Laurie thinks that over. “I don’t know. I guess I was relieved when they told me they’d tracked down your sperm.”
“Stop saying it like that. You sound like Hercule Poirot.”
Silence.
“We have to think of this in terms of better,” Laurie tells him. “And this is better, isn’t it? If the ultimate goal is for us to have a child, to be parents—we have that now. It’s not ideal what happened; it’s insane. But at least only one of us got mixed up.”
He can’t think of anything to say.
***
He doesn’t mention the discovery of his missing sperm to Nancy. Instead, he looks at the pictures Nancy has posted on her Facebook page. A shot of the family visiting the Grand Tetons. Trevor is the spitting image of Bob, which is mostly a good thing—he’s a cute child, but with Bob’s unfortunate piggy eyes. Is Nancy bothered by Bob’s piggy eyes? At least you can tell he’s the father of your child, that’s what Alan would tell her. Trust me, be grateful for that.
A photo of Trevor and Ava standing with a horse. Their horse? Are they visiting a ranch? Does Bob have a ranch? Of course he does. He has a ranch, a giant house with a wine cellar, biological children, Nancy’s big breasts—he has everything Alan ever wanted.
Trevor is missing a tooth. Isn’t he too young to be losing teeth? A horseback riding accident? Trevor has bad teeth to match his eyes? Alan’s teeth aren’t great either. Too soft, the dentist told him when he was a kid.
Maybe Buddy will inherit 296’s teeth. Jack’s teeth. Laurie mentioned Jack’s wonderful smile. Good, that’ll save them a few bucks. See, Laurie is right. A silver lining. When God slams a door in your face, he spares you orthodontia.
When people see baby Buddy, will they assume Laurie cheated on him? Alan and Laurie could have fun with that. “Oh,” people will say when they peek in the stroller. “He looks so…much like his mother.”
“I think he looks like the guy who delivers the Arrowhead Water,” Alan will say to Laurie with a wink. And she’ll wink back. All the agonies of infertility and mixed-up sperm are forgotten. So what if Buddy’s genealogy is a little wacky? Lots of people have even stranger stories, I bet.
I bet not.
He clicks on more photos of Trevor and Ava and feels tired. The ice cubes in his scotch have melted and his drink tastes like brown water. He could get up and refill his glass but doesn’t have the energy.
I’m not sure I can ever post photos of Buddy on Facebook. Shitty McShitster. Why can’t I have my own child? Is that too much to ask?
He shouldn’t allow himself to get gloomy. Alan will love Buddy the moment he sees him. But suppose he doesn’t? Will the doctor hand just-born baby Buddy to Alan and say, “You can cut the umbilical cord now, Mr. Gaines.” And Alan will answer, “I’d rather not,” or, “That’s okay, you do it. I’ll just stand over here and play a game of Word Mole on my BlackBerry.”
***
Some of their friends and family know that Laurie’s pregnant again. They waited to tell people until after she was showing. Only a few family members and friends knew about the second miscarriage. And no one knows the details about the switched sperm. Peter brought champagne to work one day and a couple of VPs met in Alan’s office and finished off the bottle after work. For a moment it almost felt like a normal pregnancy, not a crazy fucked-up one. Alan’s not exactly sure how they’d tell people the truth. Some sort of prebirth “oops” announcement? Jack will pop out of a cake at the baby shower?
Alan is looking at a photo of Nancy on a lanai in Hawaii, a drink in her hand. Is this how she copes with life, sips drinks with paper umbrellas? She doesn’t look happy in the photo. More resigned than angry, but with a touch of sadness. Has Bob been unfaithful to Nancy? She’s never mentioned anything about her marriage in the Christmas letters. Although Alan’s not exactly sure how Nancy would phrase that.
“We had a fabulous time in Maui last spring. By the way, Bob admitted he was banging his secretary. Lucky she didn’t come along on the trip!! I got the worst sunburn and we ate pig at a luau! ALOHA!”
