A Necessary End (3 page)

H
ello?” I say breathlessly. It's not the run across the house this time; it's pure anticipation. This could be it.

The birth mother phone is in the nursery. Well, right now, it's the office, a placeholder room, generically furnished from IKEA with nothing on the walls, no love at all, but after this call . . .

“Hello?” I say again. Please, just speak. Please, don't be a wrong number, or worse. Not another Patty.

“Hi.” The voice is female and uncertain. No way is it a wrong number. “Is this Adrienne?”

“It is. Hi!” It comes out loud and hearty. I remind myself: Don't come on too strong. Don't scare her away. Remember, we're not desperate. We reworked our profile a week ago, and already, our first caller. We're ahead of the game. “Who's this?”

“My name's Leah. I'm”—she hesitates and then lowers her voice—“pregnant.”

I want to scream for joy. Instead, I do a little spin, à la the Jackson Five. Leah's probably too young to even know who they are. “It's really great to meet you,” I tell her.

“I'm due in six weeks.”

Six weeks! Holy shit, we could have our baby in six weeks. Sooner, even, if the baby's born premature. Leah must be one of those people who crams for the test the night before. “Six weeks is plenty of time to find a good home for your baby,” I say. “There are so many loving people who want to raise him. Or her?” My heart is thumping so wildly that I can feel it everywhere, like bass in a tricked-out car. I sit down in the padded desk chair that will soon be replaced by a glider and ottoman. I can see myself rocking that baby to sleep. Six weeks to go; Leah must know the sex, but she hasn't answered yet. “Do you know what you're having?”

“I didn't want to know.”

“I can understand that.” I'm all for the element of surprise. Green and yellow, that's how we'll set up the nursery. Frogs and ducks. Boy or girl, either one's excellent. “It must be scary, being in your position. Having to make such a big decision.”

“You guys seem so happy in your profile. I want my baby to grow up with people who really love each other. It's like, you don't need a baby, you just want one. Some of the other couples—they seem . . .” It's not hard to fill in that blank.

I want to kiss Gabe for giving me the inspiration. I want to kiss myself for writing that profile. We've always been a perfect pair. I find myself rocking slightly, a pantomime of what will be. I can't wait to buy that glider and ottoman. And a gender-neutral mobile for over the crib. Brightly colored fish, maybe, with a matching night-light. “Are you in the Bay Area?”

“No. I'm in Rhode Island.” I was so excited, I missed the accent. It's a lot like Boston. She pahked her cah in the yahd.

“Gabe and I grew up in New Jersey.”

“I know. It's in your profile.”

Right. She knows lots about us, and we know nothing about her. It's a tiny bit unsettling but easily rectified. People love to talk about themselves. “How old are you, Leah?”

“Nineteen.”

Hopefully, she didn't drink too much or do too many drugs before she found out she was pregnant. I remember nineteen. Don't be wild, Leah. Don't be like your auntie Adrienne.

“And the father, is he on board with the adoption?” I've heard horror stories about fathers who intercede at the last minute. Well, we're already down to the wire. If Leah's pregnancy were a football game, she'd be getting the two-minute warning.

“He said he'll sign anything. He doesn't care.” I hear despair, undergirded by steely anger. “We were supposed to be like you and Gabe. In love for our whole lives. But when I told him I wasn't getting an abortion, he was like, ‘Fuck you.'” Another pause. “Sorry. I curse when I'm upset.”

“Who doesn't?” I say. Then I think, Shit, I'm auditioning to be her baby's mother. She doesn't want me cursing every time I stub my toe. “I just mean, you can say whatever you want to me.”

“When I read your profile, I felt like we had this connection. I look like you, you know.” How would I know? I've never seen her. I'm acutely aware of the power imbalance: She's got what I want, and she knows all about me, right down to my appearance. But from where I'm sitting, she's like one of those kids in the yearbook who miss picture day. She's a captioned box that reads, “No photo available.”

“I'm a mutt,” I say. My parents weren't the type to tell stories about where they came from, let alone where their great-grandparents came from. I assume I'm some European hodgepodge: olive skin, hazel eyes, dark hair. “What about your family? Where are they originally from?”

She laughs. “A mutt. I like that. You have a way with words. In your profile, too.”

