The Other Mother

But even I’m not that optimistic. I know being a teacher and being a mother are two totally different things.

Back in my apartment I collapse onto my futon, exhausted, nauseous, heartsick. My mind is churning with Martha’s words and my thoughts. I imagine her holding a baby, the baby I gave birth to, and it seems so impossible and yet there is something so right about it too. Martha might be tense, unemotional, even cold, but she’s also been one of my closest friends.

She’s given me brisk talking-tos when I needed them, when I’d broken up with yet another low-life commitment-phobe. She wrote a personal reference for my job at the community center. I’ve drunk more wine at her kitchen table—she doesn’t allow it on the sofa—than at anyone else’s.

But now? This? It feels so much bigger. Scarier. And even though I don’t know what of, I know I’m afraid.

Lying there watching the evening sunlight streak slanted patterns onto the floor, the room hot and airless, I realize I need to get in touch with Matt. I haven’t even thought about him since that night, that oh-so fateful night that started this all. But if I’m not terminating this pregnancy, which I think I have now accepted that I’m not, I need to tell him I’m pregnant.

Don’t I?

I don’t really know the ethics of this kind of situation. If I give the baby up for adoption, does Matt need to know? Does he have legal rights? What if, God forbid, he wants the baby?

I roll over onto my side and reach for my laptop. The Internet is slow this time of day, whenever everyone is returning home from work and going online. It used to exasperate me, the thought of all those nine-to-fivers scurrying back to their bolt holes and plugging into cyberspace. Sitting there impatiently waiting for a search engine to load, I sympathize a bit more.

I type biological father rights adoption into the search box, and find a site about New York State adoptions laws. I read that biological fathers only have rights if they’ve been living with the mother for at least six months prior to the birth. It surprises me, that little wrinkle, because it seems so…arbitrary. What if you’d been living with someone for five months before the birth? Five and a half? Does the father have no rights then?

I keep reading, now about the biological mother’s rights in an adoption. It seems like nothing happens before the actual birth, and even after the birth the birth mother—me—has forty-five days to change her mind. I read that if the birth mother does change her mind, the adoptive parents can contest it, and there is what is known as a ‘best interests’ hearing. A custody case. A legal battle.

It all sounds awful, so embittered, everything a minefield. Of course, it wouldn’t be like that with Martha and me. We’re friends, after all. Yet I still feel a churning inside me as I push the laptop away and roll onto my back. It’s getting dark now, the sunlight fading into dusk, turning all the colors to gray. Below me I can hear the squeak of my neighbor’s bed springs, the tinny sound of his TV. I’ve squeezed past him on the stairs, a tough-looking guy with a buzz cut and tribal tattoos all up his arms. He usually mutters a grumpy hello.

Do I need to tell Matt? Not legally, apparently, but ethically, morally? I think I do. He obviously regretted our reunion, but we got along when we dated and I think he deserves to know. It’s his child as much as mine.

I reach for my cell phone and scroll through my contacts. He’s still there; I never deleted him, but then I never delete anyone. Still, it’s been six years and he left in a hurry. I’m not anticipating him being happy about this call, but I suppose a little part of me still hopes.

A woman answers, laughing, clearly with someone. I hang up.

I lie there, the phone pressed against my chest, feel that fragile little hope blow away like so much ash. I’m not even sure what I was hoping for. It’s not like I thought we were going to get together, turn into some family.

I blink in the oncoming darkness and wonder what to do now. Who was that woman? I know it could be anyone, his sister, his friend, his wife. We didn’t exactly get into any deep conversation that night five weeks ago.

After a few minutes of just lying there, not thinking, I pull the laptop back towards me and log onto my Facebook account. I’m not a huge Facebook user, but I still have an account and a random couple hundred friends from various stages of life: high school, college, early twenties, some other teachers at the community center. Matt is on my friend list, and after a second’s hesitation I message him.

Hey Matt. Do you mind calling me? We need to talk. I give him my cell number just in case he doesn’t recognize it on his phone, and I’m about to close the window when I see an old message from Martha. Curious, I click on it.

It didn’’t happen.

