Where Nobody Dies (39 page)

I had heard there were architects in Santa Fe, but I didn't say so. Whatever compromises this woman had made for her marriage were none of my business.

“About this baby,” I began. Not my most professional opening, but then I'd never transferred title to a child before.

“It's like a miracle,” Ellie said. Her voice was soft and breathy, like Marilyn Monroe's, yet unlike Monroe she didn't use it sexually. Her sexuality was in that honey skin, in the planes of her face, the thick mane of hair tumbling over her shoulders, the utter femininity of her draped clothing, the manicured fingernails and waxed legs of a woman whose main job was to look attractive for her husband.

Women like Ellie Greenspan usually made my hackles rise. The working sheepdog's contempt for the shaved, beribboned poodle. This time, I reserved decision. Maybe it was the vulnerability of her little-girl voice, or the so-apparent sacrifices she'd made for Josh, but something forlorn in her touched me.

“I've wanted a baby ever since I can remember,” she said, and I pictured a golden child rocking a doll with loving lullabies. “But first Josh had to finish school, and then he had his practice to establish, so we waited until the time seemed just right.” Her face twisted into a wry grimace.

“And then I found out that those heavy, painful periods I always seemed to get weren't just my imagination. I had endometriosis. I could conceive a child, but my womb wouldn't let me carry it to term.” She looked away, and I wondered just who'd told her her pain was all in her head. Dear Josh, whose education came first, whose profession came first?

“We tried infertility specialists for years,” she went on. “It cost us a fortune, and all it did was make me feel more and more defective. It was so demeaning,” she said, letting her voice trail off into a private world of humiliation.

“We even thought about a surrogate,” she added with a faint blush, “someone who could carry our own baby. But the legal complications …”

“Yeah. Baby M. and all that,” I said. What I didn't tell her was that the case everyone in the country knew about was the sum total of my expert legal knowledge on the subject of surrogacy.

“Josh would have liked it better if we could have done it that way. Had our own, I mean.” Ellie's tone was wistful. “I was ready to adopt two years into the infertility program, but Josh was so set on having our own baby—our own genetic baby.”

Interesting. Still, I supposed couples arrived at decisions in different time frames.

“What changed his mind?”

Ellie's burnt-sugar eyes lit up. “This,” she said simply. She reached toward the coffee table and lifted a child's school binder notebook covered in plastic and decorated with a crescent moon.

“This is our Baby Notebook,” she explained, opening the clasp. Inside were two folders, one with a sun and one with a star on the cover. She pulled open the rings and took out the sun folder.

“I sent for this without telling Josh,” she said, handing me a desktop-edited newsletter with the logo of a sleeping baby and the word
Dreamchild
on top. Under the masthead were articles on how to make contact with birth mothers, how to arrange private adoptions, reviews of books on adoption no prospective parent should be without. Happy stories of adoptive parents who “finally, after years of avoiding other people's baby showers, had our own for little Melissa Marie.”

I opened the newsletter. On the next-to-last page were the ads. “COUPLE WHO HAS EVERYTHING—EXCEPT A BABY TO LOVE. WE LIVE IN SUBURBAN SAINT LOUIS, IN A BIG WHITE HOUSE THAT FEELS EMPTY WITHOUT THE LAUGHTER OF A CHILD. MARRIED TEN YEARS, STILL DEEPLY IN LOVE, WE PRAY FOR A BIRTH MOTHER TO TRUST US WITH HER BABY. WE PROMISE YOU WON'T BE SORRY. WHITE ONLY. BOX 89743.”

I read on. The only constant was the “white only” refrain. “Is this necessary?” I asked Ellie, pointing to the words in the first ad. I recalled the television room of Amber's group home, full of white teenagers bursting with soon-to-be-born white infants for the carriage trade.

“Well, yes,” she answered, her eyes begging me to understand the pain behind the perky presentations. “We went to an agency first, and because Josh is over fifty and I'm over forty, they told us we couldn't have a white infant. But they said they could get us an older child or a baby with a medical problem, or a nonwhite baby. Josh had a fit. Not that he's a racist, because he's not, but when you're adopting a baby, you want one that looks like you. That could be your own.”

“So that's why you chose a private placement adoption?” I asked, hoping she couldn't tell that I'd never heard the term before last week.

