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Authors: Ann Lewis Hamilton

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“We’ll order pizza. Come on, you’ll be the appetizer.” He grabs her hand and leads her to the bedroom.

***

At the office on Monday morning, Laurie is supposed to be searching online for bowling alleys in the Valley. “Something vintage. Or with a ghost,” Grace suggests. Instead, Laurie is thinking about Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. What did she look like? Thick braids wrapped on either side of her head like Princess Leia? Laurie goes to Wikipedia and is surprised to see a photo of a tan, handsome woman with short hair. Born in Switzerland, one of triplets. Naturally her mother was fertile. Everyone is fertile and carries a child to term unless they’re Laurie.

She moved to the United States in 1958 to work and continue her studies in New York. She had four miscarriages.

Four? No wonder Elisabeth Kübler-Ross knew about stages of grief. After two she must’ve thought,
Uh-oh
. And how do you try again after three? Did people continue to tell her, “Don’t worry, it’ll work out next time”? Did Elisabeth Kübler-Ross snap back at them, “Yeah, what the hell? Maybe the
fifth
fucking time is the charm.”

But she had two children. After all that, a boy and a girl.

Laurie touches the photo on her computer screen. That’s the message Laurie is supposed to take from this. After all, not everybody died on the
Hindenburg
or the
Andrea
Doria
. Some people are survivors. Like Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.

Like Laurie.

Alan

The fertility clinic is in Beverly Hills. The waiting room has lots of dark wood bookshelves and Alan whispers to Laurie he bets the books are fake and wants to pull them out, but Laurie tells him to sit down. She is nervous; he watches her twist the wedding ring around and around on her finger.

Dr. Julian’s office is more dark wood, possibly more fake books. Dr. Julian leans against his desk. He has a Ralph Lauren tan and he’s wearing Italian loafers with no socks; late forties, with short, silver hair and a jazz patch. He speaks softly and confidently about multiple miscarriages, possibly caused by uterine anomalies, fibroids. All are treatable.

“But you want to know
how
to have a baby. That’s why you’re here.” Dr. Julian puts his hands together, making a little “here is the church” building with his fingers. “A diagnosis can be difficult. Sometimes we never find out the cause. But we’ll do every test available.” He nods at Laurie. “You and your partner.”

We’re not playing tennis
, Alan wants to say.
I’m her husband, not her partner
.

“The sooner you start the testing, the better. And that’s why you’ve come to me,” Dr. Julian says. “Because I’m the one who can give you a baby.”

His tan is fake, Alan decides, imagining Dr. Julian on a tanning bed. Flipping over when the timer goes off.

***

“You seemed grumpy in Dr. Julian’s office,” Laurie says when they get in the car. “Didn’t you like him?”

“No. ‘I can give you a baby.’ Who says stuff like that?”

“Maybe he
can
give us a baby. That’s why we went there, right?”

Alan sighs. “I suppose if Dr. God can deliver—no pun intended—we have to put up with him.”

Laurie moves close and nuzzles into his neck. “I hope we have all boys. Who look just like you.” She pauses. “Only sexier. More
buff
.”

“You don’t get more buff than me.” Alan flexes his bicep and Laurie giggles.

At dinner, Laurie runs her finger around the rim of her wineglass. “There’s also adoption,” she says carefully.

“I think adoption would be great. We’ve talked about it before.” Before seems like centuries ago, back when they were dating and imaging their future—how they’d marry and their children would pop out, one after the other. No miscarriages or complications would be involved. Alan and Laurie, their charmed lives. Adoption was mentioned, but almost as a fallback. The thing you do “just in case” or once you have two or three of your own.

Alan realizes how shallow that sounds now. Shallow and stupid. “Your own.” As if adopted children don’t belong to you? Aren’t part of your family? And yet… “But a stranger’s baby?” Alan says to Laurie. “Suppose the mother is a meth addict, or we do an open adoption where we’re always in contact with the birth parents. Is that what we want? Sharing a child?”

Laurie sips her wine. “There are risks in having biological children too. Who knows what’ll happen? Babies don’t come with a warranty.”

Alan nods at Laurie. “Yeah. But shouldn’t we let Dr. God try his Dr. God thing first? Haven’t you always wanted to have somebody inject dye into your fallopian tubes?”

“No,” she says. “My dream has been to jerk off in a doctor’s office so people can examine my sperm.”

She grins at him and he has to laugh.

And then he thinks about it. “So…how
exactly
are they going to examine my sperm?”

Laurie smiles at him again. He doesn’t laugh this time.

