The Paternity Test (20 page)

Square one. I wanted to punch the ground.

But dealing with Stu, who crawled farther into his bunker of brooding, kept me from unraveling my own sadness.

I knew he blamed himself. He couldn’t well blame Debora (Paula was such pushy, gleaming proof that
she
was fertile). Months ago, when he was tested, his numbers had looked fine. But maybe we should run some tests again, I was thinking. Take another look, to ease his mind.

“I know this must be hard for you,” I said to him one night, conscious of avoiding words like
sterile
.

“Isn’t it hard for all of us?”

“No, but what I mean,” I said. “I’m sure you must be doubting if—”

“Let me deal with my own doubts,” he said.

Who could I talk to? Not our New York friends, not after my fruitless trip. My sisters? No, we never dug that deep.

The person I kept thinking of was Debora. Only Debora. But Stu was already bugging her (cut way back on coffee? try a fresh-garlic suppository?), and I didn’t want to amplify her stress.

The message board on Surromoms was where I f nally turned. After all, the site was what had hooked us up with Debora. Maybe it would work its magic twice.

At frst I was put off by the cutesy tropes of Surrospeak: DW, for “darling wife”; FT, for “fertile thoughts.” A strange form of baby talk. Craving-a-baby talk. Eventually, though, the members’ lack of irony drew me in. I thought of how deliciously unironic children were. Milo, for example, or Paula, or my nephews. They never smirked, they
smiled
; they did nothing “in quotes.” Maybe, then, to have a kid I needed to be more kidlike—earnest and unguarded. It felt good.

Implausibly, I grew close—if pixels brought you “close”—to Pentecostal Texans, to housewives in Duluth. Like LuvToShare, who couldn’t carry her own child (hysterectomy) but offered up her frozen eggs so others could be fruitful. And Pray4Life, who hoped to carry her brother-in-law’s baby, to give her paraplegic sister a child. Eight long months she’d tried and failed, but still her spirits soared.

All the moms who wrote to me said: Calm way down, be patient. I was told of someone who for
twenty months
had struggled, cycle after cycle after cycle, and then, on the brink of quitting: bull’s-eye. No one could explain it—not rationally, at least—and so they spoke of answered prayers, God’s will.

This talk of divine intervention made me nervous. “God’s will” rarely favored guys like us.

But then one night I logged on, and there was a post from Pray4Life:
Thrilled to let you know, two pink stripes!
The story was so providential, I hoped it might cheer Stu. When he came home, I handed him the laptop.

He scanned the screen. “Pray4Life? Seriously? You’re kidding.”

“Read it, Stu. The point here is, good things can still happen.”

“And you need
them
, with their precious little acronyms, to know that? Jesus, Pat—oops, I mean, SandyNeckDad—is this really the best you can do?”

If Stu didn’t want the help, no matter: I would take it. He could have a belly laugh at all the silly acronyms, while I enjoyed my network of new friends. And I alone, not he, would know the secret thrill of the question often posed to me online:
What’s your role? Are you the IF?
I loved the sharp rise of those two capital letters, their dignified boldness on the screen. Typing my response—
That’s me, the IF
—what I meant, beyond the basic code (
intended father
), was the
if
: the incalculable chance.

In May we tried (a word I now despised) a fourth time. Then, of course, we had to wait again.

The weather, I was figuring, would match my fragile mood—partly because I’d always been a fan of the pathetic fallacy, and partly just because of how a Cape spring usually went: fickle warmth, a sky that longed to crack. Weirdly, though, every day dawned clearer than the last. Daffodils, exploding from the ends of their thin stalks, looked like gaudy cartoon bursts of cheer.

The fallacy wasn’t called
pathetic
for nothing, I reminded myself: don’t be dumb and take these things as signs.

The day arrived. We’d told Debora we’d call her in the evening. Stu wanted to pose ourselves, for luck, like the last time (even though that time had been unlucky): hand in hand before our sweeping view. Maybe he was looking for a way to tell me sorry. Maybe he was tossing me a bone.

The greening marsh, the dunes beyond, whitecaps on the bay, and sunset basting all of it with soft, refined light that fired through Rina’s Holy Rose pendant. (Weeks ago we’d hung it at the pane, as she’d advised.)

Stu squeezed my hand, and squeezed again. He dialed.

