by Julie Clark
“Already done,” he says.
—
The sun is just starting to set as I make my way down the Third Street Promenade. Nan emailed last week to inform me that since I hadn’t signed up for anything, she was assigning me to the class fund-raising committee, which was holding its first meeting at Italia, an upscale restaurant far beyond my budget. Everyone needs to do their share, her email chirped, making me want to slam my computer into the wall.
I spot Jackie hurrying from the opposite direction, long skirt swishing around her ankles and silver bangles decorating her wrists.
She grabs my arm when she reaches me, leaning in. “I accidentally parked next to Nan in the lot, so I had to hide in the back of my minivan until she was gone.”
I laugh, imagining Jackie curled up behind the driver’s seat, among old Cheerios and dried-out pens.
We make our way through the dining room and find Nan and her committee tucked into a corner, with notebooks and pens sitting next to their bread plates and glasses of wine. “Hello, ladies!” Nan calls, waving us back.
Jackie and I huddle together, sliding into the two empty seats near the end of the table. Nan sits at the head, of course, but I’m at the foot, staring down the table at her as if we are hosting a party together.
Jackie pulls aside a passing waiter. “Can we get two martinis, please?” She gives me a questioning look, and I smile and nod.
“Okay.” Nan claps her hands. “Thanks so much for coming. This is going to be the best fund-raising event the school has ever had. We’re hoping to raise enough money to buy iPads for every student.” She makes a show of sliding her notebook to the side and says, “But let’s save the business for dessert and make this a moms’ night out.” The ladies lining each side of the table smile and give a reserved golf clap.
“Jesus help me,” Jackie mutters under her breath. “We have to sit here all the way to dessert?”
Just then, the waiter arrives with our drinks, and we dive for them.
“The only way through is drunk,” Jackie whispers.
Across the table, Nan starts complaining about how her Pilates instructor’s honeymoon will disrupt the class schedule, and the other moms murmur their sympathy and sip their wine.
“Have you heard anything about the job?” I ask Jackie.
She grimaces. “I didn’t get it.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugs. “It was a long shot. I’ve been out of the workforce for almost ten years. I’m a dinosaur. They can hire someone right out of college who won’t have any family obligations, no school pickups or parent conferences.” At the other end of the table, Nan has moved on to describing her father’s villa in France. Jackie huffs. “Nan’s father leaves her a villa. Mine left me a collection of Budweiser beer koozies,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Speaking of,” she says, “how are things with your dad?”
“Actually,” I say, setting my drink down, “he’s sick. That’s why he came back. Cancer.” I busy myself with my napkin, smoothing it across my lap.
To my relief, Jackie doesn’t spout any of the usual sympathy or platitudes. She nods slowly, and takes another sip of her martini. “Does that change anything for you?”
“Not really,” I say, “other than the fact that now everyone is mad at me.”
A waiter appears, depositing a basket of bread in the center of the table and Caesar salads in front of each of us. I pick up my fork and ask, “How are you?”
She sighs. “The same. It’s nice to be out of the house—even for this.” She leans closer and lowers her voice. “I need a break. It’s like every time I’m in the same room with Aaron, the conversation veers into an argument. The only time we’re not fighting is when Nick’s around, because we haven’t told him about his grandfather’s diagnosis yet.”
“Aaron still doesn’t want to get tested?”
“No. We’re supposed to meet with a genetic counselor to go over our options. I’m hoping that might change his mind.”
I take a piece of bread and rip it in half. “Well, knowing whether he carries the gene or not won’t change anything for him—today, tomorrow, or even next year. I’d want to know too, but at least there’s time.”
“I know,” she says. “That doesn’t make it any easier though.”
—
“Paige,” Nan calls out, pulling my attention back to the table. “Since you’re the only one who wasn’t with us last year, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself.”
I set down my fork. “Well, I’m Miles’s mom, and I’m a geneticist at Annesley.”
