She realized what a mistake she made, she’d say, but by that point it was too late to give me back! She said it laughingly to friends like it was all a huge joke. My existence, the great bumble of her life.
But that was fine. I had Dad and we were as close as two peas in a pod. He said Mom just wasn’t ready for kids. She had a hard life growing up in Mexico taking care of her seven brothers and sisters. She hated anything that reminded her of that. Aka any sort of responsibility whatsoever. Aka, me.
Dad loved her so much, though, he never saw her for the user that she was. It was somewhat taboo, marrying outside his wealthy WASP circles. Maybe it was love between them at first, I don’t know. He met her when she was waitressing at a bar near Harvard. My grandparents never accepted her—some intruder in their lives from south of the border—but Dad loved her beyond all reason. To him, she would always just be the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life, who for a time had chosen him. Even after she left him and went on to become a richer man’s trophy wife. Then she died in a car wreck and became forever enshrined in his memory.
She had that way about her, though. A way of making people love her. The only other person who saw her for the narcissistic, spoiled woman that she was was her older sister Mariana. Not as pretty as my mother, Mariana is still an attractive woman living in Mexico. I was able to visit her a couple of years ago. It was such a relief to finally be able to talk about the real woman I’d known my mother to be. Like I could finally be sure I wasn’t just making it all up in my head. But no, that was how Mariana remembered her, too. She was a kind, calm woman with a passel of children who all seemed to adore her.
It was already too late for me, though. I was the spitting image of my mother, if a shade lighter in skin tone and with a short bob instead of her long hair that she always paid such meticulous care to. And I’d also inherited her aversion to children.
My college friends had babies and I’d visit them from time to time. I felt nothing. No biological ticking clock. No yearning to hold the babies. They screamed a lot and it always got on my nerves.
So, while I might be my mother’s daughter, I always swore I wouldn’t make her mistake. I’d never have kids. Not something I thought too much about because, well, at least until several days ago—virgin.
But now I have to have this stranger’s baby.
Well, fine. Women are surrogates for people all the time. That’s all this is. I have no motherly instincts, obviously. I can barely handle thinking the word baby much less saying it out loud. So yes, I’m just the surrogate for Xavier’s baby. It doesn’t make a difference that the egg making up half the baby happens to be mine. Women also donate their eggs all the time. So what if I’m doing both parts, the donating and the surrogating?
It’s no big deal. At the end of this year, Dad will be safe forever. He’s already starting his new life in whatever island paradise Xavier’s settled him. Yes, he’s upset right now because he doesn’t know what’s happening to me but Xavier said he’d send pictures letting him know I’m okay… I look around me. Well, God, so at this particular moment, I’m not awesome but I’m going to fix all of it.
Just a year of pretending and then I’ll find a way to start over, too.
I can legally change my name.
Move out of New York and go somewhere no one knows me. Maybe Chicago. There are some great ad firms there. I’ll have to start from scratch and yeah, it’ll take a lot of work. But I’m stubborn and—
My stomach cramps with hunger.
Right. I’ve got more immediate problems.
If Xavier keeps to the same schedule he did the other days, he shouldn’t have gone in for dinner yet. Whether he’ll hear me is another matter. I open my mouth and yell at the top of my lungs. “Master? Master! May I please have dinner?” Maybe he has a camera on me out here, too?
The sun is dropping near the horizon even though it’s probably another hour before sunset. But I suddenly can’t wait another second.
And lucky me, through the crack I see Xavier come ambling around the house toward me just a few minutes later. He’s in his work gear, giant hat and all, like I caught him mid-cowboying. What the hell does a cowboy do all day anyway, other than, I don’t know, feed animals?