Aaron sat down on the couch. From his bag, he took out a photo stand with a picture of a smiling man with a long curved mustache. His guru, he explained, and set it on the coffee table. In the kitchen, Mark found an empty peanut butter jar kept warm in a pot of water over low heat. Jaqe—Mark assumed it was Jaqe—had crossed out “peanut butter” on the label and written in “sperm.” Next to it, on a white linen napkin, lay a new turkey baster.
In the other room Jaqe sat on the bed, fully dressed, with her legs stuck out before her. Laurie stood frowning by the window, wishing she was somewhere else, wishing she’d never agreed to the whole thing. She thought, I hate this, I should have just sent her off to the chess club. Do it the old-fashioned way and get it done. What am I supposed to do if I have to go to the bathroom? He can go to the bathroom all he likes. She thought how men used the same instrument for urination as for—the other thing—and the thought made her sick.
“Honey?” Jaqe whispered. “Come sit by me?”
Laurie winced, then did her best to clear her face before she turned around. “We’re not supposed to talk,” she whispered back. “He might hear us.”
“Please,” Jaqe said. Laurie sighed, and walked to sit on the edge of the bed. “Sit next to me,” Jaqe told her when Laurie sat with her back against the wall. Jaqe took Laurie’s hand in both of hers and laid her head on Laurie’s shoulder. “Thank you so much,” she said. “I love you so much.”
Laurie surprised herself by wanting to cry. “I love you too,” she said.
“I’m sorry we have to do this,” Jaqe whispered.
“It’s okay.”
“I know you hate it. I hate it. There’s just no other way.”
“It’s okay,” Laurie repeated. “It was my idea, wasn’t it?”
“Put your arms around me.” Laurie hugged her, then kissed her, first on the soft round cheek she loved so much, then on the mouth.
They heard a small bang in the living room, and then a mumbling. Jaqe giggled. She whispered, “Maybe he’s having trouble getting it up.”
Laurie said, “We forgot the Playboys. I guess that was our job.”
“As the hostesses,” Jaqe said.
Now Laurie was giggling too. “We put out popcorn,” she said. “Isn’t that enough?” The two of them laughed into their hands like sisters staying up after Mom and Dad had ordered them to go to sleep. Again Laurie kissed Jaqe, but then another bang, like a door slamming, set them off again. Laurie whispered, “Maybe he’s gone into the bathroom. Isn’t that where they’re supposed to do it?” She made a pumping motion with her hand, and both of them had to bury their faces in the pillow to keep the laughter from escaping the room.
Suddenly Jaqe grabbed Laurie’s hand and pulled it under her T-shirt. When she felt that wonderful shape spreading out past the palm of her hand, the delicate hardness of the nipple against her fingertips, Laurie discovered herself shocked with joy, as if she’d never expected to feel this again. She lifted the T-shirt to kiss Jaqe’s belly, then the skin just under and around the breasts, and finally the nipples, moving first one, then the other, with the tip of her tongue. As Laurie was getting undressed, she heard a faint sound, like a sigh or a moan, from the other room. She ignored it and got into bed to press herself against Jaqe, who wrapped her arms and one leg around her lover.
They froze in position at the sound of a knock on the bedroom door. “We’re going,” Mark called. A moment later, they heard the front door shut. “Just like a man,” Laurie said, still whispering. “Always coming and going.” They swallowed their laughter in a kiss, during which they lay sideways and rocked back and forth.
Abruptly, Jaqe pushed away from Laurie. “Go get it,” she said softly.
Laurie made a kind of purring noise. “In a moment,” she said. She tried to draw Jaqe close again.
Jaqe held up her hand as a barrier. “No,” she said, “not now.”
“It’ll stay safe,” Laurie insisted. “It’s good for an hour.”
“Please,” Jaqe said. “I want to feel like it comes from you.”
“What?”
“Hurry,” Jaqe urged her, and Laurie scrambled off the bed and into the living room, where the syringe still lay on its napkin, but now filled with thick yellow-white liquid. Laurie had to stop herself from gagging as she picked it up. She was grateful that Mark had done the work of drawing it into the syringe, but she wished they didn’t make turkey basters transparent.