The other ladies smile, but Nan’s got more questions. “That sounds interesting.” She picks up her wineglass and takes a drink. “Is Miles your only child, or do you have more?”
“No, he’s my only one.”
Her lips form a sympathetic pout. “That’s too bad.”
“Not really,” I say. “It works for us.”
“And your husband?”
I smile sweetly. “I decided not to bother with a husband. I used an anonymous sperm donor instead.”
Next to me, Jackie snorts as Nan’s mouth falls open. I take another sip of my martini, thankful Jackie ordered something strong.
“Can I please get another one of these?” Jackie asks, holding out her martini glass to a passing waiter.
“Well, that’s . . . unconventional,” Nan finally says.
I look around the table, all eyes on me. “It’s not that unusual. It’s what highly educated, professional women do these days.”
“Or, we latch on to the first rich man willing to put up with us. Right, Nan?” Jackie lifts her empty martini glass in a toast.
Nan’s face turns a pasty white before flushing deep red. She raises herself up slightly and says, “Boys need a father. So much of what’s wrong in the world is because our boys don’t have a steady hand at home to guide them.”
Jackie shoves her chair back and stands. “Fuck off, Nan.”
“We should go,” I say. “I’m not sure this is the best committee for either of us.”
I toss a few twenties on the table and lead Jackie through the crowded restaurant, but before we leave, Jackie shouts, “I’ll pray for you Nan!”
We fall through the doors and into the cool night air and collapse into each other, laughing. “Do you want me to take you home?” I ask. “I don’t think you should drive.”
Jackie ignores me and steps closer. “Don’t let them scare you off. You’re no different than the rest of us.” She gestures toward the restaurant. “We all wanted a kid, so we found a man. Some of us got lucky and found good ones. Others just found rich ones.” She takes a deep breath and looks into the crowd. “You’ve got a great kid. It doesn’t matter how you got him.”
Her words soften me. Somehow, Jackie knows exactly what I need to hear.
She continues, “It’s good for Nan to get her boat rocked every now and then. Maybe she’ll steer clear of you for the rest of the year.” Her eyes catch on a group of people who have just exited a bar across the promenade. “Hey,” she says. “Since our dinner got canceled, let’s not waste your babysitter.”
“Then who’s going to drive?” I ask.
She waves my words away, unconcerned. “Aaron will come and get us. Nick’s sleeping at my in-laws’ tonight.”
I follow her across the street, and we enter a dark room teeming with the scent of exotic spices, salsa music, and waitstaff maneuvering trays of mixed drinks through the crowd.
“I’m not cool enough to be here,” I say, looking down at my gray slacks and navy blue sweater.
“Nonsense,” Jackie says, snagging a table in the corner.
We order a pitcher of sangria from the waitress, and when it arrives, Jackie pours our drinks and asks, “What’s Liam doing tonight?”
I take a big gulp and briefly worry about mixing wine and gin. But in this moment, all I want to do is get drunk with Jackie. “I don’t know. We broke up.” Saying it aloud mak
es it impossible to ignore the accumulation of everything I took for granted. The cups of coffee Liam would leave in my car when he surfed County Line. The way he’d unload my dishwasher because he knew I hated doing it. All of the tiny pieces of our life together assembling into a giant hole I want to fill with alcohol.
Jackie looks shocked. “What? Why? And why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“I didn’t want to get into it in front of Nan,” I say, noticing the way the sangria warms my stomach, the way it turns my sharp edges soft. I should drink to excess more often, I decide.
“Is it because of Miles?” she asks.
“No. He says I don’t let him in enough, that I don’t include him in my life.”
Jackie’s expression is the perfect blend of angry and skeptical, and I hang on to it. “What does he expect you to do? Your child has to come first.”
“Exactly,” I say. “Let’s talk about something else.”
Jackie ticks off forbidden topics. “No Liam or Aaron. No kids. No school stuff. No work. No Huntington’s.” She looks alarmed. “What’s left?”
