Her feet were in pointe shoes.
Erik’s eyes narrowed. Her feet in pointe shoes, the ribbons tied neatly around her ankles. Her legs were bare, the muscles shaped and defined. Bare feet in pointe shoes. One long curving line of leg, from her toes on the floor, up her calf and thigh to…
With one hand, he covered the woman from the waist up, so all he had were a perfect little ass, long legs and bare feet in…
Five minutes later, he put his specimen cup through the little revolving door at the nurse’s station and left the office. His pace was a little guilty. He had ripped the page out of the magazine and folded it up in his back pocket.
Two days later, the urologist called. “By chance did you ever have the mumps?”
“Excuse me?” Erik said.
“Your counts are extremely low, but what concerns me more is the motility.”
“The what?”
“Your sperm aren’t swimming,” the doctor said with patient enunciation. “For lack of a better phrase. Is there a history of male infertility in your family?”
“I’m estranged from my father, I wouldn’t know,” Erik said. “If it helps, he was an only child, but I don’t know the reason why. My paternal grandparents are deceased. I have a brother. My brother has two children, and to my knowledge, they were conceived the old-fashioned way.”
“All right, for the moment we can rule out genetic causes. Back to my original question—did you have the mumps when you were a child?”
“No,” Erik said.
“Are you sure?” Melanie said from the other extension.
“Of course I’m sure,” he said. And the next day at work, he closed his office door and called his mother down in Key West.
“Of course,” she said, as if Erik were witless. “It’s why Peter went deaf. You knew this.”
“Pete had meningitis,” Erik said, as if she were the demented one.
“That was years later. It was the mumps when he was a baby. He got it first and you hadn’t been vaccinated yet, so we whisked you out of the house to your grandfather’s. But then you came down with it too. It’s highly contagious.”
“I see,” he said, disturbed he’d gotten this wrong all these years.
“Why are you asking, what’s the matter?”
“Melanie and I can’t get pregnant, and it seems I’m the problem. Doctor asked if I’d had the mumps. I guess one of the side effects is sterility.”
“Well, yes, they told me that. But you were three years old. They said sterility was only a risk if you were past puberty. Mumps can’t be the reason.”
“Maybe it isn’t.”
“It’s not. It can’t be. Tell him you were just three.”
He reported back. The doctor agreed, given Erik’s age at the mumps onset, it was unlikely the disease had caused such testicular failure.
“Would you mind not putting ‘testicular’ and ‘failure’ into the same sentence?” Erik said.
He would need all the jokes he could muster in the next year. Erik, this man who hated to be the center of attention, was about to be scrutinized in a way that made every atom in his body howl in protest.
“I can’t tell you how many people have been touching my junk,” he said to Miles as they ran along the canal. “I think if I made a list of people who haven’t had their hand down my pants, it would be shorter.”
“Put me on the list, please,” Miles said, panting.
“It’s not enough they have to handle your balls. No. They have to measure them. Did you know this? They have a little thing of rings to measure your boys. It’s enchanting.”
“Huh. I may register a complaint at my next physical. All I get is a finger up the ass.”
Before jumping into in-vitro fertilization, the doctors were trying to boost Erik’s counts through chemistry—injections of chorionic gonadotropin three times a week. Fortunately they were small-needle subcutaneous shots and he quickly got the knack of self-administration. Melanie, wanting to participate, tried once to inject him, botched it badly and left him with an ugly bruise. Ever after, she lost her nerve as soon as the needle hovered over his skin.
“I can’t,” she said, looking a little green around the eyes.
“Pussy,” Erik said, snorting. He took the syringe away and deftly took care of business. “So much for your career as a heroin addict.”
Once Melanie would have laughed. Now her smile died halfway past her lower lip and she sighed.
Banned from Needle Park, Melanie hovered over him with various homeopathic remedies, nagging about selenium, ginkgo biloba, Asian ginseng and Vitamin C. For the latter, Erik resurrected his old pineapple juice habit.
“Orange juice has more Vitamin C,” Melanie said, comparing labels.
“Pineapple juice makes your jiz taste good.” He nudged her side playfully, but she rolled her eyes, shouldering past to put the bottles back in the fridge.
“Only one place your jiz is going, baby.”
“Yeah, in a cup,” Erik muttered.
The months fell away. How quickly they passed when the sole purpose of life was trying to reproduce. You were either gearing up to get pregnant or in the business-like throes of the act. Or waiting to see if you were pregnant, or trying to console your inconsolable wife when she got her period. Then you geared up again.
Erik was growing weary of scheduled and scrutinized sex, conscious of Melanie evaluating every bump and thrust for optimal conception. He once offered to videotape their lovemaking for the doctors’ critique. Melanie was not amused. Without a sense of humor to play off, Erik soon stopped making jokes, robbing himself of the only outlet for stress. He kept his mouth shut, took his shots, downed the herbal remedies and dutifully jerked off by appointment. Always taking his trusty torn-out magazine page, cropped down to just legs and pointe shoes.