It’s dated six months ago and I remember it was after her third attempt at IVF failed. That one affected her more than the others; we went out for a drink and when I asked her about it she spoke to me in this high, chirpy voice and then excused herself to go to the bathroom. Ten minutes later she came back with slightly reddened eyes, ordered another drink, and started talking about the latest literary masterpiece she’d read for her book club.

For Martha, that’s big emotion. Considering the dynamics in her family, I’m not surprised.

I stare at those three words and feel my emotions see-saw and slide around, an earthquake in my mind. How can I refuse her this? Why am I even hesitating?

Lying on my futon in my tiny, hot apartment, I cannot imagine a baby here. And what about a toddler? A preschooler, a six-year-old, a teen? A human being, totally in my care, dependent on me, loving me. Maybe. All of it is terrifying.

In any case, I don’t have the money. I have a couple hundred bucks in my checking account and that has to see me through the end of the month. And as for the rest… Childcare? Healthcare? I can’t even afford the maternity clothes Martha said were so expensive. What about diapers, baby food, a stroller, braces, college?

I suppose I could make it work if I had to; I could ask my parents for help. I shy away instinctively from that thought because, strange as it might sound, my parents aren’t really into being parents. When I was growing up most of my friends envied me my laid-back parents, the total lack of rules or curfews in my teenaged life. And I reveled in it, then.

But it’s made any kind of relationship between us now kind of…not.

In any case, I don’t even want a baby, not really. I don’t want to raise a child; I can’t have that much responsibility.

But I can have a baby for Martha, a baby who I know will be wanted and loved immensely. I know, however uptight Martha is, she will love this child absolutely.

My child.

My phone rings, and I see that it is Matt. I feel something close to relief, although it’s completely unwarranted. Still, someone to talk to. Someone who is, at least a little bit, in this with me. Even if he doesn’t know it yet.

“Matt?”

“Hey, Alex.”

“Sorry to bother you. I hope this isn’t a bad time.”

“Not really,” he says, but he sounds edgy. My heart sinks. I want him here, fully present and focused. I want him to have wanted to call.

“I called a little while ago and a woman answered your phone.”

“I know.”

He doesn’t say anything else and after a second I say, uncertainly, “Sorry.” No answer. I sit up, cross my legs, take a deep breath. “Matt, I’m pregnant.” Silence. After a second or two I hear him moving, closing a door. Clearly going somewhere more private. I lean my head against the wall, close my eyes.

“You’re sure?” he asks in a low voice.

I suppress a tired sigh. “Yes.”

Matt doesn’t answer, and that’s probably answer enough. But what was I expecting, really? He left my apartment cursing and groping for his keys.

“I don’t expect anything from you,” I say stiltedly. I have never had this conversation before. “I’m just calling you because I’m keeping the baby and I thought you ought to know.”

“You’re keeping it?” He sounds appalled.

“I mean, I’m not having an abortion,” I explain. “I’m thinking of giving it up for adoption.” And I know then that I really am, and I feel a weird mix of relief and sorrow.

“Oh. Okay.” He sounds relieved, and why shouldn’t he be?

“I just wanted you to know, in case—” I stop. He waits.

“Alex?”

“In case, you know, you had any objections.”

Another silence. “I don’t have any objections,” he says finally, quietly. “I mean, I’m sorry it happened this way. For you. For me. But if it makes some couple happy—”

Yes. Yes, it will.

“Okay,” I say, and my throat is tight. When I draw a breath it sounds ragged, revealing.

“I’m sorry, Alex,” Matt says, his voice sad. “I should have told you before. I mean—that night. The thing is…” He clears his throat. “I just got married.”

Chapter 5

MARTHA

I don’t tell Rob about my conversation with Alex, my offer, and it doesn’t take me too long to realize that this might become awkward. If she says no, then I’ll just forget all about it. But if she says yes? Can I really tell Rob I made this kind of suggestion without consulting him?

I squirm at the question, and what it reveals in me. In him, and in us. What am I afraid of? That he’ll list the complications, the dangers, and say no?

I won’t let him.