“Yes. I read about it in the
Dreamchild
newsletter. And I read about Marla. So I contacted her without Josh knowing, and she put me on a waiting list while I worked on Josh. At first, he wouldn't hear about adoption. The agency thing really soured him. He wanted me to call a Park Avenue infertility specialist he'd heard about from one of his clients. But,” she paused for a delicate shudder, “I just couldn't go through that one more time. You have no idea how humiliating it is, how degrading, to be some doctor's experimental animal.”

“So what changed your husband's mind?” She gave me a startled look, and I added, “About adoption, I mean.”

“Oh, he started reading the newsletter and saw Amber's ad. I remember, we were sitting up in bed, watching Charlie Rose, and he pointed to the ad and said, ‘This is the one.' Just like that,” she said, shaking her head and smiling at the vagaries of the male sex. “‘This is the one for us.' And it was Amber's.”

“Then birth mothers advertise, too?” I was surprised. “I thought it was kind of a seller's market.” The look that crossed Ellie Greenspan's face made me blush. Without thinking, I had brought Marla's hard-boiled way of looking at adoption into the room.

“Sorry,” I muttered. “Didn't mean it to come out like that.”

She smiled an apology, but the wariness in her eyes didn't go away. It would be a while before she trusted me with another true feeling.

She reached for the notebook and opened the purple folder with the blue star on the front. Inside was another copy of
Dreamchild
, open to the ads page, with one ad highlighted in yellow. I remembered highlighters from my law school days; it was a surprise to see one used out of context.

The ad read: “WANTED: A TRULY LOVING COUPLE FOR A TRULY SPECIAL BABY. AGE UNIMPORTANT. WHAT IS IMPORTANT IS THAT YOU WANT TO GIVE A HOME TO A CHILD IN NEED. MY BABY NEEDS WHAT I CANNOT GIVE—A STABLE HOME WITH TWO LOVING PARENTS. NEW YORK AREA A +. PLEASE HEAR MY VOICE: I NEED YOU AS MUCH AS YOU NEED ME. AMBER, BOX 49350.”

“What was so special?” I asked. “Not that this isn't a nice ad,” I amended, hoping I hadn't hurt her feelings again. “And now that I've met Amber, I think she is special. But from this ad—”

“I know what you mean,” Ellie said. “When he first read it to me, I thought it was just like all the others. Except that this girl didn't mind about age and actually wanted somebody from New York. A lot of the birth mothers are from other parts of the country, and they think New York is a terrible place to raise a child. That was one strike against us. And then there's our ages, and the fact that Josh is Jewish. Most of the birth mothers want their children raised as Christians, and we're committed to giving our child the benefit of both his heritages. So just from the words ‘New York a plus' Josh thought this girl might be more open to us. And,” she finished with a triumphant smile, “he was right. Amber loved Josh's being Jewish, and she said her own parents were older when she was born, so she realized we could give her child a mature kind of love.”

“Sounds like a match made in heaven,” I remarked. Not much else to say in the face of that radiant smile.

“Oh, by the way,” I added, “where is Josh? I have something for him.” I reached in my bag to get the birthday card Amber had pressed on me.

Josh Greenspan set my teeth on edge the minute he came out of his office. He wasn't tall, but his barrel chest and thick arms weighed down the room. He resembled the huge cactus squatting in his wife's terrarium, soaking up all the moisture and covering a soft interior with scary-looking spikes. At least, I hoped it was a soft interior, for the sake of the child his wife wanted so badly.

“Can't you order your client to obey Dr. Scanlon's orders?” he began, not bothering with pleasantries. “Marla says Amber's out at the mall right now, in spite of what the doctor told her. Don't you have any control over her?” He thrust out his chin, not his hand. The challenge hung in the air.

“Josh, please,” Ellie's little-girl voice broke in. “I know how you feel, but—”

“But nothing,” the bearded architect interrupted with a shake of his head. “Look, we're paying the bills, baby, we ought to have something to say about—”

“Josh!” Dusky patches appeared on Ellie Greenspan's cheeks. Her eyes sought mine, offering the kind of wordless apology women give one another when their men embarrass them. I tried to accept it in the same manner, shrugging ever so slightly.

