Inconceivable (15 page)

“We do not know them well enough to trust or not trust them,” Sean pointed out. “I want to be very cautious until we know them better, and protecting our privacy seems prudent. I think we’ll be able to draw conclusions as the meeting progresses.”

“Sean, that is ridiculous. We have to tell them our last names. We can keep the kids’ names private.”

“Okay, we will share our last names with them. Maybe I am going too far with the privacy thing,” Sean conceded.

He was still trying to protect us. Sean was assuming that maybe they’d be done with us when they got what they wanted. So why should we reveal more than we had to? I thought he was being paranoid. He thought he was being realistic.

We continued on through the script, each speaking our part. When we discussed the logistics surrounding the delivery, my voice began cracking.

“I don’t know how I’m going to do this. I don’t think I can look at her. How am I going to do that?”

“Try not to look her in the eye. Look at something else. Like her chin.”

This made me laugh. Like I was going to stare at her chin and not see her eyes that would only be a few inches away. “Maybe I’ll stare at her neck. I bet she’ll wear a necklace. I’ll stare at that.”

“Well, just don’t stare at her chest. That would be rude.”

I burst out laughing again. Sean’s quick wit never fails me. Ever.

We went through the outline three times, adding a few things that I had forgotten. That was it. There was nothing else we could do to prepare. I went to bed grateful for Sean’s meticulous preparations. I knew I would be a wreck, but having that thorough outline in my hand would ground me. I slid into bed next to Sean and faced his strong back, his broad shoulders. Together through these three months we had been to frightening places, feeling the kind of bone-shaking fear you wouldn’t wish on anyone. We had cried together more in this short time than we had for the sixteen years of our marriage. And today we were laughing like goofy teenagers.
I love my husband
, I thought.
There is no one else I’d rather have at my side.

C
HAPTER
10

An Anxious Introduction

CAROLYN

“S
EAN, AM
I
SUPPOSED
to extend my hand to Shannon when she enters the room? Or do you think she’ll extend hers first? Oh…wait. We will be in the room already…right. They are bringing them to us? I guess we’ll just stand up and be polite, right?”

We were in the car on our way to meet the genetic family.

“Marty and Mary will lead them in. We will stand and shake their hands.”

“We decided to tell them our last names. Didn’t we?”

“Carolyn. We covered all of this. And if it doesn’t work out the way we planned, I think we’ll improvise just fine. It’s not rocket science.”

Sean was right. I could manage a simple introduction, but then again, there was nothing simple about meeting Shannon and Paul. I still didn’t want to look her in the eye, and I knew my smile would not be genuine. In fact, I don’t think I had ever dreaded an event more in my life. My hands were wringing wet from my mounting anxiety. I wiped my palms on my skirt and straightened my blouse. I had spent a lot of time trying to decide what to wear to this meeting. If I was too professional looking, I might seem standoffish or look like I was trying to come off as aloof. But I didn’t want to look
like a dumpy woman at the mall in an old sweat suit. A skirt and blouse was my middle ground.

Oddly enough, it didn’t really matter what I had on, since I felt as though I was about to appear before them naked. I felt so exposed. We hadn’t even told our families about this, and these strangers would get a front-row seat to our pain and to my physiology. And as irrational as it seemed, I felt like Shannon was coming to the meeting to get part of my body, an intimate part of me, and that both of them were coming to take my baby away.

I had vowed that I would never let them see my sadness, but as Sean and I drove to the Holmes law offices, I was petrified that I wouldn’t be able to control my emotions. I was tired of acting like everything was normal as I went through a world that was teetering and heaving. I didn’t want to hear Shannon talk, see her smile, have to endure her explaining that she knew how we felt. I didn’t want to meet the mother of my baby.

Sean started to pull into the parking garage underneath the law offices.

“Hey, don’t park here!”

“Why? Why wouldn’t I park here?”

“Because. What if they parked next to us? I don’t want to walk to our cars together after the meeting. That would be awkward. Park a few blocks away.”