She's flattering me. That must mean she's a little afraid of rejection herself. Maybe the power dynamic isn't as clear-cut as I first thought. Nineteen years old, six weeks to go—I'd be scared, too, if I were her.

“So I look like you, and Trevor's like Gabe.” She turns wistful. “If you and Gabe raise the baby, it's almost like this alternate reality. Like, in another dimension, Trevor and I stayed together and kept loving each other and we became this family.”

She wants Gabe and me to be surrogates for her and Trevor? It seems like a creepy little fantasy. But who knows why a birth mother picks a couple, what the attraction is? That could be as good a reason as any. In the big picture, it doesn't matter if she starts out thinking of me as her understudy. I'll be the one playing the role, being the mom, for good.

“You still love him, huh?” I say.

“We were together for more than a year. That's, like, big for me.” Her voice turns from rhapsodic to angry as she adds, “But now I pretty much fucking hate him.”

And Gabe reminds you of him? I get this weird feeling in my stomach. But that's not her fault. Once bitten, twice shy, and Patty was a scorpion.

This situation is totally different. Leah's young, which means this time, if need be, I'll be the one doing the manipulating. Plus, I don't need to take her every little remark too seriously. Being nineteen is the same as being bipolar. She'll grow up and become someone great. Or she won't. No need to stress about it either way. I've heard that in open adoption, everyone starts out with the best intentions—to include the birth mother in all the holidays and important events, to stay close—and then they inevitably drift. It's a summer camp romance: You promise to write and call and never forget each other, but the story always ends the same.

“You feel betrayed,” I say to Leah. “I can understand that. You feel like Trevor should have stood by you, no matter what.”

“Like Gabe would have with you.”

I think back to the early days of our relationship and I want to believe he would have stood by me if I'd gotten pregnant. If only we'd known it was a medical impossibility. What a waste of good
contraceptive devices. “It just goes to show that Trevor wasn't your big love. Your big love is still out there, waiting.”

“I'm not going to meet him looking like this. I need to get this baby out already.”

I should be glad that she sounds callous, that she just wants the baby out so she can fall in love again; it makes her less likely to change her mind and keep him. But I wonder if a baby can feel, in utero, how little he's wanted, what an imposition his growing existence is. Does she ever talk to him, or sing to him? Or does she go the other way and call him names, scream at him for ruining everything with Trevor?

All I know is, Gabe and I are going to love the hell out of him. Whatever he's been through, we're going to make it up to him.

“I think you're having a boy,” I say. “I have this strong intuition. That probably sounds very California, but I was like that in New Jersey, too.”

“I can't wait to come to California,” she says. “I hate the East Coast. Can you buy me a plane ticket, like, right away? The other birth parents have already offered.”

Other birth parents? Is she going on an adoptive-parent tour? “Of course we can buy you a ticket. How soon do you want to come?”

“Like now? You're my first choice, you and Gabe, for obvious reasons. But I need to leave time to meet other people if it doesn't work out. I need to find my baby the best home I can, you know?” She suddenly sounds absolutely perky.

She's just a kid, I remind myself. But I will have to find out her mental health history, and her family's. Maybe she really is bipolar.

No, I don't want to know. If this baby is meant to be ours, we'll deal with whatever comes our way. We're up to the challenge.

It's moving so fast. Normally, that's my preferred speed, so I'll take it as a good sign. And if she wants to interview a number of prospective parents, that means she does care about her baby. It means she doesn't spend her time berating him in utero. She might even sing to him.

Maybe she won't want to give him up, when the time comes. You hear those stories all the time, too. If it's not the father putting the kibosh on the adoption, it's the mother. Read the message boards and you'd think no adoption ever succeeded.

“I'll fly you out today,” I tell her.

She lets out a happy little squeal. “See, I knew you were like me. Spontaneous. Don't you need to check with Gabe, though?”

“He'll be thrilled.”

It's like one of those infomercials with the digital clock ticking down in the corner: “But wait, if you act now, we'll throw in a
second
baby . . .” Twins—is it possible she's having twins?

This is meant to be. Leah is carrying our baby (babies?). She and Trevor even look like Gabe and me. How amazing is that? What are the odds?

