The Paternity Test (14 page)

I told myself: that’s just how he laughs.

“I’ll go put the flowers away,” he said, and climbed the stairs.

“Nervous,” said Debora softly.

“I heard!” he called. “Am not!”

She waited a beat, and then she whispered, “Is.”

“Hell,” I told her, “I am too, and
I’m
not even doing this.” Indeed, I was starting to feel shaky, out of breath, as if jitters were solid things that cluttered up my lungs.

“Hate to be pushy,” Stu interjected. “But sperm have a pretty short shelf life.”

Debora nodded, then summoned Libby to put Paula to bed.

Paula didn’t want to go; she clung to Debora, rigid. Libby had to peel her off, finger after finger. “How about your Dora doll?” she tried. “Sleep with dolly?”

Paula cut a glance at Debora, withering, aggrieved. “But Mãe, you said . . . you
promised
. . .” Her voice trailed off to nothing.

What was the promise? It didn’t really matter. Only the primal promise from a parent truly counted, the one that went:
I’ll always be here for you
. Didn’t all parents, inherently—impossibly—make that pledge?

The girl, defeated at last, let herself be hauled away, ignoring all the kisses Debora blew her.

“She hates to be left out,” said Debora. “A little like her mother.”

“Just your luck,” said Stu, “’cause this is yours to fly now. Pat, give her the kit. Get this rolling.”

“Right, well, okay,” I said, snapping into motion. “This here’s the syringe; it’s obvious how to use it. And here’s that thing for later, the Instead Cup—you watched the video? More of a cartoon, I guess. They can’t actually
show
the way you—”

“Patrick,” said Stu. “Seriously.”

“Relax,” said Debora. “Everything will be fine.” She did something twinkly with her eyes. “Have some drinks, maybe. Sit down in the living room. I’ll send Danny to get you when we’re done.”

“Is he going to—” Stu paused. The tips of his ears colored. “Is Danny going to help you . . . to finish?”

“Sure,” she said.“ I’m clumsy. ‘Onlythumbs,’ he tells me. But Danny— he’s so good with his hands.”

“But what I meant . . . the chance of getting pregnant, isn’t it better? If the woman has—if her muscles, you know, contract?”

Now it was Debora’s turn to blush. “I told you. He’s very good with his hands.”

She playacted a shiver—or wasn’t she playacting?—and I shivered too, full of envy. (Envy of her? Of Danny? I wasn’t sure.)

“So,” she said. “All set? Good. Give me kisses.”

We kissed her cheeks, right then left; she trotted up the stairs, showing us the back of her old jeans: a faded star sewn on each pocket.

The living room was strewn with Paula’s projects: glue and glitter, a tiny loom strung with colored beads. Photos on the mantel depicted Debora and Danny’s wedding, Paula’s birth, not a whole lot since. A book was splayed on the couch:
O Alquimista
.

I bent to study a homemade-looking but cleverly built dollhouse, split into differently styled halves: on the left, a modern scene, as bright as the room we stood in; on the right, a more agrarian past (miniature straw baskets, hewn beams). The dolls on the right had coffee-tinted faces, the color of Debora’s smooth skin.

Not just
a
past, it occurred to me.
Her
past. The cashew farm in Rio Grande do Norte.

My throat tightened—a swelling of esteem mixed with pity—to think of her so distant from the childhood she had known, forging her own singular, strange life. Then I turned this mournful admiration toward myself: spitting distance, map-wise, from where I’d thrived in boyhood (lounging on the beach at Sandy Neck beside my folks, sure that life was nothing more complex than sand and sun), but miles away from anything that boy could have foreseen—orphaned now, sitting beside my thorny, decent lover while, above us, our own child was being fashioned.

My parents had been, if anything, a negative example: a couple like a lock and its hasp fused by rust, who thought that, as parents, they were bound to cease being themselves. Proving them wrong was part of why I wanted to be a dad. But now I wished I had them here, to light the road they’d laid for me, even if that road was filled with potholes.

Stu placed his hand on my tight neck. “Are you okay?”

A second sooner, “okay” might have been an iffy answer. But Stu’s hand had done the trick, his deep, steady voice. “Yeah,” I said. “Over-whelmed, but fine. Here we go.”

We would have kissed if Libby hadn’t moped into the living room and perched on the sofa’s very lip. She hovered there, consuming the space around her.

“Paula finally go down?” Stu asked.

“Yeah,” she said, and sighed. She scratched at a blueberry-colored blemish on the sofa, studied it, scratched the spot again.

“So,” I said. “Libby. You’re Paula’s babysitter.”
The sky is blue! Two and two are four!
“What else do you do? You in school?”

She shrugged. “I go to the four Cs.” Then she added, pedantically, “Cape Cod Community College.” Her expression seemed served up from leftovers of niceness, now on the verge of going bad.