Sean rolled his eyes at me and turned the car back out into traffic so that he could find a parking spot a few blocks away.

When we signed in at the reception desk, I carefully studied the registration sheet.

“What are you doing?”

“I want to see their signatures.”

“Okay.”

“Looks like only Paul signed in. And it only says ‘Paul.’ I wanted to see their last name.”

We got in the elevator, and I realized I was shaking. I remem
bered Kevin telling us that animals shake uncontrollably when threatened because the shaking allows them to release stress, and that it usually lasts a few hours after the danger passes. I held up my hand to watch it quiver and wondered how many hours it would take for this to stop.

We entered the law firm through the large glass doors, and the receptionist escorted us to a different conference room from where we’d met a few weeks before. We took our places at a large wooden table facing the door that Shannon and Paul would enter.

“Are you okay?” Sean asked as we sat down.

“No. But what does it matter?”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Tie me down because I am repressing an urge to run from the room, out of the building, and into the street. I don’t think I can talk.”

“Remember, you don’t have to. They are going first. I asked for that.”

I looked at Sean, grateful that he had the forethought to ask for that so I could collect myself after they entered. Marty Holmes Sr. and Mary Smith came in to ask us if we had any last questions.

“Have you met them?” I asked Mary.

“Yes. They are very nice. I’m going to go and get them.”

I nodded and sat back down, clenched Sean’s hand, and prayed.

Please, God, help me. Please, God, help me.

It was a simple prayer, but it was all I could manage.

Breathe. Just breathe. Inhale, exhale. Slowly. It’s going to be okay.

When the door opened, Sean and I stood as Mary entered with Paul, Shannon, and their attorney, Ellen. I could hardly feel my legs beneath me. I fixated on Shannon, who was dressed casually in a black sweater with a scoop neck, not at all the woman I had pictured. She was shorter than me, and she had a friendly and very casual demeanor about her. As we all took our seats, I struggled to find a place to look.

Not in her eyes, Carolyn. Not at the floor. Ah…a necklace.

Lo and behold, she wore a silver necklace.

Perfect. I’ll stare at that.

Shannon spoke first, as planned. She talked rapidly, and her hands gestured enthusiastically as she spoke. I confess I wasn’t hanging on her every word. I listened for just a few things. I wanted her to say thank you for saving our baby.
I heard her say she was grateful we’d agreed to continue the pregnancy.
I wanted her to tell me that she understood how awful our predicament was and that she appreciated the choice we made.
I heard her say that it was one thing to say you are pro-life, but another to walk your talk and the fact that we were doing so spoke to our character.
I wanted her to say that she couldn’t imagine how grief-stricken we were, and if there was anything she could do to help to please let her know.
I heard her say how grief-stricken they were to learn that another woman would be pregnant with their baby.

She believed that the mistake must have happened because her maiden name, which she hadn’t legally changed at the time of the last transfer, was Savage and her embryos had been labeled “Savage-Morell.”

“Do you think you and I are related?” she asked Sean, smiling brightly.

I think the last quarter-ounce of blood in Sean’s face drained out then.

“No, I don’t have any relatives in Michigan,” Sean said adamantly, which surprised me. Sean has more than fifty cousins on the Savage side of his family.

“You never know,” I suggested. “You could be distant relatives.”

“Nope,” he insisted vigorously. “We have no family in Michigan. None.”

Shannon explained that she and Paul had tried to start a family immediately after they wed seven years ago. After two miscarriages, they tried IVF in 2006 and got their twins on the first try. One of the other embryos frozen then was the baby I was carrying.

I was overcome with sympathy for the Morells, just as I had
feared I would be. I could hear in her voice how difficult infertility was for them, as it is for everyone. Miscarriages are brutal, and they’d had two. Then I tried to communicate our experience, describing our family and our history of infertility.

“My family lived in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, until I was nine,” I said.

“Oh, we lived there just after we were married,” she said.

