Cherry Money Baby (33 page)

And Cherry felt a chink in the long, solid wall of misery, the tiniest crack where fresh air was seeping through. For an instant, it was like she could squeeze out through that crack, let go of Lucas, let go of herself, and escape with Ardelia to anywhere she pleased. She’d never thought she could abandon herself so easily, but then here she was on a movie star’s balcony in another country. Anything was possible.

It was terrifying, how easy escape seemed.

“I think —” Cherry started.

“Don’t think,” said Ardelia.

Someone knocked on the bedroom door. Eve’s voice found them on the balcony. “Ms. Deen? They’re asking for you.”

“I’m going to head down,” Ardelia said. “You stay here as long as you want. When you’re ready, I’ll see you out there.”

And then she was gone, and Cherry was alone on the balcony, above the whole world.

Her limbs felt heavy. The entire world was a loud party in another room. She felt a cramp and, wincing, holding her side, hobbled into the private bathroom.

Cherry closed the bedroom door behind her and locked herself in the spacious bathroom with its Jacuzzi tub and sleek modern sink like something off the Starship
Enterprise.
Feeling dazed, thinking and not thinking, she considered herself in the standing mirror, and thought about it, the physical reality of holding a baby in there, in her belly. Her tummy — tan, soft, and happy behind her hip bones — would expand and harden into a tight leather drum, pucker pink, navel like a divot on a huge golf ball. Her feet, hands, and breasts would swell to tender bags with blood, water, and milk — a noxious, hot soup ready to burst and trickle at the slightest prick. She’d crave dirt, cry, pull her hair in wild mood swings; a crazy, bloated hag, lolling in her own nasty on a velvet couch. It was a nightmare. She wasn’t “carrying” anything. She was tossing her body into a turbine, grist for someone else’s happiness. It was a sudden, hot, horrible thought.

She’d never felt so trapped. It was not just her body up for purchase, but her
life.
Ardelia wasn’t renting her womb for a year — she was buying Cherry
whole.
From Aubrey. From Lucas. From her family. From herself. For $250,000.

She stepped out into the dark of the bedroom and felt a draft across her damp hands. It came from the panel by the bed, the cool whisper that ruffled the nightstand doilies.

The flat black panel slid aside. The small anteroom was cool, tiled like a bathroom, the far wall a bricked-off archway that must have once led to what Ardelia had called the
Galerie des Liaisons.
On the floor was a squat safety box with a keypad, its door hanging ajar like an invitation. But what drew her eye more was a cardboard crate, flaps bent back, packing kernels spilled around its base. The thing inside was pinkish, like a faded basketball, and as she lifted it from the box, it flopped awkwardly, making a rubbery
whoof
sound. She held it to the light. There were no fake nipples or distended navel, but she guessed what it was immediately. A fat suit. A fake pregnant belly and breasts.

The double doors squealed in the bedroom. Cherry stepped out of the little anteroom, holding the suit in her arms like a wounded animal. Ardelia froze on the threshold.

“That room is private.”

“What do you need this for?” She turned the suit and held it to her own body. The curves didn’t quite line up. This was no one-size-fits-all fat suit. It was a custom job.

“I knew you wouldn’t like it. That’s why I kept it from you.” Her voice cracked, pleading. “I was going to tell you.”

“When? Second trimester?”

“Cherry —”

Laughter tumbled in from the hallway, followed by Maxwell, tie undone. He tripped over the carpet and put his arm around Ardelia to steady himself.

“Hello. What’s going on here?” He squinted at Cherry. “What’s that? Are we sumo wrestling?”

Someone followed him in. Spanner. “You can’t be sneaking off like this,” she was saying. “People will think you’re — Oh.” She took in the scene and tacitly closed the door, muffling the party outside. She crossed her arms. “So, this is happening, is it?”

“You’re going to
fake
a pregnancy,” Cherry said. It was out there. Saying the words seemed to shift the air pressure, change the spin of every electron. “You’re going to keep me in a house getting fat and sick while you go on talk shows and the red carpet looking round and beautiful.” A new wrinkle unwound itself in Cherry’s brain. The blue-and-yellow boxes in the downstairs bathroom, the ones that said sure! on the side. “You
can
get pregnant.” She looked at Spanner. “She can, can’t she?”

“It’s complicated,” Ardelia said.

Cherry looked to Spanner again. “Did you know about this?”

Spanner’s eyes studied Cherry’s. She looked tired. “Yes.”

“Cherry, nothing’s changed.” Ardelia struggled to keep her tone even. “The pay’s the same; the job’s the same.”

“It’s
not
the same,” Cherry snapped. “Before it was helping a person who wanted a baby but couldn’t have one. But you
can.
You’d just prefer
not to.
”

“Oh, I could have told you that,” Maxwell said. “We had a little scare a while back, didn’t we?”

“Shut
up,
Maxwell!” the two girls shouted in unison. Maxwell’s red cheeks reddened even more.

“You don’t know what it’s
like,
” Ardelia said, pleading now. “You’ve got to be
perfect.
All the time. Everywhere. For everyone. You think
People
magazine cares if you’ve got swollen feet? Or if your tits are leaking on the
Today
show? They still expect you to be perfect, even while you’ve been
taken over
from within! And you certainly can’t have someone
else
do it if
you can,
because that’s
exploitative.
. . .” She couldn’t go on, overcome by the unfairness of the world. Instead, she took a small step toward Cherry. “I really do want a baby, Cherry. This is the only way. Span, tell her.”

