You Were Meant For Me (9 page)

“Meeting some people in Chelsea,” he said, taking the last swig of his beer.

“I'm having a little thing at my place. Feel free to drop by,” she said. “Your friends too. There'll be plenty to eat and drink.”

“Thanks.” He pressed the cool bottle to his heated cheek. The air-conditioning had not been turned on, and the place felt stuffy. “Maybe I will,” he said, knowing full well he wouldn't. No need to agitate that elephant. And then, to change the subject, he asked, “How's it going with Diego and Tiffany?”

“Tiffany is terrific; great choice. But Diego . . .” She had put her lipstick away and was signing the bill.

“What's going on?”

“Let's just say he has an attitude problem.”

Jared thought about Diego, a handsome kid with black hair that was slicked back from his full, baby face and surprisingly light, hazel eyes. Those features could be door openers—
if he bothered to try. Jared had seen the sullen looks, the slipshod work. Seen and tried to rationalize. “I'll talk to him, okay?”

“That would be a good idea,” she said. “If he's going to stick around, he really needs to get with the program.”

Outside, Jared said good-bye to Athena and hailed a taxi. The late-afternoon light was still rich and warm, but now he was eager to get home. He'd shower and rinse the disappointing day from his skin, and have a snack before heading out again. On the way up, he gathered his mail and took the elevator to the tenth floor. The apartment, tended to by his longtime housekeeper, was spotless. He left the mail on the table and did not look at it again until he was seated with a glass of cabernet, a wedge of Brie, and a handful of crackers in front of him.

Flipping through the new
Metro
magazine that was in the pile, he turned first to “Souls of a City,” that column written by Geneva Bales; it was his favorite part of the magazine. Once, she profiled a woman who had designed the costumes for Arthur Mitchell's fledgling Dance Theatre of Harlem back in the 1970s; another time, she'd focused on a contemporary female rapper she'd discovered at an uptown club. This week's column was called “You Were Meant for Me,” and it featured a white woman who'd found a black baby abandoned in a subway station and had decided to adopt her. Jared ate as he read the story. Then he checked out the photos. In one, the woman was shown holding the baby in front of the Park Slope house where she lived. The other was a close-up of the baby herself, her dark eyes wide for the camera, her expression unexpectedly serious. The caption said the baby had been found wrapped in a white towel and a blanket from the Cosmo Hotel.

Jared lit a cigarette. He knew the Cosmo quite well. It was in SoHo; he and Carrie used to party at the hotel's posh rooftop bar and sometimes they'd even stayed over. They'd had some wild nights there.
Wild.
But that was before Carrie had gone off the deep end and he'd tried to break it off, before all the screaming and raging, the accusations that he was screwing around. When she had seen these tactics weren't working, she'd switched gears: She was going blind. She had cancer. AIDS. Cancer
and
AIDS. She would kill herself without him. She would kill
him
. Jared grew weary of the threats, the scenes. It wasn't that he didn't love her. But she was too much for him and he wanted out.

The Cosmo was actually where he had last seen her. It was early on a summer evening, before the crowds descended, and he'd gotten them a discreetly situated booth in the almost empty bar. Her dress, he remembered, had been made of some iridescent blue-black material; it shimmered when she leaned forward to pick up her drink or to reach out to touch his face. In his innocence—read: stupidity—he had thought that meeting in a public place would prevent an outburst. Wrong, wrong,
wrong
. But he'd never imagined that he would be the one to hurl the opening salvo. When he'd told her that this was the very last time, that they were over, finished, done, she'd gone very still for several seconds.

“Why?” she finally asked.

“I think you know,” he said.

“Because I'm crazy, right?” She fumbled in her purse for a cigarette, which she held, unlit, in her trembling hand.

“Not crazy, not exactly, but—”

“Delusional. Paranoid. Manic. I know all the code words.”

“Carrie, I—”

“Don't bother,” she said. “I've heard it all before. I know what you think, what everyone thinks—my family, my shrink. You're no different.”

“What about your family? Can't they help?” He was curious; he knew she came from somewhere in North Carolina and that her family had some money. But that was all; she would not reveal details, and when he tried to press, she'd put him off.

