Lake Overturn (19 page)

As he drove, Coop gave Wanda an update on the condition of their uncle. He had never done this before and so it was awkward. “They say he’s diabetic. Not so bad he has to take shots or nothin’, but he’s supposed to cut down on sugar, eat vegetables, whatever. He don’t care, though. Gettin’ a vegetable in him is about as easy as getting a camel up a cattle ramp, so I leave him be.”

Wanda wondered if Coop might try to draw her into her uncle’s care. The thought made her queasy. And when they pulled up in front of the house, with its roof that sagged a little over the porch, her queasiness turned to real apprehension. You need the money, she told herself.

The shades were drawn in the living room. “Frank?” Coop said. “Looks like you got yerself a visitor.”

“I’ll be,” Uncle Frank said.

“It’s Wanda.”

“Well, don’t she look purdy!”

As Wanda’s eyes grew accustomed to the light, she saw her uncle. He sat among a pile of pillows and sofa cushions on the floor, the shape of an enormous egg. He wore a gray sweat suit; his long beard, which spread from his broad neck, was gray, and his face—perhaps from the television glow—looked purple. He held a tall, silver beer can. The air was filled with the intimate musk of orange peels left to rot in the kitchen trash. It occurred to Wanda that the sole purpose of his body now was to create this smell: to strain the alcohol from the beer and send it through veins to the skin, where it was released the way orange oil mists from pores in the rind when you peel it.

“Hi, Uncle Frank.”

“I’ll be. Wander. Haven’t seen ya fer quiter while.”

A sharp bang from the ceiling made Wanda jump.

“Acorns,” explained Coop. “Now, I’m gonna run out on an errand, and Wanda’s gonna chat with ya. I’ll be back shortly.”

Wanda perched on the edge of the recliner, the only seat whose cushions had been left in place. “How you been, Uncle Frank?”

“Cain’t complain. No one’ll listen. Now, watch this.” He tipped his beer can toward the TV screen. It was
The Price Is Right
. A woman guessed the prices of household products, and Bob Barker pressed buttons beside them, causing a sign to flip open and reveal how far off her guess was. “Well, ain’t you stupid! Everybody knows big thinger Windex coss more’n a dollar. Swear, I watch this show thinkin’ I oughta go on there. Win a hunnerd bucks and a sailboat. Whud I do with that, though? The sailboat. Well, ain’t you just stupid!” Uncle Frank sipped his beer. He had the same dismayed smile affixed to his face as Coop often did, his eyes had the same squint, but there was no light left there even as he laughed at the woman’s guesses.

Periodically, a loud crack would come from above, followed by a rattle as the acorn rolled down the roof. Wanda was relieved that Frank didn’t want to chat. The last time she had been stuck in this room with him, a couple of years back, he had asked after her brothers and sisters, oldest to youngest. When he came to Louis, she had said, “Louis is dead, Uncle Frank. He died years ago.” That smile had stayed on his face, but his eyes had squeezed, and his head had turned back toward the television. “Guess I knew that,” he had said.

Frank seemed to find
The Price Is Right
endlessly exasperating. When a man failed to spin the Big Wheel all the way around, Frank’s bullfrog voice cracked like an adolescent’s: “Aw, come on! Ya gotta do it hard!” Wanda leaned forward, her chin parked on the heel of one hand, her fingers cupped to shield her eyes from the sight of her uncle. The way his shoulders shrugged when he suppressed a burp nauseated her.

Finally Coop returned. “Mormon missionaries!” he called from the porch. “Anybody home?”

Frank made a rattling laugh.

“Well, Uncle Frank,” Wanda said, standing, “you take care. I’ll come see ya again real soon, okay?”

“I’ll be right here,” Frank said.

“Thanks for that,” Coop said simply as he drove her home. He parked in front of her house and gave her the money.

“You won’t regret this, Coop. I’m gonna do good.”

“All right, little sister.”

Coop kissed Wanda on the cheek, then glanced at his watch as she got out. Two o’clock. Time to head back to school. He’d have to pay Gina tomorrow.

T
HAT NIGHT, LINA
came in and lay next to Enrique on top of the covers. They still spent these minutes together before bedtime, but they no longer spoke Spanish. Lina was aware that, in this, Enrique had obeyed Jay.

“Mom,” Enrique said, “has that guy ever tried to kiss you again?” Enrique had put Mr. Hall’s gift in his closet without showing his mother.

“Oh. No.”

“ ’Cause I was thinking about it, and I think it’s okay. I mean you shouldn’t
not
kiss someone just because he’s married.”