In any case, Rob is usually the one with the crazy ideas, the sure-let’s-do-it attitude. I’m the one making lists, pointing out problems. But I still don’t tell him. I don’t want to risk it.

The next afternoon I close the door to my office and type private adoption laws New York State into the search engine on my computer. I’m not thrilled with the results.

Do adoptive parents have any rights here? All I’m seeing as I scroll through the pages are how the biological parents can call a halt to the proceedings at any time, even a month after they’ve given their baby up. And as for private placement adoptions, which is what Alex and I would be arranging, there are no legally binding agreements at all before the birth, no matter what you get down in writing, or when.

I close the browser window and lean back in my chair, dazed. We’d have to engage an attorney, I realize, and there would be all sorts of legal ramifications. No matter how much good will is on either side, it could become awkward. Definitely emotional. Maybe unpleasant.

More possibilities tumble through my mind. Our families, for one. Will we tell our respective families what we’re doing? How can we not? Our parents are still neighbors and friends, after all. I imagine my mother’s response and inwardly cringe. Will she gush and think it’s wonderful, or will she go all melodramatic and predict certain doom? With her, it’s hard to tell.

And what about Alex? Will she still be my friend? Will she be involved in her child’s—my child’s—life? I resist that possibility instinctively, even as I recognize how selfish it is. But how will we explain it to family, to friends, to this child? It all feels very messy.

Yet messy is better than emptiness. It’s better than the nothing I was coping with before.

I’m still dazed, still reeling with possibilities, when my cell rings, and I see that it is Alex.

I answer the call, hold my breath. I can’t say anything more; my heart is pounding too hard.

“Martha?”

“Hey, Alex.” With relief I hear myself, and I sound relaxed, assured. I reach up and smooth my hair, adjust my earring. “What’s up?”

“I wanted to talk to you. And Rob. About…about possibly adopting my baby.”

And even as a thrill of pure adrenalin, unadulterated victory, runs through me, I feel a tiny pinprick of something else. Doubt, maybe fear.

My baby.

I suggest Alex comes over tomorrow night, but she asks if she can come over tonight instead. “I’d just like this all to be dealt with sooner,” she says. “It’s been on my mind a lot.”

“I understand,” I say quickly. “Of course.” But I need to talk to Rob first. Still I tell her it’s okay and I text Rob, asking him to come home early from work so we have an hour or so before Alex arrives.

Not ideal, but it could still work. It has to work.

He arrives home just as I am ordering Thai; I’m too wired to think of cooking. I smile and wave, gesture to the phone. Rob smiles back, loosens his tie, and waits for me to finish.

“What’s up?” he asks as soon as I’ve hung up.

“Sorry, did I interrupt something at work?”

“No, just the usual.” Rob works in mid-level finance, a job he seems neither to like nor dislike. I’ve always considered myself to be the more career-focused one; he makes good money but prefers his other pursuits, biking and pick-up basketball, judging the odd minor film festival. I, on the other hand, do not have any hobbies.

“So?” he asks as I flit around the apartment, pouring him a glass of wine, arranging magazines on the coffee table so their corners line up.

I stop. Take a deep breath. Face him. “Something’s come up.”

Rob stills, eyebrows raised. “Something good?”

“Yes. I think so. Definitely.”

“Okay.” He sits down at the dining room table, takes a sip of wine. Waits.

“You remember when Alex came over to dinner?”

“Like, the other night? Yes.”

“Remember she threw up?”

He makes a face, a kind of wry grimace. “Yeah, I remember that, Mats. I cleaned the toilet.”

“Right. Well, it turns out she’s pregnant.” I wait, not sure how to get to this next part, and Rob just stares.

“Okay,” he finally says and I plunge.

“She isn’t in a position to keep the baby.”

“Is that what she thinks?”

I tense, resist the urge to retort, snap. “Yes, we talked about it over coffee yesterday.” He nods, but he’s eyeing me warily. What does he think, that I’m pressuring my best friend into giving me her baby?

Am I?

No. There has been no pressure. There’s been no pressure at all.

“So what is she going to do?” he asks eventually and I take another deep breath.

