Bottomless love, day after day, pouring out of you and Justin like breath. It made the morning worth opening my eyes to. When I tell you it’s the best thing I ever did with my life, I’m speaking the truest truth I have ever spoken.
At my end—what I felt—that’s the other part of the story. It takes poetry, and I don’t have poetry, to get this across. I wonder if you’ve had this feeling yet. You may have to wait to have it until you’re a father yourself. The earth, spinning through time, is holding you with its gravity so that you can come home every night and meet all that love with more love.
There is another side though—would he say this, add this?—it makes you think of death. You can’t stop thinking about death: how briefly you’re here, how briefly we’re here together. You see life put through all these phases, in fast motion. You can’t observe your own growing up like this, but your kids’—it’s a devastation.
I still love you, despite—despite all the reasons you give me not to. It just doesn’t work like that. Love like this never dies. I think it lives beyond us. It’s the only thing that does.
* * *
Henry got maybe three percent of this out before he choked up. He was sitting at the foot of Andrew’s bed in the room the boys shared at Judith’s apartment.
“Tore my heart out…”
“Pancakes in syrup…”
“The Parthenon…”
These phrases he somehow managed to say, though possibly not in the most coherent order; then he lost control, and his face just liquefied.
Andrew pulled himself up in bed, groggy. “Dad, what are you doing here? Are you sick? Is it Costanza?”
Henry shook his head, mopped his face with his sleeve. He brought himself back under control by looking at his surroundings. He had not set foot in this room for five years, possibly more. His sons’ parallel West Side world was fitted out with all the requisite stuff: furniture, computer, bookshelves. There were several framed professional photographs, black-and-white, of either Judith and the boys, alone, or Judith and the boys and Charlie; Henry was conspicuously absent, as though dead. And there was considerable paraphernalia of late childhood—art projects, models of motorcycles and rocket ships. What did it mean that Justin went off to college and left his things intact at Judith’s, while on the East Side he purged every trace of his life?
“No one’s sick.”
“You seem pretty upset.”
His chest felt dammed up, solid. “This is hard for me, Son.”
Andrew’s face, before. As with Costanza, Henry wanted to note it, to retain it. When would this young man, so handsome with his high forehead, his lush hair, and his watchful eyes, ever again look at Henry with trust or compassion? When would he ever again present such a not-knowing face to the world?
There is something—
For many years—
Maybe you have a sense—
Already Henry saw Andrew sinking deep into his body, a self turning away, inward; trying to figure it all out, to absorb, to grasp—a metamorphosis in the making. Henry would not have been surprised if Andrew sprouted wings or leaves, or if his fingers turned to talons or hooves before Henry’s very eyes.
The dam was letting something past now. A gurgling sound. Then words. The words.
Andrew asked his father to repeat them. The words; the information. His face—Henry hadn’t expected this—reverted in time. He didn’t change into an animal or a bird or a tree. He looked like a boy, confused and innocent. “You mean to say, you’re not my father?”
Was he possibly relieved? Did Henry see that too or invent it out of his worry and fear? Was it possible? Was Henry that awful, was Henry that blind to the kind of father he was, to this boy, this young man?
“Not genetically, no, but in every way that I know of, yes. Forever. Until I die.”
“No part of me, though, not a gene, a single gene, is from you?”
“I think you know your biology better than that, Andrew.”
He could see Andrew thinking. His eyes were busy, his brain was busy. “And Justin?”
“The same.”
“Not genetic.”
“No.”
“The same father—donor?”
“The same donor, yes.”
“Do you know who it is? Was? Is?”
Henry nodded.
“Are you going to tell me?”
“If you need to know. If you want to know.”
“Yes. Everything.”
Henry paused.
“Do I know him?”
Henry nodded.
Andrew sucked in a breath, and his whole face altered, as if it had been flushed by an electrical charge. “It’s Isaac Schoenfeld, isn’t it?”
“What makes you say that?”
“A few things. Several things. A feeling. Am I right?”
“Yes.”
“Were he and Mom—”
“No. It was in vitro.”
“Is that why you and he stopped being friends? It wasn’t a business conflict, then?”
“We had a business conflict, just as I told you. But we might have worked harder to sort it out if…” Henry took a breath. “It was just better, I think, for our lives to be more separate.”
“Does he know?
“Yes, he knows. Of course he knows.”
Andrew sat back into his pillow. His T-shirt, much washed, had a scattering of tiny holes along the neck. The fabric, Henry thought darkly, had been rent.
“This is fucking with my brain, Dad. Henry. I don’t even know what to call you.”
“I’m still your father. Dad. Pops. Scruffy. Remember Scruffy?”
Andrew looked at him as though he were speaking Urdu. “I don’t know what to do with this.”
“In time you will. Andrew, I want you to know—” Henry’s eyes filled up again. “I want you to know that you can come to me anytime, we can talk about anything you need to.”
Andrew’s eyes turned icy. “Now we can.”
