Every Kind of Wanting

by Gina Frangello

REQUEST FOR ORDER

  PETITIONER/PLAINTIFF: Gretchen Merry-Underwood

  RESPONDENT/DEFENDANT:

  Miguel Guerra/Chad William Merry

  OTHER PARENT/PARTY: Nicholas Owen Ryan

  9. X I request that time for service of the Request for Order and accompanying papers be shortened so that these documents may be served no less than (specify number) 10 days before the time set for the hearing. I need to have this order shortening time because of the facts specified in item 10 or the attached declaration.

  10. _______ FACTS IN SUPPORT of orders requested and change of circumstances for any modification are (specify):

  X Contained in the attached declaration. (You may use Attached Declaration (form MC-031) for this purpose. The attached declaration must not exceed 10 pages in length unless permission to file a longer declaration has been obtained from the court.)

  I am filing for custody of an unborn female child, who is currently nearing the 21st week of gestation. I am the biological mother of the child. My brother, Chad Merry, had asked if I would donate an egg so that he and his partner, Miguel Guerra, could have a child. I was under a lot of stress as a result of deciding to divorce my emotionally abusive husband, Troy Underwood, and unfortunately I exhibited bad judgment and decided to donate my eggs. I love my brother, and he is a good person, but it has become very clear to me that I don’t wish to have my daughter raised by people other than myself, and far away from her half-brother, my son Gray. I am trying to rectify this error in my judgment before it goes too far. In order to show my seriousness in wanting to make no further poor judgment calls, I have voluntarily given up all alcohol and am seeing a life coach, to help me understand why I would have done clearly detrimental things like marry an abusive man and give my immature brother and his partner, who I don’t think even likes me, my eggs. It is clear to me that I was having some sort of midlife crisis. I would like to be able to get my life back on track by raising both of my children together as siblings, and providing my daughter with a more stable, normative environment, in a calm and tranquil suburb, near her grandparents, rather than having her grow up the daughter of gay men in a very chaotic and wild area of the city known for its bars, Wicker Park. I think I can provide a more stable environment for this little girl, and that if my brother and his partner really want to have a baby, they should adopt like other gay men often do, like from China or something, where the baby would otherwise be living in some third-world orphanage and my brother would be able to offer a better home. In this case, however, I am able to offer the better home. And, of course, the baby is biologically mine, not theirs. The sperm donor is a man we barely even know, who has no desire that any of us know of to claim or raise the child.

  You will note, above, that I have asked for a very shortened period from these documents being served, which I am doing in the best interest of my daughter. I would like to have these papers served only after she is born, and for us to be able to immediately go to court to decide the matter at that time. If I were to serve these papers now, the gestational surrogate, who seems potentially a highly opportunistic person, could decide to sabotage the pregnancy, or my brother and his partner could pay her to go with them somewhere else to give birth, where I wouldn’t know where they were. At minimum, serving papers at this juncture would be a significant stressor on the pregnancy if everyone involved knew a custody suit was pending. For the safety and protection of my daughter, I would like these proceedings to remain a secret until on or near the due date of July 16, 2009.

  Thank you for your consideration and discretion.

  I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the State of Illinois that the foregoing is true and correct.

  Date: 03/12/2009

  EMILY

  Emily is standing up to get dressed, head still pounding and every breath a labor that doesn’t hit bottom and make her feel air-full, when the doctor—about Emily’s age and also pregnant, though further along—leans in toward her and says, urgent and conspiratorial, “Look, it’s a noble thing you’re doing, and I admire you. But you have two children of your own and this can be extremely serious. If you decide the right course of action is to deliver immediately, no one could fault you for that.”

  Emily blinks compulsively, which she has, in truth, been doing a lot of this week. Her vision is screwed up, which she thought was from exhaustion but—it turns out—is from this preeclampsia thing: a profusion of symptoms that had appeared unrelated, but turn out to be Bad.