When Laurie came back in the bedroom, Jaqe lay on her back with her legs apart and her knees up, and a pair of pillows under her ass. For a moment Laurie imagined Louise instructing Jaqe how to position herself, and her stomach spasmed with jealousy. But then she saw Jaqe’s shy and frightened smile, and it struck her that Jaqe, like herself, was one of those rare lesbians who had never gone through a try at heterosexuality, who had never slept with a man. She sat down on the side of the bed and held Jaqe’s hand briefly, while Jaqe turned her head so as not to lose sight of her. Laurie noticed that Jaqe’s other hand gripped the stone Laurie had gotten from the girl at the beach.
“Ready?” Laurie said. Jaqe nodded, and Laurie took a breath. She didn’t know why this seemed so difficult. It wasn’t any more complicated than putting her fingers in Jaqe, was it? She bent down and touched the lips, sighing when Jaqe opened so easily.
Jaqe said, “Get it in as far as possible.”
“Right.” Silently, to the baster, Laurie said, Okay, gang, do your stuff.
Later, when Jaqe had fallen asleep, Laurie slid carefully out of bed, dressed, and went for a walk. Away from home, she felt able to breathe, really breathe, for the first time in hours. She walked to a nearby bridge that connected two of the city’s boroughs across a filthy river. It was an old bridge, without lift or grace, painted a dreary gray. Because it was old, however, it still had a footpath, and Laurie could go out halfway and stand leaning over the railing to look at the water. She stood with her elbows on the rail, the top half of her body extended slightly over the water, not thinking, just watching. Down below she saw some small green shapes and thought they moved. Turtles? she wondered, but didn’t think it was possible. From somewhere—she couldn’t tell which side of the river—she heard a sudden growl of motorcycles.
A breeze swept across her face. She looked up suddenly, as if she’d see a girl fly past, with golden wings and a turkey beak instead of a nose. She saw only a seagull and, far above, a plane. When she lowered her eyes, she spotted a man walking toward her from the other side of the river. She turned and headed for home.
That night, Jaqe laughed in her sleep, a sound so amazing it woke Laurie, who thought, as if it never had occurred to her before, how much she loved Jaqe, loved her all over again. Jaqe’s eyes opened. She smiled when she saw Laurie. She said, “I dreamed you put a child inside me. She was all the way up in a tree—” She turned to look out the window. “That one, I guess. And you got her down and opened my belly and laid her right inside me. Then you closed me up and sprinkled some water on me. From a watering can.” She laughed. Then she opened her mouth for Laurie to kiss her.
Five weeks later, when she was sure she’d missed her period, Jaqe went for a test. “You did it!” she told Laurie when her lover came home from work. Laurie only looked at her. “You did it,” Jaqe repeated. “It worked. We’re going to have a baby.”
Three
The Child in the Water
A month went by, and the first major snow came and covered the city for two whole days. Below Jaqe and Laurie’s window a dog leaped up and down in the snow, carried away with delight at the chance to run, free of cars and leashes. Two months passed, and the cold wind from the river drove the homeless out of their cardboard boxes and into the eternal light and noise of the shelters.
It was during the second month of Jaqe’s pregnancy that Laurie asked her if she planned to tell her parents. “I don’t know,” Jaqe said. “I get scared just thinking about it.”
“The thing is,” Laurie said, �
��if you don’t do it soon, they’ll know as soon as they see you.” Jaqe nodded. “Unless you want to tell them on the phone.”
“No,” Jaqe said. “No, I guess I don’t want to do that.”
“Then maybe we should go there pretty soon.” Later, Laurie thought how she never would have expected herself to push Jaqe to visit her parents. Maybe, she thought, this baby thing wasn’t so bad after all.
But when Jaqe finally did decide to tell her parents, she told Laurie she wanted to go alone. “Maybe it’ll go a little easier,” she said, “if I just see them by myself.”
“Maybe it will,” Laurie said.
“It’s just this one time.”
“Sure.”