This was a lie, and Enrique said it just to test his hypothesis of what his mother would say. Mr. Hall was a subject Enrique couldn’t help picking at, like a scab.

“Enrique, are you joking?” (She pronounced “joking”
choking
.) “Of course I shouldn’t.”

“I don’t know,” Enrique said.

Lina was quiet for a while. What did Enrique suspect? “Don’ start changing your mind just because you’re growing up,
mijo
. Right is right and wrong is wrong.”

“I don’t know, though. It’s not always so simple.”

“Who tol’ you that? Jay?”

“It’s like you said, you’re lonely.” Enrique felt tears rise as he said this. He had pushed the act too far and upset himself. And his hypothesis had been incorrect.

“Don’ be mean,” Lina said.

“I’m not being mean, Mama! I would never be mean!” He threw his arms around her. The sentiment was real, even if it had ridden in on a lie. “I just want you to be happy.”

“Arright, baby, now go to sleep.” Lina kissed him. To put a word to this hesitancy she felt toward her son—mistrust—would have broken her heart.

Once she was gone, Enrique allowed himself to rewrite the episode. He had been encouraging her to be free, to find happiness. He had sacrificed his own moral code for her. How could she accuse him of being mean? He was indignant.

Of course, Enrique still only imagined that it had been one kiss. His mental image was his mother, in an apron and yellow rubber gloves, caught in Blake Carrington’s arms upon turning from her task. Her eyes bulged in shock as the man’s mouth mashed against hers.

The next afternoon, as Lina lay in the arms of the real Chuck—bald Chuck with black moles like currants in his soft, dough-colored shoulder—Lina said, “Enrique suspects something.”

Step Three:
Hypothesis

Chapter 10

W
ith trembling hands, Wanda flipped through an issue of
Parenting
magazine. It was all ads. That was okay, though, as she wouldn’t have been able to concentrate on an article anyway. Then Helen rushed in and sat right next to her.

“Are you nervous?”

Helen
made
Wanda nervous. She tended to sit too close to Wanda and to look too directly into her eyes. And if Wanda looked away, Helen repositioned herself, chasing her gaze around the room.

“Yeah, a little,” said Wanda.

“Well, take a few deep breaths through the nose. Exhale through the mouth. There’s nothing to fear. These are very nice people. You couldn’t ask for better, really—highly intelligent, both of them.”

Few things Helen could have said would have put Wanda
less
at ease. Intelligent people had never liked her. And only now was Wanda able to put her finger on what was wrong with Helen: she talked like a man. Not that her voice was low-pitched (it wasn’t), and she didn’t look like a man—she would have been pretty if not for a small, reptilian nose whose open nostrils exposed, in profile, a wet septum—but her sentences, in their precision and power, were like a man’s. Wanda would have wondered if Helen was a lesbian if she hadn’t already made references to her husband and daughter, and if this strange behavior didn’t seem to be a widespread problem. Many of the women Wanda had met at the agency, and in Portland in general, spoke this way. It was jarring, when you were used to the sugary chirp of Eula women.

“All right, should we go in?”

Wanda nodded.

Helen led Wanda by the hand into her office. “Randy, Melissa, this is Wanda.”

The couple stood to shake Wanda’s hand. Randy was bald on top, had a beard that was thinner on his cheeks than on his chin, and wore thick glasses that made his eyes look small and far away. A band that had been cinched tight around the back of his head held the glasses in place. A happy gasp caught Melissa, who was a full head shorter than Wanda, and she took back her hand to cover her small, heart-shaped mouth. “I don’t know why I’m crying,” she said. “I never cry.”

Randy put his arm around her. “This process has been very emotional for Melissa,” he said.

“For both of us,” said Melissa.

Randy nodded and kissed the top of her head.

“Let’s all sit down,” said Helen.

Wanda gave Melissa a reassuring smile as they obeyed.

“This is just an introductory meeting,” said Helen. “We’ve read each other’s profiles, we’ve seen Wanda’s test results. At this stage in the game we like to have a brief face-to-face. There’s a lot to take in, so we keep it short. Of course, things are a little different since Wanda lives so far away. Wanda, I’ve made it clear to Randy and Melissa that you might be meeting with one or two other couples during your visit. So, like I said, just a brief meeting to put a face to the numbers. Okay?”

Everyone nodded and smiled at each other.

“Wanda, I think Randy and Melissa have a few questions they’d like to ask.”

Wanda crossed her legs and turned toward the couple, like a guest on
Donahue
.

Randy said, “Well, Wanda, your profile said that you grew up on a farm?”

