Chapter Twenty-Seven Tessa
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Tessa
Marley had to pick a Saturday to meet, when it isn’t so easy for me to get away.
Gabe’s being particularly affectionate, rubbing my feet as we watch TV, holding me any chance he gets.
Each time he reaches for me, I’m conscious of his fingers, soft against my skin, of his breath, hot on my neck.
But it’s as if I leave my body, hover above and outside myself.
I’m angry. And afraid. Mostly, I’m heartbroken.
Whatever’s going on, Gabe won’t tell me, and it’s ruined us.
His secrecy forces me to lie, too, to spend these final days searching for a truth he keeps from me, a truth that has already gotten two people killed.
I tell Gabe I’m getting a prenatal massage. It’s our last weekend as a family of three, and I expect resistance from him, arguing that we should be spending this time together before everything changes. Everything is about to change. Like Jasper, Gabe has no idea how much.
“I think that’s great,” Gabe says as he whisks batter for pancakes.
“You don’t mind?” I probe. Although this isn’t the right fight, I’ll take it.
Gabe pours batter into the shapes of snakes, iron bells, Js.
He cuts strawberries and bananas into moons and stars.
Momentarily, I get lost in the way he plates Jasper’s breakfast with so much care that it’s a shame Jasp’s just going to eat it, or more likely throw it on the floor.
Something unfurls in my chest, a thawing, until I remember Gabe let Regina have a relationship with our son.
“Mind you taking care of your body? Of course not.” Gabe’s a big proponent of self-care for his patients.
He has a masseuse on staff, an acupuncturist. Although there’s no proof that your mental state affects fertility, it makes his clients feel more in control, more relaxed, which certainly can’t hurt.
I follow Gabe’s eyes down to my ankles, which spill out of the only shoes that still fit my feet. He gazes at our daughter, who has dropped and sits heavily between my hips. Then he kisses me on the temple and tells me I deserve some pampering. I deserve a lot of things, but I don’t say this.
Barb referred to tower 50 like it’s Studio 54, but it’s just a lifeguard hut somewhere in Playa del Rey.
Mornings at the beach are uncrowded, even Saturday mornings in mid-June.
It’s too late for surfers, too foggy for sunbathers, too cold for families.
When I pull into the lot by tower 50, one woman sits on a sarong on the empty beach, her dark hair blowing in the wind as she communes with the ocean.
Barb’s parked a few spaces down, and she steps out of her car when she sees me.
Before we talk to Marley, I have to tell her about Rosebud, that Regina was on Gabe’s payroll, that she’d been in my house, had taken the prototype earring, that they were having an affair and were up to something else too.
“That’s got to be Marley, right?” Barb asks as I approach her, her face half hidden behind tortoiseshell sunglasses, unnecessary given the cloud cover.
When I nod, she takes off into the wind, forcing me to follow.
“Listen, Barb, there’s something I need to—” Barb is already across the parking lot, waiting at the edge of the beach.
When I reach her, I try to say, “Barb, I really need to tell—” She takes my arm and practically drags me onto the beach into a torrent of wind.
We trudge across the loose sand. A gale catches my words and carries them away.
After a few steps, my calves start to ache.
My tailbone thuds. I need to stop, but Barb charges ahead.
“Barb,” I shout. We keep walking until we’re mere feet from the woman.
The woman peers up, confused. Not scared.
Not ready to run. She has shoulder-length dark hair, warm-brown skin, piercing hazel eyes, high cheekbones, long legs.
She seems familiar even as I’m certain I’ve never met her before.
The sun is an ambient blob somewhere above us.
Marley shields her face to see me and Barb.
“Reggie?” she asks uncertainly. It takes me a moment to realize she’s mistaken me for Regina. Her focus turns to Barb. “Is this your mom?”
“Yes,” Barb confirms as I say, “I’m not Regina.” Barb glances at me, confused. I shake my head no. We need to be honest with her.
Barb pushes her glasses onto the top of her head so Marley can see her whole earnest face. “I’m Regina’s mom. This is Tessa. A friend.”
The change is instantaneous, all-encompassing. She stiffens, then grabs her bag and stands.
“I was expecting Regina.”
She starts to walk away, the sand slowing her down.
“Please,” I shout, awkwardly following her. “Please, just give us five minutes.” Marley fights through the wind as her pace quickens. “Please,” I shout. Then I say the only thing I can think of, something instinctually I know will make her turn back. “You may know my husband, Dr. Irons?”
She whips around. “You’re Dr. Irons’s wife?”
“How do you know my husband?” There’s more accusation in my voice than intended. I can’t help it.
“Through the donation.”
It makes me think of Goodwill, money to charities, the hours Gabe clocks at Planned Parenthood each month.
“What donation, dear?” Barb asks. I’ve never heard her use the endearment before. It’s decidedly old lady, by design.
Marley hugs her arms around her chest, debating what to share with us.
Her attention drifts to the ocean, the modest waves that inch up the sand.