I laugh and feel myself relax. It’s a relief to be around someone who doesn’t want to pick apart my life, lining up my flaws and bad decisions to be examined. “I don’t know.”
Jackie pours more sangria into our glasses and glances at a table of young women next to us. “What kind of life would you live, if you were their age and could choose anything?” She takes a sip of her drink. “I’d want to live in New York, right in the heart of Manhattan. Maybe in a high-rise apartment with views, and have an important job downtown.”
“What kind of job?”
“I don’t know. One where I had an office and an assistant to take my lunch order. And a coffee cart that came by once an hour. I’d wear power suits and killer heels. How about you?”
Science is all I’ve ever wanted to do. But I try to stretch away from the ruts in my life to something completely different. “Maybe something abroad,” I say. “Like a travel journalist. I’d write about foreign locations, stay in hotels for free, fly from one place to another, and immerse myself in the culture. The foods. The smells . . .” I trail off, imagining it, until I realize I’ve chosen another career that would leave me isolated and alone. Maybe that’s just who I am. There’s nothing wrong with being self-reliant and independent. It wasn’t until I tried to be something different that things started going wrong for me.
“That sounds amazing,” Jackie says.
The women next to us laugh and clap as one of them does a shot. From behind me, a man says, “I can get one of those for you, if you like.” His voice is warm and intimate in my ear, and for a split second I think it’s Liam, somehow intuiting I’d be here, come to ask me to forgive him, and a rush of adrenaline floods me.
But when I turn, it’s the face of a stranger, leering at me through glassy eyes that are shot through with red. “No, thanks,” I say.
He turns his attention toward Jackie. “How about you? You look like you know how to have fun.”
Jackie smiles at him suggestively. “I love to have fun. But I’m finishing a course of antibiotics and my doctor says I can’t have fun until the sores heal.”
The guy recoils, as if he’s been slapped, and backs away. “Maybe next time?” Jackie calls after him, but he’s already gone, off to find his next victim.
“You’re terrible.” I laugh. But the exchange has left me feeling empty, the realization that I’m a single woman in a bar, fending off drunk assholes. Suddenly, I feel woozy and all I want is to go home. “Can you call Aaron and have him come and get us?” I ask her. “I should go home and relieve Gemini.”
Jackie shoots off a text and says, “Gemini? That’s your babysitter’s name?”
I’m reminded of what Liam said when I first told him Gemini’s name. She puts the “pair” in au pair. You’re lucky because she usually only looks after twins. I feel a sense of loss, like a missed train, departed from the station.
“Two waters,” Jackie says to a waitress passing by. She puts her hand over mine. “You miss him.”
I shrug. “Yeah.” It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud, and it doesn’t make me feel better. “But I don’t see how it could have worked. He wanted more than I could give him.”
“Life is long. Lots of things can still happen.”
—
Twenty minutes later, Aaron’s standing over our table, grinning. “Well, look at you two. My wife, drunk on a Tuesday night. Who would have thought?” He slides into the chair next to Jackie. “You girls ready to go home?”
“I need to use the bathroom,” Jackie says. “I hope there isn’t a line.”
Aaron watches her walk away and then turns to me. “Jackie really needed this tonight. She’s had a hard time with my dad’s diagnosis and what it means for our family. She says you’ve been a real help though, talking to her about the statistics and what they mean. Thanks.”
“No problem.”
His eyes dart between me and the back of the bar. “Since I have you here,” he says, leaning forward, “I was wondering if I could ask your advice on something.”
His face is stretched and desperate, and I feel sorry for him. “Of course.”
He glances again toward the restrooms and then out the front window toward the street. “I hate putting you in this position,” he finally says, “except I don’t know who else to ask.”
Cold adrenaline sharpens my focus, knowing he’s about to ask me how to tell Jackie he’s tested positive. I’m already formulating a way to assure him she can handle it.
He takes a long, shaky breath. “About twelve years ago, I was a sperm donor. Jackie doesn’t know—it was before we met.”