Topping and Tailing
“What is this?” Erik said.
Melanie was topping and tailing string beans at the kitchen table. She looked up at him, at the piece of paper in his hand.
“I was just looking around on the internet,” she said. “Throw it out if you want.”
Erik looked down at the paper, a printed list of names and addresses.
Byron Fiskare
4732 Pinnacle Peak Hwy
Phoenix, AZ
Byron E. Fiskare
49 Oak Street
Santa Monica, CA
Byron Fiskare
14975 Mann Street
Burbank, CA
“What do you think you’re doing?” The words were icy in his mouth. He felt violated. Worse—he felt pillaged. Sacked. She had trespassed in the most guarded room in his heart’s palace. A room filled with the soft white feathers of memory. A room kept quiet and still so as not to stir them. Looking down at the list of addresses, it was as though Melanie had gone into that room with a leaf blower.
“You can’t go here, Melanie.”
“Don’t you want to know?” she asked. “After all these years, isn’t it time?”
The HcG shots made him irritable. He knew it was one of the side effects and noticed both his patience and temper were easily lost these past months. Reining himself in from snapping at his students meant he often came home and snapped at his wife.
Tonight he didn’t just raise his voice, but got in her face and yelled until his voice cracked. “You try to get pregnant without telling me and now you go looking for my father without telling me. When did I become irrelevant to this marriage, Mel? When did I get thrown out of the decision making process? And when the fuck did you decide you know what’s best for me?”
He crumpled the paper in a shaking fist and threw it at her. “Don’t you ever go looking for my father again, do you understand? He is dead to me. If he ever calls here, I don’t want to know. If he ever shows up here, I don’t want to know. If you go have coffee with him, I don’t fucking want to know.”
He stormed out, the sound of her sobs dwindling away behind him as he swiftly clipped a leash on
Harry and left. He walked for hours, muttering under his breath. He cooled off, and then he felt terrible. He still felt justified, but he felt terrible.
“I’m sorry,” he said later, carefully taking Melanie in his arms. “I’m sorry. The damn shots make me crazy but it’s no excuse. I should have walked out or…”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m like a lunatic lately. I miss my mother.” Her face crumpled and she wept in his chest. Erik slid his hand along the back of her neck, rested his cheek on her head.
“I know,” he whispered.
“I miss my mother and I hate that she’s missing everything.”
“She sees you,” he said, swaying side to side. “She sees you. She knows.”
“But I don’t see her seeing me,” she said, her voice hitching. “And I’m thinking about my dad. I’m dreaming about him and…” Melanie picked up her head, touching her fingers under her eyes. “It just bothers me our child won’t know its grandfather.”
“I know,” he said again, helping with his own fingertips to stay the tears. “Sometimes that’s just how it is with people. My mom will be the only grandparent. It’s not ideal but it’s what we have, Mel.”
She nodded, and touched her fingertips to his necklace. “They say infertility can really bring the crazy out in people,” she said. “I guess I have more crazy than I knew.”
“I love your crazy,” he said. “And you put up with mine.”
“I’m sorry, baby.”
He shushed her and pulled her close. “I know how important this is to you,” he whispered. “But please. Mel. My balls are under a microscope. Sometimes I need you to just take me to bed for…”
She picked up her head and managed a wobbly smile. “Just for your cock.”
“Well,” he said, looking up the ceiling. “Yeah. Kind of.”
She laughed then and put her hand on his face. “Come on. Upstairs. Leave your balls. Take the cannoli.”
“You’re adorable,” Erik said, pulling her by the hand.
“You can even pull out,” she said, following. “That’s how uninterested I am in your sperm tonight.”
“Oh, now you’re teasing.”
“Try me…”
Below the Belt
Mel tried hard to separate making love from making babies. But the gonadotropin injections were not helping Erik’s counts, and the doctors concluded he and Melanie would need high-tech assistance. Conventional insemination was ruled out. “Even with the artificial head start, your sperm will never make it to the fallopian tubes,” the doctor said.
“Thanks,” Erik muttered.
Overnight their life turned into acronyms. They jumped right over IVF—in vitro fertilization—to a procedure known as ICSI.
“Intracytoplasmic sperm injection,” Erik said on his daily run with Miles. “You don’t just flood the egg with sperm and hope for the best. You pick up one single sperm and inject it straight in.”
“Sounds foolproof.”
“Ah, but I like to make things difficult. They have to get my boys direct from the source.”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“Percutaneous epididymal sperm aspiration.”
“Showoff.”
“PESA for short. I mean, who can handle a mouthful like that?”
“Your mother?”
The procedure failed.
“Testicular sperm extraction,” Erik said to Miles. “That’s TESA to those in the inner circle.”
“I can’t compete with this,” Miles said.
“I feel bad you won’t ever know the pleasure of getting a local anesthetic in the nuts. I mean, once you get over the nausea, a needle to the sack really makes you feel like a man.”
“The only thing I feel right now is inadequate.”
