Custody (36 page)

“Hi,” Jason said.

He was stretched out on her sofa, a pile of newspapers on the floor and coffee table next to him, the remote control in his left hand, a glass of wine in his right.

“I thought I’d surprise you,” he told her, grinning.

“Oh, you surprised me.” Shutting the door, she sagged against it.

Unfolding himself from the sofa, Jason crossed the room and embraced her. “I’ve brought a bottle of excellent merlot. And I’ve made fettuccine Alfredo.”

“Lovely.” Except (a), she thought, it’s too hot for pasta, and (b) I’ve just eaten an entire bag of potato chips. But of course, Jason couldn’t know that.

“Do I have time for a bath?”

“Absolutely. But make it quick. I’m starving. You’re back later than I thought you’d be.”

“It was a long day.”

“I want to hear all about it.”

Randall had forgotten how perfect Lacey could make things. She had no hidden agenda: wanting to please a man
was
her agenda. She welcomed him at the door with no action more demanding than a smile, and settled him on the sofa with a Scotch and water and the remote control, saying she knew he’d want to see the news before they ate. She didn’t chatter through the news. At the table, while they ate her substantial, hot, melting lasagna, she kept the conversation light, focused on hospital gossip rather than the more serious discussions of HMOs and death that would spoil the taste of her delicious food.

And if she wore only khaki shorts and a tight black tank top that showed more than it concealed, if she padded back and forth from the table to the kitchen on bare feet, an ankle bracelet glittering against her tanned skin, if she managed to appear undeniably sexual and completely available, why should he be surprised? He had always known from the start what Lacey wanted: marriage and children. He had always been frank with her from the start: he was married, he had a child, he desired Lacey and admired her physical beauty, but he did not love her. He had never told her he loved her.

And what in the hell was love, anyway? Randall wondered. He knew what it was, clear as a bell, bright as a bead, definite as a bump in his chest, when it came to Tessa and his parents. He knew now that when he married Anne, he’d confused respect, affection, and idealism for love—he’d been so young then, so eager to save the world, so—
earnest
.

Ernest. The woman he’d called Morgan had touched him more deeply than she knew when she named him that. It was as if she saw instantly, instinctively, to the true core of his being. And was that love? Could love really arrive so easily, so abruptly, a shaft of unexpected sunlight, a door opening in his heart to rooms he’d never known were there? What was it he found so absolutely alluring in Morgan? She was beautiful, but many women were physically beautiful. She was intelligent, and that always had been something that attracted him even more than physical traits. He knew so little about her, and yet within him ran a certainty that he did know all the truly important things. It was a mysterious gift, the way he knew she belonged to him. It was like seeing, out of a crowd of dogs at a shelter, the face of the one dog you know belongs to you, or like hearing on the radio, during a long drive, a concerto you know you must buy and play over and over again, because it speaks to you, carries you where you want to go, or like walking into a house and knowing, at once, that you’re home.

“Penny for your thoughts.”

Lacey’s voice made Randall jerk guiltily. “No thoughts,” he said. “I’m just relaxing.”

“Want to go into the living room for coffee?”

He would drink his coffee while sitting on the sofa, Randall knew, and this time she would sit next to him. Her lovely plump thigh would press against his.

“No thanks. I’ve reached the perfect state of equilibrium,” he told her. “Coffee would startle me out of this wonderful lazy stupor I’ve achieved.” Yawning, he stretched his arms high above his head. “I should go home. I’m beat.”

“You could sleep over.”

He smiled at her. “No, honey. No.”

She came to him then, while he sat in his dining room chair. She stood next to him, pulling his head against her bosom, leaning her head down so that her breath stirred his hair. He put his arms around her for a moment and held her sweet warm body.

Then he pushed her away. He rose. “I’m sorry, Lacey. I’ve got to go home.”

She was so young, and still innocent. She was uncomplicated and without guile. Her disappointment shone from her face.

“It was a great dinner. Thank you.”

“Any time, Randall. You know I mean that. Any time.”

Kelly came out of the bath, barefoot and wrapped in her silk robe, to find candles lighted on the table. Jason was tossing a salad, but when he saw her, he stopped and stared.

“Nice robe.” He walked over to pull her against him, running his hands down her back, murmuring with pleasure when he realized she was wearing no underwear. “Why don’t we eat later?”

She drew away from him gently. She could avoid it no longer. “Jason. I have to tell you something.”

He cuffed her neck with his hands, something he found sexy and she found vaguely frightening. “Oh, yes?”

“I’d like a glass of wine.” Breaking free of his embrace, she found her glass, poured her wine, and crossed the room to curl up in an armchair.

Jason frowned. “You look very serious.”

“I
am
very serious. I’ve done a lot of thinking this week …” It was hard to continue.

Jason relaxed into the corner of the sofa facing Kelly. Behind him the windows gleamed with the wonderful peculiar blue of summer twilight. “And?”

Kelly held up her hand. “Look. This is hard for me. Let me just get it all out, okay?”

Jason arched one elegant black eyebrow. She could see how he was just on the verge of moving into the protection of sarcasm.

“Jason.” She forced it all out at once, an explosion. “I had a baby. On purpose. I needed money for college. When one of my professors came to me with a proposal, I agreed to be a surrogate mother so that another couple could have a child.”