“Never mind about them. It's you that I care about. You, me—and the baby.”

“Baby?” he said. The glass of wine he was drinking tasted like poison. She couldn't be telling the truth.

“Yes,” she said, with a small, triumphant smile. “Baby. Yours and mine. She'll be so beautiful, with skin like café au lait and—”

“God
damn
it!” He stood and pushed the table away so sharply that his glass fell on its side, rolled to the floor, and shattered. Wine puddled around his feet. “You will not do this to me. You will
not
.”

“Jared? Aren't you happy?” She blinked rapidly, but the tears were gathering and falling anyway. “I'm happy. So happy! We'll be a family. Don't you see? A real family.”

“I don't believe you,” he said flatly. “It's just another one of your tricks. And it won't work.”

The waiter came hurrying over. “Is everything all right?” he asked.

“Don't ask me,” Jared spat. “Ask
her
.” Furious, he tossed some bills on the table and marched out.

She began stalking him after that—calls, texts, and e-mail. Once she'd left a rubber doll in a box by his office door; she'd taken a Sharpie and drawn fat, black tears on the doll's face.
Luckily, he'd found and disposed of the whole mess before Athena saw it. He was torn about what to do: confront her again, call the police, or seek some kind of help for her. And then it stopped. Just like that. No more calls, no more texts, no more dolls. Relief overcame worry; he was just so grateful that she was out of his life.

Months went by, months in which he tried not to think about her. To worry about her. In late March, a detective from a precinct in Brooklyn came to see him at home. A female corpse had turned up on a beach in Coney Island; the corpse was barefoot but wearing an oversized purple coat. In the pocket of that coat, sealed in a ziplock bag and reinforced by duct tape, was a piece of paper that read:
Call Jared.
His phone number was underneath.

Jared had to make a trip to the morgue to identify her, a horrible moment he'd never, ever forget. Then he'd been interviewed by the detective; he was in too great a state of shock to understand that the police thought he might have had something to do with Carrie's death. It was only later, hours after he'd gotten home, that he realized he'd been under suspicion, even briefly.

But Carrie's death was not the sole reason for Jared's stunned condition during the questioning. The medical examiner had said there were indications that she might have recently given birth; she had been in the water for some time, so it was impossible to say for sure. But Jared knew. Knew and was devastated. She
had
been telling the truth that last night—she had. The baby, whose body had never washed up, had no doubt drowned with her. And it was his fault.

He thought about trying to contact her family, though he knew almost nothing about them—but to what end?
Hey, I got
your daughter/sister/niece pregnant, but I broke up with her and she
drowned.
No, he could not imagine a conversation like that. What good would it do, anyway? Caroline was gone, along with any baby she'd had. His mourning and his guilt? Those were private, not to be shared with—or expiated by—anyone else.

But now, staring at the magazine, he had to wonder. What if somehow the baby—
his
baby?—had not gone into the water with Carrie, but survived and somehow turned up in the subway station?
What if?
The thought was like a slap: sharp, startling, and once the shock had passed, galvanic. He ground out the cigarette and went into the small bedroom he used as a home office. After a few minutes of digging around on the top shelf of a closet, he found it—the scrapbook his mother had assembled, an encyclopedic and doting record of his earliest days. Here was the wristband he'd worn in the hospital, his baptismal certificate, and a list of every baby gift he'd received. And here was the photograph, with his own wide-eyed face staring out of the border. Jared looked from the photo in the scrapbook to the photo in the magazine and back again.
Was
he seeing what he thought he was seeing? Because in these two faces—dark, unsmiling, and separated by about three and a half decades—he could have sworn there was a resemblance.

He looked down at the bottom of the article.
Comments? Questions?
Contact me at [email protected]
Comments? He had a few of those. Questions too. Carrying the magazine in one hand, Jared went over to his laptop, sat down, and immediately began to type.