Much of the time, Debora’s nasal vowels could still confuse me: her sounds for
no
and
now
seemed the same. And oh, how I would have liked, just then, to misconstrue her. But there was no mistaking the word
negative
.

A week later we met again at the Pancake King, both couples. Paula had been handed off to Libby at the multiplex, to see a film that starred a singing fsh—which sounded much more fun than what we faced.

We’d waited twenty minutes for a table, tempers spiking (a busload of Japanese tourists swamped the place, enjoying their Memorial Day trip), and now, finally seated, having ordered, we were silent. A doctor’s-office silence—anxiety and shame—but sharper edged, layered through with anger.

Or maybe it was this: the high-G-force queasiness of having sped to intimacy too fast.

A neighbor in New York, who hustled to pay for med school, had once explained the job’s biggest drawback: “The sex isn’t terrible. It’s even good, occasionally. The terrible thing is lying there, afterward, and talking.
Talking
is the thing I make them pay for.” Was this how Debora and Danny saw us: the payers and the paid? No, I couldn’t believe that. But why was no one talking?

Past us whooshed the rapids of the restaurant’s commotion; I felt like a river rock, eroding. All around, the hatchet chops of chats in Japanese. (Did our English, to them, sound as violent?)

A dainty-boned man with a credit card–sized camera cradled in his chic, stemlike fingers, hovered over a golden stack of hotcakes. He snapped a shot and showed it to the woman at his table, who frowned and gestured:
You can do better
.

I thought I saw a chance to break our gridlock. “If I’m ever lucky enough to visit Japan,” I said, talking in a forced, roguish whisper, “I hope I eat better than, whatever, Sushi King. If all they want is shitty food, you’d think they’d stay at home.”

“I wish they’d stay home, period,” said Danny.

I braced for a possible racist rant.

But Danny added, “Not just them. Everyone. All the tourists. Every year it’s worse, I swear. Did you guys see the traffic? More and more, I just—I’m sick of everyone.”

“But not us, though,” said Debora coyly. She touched her heart. “Not me?”

“Ha! Sick of
you
? Ha! Ha!”

Danny’s tone, the muscle of it, shoved us back to silence.

Stu was locked in something like an autism of anxiety, moving his fork left of his spoon, then right, then left, then right. He had been the one who’d made arrangements for this check-in (“See where we all stand,” he’d suggested), but now he looked as though he’d been dragooned.

The waitress brought our drinks and was greeting her next table, when Danny reached back and tapped her shoulder. “Miss? Hey, excuse me. I asked was the iced tea sweetened. You said it wasn’t, but here— here, taste this.”

“Hold on just a sec, sir, okay? I’m with this table.”

“No!” he snarled. “Come on. It’s like syrup.”

Debora, looking mortified, said, “Here, take my soda. Danny, please. Dan. Turn around.”

“Don’t want soda. The point is, I asked for unsweetened. But the waitress”—he jabbed his hand; it seemed he might swat her—“the waitress doesn’t know her own menu.”

Diners at the tables all around us now stared. The man with the camera turned; I feared he’d snap our picture:
Trip to America. View of vulgar natives
.

The waitress came and knelt beside Danny, eyes reddened. “I’ll get you another, sir—of whatever, on the house. But please, would you—” Her voice cracked. “Would you please not yell?”

Her tears, or her splintered voice, finally got to Danny. He broke out of his trance of self-pity. “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry. It’s—forget it, this is fine.”

“I’d be happy to—”

“Really, no. It’s fine.” Then he faced us. “Sorry, guys. Really, really sorry. It’s work,” he explained. “I’m letting it get me down. A couple of my lots failed their perc tests last week. And the INS—my crew is almost all, you know, Brazilians—the INS is breathing down my neck.”

Debora cringed. At the notion of her countrymen being hounded? No, I thought: at the not-quite-glance Danny had just given her. He looked limp and thwarted, could scarcely meet her eyes.

Watching this exchange, this
lack
of one, I got it: Danny’s problem must not be his work, or not just that. The real problem? His marriage— the way that we had crimped it: four months-plus since he had been allowed in Debora’s bed. Wouldn’t any husband’s nerves have frayed?

No intercourse until the surrogate pregnancy is confirmed
...

No action that could introduce semen into her body
...

Standard clauses. Boilerplate. The lawyer had insisted. But did we really have to be so strict? Maybe we could grant a one-time variance, for morale: using a condom, and spermicide, the day after her period . . .