***

Alan enjoys being married to Laurie because she’s his best friend—and not in that fake what-they-say-on-eHarmony-ads way, but in a real way. Sometimes she reminds him of Matt, his best friend when he was growing up—the perfect hang out, share jokes, belch-the-national-anthem-with pal. His relationship with Laurie is like that. Minus the belching. Plus, he gets to have sex with her.

He told his parents when he was nine he was never getting married because if he did, he wouldn’t see Matt anymore.

“Matt and me, we’re going to visit every country. There are almost
two
hundred
, isn’t that incredible?”

“Incredible,” his mother said.

She didn’t believe him. But he was sure he’d never find a girl who was fearless, who’d eat bugs and sleep on floors with spiders crawling on her face. What girl would do that?

On their first date, a Dodgers game, Laurie told Alan one of her dreams was to visit every country in the world, even the hard to get into ones, like North Korea and Cuba. Alan had found his female Matt.

***

The night before Laurie has her first test, he has a nightmare. He dreamed he was in Cuba with Laurie and she was wearing a baby carrier, and when he bent over to look at the baby, inside the carrier he was surprised to see a large bottle of dark Cuban rum.

“A chip off the old block,” Laurie said to him. “Not to mention one hundred proof.” She pulled out her diaper bag to reveal it was stuffed with cocktail glasses and fresh limes. “Would you like a Cuban daiquiri? They’re quite tasty.”

When he wakes up, he thinks about telling Laurie the dream but reconsiders. He’ll keep his freaked-out, rum-bottle dream to himself.

Laurie goes through her testing—ultrasound, X-rays, hysteroscopy, blood work. Nothing shows up. Alan does blood work as well, and when that’s done, it’s time for the sperm sample. They say he can come into the doctor’s office or bring in a specimen from home.

“Specimen doesn’t seem like the right word,” he tells Laurie.

“What’s better? Your ‘bodily essence’?” Laurie suggests.

A clinician at the fertility clinic gives him a small plastic bottle and a paper bag and tells him morning semen is best. He imagines collecting his specimen, driving to Beverly Hills, and getting mugged by a kid who takes the bag, looks inside, and says, “Whoa, what’s this? It looks like jiz.”

“It’s my bodily essence,” he tells him before he’s pistol-whipped into unconsciousness.

And how does he go about collecting his specimen at home? Laurie volunteers to buy a sexy French maid outfit.

“You think this is funny,” he tells her.

“No,” she says. “But we have to promise we’ll laugh. Even at the lowest point.”

“We haven’t had the lowest point already?”

“I hope so. Are you sure about the sexy French maid outfit?” She winks at him. “Ooh la la.”

***

The morning he’s supposed to deliver the specimen, he goes into the bathroom with the plastic cup, sits on the side of the tub. Who should he think about? Laurie? He closes his eyes. He remembers watching her take a shower, unaware he’s come into the bathroom. She rubs soap up and down her arms, across her chest, under her breasts. She’s smiling, unselfconscious. She might be singing. He tries to hear the words, but he can’t make them out. Smooth and white and soapy, her body is as attractive as it was when they met. Maybe more attractive.

He opens his eyes and remembers hearing Laurie crying in the bathroom after the first miscarriage. Or was it the second? He’s not sure.

He doesn’t want to do this, be alone in a bathroom with a vial and a ridiculous job to do. But there’s no way around it. It might be easier if he doesn’t think about Laurie—not that he doesn’t find her desirable. She’s the most desirable woman he knows. But if he thinks of her, he’ll see the pain in her eyes. He needs someone more anonymous. Neutral. If he could track down a Victoria’s Secret catalogue, that could work. There’s probably one in the house. Or the
Sports
Illustrated
swimsuit issue. He likes how they paint suits on the models. He imagines having a job like that, trying to carefully maneuver a brush around a nipple.

Just when he’s considering going out to the den, something slides under the bathroom door. A
Maxim
magazine with Jessica Alba on the cover. When he looks more closely, he can see Laurie has stuck a photo of her own face on Jessica Alba’s body. From behind the door, he can hear Laurie laughing.

“Not funny,” he calls out to her. “I’m taking this seriously.”

Her laughter trails off down the hallway.

***

It’s good she’s laughing now. But suppose they have a serious problem? He originally assumed the miscarriages were related to Laurie, but the problem could be his. What will they find in his sperm? He’s got to have enough. Millions, right? And at least his sperm was okay before; it’s not as if he’s shooting blanks.

