“You could come too,” she tells Alan.
“I don’t think so.”
“Are you sure? Don’t you want to know what he’s like?”
“You read the file.”
“I want to see him. Talk to him. You aren’t curious?”
“I’m curious you’re so curious.”
“We agreed—” Laurie says.
“To have the baby, I know. But I’m still having a hard time with this.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
Another silence. Even though they’re moving forward, the reality of what’s happening is settling in, and as days pass, instead of bringing them together, the pregnancy seems to be pushing against them, shoving them apart.
“I need to know who he is, not just words in a sperm donor application,” Laurie says.
“He likes to play kickball. Doesn’t that tell you everything you need to know?”
“You can’t understand somebody’s personality from a file. I want to hear his voice. His laugh. Make sure he’s got a sense of humor.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“We’ll give the baby up for adoption.”
Whoops, she’s said that with too much edge in her voice. Alan frowns.
“Funny,” he says.
“I wasn’t trying to be funny. Or bitchy. I’m sorry if it came off that way.” She pauses. “He’s part of us now.”
“But I don’t want him to be. That’s the problem. I’m sorry too.”
Alan walks out of the room. Laurie listens to him open the refrigerator door. He’s getting a beer. We’re turning into the house of alcohol. We could open a bar. She puts her hands on her stomach. It feels round and full, an almost twenty-week pregnant belly. Is she just imagining it, is that a flutter? Like a butterfly, she imagines wings inside her body moving ever so lightly.
***
Laurie watches Jack; he’s sitting at a table by himself at the Castle Park Café. Café is a generous way to describe the food court at the Castle Park arcade—a dozen tables, several wall-mounted flat-screen TVs blaring ESPN channels, adding to the din of arcade game sounds—machine gun fire, game show music, revving engines. Will Laurie have to shout for Jack to hear her? And yet it seems like a safe place to meet. Not too fancy or intimidating. Jack sips his Coke, looks down at the napkin in front of him and begins to shred it. He’s wearing a faded blue polo shirt splotchy with bleach stains. His hair falls in front of his eyes.
Laurie takes a deep breath. It’s time.
“Nice to meet you.” Jack stands when Laurie joins him. Good manners. That wasn’t in the file.
“Well. This is a little…” she says.
Jack smiles. “Weird.” He looks down, realizes he’s staring at Laurie’s belly, sits quickly.
“I’m not sure what to say. I read your profile.”
“So you know everything about me. That’s weird. Oh, I said that already.” Jack concentrates on his napkin.
He’s young; he could be eighteen, not twenty-one. What should she say? Why didn’t she plan something? “How’s school?” she finally asks him.
“Okay. I’m a fifth year senior. But I’ll finish up by spring.”
“What’s your major?”
Before he can answer, a girl in a T-shirt with a Castle Park logo appears. She yawns, ready to go home. “You can order at the window,” she says, pointing to a menu sign above the counter. “Or I could bring you something.” She looks like she’d rather clean the tables with her tongue.
Laurie checks out the menu—burgers, pizza, quesadillas. “Ah—I haven’t decided yet.” She can feel the girl checking her out, noticing the bulge in Laurie’s shirt.
“You’re pregnant, huh?” the girl says.
“Yes.”
The girl turns to Jack. “Whoa, aren’t you lucky?”
Jack almost knocks over his Coke. “It’s not, it’s sort of…” He clears his throat, turns to Laurie. Help me out here.
Laurie smiles back at the girl. “He’s not the father. Well, he is. It’s a little nutty. My husband’s at work. You know what? I think we’re ready to order.”
***
The girl practically tosses their cheeseburgers on the table, she’s so reluctant to make eye contact. Jack is still grinning (sense of humor, check); he likes that the girl is uncomfortable.
Laurie watches as Jack squirts ketchup and mustard on his cheeseburger. “I suppose you want to know more about me,” he says.
Laurie nods.