“I’m sorry, honey,” Jaqe said. “I just want to—you know what they’re like. And I haven’t seen them in so long.”
“It’s okay,” Laurie said. “Seeing your folks is not exactly my favorite treat.”
Jaqe’s parents picked her up at the train station on a cold day with the sky white with expectant snow. Jaqe had not seen them in a long time, she realized, not since before the trouble with Laurie’s parents. On the train she’d wavered between telling herself they made it impossible and wondering if she could have done more to get them over their prejudice, or just accept them the way they were. When she saw them coming toward her on the platform she realized how much she feared they would have gotten sick, or aged terribly, in the few months she’d been away from them.
Her mother put her head on Jaqe’s shoulder and hugged her so long Jaqe looked around to see if people were staring at them. Her father stood by, smiling as if for a photograph. They know, Jaqe thought. They could see it somehow. But then another thought came to her, and she felt a little queasy. They think I’ve broken up with Laurie. Gently she pushed her mother away, only to have her father give her a shorter, if more crushing, hug. “Come on,” she said lightly. “Let’s go. It’s cold here.”
“Welcome home, baby,” her father said. He grabbed her overnight bag out of her hand.
Jaqe said, “Laurie sends her love.”
Her father winced, but her mother managed to say, “I hope she’s all right?”
“Of course,” Jaqe said. “She just had to work. She’s taking inventory in the bookstore.”
Her mother made pot roast. “Your favorite,” she told Jaqe. Jaqe didn’t remember ever having a favorite dish—before she’d discovered her name everything had tasted alike to her—but she thanked her mother, who ran up and hugged her again before setting out the rolls and applesauce. Throughout dinner, Jaqe’s parents talked constantly, sometimes both at once, her mother about neighborhood gossip, her father about local politics, crime rates in various places, and a Japanese company’s plans to build an auto factory on the other side of the county. A couple of times they would ask Jaqe a question about school or Louise or the weather in the city. Her one-sentence answers satisfied them, and they jumped back into their monologues. Jaqe kept ordering herself to tell them, to break into their speeches with an announcement. When her mother offered her coffee and she asked for tea she thought of saying, “Coffee’s bad for fetal development, you know,” but she couldn’t make herself do it.
After dinner, Mrs. Lang waved a hand at the table and told Jaqe they would leave the dishes. She said, “I always hope I’ll come back in the kitchen and find some elf has done them for me.” She tried to look meaningfully at her husband, but he’d already headed for the den to turn on the television.
On the screen a woman was telling jokes about rewinding her biological clock. A moment later she gave way to a desert scene and a husky voice announcing a “new generation” of automobile. Talking loud over the television, Jaqe told her parents she wanted to tell them something. They looked at each other, and then at her. “Could you turn the TV off?” Jaqe said. In the sudden silence she heard herself sigh. “Do you remember,” she said, “when you told me you looked forward to having a grandchild?” Neither of them spoke. “I’ve decided to have a baby,” Jaqe said.
“What?” her father said. “Oh, come on.”
“Jacqueline—” her mother began, but stopped when her daughter said, “Jaqe.”
“This is ridiculous,” her father said. “You’re joking, right?”
Mrs. Lang said, “You’re not even married, honey. Don’t you think that you should wait until you’re married?” Her face lit up. “You haven’t gotten married, have you?”
Jaqe thought of how if she was Louise she would say, “I married Laurie two years ago.” Instead, she told her parents, “I don’t need a husband to have a child.”
“How are you going to support a child?” her father asked.
Her mother said, “Sweetheart, don’t you think maybe this one time—just this once—you’ve gone a little too far? Don’t you think that’s a possibility?”
Mr. Lang said, “Can’t you just finish school? You can decide stuff like that later.”
“You don’t understand,” Jaqe said. “I’ve already decided. I’m pregnant.”
“Jesus Christ,” her father said.
“Dear,” his wife said. “Please.”
“She’s pregnant and you’re worried about my language?”
Jaqe’s mother said to her, “Are you sure? You haven’t made a mistake?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“How do you know?”