But there could be something
inside
his sperm that doesn’t work or isn’t compatible with Laurie. He’s heard about complications with antibodies. Is that what this is about? And the solution will be something easy, like taking vitamins—or having more sex.

Suppose he has bad antibodies and needs to have some kind of penis surgery? Something involving a glass tube they stick up your dick. And pull-y things they put on your balls. And the worst part—to do it right, they can’t use anesthesia.

What happens if he finds out his sperm count is
five
? And his motility is zero? There’s no way he could have impregnated Laurie. So the first two pregnancies—Dr. God will shake his head at Alan and say like Maury Povich, “Clearly you were
not
the father.”

***

A knock on the door. “Need another magazine?”

He looks down at the
Maxim
and realizes he’s been reading an article on “Motorcycle Mayhem.”

“No, I’m fine,” he says.

“They’re not going to find anything, you know,” Laurie tells him. “But we still have to do it.”

She’s right. And he’s a moron for letting his imagination run away to nutso land. Everything is going to work out. They’re young; they have an excellent fertility doctor. Alan has Laurie, his best friend.

“I’m lucky to have you,” he calls out to her.

“You bet you are.”

He hopes she’ll still love him when she finds out about his zero motility, bad antibody sperm.

Laurie taps on the door again. “Hey, Mr. Lucky,” she says. “I could put on my sexy black corset. Maybe find a riding crop.” She lowers her voice. Says in a husky whisper, “Have you been a naughty boy?”

“Go away,” he tells her.

***

When she’s gone and he’s finished the motorcycle article, he looks around. He’s in a bathroom. With pictures of Jessica Alba.

This isn’t how you’re supposed to make a baby. Sometimes old-fashioned ways are the most
kick
-
ass
. Jessica Alba? Who cares? Although she is gorgeous.
Really
gorgeous.

He hates being dependent on doctors and lab tests, and why does it have to be so damn difficult? And humiliating? He looks up to see his reflection in the mirror above the sink. Are those wrinkles around the corners of his eyes? He’s sure they weren’t there a year ago. Oh, man. By the time they have a child, he could be
sixty
.

But what else can he do? They have to keep going, push forward. They aren’t quitters. So they’ll try anything. Dance naked around a maypole, sacrifice animals (not really, unless slugs or cockroaches count), they’ll do whatever they have to do.

He will be positive and supportive. He will
embrace
this fucktoid fertility technology. He loves his wife. They want a child—even if he’s uncomfortable with the process, even if he despises it. And it could be worse. He looks down at the seminaked photos of Jessica Alba.

Because this time, dammit,
this
is the one that’s going to work.

Jack

He has every intention of paying back the money. It’s not as if anybody will notice it’s missing; people have been stealing from the fraternity party fund for years, no big deal. “Stealing” sounds too harsh. Jack prefers to think of it as borrowing. Granted, he could have asked Danny to help him out—Danny, who gets a new leased BMW every fall and wears a TAG Heuer watch (“A Carrera,” he says, “like the Porsche”), but he didn’t want to tell him the truth, explain how his parents had slashed his allowance in half. (“Perhaps if you’re forced to deal with the realities of life—you can’t stay in school forever,” Jack’s father told him.) Even though his father was the one who made the hard-ass phone call, he thinks his mother was the one who went apeshit because he changed his major again, from history to South American studies.

And who knew they audited books at fraternity houses? Danny told the guys it was no big deal, but some big honcho from the National SAE board would be dropping by some time in the future to make sure everything was running okay.

Jack only borrowed a little over a thousand dollars, so he’s got a couple months to put the money back. Only how’s he going to work
and
get his degree at the same time? He’s already decided to not drive as much to save on gas, so hopefully he can find a job in Westwood, within walking distance. Except the pay at restaurant jobs is shit and he doesn’t see himself as a busboy. He looks at the UCLA job board, and everything listed looks crappy or offers more busboy jobs. As a last resort, he checks out
The
Daily
Bruin
, and while no amazing jobs appear, an ad on the back page catches his eye. The Westside Cryobank.

Sperm donation. Why didn’t he think about that before? He goes to the Westside Cryobank website—$40 to $100 for each semen sample. The potential to make up to $6,000 a year. And the work—do you really call it work?—it’s something you do for fun anyway. Why not get paid for it?

He reads through the info. The screening process is extensive—a long form to fill out and interviews and your sperm and blood work are checked and double-checked for diseases. Still, better than bussing tables. He clicks on the box to begin the application process. Name, address, the usual. And then more specific questions:

Have
you
had
West
Nile
virus, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease? Did any of your sexual partners live in Cameroon, Chad, the Congo? Unexplained diarrhea, SARS, exposure to heavy metals?

