She had wanted a different life for herself and that meant independence from her parents. It might not have been, were it not for the fact that her parents were not capable of simply allowing her opinions to be different, allowing her choices to remain her own. They couldn’t help trying to change and mold her. They kept trying to make her see that her life would be so much easier if she simply agreed to follow the plan they had set out for her life.
She looked at her sister’s life. Emily had a career her parents were proud of, in fact, they were the ones who had suggested it and given her the necessary contacts to make it a success. This man she was marrying was no doubt a member of their circle, there was no other way they could be so happy about it. Elena knew how it would go. Emily would get married in a year in a lavish and tasteful ceremony, she would work occasionally, simply so that she could talk about her career at dinner parties she would be invited to on a weekly basis, and after a few years, she would have a child who would one day inherit her fortune, and she would spend the rest of her life molding that child so that he or she would grow up to follow the same path as his parents before him.
She knew the path her sister’s life would take, but she knew more than anything, that she did not want that for herself. She wanted her life to be a surprise. She wanted to be free and excited about things. She wanted to know different kinds of people, not just different variations of the same person. She wanted to travel, to backpack around the world. She wanted to create sculptures that she could one day exhibit in galleries.
Elena knew that in order to achieve any one of those things, she needed to have financial independence, too. Her parents had made it clear that if she insisted on following her ‘own path’, as they called it, she would not have their help. Elena thought about what Neal had asked of her.
She felt a wave of fear when she considering going through with it. Nine months of pregnancy. It was a huge favor to ask. Elena had never seen herself as a mother. She had never even seen herself married. When she saw her future, it included different countries, lots of different adventures and sporadic and temporary lovers. Elena reminded herself that she was not being asked to be a mother. She was being asked to ‘be an egg donor and a surrogate.’ The egg was hers, however, and that made all the difference.
Elena sat in her room for the next few hours. She ignored the knocks on her door from her mother and her sister. They kept talking to her through her door, but she tuned them out and began humming to herself softly until they had given up and left her alone. She just lay on bed, watching as the light fled the room and was replaced with darkness, and the whole time, she thought and thought and thought.
Her thoughts eventually moved from straight lines to erratic waves and her memory flexed and bent to include strange recollections from her childhood that she had long since forgotten. She remembered the parties she had been forced to attend, the boy she had loved in high school, the difference in the way her father looked at her compared with how he looked at Emily.
At some point, she eventually started to drift off, exhausted from her incessant thinking. Just before she fell asleep, she remembered vaguely, the juice her mother had handed to her earlier that evening. She had really not been in the mood for juice, but she drank it anyway. That really was the only way to be left alone in this house.
Chapter7
“I’ll do it,” Elena said as soon as the door had opened.
Neal stood opposite her, stunned into silence by her declaration. He realized that he had not expected her to say yes. Or at least, a large part of him had doubted that she would, but she stood there, her eyes strangely focused, her expression resolute.
“You’ll do it?” Neal said, more than slightly shell shocked.
She smiled at his expression and nodded again, slowly.
“Well then,” he said, swallowing with huge relief, “you’d better come in.”
Elena followed him inside. It was definitely a bachelor pad, she could tell right away. The kitchen was spacious and well designed, but the focal point of the room was the massive flat screen TV and the large cushy sofa that sat in front of it. To the side of the sofa was a large leather recliner, complete with a built in cup holder and a music-stereo combo. She could also spy a pool table peeking out from behind a half wall, set against the backdrop of an impressive system of shelves, but instead of holding books, they held DVDs. She wondered why men had such a complex with size.
“Can I offer you something to drink?” Neal asked cautiously.
He was conscious of her eyes studying his living room. He wondered if she was wondering who had paid for all the luxuries that surrounded him. For a moment, he felt ashamed, knowing that few things in this house had been bought with the money he had earned himself. Most of it had been his own money, but it was part of his inheritance. From his sporadic bouts of employment, he had earned enough money for an expensive dinner or a random splurge that he really did not want. He rarely saved what he earned from those jobs because he knew his safety net was secure.
“Water, please,” Elena replied.
“Take a seat,” Neal motioned her towards the sofa, but she followed him to the kitchen.
Elena took a seat on one
of the bar stools that surrounded the center island as Neal poured her a glass of water and passed it over. She looked around the kitchen, admiring the clean surfaces. It looked like it was barely used.
“I don’t really use it much,” Neal said, reading her thoughts.
“I don’t cook much either,” Elena admitted, “but I wish I could, I just don’t have the patience.”
Neal smiled politely, but he was really thinking of how the two of them were going to pull this off. This time, Elena was the one who read his mind.
“How do we do this, Neal?” she said, businesslike all of a sudden.
Neal poured himself a glass of water too and took a long sip before he replied.
“We… need to get started immediately. I mean… truly speaking, you already need to be pregnant.”
“And what are you going to tell the board?”
“I’ve already mentioned, in passing, that George was seeing someone. I told them that you were distraught when you heard about the accident. As soon as you’re pregnant, we can make the announcement.”
She bit her lower lip and thought for a moment. “Will they require a paternity test done?”