We recounted our ten-year struggle to conceive, our complicated history of premature delivery. Shannon was silent through that part of the chronology. I may have frightened her. I think I saw a flash of surprise pass through her eyes when I explained that we had three children, two of whom were nearly teenagers. She was more vocal when we detailed our excellent prenatal care and how we were taking every precaution with this pregnancy. She was an eager and active listener, chiming in when she identified something we had in common. When I named the hospital we would deliver at, Shannon interrupted.

“Do you want your kids to meet the baby?”

That simple question flooded me with emotions. Of course I wanted my kids to meet the baby, but I wanted so much more than that. I wanted my kids to know the baby. I wanted to know the baby. Suddenly I was frightened again. Was she saying that once they had the baby we’d never see them again?

They wouldn’t do that to us. That would be cruel. No, they’ll like us and want to keep us in their lives.

In a flash, my thoughts turned to a scene of my boys and Mary Kate gathering around my hospital bed to marvel at our special delivery. I never imagined that my children would not know this child, but I also knew that we wouldn’t ask Paul and Shannon for visitation rights. We would never invite ourselves into their lives or the life of this child. The future of our relationship with my baby was in their hands, and I was not sure what she was saying. All of these thoughts flew through my mind in a matter of seconds, and
before I knew it my eyes were filled with tears. Sean must have sensed my agony.

“That is so far off in the distance. We just aren’t ready to think about delivery scenarios yet.”

Good. Good job. I can’t talk. I don’t know how to answer that question without crying. Thank you, Sean. Thank you for saving me.

SEAN

Paul sat across the table from me and grimaced regularly. I could tell he was unbelievably uncomfortable. I wondered if he felt bad for us, or if he was so frightened of saying the wrong thing that he said nothing. Sometimes sitting quietly and listening is the right thing to do. Carolyn and I had our outlines clutched tightly in our hands.

The first moment we all bonded was in speaking about the doctor and clinic that had put all of us in this situation. I told them about the doctor’s call to me and driving home to inform Carolyn and the voice-mail messages from him. Although Paul hardly said anything during the meeting, he spoke up then to express the hope that I’d documented those calls. I guess it is up for interpretation what he meant by expressing that, but I believe he hoped that I’d saved the messages the doctor left, or that I’d written down exactly what he said in our conversations, for legal purposes.

We did agree on my number one concern: privacy. I let them know that to date we had told only a few individuals who were bound by privilege, including a priest, a counselor, and attorneys. Before I could finish my thought, Shannon swiftly said, “I agree. How are we going to keep it that way?”

“I’ve thought about this a lot since February 16,” I said, “and I know there is no way that we can keep a pregnancy private.”

“We haven’t told anyone but our lawyer,” Shannon said.

“The day we found out about this we knew that the day would come when we would have to share with those around us what had happened,” I said. “Pregnancy is a public event, and we’re very
involved in our church and the kids’ school and the business community. We are not in a position to hide a pregnancy, nor are we comfortable with that idea.”

“You could just tell everyone that Carolyn was serving as a surrogate for someone else,” Shannon suggested.

I could feel Carolyn tensing up next to me. Anytime one referred to her pregnancy as a surrogacy, it enraged her.

“We are not going to lie about this. We are going to be genuine. We have decided to not terminate the pregnancy and to not fight for custody. After making those two decisions, it would not be consistent of us to start lying about everything else. We will be telling family and friends the truth in the coming weeks once Carolyn is visibly showing the pregnancy, and I am sure it will spread from there. Rest assured that we will keep your identity private forever if that is your request.”

“We hardly told anyone about our IVF,” Shannon said. “And one of the people I did tell was very critical about our choice to use IVF. If you are Catholic, aren’t you worried what people in your church will say?”

“We think our friends and community will look at it differently,” I said. “We think we’re doing the right thing. The fact that the Church doesn’t approve of IVF was something we considered, but in the end we decided it shouldn’t prevent us from expanding our family. Plus, we can’t control our church’s reaction.”