“Oh my gosh, I’m not having sex with anyone,” Katie blurted out. “I can’t believe we’re even talking about this.”
Lucas kept talking as if he hadn’t heard her. “Of course, we would buy you good health insurance, cute maternity clothes, anything else you needed. We’d also pay you thirty thousand dollars.”
I choked on my sangria. Katie’s face drained red to white. Thirty thousand dollars was nearly three years’ salary for us. Lucas might not get that, but Jason certainly did, and we all looked at him, waiting, stunned, for his explanation. When he’d said favor, I really thought that’s how he’d imagined it.
“Actually, this saves us some expense as well as stress,” he explained. “Surrogates, adoptions, having a doctor implant our sperm in you, these things are all really expensive. Plus the emotional trauma of all that. If we keep it among friends, we save the expense and the feeling that we’re doing something really unnatural. We know who the mother is, so if we need a kidney or some medical info later—”
“God forbid,” Lucas broke in.
“God forbid,” Jason continued, “we’d know where to go. We know you won’t change your mind at the last minute because you’re a friend, and we know you’d never do that to us.”
“And you’re already surrogate parenting,” Lucas added. “Atlas isn’t your son, but you care for him as if he were. This would be like that, only with more work before and much less after . . .”
Lucas trailed off. No one said anything for a while. It would have been unbearably awkward if we weren’t all so drunk. I knew Katie was never going to go for this. It was only, it seemed to me, some kind of pure love that had enabled Jason to convince himself otherwise. Katie had a lot of planned childbearing ahead of her. She wasn’t about to start here.
“I love you guys. You know I do. But I can’t . . . I wouldn’t.”
“Maybe think about it a little bit,” Jason prompted.
“Don’t rush it. Just consider it,” said Lucas. “For us.”
“The sex would be—I’m sorry to be blunt, but I know you must be worried about this part—gentle and easy and over fast. Not gross,” said Jason.
“I’m not going to do this,” said Katie quietly.
“We knew your initial reaction would be no,” Lucas said. “But if you think about it a little more, it gets less weird.”
“And you know we love each other,” said Jason.
“You know we’d make great parents, provide a loving home.”
Katie hesitated. Then she said, soft but steady, “Being gay is . . . not something I . . . condone—”
“Katie!” Jill gasped.
“What? They’re allowed to ask me something like this at the dinner table, but I have to hold my tongue out of politeness?”
Lucas hung his head, but Jason looked ready for a fight.
“You know this about me,” said Katie, hurt, like she was the offended party here. “Why did you even ask? What were you thinking?”
“That loving us means acknowledging we’re not sinners?” said Jason. “That loving us meant you might think about helping us have a baby?”
“I don’t . . . I can’t condone raising a child in that environment.”
“We would be great parents,” said Lucas softly.
“Families need a mother and a father,” said Katie.
“How can you say that?” Jason demanded. “What do you think this is?” He waved his hand vaguely around at us, the room, the house.
“What we’re doing is great,” she said. “But it’s only temporary. We won’t do this forever.”
Not we can’t. Not we might not. We won’t. Like she already knew for sure. Like she already had an exit plan. “Why didn’t you ask Janey?” she said.
“Janey would get too attached.” Jason shrugged. “She wouldn’t give the baby up to us.”
“So, what, I’m just cold enough to do it?” Katie said crossly.
“You’re just cold enough to do it,” said Jason.
What can I tell about dinner parties like this one? They are shattering but also not so rare among friends that I really need to explain exactly what it felt like when eventually we hit lull and cramp, and anger bled into awkwardness, and everyone rose with excuses finally to go home, and those who lived there, those who stayed, felt very glad to have their house back and be alone again as if we’d been out too late and were coming home exhausted at dawn. Though always, too, dinners like this preclude return. You can’t go back after you’ve asked a friend to make love and then carry a child for you even if deep down you always knew—and were relieved that—she would say no.
“I’m sorry, Katie. We didn’t mean to upset you. But we had to ask. Do you still love me?” Jason said on his way out the door.
“Even though you totally embarrassed me? Even though you made me look like a horrible person?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, I still love you. Do you still love me?”
“Even though you said no without even thinking about it? Even though you think I’m a sinner and are totally bigoted?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, I still love you.”
This is how it is with Katie. You have to hold two things in your brain at once. She really believes in what she believes in, even the offensive bits. This is her world. If you love her, and we do, you have to accept that part too. For her, these were the rules. Katie is very good about not trying to convert us even as she deep down believes we are all going to hell. Sometimes I am offended by this. I grant her it’s a long shot, but doesn’t she love me enough to at least try? And this, clearly, had been Jason’s philosophy too. He knew she’d say no, but he loved Lucas enough to try.
“Thanks for everything,” Ethan said, eyes a little dazed, hugging each of us in turn, walking out with Lucas and Jason as if they three had been friends since elementary school. “I had a great time. You guys throw a . . .”—he paused and finally settled on—“seismic dinner party. I’d love to come back.” We closed the door, marveled for a moment at the bravery of Ethan’s promise to return, left a million dirty dishes strewn throughout the house, and went to bed.
There, alone in the dark, I tried to decide if I was offended that they’d asked Katie and not me. I wouldn’t have said yes either. They were right, I would get too attached. And though the sentiment “it’s nice to be asked” rings true, you can’t ask a question like that without truly meaning it. Committing it out loud is itself too intimate by half. Which is how I knew this wasn’t off the top of their heads, wasn’t a passing thought, wasn’t a whim to finally ask her. They’d been thinking about it and planning for it, waited for her to break up with Ethan, jumped before she found somebody else. Must have considered every woman of childbearing age they knew, settled on the one person they thought had the foundation of God or of anything to separate sex from what it feels like and childbearing from motherhood. I have never been good at the former and clearly could not abide the latter. I would have said no. And besides that, saying no would have been hard and sad. But it would have been nice to be asked.