After the first couple of sentences, the words stopped. What was he doing, anyway? If this baby was his . . . then what? Was he prepared to claim her, to raise her? He never
thought about having kids other than in that general maybe-if-I-met-the-right-girl sort of way. And the girls—women—he went for didn't seem to be the marrying, baby-raising kind. He sat there for a few minutes; the minutes stretched into something closer to an hour. Then he looked at the photographs again. The faces still looked the same—at least to him. He put his fingers back on the keypad. Whatever happened, whatever came of it, he simply had to
know.

E
van Zuckerbrot maneuvered his shopping cart through the crowded aisles at Fairway. He saw Audrey a few feet ahead, palpating the melons for ripeness.
Tap, tap, tap,
went her busy fingers.
Tap, tap, tap.
“Found a good one,” she said when he had caught up. “Catch.” She raised the heavy, round fruit as if to lob it in his direction.

“You wouldn't,” he said, immediately bringing his hands to his face. He felt like he'd spent his whole childhood in this defensive posture; he hated sports and viewed any oncoming balls as threats, not competitive opportunities.

“I would if you could actually
catch
it instead of cringing. You're a wuss, Evan.” But she was smiling as she gently lowered the melon into his cart. “Now we should get some prosciutto.”

“Whatever you say.” Evan had planned a picnic with Miranda for the next day, and Audrey, his oldest and closest friend, was helping him put the whole thing together.

“Yeah, if she's a foodie, she'll be into the melon and prosciutto thing. We just have to clean and slice it beforehand, that's all.” She started walking toward the deli counter and Evan dutifully followed. He wanted this picnic to go well. No, he wanted it to be
perfect
. Since their initial meeting at the coffee shop, he and Miranda had gone on three dates. Well, the first of these was not even a real date; he'd just accompanied her to the opening of a ridiculously twee popcorn shop—wasabi-laced popcorn, cinnamon-and-cardamom-dusted popcorn—on Van Brunt Street because it was minutes from where he lived in Red Hook. The second had more substance to it. They had gone to the Museum of Modern Art and he'd led her through the photography gallery, spending a long time in front of his favorites—Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand—explaining what it was he saw in those pictures, why they moved him. She'd seemed engaged and her reaction made him hopeful. The third, when they had gone to the movies, was the best of all; that was the night he'd first kissed her.

But all that was before her new daughter had arrived. Celeste. Now that she was here, Miranda did not want to leave her any more than she had to. So Evan suggested this picnic in Prospect Park as a way for them to all spend time together. He knew that most guys wouldn't have been too thrilled to have a baby tag along on a date. But Evan had a soft spot for babies.

Audrey was considering the prosciutto selections at the deli counter now. “Imported costs about three times as much as domestic. But the imported is way better.”

“She'll be able to taste the difference, won't she?” asked Evan. When Audrey nodded, he added, “Imported, then. Definitely imported.”

“Next up: bread,” said Audrey.

Evan hurried to keep up. That was so Audrey: she had a plan and she stuck to it. Just like always.

*   *   *

Audrey
Zelkowitz had had the seat next to Evan Zuckerbrot in homeroom on the first day of high school; she'd kept that same seat all four years. Four years in which they had been best friends, confidants, soul mates—and for one brief night, lovers. It had happened after the prom. They had gone together, of course, and they had been deconstructing the evening in the apartment—conveniently empty at the time—that her parents had built over the garage. Splayed out on the double bed with a bottle of vodka and a box of Entenmann's chocolate-frosted doughnuts, they talked and talked. Then had come a lull in the conversation. This had not bothered Evan; he and Audrey could be quiet together too. But when she turned to him and said, “Well, I guess we should do it,” he had to wonder whether he had missed some essential link in the conversation.

“What are you talking about?” She did not answer, but stood up and began to unzip the tight, electric blue dress she wore. “You're kidding, right?” Evan knew that she—like him—was a virgin. “Or you're drunk.” They had been sharing the vodka, and maybe she was more looped than he knew.

“No to both, actually.” The dress was off now; she stood before him in her strapless white bra and white panties, her strong, athletic body—she swam, played basketball, softball, and ran track—looking both unfamiliar and unbelievably exciting.

“But, Audrey, this isn't us.” Confusion and lust were arm wrestling in his brain, making it pound. And the boner
pressing against the front of his rented tux pants wasn't making things any easier. “Is it?”

