Everything Has a Price

Theron

Ansel Pryor had represented the Wexcombe family for thirty-one years, and in that time he had developed a way of sighing that could be heard through a closed door, a leather seat, and, on one memorable occasion, a transatlantic phone call.

He did it now, in the back of the Bentley, as it turned off Francis Street onto Weybosset and slowed in the thin Friday rain.

"I want it noted," said Ansel, "that I advised against this."

"It's noted."

"I want it noted in writing."

"You may have a secretary prepare a memorandum." Theron kept his eyes on the window. The city went by in wet gray strips: a bank, a parking garage, a man in a yellow slicker selling umbrellas from a shopping cart. "Dell, how long?"

"Two minutes, Mr. Wexcombe," said the driver from the front seat. Dell Okafor was forty-nine, broad as a door, with a close-cropped gray beard and a voice like gravel being poured slowly out of a bucket. He had driven for the Wexcombes since Theron was twenty-six, and in all that time had volunteered perhaps four opinions. "Parking's a problem. There's a loading zone on the corner. I can idle."

"Idle, then."

"I'd like to say," said Ansel, "for the record—"

"You've said it."

"—that what you're proposing is, at best, a breach of professional etiquette, and at worst a violation of the Rhode Island assisted-reproduction statute, three provisions of the Department of Health's regulations, and a contract that your own brother signed at twenty with his eyes open." He was a tall, stooped man of fifty-five, with a long gray face, half-moon spectacles, and a camel overcoat that had seen better decades. He held his briefcase on his knees like a man holding a small, disapproving cat. "You can't walk into that building and demand the identity of a recipient. Nobody can. It's the one thing the whole industry is built on. If every grieving family could—"

"I am not going to demand."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to ask."

"Ask."

"Politely."

"Politely." Ansel removed his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Theron. With the greatest affection. I've known you since you were five. I remember you at your first board meeting, at twenty-four, with the IV bruise still on your arm. I've watched you do many astonishing things. But I have never once seen you ask anyone for anything. You don't have the muscle for it. You inform. You arrange. You make a thing happen, and then you thank people for their cooperation."

"That's unkind."

"It's an observation."

"It's the same thing," said Theron, "when delivered by a lawyer."

The faintest dry smile touched Ansel's mouth.

"Mr. Wexcombe," said Dell, from the front. "We're here."

…

The waiting room of Lumen Family Cryobank looked like a spa for people who had given up on spas. There was a wall of river stones with a thin sheet of water sliding down it, a fiddle-leaf fig of almost indecent health, four oatmeal-colored chairs, and a white-noise machine hissing under the front desk. Theron, who disliked white noise on principle, stood in the center of the room with his coat on and his hands behind his back and looked at it all with the polite, faintly pained expression of a man who has been asked to admire another person's baby.

The young man at the desk had a lanyard, a red nose, and an expression of strained cordiality that had worn thin around the edges.

"Mr. Wexcombe?" he said. "Dr. Teague said she could give you fifteen minutes. She's, uh—she's just finishing with a patient. Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea? We have the little cookies."

"Thank you, no."

"The little cookies are pretty good."

"I'm sure they are."

"There's a lavender one." The young man sniffed hard and pushed a plate toward them with a damp, hopeful gesture. "It tastes like soap, but in a good way. I mean—" He flushed. "I'm Wade. Wade Pruitt. If you need anything. I'm the, uh. The front desk."

"Thank you, Wade."

Theron did not touch the cookies. Ansel took one, sniffed it, and set it carefully back in the plate as though returning a piece of evidence.

The door to the inner hall opened, and a short, square, silver-haired woman in a gray cardigan came out. She was drying her hands on a paper towel and did not look up until she was nearly in front of them.

"Mr. Wexcombe," said Dr. Rosalind Teague. She dropped the towel into the bin and studied him, from his black overcoat to his cracked watch strap and back up to his face. Her own face was perfectly still. It was the face, Theron thought, of a woman who had been expecting him for some time and had not enjoyed the wait. "And Mr. Pryor. I recognize you from the Brown Alumni bulletin. Please. Come back."

…

Her office was small, warm, and crowded, with a window that faced a brick wall and a spider plant in a chipped mug. She did not offer them the good chairs. She sat behind her desk with her hands folded on a closed file and looked at Theron, who stood.

"Sit down, Mr. Wexcombe," she said. "You make me nervous."

"I prefer to stand."

"I know you do. I've read about you. You stood through your father's memorial, according to the Providence Journal. They said it was a mark of respect. I think it's a mark of something else." She tipped her head at the chair. "Sit, please. Or I'll have to stand too, and I've had a long week and a bad knee."

Theron looked at the chair. It had a loose leg. He could see it from here.

He sat.