How to raise the subject, though, without seeming even more intrusive? Plus, I had to ask Stu frst. No more surprise announcements.

Danny was now looking at his tea, not at Debora. Flexing his bite with tension. Poor guy.

“Hey,” I said. “Don’t worry. We’ve all been under stress.” I went to pat his hand, but he jerked it out of reach.

“Yeah, well, for you,” he said, “for you the stress is worth it.” He gripped his glass. Tea sloshed to the rim.

Stu jolted forward, his face suddenly focused: a cloud about to dump a spate of rain. “What are you really trying to say?” he challenged.

Danny shrugged. “If all this works? Bang, you’ve got a family. For us, it’s . . . the thing of it is, we’ve already got a family. Maybe for us this does more harm than good.”

Stu said, “We didn’t come to talk about quitting.”

“Hold on,” Debora said. “Does anyone say we’re quitting?”

“It sounded like your husband did. Sounded like that to me.”

Debora grinned: an appliqué of poise.

“Remember the contract,” Stu went on. “The contract says you’ll try for eight cycles.”

“Don’t sit there and boss her,” Danny said. “Don’t talk like that.”

Stu said, “Don’t talk to
me
like that.”

“Hey hey hey. Please!” I said. “Can’t we please stay decent? Everyone please just calm down for a sec.” I won an instant’s lull, but I guessed it wouldn’t last. “We knew this would be tricky,” I said. “Didn’t we, going in? I mean, hell, it’s tricky enough just trying to get pregnant.”

“Appreciate your expert view, there, Pat,” said Danny tightly. “Actually, though, it wasn’t all that ‘tricky’ making Paula. Pretty easy, in fact, and—correct me if I’m wrong—a hell of a lot more fun to do, right, Deb?”

Stu bared his teeth. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Not
supposed
to mean anything. Means just what it means: Maybe you’re having trouble because this isn’t something natural. Maybe this just isn’t meant to be.”

“Christ, don’t start me with
natural
. What is it with you people? Strut around like God’s gift, just because when
you
havesex, ta-dah!—your wife gets pregnant. As if that’s some major moral achievement.”

I put my arm around him, hoping to rein him in. “Stu,” I said. “Stu, please.”

“Please what? Please swallow this crap again? And not from my family but from
them
?”

“Stop!” said Debora. “I hate to hear this. Danny didn’t mean it how you think.”

“Right,” said Danny. “All I meant—”

But here was the waitress, doling out our plates with practiced flicks. “There,” she said. “All set for now? And sir, I’m going to bring a brand-new tea.”

The tourists stared, awaiting another brawl.

Danny only nodded. I did, too. We all did.

“Okay, great,” the waitress said. “Holler if you need me.”

The food was steaming sweetly. It softened the air between us. The smell of bacon acted like a balm.

“Look,” I said. “We’ve waited for this food so long. We’re cranky. Let’s just say we’re sorry, and dig in.”

“Yes,” said Debora. “What we need is food.”

But Stu said, “I am sorry. I’ve actually lost my appetite. Pat, do you mind? Let’s just pay the bill and go on home.”

I wanted to kick his shins. And maybe Danny’s, too.

Stu got up, and as I followed, Debora caught my eye. When Danny wasn’t looking, I mouthed, “Call me.”

It felt sneaky: our men still crouched behind barricades of sanctimony, licking their wounds, nixing any truce, and here we were, Debora and I, meeting on the sly, at the cool, sweeping shore of Sandy Neck. My alibi was simple but sufficient: “Off to the library,” I’d said to Stu, a stack of books as proof, and he had scarcely looked up from his
Times
.

The furtive mood was heightened by the afternoon’s conditions: the sun like a secret agent, stealing from cloud to cloud; a shifty wind that disarranged the dunes. Debora and I had the beach almost to ourselves. Two lovebirds, khaki cuffs rolled up to their knees, held hands and hurdled low breakers. A smoky-haired woman and her not-so-golden retriever hobbled with the same arthritic gait.

We headed east, skirting between sand and sea-buffed stones. Debora looked undaunted as she walked across the scree. She wore a crimson windbreaker, buttoned at the bottom, which kept catching gusts of breeze and puffing on both sides, calling to mind the bulging cheeks of someone about to blow out birthday candles.

“Wow,” she said. “So beautiful.” Her arms stretched up, outward; her cheeklike jacket caught another gust.