Henry paused. Softly he said, “Yes, now we can.”
“I would have liked to know this before. A lot before.” Then: “Does Justin?”
“I haven’t told him. But I’m going to now. As soon as I can find him.” Henry glanced at the untouched second bed. “It’ll probably have to be by phone.”
Again Henry could see Andrew reasoning. He could almost feel the boy’s heart beating—racing. “What you’re doing with Costanza, the cycle. Is it—?”
“We have new procedures now.” He reminded Andrew about ICSI. He said that reproductive medicine was a different world, a world full of different possibilities. Miraculous possibilities.
“You mean if you and Mom were trying to get pregnant today, you’d be my genetic father?”
“In all probability, yes.”
“I would be—” Andrew’s forehead creased. “I would not be me. I may not be me now.”
“Of course you’re you. You’re the same. It’s just that your story—a part of it—is different.”
“My story?”
“Your starting point. Your genetics. That’s it.”
“That’s not a small it, Henry.”
“I wish you wouldn’t start calling me Henry just so quickly.”
“That’s not a small it…”
Now Henry was nameless, title-less. Stripped of his identity. It was probably inevitable that there would be some of this; a lot of this, even, for a time.
Andrew’s eyes were darting, moving. “I have one more question—for now.”
“Of course.”
“Does Costanza know about us—Justin and me?”
“Yes.”
“How long has she known?”
This Henry did not expect. A complication. A snare.
Andrew persisted: “Has she known since you started IVF, or before that? When did you tell her?”
Henry’s heart began to speed up. How could he not have thought all this through? How could he not have taken the time to consider all the poss
ibilities and ramifications, all the eventualities, so that he might be better prepared? Even after all these years he was unprepared. By pushing forward with his life, and burying this piece of it, this key piece of it, this story, he had had no practice thinking through how he might respond if—when—it became unburied, as it had now.
“Has she known all along?” Andrew asked again, more forcefully.
“Yes. Yes, she has.”
Looking at Andrew’s face—the darkness that rolled across it—Henry suspected he had made a mistake. He lied to protect himself, to improve his chances, on this day of all days, that Andrew would not judge him or find him wanting, a disappointment—more of a disappointment. He had been afraid of his own son, of what his own son would think of how he was conducting himself in his life now, all these years later. Probably he should have just told the truth. That’s what he advised his patients to do with their children. That’s what his father would have done. Leopold would have told the truth and lived with the consequences.
“And the child you have with her, if the cycle works, will be yours genetically. Yours and hers.”
“If we succeed, yes.”
“He will be my brother, she will be my sister?”
“In the way that I am your father. Yes.”
“Not in that way, Henry. It won’t be hidden, will it? Because this time there will be nothing to hide.”
* * *
Costanza’s pre-op appointment that morning was not at Henry’s clinic but at the hospital, where the retrieval would take place the following afternoon. She presented herself at Sixty-Eighth Street and York Avenue before eight a.m., as instructed. She had slept maybe four hours—maybe—the entire night and looked it. Her eyes were red and had sunk deep into their sockets like two pebbles in wet sand. Her hair was pulled back into a sloppy ponytail. She left her dark glasses on, even as the attending physician—someone, fortunately, she had never before met—did one last ultrasound to confirm the size of her follicles. Afterward he gave her a list of postoperative instructions, a prescription for the antibiotics and painkillers. Then he asked her if she had any questions.
All this was as before. Only before, where she had said she had no questions, now, in as casual a voice as she could summon after her night, she said, “I do, actually.” Then, still from behind her dark glasses, she said, “Do people ever decide not to go through with the retrieval, even after they’ve had their HCG shot?”
The physician—pink complexioned and seemingly young despite the scattering of gray in his hair—looked at her carefully before answering, “Yes, it has happened.”
“Why does it happen, have you found?”
“Well, sometimes the patient reconsiders. In such cases typically there has been conflict between the couple. Or we reconsider, because something unusual has happened to the follicles.”
“What do you do then—just give up?”
“If the couple resolved their conflict within the window”—he looked at her again closely—“then we suggest that they have timed intercourse within twenty-four hours. The sperm need to be in the fallopian tubes once the eggs are released, and the eggs are released precisely thirty-six hours after the HCG shot. Probably the best approach is to have intercourse twice within that window. This is not an assurance of anything, mind you. The chances of conceiving after ovulation has been triggered are higher than they would be without the stimulation and the HCG injection, but they are never as high as IVF would be, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“Sometimes it happens that intercourse is not—successful. There is a great deal of pressure at these times. In that case, assuming a semen specimen can be produced independently, we convert to an insemination. Again it’s not optimal, but it is better than nothing.”
“All that high-tech medicine of yours comes down to a turkey baster.”
The doctor leaned forward. “Ms. Ansaldo, is everything all right?”
“Perfectly. I’m just a—curious sort of person. I like to understand, as far as I can, the eventualities, the possibilities. I don’t know if you can quite realize—it’s not easy to feel so out of control of one’s body, one’s body’s fate.”