“Uh-huh. My dad was a farmer and my mom was a housewife. They died not too long ago—”

“In a car accident,” said Melissa. “I was so sorry to read that.”

“Thanks. But, yeah, we were farmers. I’ve lived in Eula all my life. Now I work at the K-mart.”

“And do they know that you’re doing this? That you’ll have to take some time off down the road?” Melissa asked.

“Oh, yeah. I’ve worked there a long time. They’re behind me on this.”

Randy inhaled, then paused, then said, “What makes you want to do this, Wanda? I mean, it’s such an odd situation”—he cast a sheepish glance at Helen, who had folded her arms and leaned her chair against the wall, as if she could melt into it—“and it makes perfect sense from our end, but, from yours . . .” His sentence trailed off, and his tiny eyes blinked.

“Well,” said Wanda, “I’m thirty-one years old. I had a boyfriend Hank all through my twenties, and he was a good man. We talked about gettin’ married and havin’ kids, but we were just so busy, me at K-mart and Hank with his career, and pretty soon he got so high up that his company had to move him. He asked me to come with him, to Washington, DC, but I just couldn’t, you know? Eula’s always been my home. I have a sick uncle I take care of. Plus, I just knew Hank would never settle down and make a real family with me. So I broke it off. And now here I am at thirty-one, healthy and ready to bear kids. And I don’t have a man, and I don’t want a man. But I do want to experience pregnancy, to do that with my body. My body wants it. It’s in my genes; women in my family have always had children. But, you know, I can’t afford a kid, and I don’t want to be a single mother. So I figured I’d do what the Bible says and give to the poor. Not that you two are poor, of course, but you need help. My friend Sarah gave her kidney to her brother. He died anyway, but that’s not the point. I see this as a way of giving to the needy, even though I don’t have nothin’ to give. Does that make sense?”

Melissa glowed. “It makes perfect sense. It’s the only reason anyone would ever do this, I think.”

“Wanda,” said Helen, “do you have anything you’d like to ask Melissa and Randy?”

“Um, sure. What do you do?”

“Well,” Melissa said, “I’m an architect, and Randy owns a bike shop.”

“We do a lot of cycling,” Randy added.

“Wait,
you’re
an architect?” Wanda asked.

“Yes.”

“I never heard of a girl architect,” Wanda said.

“Well,” Melissa sang airily, repositioning herself in the chair, “there aren’t too many of us around.”

Randy chimed in, “They always said, a woman’s place is in the home.”

Helen guffawed. This was the first thing the couple did that felt canned; Wanda could tell they had said this a thousand times.

After a short pause, Wanda said, “Do you live here in Portland?”

“Pretty much,” Randy said. “Out in the gorge.”

“And do your parents live here?”

“Melissa’s recently moved to Arizona.”

Wanda continued asking them unobtrusive questions, and her mind wandered a bit during their answers. She had known what type of people they were since she laid eyes on them: They exercised regularly and watched very little TV. They used dental floss and voted in every election. There were people like them in Boise.

Nearly everything Wanda had said so far in this meeting had been a lie. She had told herself two weeks ago, before her first meeting with Helen, that she would lie about the drugs and that would be all. But then there had been questions about her parents on the form, and she knew that they’d never accept her unless she changed her family history a little. And once you change your family history, you change everything.

So, in this meeting, she was forced to tell those first lies, and after that she had had to keep going. A true answer would have sounded like a lie. Even when Randy had asked her why she wanted to be a surrogate, she had to lie—because she couldn’t remember. She had known once, back before she had been asked to put it into words, but ever since that conversation with Coop on his porch, she had been quoting the women on
Donahue
. Once she was pregnant and everyone left her alone, the reasons would return to her. Until then, ten thousand dollars would be her reason.

“I hate to interrupt,” said Helen. “I know you all have a million questions for each other, but, like I said, we try to keep these initial meetings short.” She stood, and so did the others. “Melissa, Randy, have a seat for a minute. I’ll be back to wrap things up.”

Helen led Wanda back to the side lounge and sat down with her. “You all right, kiddo?”

“That was easy,” Wanda said.

“No reason it shouldn’t be. You did great. Now just sit tight for a few minutes, okay?” Helen disappeared back into the office.

Wanda picked up another magazine. Was there another couple for her to meet? Helen hadn’t been clear about this part of the process. How many interviews would she go through, and, at the end, would she choose them, or would they choose her? After a few minutes, Helen came back into the room and plopped down with a satisfied sigh. She leaned toward Wanda and grinned. The grin implied that there was something Wanda should be expecting, hoping for—something about which she should feel in suspense.

“Did you like them?” Helen asked.

“Yeah.”

