The Paternity Test (13 page)

“Maybe I was making errors, using the kit,” she said. “But now I looked another time: the second line, it’s dark.”

“Okay, then,” I said. “Fine. I mean—great!” Blood pulsed on both sides of my throat. “Stu’s not here. He’s, I don’t know, probably over Cleveland. He gets home at sevenish, I think.” I felt dipsy, boundless, as though I’d guzzled gin straight from the jug. “I’ll call the Saltwinds and see if they can bump us to tonight. Shouldn’t be a problem, it’s off-season.”

The Saltwinds was the B&B where we held reservations, the result of a careful compromise. After we had all agreed to do insems at home— pleased for having hit upon this plan—only then did someone think to ask: At home, but
whose
? Ours, we had assumed. But they’d assumed theirs. Each side made a credible claim to reason: Shouldn’t the baby, being ours, be made in our own house? Yes, but if one goal of DIY was Debora’s comfort, shouldn’t the deed be done in Debora’s bed?

Before the tiff could escalate, Stu got all rabbinic and devised a way to thread the quarrel’s needle. What we’d do was book adjacent rooms within a guesthouse. Neutral turf for all of us, a break from our routines. Comfy, yes, but special, too. A treat.

So now I had to phone the place and change our reservation. The thought of having a doable chore relaxed me.

“But Pat,” said Debora.
Patch
. “Today it’s Valentine’s.”

“Oh, good God, of course it is. And I didn’t buy a gift. You think the B&B is . . . are we screwed?”

“That, but also: Danny was supposed to take me out. I think he has a table at Abbicci.”

“Crap,” I said. “Hold on. Call you back.”

The Saltwinds had no vacancies, and nowhere else did, either. Not even the Days Inn in Hyannis. Lovers, I imagined, in every room.

I told Debora; we sat in foggy silence.

“Wait until tomorrow?” she said. “Maybe that’s not too late. We don’t want to wait another
month
, I don’t think.”

“A month?” I said. “Absolutely not.”

I made an executive decision, which stemmed in part from guilt—I rued the thought of wrecking her and Danny’s evening plans—but mostly just from sheer pragmatism. I would go to the airport and be waiting when Stu landed, and then we’d hustle straight to Debora’s house. (Compromise be damned: we’d do this on her turf.) We’d be finished, with any luck, by nine, nine-thirty—in time for Debora and Danny to go out. By that hour, even tonight, they wouldn’t need a booking.

“Sound okay to you?” I asked.

“Yes, if you are sure. Will Stu be angry?”

“No,” I said. “Or, well, not at you.”

At the airport I waited for Stu’s plane to land, and waited. All the while I babied the dozen roses I had bought him. I paced and paced, left to right to left.

The monitor said nineteen minutes more.

Through the plate-glass windows I could see the runway traffic—a Cape Air flight to Nantucket; a pristine, private Lear—but couldn’t make the clock speed up, or make the next plane his.

Watch and wait, was all. Watch and wait.

The screenlike separation, the idleness, the impotence . . . this was how I’d felt the time (I’d tried to kill the memory) when Stu almost couldn’t land his plane.

We were still New Yorkers then. Mired in our old lives. Stu was in his bingeing phase, and I had started doubting: Was he the man with whom I’d someday hope to raise a kid? Should I go looking for someone else? And/or a different
self
?

I was at home, watching the news, and rose to crack a window: the first warm evening of the spring. When I sat down again, the screen now showed a jet. An anchorwoman’s bossy, breathy voice was reassuring us: “. . . not, repeat
not
, an act of terrorism. Only an equipment malfunction.” A relief to the public. But to the passengers? The pilot? If they died, would their deaths, due “only” to a failure of the landing gear, be any less deadly? If Stu were ever to crash, I thought—if Stu were on this flight—I would be more focused on the end than on the means. If Stu were . . .

I buried the question:
Is
he?

The anchorwoman appeared again, bearing further news: US Air flight 246, originating in D.C. It would attempt to land at LaGuardia.

