A Necessary End (6 page)

I
t's a glorious April day—seventy-two degrees, no humidity, the sun bright but not harsh, as if angled through slats—the kind of day that would make anyone wish they lived in California.

Leah casts her own radiance as we sit outside having brunch. Her long dark hair is in two braids, snaking forward on each shoulder. I never wore my hair like that, not even when I was a little girl. She's friggin' adorable, and I'm pretty sure she knows it.

The back terrace of the restaurant is done up like Tuscany (not that I've ever been there, though Gabe and I plan to go one day). We're in a grape arbor, within a suburban downtown. Sleight of hand, a magic trick. It's a perfect metaphor for what I'm trying to do with Leah. I need her to see what she wants in us. Whatever that might be.

Normally, I'm a quick reader of people, but that girl's book is closed. Behind all her “I love your car” and “I love this restaurant” and “I love the weather,” behind all the sweetness and light, lurks her true motivation.

It's disturbing, this supernatural sense that I'm meeting my
nineteen-year-old self and she's carrying my baby and running a game on me.

Gabe can't see through it, of course, same as he couldn't see through mine half a lifetime ago. But I had good intentions. I wanted to love him forever. What does Leah want?

“I've got to work later,” he's telling Leah, “but tomorrow's my day off. Where do you want to go?”

I snap to attention. I don't have off tomorrow. It's Monday, a school day. Maybe I could call in sick? It would mean doing a bunch of work tonight to get ready for the sub, but it might be worth it. I have to do my prep for the week anyway.

“We need to go to San Francisco,” Leah says, “obviously.” She smiles.

Gabe and Leah touring San Francisco by themselves? Yeah, I'm calling in sick. “Where in San Francisco?” I try to sound friendly and interested as I keep my eyes down on my plate. In case eyes really are windows to the soul, I better keep my blinds shut.

“I don't know.” I'm pretty sure Leah's windows are trained on Gabe. “Any suggestions?”

Gabe goes into this spiel about the merits of exploring different neighborhoods versus going to tourist spots, and I'm staring at my egg-white omelet. I can't help thinking about how young Leah's eggs are, how fresh. I didn't pay enough attention in health class, so it wasn't until Gabe and I were trying (and failing) to conceive that I learned women have all the eggs they're ever going to have at birth. It's downhill from there, a slow degradation until they reach their expiration date.

That's how they made it sound at the fertility clinic. Apparently, there's no upside to aging for an egg. It doesn't get seasoned with life experience, it doesn't marinate in self-improvement. No, if I'd gotten knocked up at Leah's age, as selfish and callow as I was, my eggs would still have been all the better for it. They would have been more viable.

Leah, sitting there chomping on a slice of bacon while I avoid yolks, is more viable than I am.

“You're a teacher, right?” she says. “That's, like, such an important job.”

“I love the kids,” I respond, which is true.

But she's put me over a barrel. If I call in sick, it could look like I'm not devoted to my job—not devoted to the children—and that's not the impression I want to give, in case Leah really is assessing my maternal instincts.

Also, if I call out of work, it could look like I don't trust my husband to be around Leah, and that's definitely the wrong impression. As far as Leah is concerned, Gabe and I are the Greatest Love of All (not the Whitney Houston version of self-love—why did it never previously occur to me that that song could be a paean to masturbation rivaled only by Billy Idol's “Dancing with Myself”?). The Greatest Love of All is supposed to be Gabe and me, as stand-ins for Leah and Trevor.

Besides, I do trust Gabe. His love for me, his basic honesty, his fidelity—none of that is remotely in question.

I just don't trust Leah. I sense her capacity for manipulation, which, combined with his susceptibility to it, could make for a hairy situation. I don't like imagining what information she could get out of him, what promises she could extract.

But if I call in sick and Leah realizes that I have her number, that could queer the deal, irreparably. Leah might be looking for easy marks, and I'll need to play one, at least for a while longer.