Helen clapped her hands together and fell back in the couch. “I had a good feeling about this from the start. Somehow I knew.” Then she leaned forward again and said, “They want to have you over for dinner, Wanda. Would you like to have dinner at their house?”

“When?”

“Well, you leave tomorrow, don’t you? So it’ll have to be tonight.”

“What about the other couples?” Wanda asked, a little disappointed that she wouldn’t get to order room service, as she had last night.

“Think of them as backups. You like the Weston-Sloanes, right?”

“The what?”

“Randy and Melissa. The Weston-Sloanes. Do you feel comfortable going forward with them? You can say no.”

“I like them. They like me?”

“Enough to have you over for dinner and get to know you better. This is a very good sign, Wanda.”

“And they don’t mind that I live all the way in Eula?”

“Like I told you that first day, Wanda, that’s going to work in your favor. Everyone wants a farm girl to carry their baby. They’re a little concerned that you’ve never been pregnant before, that you’ve never carried a baby to term, but you can’t have everything, can you?”

“Well, then,” Wanda said, “I’ll go over.”

“
God
, I love my job,” Helen said, with a force that startled Wanda. “I’m sorry, but this is the part that really excites me, when there’s chemistry between a couple and a surrogate.
You
can help them make a family, Wanda. You have that power.” Helen squeezed Wanda’s shoulder and went back into the office.

T
HAT EVENING
C
ONNIE
took Bill Howard to Payette, a half-hour drive from Eula, to give his presentation to a board of deacons. The pastor of Payette Nazarene, Bill had explained to Connie as she drove, had approached Bill about giving a short talk during the Sunday morning service. The church would take a special collection for the mission, and this required the approval of the board of deacons. Hence, this presentation.

Connie remembered this sort of thing being presented to the board when she served as a deaconess. Still, by being Bill’s guide, she was learning new things about how churches worked. The group at Melba Nazarene had made a collection after she and Bill had left, and someone had delivered a check to the parsonage the following day. It seemed this was the way large groups in small churches operated. Bill had been very encouraged by Melba Nazarene’s generosity. Connie’s group, the Dorcases, had left it to its members to quietly slip Bill a check after his talk. She wondered which method the smaller groups she and Bill were scheduled to visit would use, and she worried that they would shame the Dorcases by being more generous. Then she remembered Christ’s words of the woman who put a penny in the offering: “This poor widow hath cast more in than all they which have cast into the treasury: For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had.” Bill would never judge one group harshly for having given less than another.

And so, here they were on a Friday evening, Bill giving his talk and Connie at the back of the room, listening to it for the third time. She loved it. She especially loved hearing the improvements he made each time. It seemed he was gradually realizing that people were interested not only in the fact of his work but the details of it, and he allowed himself to use the children’s names and tell quick anecdotes about them. Connie would tell him, on the way home, just how well this worked. She had arrived at a decision during her evening prayer a few nights previous that it was her role not only to drive him around but to encourage him.

She sat in the back, quietly waiting for him to come to the slide that she had put right, hoping that he would pause, just for a second, and realize what she had done for him.

“And this is me with some of the children,” he said at last. Then he looked up to the screen, and—he did!—he paused before he went on.

After Bill’s talk, the deacons showered him with questions. It was clear that they were fascinated with his work.

“That went well,” said Connie, once they were driving back to Eula.

“Yes, it did.”

“Will you be showing slides Sunday morning, or just giving a talk?”

“I’m not sure. The pastor said he would leave me a message after the meeting lets out.”

“I see,” said Connie. She wanted to ask if she could accompany him Sunday morning, if he would need help finding the church again, but she worried that this would sound overeager.

“Connie?” said Bill.

“Yes?”

“Did you fix that slide that was upside-down?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

They were quiet for a long time. Wasn’t he going to thank her? He cracked his knuckles and gazed out the window. Maybe he disliked that she had taken care of this. Maybe it embarrassed him. Gene sometimes tore his coat out of Connie’s hands when she was helping him put it on; maybe Bill was feeling a grown-up version of this rebellion. The idea that she could have made a mistake so early in her position of assisting him made her throat seize a little in panic.

They were coming into Eula now.

“I’m a little embarrassed,” Bill said, chuckling affably. He turned to her. His eyes were brown and close-set, and Connie could see from the lift in his brow that he was, indeed, embarrassed. Vulnerable. “See, Connie, you’ve found me out. There’s a bit of the performer in me. That first night when I was speaking to your group, the slide was upside-down. You all laughed, and it kind of broke the ice, so I figured I would leave it that way.”

“Oh,” Connie said.