The Paternity Test (8 page)

Danny mugged a tell-me-something-I-don’t-know expression.

“But then,” she said, “your ad.
Never
I saw an ad like that. It’s like I told to Pat: just too perfect. Except you wanted ‘traditional’—so maybe, I thought, no. Maybe I was not the one for you. But everything else— everything!—was such a good connection. Maybe I would have to think again.” She acted out
think
, her finger on her chin. “You know what I was doing when I changed my mind?” she asked. “Taking out a—well, in the bathroom, okay? Imagine. And look, I thought, I have these eggs, and every month I flush them. Flush, good-bye,
tchau
—but do I cry? The way I throw them out, just like that: what a waste! If someone wants to love a child the way we do with Paula, why not give them something that would only go to waste? It makes more sense, don’t you think, to use it?”

Her logic sounded smart, but I had sensed already that surrogacy and logic rarely mixed. I said, “Trust me, the last thing I want to do is dissuade you . . . but actually being the mother? It takes a special woman. ’Cause then you’ve got to—
she
would have to—give the baby up.”

“Because,” Stu said, “we hope the mom will stay in touch, but—”

“Absolutely! And be an auntie. As long as you would want to.”

“—but
we’re
the parents,” he finished. “Legally and otherwise. Any surro has to understand that.”

“I understand, yes,” she said. “But you also have to understand: I would do this for you, of course, but also, a lot, for me. I have this . . . well, this power, no? This gift that I can give? It’s wrong—wrong for
me
—not to use it. And so, you see, you are giving me a gift, too. The gift of being who I’m supposed to.”

I’d heard that claim before. Or, rather, I had read it—in other women’s Surromoms ads. In writing, it could come across a little bit Hallmarky: not untrue but maybe sort of coached. But Debora spoke the words as though she didn’t have a choice, spoke them with force of revelation.

Stu looked swayed, too, but still slightly quizzical. “Your spirit,” he said, “is great. I mean, it’s really gorgeous. But don’t you—not to put, you know, too fine a point on it. Don’t you want more children of your own?”

“Oh! Well,” said Danny, butting forward. “You’ll meet Paula, and when you do, you’ll see she keeps us plenty busy! She’s great, though. How would we ever top her?”

Pall
-a, he’d pronounced it. As opposed to Debora’s
Pow
-la.

“Excited to meet her,” said Stu. “But still, it just seems logical that—”

“We’ve got Paula,” said Danny, smiling. “Our own family’s finished.” He held out his hand for the snapshot.

Stu withheld the photo a moment longer. “We’ve been wanting to ask you, too, Danny. This must all be . . . I don’t know. Isn’t it sort of strange?”

“What, right now? To be here? I
have
to be, sort of, don’t I? I mean, any freaks could’ve put that ad on Surromoms.”

Beat.

Beat.

I waited for a wink. A signal of how little (or much) he meant this.

Then he said, “That’s the vow I took, wasn’t it, Deb? Sickness and health, defend you from all weirdos? Ha!” he laughed. “Ha!” He thumped an empty glass against the table.

“No, but really,” said ever-persistent Stu. “You’re okay? Is this what you want Debora to do?”

Here was Danny’s laugh again, a series of sharp bursts. “Sorry,” he said. “No. I forget you don’t know her. You don’t know: when she wants something, she
wants
it.” He clinched her with a one-armed hug, and she, in turn, blinked at him: a Morse code of marital emotion. (Affectionate annoyance? Vice versa?) “But seriously,” he went on. He let her go. “Weird at first? You bet. For starters, loving pregnancy? Fine, I’ll just accept that. I mean, don’t we have to, guys? What the hell do
we
know about it? But then doing it for
someone else
. . . well, no offense, but it’s a little cuckoo, right? I mean,
right
? Just being honest.”

I found myself nodding along—partly in agreement, partly just because he seemed so much to
need
agreement.

“But hey,” he said, “one man’s cuckoo’s another man’s . . . whatever. You don’t think I’ve lived through that myself ? I mean, okay, you heard Debora’s version of how we met.
Once upon a time
, and all that. But now try to see the other side. Who am I? I’m just some local schmo from up in Brockton. No offense, Stu, but we weren’t, you know,
New York
Jews. More bologna-on-Wonder-bread than bagels-and-lox, okay?

