The Paternity Test (24 page)

I pinned him with my sharpest spousal stare—daring him, just daring him, to answer.

A message started recording: not Cynthia but Rina. “Are you there? If you’re there, Stu, pick up.”

He touched the phone, but stopped. Stopped and turned and looked at me. He dropped his hand, and he and I just listened.

“Crap,” she said. “Well, anyway, we just came from the rabbi’s—a ‘counseling session,’ if you could call it that. I asked the schmuck, tell me how you actually
do
conversions. Send the kid to a Hebrew school with other adopted kids? Kind of like a bar mitzvah, but sooner? And he says, ‘Oh, no. You don’t understand. We do the conversion right away, when they’re babies. As soon as the baby is in hand.’
In hand
, he says. As if the baby’s, I don’t know, a check! ‘As soon as it’s in hand, we perform the conversion. A bris, for boys. Immerse it in the mikvah.’

“Again I’m like, hold on. You take a baby—a newborn!—and dunk it in some holy water, and
presto
, now it’s Jewish? Doesn’t that sound a tad bit
less
than Jewish? I was under the impression that converting should be hard, that Jews purposely put up all these hoops for folks to jump through.
Why do you want to be Jewish? You’re really sure you want to?
But no, Mr. Rabbi has his little Talmud handy, and
flip flip
, here’s the page he wants: ‘We can act to someone’s advantage even without his permission.’ It’s sick, how they’ve got an answer for everything.

“Richard and I, on the way home, we had a
massive
fight. He kept saying, ‘But the rabbi said, the rabbi said, the rabbi . . .’ Any time I tried to talk, his face just went on screen saver.

“What am I going to do, Stu? I mean, if things go on like this, I don’t even
want
to have a baby! I don’t know right now. I—”

The answering machine beeped and cut her off.

Rina must have known, of course, that I would likely hear her; she had freely chosen to leave a message; but standing there, in real time, listening to her heartache, standing there and never picking up . . . God, it made me feel like such a creep.

Or maybe what disturbed me was the way she spoke of Richard, which matched the way I felt right now about my own companion.

Stu hadn’t said a thing. (Why had he not answered? Rina was his sister, after all.) Now he ran some water into a glass, gulped it down. “I
have
to fly tomorrow,” he said. “Seriously. I do.” Opening the tap again, he switched on the Disposall, even though there was no trash to grind. The gadget made a dry, grating crunch. “But,” he said. “You’re right.”

“I’m right?”

“About Debora. Have to do it. Can’t just leave her hanging.” Maybe he, too, had recognized himself in wretched Richard, and shriveled at the thought of their alikeness. “I have an idea,” he said. “A way we might do both.”

Just before he headed for the airport in the morning, he would do his mortifying duty in our bathroom; and then, as he hurried off to make his early flight, I would speed the sample, on the double, to Hyannis, where Debora would be ready for her role.

“Does that sound like a plan? Can you live with that?” he asked.

“Well, I guess if . . . sure, I guess. Yeah. That sounds fine.”

Actually, sort of brilliant, but I didn’t want to say that. Neither did I admit to him, and hardly to myself, my snapped-rope jolt of disappointment: for one second, I had thought that he was going to say—for maybe a nanosecond I had guessed this—that I should just go and take his place.

What I said was, “Rina’s call? You really could have answered.”

“I know,” he said.

“I know you know. I just wanted to say it. You could’ve. I would’ve understood.”

“I wanted to focus on
us
,” he said. “Isn’t that what—”

Yes, I told him. Yes.

A bullion-bright day, two weeks before the year’s longest. All the world in crisp, flawless focus—and me, too. The air was cool, but here inside my Volvo, who would know? Windows closed, heater cranked to high. Tucked away, snug within the crotch of my fleece sweatpants (trying to maintain 98.6): the specimen cup filled with Stu’s semen.

Such focus, such flawlessness: Did carrying a piece of Stu enable me to feel like this—the fact that he had found a way, though gone, still to be here? Or did his
absence
free me for the feeling?

At Debora’s, I moved the cup to underneath my armpit, and quick-stepped my way up the walk. She met me at the door in a vivid yellow robe, which seemed to luminesce in fireflyish winks with each of her tiniest movements.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said, pointing to the robe and then to her off-kilter hair. “Why try to make myself together so early, only to make myself apart again?”

“Make yourself apart? That doesn’t sound too pleasant.”

