, wiping at my eyes.

“But I should have done it. It was my responsibility. I don’t know why I would think that he paid off that loan. When I got down there the lawyer told me that the payments were behind. I was able to scrounge up enough to pay a couple of months, but I didn’t have much. That’s not all, though. The house itself was in pretty bad condition. The grounds were grown up. The vegetable garden was completely gone. The house itself needs a ton of work. And I’m the only one who can do it.”

“Rue, you hadn’t been back there in years.”

“I know.”

“The only times you even saw your dad was when he came here or when he was in the hospital.”

“I know,” I said, feeling guilt start to creep up inside of me as she spoke.

“You always said that when you were younger, the only thing you could ever think about was how you were going to get out of there and start your life in the city. That once you got out of the holler, you weren’t ever going back.”

“Tessie,” I said sharply to stop her, then softened my tone. “I know.”

She turned to me, reaching up to rest one hand on mine.

“Then why are you so worried about saving it?” she asked. “Grammyma’s been gone for a decade. Your daddy’s gone now, too. Don’t you think that it’s time to just go ahead and let it go?”

I shook my head. The holler that she was talking about was Whiskey Hollow, the tiny valley village where I was born and raised, and then got out of as soon as I got accepted into college.

“No,” I said, struggling to regain control over my voice. “No, Tessie. I can’t. That place is all I have left. I don’t have siblings. I don’t even remember my mama. All I had was Grammyma and Daddy. That’s it. As much as I talk about the bad things about it, there really are wonderful things about it. And that house…I grew up in that house. It was my home. It smelled like the cookies that my grandmother made for me and that I was never able to recreate because she put the recipe aside for safekeeping and we never found it before she died. It was where my Daddy let me try to paint my own room and never even made fun of me when I tried to paint it three different colors and add swirls and it essentially ended up brown. It might not seem like much, but the reality is that it’s everything, and I’m the only one left who can save it.”

“How are you going to do it?” Tessie asked.

I drew in a breath.

“I’m moving back there.”

“What?” Tessie asked. “You’re leaving?”

She sounded crestfallen and I couldn’t even look at her or I would start crying again.

“I have to,” I said. “I can’t afford the payments on the house and this apartment, and besides there’s so much work that I need to do there to get the house and the land back in shape. I can’t be in both places at once.”

“I wish that you would have told us this. We could have helped you. I don’t make a ton, but between me and Christopher I’m sure we would have been able to get together enough that you wouldn’t have to rent out your womb.”

I smiled.

“I know,” I said. “And I love you both for that. I know that you would have helped me, but that’s why I didn’t tell you. I need to be able to do this for myself. I owe it to Daddy and Grammyma. They were both able to get through so much without having to lean on other people. It wasn’t until close to the end that Daddy started to really struggle and let things slide. I want to make him proud of me.”

“He is proud of you,” Tessie insisted. “You don’t have to go through this alone. The only reason that they didn’t lean on other people is because they didn’t have any one to lean on. You do. You have me, and you have Christopher. We love you and we want to be here for you.”

I was suddenly feeling like I was part of some sort of intervention.

“I can’t ask you two to stop your lives just to help me out of this,” I said. “Besides, it’s something good that I can do for someone else. You are always doing good for the world. You do the food drive. The pet food drive. Meals on Wheels. Wheels for Meals, that car donation initiative. If it has to do with food and driving, you’re right on top of it.”

“Sometimes food and driving,” Tessie pointed out. “Don’t forget my Christmas program from two years ago.”

“Oh, yes. Ho-Ho-Homeless.”

“It might have gotten me banned from the development and marketing of any new programs, but they really did enjoy the hot meals and egg nog while they rode around looking at the Christmas lights.”

“They did,” I agreed. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. You do all of these amazing things for people, and I really don’t do anything. I might not be helping a lot of people, but if they choose me, I’ll get to make a really big difference in the lives of this one couple at least.”

“So, you’re not pregnant yet?” Tessie asked.

I gave her a quizzical look.

“No, Tessie. That’s why I said that I was thinking about becoming a surrogate, not that I was one already. Don’t you think that that’s something I would mention to you before I went through with it?”

“I don’t know,” Tessie said, her voice rising slightly as she tried to defend herself. “You sound so convinced, I thought that maybe you got all swept up in it and just went ahead with it.”

“I don’t think that this is like a drive-thru situation. They don’t order the baby and get it baking on the same day. It takes time. I still have to go through interviews and briefings and meet with the couple and go to the doctor. There’s a lot that has to happen before they even choose me, if they’re going to choose me.”

“Have you thought about how this is going to impact the rest of your life? Forever, you’re going to be someone’s mother.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I won’t be the baby’s mother. I’m just a vessel. It’s like the T-Rex who put her eggs in the nest with the eggs of another dinosaur to be taken care of until they’re born.”

Tessie stared at me blankly for a few seconds, then blinked.

“Yeah,” she said. “And then the T-Rex babies were born and ate all of the other dinosaur’s babies.”

“Well, I don’t have any babies, so I don’t think that the one that I’ll carry for the other couple will be able to eat any of them.”

“But will you always think of that pregnancy? If you get pregnant with your own children, will it not be as special because you will have already been pregnant? You will have already gone through all of those things. You will have already felt a baby kick inside of you and seen the sonograms and gone through labor and delivery.”

“I will have,” I conceded, “but there’s a major difference.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Those babies will be mine. I’ll find out that I’m pregnant with my own child. I’ll feel my own baby kick inside of me and see my own baby on the sonogram and go through labor and delivery to bring my own baby into the world. There’s nothing about this experience that will make having my own babies one day any less special or any less important.”

“And what if they don’t choose you?”

She was putting voice to a concern that was strong inside of me, but that I didn’t want to admit to.

“Then I’ll figure it out then,” I said. “The office gave me a leave of absence. They don’t realize that it’s going to be a permanent absence, but it gives me a few months of partial income. If the couple chooses me, part of the agreement is that they’ll pay my living expenses in addition to the surrogacy fee. I’ll put my paychecks into savings to carry me through later. If they don’t choose me, at least I’ll have that to live on while I figure out my next move.”

“You’ve really thought this through,” Tessie said, sounding completely sad now rather than angry.

“I have,” I told her, reaching out to squeeze her hand. “I’ll be fine. I promise.”

“I’ll miss you so much,” she said.

“I’ll miss you, too. But it’s time to go home.”