Friends: A Love Story (36 page)

Night after night the audience loved the play. The audiences in Minneapolis are so appreciative and so savvy. It didn't matter that Courtney and I were black and playing in roles from the 1940 movie starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. They paid their money. They bought the seats. The lights went down, we told them the way it was and they agreed. They bought it. They believed it. And that's what theater is all about: transporting belief. Opening night, Izzy came to the show. So did Sharon Reich, one of my freshman-year roommates. Today she is a doctor at the University of Minnesota. I got to meet her husband and daughter.

Meanwhile, back in California, our surrogate was going through the process of preparing herself to get pregnant. We knew the process was in capable hands—hers and the doctors'. One, two or three occasions Courtney and I had to ask for a break in our rehearsal schedule to participate in activities related to our surrogate. When the doctor places the embryo in the surrogate, we participated by conference call. I'd been through that process before and knew it was private and that we wouldn't be in the room anyhow. Courtney wasn't even in the room when I did it. But we could have our voices there in the room so we could talk to Stephanie and support her. We could all talk to each other. That was good. We had been told the odds—there was only a sixty percent chance that each egg would work out positively, so we had agreed to implant two embryos. But at the last minute the doctor said he was going to implant three embryos to increase our odds.

“You've been through so much,” he said, “I want to put in three to give you the best chance.”

We had already agreed we were going with two. She was younger than me. You're supposed to have babies in your twenties, so her uterine lining was thicker than mine. We
figured we'd have the doctor put in two and see what we get. We'd either get none, one or two—unless one or both of the embryos split, in which case we could get three or four. It's rare, but it has happened. So we had all discussed this from the beginning and agreed upon two. We were all clear. None of us wanted to do more than that. Now at the last minute, the doctor was talking about three. We were caught off guard. She didn't want to try to carry three. And we didn't want to make the decision of—they call it selection—decreasing the number by aborting one. We just couldn't do that. Our beliefs wouldn't let us do that. We'd wanted children for so long, we couldn't just say, “Okay, now we're getting rid of one of them.” You don't know who you'd be getting rid of.

We started to defer to his expertise.

“What are the odds of all three taking?”

“You only have a five percent chance.”

“But if that happens it's like a hundred percent.” I was just so emotional. I was leaning toward giving in to this professional who's been through this and knows we're not going to end up with triplets. Because as he said, “Triplets are nobody's friend.” He was just for putting them in and getting one or two.

With hesitancy, I said, “Okay…” We stayed on the phone and the doctor talked to us as he performed the procedure so we could hear what was going on.

Stephanie said, “We said only two. Two only!” She was worrying that maybe she might hurt our feelings, but it was a relief.

I told her, “Yes, yes, yes! Thank you! Thank you!
Somebody
had to have the presence of mind to make a good decision.” Because all we wanted was two. We didn't want more. “Thank you for being stronger and remembering what our first conversation was. Let's go ahead with that.”

We stayed on the line and the doctor talked us through it. We're all talking on the phone and hearing what's going on. After the procedure Courtney asked, “Can we say a prayer?”

Yes! Being a man of faith—he's Jewish—our doctor offered a prayer in Hebrew.

Two weeks later we would find out whether Stephanie was actually pregnant. We could have gotten the information on a Friday, but Monday is the day off in the theater. We didn't have to be there but we wanted to be as much a part of the process as we could. Some people can't—they live in Japan or another foreign country or have other reasons. But we could. I wanted to be there to support Stephanie. How could I not support someone who is giving me such an amazing gift and I am believing that they will treasure themselves to take care of my baby. You've gotta show that you care. In my mind, not to would have been negligent. I also wanted to be there because for years I had tried arduously so I could have the experience. Okay, so my body wasn't physically going through it, but I wasn't gonna miss it. I didn't want to miss it.

“If we can wait until Monday, we can fly there. We want to be there for the ultrasound instead of just hearing it over the phone.”

So Courtney and I flew home and went to her ultrasound appointment. We got the most amazing news—she was carrying twins. I was stunned! Several years earlier Courtney had had a dream that we'd have twins, and the minister had prophesied that I'd have two children.

Now another woman was carrying my baby—not just one but two! There are no words to explain how appreciative I felt—feel! You can't tell them enough.
Thank you
doesn't get it. And they told us, “I'm just glad I was able to help you, I did it for you. Here. Have the wonderful life that you want.”

“Oh. Okaay…” It's strange; we can never give enough thanks. We don't visit each other back and forth. But we can make sure you're well attended to. How are you feeling? What do you need? We'd see each other at Stephanie's monthly doctor's appointments as we all looked at the ultrasounds together.

 

We weren't sure exactly how we were supposed to interact. We had agreed to be open but weren't certain how to do it or where the boundaries lay. As the holidays neared, Courtney said, “We could knock on their door for Christmas or something like that.” We decided to get them a Christmas present. How could we not? They were such sweet people, although we knew there was no way to thank them. But we wanted them to know we were concerned, we cared.

Then at our December appointment Stephanie whispered in my ear, “I don't know if we're supposed to do this or not, but…” and handed me a present.

“Oh, you beat us to the punch!” Courtney told them. Over the nine months we grew closer and closer to each other.

 

Before the babies were born, Courtney and I went to see our business manager to get our wills together. Years earlier we had written wills as if we had children even though we didn't. Now that children were actually on the way, we needed to answer some hard questions we hadn't answered before: what's going to happen if somebody dies—that kind of stuff. We drove separately. Afterward I think he went home. But the meeting went on so long, I had to get something to eat. And I had some errands I wanted to run, some stuff I wanted to get to help pull the babies' room together. Then I decided to make a couple of stops—I was just out in the street lollygagging. I didn't have my cell phone with me.