  “Deliver?” she says, hearing her voice as nearly a squeal. “But I’m not even in the third trimester yet. Do you mean . . . terminate the pregnancy?”

  “We don’t look at it as termination,” the doctor says cheerfully. “We can try to treat this with steroid injections to help the fetus’s lungs develop faster—we can give you magnesium and blood pressure medication to try to lower your own complications, but the thing you need to understand is that the only cure for preeclampsia is to deliver the baby. You’re a mother. Your own children need you.”

  Under her blue paper medical gown, Emily’s armpits leak conspicuously. She is not sure she has ever felt sweat dripping and running down her sides in such a manner. Her body has become a thing out of her control.

  “I couldn’t possibly do that. I’ve signed a contract. I have an obligation to these people. This is their child.”

  “Of course,” the doctor says. “Whatever you decide. It’s my job to make you aware of all your options. Most women with preeclampsia do deliver their babies past the thirty-seventh week, and everything works out, but some women have a more mild form of the condition, and yours is somewhat more serious at the onset, so it could be more challenging to get it under control. But that doesn’t mean we can’t achieve it.”

  She pats Emily’s arm reassuringly, then retreats from the examination room. The stupidly green walls look blurry. How can this be happening? Emily glances down at the “Preeclampsia & Eclampsia” pamphlet the doctor has given her and the potential consequence of “cerebral palsy” for the infant jumps out at her as though written in 3-D. Could she have had this last time and never been diagnosed? But . . . her pregnancy with Jay seemed perfect. No one ever mentioned high blood pressure. She never felt like this. It seems to be a cosmic joke.

  It’s difficult to get dressed. Her abdomen isn’t that huge yet, but everything else is swollen, too. Her shoes are hard to get on. Her hands feel bloated and tingly, like she’s trying to work her zippers and buttons after a shot of local anesthesia.

  If she terminates this pregnancy, everything she’s been working toward will be lost.

  Instead of being the hero, the saint, she will just be the failure, yet again. Chad and Miguel will mutter disappointedly to each other how she was too old—how she already had one disabled child and they should have known better. Nothing has been found wrong with their daughter on the ultrasound, but nothing was found wrong with Jay, either.

  She sits, breathing hard, not leaving the exam room. Chad is in the waiting room, and she will have to face him. What will she say? What would he want her to do? If she carries to term, something could be wrong with the baby. She would have delivered them a damaged child. She wouldn’t wish that on anyone, of course—but mostly, she wouldn’t wish the stigma of a double-hitter on herself, and the terror of it makes her throat constrict. Her head buzzes and hums.

  How to salvage this situation? What to do, who to ask? She clutches her referral to a maternal-fetal medicine specialist (whatever that is—if her existing OB-GYN isn’t a “maternal-fetal medicine specialist,” then why has she been handling maternal Emily and this fetus?), shoving it deep into her purse where Chad won’t see it. She has to go home and begin bed rest, which is going to be hard to explain, since Chad will think they’re going out for “just one glass” of champagne or (virgin, for Emily) umbrella drinks, and maybe even shopping, and Emily wants to go—wants to go so badly that it hurts worse than the pain in her head to think she has to depri
ve herself.

  Chad jumps up when he sees her, all innocent gleeful smiles, and for the first time since she’s met him, Emily wants to smack him. Usually, just seeing him makes her feel better than she does at work or home—but now he’s become another male body she has to hide things from. Already her head is churning with how she’s going to manage Nick, who she suspects resents her pregnancy even now, before he realizes she’s about to spend the next three months in bed, while he will have to wait on her.

  Which, according to the pink apron fantasy, he should get off on. But no, of course he will hate it. A pregnant woman with swollen hands and feet and dangerously high blood pressure is hardly the epitome of sexy. With the boys, Nick is a nurturer. He never snaps, never yells, never fails to say kind things or make Miles and Jay laugh. He fetches things for Jay like a personal valet. But when Emily has the flu or something, Nick never even thinks to get her a cup of tea. He says things like, “Don’t worry, you just rest, I’ll take care of the boys,” but “resting” ends up meaning that she is stuck in the bedroom alone, starving and dehydrated and uncomfortable and bored. In no one’s mind is Emily ever the one who needs taking care of—as though the epitome of any care they might offer is to alleviate her of the burden of caring for them.