But the TESA failed as well. After the doctor called with the unsurprising news, Melanie went straight out with the dog. Erik stayed put.
Slumped at his desk, he pressed the heel of his hand into his forehead, feeling older than he had a right to, and relieved he was finally excused from all of this. He was done. No more would his private parts be under constant public scrutiny. No more acronyms. No more every other word being “sperm” or “semen” or “ejaculate.” No more needles and specimen cups and everything below the belt. The verdict was in.
He wrote sterile on a post-it, taking a good look at the word. He couldn’t connect with it yet. He was too occupied with liberated joy that everyone, including Melanie, would finally get out of his pants and leave him alone.
His computer beeped. He tore off the note and crumpled it as he jiggled the mouse, bringing the dimmed screen back to life. He had been waiting for his brother. They always talked on Thursday nights, via instant messaging.
Ptfiskare74: Hey bro… How’d it go yesterday? You hear anything?
Efiskare: Yeah just hung up with the doc actually. Nada.
Ptfiskare74: Nada like they found nothing or nada found nothing that was swimming?
Efiskare: No swimmers.
Ptfiskare75: Shit. What now?
Efiskare: We look for a donor or adopt.
Ptfiskare74: What are you leaning toward?
Efiskare: I don’t know yet.
Ptfiskare74: Well…I don’t know how you feel about this but if you want, I’ll do it.
Efiskare: Do what?
Ptfiskare74: I’ll donate. Don’t make me spell it all out. You know how I blush…
Efiskare: Really?
Ptfiskare74: Of course. If you guys wanted. I mean… I feel kind of responsible that you can’t.
Efiskare: What the fuck are you talking about?
Ptfiskare74: Come on, I gave you the mumps and screwed up your boys.
Efiskare: Dude, shut up.
Ptfiskare74: I’ll do it. I’ll do it for you. I’ll do it yesterday. You let me know.
Pete’s offer kindled Erik’s interest. He felt a little genuine excitement. Pete. Of course. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed like the perfect solution.
But Melanie refused. She wanted a donor. Furthermore, she was beginning to feel she wanted a black donor.
And then it was war.
Erik’s ancestral hackles were up. He was not only filled with residual gonadotropin, but with insulted Italo-Swedish rage. He turned on her, wounded and angry. Was she declaring him of defective stock, his bloodline and genes of no use to her? He had no problem raising a child who was a biological niece or nephew. It would be blood. He would have a bond. A connection.
“My parents are dead,” she said.
“What does that have to do with it?”
“It has everything to do with it. My parents are gone. My sister’s not having any kids. I’m the only one left. I’m continuing my father’s line.”
“And I’m not?”
“Pete has two kids. You have both your parents and you could not care less about your father’s line.”
He couldn’t have been more shocked if she’d spit in his face. “Fuck you, I have both my parents. How can you even say that?”
“You know you won’t ever look for your father, Erik. You’re not even in touch with any of your cousins on his side.”
“You have a lot of nerve, Mel. You know nothing about what I went through when he left. Nothing.”
“Maybe if you told me—”
“Oh, I see where we’re going. You’re hung up on knowing every little thing about my past.”
“I bet you told her about your father.”
There was no question who she meant but this was an unexpected smoke bomb. He kicked the explosive topic aside and counted ten. “Are we arguing about a donor or are we arguing about my ex-girlfriend? Please let’s pick one thing.”
“There is still so much you won’t share with me.”
“I can’t share everything,” he said, looking up at the ceiling.
“You can, you just won’t. I’m your wife. I need to know these things.”
“And I’m your husband. You’
ve got to respect what hurts me.”
“Fine. We’ll argue about donors. I don’t want to use Pete’s sperm.”
“Why, because he’s my brother or because he’s white? Or because he’s deaf? Tell me what’s going on here. Please.”
“This is my father’s name,” she said, her throat thick with suppressed crying. “I can’t help but wonder what he would think… What my mother would think if…”
Erik stared at her. “If they knew you were in an inter-racial marriage?”
Melanie looked away.
“We talked about this,” he said. “We talked about this when we started dating. We talked about it before we moved in together. After we got engaged I asked if you were sure and you got mad at me. You were insulted. I apologized and said I would never ask you again. Do you remember this, Melanie?”
“It’s different now.”
“Different how?”
“It’s different when you’re trying to have a child.”
“It wasn’t my idea.” His voice was raised. He wanted to throw something. “You went off the pill without telling me. You didn’t even instigate a conversation. A whole year, you tried to get pregnant on the sly and race wasn’t a problem. Only now, when I can’t get you pregnant, it’s a burning issue? Now we’re going to have this conversation?”
“You,” she whispered, “are the king of un-had conversations.”
“Stay on the topic,” he said. “If we use your eggs, any child of ours is going to be half black.”
“You’re saying we shouldn’t use my eggs at all?”
He opened his mouth and shut it, thinking. “Maybe it’s the fairest thing,” he said.
The Man I Love Page 36