He rocked back from her words. “Jesus.”

“Shall I go on?”

“Of course.”

“I was twenty-two years old. My mother had just married René Lambrousco, and my father’s parents had just died. They’d drawn up their wills when I was a child, so of course they named my mother as beneficiary, and they never got around to changing it, but they always made it clear that their estate should go to me. Of course, they couldn’t foresee that René would enter my mother’s life or that he would have the power to persuade her to give all the money to him.”

“She did that?”

“She did.”

“Wow. You should have taken them to court.”

“Perhaps. But it really wasn’t that simple. It never is, I suppose. Love and money do get so mixed up together, don’t they? I mean, we see it in court over and over again.”

“Seems clear-cut to me. They stole your inheritance.”

“Exactly. But it was more than that. It always is. My mother had never been passionately in love, and all at once she was. The next moment my grandparents were dead, and I was knocked over with grief, and before I could turn around, mother told me she was going to marry René and move to New York with him, using my grandparents’ money to invest in his acting career. And they were gone. I had to find an apartment, I had to find a job, I had to get a student loan to finish college, and I had no one to help me.”

“That sounds rough.”

“You bet it was rough. I was lost, Jason. Absolutely lost. Perhaps I could have found some legal recourse, but I was so young and ignorant then. I had no one to turn to.”

“What did you do?”

“I had one professor who cared for me. George Hammond. He was a funny little man. Dapper. He wore tweeds and bow ties. He taught a course in law and society. My junior year, he called me in to tell me I should consider a career in law. I had, he told me, a quick and incisive mind.” Kelly smiled at the memory. “He suggested books I should read. Told me what courses I should take my senior year. Told me he’d write a brilliant recommendation for me.” Her smile faded. “That summer my mother married René.”

“And everything changed.”

“Yes.” She was surprised at the power the old memory still had to wound her. “The fall of my senior year he called me into his office to ask me why I hadn’t applied to law school. I told him I couldn’t afford it. As if everything else weren’t enough, that year all my wisdom teeth came in. I had a thousand-dollar oral surgeon bill to pay off.”

Jason cringed slightly, as he often did whenever people spoke about their lack of money.

“In February, Professor Hammond came to me with a proposal. He knew a couple who weren’t able to have children. They wanted to find a woman willing to be a surrogate mother, a woman who would be fertilized with the husband’s sperm, who would carry the baby through the nine months of pregnancy, give birth, and legally give the child up for adoption. They wanted to find a woman who was healthy, attractive, and intelligent, and—especially—capable of doing it all in secrecy. Their need for privacy in this was paramount. Professor Hammond said he would act as intermediary and handle all legal matters.”

“And in return?”

“The couple were willing to pay fifty thousand dollars.”

Jason was quiet, looking down into his glass.

“Back then that was three years of law school tuition, and then some.”

“So you did it.”

“It’s not uncommon, Jason. Many couples go this route rather than adopting. This way they have some sense of being involved in the creation of the child.”

“Did you meet them?”

“No. They didn’t want to meet me. The woman, understandably, was very sensitive about this matter.” Kelly paused. “So I agreed.”

Jason cleared his throat. “How did you … become pregnant?”

“How much do you want to know?”

“Everything, I guess.”

“All right. First, I had to have a complete medical examination by a fertility expert in Brookline to ascertain whether or not I was healthy and a good risk for pregnancy. I had to track my reproductive cycle, which until then I’d thought of as my menstrual cycle, carefully, taking my temperature every morning and noting it on a chart. I was very regular, spiking clearly during the fifteenth day, which pleased the gynecologist. For three months I was inseminated with the husband’s semen—”

“How?”

“Artificially. A gynecologist did it. With a kind of long syringe. It wasn’t romantic, Jason. It wasn’t painful. It wasn’t
anything
. Dr. Radison chatted the whole time about the chances of the Red Sox winning the pennant that year. There was a nurse in attendance the entire time. She held my hand.”

Jason looked bleak.

“After three tries, I got pregnant. I felt proud of myself, rather as if I’d made a good grade on a difficult test.” She looked down into her wineglass, remembering. “Later on, though, I was terribly lonely. I didn’t even have my mother’s address at that point. Professor Hammond arranged for me to live in Williamstown for the tenure of my pregnancy. He had friends there with a vacation home where I stayed. It was nice, really. I had a TV, VCR, CD player, microwave. I had a queen-size bed with a down comforter and a guest bedroom which I used as a study. I read a ton of books on the law. That was really all I had to do: read and wait. Oh, I was expected to eat well and healthily, get lots of protein and vegetables, and forsake alcohol. I was to take sufficient exercise and to be certain I got plenty of sleep. Each month I was thoroughly examined by Dr. Roberts, an obstetrician in Pittsfield who assisted me at the birth. I’d signed a series of legal agreements that Professor Hammond had drawn up, which covered every contingency, or so it seemed. I knew what would happen if I miscarried. I knew what would happen if the child were stillborn. I knew that the child would be taken from me immediately upon being born.

“And that was all right. I had no desire to see the child. I tried to think of the child as the child of Mr. and Mrs. X, whom I was only tending. Like someone watering the plants or caring for the animals of a couple off on vacation. It was a kind of job, one I could do without thinking, without even working, really. After the morning sickness had stopped, it seemed like the easiest job I’d ever had.”