Everyone has an uncomplicated life except for Alan and Laurie. Even as he thinks that, he knows it’s not true. Tim, who he works with, has been married and divorced three times. Three times by age thirty-four. What’s up with that? At an office party last year, one of Alan’s project directors got slobbery drunk and told Alan the only way her husband could make love to her was if he was wearing a Jason hockey mask.
“Are you happy?” he’s tempted to IM Nancy. What kind of question is that? What would she say? “Of COURSE I’m happy. You’re looking at my FB pictures. You can see the happiness SPILLING out of me”?
Oh, shit. He’s typed, “Are you happy?” and hit return by mistake. Maybe she’s not online now and won’t see it. Can he erase it? Fuck Facebook, they have the worst Help section on any site he’s ever encountered, plus no email address where you can post questions.
He hears a soft ping and her photo appears in Chat.
“Not especially,” is her reply.
Is she being ironic? Is there an emoticon for irony? If there is, Alan doesn’t know what it looks like. Should he type, “Just kidding, sent that by mistake,” with a smiley face attached?
Instead he types, “Me too.” He watches the screen. Will she type a response right away? Is she looking at the screen like he is, trying to decide what to say? He thinks about typing something else like, “Happiness is overrated,” but reconsiders. Her “not especially” sounds serious.
Ping. “Do you ever think you’ve made wrong choices?”
Wrong choices. Everybody makes wrong choices, don’t they?
“Sometimes,” he types.
She replies quickly, “I forgot, you ALWAYS make the right choice :-).”
“Yeah, I’m perfect,” he says.
“Maybe you HAVE changed.”
“Very funny. You know, if you ever need a shoulder to cry on…”
“I might,” Nancy writes. “I’m glad you’re doing okay.”
“You look good.”
“You’ve been checking out my photos on Facebook?”
“Just catching up. You don’t do the same thing?”
“All the time. Every old boyfriend. Every old girlfriend for you?”
“Of course.” No, Nancy. You’re the only one.
“How do we look?”
“You look the best.”
“That’s because I pick the photos. :-) You should see me in real life.”
“I’d like to. Do you ever get out to L.A.?”
“Not really. What about you? Ever come to Dallas?”
“I haven’t been in years.”
“We’ll have to arrange a reunion.”
Silence.
He’s the first one to type. “I’d like that.”
“Me too. I better sign off.”
“Nice chatting with you.”
“Talk 2 u soon,” she says.
***
The green light by her name blinks to gray. Alan looks at his computer screen. He should check out other old girlfriends on Facebook. Instead, he goes to “history” and erases the things he’s been viewing. Not that he’s paranoid or ashamed of what he’s been doing.
Because he’s not doing anything wrong. Is he?
Jack
She’s old enough to be my mother. That was his first thought when he saw her. But when she told him she was thirty-two, he realized technically she could be his mother only if she’d been some kind of a child bride.
Face it, the whole thing is seriously messed up and what was he thinking, donating sperm, like there wasn’t some kind of catch involved? If something is too good to be true, it is. There are consequences, a price to pay. Like suddenly finding out you’re going to be a father. A father? He can’t even be a responsible college student. Or be fa
ithful to one girlfriend at a time.
Or keep borrowing money from the fraternity party fund. Sure he paid back the money the first time, but unfortunately Westside Cryobank told him that after the mix-up he should take some time off. “Time off” meaning they’re scared of legal action, even though Laurie told him the problem happened at her fertility doctor’s office and not at the sperm bank.
He could sue Westside. Get millions of dollars. To hell with college—he’ll buy a big house in Mexico and fish and drink tequila all day. Except he has a sneaking suspicion that with all the paperwork he filled out at Westside, he probably signed something that prevents him from suing, like the legal version of, “The minute you give us your sperm, it’s ours and we can do whatever the hell we want to do with it.”
He’ll figure out another way to make money; three hundred dollars isn’t much. Win some poker tournaments at Indian casinos, that’s an option. Find things in his room he can sell on eBay—Xbox games, a pair of vintage Nike Dunk high-tops he only wore once. He’ll never ask Danny for a loan. Smug rich boy Danny who organized a trip to Cabo over spring break—too bad Jack couldn’t make it. Fuck you, Danny. Jack will run it up at the Indian casino. Pay the money back, move on.