  “How did the appointment go?” Chad says, rubbing Emily’s belly with gusto. “How’s our little girl?”

  “She’s great!” Emily says, wishing she could pop about twenty Advil right now. “My blood pressure is a little high so they said I should rest a lot the next few days to bring it back down. I should probably skip going out to lunch.”

  “Your blood pressure’s high?” Chad’s voice fills the waiting room—people turn to look. “Should we go back and talk to the doctor some more? Is the baby okay? Did they take the baby’s blood pressure?”

  Emily forces herself not to sigh audibly. “The baby’s heartbeat was just fine. Everything about the baby is perfect. High blood pressure isn’t terribly uncommon in pregnancy. It’s no big deal—I just need to take it easy.”

  “Okay then, all righty then,” Chad says, still talking too fast and too loud. “No problem! We can get Barb to come to your house more regularly. We can order you some meals from First Slice Café—they donate parts of the proceeds to homeless shelters and have vegetarian options. We can order you HBO so you can binge watch all the shows you’ve missed. It’ll be fun!”

  Emily begins to exhale. He still seems stupid to her in this moment, but he is a stupid man who is going to buy her HBO and make sure her house is cleaned and the three males she lives with are fed. He is better than she can manage without him, and relief begins to sink into her bones like an analgesic.

  “Hopefully the resting thing won’t last that long,” Emily lies. “I’m supposed to talk to the doctor again in a few days, to see if I need to be referred to any kind of specialist, but hopefully it’s all just normalized by then.”

  There is no possibility this is true. The doctor, the pamphlet, have both already informed her that the only way this matter will “resolve” is to get the baby out of her body. But she has an innate instinct, uncontrollable, that makes her want to buy time, to figure out how to spin this, to figure out how to present it to Chad and Miguel in a way that assures their continued devotion and gratitude—to make sure she isn’t a disappointment to them, of which they will wash their hands.

  She can see the specialist on her own. After that—once she knows more—she will call Chad and tell him . . . something. Maybe the truth. Maybe some half-version of the truth. She can’t avoid it entirely—he has access to the doctors, too. It’s only out of respect for her modesty that he wasn’t in the examination room with her. She can’t hold him off forever.

  They wouldn’t have to return the ten grand, would they? She and Nick had twice that in debt, and the money is already spent. Emily makes a note to review her contract when she gets home. Surely, there must be some clause that provides for situations like this?

  On the way back to the parking garage, Chad links arms with her, walks more slowly than his usual brisk pace. He hovers solicitously while she puts on her seatbelt, as though expecting to have to fasten it for her. She wishes, with a ferocity that makes her feel like the bottom has dropped out of her stomach, that he would just take her home with him. If she tells him—once she tells him—might that be an option? Might she just go and stay with them, and leave Nick and the boys to fend for themselves while Chad and Miguel minister to her every need?

  Then, if they lose the baby anyway, it would be all of their shared failure and grief. It wouldn’t be Emily, quietly letting them down on the west side of town, solely culpable, something to be forgotten. Somehow, if the baby doesn’t make it, that has to strengthen her bond with them, not eradicate it . . .

  This is a long game. A marathon, not a sprint. This is still salvageable. It has to be.

  Forbidden to return to work, confined to her bed, Emily will soon have ample time to figure out exactly how.