“But anyway, my parents run a used-equipment resale place. Washing machines, lawn mowers, pumps. Want to know the closest they would come to something foreign? Ordering a replacement valve from Honda! I mean, for me, growing up,
Boston
was exotic. Twenty miles, and could’ve been two million. Maybe twice a year we’d drive up to see a Sox game, and Dad, when we hit the city, always threatened to make us eat at one of the ‘gook’ restaurants we passed: ‘What, don’t you like roasted poodle?’ All us kids would scream bloody murder.

“Got the picture? Okay, now, go from that to
this
: ‘Mom, Dad, I want you to meet the girl I plan to marry. Actually, no, the girl I
already
married. She’s ten years younger, and oh, by the way, can’t speak English. I met her at some disco in Brazil.’

“They thought I was nuts. And, hell, I guess I
was
. I had no clue what I was getting into. I mean, as a kid, dreaming of my wedding, you think I ever imagined getting hitched to some Brazilian girl who couldn’t even say ‘Pass the salt’? So no, I didn’t imagine her, all these years later, wanting to get pregnant with some other guy’s baby. But
life
is nuts, right? Things don’t always go the way you planned them. I mean, as kids, did you guys plan on being . . . well, on
this
?”

I was so unsettled—in a good way—by his candor (Hark, he speaks! The hunk of flesh has feelings!), that I forgot my vow to pose as solemnly parental, to keep my inner princess in her tower. “Haven’t the foggiest concept what you mean,” I said, lisping. “My high school yearbook photo says ‘Most Likely to Borrow Eggs.’”

Stu shot me a look, but Danny seemed to like the joke; he heaved a load of laughter. “You’re right. It
is
easier,” he stage-whispered to Debora.

She warned him with a cocked, vaudeville elbow.

“Oh, come on,” said Danny. “We’re friends here, now, aren’t we?”

“Fine,” I said, “I’ll take the bait.
What?
”

“Well, see, according to this book Debora gave me? Sometimes there’s a problem for the husband of the surro: the thought of another guy’s stuff inside her. Human nature, I guess, to be jealous.” Danny had been toying with the leavings on his plate, forking through a residue of yolk. Now he stopped, as if it had just hit him what an egg was. Or what it could have been, if not food. “But Deb’s theory?” he said. “She thought the whole thing through. She says, if the other guy is . . . well, if there are
two
guys. Know what I’m saying here? Guys like you? Then it’s easier. What do I have to worry about, then, right?”

Stu had warned me, earlier, not to get political: “Remember, Pat, you can’t assume the whole world thinks like us. We’re not here to find out how they
vote
.” But now he was saying how relieved he was to meet them—such kind, decent, open-minded people—“when the country has been hijacked by the wingnuts, don’t you think?”

Danny jumped right in: “Oh, Christ, don’t get me started. Know who they remind me of ? The townies I grew up with. Shut their eyes and pray the world won’t change.”

“Right,” said Stu. “Scared shitless. The bullies always are.”

That led to a talk about Iraq and foreign wars, which then devolved to topics much less serious: Brazilians vs. Americans, the stiff-hipped way we gringos danced; Portuguese and its nasal tones, its word for knife, which sounded to us like
fuck
.

We didn’t mention babies again—only just to say we’d think things over. We weren’t skirting the topic so much as giving it room to breathe. That was definitely the mutually reached Rx: lots of breathing.

Eventually we arrived at a reassuring silence. Our third cups of coffee had been drained.

“So, I guess that does it,” Danny said. “What do we owe?”

Stu said, “Please! Don’t worry. Taken care of.” Earlier, per our plan, he’d settled with the hostess, on the pretense of going to the men’s room.

“You’re sure?” said Danny, reaching for his wallet.

Stu took Danny’s arm and returned it to his side, and both of them seemed startled by the contact, then relieved. “More than sure,” said Stu. “It’s our pleasure.”

The parking lot was breezy with the front edge of a storm. A small jet, seconds away from landing at the airport, strafed us with its wholehearted roar. We pledged again to mull things over (“Why don’t we say a week?”), after which we’d talk some more, decide.

“Well,” said Danny. “Back to work. And plus, the sitter’s waiting.” He shook his car keys:
ting-a-ling-a-ling
.

“Oh!” said Stu. “The sitter! We should reimburse you.” Now he was the one reaching for his wallet.