And he’ll break up with Normandie and Megan, or at least one of them. Juggling two girlfriends at the same time isn’t the way a religious studies student should behave.
As if. As if he’s going to get into a graduate school for religious studies when they find out he’s fathered a child. Even though he didn’t set out to father a child. Except, on one hand he did. Well, in theory.
He definitely should sue Westside. They won’t want the news to get out, so they’ll settle out of court. Jack gets a fat check, everything goes away.
Except the baby. Laurie didn’t say much about what happens after the baby is born. But no obligations, she told Jack. Is she sincere? She bought him lunch to see what he’s like. Which makes sense. He’d probably do the same thing if he were in her shoes, which he’s not, thank God.
“I’ll call you,” she said. And he told her the same thing. And now what? Should he call first? Wait for her? He has no idea.
***
He should be studying. It’s not fair he has to think about this other stuff. Like why didn’t Laurie’s husband come to lunch? Did Laurie invite him? Suppose he doesn’t want to meet Jack? If Jack comes over to visit Laurie, will her husband be hostile? Will he narrow his eyes at Jack as if Jack had an affair with his wife, which he clearly didn’t. Dude, I wasn’t even in the room.
His bedroom door opens and Megan walks in. She’s holding two cups. “These milkshakes are cold as fuck,” she says as she hands him one. “Chocolate banana. Delish. What are you doing?”
“Homework.” He could talk about his situation with Megan, she’d understand. Megan collects oddball things, tidbits about life—how many teeth a horse has, why fingers get wrinkly when they’re in water for a long time.
“Aren’t you supposed to be studying for the GRE?” he asks her. She’s decided to take it, just for fun.
“I changed my mind.” She plops on his bed beside him. “I’m thinking I’d make a good spook. You know, state department, CIA, one of those jobs where you can’t tell anybody exactly what it is you do.”
“You can’t keep secrets at all,” Jack tells her. “You’re the worst.”
“Maybe that’s part of CIA training. They teach you how. Of course that’s a bitch, that I won’t be able to tell you how they teach me to keep secrets. Do you think I’d get to carry one of those briefcases where you push a button and a knife comes sticking out of it?”
“No offense, I don’t think you have a chance.”
Megan shakes her head. “I bet they love actresses.”
“What about torture? That would suck.”
“I’d be awesome,” Megan says. “They’d never get anything out of me.”
Jack grabs Megan’s feet and begins to tickle her. She screams for him to stop. “Being ticklish is a big problem,” Jack says. “It’s probably one of the first things they check out.”
Megan pulls away from Jack, sticks out her tongue at him. “I don’t think spies from other countries tickle you. You’re just jealous. I bet they give you a ring with cyanide in it. How cool would that be?”
***
After Megan leaves, Normandie calls and goes on and on about her plans for their big “sex night.” Dinner at a restaurant with ocean views. She’s still trying to decide on the perfect menu. Everything’s been coordinated to her period schedule (“I can predict when my period will start to the hour”), is he sure he has enough condoms? The overkill factor is starting to make him crazy. It’s just sex, he wants to tell her.
“There’s a reason people wait,” Normandie says to him. “To make it extraordinary. An Event.”
If it’s an extraordinary Event, he should be looking forward to it, shouldn’t he?
***
But first, he has to survive a family reunion back home in Menlo Park. Auntie Neeta is turning ninety and Jack’s mother expects everyone there to celebrate. (“No one thought she’d make it to eighty,” Jack’s mother said.) And the best news of all, Subhra is flying in. Jack wouldn’t want to miss that, would he?
He can’t think of anything he’d like less, watching his relatives gush over Subhra. Not that he doesn’t love her; of course he does. But after a lifetime of every teacher he’s ever had saying to him, “Oh, you’re Subhra Mulani’s little brother? Subhra, she was one of my favorite students...” Sheesh, he’s done, he’s over that. Yeah, Subhra’s a goddess. What. Ever.