I'm managing to think all this as I tell one of my go-to cute-kid stories (complete with lisping mimicry), and Leah is smiling in all the right places. It occurs to me, too late, that I shouldn't remind Leah how cute kids are.

Because it's possible that Leah is just a normal birth mother, and all my suspicions are coming from my last experience. Unfortunately, a normal birth mother is prone to maternal feelings herself, and to second-guessing.

Let her be Machiavelli, if that's what it takes.

Her cell phone is lying on the table next to a pot of orange marmalade. A text is coming in, and she glances down and smiles, with what seems like private pleasure. Then she broadcasts: “The other prospective parents. They want to know if I'm going down to L.A. to see them.”

“They must be nervous,” I say. “We've been in their position before.” Meaning: We're not there now. Meaning: This is our baby, not theirs.

Leah nods, still with that enigmatic smile. “I don't want to pressure you guys, but I do need to know pretty soon what you want to do. If you want me to stay.”

It's funny phrasing—this isn't about Leah staying, it's about her baby staying—and it makes me think that Leah is going to be acutely sensitive to rejection. I remember what she said about birth mothers getting thrown away and how that's not going to happen to her. It's the kind of defiant thing I might have said when I was her age.

It's also funny that I'm not feeling more warmly toward my young doppelgänger. Maybe the mistrust isn't about Leah's resemblance to our last potential birth mother/con artist, but about her resemblance to me.

Gabe and I look at each other. We haven't actually talked about this since our middle-of-the-night tête-à-tête. In the cold light of day, we haven't finalized anything with one another, let alone with Leah.

But the next few seconds are crucial, I know. Leah can't feel rejected.

“We want you,” I say. “And the baby, of course.” Like the baby is an afterthought, like what we've always wanted in our marriage is not a newborn but a nubile version of me traipsing around our house, burning off her pregnancy weight at the speed of nineteen. “Are you sure you want us? You only got here last night. This is such a big decision, and we want you to feel—”

“I want you guys,” Leah says. “I'm the kind of person who goes with my gut.”

“What does your gut say about us?” Gabe seems mildly curious, or bemused.

I turn to stare at him. This is no time for questioning. Leah is choosing us. This is all proceeding according to plan, sort of.

Leah turns to him, too. Her expression is decidedly softer than mine. Where he's bemused, she's amused. “My gut says you're awesome.” I'm pretty sure she's flirting, though her smile encompasses me, too, like a great big hoop skirt. She's choosing us both. We're her new family.

That's what it is. That's what scares me the most. What if Leah tries to latch on and never let go, like a parasite and her hosts? Family is supposed to be forever.

Good in theory.

I can still hear the slur of my mother's voice. She's overweight, lumbering unsteadily to her feet, like a cow on ice. “Don't ever come back then!” she shouts. “You fucking slut!” She's wrong about the slut part. There weren't many others besides Gabe. In my heart, there was none other.

I was nineteen then, I realize. I lost my mother, what little I ever had of her, at the very age that Leah is going to deliver my own child to me. A boy. Please, let it be a boy. Boys revere their mothers, if the rumors are true.

It's almost too perfect, the symmetry: coming full circle, the circle of love, just like I wrote in the profile.

Leah's right. Gabe and I are awesome. No matter what, we're going to stay that way.

“Can I touch him?” I ask Leah. She leans back obligingly, and I place my hand on her belly. I feel around for him. It's my third time today. I'm like a junkie needing a fix.

I mainline my future child, knowing that whatever happens will be worth it. He's worth everything.

A
nother text from Adrienne: “Soooo . . . ????”

So what? I want to text back. So what are you expecting? I'm showing Leah around the city. We went to Fisherman's Wharf and watched the sea lions and poked around in a few tourist-trap stores; visited Golden Gate Park, where I learned Leah isn't much of a walker, at least not while she's this pregnant; and now we're in the Richmond, my favorite neighborhood. Leah seems to like it, too, even though it's overcast, where the wharf was pure sun.

“Are you going to answer that?” Leah asks. She's smiling in this teasing way, like she knows.

