Read Online Then Came You by Jennifer Weiner - Free Book Online Page B

while the barber made small talk, then sprinkled talc on the back of his neck. Back in the apartment, I straightened up some more while he made coffee and read the paper. At one-thirty I handed him the plastic bag, my haul for the month.
    The shaking in his hands had gotten worse, I saw, as he opened the bag and rummaged inside, pulling out four paperbacknovels, a razor and a can of shaving cream, a jar of Kiehl’s moisturizer, and three bars of Dial soap, all of which I’d scavenged from campus. It was easy: my classmates were constantly leaving their buckets of toiletries in the bathrooms, their clothes in the dryer, their bookbags and backpacks everywhere. Sometimes I would slip into the boys’ bathroom and slip out with a razor and a canister of shaving cream in my bathrobe pocket, or I’d hang around the basement laundry room and wait until it was empty and I was alone with a dryer-full of men’s clothing. It wasn’t as if the boys at my school couldn’t spare a little soap or a copy of whatever book it was fashionable to tote around that semester. Because of my job, I knew who had money and who, like me, was on work-study, and I was careful to take stuff only from the ones I knew could just buy more, in the unlikely event that they even noticed what was missing. I was, I told myself, like Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and entitled and careless, giving to my father, who needed it more than they did.
    “What are you reading?” I asked him. This was a safe question, because he was always reading something.
    “Great Expectations,” he answered. “It’s spring.”
    “Oh, I loved that one,” I said, not taking the bait, not mentioning that he’d taught that book every May. “Magwitch was my favorite.” Magwitch, Pip’s mysterious benefactor. Someday, I thought, I would like to be somebody’s mysterious benefactor, too; giving gifts to someone who didn’t know me; watching, from a distance, their delight.
    I looked out the window as my father went into the back of the apartment, where I’d never been, to put the soap and shaving cream away. The kids who were playing soccer had taken their ball and gone home. Now there was a woman in a bright orange sari outside, standing behind a baby slumped in the plastic cradle of a swing. She pushed him back and forth as the chains creaked. The baby sat quietly, its brown fingers gripping the edgeof the black plastic, its face stoic, as if swinging was a punishment it was sentenced to endure. When I heard the honk of my mother’s horn, I couldn’t lie, even to myself, about the emotion that flooded through me. It was relief.
    Twenty thousand dollars. I thought about it as I ate pot pie, as I dried my hair in the bathroom, where the shelves were filled with products my mom had bought at cost at her salon. Twenty thousand dollars, I thought, lying on the bed. Twenty thousand dollars could pay for rehab. It could buy medicine. Twenty thousand dollars could save him . . . and, with that thought, I finally fell asleep.

ANNIE
     
    M y husband and I have fights, like any other couple: about money, about whether we’re spending too much time with my family and not enough with his, about whether or not to spank the boys—but we have always gotten along in the bedroom. From the first time I was close to Frank, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on him, and feel his hands on me. I loved the muscles of his chest and his legs, the tightly curled hair on his chest and around his penis, the look of our hands entwined, his dark skin against my pale fingers.
    That night I got the call from the clinic, saying that I’d been approved as a surrogate, I waited until the boys were sleeping. By nine o’clock they were both dead to the world, full of pizza and worn out from an afternoon of Skee-Ball and table hockey. I lit a candle, zapped the TV into silence, took Frank by the hand, and led him upstairs. In the bedroom he looked around, blinking. The bed was neatly made, the