At least she’s not bringing her equally overachieving Indian boyfriend Sonny. Sonny is in medical school with Subhra at Johns Hopkins. Something (most everything) about Sonny annoys Jack. Sonny likes Donald Trump, One Direction, and refers to Subhra as “his sweet cupcake.” Sonny and Jack’s mother are always debating which field of medicine Subhra should specialize in.
“Medical research can be quite lucrative,” Jack’s mother says to Jack in an email. “Pediatric oncology? Sonny suggested radioactive medicine because it combines research, plus the hands-on experience Subhra craves.”
Why does Jack’s mother think he cares about Subhra’s medical career? And does she think Jack gives a rat’s ass about Sonny’s opinion? Jack told her once, “You can stop with the Subhra updates, Mom,” but she’s ignored him. Most of the time he deletes her messages if they say “Subhra” in the subject line.
***
Jack’s plane gets delayed at LAX, so by the time he arrives home, the party is already in progress. The house is filled with people; it’s a casual party, but a few of the older women are wearing saris. As they move, the rhinestones in the fabric and gold bangles on their arms and ears sparkle. He doesn’t see his parents but spots Subhra in the dining room, surrounded by people, the center of attention as usual. He could slip downstairs to the basement where he’ll be sleeping—his mother informed him Uncle Prem is staying in Jack’s room. Jack is tempted to ask who’ll be in Subhra’s room, but he knows the answer. Subhra.
Jack’s father appears and greets Jack with a hug. “Hurry, eat quickly. Auntie Neeta’s friends have big appetites.” His father is slender, with a full, thick head of dark hair that always reminds Jack of shrubbery. When he smiles, his eyes crinkle at the corners. Jack wishes his mother would smile like that.
As Jack makes his way to the dining room, various relatives squeeze his arm or pat his face. “Too skinny,” he hears. “A handsome boy, did he graduate yet?”
The dining room is crowded and the table is covered with food. Samosas and pakoras and gulab jamun and ras malai—so much food he’s surprised the table legs can bear the weight. Subhra has disappeared, but Jack’s mother appears with a platter; she’s wearing a pale green pantsuit and earrings that dangle almost to her shoulders. She is small, with child-sized wr
ists and fingers, and Jack has always been surprised that such a delicate-looking woman has the ability to scare the shit out of him. “You couldn’t get a haircut before you came up?” is the first thing she says to him.
“I didn’t have time,” Jack says. His mother kisses his cheek, finds a spot for the chicken biryani, and heads back toward the kitchen. “Sonny isn’t here, what a shame. Subhra helped make the biryani, get some right away. It won’t last long.”
Jack is positive it’s time to go to the basement. He smiles at several of his father’s friends and one of the men asks what he’s up to.
“About to graduate,” Jack says. “And I’ve been accepted at dental school in the fall. At USC.” The men nod at each other, they approve. They would; they’re dentists.
***
When he goes out to the backyard, he sees a group of people on the new deck. His father is explaining how the Eternity deck is made of recycled plastic lumber. No splinters! It will last forever, he hears his father say.
There are multicolored lights hung in the trees, and music is playing. At first Jack thinks it might be something Indian, then he realizes it’s a Billy Joel collection. Jack retreats to the far corner of the yard, to an old stone bench that’s ugly, but it came with the house and was too heavy to move. The stone feels cool against his legs and he wishes he had a plate of chicken biryani, even though his sister helped make it.
“I knew you’d be antisocial,” a voice says and he looks up to see Subhra. She’s in a long dress and wearing cowboy boots—pretty, a taller, more sturdy version of their mother. “You need a haircut.”
“I was thinking of growing a ponytail. Just to make Mom insane.”
“Because she’s not insane enough?” Subhra sits beside him. She has a plate of samosas on her lap. She nods at Jack and he takes one.
“Mom says you might do some radioactive medical research thing,” Jack says. “That sounds interesting.”
Subhra snorts. “Mom’s crazy. It barely pays six figures. It would take me the rest of my life to pay off these ridiculous med school loans. Orthopedic surgery or cardiology pay the best.”
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