“My parents were born in Mumbai. It used to be Bombay. They had an arranged marriage.”
“Yuck,” says Laurie.
“No, it was actually okay. They’re perfect for each other. They came to the States to go to graduate school; now they’re both professors at Stanford. He teaches chemistry and she teaches biology and bioinformatics.”
“What’s that?”
“You combine biology, computer science, and statistics.”
“And you get a really smart frog who can use a calculator?”
Jack smiles. His teeth are perfect and white against his mocha skin. His eyes are large, deep brown, almost black. “So my parents had big expectations for me,” he says.
“Oh. Not a fifth year senior? You never told me your major.”
Jack looks down at his napkin. “That’s another problem. I keep changing it. Right now I’ve got a South American studies major with a religious studies minor. But I’m not sure what I’ll do after graduation. My parents—they’re not exactly over the moon.”
“They’re parents. Go figure. At least they want what’s best for you.”
Jack makes a face, picks at a french fry. “Do you know what you’re going to do with the baby?”
The question comes out of nowhere. It was safer talking about UCLA. Laurie is tempted to tell him everything. She hasn’t told anyone else yet about the switched sperm. Not Grace, not her mother. She and Alan have decided to wait to tell people. For how long? They’re not sure.
Laurie could use a confidante, like her old G.I. Joe doll. Someone to talk to about what her life is like now, how it’s become a mixture of joy and confusion, how she’s mostly thrilled, but sometimes overwhelmed by the strangeness of it all. She could explain how she and Alan lie in bed at night, not sleeping, sharing their wordless anxiety about what will happen when the baby arrives.
“I’d like to hear more about UCLA,” Laurie says to Jack.
***
Jack tells Laurie he’s considering graduate school and an advanced degree in religious studies.
“I took a comparative religion class in high school,” Laurie says. “You must’ve taken lots of classes.”
“Some,” Jack says, and Laurie can tell he’s not being entirely truthful. She already suspects he wasn’t a hundred percent honest on the donor application, so she’s not surprised. But she feels a small moment of panic. How many other things did he lie about?
“I think because I’ve taken such a variety of other classes, I’ll be able to bring all that experience with me to a graduate program,” Jack says.
“Practicing what you’ll say to the interviewer?”
Jack looks caught. “Oh, I didn’t mean—”
“I get it. I was a college kid too.”
She likes him. Is he what she was expecting? She’s not sure what she was expecting—a steroid-pumped frat boy who crushes beer cans against his head? Jack seems open, smart, friendly. Nervous—well, who wouldn’t be?
How much of Jack will be in the baby? Will Jack and Laurie’s genetic material combine in a good way? Will the baby look like him? Latte-colored skin and dark eyes? No invisible Alan eyebrows. There’s a blessing. Jack seems to be kind and he has a sweet quality. That makes her feel better. Well, betterish.
***
&n
bsp; After lunch Laurie asks if he’d like to play miniature golf. “This is one of the best mini golf/arcades in the Valley,” she says. She’s explained her job at Hidden Valley, and Jack thinks it sounds “awesome.”
He’ll take a pass on mini golf, but how about they check out some of the games? He’s interested in The Vault, a laser maze challenge where you thread your way in the dark and try to make it to the end without touching glowing laser beams. Laurie begs off—the baby, you know—and Jack nods, yeah, probably not such a good idea. Instead Laurie buys ten dollars worth of arcade tokens and gives them to Jack.
“All four of my grandparents are still alive,” Jack says after winning twenty prize tickets on Ninja Assassin. “No hidden relatives in mental institutions. At least none I know about.”
Laurie laughs. “The truth is, you shake anybody’s family tree and you’ll find some nuts. Do you have a girlfriend?”
Jack hesitates. Uh oh, should Laurie have asked that question? And now that Jack isn’t saying anything, Laurie wonders if he’s gay. Not that she cares.
“Sort of,” Jack says.
