The Mother-in-Law(71)

“Why don’t we go into the dining room to get away from little ears?” I suggest. “And I’ll tell you what’s going on with Diana.”

As I clear the clutter from the dining room table, I notice Nettie giving Patrick a look—somewhere between a smile and a wince. I feel a little dance inside. She’s pregnant, I realize. She must be pregnant.

“So . . . do you guys have anything to tell us?” I ask, when we’re all sitting. Nettie’s smile indicates that she does, but she shakes her head.

“No, no, you first. Tell us about Mum.”

“Okay,” I say. “Actually I dropped in to visit her today.”

There’s a short, loaded silence. Even Patrick stares at me like I have two heads. “You dropped in to visit Mum?” Ollie says.

Admittedly it is not the kind of thing I usually do. Still I’m taken aback by everyone’s level of shock.

“Well . . . we’ve hardly seen her since Tom died, we’ve barely even heard from her. I was worried! And it turns out, I was right to be. She looks like she’s been sleeping in her clothes, not eating properly. I took her to the doctor, just to get her looked at.”

Ollie puts down his beer. “What did the doctor say?”

“She’s had some blood tests, but she’s most likely depressed. She was given a prescription for antidepressants. The doctor also recommended exercise and keeping some sort of routine. And I thought we could all take turns taking her out, bringing her food, that kind of thing.”

“Good idea,” Ollie says.

“Sure,” Nettie says. “Yes, why not.”

But Nettie seems distracted. Jittery. Her eyes bounce around the room the way the kids’ eyes do when they arrive at someone’s house for a playdate and they can’t decide which toy to play with first. It’s distracting.

“Is everything all right, Nettie?”

“Well, actually . . . Patrick and I do have something we’d like to discuss with you.” She beams at Patrick, who smiles back a little less enthusiastically.

“You’re pregnant!” Ollie exclaims.

Nettie’s beam dims a little. “Well, no. Not yet. But that is what we wanted to discuss with you. The thing is, my fertility issues are multilevel. It’s not just the polycystic ovaries, it’s also my ovum and my uterus. Give me a fertility problem, and I have it.” Her laugh is a thin, empty titter. “Our doctor told us this week that our best chance we have for conceiving a child is using a donor egg, and a surrogate.”

I take a sip of my wine, drop my gaze

“It’s not how we imagined becoming parents obviously. The baby wouldn’t be biologically related to me, but it would be related to Patrick and it would have been conceived to be ours. I think this is our best chance at having a baby.”

“Wow,” Ollie says. His expression says he doesn’t know if this good news or not. I, only the other hand, am fairly certain it is not. “So, you guys are going to do it? Use an egg donor and surrogate?”

“Well that’s where it gets complicated.” Nettie winces slightly. “We’d like to but egg donation and surrogacy is only allowed in Australia for altruistic reasons so we can’t pay anyone. Someone would have to volunteer to do it—”

“Can’t you go overseas?” Ollie interrupts. “I saw a documentary about people going to India to do this? Or the United States?”

“That’s an option,” Nettie says. “But it would be very expensive. More importantly, the baby would be so far away from us while it was in utero. We wouldn’t be able to go to any scans, or check on the mother’s health, maybe not even be there for the birth, if the mother goes into labor early. Also, we don’t understand the health system over there. How do we know their systems are reliable?”

Patrick still hasn’t said a word. Admittedly it would be hard to when Nettie is saying so many words.

“So what are you going to do?” Ollie asks.

Ollie still has no idea. He must be the only one. I take another very large sip of my wine and force myself to swallow.

“She wants me to do it,” I say.

Nettie looks at me. She’s cautiously excited but trying to keep it under wraps. She takes a clear plastic bag out of her handbag and places it on the table between us.

“I have some information here,” she says. I see the words Becoming a Surrogate printed on the front of a purple brochure, next to a picture of a headless, pregnant body. “It’s actually a pretty straightforward process.”

Ollie looks at Nettie, blinking wildly; a deer in the headlights. “You want Lucy to donate an egg? To be your surrogate?”

Nettie keeps her gaze on me. “I know I have no right to ask.”

“You have the right to ask . . .” I say. “But—”

Nettie sits forward in her chair, her hands folded on the table in almost a businesslike fashion. I get the feeling she is prepped and ready to refute any argument I might have. I feel sweat bloom under my arms.

“Wait,” Ollie says. “You do want Lucy to donate an egg? And carry the baby? So it would be Lucy’s child and . . . Patrick’s?”

“No,” Nettie says. Her nervous energy seems to have abated now and she is oddly calm. “It would be mine and Patrick’s.”