Jaqe thought of a cousin who’d once said, “A woman knows the moment it happens. She can feel the new life quicken inside her.” Jaqe said, “The traditional method. I missed a period.”
“There are many reasons you might—”
“Mom, I went to the doctor. The tests are positive.”
“Excuse me,” her father said, “but I was under the impression Laurie’s a woman. She hasn’t changed it to Laurence, has she?”
Mrs. Lang said, “Please, dear, don’t make it worse.”
“How can I?” he told her. “I’m just trying to figure this out.” To Jaqe he said, “You mind telling us the father of our future grandchild?”
“There is no father,” Jaqe said.
Mr. Lang rolled his eyes. “Now we’re really in fantasyland. Let me tell you something, young lady, there are some things a man is still good for.”
Jaqe said, “I did it by artificial insemination.”
There was silence for a moment, then her mother said, “I didn’t know they took…”
“Lesbians,” Jaqe finished for her. “The word is lesbians.” She thought how soon she’d start marching, carrying placards. She thought of a T-shirt: “Don’t ask for a father. I did it with a turkey baster.”
Her mother said, “How far—how many months?”
“Two months.”
Mrs. Lang sighed. “Then it’s not too late.”
“Too late?”
“For an abortion. Usually I don’t believe in them—”
“I’m not having an abortion,” Jaqe said. She saw her mother cringe, and she realized she was shouting. She pushed her voice back down as she said, “I want this baby. I planned this baby. Artificial insemination does not happen by accident.” It occurred to her that her parents might not believe her. They might assume she made up the AI story to save Laurie’s honor, or even to deceive Laurie after she’d gone with some man and gotten caught.
Mrs. Lang said, “Please don’t get angry. We’re just worried for you. You read the papers.”
“The papers? What have the papers got to do with it?”
“Well, all of the trouble with single-parent families.”
“I am not a single parent.”
Her mother started to cry, and her father slapped the arm of his chair. “Don’t shout at your mother!” he shouted. Jaqe got up and began walking toward the doorway. “What are you doing?” her father said. He sounded more surprised than angry.
“Nothing,” Jaqe said. “I’m going upstairs. I want to lie down.”
Her mother ran after her. “Are you all right? Should we call the doctor?”
Jaqe laughed and shook her head. “I’m fine, Mom. I’m just tired.”
“I guess you need your rest,” Mrs. Lang said. She stood in the doorway of the den and watched Jaqe walk down the short hallway to the stairs.
Upstairs, Jaqe lay down for just a few seconds before she got up to find the photo album of herself as a child. She looked at the baby pictures, all of them, but none of that old urgency rose in her. Suddenly she became scared she’d made a terrible mistake. Could she change her mind, do what her mother said and get an abortion? She thought of all the trouble she’d made for Laurie, then realized Laurie would probably rejoice if Jaqe got rid of the baby. It’s not fair, she thought. Doing everything alone. It’s not right.
Don’t panic, she told herself, just don’t panic. Quietly, Jaqe put on her sneakers and her coat and slipped downstairs and out the front door. She took a couple of deep breaths before she hurried across the lawn and up the street, nervous her mother would spot her and come running with a few extra scarves or a hat. The road was slippery, with patches of ice that had melted in the day and then refrozen in the evening chill. Hugging herself against the wind, Jaqe walked to the place where she remembered seeing the women dancing that night. It was very hard to tell—so many months had passed. She bent down to the ground. Frowning, she traced her finger on what looked like very faint lines, the remnants of a drawing of a tree. With a pebble she scraped away some packed snow to reveal what looked like remains of a labyrinth. She reached in her jeans pocket for the stone Laurie had found on the beach. It looked the same—except for that clear picture of a child in the top branches.
The sound of a car behind her made Jaqe stand up and move to the side. A police car passed her, and she thought of the way the women had looked so startled when the patrol car disturbed their dance. She turned over the stone; she’d never really studied the other side, the one with the ferryman poling his boat along a river of white quartz. Funny, she thought, when you looked at it close, it all dissolved into meaningless lines, but when you just glanced at it, it was so clear.
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