By the time I got home it was about three-fifteen. I came in through the back door into the kitchen. It was quietish. Nobody was here. Courtney wasn't here, his mom wasn't here, our assistant, Tracy, wasn't here—only Dmitri, who doesn't speak English, who was tiling our newly remodeled bathroom. There was just nothin' goin' on—no phones ringing. Nothing. For some reason my overnight bag was sitting in the middle of the
floor with a yellow Post-it note on top of it. I wondered why it was sitting there but figured I'd grab something out of the fridge and check my messages first. So I got some tapioca pudding, which Courtney was into at the time, then started listening to my messages. The second message was from our surrogate.

“Hi. I hope you're having a good day. I was just here at the hospital for an appointment and I want you to know that my water broke—”

“OOOOOOH, MY GOD!”

Any fool knows that means the baby's comin'—the babies are comin'! But what does that mean? Is everything okay? We had just had a doctor's appointment two days earlier. Everything was fine then. The hospital is across town, which might as well be another country since we were in Los Angeles on a Friday afternoon and rush hour had started at eleven. You don't want to be on the freeway leaving Los Angeles on a Friday afternoon. I tried to listen to the rest of the message, but it was hard to listen. I heard something about delivery at four, but my brain was just jumpin' around and tryin' to figure out what to do next. I was tryin' to listen.
Delivery at four! It's three-thirty now.
In traffic I was about three hours away. What should I do? What should I do?

Then it dawned on me that maybe that my luggage sittin' in the middle of the floor had somethin' to do with it. I read the note: “Go down to Mattie's house. She's going to drive with you.” Mattie is our neighbor down the street. Mattie? My mind was like “WHAT? WHAT? WHAT?” I was trying to make sense of this note and figure out what to do next. I had packed my bag weeks earlier, so I knew I had all my stuff. I knew that babies would be early—they were scheduled to be delivered at thirty-eight weeks—and I wanted to be ready to go. But I didn't think they'd be five weeks early!

The phone rang. I snatched it up.

Courtney.

“Hey, how are you?” Mr. Cool, Calm and Collected.

“COURTNEY, TELL ME WHAT'S GOING ON! TELL ME WHAT'S GOING ON!”

“Okay, let me tell you exactly what's happening. Everything's okay. Everybody's fine. We have time. The delivery's at four. We're going to wait for you.”

There was no way I could get to the hospital by four. All of a sudden I felt like one of the parents I'd heard stories about at our initial surrogacy consultation. People who lived in Japan or someplace and who tried their very best to guesstimate when they needed to be in the United States for the birth of their baby, but the baby came early and they were trying to get here from Japan as quickly as possible but just couldn't get here in time. When I first heard these stories, I thought, “I'm glad I'm right here in Los Angeles.” Right now, as far as I was concerned, I might as well have been in Japan.

“ARGH!” My heart! My heart was breaking. I just felt so disgusted with myself. A part of me wanted to burst into tears, but another part of me knew I'd be good for nothin'. You could already sell me for half a cent; I knew if I started cryin' you could give me away for free.

“Don't even go there,” I told myself. “If you cry you won't be able to turn it off and that's gonna make it worse. You gotta hold it together, hold it together in case it works out.”

Why hadn't I carried my cell phone? How could this happen to me? How could I be so close yet so far? I had tried to be there to support Stephanie and experience it all—every doctor's appointment, even from Minneapolis. Me and this not carrying my cell phone! I knew I hadn't been one of those people with their cell phone tied to their hip. I would easily run out and forget it. “I'm not gonna carry that cell phone.” But when you need it, it comes in so handy. And now Courtney was at the hospital and it was his mama who was there with him.
I
wanted to be with him.
I
wanted have that experience with him. I
wanted it to be me and Courtney—not Courtney and his mom! Not that I have anything against his mom, but I'm his wife. Oh, it was disturbing! It was distressing! All these thoughts were going through my mind.

So Courtney had told me to go down to Mattie's, so I went down to Mattie's. I'm waitin' in the car, waitin' for her to come out of the house, but nobody's comin' out. Finally, after about five minutes, I'm wondering, “Golly, what's goin' on?” I call Courtney. He tells me Mattie's picking her son up from school and must not be back yet. But her son goes to the school across the hill and it's Friday at rush hour. Oh, Lord! I don't know where they are in her travels. Where are they? I call her husband, Michael.

“Where are they? Where are they?”

He's all calm. “It's gonna be okay. She's almost there.”

“Oh, Michael, I can't believe I wasn't ready.”

“Angela, nobody's ever ready. Nobody in the history of birth has ever been ready.” Then he laughed. That was calming and reassuring—for about two minutes.

Okay, I've got a few minutes, I thought, so I drove back to my house. Let me make sure I have everything I need to be comfortable: some sneakers, whatever. I didn't need anything. I'm just trying to keep myself busy until she comes back. Then I drove back down the street to her house. Then I called Courtney.

“Courtney, I'm leavin',” I told him. “I can't wait. I can't wait. I'M CRAZY! I'm gonna drive myself.”

“No, baby,” Mr. Calm, Cool and Collected instructed me. “Wait for Mattie so you two can get in the carpool lane and get here faster. Everything is okay. We're going to wait for you. We're all just sitting here tellin' jokes.” I guess it wasn't going down like on the Discovery Channel where the water breaks and the vaginal hard labor happens. “Everything's calm and nothing's gonna happen 'til you get here.”

That calmed me down a bit—but could I believe it? Yeah, I kind of believed it—for a minute. Then I called Michael again.