The Surrogate

Rolls still steaming were piled together in a large basket. The macaroni and cheese looked to Esther like she could fall asleep on it as the casserole dish looked like a pillow.

Of course, it all tasted divine. Everyone had a hand in the meal. Even the boys had been conned into setting the food out on the long dining table and making the place cards and sparkling punch with Roberta during the bowl game halftime break. Louis had gotten his workout for the day grating cheese for Roberta, and he was happy to finally be eating the fruit of his labors.

“I’m going to have serious biceps when I see my doctor next week!” he joked, making the table laugh as they began their meal.

Sitting at the table, they all talked politely, making light conversation between bites of the deliciously decadent meal. Esther did her best with the help of Hillary to keep the conversation light, while sneaking her sips of the table wine.

“It’s funny,” Oliver commented. “Neither of you have New York accents. I thought you might be like Hilly here and have some secret accent you’ve been hiding all this time.”

“Ollie, my accent is not that thick!” Hillary retorted.

“Say coffee,” he asked her in an even tone.

Staring right back at her husband like they were in a western-style standoff, Hillary pursed her lips and simply refused with, “No.”

Esther shook her head at her stubborn friend before finally answering, “My parents did not grow up here. I mean, Dad is from Haiti and my mother mainly grew up in Virginia. Archie’s Dad has a pretty harsh accent though.”

“It was as thick as a kid’s from Queens!” Archie laughed. “Apparently, my grandmother had a thick accent when she was young, but it was his nanny that really did it in. She read to him everyday, so he learned to pronounce words just like her.”

Everyone laughed lightly, but Hillary noted, “That’s kind of cute though. I just got mine on the public school bus fighting off idiot kids. It’s hard to sound tough and posh at the same time.”

“If you had said the word ‘posh’ to me, I might have wanted to slug you too,” Oliver teased his wife, which resulting in her lightly punching him in the arm.

He pretended it hurt, comically whining about it and causing the table to laugh. Finally he asked another question of Esther.

“So if you grew up in New York, was it here in the city?”

“Oh no, I grew up out rural Westchester County. My father worked running a nearby state park.”

The guests seemed impressed, and they began to ask about the park. Louis loved to reminisce for everyone, but Esther feared where this was going. Louis began to talk about the part of her family that Esther did her best to forget.

“After I got the job, I found this wonderful house by a lake in need of fixing up. Esther’s mother and I worked tirelessly before our dear Esther came along. We thought we might have a bundle of children, so just in case we wanted to have plenty of room for them all. It was a big house with beautiful flowers and a little dock for a tiny sailboat. I used to take Esther sailing every summer, but when her mother died it seemed pointless to keep. Esther did not need the house, and I was starting to become forgetful. It came time to end that chapter of my life.”

Archie knew the story well and added, “You both built a beautiful home there.”

“It was,” Louis sighed. “It wasn’t practical to keep it anymore. I did not want it to be a burden on Esther.”

Esther felt grim as she thought about her father’s choice to sell the house with Esther herself having little to say in the matter. At the time, it was out of her control, and now it was too late to change anything. Even after attempting to keep the evening happy, the lull of somber sobriety crept over the festivities. Thankfully, Roberta saved the moment with the opportunity to have dessert.

They all took their dessert plates into the big living room where seasonal music played over the television. From there, they drank coffee and ate their secretly store-bought pie and homemade cake while listening to Louis and Roberta tell stories of holiday seasons of days past. The party eventually grew weary as the evening turned into night. As the night set in, snowflakes began to fall to the excitement of all the teenagers. They hurried outside to see the winter weather for a quick moment before the chill of air sent them right back in.

Noting the time, Louis slowly pulled himself up off his chair where he had been admiring the light snow falling outside. He had watched it collect and form a fine white layer on the empty flower boxes outside. Esther liked to see her aging father in peaceful moments like that one, and so the snow had to wait as she found the soft smile of her dad much more delightful. Setting down his teacup half-filled with coffee gone cold, Louis turned to his fellow guests. Leaning against his cane, he announced his departure to the room.

“This has been fun everyone, but my ride will be getting here early. I probably need to call it a night. Thanks everyone for making this a holiday to remember. I don’t think even I will forget this.”

Esther laughed, getting up to kiss her father goodnight. Grace did too, getting the parlor door for her grandfather.

“I’ll go see what those boys are up to,” Grace said, slipping out as well.

Now, Roberta and Esther sat on one sofa as Hillary and Archie said on the couch across from them. Oliver sat against the window seat overlooking the backyard where he kept an eye on the weather, while still keeping up with the conversation.

“You know,” Hillary said with a tone that gave her intentions away to Esther. “I haven’t asked about baby news yet tonight. I don’t think that I could go to bed tonight without some update.”

Esther shrugged, feeling a bit odd about talking about her pregnancy with Roberta. She was nothing short of delighted for Esther, but the feeling felt a bit like a small strange betrayal to be happy with another man and another man’s child no matter how the relationship was defined.

“There’s nothing much to tell. I have another appointment in the next few weeks. I do hope we’ll know the gender then, but I’m not sure if that is a guarantee.”

Hillary sipped her coffee, asking, “Are you going to know the gender? You are not going to leave it surprise.”

“I don’t think I could wait that long,” Archie told her. “The doctor would know, but we would not? Seems silly.”

“It does!” Roberta exclaimed with a bit of a chuckle. “The technology was not available to me with my first born. I was all nerves too because of it. I had everything green and white because I was too scared to pick a color that might give folks the wrong idea.”

Everyone laughed as Roberta continued telling the story with a healthy does of animated storytelling flourish the tale of her first pregnancy. Painting the picture of her small house in Louisiana, it felt like they were there instead of in the New York palace. When the story ended, the room came back to being as it was, and Esther noticed the snow was picking up at an exponential rate.

Oliver looked out the window, scratching his thinning red curls as he announced, “We’d better get back home. It’s starting to come down pretty hard.”