The Paternity Test (27 page)

That didn’t seem to sit well. She shuffled heavily forward, her calves—their sandy skin—rasping. I was on the brink of saying,
No, no, forget it
, when Debora answered, “Married. To one of the boys my brothers knew. Nilson or Henrique or Thiago”—she spat their names. “They were all the same: grabbing always, looking. Their looking, it was like a
smell
in the air. A bad smell. But what choice did I have, you know? What choice?”

Well, the choice you made, I thought. You left. Don’t forget.

“And wait,” I said. “Remind me. How many brothers were there?”

“Seven.”

“And they all stayed? All of them stayed and married?”

“Yes, of course. As soon as they had eighteen, nineteen years. Two of them, they even married sisters—stupid cows.” She looked up to the cutting sun, her eyes clear, unsquinting. “Well, all but Waterston. Who I told you. That summer.”

“The one who lives in the city, in . . . what’s it called?”

“Natal.”

“—who lives in Natal. Never married?”

Debora shook her head. She said, “Lived.”

“Why? Did he move back to your village?”

“No. He died.”

The bluntness of it caught me at the knees.

I should have asked what happened, or told her I was sorry, but sorrow didn’t come as fast as self-indulgent anger: why the hell was
loss
our only topic?

I looked up uncomfortably, worried she’d seen my thoughts, but Debora wore a crisp, vivid smile. “I told about my summer in Natal?” she said. “With Waterston? The orchid from my teacher, that I sold?”

“Yes,” I said. “The summer you met Danny.”

“Fifty
reais
I earned,” she said. “For you, this would mean nothing. A dinner, maybe. A few beers in a bar. But for me!” She clenched her hands then burst them brightly open. “For Waterston and me—our best time.”

I was even more ashamed now of my reaction—my nonreaction—to hearing about her brother. I wanted to redeem myself. How?

“Maybe we could fnd an orchid now,” I said. “You want to?”

“Where?” she said.

“Here. There’s wild ones, if you’re lucky.”

Debora tucked her chin. She looked doubtful.

“Trust me,” I said. “I know the perfect spot.” A swale in the dunes by an old duck-hunting shack, another mile or so down the trail. Years ago, my mom had led me there, and we’d hit pay dirt: a grass-pink, according to our guidebook. “Well?” I said.

“Okay, I guess.”

“Great, come on. Let’s go!”

Why was I injected with the urge to hurry so? If orchids were there, they’d be there for a while. But I could feel my spirits being whipped to stiff peaks. Debora was in the left rut, and I the grassy middle, and we both started picking up our pace.

Now was the time, I knew—when we were feeling hardy—to talk about the subject we’d been dodging. The crater we kept landing in: our failure to conceive.

I brought it up, but hastened to say, “Not that we think
you’ve
failed. I hope you know, we never think like that. And actually, if someone is . . . Stu’s the one. He must be.”

“He’s not failing, either,” she said. “Maybe his sperm. Not
him
.”

“No, you’re right, you’re right. It doesn’t help to blame.”

It didn’t help, but that didn’t seem to stop me. And blame or not, the doubts about Stu’s sperm, its health, remained. (So far he’d resisted further testing.) Weren’t we, then, banging up against a brick wall? Wouldn’t we keep banging it, and banging?

“Yes,” she said, “and I’m not sure, you know, how much longer . . .”

At least three more months
, I pictured Stu insisting.
Take a look at the contract you agreed to
.

Debora worried for Paula, she said, and Danny too—their moods; they suffered when they saw her get so sad. Danny had said the right things when he came back home from Brockton, had promised he’d support her, if she wanted. “But I don’t know, the way he’s being nice to me,” she said, “the way he is giving his support—all this almost makes me want to make things better for
us
. Almost makes me think that I should stop.”

Everything she said—its content—was depressing. But her voice, her being together with me, here and now: within my husk of hopelessness, these little seeds of hope . . .

“Please,” I said. “Please don’t quit. Not yet.”

Soon we saw the hunting shack, worse than I’d remembered: siding scabbed with tarpaper, stovepipe pocked by rust. Off behind the shack, though, the dunes were uncorrupted. Scattered clumps of poverty grass, in brilliant yellow bloom, looked like little campfres in the sand.

“It’s off-limits, of course,” I said. “All the dunes here are.”

“And so, if they catch us?” she asked.

“Cite us, I guess? Fine us?”