“I didn’t mean to get too personal.” Although she is having his child.
“Her name is Megan,” he says. “I’m not sure what she’d think about this.”
Laurie can tell he’s left something out. Here’s a quality she doesn’t want Jack to pass along to the baby—the inability to lie. Unless that’s a good thing, to have a face that’s completely transparent.
“Are you going to tell her?” she asks him.
“I don’t know.”
“What about your parents?”
“Are you kidding? They’d flip. Did you tell anybody?”
“Not yet.”
They don’t say anything for a while. Laurie knows Jack has questions for her, but he stays quiet.
“You can ask me anything, Jack.”
“Really?”
Laurie nods at him.
“It’s just—I don’t have a lot of money,” he says. “I’m not sure I can pay child support.”
“I don’t need money from you,” she says. “That’s not why I wanted to have lunch.”
The relief on his face is obvious. “Then how come?”
“To know what the baby will be like.”
***
With the child support issue off his chest, Jack talks more openly about his sperm bank visits. “They said if a kid gets conceived by donor sperm, at age eighteen, they can contact the clinic and get information. About me. So I knew it could happen.”
“Just not right now.”
“Yeah. It seemed more—hypothetical. Nothing to do with a real live baby.” Jack looks around at the arcade, lights flash against his face. Red, blue, purple. “What does your husband think?” he asks Laurie.
A complicated question. “He’s confused.”
“That makes sense. He thought it was his baby. Now it’s mine.” Jack looks flustered. “Not mine. I don’t mean I think it’s mine…”
“I understand. Don’t worry.”
Jack looks at her. “What about you?”
“I’m confused too. And scared. But I want a child. And now I’m pregnant, so there isn’t a lot I can do. Except take care of myself. And have a baby.”
***
Laurie watches Jack concentrate as he plays Skee-Ball. What happens now? Will she continue to talk to him? Will Alan ever meet Jack? Will Jack come to a baby shower? Will they shake hands at Castle Park and say good-bye? “Good luck with the baby,” Jack will say to her. She’s taking the first steps in a journey where she has no idea what the ending will be. She feels tears in her eyes. Damn, she didn’t want to cry in front of Jack. It was absurd to meet him; the whole situation is absurd.
Jack turns around. “Hey,” he says. “It’s going to be okay.” Deep inside the Skee-Ball machine, gears grind, and with a click click click, a stream of blue prize tickets begin to appear.
***
After Laurie’s meeting with Jack, she drives to Alan’s office and waits in the Palmer-Boone parking garage. She’s brought along a Sheila Kitzinger pregnancy book and opens it to the chapter with illustrations of fetuses at various stages. Mid–second trimester and her baby is beginning to blink, grow tiny toenails. Are you sucking your thumb? Developing a brain curious for science facts from your paternal grandparents? Can you hear the fights with Alan? Did you recognize Jack, your birth father’s voice?
The baby will be born, her baby, and the baby will know who she is at once—her smell, her voice. They’ve spent nine months together. Switched sperm specimens, the baby doesn’t care.
Laurie is crying when Alan approaches the car.
“Honey?”
He gets in, doesn’t say anything for a while. Finally he asks, “Did you meet him?”
Laurie nods, not trusting herself to speak.
Alan examines the dials on the dashboard, the button that makes the seats go warm. A silly indulgence when you live in Southern California, but it was one of the options.
“Is he nice?” Alan says.
Laurie nods again.
“What’s he like?”
Laurie’s not sure how to begin. Does Alan really want to know? She and Jack have agreed to keep in touch. Maybe next time they’ll try mini golf. Or the batting cages.
She says to her husband, “He’s like you.”
Alan
Laurie seems happier after meeting Jack. That’s good, Alan tells himself. And she said, “He’s like you.” That’s good too. At least he can feel a little better about the situation although he hasn’t asked Laurie how exactly he and Jack are alike. Personality? Eating habits? It’s a safe bet they don’t look much like each other, which is too bad because then Alan and Laurie would never have to reveal the secret of the baby’s paternity.