“Stop,” she said. She glared at me with chummy irritation. “It’s not nice to tease about my English.”

“No, you’re right. I’m sorry. Accept this in apology?” I brought the cup out into view.

“Ah,
here
you are,” she said, and took the cup and cradled it, as if it were already an infant.

A breakfast smell of butter and burnt crumbs suffused the house. I wished we could loiter in the kitchen, just to chat, to lessen the sense of doing a
transaction
.

“It’s quiet,” I said, stalling.

“Yes, and I don’t like. Danny says a day or two more and he returns.” Debora’s facial expression was full of twists and turns. “But oh! Paula called. She left the most sweet message. Come, do you want? You
must
hear.”

And so we did linger in the kitchen, while she played it.

“Mãinha? Guess who. Did you guess
me
? You’re right!” Paula’s voice swung from too loud to barely audible, as Danny fought (I pictured it) to keep her near the phone. “Mãe, we’re in Friendly’s, and I just got some onion rings, but they’re so big, they’re not rings, they’re
bracelets
. I would like to bring you one to wear, but Daddy says I can’t, these rings are for eating not for keeping, and now . . . now . . . I love you, Mãinha. Come back soon!”

Danny could be heard chiming, “Wow! Good job, sweetie,” and then, in a private voice, “Love you, too, Deb. Bye.”

“Cute,” I said. “Especially how she tells you to ‘come back’—as if you’re the one who went away.”

“To her, I am,” said Debora. “Away from
her
. You see?”

The topic of maternal duty returned us to our mission.

“Well,” she said, raising the cup. “It’s time to start. You’ll wait?”

“Waiting’s really all I do these days.”

“Yes, but later—later you will
dream
of all this free time.”

“Oh, you’re right. Of course you’re right. When have you ever not been?”

Debora turned and made her way efficiently to the staircase, and up she marched, into her hall of mysteries.

Footsteps through the ceiling . . .

The sound of no more footsteps . . .

Debora had been reading a glossy rag. I picked it up. “Tom’s Crazy Love. Will Katie Say ‘I Do’?”

I walked from the kitchen to the living room, the den, mapping out the bounds of my irrelevance. The rooms were tight, narrowed by their clutter, like clogged valves: Paula’s clothes and dolls, a blueprint tube, a plumb bob—nothing with the glow of being Debora’s.

Up in bed, what was she now doing?

Aimlessly I circled back to the kitchen. A saucepot in the sink held expressionist eggy froth. I sniffed a hint of vinegar, the gourmet’s trick to poaching. Debora clearly knew this trick; now I knew she knew. Why did this small intimacy stir me?

The urge to snoop, to open doors, was bodily, erotic. Refrigerator (Coors Light cans, graying cuts of beef ), broom closet (piles and piles of grocery bags, no brooms). The cupboard by the fridge brimmed with unfamiliar dry goods:
farofa, goiaba roladinho
. Finally, a place that was just hers! An image came: Debora, a newly minted immigrant, knowing no one other than her husband; and then being walloped by that same husband’s news, that he had fathered someone else’s baby. And yet she had found a way—ways—to make life work. Like this, here: a cupboard full of home.

The next cupboard held dinner plates, salad plates, bowls. Well ordered—the neatest spot, so far, in the house. I thought of a night with Stu, many years ago, a week or two after we’d shacked up. I had cooked us supper: meatloaf, mashed potatoes; our place, for the frst time, smelled homey. Later, cleaning up, I saw that when he stored a plate, instead of simply placing it atop the cupboard’s stacked ones, he lifted them and laid the new plate under.

“What’re you doing?” I’d asked.

“Sorry—is that a problem?”

Of course not. I only wanted to know.

Blushing a bit, Stu explained his theory of “equal time”: place clean plates on top, the same ones would get used too much; place them under, they would always rotate.

“Exactly,” I said. I did this, too, but hadn’t told a soul. “For me, though, it isn’t about giving equal wear, it’s—”

“Emotional, sort of, right?” he said. “Like, what if they have
feelings
? You wouldn’t want some plates to feel left out.”

Adorable! I kissed him robustly on the mouth, thankful for the luck—the fate—of having found him. From out of all the five-plus billion plate-misstacking humans, I had been assigned a task to share with him at Serve the World, and now we shared a love, a home, a life.

Where had that feeling gone?

Where had
we
?

I was admiring one of Debora’s neatly stacked plates— cobalt-rimmed, sturdy-looking, plain—when something above me thunked. The lights in the kitchen wavered.