“Yes, but—” She raised her wrists, as if to say,
Arrest me
. “By then, it’s too late. We are here.”

Up and down a slope we climbed, and up a second, higher one, and then, there it was, below: the swale. Just as I’d recalled, a thriving bit of bog. Not quite dune and not quite marsh: a curious in-betweenness.

Skidding together down the slope, we carved a sandy wake. Debora slipped and stumbled, but leapt right back to balance, sunlit face aflash with satisfaction. “So?” she said. “Where are all these orchids that you promised?”

The ground here was damp. The air felt somehow softer. Maybe the plants, I postulated, fltered something sharp from it, socking away sunlight in their stalks. I tried to call to mind, from four or fve years back, a piece I’d done on interdunal flora. “See this, here?” I said to her. “Below those weeds? That’s cranberry.” It looked about a blink away from flowering. Farther on: a sundew with reddish hairy leaves, a devious liquid drop on each hair. “That one is a carnivore. Those drops? Bugs get stuck.”

“Ai!” she said. “Thank you. I’ll be careful.”

I would have to concentrate, if I would fnd an orchid. Squatted down, I duck-walked, scanning along the ground. Scanning, scanning, every inch of sand. I’d spot something, but no: an optical illusion. Amazing what desire could make you see.

My thighs were killing, but still I waddled onward (scanning, scanning). More cranberry . . . another scrubby plant I couldn’t name . . . plenty of budding life, but no orchid.

Debora was strolling, brushing shrubs, barely even looking.
Focus!
I wanted to shout at her.
Don’t you even care?
But she must have seen the truth, sooner than I did now: our search had very little to do with flowers.

I was sweating, my throat was dry, my body needed a break. I sank onto the swale’s sandy edge. “Fuck,” I said. “Forget it. There’s nothing. It’s no use.” I felt like crying, like laughing at my foolish sobby self. The colors of my mood ran together.

Debora plopped down next to me and kicked her flip-flops off. Her brown, beat-up feet had a rough sort of dignity; they looked like a long-surviving heirloom.

I started to say how sorry I was; she cut me off with “Don’t be.”

She had plucked a flower, a pink one I didn’t know, and planted it now, buried to its bloom, in gathered sand. “My brother,” she said. “He was so much like you: the way he searched.” She smiled the crisp smile she’d shown before. “Our mother, she was baking, once, and Waterston had such questions: how much this, how much that, Mãinha, how do you make? She was getting bored, so she tells him that it’s
butterflies
.A nice cake like hers, to be sweet: ffteen butterflies.”

“And he believed her?”

“Of course! Just a boy, you know? A child. The next day he goes out. All day, until it’s dark. Time for the dinner, time for the bed—still he isn’t home. My mother says to my brothers: ‘Go, go and see.’ And so, all around the farm they’re looking. The barn? No. The ditch? No. He’s gone! And then, fnally, the most old brother, Uílliam, he discovers him: sitting in a far, far feld, crying. ‘Waterston! What happened? Why are you out here crying?’ ‘The butterfly,’ he tells him. ‘I chased it, but I lost it. A butterfly to make our cake sweet.’” Debora’s smile looked aimless now: indulgence with no object. “After this they always called him butterfly.
Borboleta
. Even then, I guess, they maybe knew.”

“Knew?” I said, but as soon as I had asked, I understood.

“Moving away, to Natal?” she said. “That was still a searching. He went there to look for others like him. But that was also, you know, how he died.”

To keep Debora from having to say the word, I did it: “AIDS?”

“Yes,” she said. “And that is why, when I frst saw your ad, I thought: this is extra good, to help two men like him. Not that I was thinking I can—how should I say?—
replace
him. But help some men like him to . . . to continue.”

Her phrase was an imprecise translation, I imagined. A grope at expressing something tricky. Nonetheless, she’d found the perfect wording:
to continue
. A heartbeat, a heartbeat, another, then the next (the ones within my chest were growing harder), and then, when our hearts gave out, what would still survive? All the bloody effort of our lives, the love and bother: would any of what made us
us
go on?

“It’s bad,” she said, “to tell you all these things about my brother?”

“Bad?” I said. “You kidding me? Of course it’s not. I’m glad.”

Glad that she had told me, and glad she’d felt she could.

Glad to be right next to her, so close.

A breeze eddied, bringing hints of moisture from the marsh. I felt my pulse poking at my throat.