I feel as if my chair might slip out from under me, and I wonder if I’ve heard him right. Am I drunker than I thought? “I’m sorry,” I say. “I couldn’t hear you. What did you say?”
But he says it again. “A long time ago, I was a sperm donor.”
I nod, as if this were something innocuous about himself that he’s shared with me—like the fact that he used to play basketball or he was once a camp counselor—and I take a sip of my water to buy myself some time as I scramble to process what he’s just said.
“Since you work in genetics,” he continues, “I was hoping you could tell me what my ethical obligations are. About the Huntington’s.”
I study his face, looking for signs he knows how I conceived Miles, but there aren’t any. He wants my opinion as a geneticist, not as someone who used a donor.
“I’m not an attorney,” I tell him, measuring my words carefully. “And it will probably vary by clinic.” I fight to keep my voice steady and clear. “Which one did you use?” I grip my water glass, willing him to say names of clinics I know of but didn’t use. Hillcrest Reproduction. Cryogenics of North America. Crenshaw Cryogenics.
“American Cryogenic Bank,” he says.
I feel the air rush out of me, but I pull myself together before he notices. ACB has donors from all over the country. Tens of thousands of men, all across the United States. It would be almost statistically impossible for Aaron to be ours. Almost. The word floats through my mind, like a whisper, causing me to nearly choke. I close my eyes, seeing Miles and Nick, their heads tilted toward each other as they talk about chemistry.
I shake my head to clear it. I need to stay calm. This can’t be what I think it is. “You absolutely have an obligation to inform the clinic,” I say. “They’ll need to notify the families who used your sperm.”
Aaron looks at his hands, splayed on top of the table. I study the contours of his face, the way his cheekbones blend into his jaw, the set of his eyes, the arc of his nose, and pick up my water glass, draining it, the chill of ice racing to my temples.
Over his shoulder, I see Jackie making her way toward us, and I sit up straighter in my chair. Aaron follows my gaze and says, “Please don’t mention this to Jackie. I’ll tell her. Just give me some time.” When she arrives
at our table, he stands and says, “I’d better get you two home. We can bring you back tomorrow to get your car,” he tells me.
I wobble, gripping my chair for support. “That’s okay,” I say. “Rose can bring me.”
“It’s no trouble,” Jackie says, wrapping her arm around Aaron’s waist and letting him lead her toward the door. I follow behind them, my mind a mess of questions I can’t even begin to sort into any kind of sense.
DONOR SIBLING REGISTRY HISTORY AND MISSION
* * *
OUR HISTORY AND MISSION
The Donor Sibling Registry (DSR) was founded in 2000 to assist individuals conceived as a result of sperm, egg, or embryo donation that are seeking to make mutually desired contact with others with whom they share genetic ties. Without any outside support, the DSR has single-handedly pioneered a national discussion about the donor conception industry and families, with its many media appearances and interviews. DSR advocates for the right to honesty and transparency for donor kids, and for social acceptance, legal rights and valuing the diversity of all families.
The DSR’s core value is honesty, with the conviction that people have the fundamental right to information about their biological origins and identities.
The donor conception industry is largely a for-profit enterprise, and after the “product” has been purchased, most doctors, clinics, egg donation agencies, and cryobanks do not engage in discussions and activities which acknowledge the humanity and rights of the donor-conceived. It is our mission to bring these concepts to the public arena for discussion, as has been done in many European countries, as well as New Zealand and parts of Australia.
Since 2000, we have provided support and connection to families which have been developed via donor conception, advocated for the rights of the donor-conceived, and educated the general public through national media interviews and appearances about the issues, challenges and rights of the donor-conceived community.
Parents are sometimes not prepared for their children’s curiosity and desire to know more about their genetic background. In order to move out of the secrecy and shame that has for so long shrouded donor conception, the DSR will continue to educate parents and the general public on the importance of honoring and supporting their children’s natural drive to know more about their identity.