Subtly, she rubs her lower stomach. The blood rushes to my head as I expect her to tell us she’s pregnant, that it’s Gabe’s. Then I realize it’s the opposite.
Marley lays out her sarong, and the three of us sit side by side, shoulder to shoulder, staring at the ocean. It puts Marley at ease, sending her story off to sea. The sand is too soft for my inflamed tailbone, too damp against my swollen ankles.
“It was about a year and a half ago,” Marley begins.
“At the time, most casting companies were still auditioning by video, so when one was in person, you dropped everything. Regina was a lot nicer than most casting agents. She really considered everyone, didn’t just write you off.
I don’t know who the part went to. I ended up getting the better deal, though.
Indie films don’t exactly pay like eggs do. ”
Regina called to tell her she didn’t get the part but to stay in touch, so Marley did. Quickly, their text exchanges became a rapport. It wasn’t flirtatious, romantic. It was two young women in a big anonymous city, making each other feel less alone.
Marley stops suddenly, her face quieting. “There was no movie, was there?” When we don’t answer, she monitors the retreating wave, the jellyfish left in its wake. “Reggie never took advantage of me. She was a friend, got me paid when I needed money.”
Regina assured her the donation would remain anonymous.
Neither the baby nor the parents would be able to find her.
There’d be some paperwork to make sure she met the criteria, genetic screening, a little break from alcohol, pills that caused a few days of bloat, then a payday that would cover her rent for the next six months, all while helping fulfill someone’s dream.
“Donating my eggs was the best decision I ever made. I would’ve had to go home if it weren’t for Reggie.” Then she stares at me, making my chest tighten. “And your husband.”
Her voice is rich with gratitude. It makes me too heavy for my body, for this beach, this world. Longevity Fertility doesn’t harvest donor eggs, but Rosebud LLC must. Clinics recruit donors all the time. There’s nothing illegal or immoral about this. Except Gabe never mentioned it.
I’ve been sitting so still that a charley horse shoots up my calf, causing me to wince. I start to massage my leg, the cramp lingering longer than it should. The baby kicks and punches, fighting my ribs and pelvis. It doesn’t make sense. Why keep this part of his business a secret?
“Is Regina okay?” Marley asks, realizing how strange it is that we’re here in her stead.
Barb puts her hand on Marley’s. “She’s fine, dear. Just couldn’t make it, so she sent us. She’s not doing that work anymore.”
Marley shrugs. “I knew it was a long shot.”
She stands. Barb stands too. I’m not ready to move, not until I can understand the unease that’s rising like acid.
Marley was an egg donor. Regina recruited her on Gabe’s behalf.
As the embryologist, Aram must have prepared her eggs for storage or implantation.
It’s all an essential part of the field.
The burning creeps up my throat. I want to retch, only there’s nothing solid, nothing coherent to purge.
Just the persistent inkling that something isn’t right.
Marley stares down at me, and I wiggle to the side so she can retrieve her sarong. “When are you due?”
“Next week.” I mean my C-section is scheduled for then. I don’t elaborate. It takes all my energy to emit those two words.
“Say congrats to Dr. Irons for me.” Her well-wishes send a jolt up my spine.
Barb and I watch Marley walk away, her slender, curvaceous body getting smaller as the distance between us grows. I can’t shake the suspicion that I know her, that she’s the younger sister of one of my friends, a teacher at the nursery school we toured for Jasper, a waitress at Great White.
“It’s uncanny,” Barb says. “She could be Laila Ruiz’s little sister.”
That’s it—why Marley is familiar. Laila Ruiz’s face is everywhere from movie billboards to perfume ads, even in her mid-forties.
When she got pregnant last year, I knew.
It was you, wasn’t it? I asked Gabe. He’d smirked, admitted nothing, but anyone in their forties who wants to get pregnant and has the means goes to Gabe.
He gets impossible results. Maybe they aren’t so impossible after all.
Laila Ruiz must have used Marley’s egg. It’s not surprising that she would keep this secret.
Plenty of celebrities use donated eggs without divulging it to the press.
The public doesn’t deserve this information.
Sure, it creates a false sense of fertility.
If Laila Ruiz can get pregnant at forty-five, you can too.
As her doctor, despite any misgivings he may have had, Gabe would have honored her privacy.
Only, it isn’t merely privacy. It’s secrecy.
The extra office space. The donor recruiting.
Regina’s connection to my son. This is bigger than Laila Ruiz, bigger than mothers who don’t want to broadcast their fertility struggles to the world.
And it couldn’t all be to hide an affair.
Regina’s connection to my son.
I grab Barb’s leg like I might collapse, even though I’m still sitting.
I let go of Barb and roll onto my side, trying to make myself so small I’ll disappear.
Only my stomach is too obstructive, too hard, too full of life.
My head spins. This time it isn’t from low blood pressure.
It’s from an impossible truth starting to take shape in the form of my son.