But what can she know? That Adrienne is threatened by her, by the two of us being out together? I don't think Adrienne is willing to admit that to herself.

This morning, Adrienne insisted we have sex, and she wasn't quiet about it either. Maybe it was stress relief; maybe she was marking her territory. To be honest, I wasn't that into it. I'm not a big morning-sex guy, and the potential mother of our kid was within earshot.

“What about Leah?” I whispered.

“She likes that we're hot for each other,” Adrienne whispered back. “It's part of why she picked us. She wants us to be what she and Trevor weren't.”

I don't know about that. I just know that if I were in the guest room, I wouldn't want to hear the future mother of my kid moaning, especially when it sounded kind of fake. Adrienne often sounds a bit theatrical, but all I could think of while we were doing it was how it would sound to Leah. Like Adrienne was putting on a show.

“It's Adrienne,” I tell Leah now. “She wants to know if you're having fun.”

“Tell her I'm definitely having fun.” Leah's got this twinkle, like she's messing with Adrienne, or with me. I don't mind it, it's friendly, but Adrienne would disagree.

The thing is, Leah does sort of twinkle, all the time. Adrienne is obsessed with how much Leah looks like her, thinks it's a little creepy, but I don't really see it that way. I think Adrienne is gorgeous, don't get me wrong, but she was never just as plain pretty as Leah is. Adrienne tortures her hair straight, while Leah's is long and wavy without any kink to it. Adrienne's skin was never so perfect and clear. Leah's the After in the Proactiv infomercials Adrienne and I sometimes watch (they're heartwarming, with all the pizza-faced ducklings turning into swans).

“Having fun,” I text back. On the one hand, I figure Adrienne will be pleased. She wants Leah to have enough fun to stick around, but
only
that much. I'm not sure she wants me having fun at all. She wants this to be a job.

But it is fun, showing someone around this great part of the world in which Adrienne and I chose to live. I never get to do it, since we're not in touch with family and all the old friends have fallen away over the years.

That's all it is, me getting to be proud I inhabit the Bay Area, that
I didn't just stay in my NJ burg for life. I have Adrienne to thank for that. It's like I always say: She's a life force. My life force.

So why is she so threatened by this girl?

Leah and I are browsing a little market, the kind you'd find in Chinatown. That's why I like the Richmond. It's this mix of old Chinese ladies with their steel carts bumping behind them and young hipsters. And normal people, too, though it seems to me it's predominantly Chinese and hipster. Leah's a little bit hipster: all in black once again, with those lace-up boots, like the old Doc Martens people used to wear when I was in high school. They might actually be Doc Martens.

She's peering into a freezer case. “Taro-root ice cream,” she says. “Sesame ice cream.” She's got big round eyes. Sometimes she really does just look like a kid. Does she look like our kid will?

Now, that's what freaks me out. All this shit Adrienne is dealing with, the petty jealousy—it's nothing compared to the simple, insane reality that soon, we'll be parents, fully responsible for the care and feeding of an actual human being. When my brother and I were kids, he noticed I couldn't even keep Sea-Monkeys and Chia Pets alive. “You've got a black thumb,” he once said.

“You okay?” Leah asks. “You look a little—I don't know, something.”

My laugh comes out shaky. “I am something.”

I'm surprised when she takes my hand in hers. Her eyes are intent on my face, as if she's some kind of healer. The weird part is, I do feel steadier. She smiles. “Better?”

“You got special powers? Are you one of the X-Men?”

She laughs. “I get scared out of the blue, too, sometimes. Comes with the territory.”

“What territory is that?”

“I'm about to be a mother, and you're about to be a father.”

I take my hand away and go to the produce section, which is full of vegetables I don't recognize. The signs are lettered in a few different Asian languages, plus English. Leah follows me.

“Taro root again,” she says. She picks it up and runs her fingers over it. It's like a potato that mated with a coconut, the skin thick and dark and a little hairy. “Do you cook?”