What were the odds of coming across Patty, the devil herself?

“Bring the ultrasound pictures,” I say. “Please.” Then, “He is healthy, right?”

“I don't know if it's a he, but the baby's healthy, yeah. I've been having regular prenatal checkups and taking my vitamins. Just so you know, I don't drink or smoke or anything anymore.”

I ignore the “anymore.” We've got a healthy baby boy on the way. Six weeks. Holy shit.

I can't wait to tell Gabe. He's over at the Pyramid. Once I'm done booking Leah's flight, I text him: “Come home NOW. We're having a baby.”

I
hear the text's arrival when I'm in a hand. I raised from middle position with the jack-ten suited (both clubs) and the flop came jack-ten-three, all hearts. So I've got two pair, but no hearts, and the only other guy in the hand is down to his last $150. He pushes the chips to the center of the green felt and says, “All-in.” He's not looking at me, not wanting to give anything away. Shit. I was hoping to be the aggressor and put him to the decision, but now I'm in the hot seat.

Still two cards to go. He could already have the flush, if the cards in his hand are both hearts. Or he could have just one high heart, like the ace or king of hearts, and be gambling. Even if I'm ahead now, one of those remaining cards could be a heart. I'd lose a third of my stack. Of course, there could be another jack or a ten, and then I've got a full house. I'd be untouchable. But there are, at most, two jacks and two tens left in the deck. Maybe not even that, if the other guys at the table already folded theirs.

What do I know about my opponent? He sat down not too long ago. Midthirties, Hispanic, quiet, with callused hands, wearing a jacket with threadbare cuffs. He folded the last five hands before the
flop. Maybe he just has ace-king, no hearts, and he's figuring that flop missed me. But he didn't reraise me initially, he just called my raise. Wouldn't an ace-king merit a reraise? Ditto for pocket kings, and definitely pocket aces. Maybe he has pocket queens?

Another text. Usually, Adrienne respects my poker time. Maybe it really is important.

I can't think about the hand anymore. I need to check that text. So I call. The bet, that is. It's only a couple hundred dollars. Not that I can afford to be casual with money, when we're staring down adoption costs, but you can't think that way and play poker. You can't play scared. It's a recipe for losing.

He turns his hand over. Ace of hearts, king of diamonds. I hold my breath, waiting for the next card. He's got outs to beat me: A queen gives him a straight, and any heart gives him a flush.

The turn card is the three of diamonds. So there's a pair of threes on the board now. That gives him more outs. If an ace or a king comes on the river, his two pair beat my two pair. I've got a bad feeling.

He's staring at the board. He looks morose, really. So we've both got a bad feeling, and only one of us can be right.

The cuffs on that jacket are practically worn through. He might need the money more than I do. He could have a kid already, or two or three, and he needs to buy formula and diapers. Kids are expensive. But then, should he really be here gambling? First rule: You never put money into a pot you can't afford to lose. Of course, that's my rule; lots of these guys play by their own.

The last card is a two of spades. He missed all his outs, and I get all his money. “Nice hand,” he says in a low voice, tapping the felt as he stands up. He's not going to rebuy, which makes me feel rotten.

Three seats separate us. “Good play,” I say. “Anything but what I had, I would have folded.”

“You had many, many outs,” an older Asian man tells the exiting player in his pinched, accented English. I don't know about “many,
many.” But we all want to buoy up this particular loser. Part of me wants to give the chips back, like I don't deserve them. It's poker, though. No one's deserving.

I played right. I got my money in as the favorite. That's all you can do.

Ames, next to me, taps the felt in appreciation of my victory. Cards are being dealt, but I don't look at them. I'm staring at my phone. The first text tells me to come home NOW, we're having a baby. The second one reiterates NOW. Apparently, I'm winning all over the place.

Sometimes you'd rather lose, when winning's got so many strings attached.

Ames prods me. “You okay?” he asks. Over the years, sitting next to each other, we've become friends. He's in his late forties, with thinning sandy hair. He's always in faded jeans and a T-shirt advertising something. Today, it's Jim Beam. When we first met, he told me he was in commercial real estate. I've since found out that he owns buildings in questionable parts of town and does all the repairs himself, with no particular urgency. I guess technically, that makes him a slumlord, but he's also a pretty good guy.