Spanner was quiet, and Cherry braced herself for her icy bile. But instead the other girl shook her head.

“I’m sorry, honey.”

“See?” Ardelia said, then snapped around. “Wait, what?”

“I told you not to do this,” Spanner said, her tone quiet, even. “I told you this was bad for you. This was crossing a line.”

Ardelia made an exasperated sound. “Oh,
not
this again.”

“It’s good she found out,” Spanner said. “It can’t go on like this.”

“What is she talking about?” said Cherry. She felt dangerously close to losing her grip on the situation. She shook the wobbly belly at them. “Explain!”

Ardelia turned her back. Spanner looked as if she didn’t know what to do with her hands. She had no cigarettes or cell phones or props to shield her. She folded them over her stomach.

“I told you I would do it,” she said. “That if you wanted someone to carry it, I would, as your friend.” Her hands dropped. “But no, you preferred me as an employee.”

“I
need
you,” Ardelia said to the wall. “You
know
that.”

“And now, as your
oldest
friend,” Spanner went on, “Ardelia, as your
only
friend, I’m telling you, do not become the sort of person who does . . . this.” She waved to Cherry and the fat suit. “I know you want this baby, but you’ve got to take responsibility for it, Ardy. I can’t let you make this mistake.”

Cherry felt her fury drain away. She felt limp and lifeless as the fake belly in her arms. She let the suit drop to the floor. It bounced, lolled, and landed curves up. Trembling pink Jell-O.

“You should listen to your friend,” she said.

Ardelia turned back and hugged herself, looking small and petulant. Something crumbled behind her eyes, and behind the crumbling wall, something black was waiting. “You sanctimonious bitch. High-and-mighty Cherry Kerrigan. So good and pure. She doesn’t need fancy clothes and good food, just give her Pixy Stix and track shorts, thank you very much.” Ardelia pointed a painted, sharpened nail at Cherry’s chest. “Don’t make like this is about
friendship.
You want the
money.
Just like everyone else. Ardelia Deen”— she bowed dramatically —“Ardelia Dollar Sign, more like. That’s all anyone sees when they look at me.”

Maxwell had backed himself into a corner and was searching furiously for a line of escape. He cleared his throat. “Do you really think that, Ardy?”

She ignored him.

“You,” Cherry said, slowly and clearly so there was no mistaking her words. “Have. Ruined. My. Life.”

She kicked the fat suit so it bounded across the carpet like a mutant tumbleweed. She pushed between them, jerked open the door, and ran out into the hall.

“Oh, shit, oh, Span, I’ve fucked everything up,” she heard behind her.

“Come here, honey. It’s going to be okay.”

She went down the stairs, kicking off her heels halfway down to quicken her progress, and made straight for the front door. She’d walk to the coast, into the water, and dredge the sea until she reached Cape Cod, the Mass Pike, and the bridge to Sugar Village and the sweet-smelling dead pond. She was three rows into the dark, damp cherry orchard, the stars blinking through the petals so pale they were almost transparent. And then she stopped.

She didn’t have anyplace to go.

She didn’t have a trailer. She didn’t have a home. She didn’t have a Lucas. All she had was herself, a person she barely knew and didn’t particularly like.

She trudged on until she came to a small brook. An ancient tree gripped the big boulder by the water, its exposed roots winding over the granite and into the soft earth. She felt the rough wood of the trunk and thought of their elm back home. This tree was probably so much older. Older than her neighborhood, older than her country maybe. She wondered if their elm would ever get that old, and if their names, carved in its side, would still be visible after hundreds of years.

She ran her hand along the bark, feeling its rough edges, and then she felt it. The smooth patch at shoulder level, the bark stripped away, the letters etched into ancient wood. A single word. Small and awake as a heartbeat: cherry.

“What are you doing out here?”

She jumped at his voice. He came strolling down the hillside, kicking loose the pebbles and dirt and letting them tumble into the brook. Even in the low light, she could see his eyes were red and raw.

“You did this?” she said, her hand on the sharp word in the wood.

He was quiet. She’d stumbled into his private gloom, tracked her own misery into his, here by the water.

“I’m sorry,” she said, trying to find more words, a joke maybe. “I have nothing.”

He looked confused. “What do you mean? I’m here.”

“You don’t want to be with me,” she said. “I don’t know if I’d let you take me back, even if you did.”

He looked up into the branches, and losing his eyes was like losing him in miniature, all over again; she didn’t even have his full attention. But then, no. He was just trying to hide his tears. “No. That part’s changed. It’s changed. But we’re still
something.
” He looked at her. “We’re still family.”

She came to him carefully, worried he might vanish. But he was solid and stayed in her arms when she held him. He didn’t move at first, but then, stiffly, his arms encircled her. He felt so sturdy, so permanent. And Cherry felt so shaky, like a leaf ready to drop off in autumn. Her legs felt weak, and she lost herself, falling against him. He caught her. He helped her up, put his arm around her shoulder.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m not feeling too good. I keep getting these cramps.” She blinked. It was hard to concentrate. She felt drunk but hadn’t been drinking. “I feel kinda woozy.”

“Let’s get back to the house.”

He led her through the orchard, pointing out the smaller roots, helping her over the large ones. She tried to walk on her own, but her feet felt weightless, floating out from under her. Soon he was supporting her entirely, and Cherry felt the ground fall away. The stars were swimming through her vision now, and she realized Lucas was carrying her through the orchard as she drifted in and out of consciousness.