The Choices We Make. Karma Brown
I said, hitting End with a peanut-butter-covered fingertip. “Shit!”
“Mom, you need to put a dollar in the jar.” Ava came into the kitchen and grabbed a triangle of the sandwich before I could stop her. “Is this peanut butter?” Ava asked, holding the sandwich up in the very tips of her fingers as though it were poisoned.
“Yes, it’s peanut butter. You love PB&J sammies. What’s the deal?”
Ava rolled her eyes. “First of all, stop calling them ‘sammies.’ You sound really lame.”
“Well, excuse me,” I replied, tucking the other triangles into Josie’s reusable sandwich bag, which was covered with bumblebees and tulips. “And I’m not lame. I’m your very cool, very hip mother.”
“Secondly,” Ava said, ignoring me, “you know you can’t send peanut butter to school. We need that soy nut butter crap.”
“Shit,” I said, quickly followed by, “Don’t say it. I know.” I pointed a finger at the jar on the windowsill, which was half-full of dollar bills. “I’ll put my money in today and after school you need to put a dollar in for using the word crap.” It had been my idea to do the swear jar, after watching some parenting show while I was at the dentist’s office trying to ignore the drilling in my mouth. But it had backfired, as I was responsible for at least 70 percent of the money in there. I reached into the pantry and grabbed two protein bars and two fruit cups. “There’s no time to make more sandwiches, so protein bars it is.”
“Fine,” Ava said, taking her lunch bag from me and putting it in her backpack. “I’m tired of sandwiches anyway.”
“Where’s your sister?”
“She’s changing again. Something about not feeling the color pink today.”
“Josie!” I shouted up the stairs, just as David started coming down. “Sorry, can you grab Josie? They’re going to be late.”
David turned and went back up the two stairs he had come down, shouting Josie’s name as he did.
I finished packing Josie’s lunch and tucked it into her backpack, mentally running over all the things I needed to do before they left for the day. My mind felt foggy, an irritating side effect of the medication I took to thwart the debilitating migraines that struck every month or so.
David and Josie came into the kitchen, looking as if they’d coordinated their outfits. Josie was dressed in black leggings and a tunic, and David wore his all-black paramedic uniform. “You look lovely.” I kissed Josie on top of her head. “Black is a great color on you.”
“Thank you, Momma,” she said, her chin tilting up and a smile coming across her freckled face at the compliment.
“Okay, get going or you’ll miss the morning bell.” I kissed the two of them on their cheeks, foreheads, noses and lips, just like I did every morning. Ava wiped her lips afterward, but Josie came back for a second kiss. I was grateful I had a few more years of kisses and snuggles and Josie thinking I walked on water before the hormones kicked in and I became her “lame,” forgetful, cussing mom instead of her hero.
David pecked me on the lips when I handed him his lunch, and I pulled him in for another kiss. “Have a great day,” I said.
“You, too.” He smiled at me, his gaze settling on me in a way that made me feel warm inside. “How’s the head?”
“Better,” I said. “Hannah’s bringing me a coffee, so I’ll be right as rain in no time.” David kissed me again, and then in a rush they were out the door, and suddenly all was quiet in the house again. With a sigh, I sat at the kitchen table and rubbed the back of my neck while I checked my inbox filled with spam offers and PTA to-dos, impatiently waiting for Hannah, her news and my double-shot latte.
HANNAH
We had an off-site photo shoot and I didn’t have to be at the restaurant we were featuring until ten. At nine o’clock I rang Kate’s doorbell, nervously tapping the toes on one foot as I mentally rehearsed how I was going to justify what I was planning to do.
I could tell she wasn’t feeling well when she opened the door, even though she was smiling. Her eyes were dull and her face pale.
“Thank God,” she said, kissing my cheek and taking the tray of coffees from my hands. “I really do need to set that timer. David usually makes the coffee, but he didn’t get a chance this morning.” She smelled like peanut butter and tea tree oil, which I knew she used on the girls’ hair every morning before school, claiming it had kept them lice-free even during the school’s inevitable outbreaks.
“How’s the migraine?” I asked, following her into the living room. I sat on the couch beside her and tucked my legs under me. She took a sip of the latte and closed her eyes. “So much better now. Thank you for this.” Then she opened her eyes and looked at me in a way that made me even more nervous, her deep brown eyes holding steady on my face. “Out with it, Hannah. What’s up?”
I cleared my throat, shifting to grab my own coffee. “So I’ve done something... Something I probably shouldn’t have. No, definitely shouldn’t have.”
“What have you done?” Kate asked slowly, as though she was giving both of us time to prepare for whatever it was.
It all came out in a rush. “I emailed a surrogate even though I told Ben I wouldn’t, and now she wants to meet, like tomorrow, and I said I’d meet her and I didn’t tell Ben and I’m not sure I want to because I know he’s going to lose it and she’s asking for forty grand to do this and she’s really religious and we’re not and she wants to have a relationship with the baby after it’s born but I really want to meet her. I think. I’m pretty sure—”
“Stop talking,” Kate said, and so I did. She casually took a long sip of her coffee and then got up. “This calls for chocolate.” A moment later she was back, a huge dark chocolate bar on the coffee table in front of us. Kate popped a piece of the chocolate in her mouth and sucked on it, melting it on her tongue. I didn’t bother reminding her chocolate was one of her headache triggers.
“First of all, I have to say I’m sort of impressed. I mean, going on a secret surrogate-hunting mission? That is a very un-Hannah-like move.”
I squirmed, knowing she was trying to make me laugh but feeling worse by the second. “I didn’t mean for it to be a secret, I just... I don’t know. I just did it before I could think too hard about what I was doing.”
Kate nodded, looking at me thoughtfully. “Who is this person?” she asked, snapping off another square of chocolate.
“Her name is Lyla. She’s a mom, married and healthy, and she wants to be a surrogate. My—our—surrogate.”
Kate narrowed her eyes. “How did you find her?”
“A classified ad.” I tried not to cringe, hearing how it sounded. I mean, you went to the classifieds to find a dining room table or tickets to a sold-out concert, not for a woman to carry a baby for you.
Kate paused, the chocolate square partway to her lips. “You’re kidding me.”
“Nope, not kidding.”
“And you’re sharing this with me instead of Ben because...?”
“Because I needed to tell someone who was going to be on my side,” I said, my voice dropping. The sweetness of the chocolate locked up my throat and I coughed hard a few times.
Kate rubbed my back. “Oh, honey. Ben is always on your side.”
I shook my head. “Not this time, Katie. Sure, he humored me and went through the ads with me, but I know he doesn’t want to do this. He thinks it’s... He wants to try adoption.”
Kate took my hands in hers and gently