“It's Adrienne,” I say. “She needs me home.”

“Right time of the month?” He grins like he knows the ovulation drill. His kids are ten and twelve.

“No, we . . .” Forget it. “I just have to go.”

“In or out, gentlemen?” the dealer asks. The “gentlemen” sounds like an affectation, since he looks like he's barely twenty-one himself. He's in his tuxedo shirt and no bow tie. His collar's askew. It's the first time I've seen him in here. He looks like he was partying all night and didn't have time for a shower before work. He won't last. The Pyramid lacks Vegas-style amenities—hell, it looks like a banquet hall in the Poconos that no one's bothered to renovate since the eighties—but the management runs a tight ship.

Ames slides his cards toward the dealer. I do the same, without
having peeked, and stand up. He says, “I'll walk out with you. I should head home, too.”

I don't really want company, but what can I say? Ames grabs plastic trays for both of us and we load our chips into them. Red, white, and blue; we're real patriots. We walk up the paisley-carpeted ramp, heading for the booth, where we cash out. I put the crisp hundreds in my wallet.

From the gold railing above, I survey the card room with nostalgia. I feel like something in me is about to die, the part of me that was at home here. The room is large and windowless, ringed with TVs bolted to the ceiling, always showing sports but never poker. I catch a faint whiff of the lousy Chinese food they serve table-side. Some days, you're seated downwind from the lo mein; people touch their greasy food and then their chips and you win a pot and almost wish you hadn't. I don't want to go.

“Come on.” Ames claps me on the back and nudges me toward the door. “It can't be that bad.” He smiles, revealing one chipped incisor. “Nothing with Adrienne can be that bad.”

A few years back, I had him and his wife, Paula, over to our house, testing to see if we could become real friends instead of just poker buddies. Turns out, we couldn't, because of Adrienne. She was a great hostess, like always, and neither Ames nor Paula would have guessed that after she shut the door behind them, she intoned, “Never again.” Adrienne makes people like her, no problem, but she's a tough customer herself. Ames and Paula rank among the many couples I've brought in to audition over the years, only to have Adrienne deliver the same pithy verdict. Fortunately, Adrienne's such good company that I barely miss other people.

Now that I'm standing on the precipice of fatherhood, I find myself recalling a conversation Ames and I had that night. He was marveling at our house, how nothing was on the floors but the furniture. “You have your kid, that'll change,” he said. “You go out to take a piss in the middle of the night, and it's this toy minefield. Everything
plays a different song. One wrong step, and it's a rendition of ‘The' fucking ‘Wheels on the Bus.' One time, when Natalie was two, I put weight on the wrong floorboard, and this voice comes out of the darkness and says, ‘Want to play?' I almost went for my gun, I'm telling you. Had to remember it was the plastic purple octopus. People give you this shit as gifts. Trust me, it's no gift.”

“So cleanliness is the first thing to go?” I joked, with a pointed look at his bald spot.

“Well,” he said, amending that with a grin, “the third. After your sanity and your hair.”

It's all fun and games until your wife texts you to come home NOW, you're having a baby.

Once Ames and I are outside, taking in the view of a parking lot full of lengthy, American-made cars, he shakes a cigarette from his pack and hands it to me. Then he takes one out for himself. I don't really smoke anymore, but it seems like the best idea in the world.

“She says she found us a baby,” I say.

“Found? Like in a Dumpster?”

“Like adoption. She must have found a birth mother. She says we're having a baby.” I hold up the phone as proof. “We just started looking.” Eleven months isn't that long. I was hoping for twice that, at a minimum. It's like I want a long engagement and Adrienne wants to elope.

Ames takes a drag. “Well,” he says finally, “congratulations.”

I inhale too sharply and start to cough. I would have thought smoking was like riding a bike.

“You're going to love it, fatherhood. It's a pain in the ass, but it's worth it.”

“Is it really?”

He squints out at the parked cars, sunlight glinting off their windshields like asteroids. “What's done is done.”

I knew it.

“I love my kids, and you'll love yours. Just don't overthink things.
If you spend your time worrying whether you're happy, then you're not. Happiness finds you when you're not looking.”