The ceiling didn’t do a lot to muffle Debora’s voice. “Ai, no!
Porra! Caralho!
”

I whipped shut the cupboard, and raced up to her room. “Hey, you okay in there?”

“Wait,” she said. “Hold on.”

Another thunk. Rustling. Then a high-pitched yelp.

“Okay, now I’m coming in!” I warned her.

She sat on the tall bed’s edge, naked legs dangling. The yellow robe was draped over her shoulders but not tied. A patch of brown belly could be seen, a fist of hair. The specimen cup, the syringe, in her hands.

“I tried,” she said. “Was trying. But I lost my balance. I fell.”

“Fell? From the—how? From the bed onto the
floor
?”

She nodded. She looked like a child who’d wet the sheets. “Danny usually helps,” she said, “and I just lie and wait. But
this
. This stupid thing!” She throttled the syringe.

We’d used it for the frst couple of goes but not since; Stu had lately aimed his spurts straight into the Instead Cup, which Debora could insert right away, no sperm lost. But not today. Not with Stu at thirty thousand feet.

It wasn’t Debora’s fault, it was Stu’s—should I say that?

“To put it in myself,” she said, “is hard. Now it’s ruined.”

“No. No, I’m sure it’s not. Give.”

At frst glance, it was true, things looked less than great. All around the outside of the tube was wet and gummy. But some semen—a few cc’s—had stayed in the syringe, and that was what I chose to home in on. “It’s fine,” I said. “Don’t worry, now. Everything is just fine.” I caught myself talking like a cop at some big tragedy: self-important, sternly reassuring. But then it struck me: Tragedy? Is that what this scene was? A woman tumbling half-nude out of bed, a sticky gizmo . . . no, what we were dealing with was slapstick.

“What,” she said, “you laugh?”

I tried to stop but couldn’t.

“What?” she said again, sounding tight.

In lieu of words, I wiggled all my glistening, gummy fingers. Waved their gross absurdness in her eyes.

Something in her face gave way, a kind of unchaining. A gorgeous thing to witness, like water becoming steam, molecule by liberated molecule.

“
Caralho
,” she said merrily. “Look at me! So dumb.”

Look? All right, I did, through her still-unfastened robe: hairless thighs, a single glossy smear of what she’d spilled. But maybe she hadn’t meant for me to . . . of course not. I dropped my gaze.

“Now what do we do?” she said. “You’ll tell Stu? No. You won’t.”

This was not instruction but appraisal.

I had not yet thought that far but knew that she was savvy. “No,” I said, smiling. “No, I won’t.”

Now we had another truth to hide.

Debora nodded, considering. She tapped her front teeth. “How much is left? Enough?”

“Maybe, I think. Sure.”

“Okay. What we do—we try again. You think?” She scooched herself back, to the center of the bed. Her robe threw off tiny darts of light.

Had
she meant “look” literally? She hadn’t tied the robe. Could have, during all this time, but hadn’t.

By swiveling her hips, she rearranged some pillows. Tossed her hair to clear it from her face. I didn’t ask if I should stay; she didn’t say to leave. The quickest of glances passed between us: fear and its dismissal.

“Lean back, now,” I said. “Spread your legs.”

A classic nightmare put the dreamer standing on a stage, unable to recall any lines. This, now, for me, was curiously the opposite: a play I didn’t know but whose lines, somehow, splendidly, I did. I knew that whatever I might say right now would be okay. Whatever I might ask, she’d say yes.

“Aim like this and push?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Just right here?”

“Yes. Just right there. It goes in.”

I wasn’t seeing
her
, exactly, but entrances and angles, a problem of geometry and physics.

Debora laid her hand on mine and smiled a depthless smile. One, two . . . I eased the tube inside her.

“All okay? Still good?”

“Yes,” she said. “Perfect.”

“All right, then. Ready? In they go.”

I pushed the plastic plunger, and held it for a five count, waiting for the onset of unease, or more slapstick: shouldn’t something leak or slip back out? But no, what had started with the makings of a farce now was all balletic style and balance. The syringe, a magic pen, inscribing our new life.

Debora inserted the Instead Cup, to keep the sperm inside. Just as fast, her hand was out; she dried it on the sheet. She settled back, tilting her pelvis upward. Once again I wondered if she’d pull her bathrobe closed, but now that I had . . . well, now why bother?