I’d worked so hard learning to dismiss this possibility that all I could do, at first, was keep watching. I thought about the ethics of broadcasting disaster. The previous month, the Pentagon had tightened prohibitions on documenting servicemembers’ coffins. (Generals spent the soldiers’ lives like stacks of poker chips. But let us see their flag-draped caskets? No.) But this—a faulty plane, innocent folks at risk, a tragedy truly not ft for viewing—
this
would be shown on live TV.

I planned how I’d carp about it to Stu when he came home. But then, panic: What if Stu would never now come home? What if there were no Stu to carp to?

I bolted to the kitchen, where Stu, before leaving, posted each day’s schedule on the fridge. He always used the same campy magnet— I
Goyim—and sometimes scrawled a message in the margin. Today’s read:
Don’t worry about the garbage. I took care of it
.

There it was, his day’s last flight, DCA to LGA. I zoomed in on the number: 246.

The next minutes passed in a hyperreal fever, my proxy life vivid on the screen (alarm lights, sirens), my life at home (couch, clicker) fraudulently calm. Rescue trucks and ambulances raced into position, commentators spoke of likely outcomes:
Fiery skid. Secondary blast
. At the terminal: an FAA spokesman, a priest. “A priest?” I could hear Stu say. “The ultimate indignity! Even in death, we Jews get short shrift.”

Where would all Stu’s outrage go, his melancholy humor? All his Stu-ness—where?

Fiery skid
.

But then, in an instant, it was done: a gasp; applause.

Soon the doors broke open, emergency slides inflated, shoeless passengers sluiced out to safety. “Thank God,” said the anchor, “for that pilot.”

Yes, I thought. Thank God. Thank God.

As I said, those were the days when I had started doubting (maybe if I wanted kids, Stu was not the man for me; could someone so intemperate be a father?). But now, having watched him almost disappear for good, I saw beneath the rubble of my doubts. Maybe he wouldn’t make the most assiduous father ever. But I didn’t just want a child
with
Stu, I wanted a child
of
Stu’s. I longed for this because a child of Stu’s would spawn more Stu-ness. A further bit of him within the world.

Stu, who took care of all the garbage.

“Please,” I said, when finally he came home and hugged me close. “Seriously, Stu. Don’t ever scare me like that.”

“Shh, okay? I’m here,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

All that night:
I’m here I’m here I’m here
.

At
their
place?” said Stu. “But no. I don’t want to!”

Striding through the gate just now, engrossed in his own thoughts, he had looked so handsome and august. His polished, brass-latched briefcase, his cap, his epaulets. Then, when he laid eyes on me and the dozen red roses, I saw his pleasure fighting with suspicion.

“What about the Saltwinds?” he said. He clonked his briefcase down. “Come on, Pat. I thought we’d worked this out.”

I filled him in on Debora’s early surge, the booked hotels. “Happy Valentine’s!” I held out the bouquet.

“But Pat, it’s not . . . I mean, I’m sorry, no. But this just isn’t—”

I could see him struggling with the need to fling some blame. Probably he wasn’t pissed so much about the switched locales as about the subversion of his plan. About his being bypassed, overruled.

I told him it was my fault. I should have had a backup plan. Should have booked
two
nights, just in case.

My mea culpa soothed him. He sighed at length. He nodded.

“Great,” I said. “Now quick. They’re waiting, as we speak. They’re still trying to salvage a date tonight.”

But Stu turned and walked the wrong way, deeper into the airport.

“Wait,” I said. “Stu. Where are you going?”

“We can do the insem at their place. Fine,” he said. “Okay. But not
my
part. Not in their house, with everybody there.”

“But they won’t be ‘there.’ I mean, not in the room when you—of course not! Anyway, where else are you going do it?”

Stu marched three more strides, to a sign above a doorway. He pointed. Men.

I followed him in, coughing at the fake-fruit scent of cleanser. We stood before a gray, graff tied stall door. Stu said I should hand him the specimen cup.

“Please,” I said. “Not here. Could it be any less romantic? This is a moment we’ll always want to remember. This is our kid.”

“You think I don’t know?” he said. “That’s why I can’t do it in
their
house.”

I looked into his dutiful eyes, so earnest and, yes,
dadlike
(their gravity, their seriousness of purpose), and now the scene seemed less unromantic.