“It could be,” she said, coming closer to him now. “It should be. I mean, you're my friend, Evan. My best friend. I love you and I trust you. And I don't want to go to college a virgin—do you?” He shook his head. “So why not . . . initiate each other?” She reached over and slid her arms around his neck. “Come on. It'll be good. I promise.”

Evan needed no further coaxing. She was right. He didn't want to go off to college a virgin, and here she was, all smooth, sturdy limbs, ponytail unloosening and spilling glossy brown hair down around her shoulders. . . . But she had been wrong. It wasn't good. Not for him, not for her. It had been awkward, lonely, and kind of sad. He'd rolled away afterward, for once not having a thing in the world to say to her. She was crying and trying to hide it; he could tell by the small, snuffling sounds she made.

“I have to tell you something,” she said, finally breaking the silence.

“What is it?” He propped himself on his elbow so he could look at her.

“I like girls.”

“Well, duh.
You're
a girl.”

“No, you don't get it. I like girls
that
way. I'm a . . . lesbian.” She began to gather her hair back into its ponytail. “I knew I was before we . . . before we did it, but I wasn't a hundred percent sure, and I thought that if it was okay between us, then maybe I was wrong.” Her voice clotted with tears. “That's why it wasn't any good. I'm sorry. I used you. Can you ever forgive me?” She began to cry in earnest, noisy sobs, and she pressed her face into her hands to muffle them.

Evan took her into his arms. A lesbian! So that was it. There was nothing wrong with him. Nothing wrong with her either. They were just wrong for each other. He was so relieved he wanted to laugh. Or sing. “Hey,” he said, squeezing her tight. “No biggie, okay?”

“You mean you're not mad?” She lifted her wet face to stare at him.

“Nope.”

“And we're still friends?”

“Best friends,” he said seriously. “Best friends forever.”

*   *   *

In
addition to the melon and prosciutto, Audrey steered him toward a baguette, two kinds of cheese, cherries, and some tiny little cookies that were covered in powdered sugar as well as bottled water and some fancy paper napkins and plates. Then she helped him lug everything back to his place. “Text me to let me know how it went,” she said. “And let me know if she says anything about the prosciutto.” These days, Audrey's light brown hair was shorn down in a buzz cut, and her strong limbs had been embellished by the addition of several memorable tattoos. But she was still the Audrey he knew and loved; he gave her a bear hug and kissed her on both cheeks before they said good-bye.

The next day, Date Day, dawned perfectly blue and cloudless. Evan loaded up his car and drove to Park Slope to pick up Miranda and Celeste. He found them waiting downstairs by the curb, Miranda in a snugly fitting sundress with ladybugs all over it and a straw hat, and Celeste, strapped into a car seat, wearing a one-piece romper, pointing and flexing her bare toes in the air. “You look great,” he said, allowing his gaze to roam over Miranda's creamy shoulders and lush body. He
loved that she wasn't one of those skinny, breakable-looking women, all clavicles and jutting hip bones. No, she was as full and ripe as a peach. What was the name of the magazine she worked for?
Domestic Goddess
? It could have been coined for her.

He strapped the seat into the car and they took off for the park. Not that they couldn't have walked, but there was so much stuff to deal with—food, blanket, two diaper bags, stroller—that he thought it might be easier to drive. In keeping with the charmed spirit of the day, he found parking immediately, and they set out looking for a spot where they might spread out. As they walked, Evan imagined how they must look: a man, a woman, and a baby equaled a family in most people's eyes. But it was obvious that Celeste was not his child, or Miranda's either. Her dark skin set her apart, a distinct and different genetic code visible to the world. Well, they would think she was adopted, that's all. The reasons why could be many and varied; no one would guess the real truth.

*   *   *

It
had been more than two years ago, when they'd both turned thirty-five, that Audrey had come over with a bottle of seriously good Scotch and made him a proposition. “I want a baby, Evan,” she said. “And I want you to be the sperm donor.” She took a long swig of her drink and waited.

“Whoa,” he said. “That's some bomb you just detonated, you know. How am I supposed to feel about this?”