“No, Adrienne does.” Though not like she cooked for Leah. I want to tell Leah not to expect that for the next year, unless Adrienne's planning to keep up the act for that long. The truth is, I don't know exactly what she's planning.

There it is, that feeling again. But I keep my back to Leah. It's not right, her comforting me. Adrienne wouldn't like it.

Leah picks up another vegetable. “It says this is bitter melon. Looks more like a really wrinkled cucumber, like a little old man.”

I laugh. “Me, in twenty years.”

“Don't be so hard on yourself. Twenty-five years.”

“Ha ha.”

An Asian woman, stooped and foreshortened, elbows me out of the way. I thought she wanted to get at the Japanese eggplants, but no. She points at Leah's belly. “When you due?”

“Six weeks.” Leah glances at me. “Well, more like five.”

Jesus. Why did she lie to Adrienne about the due date? Or did Adrienne lie to me? One of them was buying time.

“You tiny,” the woman says. She touches her own stomach. “Tiny, too. But baby big.” She spreads her arms, and Leah and I laugh.

“May I?” another woman asks shyly, indicating Leah's belly. She's white, fifty or so, with close-cropped dark hair. “Is the baby moving much?” I have the distinct impression from the quiet of her delivery, the sense of reverence in it, that she's never had children of her own. The Asian woman begins examining the tubers.

“He's not moving right now,” Leah says, but she pins her arms back, assenting to the woman's request. Leah has caught Adrienne's certainty about the sex, or she's decided she might as well co-opt the syntax.

The woman runs her hand gently over Leah's stomach. There's something sensual in the touch, and I find myself averting my eyes. But then the woman looks at me and says, “You must be thrilled.”

I'm not sure how to respond. She looks so hopeful for us, for Leah and me. She must think that I'm the real father.

“He's going to be a great dad,” Leah interjects. I wonder if she really believes that, and if so, what in me suggests it. It might just be what she needs to think. Or a favor she's doing for this childless woman, who is hanging on the answer.

Leah can be kind, I realize.

“My wife is really excited,” I say. It feels like Adrienne should be part of this conversation.

The woman stands up and smiles at Leah, clearly assuming her to be my wife. I would think she'd have some reaction to our age difference, perhaps disapproval, but she's apparently too focused on the fantasy. Two loving parents and a baby on the way. “You're beautiful,” she tells Leah. “You glow.”

“My husband says the same thing.”

What the hell? It's one thing to indulge the woman's fantasy, another to— There's no way I can tell Adrienne about this.

“Congratulations,” the woman says, moving away, but reluctantly, like she wants to bathe in our light awhile longer. In Leah's glow.

I stalk out of the store.

“What?” Leah says defensively, once we're both out on the sidewalk. People stream by, mildly interested in our sideshow. What do they take us for? Father and daughter? Husband and wife? Man and mistress?

“You lied, that's what.” I probably shouldn't be calling her out. I promised Adrienne I'd be on my best behavior.

Another text. Christ. Adrienne and her impeccable timing.

“Short leash, huh?” Leah ribs me. I guess she's thinking it's a way to lighten the mood, but I glower at her. I'm being too real with her. I'm showing her who I actually am.

But I've got this feeling she likes that. She likes me more than she likes Adrienne, and we all know it, including Adrienne. That's why all the texts.

“Why did you do that?” I ask. “In the store.” Maybe I can get Leah to be real, too.

“Don't you ever like to pretend?” She shrugs. “It's not like it hurt anybody.”

“But . . .” Why pretend
that
? Why my wife?

“We're friends, right?” she says.

I nod.

“So you need to know something about me. Sometimes I do things and I don't know why. And I'm okay with that.”

“It's called being nineteen.”

I can tell she doesn't like that answer. I can hardly blame her. No one likes being reduced to their age. I know I don't like when people think the things I do are middle-aged clichés. Like when they assume I'm a married guy sleeping with a young girl. I've gotten a few of those looks today, too.

“Friends,” I say. “That's a good idea.”

“Didn't you say you were going to take me to Lands End?” She tosses her hair back and smiles. “I love that name.”