I told myself my touch would be a simple one, of solace. I rubbed her knee, its smooth, hard-boiled knob. But then we both . . . what happened? A sudden sluice of craving. We fell together, grappling in the sand.

Why else had I asked her here? Why else had she come? We had both tied blinders on but left the knots too loose, and now here we were, eye to eye.

I worked her shirt, stripped it. Debora ditched her bra. And though I’d seen her private parts—the last time, I’d had to—her chest now seemed to me a million times more private: not her breasts,
between
them, the caviar of freckles.

Debora glanced behind her. “The shack?” she said. “It’s better?”

“No,” I said. I muzzled her mouth. “Here.”

After that we didn’t talk till we were both undressed, I on my back, Debora above, astride me. The previous time, her nakedness had had a worthy purpose, a context that blunted its effect. Now, the only purpose was . . . well,
this
.

I edged up, but stalled, caught by the thought of birth control. I hadn’t faced that issue in so long.

Debora seemed to spot my fear. “Pat,” she said. “Think. Today came my period—we’re safe.”

Yes, of course. What day could be safer?

But this, too, presented its own problem. “What if there’s—” I faltered; I didn’t want to say
a mess
. Finally what I managed was, “The blood?”

“How you worry!” She laughed. “It’s nice, but you don’t need. Look, you know the cup we use, for doing the insems?”

“The Instead Cup?”

“Yes. Why they make this, do you know?”

Hadn’t she just said why? For insems.

“No, not to keep
your
stuff inside. To keep
mine
. To hold the blood in. That is what it’s made for.”

A menstrual cup, right.
Instead
of using tampons. When Marcie sent her care package, she had made this clear. It hadn’t seemed germane. I’d forgotten.

“You have it?” I said.

She nodded.

“Now? It’s in already?”

“Yes,” she said. “So stop this worrying. Yes? Okay? Good!”

She raised up, slammed back down, and oh! I was in.

“Easy, now,” I started to say, but this time I was muzzled. Jesus, how she pounded me, and with such concentration, as though she were digging a hole to bury stolen loot.

The sand scraped and scraped my back, a pleasant stinging pain. An exclamation point, painted along my spine.

Afterward we scurried for the shack, to tidy up: naked, still; clothing in our fsts. The door was locked, but shiplap boards beside it were coming loose. Prying them back, we made an easy passage.

The overheated air had an unnutritious taste. Smoke-darkened, fly-stained windows scarcely let in light. My eyes adjusted: a sprung mattress, a woodstove strewn with mouse crap. Had no one used the place since hunting season?

Debora was looking jelly-eyed: a boxer after a blow. She found some paper towels, only slightly mouse-gnawed, tore a bunch, and handed them to me. I sat down at a card table, stacked with Bud Light empties, one of which was now a homemade bong. A soggy soft-core magazine lay opened to its middle, ripped so that the centerfold—a blonde with smug eyes—looked like a double amputee.

As soon as we’d de-sanded ourselves and swabbed our skin, we dressed, then faced each other, in hair-trigger silence. Gazes lowered. Bared, despite our clothes.

“Sorry,” she said, “I hate to . . . but I need to ask. Forgive me.” Still, she couldn’t force herself. She couldn’t meet my eyes.

“Ask,” I said. “I mean, by now, what’ve we got to hide?”

“Okay, well . . . you have taken the test? I can ask this?”

“Oh!” I said. “Oh God, no, don’t worry. Yes, of course.”

“Ah, okay. Thanks God. I should have asked before. I knew Stu must take the test, of course, for our insems. But you, well, maybe I never saw you in this way.” Finally, she looked up at me. Into me. Appraising. “Pat, you have been with women?”

“Yes, but not in ages,” I said.

“And you liked?”

“I certainly liked
this
.”

She took one of the beer cans and shook it, shook it, shook it; the broken-off tab inside jangled. “At home, the gays are
gay
, you know? Like Waterston. Only gay. Yes, there are some hetero men who sometimes sleep with men, but only . . . I think you call it ‘active’?”

“We might say ‘tops.’”

“Yes, but they are hetero, really. The other is just for pleasure. But gays who
live
as gays and sleep with
women
? I’ve never heard.”

“Well, it’s not so common here, either, I guess. Not really. Like Stu,” I said. “He’s never, I don’t think. Not even once.”