“Unless it doesn't. Adrienne wants this more than anything.” I saw that line before she deleted it.

“And you don't.”

“I want her to have what she wants.”

“Then let her be a mother. Let her do the work.”

That's the bargain he's struck. He's got an old-school marriage, where the kids are Paula's domain. There's no way Adrienne would go for a division of labor like Ames's family. She plans to keep working, and she wants me to be a full partner in this, as in everything else; she wants me to want that.

“I've got to go,” I say. Another text is coming in. Another NOW. Since when do we talk to each other like that? The kid isn't even here and already I feel like the henpecked husband.

It's always easy to spot my car here, the only hybrid Lexus on the lot. Card players favor gas guzzlers, especially Caddies: old Eldorados and new Escalades. Adrienne's been talking about an SUV. One baby, and we need an SUV. I turn the key in the ignition and remind myself: We don't have one yet. The text said we're
having
a baby. So there's still time to eject from the cockpit.

I think of my buddy Rodney from work, what he said after he learned his wife was pregnant: “You know your life is going to change forever, but at least you've got nine months to kiss it good-bye.”

The problem is, I like my life. I love time alone with Adrienne. Last week, we ate kettle corn for dinner with a bottle of wine. Okay, two bottles of wine. I don't want to kiss that good-bye. Adrienne says this'll make us better people, we'll be role models. Jesus. She never used to talk like that either. That kind of stuff made her gag. “Fuck me like a role model,” she would whisper in my ear if she overheard someone using a term like that. Maybe I don't want to be a better person; I just want to be happy.

It's not a long drive home, almost all freeway, and I alternate between
driving exactly the speed limit and doing ninety. I must look like a schizophrenic. It's the ambivalence made manifest. I need to know what's happening
right now;
I don't want to know, ever.

If I get pulled over by a cop and given a fat ticket, it'll prove I'm not ready to be a dad. Or I can just keep on driving straight to Reno. A poker overnight, the province of the parentless. Show up the next morning and tell Adrienne, “See, I'm not cut out for fatherhood. I'm still a kid myself.” Forty-two, and a kid myself. Even I hear how pathetic that sounds.

No cops, no ticket, and I get off at our exit like I'm supposed to, like a good boy. Adrienne yanks the front door open, this massive smile on her face. It's so wide that it's almost creepy, like that clown from
It,
the one that lives in the sewer. The house is redolent with spices. “I'm cooking!” she announces. “Leah gets in tonight at eleven twenty-three.”

I follow her into the kitchen. It's small but state-of-the-art, all gleaming steel appliances and expensive granite countertops covered with bowls and implements we never use, like a nylon brush. Who is this woman?

“Leah might not be hungry that late,” Adrienne continues, “but the house will smell amazing. First impressions are everything, right? So on a subconscious level, she'll equate us with domestic bliss. And she'll want that for him.” Adrienne turns suddenly, her eyes bright and moist. “Do you think we get to name him?”

I am legitimately speechless. Sagging against the refrigerator, I tell myself I don't need to speak. I can just turn on my heel and run. Run away from this possessed woman. Go to Reno, and when I come back in a day or two, Leah will be gone, and reality will have reasserted itself, and Adrienne will be my wife again.

I go into the dining room and sit down. From there, I can look toward the living room, stare longingly at the TV and the night I thought we'd have, or straight into the kitchen, where she's hard at work, kneading dough. Jesus.

“Tell me about Leah,” I say.

“She's from Rhode Island.
Really
sweet girl. Her boyfriend, Trevor, wanted her to have an abortion but she wouldn't, and he dumped her, if you can believe it.”

“I can believe it.”

“She said he'll sign the papers, he's not attached to the baby at all. So that's great news. Oh, and she looks like me, and you look like Trevor. Isn't that amazing?” She doesn't wait for my answer. “The best part is, she's due in six weeks.”

“And she's flying out here tonight? Is she supposed to be flying in the last trimester?” If I know that and the mother doesn't—if neither of these mothers do—we're in big trouble.

I see Adrienne's brow furrow. Then she pushes her hair out of her face with her forearm, and it's almost like she's manually smoothed everything over. It's a-okay now. “This is the one,” she says quietly. “This baby is meant to be ours. He's even going to look like us.”