Heavy
metal?
Yeah, he likes Metallica and Slayer and Seether. Should he put that in the application, let them know he has a sense of humor?

Probably a bad idea.

Physical
characteristics. Height, weight, ethnic origin of parents. Talents.

Talent. He can drink a bottle of Captain Morgan without puking. He’s a beer pong champion. He took violin lessons for five years but didn’t practice much.

He writes, “Play the violin.”

He played flag football in high school, some tennis, ran cross-country one season (most of one season—okay,
half
of one season) until he realized he hated it as much as he hated violin. His mother despaired:
What
will
become
of
you? You quit everything
. He liked kickball. A bunch of his friends thought it would be cool to start a high school kickball team, but they never did.

He writes, “Athletic, likes kickball.”

Professional
aspirations
.

Oh no. Maybe he should email this question to his mother, give her a good laugh. “My son is coasting through life,” she’ll write on the form. “Four years, almost
five
years at UCLA, and he changes his major once a week. Who would choose such low achieving sperm? Now, if you need eggs, our daughter, Subhra—she’s in medical school at Johns Hopkins. Brilliant, beautiful, excels at sports, especially swimming and volleyball, fluent in five languages, plays the violin and cello.”

Jack chooses to be vague. “I have so many aspirations, I haven’t narrowed them down yet.”

Personal
reasons
for
becoming
a
sperm
donor.
He thinks. Well, he’s got plenty of sperm. Why shouldn’t he use it for good? Instead of just squirting it into mouths. Or other places.

He’ll do that question later.

Can he provide a childhood photo? He has a couple old little league baseball photo cards in his desk. He looks okay in the photo—his teeth are slightly funky (preorthodontist), but probably most six-year-olds have funky teeth.

But his teeth might be the kiss of death. People are going to look at the picture and read his file. Is this sperm donor thing a waste of time? Maybe it’s easier to ask Megan for money, except she has less than he does. It’s funny how Gwnn’s/Megan’s name really turned out to be Megan. And it’s been great dating her. Except for the inconvenience of the missing party fund money and his mother’s occasional annoying emails, things are okay. Pretty close to excellent. And now the sperm donor idea—what’s more genius than that? It’s foolproof. His life is
golden
.

***

He’s eating dinner at a fish place Carter told him about; in fact, Carter is supposed to be here having dinner with him, but he hasn’t showed up yet. The fish tacos are good, very tasty with a cayenne kick. He’s on his third taco when he realizes there’s something hard in his mouth—a fish bone. He chokes a little and spits out the bone on his plate.

“Disgusting,” says a voice beside him.

He looks over to see a small, cute girl watching him. She has short red-blond hair, with bangs. Her haircut looks precise and squared off, no loose pieces anywhere.

“Sorry,” he says to her, but she’s walking over to his table and looking at his plate.

“Not you. This place is disgusting to serve big hunks of bone in their fish tacos. Don’t they double-check? You could sue them. Did you break a tooth? I smell lawsuit.” This is how Jack meets Normandie. She’s a junior at UCLA, prelaw, very focused. “It’s not enough for me to win at life,” she says later after she’s joined him at his table. “My enemies must lose.”

Normandie has always wanted to be an attorney. People ask her why: Are her parents attorneys? Did she read
To
Kill
a
Mockingbird
and fall in love with Atticus Finch? She doesn’t understand what they’re talking about. She wants to be a shark, a killer. For three years in a row, she dressed up as an attorney for Halloween. “And what are you supposed to be, little girl?” a sweet old lady would ask. “You’ve got a crack in your sidewalk that could potentially cause you some serious litigation worries,” Normandie would answer as she handed the lady a card with her name and email address on it.

***

On their first official date, at a café in Venice Beach that’d been triple-vetted by Normandie, she tells him how much she admires Gloria Allred.

“I won’t be as brittle,” Normandie says, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I’ll be warmer—not a viper, but some kind of animal that seems gentle and cuddly on the outside until you realize they can—and
will
—kill you. Like the dilophosaurus in
Jurassic
Park
who looks cute and friendly to the fat guy who’s stolen the dinosaur eggs, only then it sprouts this creepy frill and opens its mouth to reveal giant, sharp teeth and spits venom. And that’s the end of the fat guy.”

Normandie spears a cherry tomato with her fork and pops it in her mouth. “Squish,” she says.