Danny’s expression hardened. He jabbed his keys at Stu. “This isn’t just for the money, you know. That’s not—we’re not
desperate
.” He unlocked a midnight blue, late-model Explorer. (He must have traded up from his old pickup.) “The main thing,” he said, “is to make Debora happy.”

“I’m
already
hap,” she said—her accent cut off the
y
. She spread her arms in what could have been a gesture of impatience, or an imitation of the plane that had roared past. She took my hand, and then took Stu’s, and held us. “
This
is hap.”

The way she said it made me think of “hap” as something tangible: a substance to hold on to or to lack. You could be full of hap (as I guessed I was, just then) or have the stuff withheld from you.
Hapless
.

Nothing more to say, really. Nothing short of everything. We lingered in the swirling wind, sweet with coming snow. Debora shivered and seemed totally tickled by the reflex.

I hope the baby gets her smile, I thought.

When Danny asked, “Did you plan on
this
?” he’d left
this
undefined: Being gay? Needing to hire a surro? I had parried by making my dumb joke. But late that night, when Stu had gone to bed, I sat alone—just me, in the quiet of the cottage—and tried to frame an answer to his question.

The truth was, through high school, and even more in college, I had held the expectation of having kids the usual way. My oversized attractions gummed things up.

I was always attracted to girls. Certain girls, sometimes: this girl over here, that one there. But boys I was drawn to categorically, essentially. Offer up a boy—almost any boy at all—and I could find something in him tempting. The ropy grace of one, the frailty of another; leg hair or its unexpected lack. A feature and its opposite could equally entice me because, in the end, it wasn’t boys’ particulars that moved me but their fundamental
maleness
.

When guys started pairing off with girls, I was pragmatic: I kept pure my love for boys, awaiting my ideal, meanwhile having fun with girls (why not, if they were willing?), to quell my most on-the-surface urges. Mary Beth O’Donnell, daughter of a fireman, who asked to slide along my arm, as if it were a fire pole. And then Rachel (what was her last name? Something-berg? Bloomberg?), who liked my blond hairs against her dark ones. A long string of Pancake King companions.

Meanwhile, boys were pulling away. Why? Had I done something wrong? Maybe I myself was the mistake.

I kept finding girls—or no, let them find
me
. My trick? The art of apparent indifference. Actually, though, the quality they saw was indecision. I wanted the girls, and clearly pictured someday tying the knot with one, so we could get to work on making babies; but also what I wanted was for
this
wanting to triumph, to nullify my less-accepted yearnings. Which wasn’t possible: my love for boys was hard and imperishable, a hunger from a whole different stomach.

I was twenty, and prominently, stridently gay, before I found the woman I believed I’d settle down with.

I’d come out of the closet as soon as I hit college. I hadn’t planned to, had expected to be fraught and frustrated, chalking this up as character-building and good for making Art: all those coded poems I would write. But college was another world entirely from home, a planet where the gravity was gone. The RA in my dorm was a dyke with spina bifida, her girlfriend a Haitian refugee. Everyone, it seemed, was
a something
. Pretty soon I tallied up a different calculation: sure, being gay would undoubtedly bring stigma, but maybe not as much (at least among my crowd) as being just a white-bread WASP.

The Homecoming Ball was Columbus Day weekend. “Bringing a date?” my roommate, Russ, asked. I told him no. Then I said, “I’m single.” And then, in a torrent: “You know of any eligible bachelors?”

“Oh,” said Russ.

“Oh!” I cried—surely, of us two, the more surprised.

One second to the next, I had a new identity. You had to stand on one side of the line; I’d picked mine.

Which wasn’t to say being gay was easy. My gang was a small one at a small, rural school: a dozen other openly gay students, and none appealed. So far I was only gay in theory.

Like many
sayers
who haven’t yet chanced to become
doers
, I often overcompensated with volume. I challenged any homophobic comments during class, led teach-ins, shouted from the rooftops (literally: the Dykes for Divestment staged a rally; I scaled the fire escape of College Hall). I also aimed my shrillness at my parents. My mom, when I came out to her, said, well, she’d always love me, but . . .

“But what?” I said.

“But don’t you want kids?”

“Why? So I can tell them that I really love them,
but
?”

By the time I met Becky MacLeod, I was Big Fag on Campus, co-chair of the school’s nascent chapter of Queer Nation, straight-A author of papers like “A Poetics of Promiscuity? Allen Ginsberg’s Horny ‘Howl.’” Since coming out, I hadn’t had sex once.