"Thank you." Teague folded her hands. "First, Mr. Wexcombe, I'm very sorry for your loss. I mean that. I knew Christopher. Not well, but I knew him. He sat in that chair three times. He had a habit of bringing me gifts. A piece of driftwood. A hand-carved spoon. Once, God help me, a small dead crab, in a jar, which he thought was a joke."

"That sounds like him."

"It was a very good crab."

For a moment something loosened in Theron's chest. He suppressed it at once.

"Dr. Teague," he said. "I'll be direct, because I imagine you'd prefer it. My brother registered as a donor with your bank at the age of twenty. I found a letter in his effects. It says one vial remained in storage as of last year. My mother and I would like to know what became of it."

"I can't tell you."

"May I at least know whether it was used?"

"No."

"Whether it was released?"

"Mr. Wexcombe." Teague's voice was gentle and absolutely immovable. "I can tell you what the law says, and I will. A donor's identity is protected. A recipient's identity is protected. The existence of a recipient, the dates of use, the outcome of any cycle: all protected. All confidential. If I were to confirm for you that a vial of Donor 4417 had left this building, I'd be telling you something that I am legally and ethically forbidden to tell. I'd be telling it to a man whose family has just buried the donor, and who might, with the best intentions in the world, go looking."

"I'd go looking with the best of intentions."

"That's what makes it dangerous."

Ansel cleared his throat. "Dr. Teague, if I may. My client isn't seeking to disrupt anyone's life. There are circumstances. Donor 4417 has died. His mother is gravely ill with grief. He leaves no direct heirs, unless—"

"Unless there's a child."

"Unless there is."

"And you'd like me to confirm that there might be."

"We would like to know," said Theron.

Teague looked at him for a very long time. The radiator knocked. Out in the corridor, faintly, someone laughed.

"I'm going to say something," she said, "and I'd ask you to take it in the spirit in which it's offered. Which is a sincere one." She put both palms flat on the file. "I have run this bank for twenty-three years. In that time I've seen donors who regretted donating, and recipients who regretted receiving, and one memorable family in Cumberland who sued everyone involved, including the stork. What I've learned is this. The people who walk into my office asking about the other side almost never mean harm. They mean need. A wife who wants to meet her husband's genetic daughter. A donor who wants to make sure the child is all right. A mother who's frightened of a diagnosis and thinks someone, somewhere, shares the answer." She spread her hands. "And almost every time, if I give them what they ask, it ruins something. Not out of cruelty. Out of weight. You cannot hand a stranger's child a meaning it didn't ask for."

"I'm not proposing to hand anyone a meaning."

"Aren't you?"

He had no answer.

"You're a very grieving man, Mr. Wexcombe," said Teague, more quietly. "And you're angry, and you're frightened, and you want to put something back where it came from. I understand that. I truly do. But I'm not going to help you do it. And I'd advise you, as someone who has watched this go wrong, to go home and let your mother mourn her son. And let whatever is out in the world be what it is."

"And if there is a child who has no idea what it's heir to?"

"Then it has a mother who loves it. That's heir enough."

He rose. It was not a decision. He found he was on his feet, hands at his sides, the left one shaking, and he curled it into a fist to hide it.

"Thank you for your time, Doctor," he said.

"Mr. Wexcombe—"

"I understand your position. I respect it. I'd ask you only to remember that I made the request in good faith, and in your office, and in the open."

"I'll remember."

"Good."

"And Mr. Wexcombe?" Teague stood too, with her hand on the back of the chair. "The boy talked about you. He did. He was very proud of you. Mostly he complained, but it was the sort of complaining that doesn't leave room for doubt." She hesitated. "He said you had never once let him fall."

Theron stared at the spider plant.

"He was mistaken," he said.

He walked out. Ansel, after a bewildered pause, followed, murmuring apologies to the air.

…

"I told you," said Ansel in the elevator.

"You did."

"Four times."

"Five. You said it in the car as well."

"I'm trying to be supportive. In my way." The elevator descended with a wheeze. "The woman is a model of professional rectitude. Frankly, she's the best argument I've ever met for the licensing board. I advise you, as your attorney and your friend, to let it go. Go home. Have your mother see a grief counselor. Let the thing lie."

"There's a child, Ansel."

"You don't know that."

"She didn't deny it."

"She didn't confirm it."

"She said, Then it has a mother who loves it." Theron stared at the brushed steel doors. "She spoke in the present tense. A woman like that doesn't make a rhetorical slip. She doesn't say 'Then it would have a mother.' She said, 'It has.'"

Ansel opened his mouth, and shut it.

The doors opened on the lobby. Rain drummed on the glass. Dell was waiting beside the Bentley in the loading zone with a black umbrella the size of a small tent, and a wiry shadow of a man stood beside him, shoulders hunched, hands in the pockets of a gray windbreaker.