At dinner, Laurie talks about making an appointment with Dr. Liu. Originally Dr. Julian would have delivered the baby, but that won’t work out now, will it? Alan volunteers to come along, and Laurie says it will be nice to have Alan with her.
“Do you want to hear anything else about Jack?” she asks. “You’re comfortable with me talking about him, aren’t you?”
“Sure,” he says, almost meaning it. “You liked him.”
“Yes. Enough to want him to be the father of our baby? No. But if it couldn’t be you, Jack’s a good runner-up.”
“So if I weren’t around, you’d choose Jack.” Uh-oh, did that come off as snippy?
Laurie frowns, ready to protest.
“No, I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant.” He hesitates. “You’re going to see him again? Keep in touch?”
“I think so.”
“So this will be like some kind of open adoption?”
Laurie doesn’t answer right away. “I don’t know what it’ll be like. I can’t predict what’s going to happen. Maybe we shouldn’t talk about it now.”
“We have to,” Alan says, thinking he’d love to never talk about it again.
“When the child is eighteen.” Laurie tries to smile. “Because we’ll have to tell him or her the truth eventually, won’t we?”
And then how will the child feel about Alan? Alan will have taught him (he’s sure the baby is a boy) how to throw a football in a tight spiral pass. He will have helped him with algebra. “No need to get frustrated by linear equations, buddy. That’s what dads are for.”
So he’s taught his son, his buddy—Buddy has learned about sports and math, and Alan has helped him navigate girl problems too. The high school girl who’s broken his heart. “She wasn’t good enough for you. Come on, let’s go out on the patio and have a beer. Your mom won’t be home till late; she doesn’t have to know.”
And then at eighteen, they’ll drop the switched sperm bomb and Buddy will look straight into Alan’s eyes and say, “You’re not my re
al father.” And Alan’s heart will literally rip in two, cleave—how does something cleave anyway? Well, Alan will find out in eighteen years, won’t he?
“This will work out,” Laurie says. “It’s not as terrible as you think.”
Alan returns her smile. But eighteen-year-old Buddy’s rejection of him burns in his brain.
***
Nancy F. plays a lot of CityVille. Alan is surprised to see how often she posts about raising rent and energy points. He goes to Google and reads about CityVille. It sounds like fun. He could learn how to play, impress Nancy with his CityVille skills. She’ll IM him more.
Wait. Why does he want more IMs from Nancy? Because she helps take his mind off thinking about Laurie’s pregnancy. Shit, it’s his pregnancy too. Sort of. Shit again. He could tell Nancy about it.
“Hi, Nancy. I have this very unusual problem. No, I mean really unusual.”
Is he being disloyal to Laurie? Disrespectful? He just wants someone to make him feel better about what’s going on, tell him he’s not a douche bag for having conflicted feelings. It’s not as if he’s contemplating an affair with Nancy Futterman Campbell. No. Of course he isn’t.
He’ll tell Nancy the funny story about what happened to his missing sperm. “We just heard the news the other day. It’s hilarious.”
Not so hilarious. Laurie got a call from Dr. Julian. When Alan came home from work, she told him they’d found the missing vials in a landfill in Long Beach. She thought that would make Alan feel better.
“To find out my missing sperm ended up in a landfill? In Long Beach?”
“At least you know what happened to it,” Laurie says. “There’s one silver lining.”
“Some silver lining.”
“Don’t you get it? It’s a good thing.”
“Instead of my sperm ending up in some other woman’s womb. Because then we’d be even.”
“Even?” Laurie says. “How is that even?”
“Then you’d know what it’s like.”
“You think I don’t know what it’s like? Are you telling me I don’t understand?”
“You couldn’t possibly understand,” Alan says. “How would you feel if you suddenly found out there was a woman out there, a stranger, and she was having my baby?”
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