  LINA

  You’ve told me that one of the first rules of writing is not to be coy with the audience. Not to hold things back that the characters already know, for no apparent reason other than the value of surprise. You’ve explained to me that shocking the reader is cheap, that punchline endings are a cop-out and the real trick is creating something that feels new with each read, fresh points of entry invisible on the last round. For example, when someone writes a letter in real life, they won’t rehash all the things the letter’s recipient already knows, and that’s why letters never look real in novels, because there’s a difference in awareness between the story’s players and its audience, and writers forget that. And so, Nick, under the laws of your universe I’ve already made too many fatal mistakes. I am still the girl who thinks I can turn this into a love story. I am still the girl who thinks if I say, “I don’t want to talk about it,” it will somehow go away.

  There is still so much you don’t know. Please be patient with me. I need to take this slowly.

  I learned about the BRCA gene during my phone call with Isabel’s doctor, way back in the late fall when I was masquerading as Ezme. The doctor said to me, “Ezme, did your mother talk to you, have you decided yet whether or not to be tested?” and when I said, to stall long enough to figure out what the fuck he was talking about, “No, I haven’t made up my mind yet, what do you think?” he sighed into my pretend-Ezme ear and said, “It’s a very personal choice, but I think it’s better to have the information. You’re so young that you wouldn’t need to have a preventative hysterectomy immediately, most likely. You could still bear children, if that’s what you’re worried about.” And I said dumbly, “Yes, that’s what I was worried about.” When I hung up, I wrote “Bracka Gene?” on the thigh of my jeans, before I called Eddie and invited myself for Christmas. I sat staring into space, in the screaming vortex of my own head, hating my existence and wishing someone would cane me within an inch of my life so I could feel different without having to take a new sober date.

  Later, after the aforementioned phone calls, I would finally Google it. I would see BRCA gene. I would read about the time bomb possibly ticking inside me, potentially putting me at such an increased risk of both ovarian and breast cancer than the general population that the recommended course of action was a preventative hysterectomy and, in some cases, a bilateral mastectomy. I immediately went into my bathroom and took five Klonopin by chewing them to get them into my bloodstream faster, even though that would leave me short of pills by the end of the month.

  So where was I supposed to drop this little tidbit of information in, Nick? Go ahead, go back over what I’ve written and tell me. Fuck if I know.

  So here I am in our story, near the end of your wife’s second trimester, and I’ve been sitting on this information for nearly four months. So what? That I’m capable of denial—that I’m capable of spinning while revealing nothing—is hardly news.

  One thing’s becoming clear, though. Yes, you’re the yo
u of this story, but just like it isn’t all about us, it also isn’t all for you anymore. I want to get everything down as I remember it. I want to understand things myself, as much as I want you to understand. I want something bigger than what I wanted when I started writing this, even if I’m not sure what it is.

  Denial is easy when you have no actual information. It took me months to actually make an appointment to get the BRCA gene test, and—as with every terrifying blood test I’d ever had—I expected the results would be back to me within a couple of days. Only once I was in the lab with a needle in my arm did I find out it would take some six weeks for the results to come in, and that the anxiety I’d been facing wondering whether to get the test had just multiplied by about a million, and I was trapped, helplessly waiting.

  In some ways, I don’t know why I’m saying that. The truth is, I always knew what the results would be.

  When the phone call comes, imparting the news that I tested positive, Isabel’s toxic DNA making up the blood and substance of me, I feel, if anything, a powerful sense of déjà vu, my body long since a foregone conclusion. I think for a quick, violent flash of Miguel, and how his syphilis became some opportunity for a madcap communal adventure, and for maybe the first time in my entire life I hate my brother, who has always had more love and support circling him than he ever acknowledges, while I am here alone.

  But wait: Can I scratch that? It sounds so self-pitying. The truth is that I am not alone even on a literal level, as in in my apartment. I could knock on the door to Bebe’s office and tell her, and she would call me “pet” and hold me. I could call Miguel a few neighborhoods over, and he would meet me anywhere, might even let me pound a drink in front of him and not complain. I could, for fuck’s sake, call Isabel and tell her off for not warning me herself, and perhaps derive some catharsis from that.

  I do none of those things.