“That's what I want to find out,” she said, nudging the glass she'd poured him in his direction. They'd spent the next two hours parsing the situation from every possible angle. She was getting older, with that damn biological clock ticking louder and louder in her head. Yes, she would have rather had
a partner, but she'd just broken up with her last girlfriend and she was afraid she'd miss her chance if she didn't act now. As for going to some anonymous donor, why do that when she had him in her life? “You're like family to me, Ev,” she said. “I'd be so thrilled if you'd be my baby's father.”

“Donor is not the same as father,” he pointed out. “And I do want to be someone's father—at least someday.”

“This wouldn't mean that you couldn't. This is an
added to
, not an
instead of
. And you could be as involved in his or her life as you wanted. I'd leave that up to you.”

In the end, he'd agreed, and when he asked how she wanted to handle the mechanics, she gave him the name of a clinic where he'd need to go once a month. The whole thing had been weird and a little distasteful—heading to the men's room with a stack of magazines and a collection jar, sheepishly bringing the sample up front, looking out at the sea of other guys in the waiting room, hanging out until it was their turn. This went on for nearly a year, a year in which Audrey did not become pregnant.

Finally, she went for an examination by a highly regarded Park Avenue specialist; he went along with her. When the exam was over, she walked into the waiting room and sat down next to him. Her expression was grim. “Are you all right?” he'd asked. Maybe there was something seriously wrong with her; maybe she was going to
die.

“I'm fine,” she said. “Totally fine. Everything is in good working order—great, in fact.”

“So then why can't you . . . ?” He trailed off as the humiliating implication became clear. “It's me, right?
I'm
the problem.” He felt a slow burn creeping up from his neck to his face.

“Oh, Ev,” she said, and her eyes filled. “I'm so sorry. The doctor suggested that you have some tests to find out what's wrong.” She leaned over to hug him, but he went rigid. Audrey was his best and oldest friend, but at the moment, he wanted to punch her. To think that he had been getting it up, month after month, to help her out and to learn that all this time, he'd been shooting nothing but blanks.

“It's not your fault,” he said stiffly. “But if you don't mind, I'm going to leave now. I need to deal with this on my own.” He had gotten totally shit-faced that night; he was so drunk he had no idea how he'd managed to get home. When he woke in the morning—the daylight stabbing his eyeballs, the sound of the water running in the kitchen a deafening roar—she was there, bringing him a cool compress, a glass of freshly squeezed OJ, and a couple of extra-strength Tylenol.

“Hey,” she said. “How are you?”

“Terrible,” he croaked in return. He accepted the juice and gel caps; the compress was soothing on his forehead. “How did you get in anyway?”

“I have your keys, remember? Or did all the booze kill the brain cells where that information was stored?”

It took a while, but they did get over it and were even able to laugh about it. Audrey met someone and fell in love; her new partner had three kids of her own and was not eager for more, so Audrey had not pressed it.

Evan had taken her advice and submitted himself to a battery of tests: semen analysis, scrotal ultrasound, transrectal ultrasound, postejaculation urinalysis along with hormonal and genetic screenings. He'd drawn the line at the testicular biopsy, but what the doctor had found was damning enough even without it.

“Some men have abnormalities in the morphology; that is the shape of their sperm. Others have it with the motility.” He sighed and Evan braced himself. “In your case, there are significant issues with both.”

“Kind of like a double whammy?” Evan had said.

“Kind of,” the doctor agreed. “And to compound the problem, you also have an unusually low sperm count.”

Evan just nodded. “I guess the chances of my having a kid of my own are not too great.”

“When you're ready, you can start to explore other options,” the doctor said, not unkindly.

“Such as?”

“Donor sperm. Or adoption.”

Evan gathered up all the information the doctor had given him—leaflets and printouts, a big fat study about the issue—and left the office. He'd never thought seriously about fathering kids until he found out he couldn't. The knowledge brought with it shame and a weird, twisty kind of despair he had never felt before. His biological stock had just seriously plummeted; who would want him now? He came to a garbage can on a street corner, where he deposited everything the doctor had given him. He never revealed what he'd found out about himself; apart from Audrey and the two doctors who'd examined them, no one else knew.