“Kiss me,” he said, just as he had on the way to the Pancake King. He tasted of airline peanuts, a perfect match of honeyed sweet and salt.

“Guess I’ll leave you to it?” I said.

His gaze, for an instant, wavered.

“Or I could stay. Right outside the door, here, yeah? You want me to?”

“I do,” he said, as though this were a wedding.

Stu’s hands were busy, warming the cup against his armpit’s skin, so I reached up, around him, to the doorbell. I held the insem kit and also the rose bouquet, which Stu said should go to Debora, a consolation prize (“Not much of a Valentine’s Day, right?”). The roses hadn’t fared well in the Volvo heater’s blast—we’d tried to keep the car at body temp—and now the wind shook their petals loose.

Tick tick tick
went Stu’s tapping feet. How long did sperm stay viable—half an hour?

I rang again. Peered in through the saltbox Cape’s curtains: lights but no human silhouettes. I felt at ease with Debora now, and mostly so with Danny, but certainly not enough to just walk in, unescorted. And so we stood there waiting, ready to hand off (literally) our future.

“Come on,” said Stu. “Come
on
.”

Finally,
clack
, the knob was turned, and Debora opened the door, a red-eyed Paula saddled on one hip. “Sorry,” she said. “Somebody’s having one of those nights, you know?” She gave the girl a peck on her skull, which only made her thrash.

“Hand her to me?” a voice from behind suggested.

“Yes, that would—” Debora started, but Paula thrashed again. “Not just yet. Hold on, okay? Maybe in a minute. And oh,” she said, “Pat and Stu? Our babysitter, Libby.”

The young woman—plump on top, twiggy beneath the hips; the build I’d always called “egg with legs”—leaned around Debora with a wave.

Our hands were full. We smiled at her uncertainly. Wind whipped past us.

Freeing the cup from under all his layers, Stu said, “Here.”

“Ah,” said Debora, and went to take it, but Paula started flailing again, drubbing her heels against her mother’s leg.

“Wait, let me,” said Libby, intercepting. But then, as Stu called, “Actually—” and tried to grab it back, the sitter seemed to recognize the liquid. She shrank, pushed the cup away, tipping it to the brink.

I could picture, frame by frame, a slow-mo tragicomedy: semen like a seagull’s spattered droppings on her sweatshirt, which claimed “I’m a Cape Cod Chowdah-Head.”

But here came Debora’s superhero hand to save the day. She caught the cup; everything was righted.

Libby said, “I guess I’ll just,” and flapped her palms laxly. She backed down the hallway, out of sight.

The turmoil, for the moment, had seemed to sidetrack Paula. I tried to take advantage of the lull. “Well, well, my old duck-feeding pal, how’s it going?”

Paula pulled a halfhearted grimace.

“Pow,” I said, boxing at the air around her shoulders; the kid now indulged me with a chortle. “There!” I cheered. “There’s my little sweetpea.”

Stu said, “Hey, where’s Danny? I hope he’s not mad.”

“Mad?” said Debora.

“Valentine’s. Having to push back dinner.”

“No,” she said, then added, “I think this makes him timid. Timid? No, wait—in English: shy.”

“Oh,” I said belatedly, lifting the bouquet, “for you. Because . . . just because.”

“
Que lindo!
You’re so thoughtful. But—” She noted her taken hands: the cup in one, Paula in the other. A smart before-and-after advertisement.

Danny came downstairs. “Right,” he said. “How thoughtful. Here, hand them over, I’ll take them.” His bearing was the last thing but shy. In shorts and a singlet, his burly arms exposed, he looked like a football coach, ready to dole out insults.

Maybe we’d upstaged him: had Danny forgotten roses, or brought Debora a not-as-nice bouquet?

“Sorry about the mix-up,” I said. “No one was expecting this.”

Danny loomed above me, two steps from the bottom. “Nothing to do about it. Shit happens.”

Stu seemed to sense the same tension I was sensing. “You know,” he said, “I have to tell you, doing my part felt . . .
weird
. Your part’ll be weird, too. Even weirder, I bet. I mean, actually doing the—you’re fine? You can do it?”

“Who the hell else would I let—obviously, not
you
guys. Ha!” said Danny. “Ha! Ha!”