Normandie’s parents run a local radio station in Fresno. Cool, Jack said. Normandie shakes her head. “My parents are ex-hippies with MBAs who should be Silicon Valley billionaires, but instead they embraced an alternative lifestyle. If you want to drive around in a beat-up truck with pot in the glove compartment, that’s fine, but one day, you’re going to have kids and be role models. They never thought about that part.”

“I think running a radio station sounds great. You can be your own boss, play your favorite music all day.”

“There’s a lot of corporate stuff involved and zero money,” Normandie says. “They have to do these terrible promotions like tractor pulls and mini slot car races.”

“They must hate that.”

“No. That’s the worst part—they think it’s fantastic. They had a ‘Guess the Weight of the Pig’ contest and they had this gigantic pig, like out of
Charlotte’s Web
, and the winner got to keep it. Only not as a pet, duh. ‘Mr. Bacon.’ That’s what they named the pig. Disgusting.”

“So you’re a vegetarian?”

“Hell, no. They’re animals, not people.” She pokes at her salad again, looking for another cherry tomato.

“What about all the inhumane ways they’re treated?” Jack is almost a vegetarian. He likes a steak every now and then, but that’s only when he forces himself not to think about slaughterhouses.

“You mean like veal? Yeah, it’s sick to keep them cooped up in tiny cages so they can’t move and won’t develop muscles and feed them milk and kill them when they’re babies. But they’re
cows
. It’s not like they know what’s going on—or care.”

Jack thinks they probably
do
care about being dead versus being alive. And the thought of living your short life in a crate, always indoors, with zero contact with other calves—it’s pretty ghastly.

“Don’t you worship cows?” she asks him.

“Hindus believe animals have souls. So that includes cows. Krishna was a cowherd.”

“The blue guy?”

Jack nods.

“So you’re Hindu?” she asks.

“Presbyterian.”

She frowns. “You’re not as exotic as I thought.”

“Is that a problem?”

“I always look at the long term. An Indian husband, that would stand out. Look good on my résumé. Not that I’d ever change my name.”

She’s talking about marriage. He should run. But she’s cute. Will she have sex with him tonight? A good chance if she’s already talking about marriage.

She sips her drink. “Change my
last
name, I mean. My first name I’m going to change soon. Normandie. What were my parents thinking? They were probably high. Normandy’s a place in France, you know, D-Day. Which would be stupid enough, but they had to end it in
–ie
. Isn’t that hideous? My brother’s name is Merlot.”

Jack laughs.

“Get this—because the night he was conceived, they were drinking Merlot. I suppose it could be worse; they could’ve been drinking absinthe. Or mint juleps.”

***

They don’t have sex that night. Or on the next date or the date after that. Jack thinks it’s probably okay, since he’s technically dating Megan, although she’s busy in a production of
Guys
and
Dolls
, understudying Miss Adelaide. According to Megan, the girl playing Miss Adelaide, Jyll, got the part because she told the director her father had cancer and his dying wish was to see his daughter in a UCLA musical, and even though Jyll is tone-deaf and dance-challenged, she got the part anyway. And Megan has heard some of the Hot Box girls talking about how the stuff with her father having cancer is bullshit.

So Megan is busy with her play and whenever Jack talks to her, all she wants to do is complain about Jyll, and Jack has never liked musicals anyway and seeing this one sounds especially awful.
Medea
wasn’t bad though; he was surprised he liked it. But musicals give him the creeps. People suddenly bursting into song for no reason. Who does that? Life isn’t
Glee
.

***

Why won’t Normandie have sex with him? Because she wants to be sure, she says. Is she seeing anybody else? No, of course not. Would she care if she knew about Megan? Maybe. Would she care if she knew about the money he’s borrowed from the party fund? Would she loan him money? He’s not willing to go that far. Potential sex outweighs a loan. At least for now.

***

After dinner, Carter comes in with a keg he’s liberated from another fraternity and even though the beer tastes flat, “What’s that expression about a gift horse?” Carter says, so they finish the keg, and when Jack goes back to his room, he’s a little light-headed, but checks his email messages and sees an email from Westside Cryobank asking if he could come in for an interview next week. Ka-
ching
, he thinks. He might be a failure at graduating from college on time or picking a major. Dating two girls at the same time could be considered some kind of failure too. And being forced to borrow money from your fraternity—wait, he refuses to go to the dark-cloud-hovering-over-his-head place. Golden, that’s what his life is now, isn’t it?

Yeah, look on the bright side—somebody wants his sperm. Woo-hoo, he’s finally good at something.

BOOK: Expecting: A Novel
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