Certain Girls by Jennifer Weiner

Author:Jennifer Weiner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

NINETEEN

“I don’t know,” I told Peter, fidgeting on the chair beside him. “This feels weird. Immoral. It’s like we’re picking out a prostitute or something. Ooh, she’s cute!”

Joy had sipped a cup of chicken broth and nibbled a piece of toast, then gone to her bedroom at nine-thirty. Ten minutes later, Peter and I had put a pot of coffee and shortbread cookies on a tray and tiptoed into my office. I’d gathered up my latest StarGirl outline while Peter had logged on, and we’d spent the next hour huddled together in front of my laptop, scrolling through the classified ads at the Open Hearts website, which I’d insisted on calling Moms.com. We’d been conditionally approved by the agency, which had sent us an access code so we could browse the pictures and biographies of the surrogates while we waited for our home visit, and we’d been looking at the profiles with a mixture of horror (mostly mine) and interest (largely his).

“Check her out,” I said, feeling vaguely pimplike as I pointed to a picture of a sweet-faced brunette posing on a porch with two beaming little boys. She was squinting into the sunshine, a hand on one of her son’s shoulders, the other hand brushing her bangs out of her eyes. “She even kind of looks like me.”

Peter studied the picture. “I don’t see the resemblance.”

“We both have brown hair,” I said. His eyebrow went higher. “And we’re both female.” Peter gave me an indulgent smile.

“Oh, c’mon,” I said. “You would totally hit that.”

“Is that how we’re talking now?”

“Well, isn’t that kind of the point?” I replied. “If we’re looking for a woman who’s going to carry our child, shouldn’t she be, you know, someone you’d theoretically want to sleep with?”

“I guess.” Peter, agreeable as ever, stretched his long legs out in front of him. “But because it’s my sperm and your egg, shouldn’t it be someone you’d want to sleep with, too?”

“Huh.” I looked at the surrogate’s picture. “That does put things in a different light.”

The creases bracketing his lips deepened as he smiled. “Hey. Cannie. Are we really doing this?”

I felt as reckless as if I’d drunk a dozen espressos, jittery and excited and deeply disconcerted. “It seems that we are.” My fingers flew over the keyboard. Dozens of women’s faces and screen names zipped by. I stopped and laughed at one posed in a T-shirt that read WILL BREED FOR FOOD. Then I scrolled back to the first woman I’d picked. “Twenty-nine years old, brown hair, brown eyes, and she’s done this before.” I scrolled down through the ad and read out loud. “‘My first surrogate experience was fantastic! I gave birth to a beautiful, healthy nine-pound, two-ounce baby boy without complications or pain meds . . .’” I pushed my chair away from the computer so my husband wouldn’t see how the words “beautiful” and “healthy” and “no complications” had pierced me. He did see, of course, and he put his fingers under my chin, turning my face toward his.

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