The big man grinned, holding up a large paw in conciliation. “I'm sorry. It's just that we're getting so close to Amber's delivery date. If anything were to go wrong now—” He shrugged an apology.

“I understand,” I said, meeting his grin with a cool smile. “If I could make Amber listen to Doc Scanlon, I would. But the real reason I'm here is that Amber asked me to bring you something, and since I live in the neighborhood …” I let my voice trail off; technically I was not a Heights resident, since my home-office was on the wrong side of Atlantic Avenue, but there was no point in advertising that minor fact.

Greenspan's eyes narrowed. “Bringing something? That's a new one.” His laugh was a harsh sound and held no hint of humor. “Seems to me our Amber is usually asking for something, taking something. It's not like her to give back.”

“Josh,” came Ellie's admonitory voice. She sounded like she was getting into practice for speaking to a recalcitrant child. “I thought we agreed that Amber needed those things we gave her.”

“What things?” Part of my mind said it was none of my business, but the other part remembered the words of the Domestic Relations Law governing permissible expenses to be paid by adoptive parents to birth mothers. I wasn't about to be Marla's patsy in covering up illegal payments.

“Oh, little things,” Ellie said hastily. It was clear she grasped the meaning of my question. “Like paying her phone bill so she can call her family back home in Kansas, her sister in Baltimore. Nothing out of the ordinary or unreasonable.” The look she gave her husband was meant to insure his agreement.

It worked. He shrugged, then said, “Yeah, I guess sometimes I make more out of it than I should. I just hate to see you pouring money—and affection, too, don't forget that—down a bottomless pit like Amber. She'd suck you dry if she could, Ellie, you know she would.”

Ellie shook her head. She moved as if to get up from the couch, then changed her mind and leaned back. “She's not much more than a child herself, Josh,” she said. “She needs to know we care about her as a person, not just as someone carrying our child.”

“I still think you romanticize her, baby,” Josh said, his voice heavy with disapproval.

Then a slow smile spread across his face, a smile that took years off his age. He walked toward the palomino couch and parked himself next to his wife. He leaned toward her and grazed her golden cheek with his full lips.

“But that's why I love you, El. You have so much to give, so much love. I can't wait to see you holding our baby.”

It was to throw up.

I handed over the card, watching the yellow envelope all but disappear into Josh's heavy, hairy hand. He opened it with a single rip, Ellie following his every move with hungry eyes.

He pulled out the card. It had a teddy bear on it, drawn in primary crayon colors, as if by a small child. “Happy Birthday, Daddy,” it read. Either Amber had decided Josh was her surrogate daddy or she was sending him a birthday card on behalf of his unborn child. Either way, the card was weird as hell.

But Ellie, predictably, didn't see it that way. Tears welled in her eyes as she gazed on the sappy message inside, a message that hailed Josh as a wonderful daddy. “Oh, it's so beautiful,” she breathed. “I'm putting it in the Baby Notebook, next to the one she gave me for my birthday.” I was willing to bet Ellie's card had a similarly childlike motif and was addressed to Mommy.

Josh held the card with thick fingers that shook ever so slightly. I glanced at his face; his jaw was clenched and his mouth was set in anger. His face held all the thunder of a spring storm in the desert.

A white paper fell into Josh's lap. Ellie reached for it with her slender, elegant fingers. “A gift certificate from Baby Gap,” she said delightedly.

“Nice,” I commented. “A thoughtful gesture.”

“Yeah,” Josh chimed agreement, but his tone was wry. “A thoughtful gesture with our money. You don't really suppose she spent her own cash on this, do you, babe?”

“Josh, why do you have to be so cynical? Why can't you take something at face value, for a change?”

“Because with Amber, nothing is face value, that's why. She uses us, she takes and takes. I can't wait,” he finished, emphasizing his words with the slap of his huge palm on the bleached coffee table, “till this baby's ours and that woman is out of our lives forever.”

I hadn't known much about adoptions when I took this case, but I'd read a book or two since meeting Marla in the motion part, and one thing I'd learned about open adoptions was that the birth mother and the adoptive parents were supposed to be able to keep up contact after the baby was born. It didn't sound as if Josh was entering into the open adoption spirit at all.
Out of our lives forever
wasn't particularly realistic, since Amber knew the name and address of the people who were going to raise her child.