It was Wade Pruitt.

He had a cigarette, unlit, between two fingers. He did not seem to know what to do with it. When he saw Theron, he took a step backward and then, visibly, took it forward again.

"Mr. Wexcombe," he said. His voice was a rasp. "Can I, uh. Could I have a word?"

Dell, without turning his head, shifted his weight slightly, and the umbrella moved an inch to cover the space between them. It was the most polite imaginable form of threat.

"It's all right, Dell," said Theron.

"I wouldn't, sir."

"I know. It's all right." He stepped under the umbrella. Ansel hovered. The rain beat on the nylon overhead, and the wind plucked at Wade's windbreaker, and in the gray light the young man looked less like a villain than like a very tired person who had run out of options two weeks ago and had been surviving on pure momentum since.

"I heard you in the lobby," said Wade. "I mean—I was at the desk. I wasn't listening. I just. I couldn't help it. The walls are thin."

"You heard Dr. Teague."

"Yeah."

"Then you know she won't help."

"She won't." Wade licked his lips. "But I might."

Silence.

Ansel drew in a breath. "Young man," he said, sharply, "I strongly advise you to consider whatever you are about to say very carefully, because anything—"

"I'm not talking to you," said Wade, without heat. "I'm talking to him."

Theron said, "Go on."

"I don't have a lot of time. My break's ten minutes. But I want to say, first, that I'm not—I'm not a bad guy. I've got a sister. She's got a kid with a, with a heart thing. We're behind on the medical bills. And the clinic doesn't pay much, so." He swallowed. "I'm just saying. If somebody was to, you know, offer a little help. In exchange for a little help."

"Help of what kind?"

"A name."

"Whose?"

"The woman who got your brother's last vial."

The wind whipped across the street. Somewhere, a car horn bleated.

Theron looked at him for a long, level moment. He had spent thirteen years learning, from the inside, the exact texture of desperation: its smell, its register, the tiny telltale tremor in the voice. He recognized Wade Pruitt's as one recognizes the cut of a familiar coat.

"What do you want?" he said.

"Forty thousand."

"Mr. Wexcombe," said Ansel, "you absolutely cannot—"

"Forty," said Theron.

"Forty. Cash. Or a transfer. I don't care. My sister's got a surgery in January and I—" Wade's face crumpled for an instant. He recovered. "I'll send you the name tonight. And her file. I can get it off the server, I've got the access. Nobody checks. Dr. Teague's got it all in a drawer, but she's old, she keeps a backup on the system, she doesn't think anybody—"

"Stop."

Wade stopped.

Theron stood very still under the black umbrella. He was aware of Dell's silent bulk beside him, and of Ansel's agitated breathing, and of the rain, and of the faint electric hum of the building behind him where a small woman with a silver bob was no doubt at this moment returning to her work, believing she had done a decent thing.

Politely, he had told his mother. I'll ask. As we were taught.

The thing was that he had asked. He'd asked in the open, in the proper office, in the proper words. And the answer, spoken with the full weight of law and honor and a spider plant, had been no.

What has the law ever done for this family?

"I'll consider it," he said.

"Theron," said Ansel, very low.

"I said I'll consider it." He turned to Wade. "You'll hear from me by tonight. Do not contact me. Do not contact my driver. Do not discuss this with anyone, including your sister. If I decide to proceed, an arrangement will be made. If I decide not to, you will forget this conversation, and I will forget your name."

"Yes, sir."

"Go back to work, Wade."

The young man nodded, jerkily, twice. He took a breath, said "Thank you," in a voice that cracked, and fled across the wet street without his umbrella.

They watched him go.

"Get in the car," said Dell, in his gravelly bass. It was the fifth opinion he had volunteered in ten years.

…

Ansel did not speak until they were on Route 195, crossing the long gray bridge over the Seekonk with the rain lashing the windows.

"You're not going to do it."

"I have not decided."

"You're going to pay him. A man who is committing a felony in front of your face. You're going to sit at your desk and wire forty thousand dollars to a stranger to steal a woman's private medical records. And then you're going to read them." He turned. His long face, in the glow of the dashboard, looked ten years older. "Theron. In thirty-one years, I have never once told a Wexcombe he was about to make a mistake that he couldn't walk back. I'm telling you now."

"What would you do?"

"I'd go home."

"You'd go home to a mother who says find my son's child. You would go home and tell her you tried politely, and a woman with a spider plant said no."

"Yes."

"And what would she say?"

Ansel looked out the window.

"She'd say," he admitted at last, "Then try less politely."

"Yes."

"She's a Wexcombe too."