“In two weeks, you’ll know everything.”
“Everything?” she repeated with some edge. Then, catching herself, she added, “In two weeks. Yes, of course I will.”
* * *
Henry bought Costanza flowers, a large bouquet of tulips close in color to the bunches she had carried downtown the day they were married. He hoped he remembered the color correctly. He hoped she would discern his intent: to try to make a loving connection. He had to do something. Best of all would have been to have found her in the apartment, back from her early appointment. He would have spoken to her, felt out her mood, her thinking. He would have taken her into his arms. He too needed some kind of gesture, some reassurance. It had not been an easy night, or morning. Far, far from it. But she was not there, and she did not answer her cell phone. Where was she? He had no idea. She had left no note or message.
He put the tulips in water, then set them by the bed. They seemed too funereal, too sickroom-like there, so he moved them to her desk. He wrote out a note: “I spoke to A. I’m trying to get hold of J. I’m doing what you asked. I love you. H.”
Then he went to the clinic. He couldn’t think where else to go, what else to do.
* * *
Andrew looked up the bus schedule to Annandale-on-Hudson. He arrived at Justin’s apartment before noon. He rang three times before Justin came to the door. The way he was wearing a pair of gray sweatpants, their drawstrings dangling, suggested that they had just been pulled on.
“Andrew, what are you doing here? This can’t be good.”
“I just needed to talk to you. Can I come in?”
When Justin didn’t step aside, Andrew glanced over his shoulder. In an alcove at the back part of the apartment was a large futon. David lay asleep there under a burgundy sheet.
“He’s kind of just staying here for a few days.”
“Kind of just?”
David emitted a snore. “We should probably whisper. He was up late practicing.”
“Does this mean you’re back together, or what?”
Justin glanced back at David. “Or what.”
* * *
They went to a coffee shop around the corner. Justin placed an order for an elaborate espresso drink; anything stronger than water, Andrew felt sure, would cause his stomach to give up the last meal he’d eaten and possibly several others besides.
“I had a visit from Dad this morning—he came to find me at Mom’s. Early.”
“Judith must have been thrilled by that.”
“She and Charlie spent the night in Jersey. They went to visit his uncle.”
“I don’t keep such close track of Judith’s movements.”
“Dad told me something pretty—big. Huge.”
“Oh? What about?”
“Us. You and me.”
“Let me guess. About our genes maybe? Our origins?”
The color drained out of Andrew’s face. “You know?”
Justin nodded.
“Since when?”
“Judith told me in high school, at the start of senior year.”
“You’ve known for two years, and you didn’t tell me?”
“Judith asked me not to. She said she thought you still had some growing to do. Some growing into yourself, she said, that she didn’t want to interrupt. I believe that was her professional take at the time.”
“But I don’t get it. Why you and not me? I’m a senior now…”
“She thought it might help with the homo thing.”
“How?”
“She wasn’t sure. She just ‘intuited’ it.”
“Didn’t she ‘intuit’ that I might need help with the hetero thing?”
“Apparently not.”
Andrew paused for a moment to absorb. “What about just the human thing, the life thing
? Like wanting to know where you come from, what you are made of, who made you? Wanting to understand why, all your life, you’ve felt your own father, on some level, hasn’t quite gotten you. Or liked you.”
“I suppose that wasn’t on her radar, exactly.”
Andrew slumped back in the booth.
“And Henry doesn’t dislike you, Baby B.”
“Yes, he does. Sometimes he does—lately I’d say it’s been often. Even if he did tell me, in tears, about eating pancakes at the diner and feeling such love for me that it tore his heart out.”
“I always thought their waffles were better. And that waiter Dmitri was hot.” Andrew just stared at Justin, who changed his tone. “I’m sure he felt that, in the moment. In some rare unnarcissistic moment.”
“You know what? Now that I think of it, what he actually said was that he felt my love for him, and that was what tore his heart out. Interesting how I got it reversed.”
“Sounds more like the Henry we know.”
“Though to be fair, he said he loved us a lot.”
“‘What’s love got to do with it?’” Justin sang.
“You’re mocking him—me? Now?”
“‘What’s love but a secondhand emotion?’”
“Justin, please.”
“I’ve never been more serious in my life, Baby B. One thing I’ve learned from observing the mater and the pater is that love has a lot less to do with all this than we think.”
“What does then?”
Justin shrugged. The freedom in those shrugs of Justin’s, the beauty in them: Would the day ever come when Andrew would be able to shrug like Justin?
“Does Henry know you know?” Andrew asked.
“Judith may have told him. But he’s never said anything to me.”
“If she did … and if he knows, or suspects, you know…” Andrew’s mind was flashing, connecting; seeing. “Do you think that would explain why he’s been so much more into you than me? Especially since you went to school. It’s like he’s been trying to prove something to you, or hold on to you.”
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