“Well, she doesn’t want to have an abortion.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not like getting your tooth pulled,” I say a bit sharply. “It’s a big thing for a woman, Rob. A big, tough emotional decision.” I don’t mention that she’s already had two. That’s beside the point, and it’s her business anyway.

“Sorry,” Rob says mildly. “It just seems like something she might consider.”

“Well, she doesn’t want to go down that route.”

“And she doesn’t want to keep the baby.”

“No.” But now I’m wondering if that is really true. Did she even say that? I can’t remember. She seemed so unhappy and confused, and of course she can’t keep the baby. She just can’t.

I take a deep breath. “We—we discussed having her give the baby up for adoption. To us.”

And Rob doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Not anything at all. I break first.

“Say something.”

“This is kind of a shock.”

“What do you think?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. The last time we talked about adoption, you were totally against it.”

“This is different.”

“Yeah. Really different.”

There’s an edge to his voice I don’t like, an edge that creates a crack between us. I feel it, feel the tension of knowing that in this we are not on the same side.

Yet.

“Rob, I just meant that I didn’t think we were in a position to adopt a child with a—a history. But this would be a baby, Rob. A newborn. We could be there when he or she is born, we could take her home the next day—” I’m running ahead of myself, way ahead, and I know that, but I just can’t stop. “It would be so different. It would be so much more like having our own baby, just that I wouldn’t be the one who is pregnant.” And really, that’s not so bad. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to the nausea and the weight gain and the stretch marks.

Rob nods slowly; I can see he’s warming to the idea. “But it’s Alex,” he says, and it sounds like a question.

“I know it might be strange to have a friend as the birth mother,” I say carefully. “I’ve thought of that.” Sort of. “But I think if we’re all just really clear and up front about what our expectations are, then it could work.”

“If we all agree on those expectations.”

“Yes.” I don’t want to think about us not agreeing, or the fact that at any point in the next eight months—nineAlex could pull out and decide she wants to keep her child. Her child. Because no matter what she promises or we agree on, it will be her child until a court date is set forty-five days after the baby is born.

Even now, when this thing is barely off the ground, I get that.

“I don’t know, Martha,” Rob says, running a hand through his hair. “I need to think about this.”

“Of course you do. We both do. And Alex too. But—” I pause, then plunge once more. “She’s coming over in fifteen minutes to talk about it.”

Rob starts, almost tips his wine glass over. “What? Martha, I’ve barely—”

“I know, I know,” I soothe, “but she’s feeling anxious and wants to get everything sorted out as quickly as possible—”

“Sorted out? Have you already said yes?”

“No, of course not. I just suggested the idea.”

“You suggested it.”

“Yes—”

“Not Alex.” He speaks flatly, and I stiffen.

“What are you implying, Rob?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t want Alex to feel—feel like she has to do this. And I know how much you want a baby.”

“You think I’m pressuring her into this? Is that what you think?”

“Not intentionally—”

“Then how?”

“I don’t really want to get into the dynamics of your friendship with Alex, Martha, but it’s not like you guys are, well, normal—”

“Normal?“ My voice rings out. “What do you mean, we’re not normal?”

Rob sighs. “I only meant that you’re really different from each other. There’s a disparity—”

“We had one conversation about this,” I say. “One. That’s it. And then today she called me and asked me to talk. So whatever you’re worried about, it’s not like that. Okay?” My voice is shaking. Rob gazes at me, and his brown eyes seem soft with sadness. He rises from the sofa and puts his arms around me, and I realize I am trembling.

“Okay,” he says quietly, and as the intercom buzzes I twist out of his embrace.

Chapter 6

ALEX

I’m feeling incredibly nervous about this meeting. I actually threw up on the sidewalk outside their building, although that might have been the nausea. It’s got worse over the last few days, and I can barely keep anything down.

I called Martha on impulse, because I think I’ll feel better once something’s settled. Yet now that she’s agreed and I’m here I’m not so sure any more. I might not want an abortion, but I’m not sure I want to give this baby up. No, that’s not true. I know it’s completely impractical to keep a baby. I really do get that. And I know I’m not cut out to be a mom. No, the thing I’m feeling uncertain about is giving this baby to Martha.