"She is the most Wexcombe of any of us." Theron rested his head against the leather. "I have never taken anything in my life that was not mine, Ansel. I want you to know that. I have paid my taxes and my bills and my debts. I paid for my father's gambling when I was twenty-four. I paid for every single man he cheated, in the end, to the cent. And I would like it noted, if we are keeping notes, that I am not doing this for the money. Or the company. Or the shares, though I'm sure Hale thinks so."

"Then what for?"

He was silent a long time.

"Because he was my brother," he said finally. "And I told him a thing, on the last night, that I can't unsay. And if there's a piece of him still out there, I would like—"

He stopped. The words dissolved. He didn't have a word for what he'd like.

Ansel did not press. He faced forward and put his briefcase on his knees and was silent for the rest of the drive. Only when the Bentley turned in at the gates of Ledge Point and the headlamps swept across the wet rhododendrons did he speak again, very quietly.

"I'll need to be told," he said. "Whatever you find. I can't stop you. But I can at least try to keep the pieces from falling on you."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me. Pay my bill."

"I always do."

"Yes," said Ansel with a weary sigh. "That is the awful thing about you."

…

At 11:42 that night, in his study, with a single lamp lit and a glass of untouched whisky at his elbow, Theron sat at his desk and looked at a transfer confirmation on his laptop.

$40,000.00 — COMPLETED.

It had taken him four hours to do it. He had written the instruction, deleted it, rewritten it, risen, walked to the window, looked at the black water of the Sound for ten minutes, returned, and sent it before he could change his mind. He'd used a private account, one that would not appear in Wexcombe Marine's books. He told himself it was a matter of discretion. He knew, with a clear-eyed honesty that was his most punishing quality, that it was a matter of shame.

An email arrived at 11:49.

There was no subject line. There was no message. There was a single attachment, a PDF, and a filename that had been scrubbed of anything identifying: 4417_RECIPIENT.pdf.

His cursor hovered over it.

If you open this, said the cool voice in his head, the one that had spoken in his father's cadence since the day the old man died, you will have done a thing you cannot take back. You will have stepped across the line between what is ours and what is hers. You will know her name. And once you know it, you will not be able to stop knowing.

And if I don't?

Then you go to your mother with nothing.

He clicked.

The document opened on a plain white page. A clinic form, with a Lumen logo in the corner, and fields filled in with a neat, slightly tilted, female hand.

RECIPIENT INTAKE — CONFIDENTIAL

Name: Odessa M. Rourke

DOB: 04/17/1996

Address: Ives Street, Providence, RI

Occupation: Claims coordinator, Narragansett Mutual Insurance

Marital status: Single

Donor selected: 4417

Cycle: 2 (IUI). Date: 09/16

Notes: Patient is organized, articulate, financially prepared. Declined counseling referral twice, politely. States, "I've thought about it for three years, and I'd like to stop thinking about it and start doing it." No concerns.

At the bottom, in the Notes section, someone had added a line in a different pen.

Recited donor's profile answer from memory (the boat line); eyes wet. Said she'd never been more certain about anyone.

Theron stopped breathing.

He read the line three times. Then a fourth, slowly, with his lips moving, in the manner of a man who has found something in a language he once knew.

A wooden boat is just a tree that learned to float.

He had heard it a thousand times. Kit had said it at the dinner table at sixteen, and at the christening of the Kittiwake, and, with a slight ironic bow, at their father's funeral. He had had it carved, in tiny letters, on the underside of the transom of every boat he ever built, where no one would see it unless they were drowning.

The boat line. From memory.

Theron sat back. The lamp threw his shadow, long and narrow, across the wall behind him. The whisky glittered. The study clock, which he had wound the night before, ticked firmly onward, correct to the second.

In the right-hand corner of the PDF, a second file had been attached. A photograph, lifted from a professional networking site, of a young woman in a navy blazer with her dark hair pulled back, smiling at the camera with the slightly rigid courtesy of a person who has been told to look approachable. She had a small scar through one eyebrow and a pair of very direct hazel eyes. She looked, he thought, like someone who would read the terms and conditions.

Odessa Rourke.

Thirty. Single. Prepared. Certain.

And somewhere under that navy blazer, according to a two-month-old note from a clinic and a cold, remorseless arithmetic that Theron could not stop himself from doing, a child was growing.

His brother's child.

His mother's grandchild.

Possibly, he thought, with a strange dizzying lurch, the only thing in the world that was left of them.

He put out one finger and touched the screen, very lightly, just beneath the photograph, as one might touch the glass over a portrait in a museum.

"Ms. Rourke," he said softly, to the empty room. "I'm very sorry."

He did not close the file.

Outside, in the dark, the sea moved against the rocks below Ledge Point with the slow, patient, unstoppable rhythm of a thing that has all the time in the world.