Which makes me a complete bitch, because she’s practically my best friend. I should be saying stuff like there’’s no one I’’d rather adopt my baby than you instead of wondering if I’m making a huge, awful mistake.

But giving a baby to a friend…a control-freak friend like Martha…it just feels so weird. So awkward. And Martha doesn’t really do awkward, so I have no idea what this is going to look like. Feel like.

Rob greets me first, giving me a hug, which is more than he usually does, and inwardly I squirm at this sign of what feels like pity. Martha stays back, smiling, although I see an uncertainty in her eyes, a surprising vulnerability, and I feel like telling her it’s going to be okay, or even hugging her. She would so not go for that, and I smile at the thought. I smell the greasy, spicy aroma of takeout food and my stomach lurches. Again.

“Sorry,” Martha says, and it kind of freaks me out how she notices everything. “We ordered in. Thai. I’ll clear it up.” She bustles around taking paper cartons and foil dishes back to the kitchen, which at least gives her something to do. Rob and I just stare at each other.

He smiles wryly, rubs the back of his neck. “Come on and sit down.”

We sit, him on a chair and me on the big overstuffed sofa by the window overlooking Central Park West. I’m looking around the room with these new eyes, these mother eyes, except I’ll never actually be a mother. But now I see the room with all its substantial furniture—real furniture, solid wood, not plastic or particle board. And there are photographs in sterling-silver frames, and real art on the walls, modern stuff. The walls are painted a soothing sage green with pale gray trim, and even the paint looks expensive. The area rug is soft and thick under my feet, and out of the corner of my eye, on the polished coffee table, I see copies of Country Life and Harper’’s Bazaar, their corners lined up.

“How are you feeling?” Rob asks, and I turn to face him, see him still smiling wryly, clearly uncomfortable but trying to work through it.

“Oh, you know.” I wiggle my fingers. “So-so.”

Martha comes back in, still bustling. She stops on the threshold and looks at us and it seems to me like she is planning her attack. But then Martha has always been a planner, a battle general; when I toyed with the idea of going to grad school about five years ago she presented me with a printed list of pros and cons over coffee.

The memory, strangely, relaxes me, reminds me that despite our differences and the gaps when we don’t see each other, we really are friends. I trust and love her. I do.

“How are you feeling?” Martha asks, coming to sit down in the chair opposite Rob. I wiggle my fingers again, give the same line. She nods. We all stare.

Rob breaks the silence first, by clearing his throat. “Maybe you should tell us what you’re thinking, Alex.”

What I’m thinking? I want them to tell me what they’re thinking. “Well, obviously I’m pregnant.” Silence. “And I’m not really in a position to keep the baby.”

“Not in a position,” Rob says, “is different than not wanting to.”

Is it? I blink, and realize I am, suddenly and inexplicably, near tears. “Well,” I say, and my voice sounds a little thicker, “in this case it isn’t.”

“Are you sure about that?” Rob asks quietly, and across from him I feel Martha tense, as if a wire is running through her.

I blink again and feel moisture gather at the corners of my eyes. Damn. This is not how I wanted to start this conversation. They’re both staring avidly at me, so it’s impossible to hide. I touch the corner of my eye with my fingertip. They both notice; Martha looks down and Rob reaches for a tissue.

“Sorry,” I say. “Pregnancy hormones.”

“The thing is,” Rob says, “you know we’ve been trying for a baby for a while. And I don’t want that knowledge, or your friendship with Martha, with us, to influence your decision.”

Well, of course it’s going to influence my decision. I wouldn’t even be here if we all weren’t friends, or if Martha didn’t want a baby.

“I mean,” Rob clarifies quietly, “the decision about whether you want to keep the baby yourself.”

Martha is so tense she could practically snap. She is gripping the arms of her chair, but she notices and puts her hands in her lap. She still doesn’t speak.

“I can’t keep the baby,” I say, and I hear the tiny lilt of a question in my voice. I know they hear it too because Martha clenches her hands tightly together, her knuckles like little bony hills of white, and Rob gives me a sympathetic, understanding kind of smile.