“Right,” said Stu. “We know. We live just down the road.” He drummed his hands on his knees. “What’s your major?”

“Communications,” she mumbled, missing her own punch line. She tugged her sweatshirt taut around her waist. Finally she added, “Really, you can take off. You don’t have to stay. Paula’s asleep and everything. I’ve got this.”

My mood was still fragile, or I’d have let this pass. Probably she was only being thoughtful. But something about the way she said “I’ve got this” set me off. As if we were merely hangers-on. Was
that
how I’d be seen? A footnote, not a father: the boyfriend of the guy who shot his wad into a cup.

“You know, Libby,” I said. “You know, I really have to say—”

A noise from above distracted me. A muffiled call of revelry or anger.

Then a clunk—a bed? a body?—against the floor. Stu appeared to fight an urge to hurry up the stairs. Libby wrung her pale, pudgy hands.

Eventually, through the ceiling: the faint trill of laughter. We glanced at one another, glanced away. Now a new silent sinkhole opened up between us; no one bothered to fill it up with small talk.

A minute later Danny appeared, his singlet dark with sweat, looking like he’d just been pumping iron. “Herself would like to see you now,” he said.

Libby strained to lever herself up and off the sofa, but Danny said, “The
guys
, I think, Libby. Just the guys.”

I couldn’t help but lift my chin in triumph.

Laid out on her bed, Debora was propped with pillows at her knees, her hips, her neck: something perishable packaged for an airlift. Scanning the room, I found no concrete signs of what they’d done. And yet, a loamy smell of sex faintly lingered. A little giggle welled up in my gut.

Danny put his pumped-up arms on Stu’s and my shoulders. Vanished was his sulky threat, his territorial scowl. “So,” he said. “As good for you as it was for me? Ha! Ha!”

“Danny, stop,” said Debora. “Be serious, now. Okay?”

But he had earned the right, I thought, to act just as he pleased: the textbook definition of “good sport.” Plus, I felt like goofing, too. Kicking up my heels. We had done it. We had really done it!

But Stu, ever himself, stuck to business. “You think you can stay in bed awhile—you know, to keep it in? I realize it’s past nine o’clock.”

Danny said, “No worries. We made a change of plans. Some pizza, some beer—beer for me, not her!—whatever corny movie’s on cable.”

“Shoot,” said Stu. “I honestly feel so bad.”

But I could see that Debora was content, or not displeased. Queen for a night, footman at her beck, a homey romance. A better gift than the flowers we had brought.

“Go,” she said. “Celebrate. Go dancing. Drink champagne.”

Danny seconded the motion: “Live it up.”

The thought of taking off no longer made me feel tangential. The party would be wherever we would bring it.

We shook Danny’s hand, and kissed Debora good-bye, then walked out, with Stu calling, “You guys are the best.” I followed him downstairs, teetering with ecstasy—organic, little-e ecstasy, sweeter than the pills we used to swallow.

Libby stood awaiting us, propped against a wall, and now I saw, beneath her sullen bulk, the sweet and lonely girl.
Egg with legs!
I wanted to pinch her cheek.

“Bye,” she said. “Good luck.”

“You, too! Same to you.”

Out we walked—we almost danced—to the car, and climbed inside. And only there, in the quiet of my parents’ old Volvo, did all the fizzy queerness (what better word?) subside. We sat together, wordless, the engine still unstarted. The night was black. We could have been at sea, or in a cave.

Then Stu took my hand within his steady, skillful hands. Tethering me to . . . everything. To him.

Not at sea. Not in a cave.
Here
, beside Stu.

I leaned close, pressed his fevered cheek to mine, and clutched him, shivering in the still winter dark.

The next evening we did it all again. This time we collected the sample (
collected?
the
sample?
as if all we hoped for was a science fair ribbon!) at home, in our very own bed. Then we swathed the cup in a microwave-warmed towel and hurried it across the Cape to Debora’s. Again we sat downstairs (no Libby, now, looming); again Debora called us to her side: a routine of sorts, but one, like a jet lifting off, that still felt solemn and uncanny.

Then we waited.

Two weeks till we’d know: a find-religion fortnight, praying for the pregnancy test to pinken.

We tried to trundle on with life as normal: I was plugging away at the reading-comprehension quiz to go with my new textbook unit; Stu was shuttling in and out of Logan. I shopped for socks, a shower-curtain liner, a faster toaster. Took two months’ bottles to the dump.

But I couldn’t quit obsessing, my mind like a muddy greyhound track: thoughts in chase of the out-of-our-reach rabbit of what would happen. All I could do was to keep calling Debora, to ask how she felt—queasy, perhaps? (If only my own nausea were a sign that she was pregnant.)

“I’m perfect,” she said. “Everything will be perfect now, believe me.”

“But how does this compare to when you—”

“Pat,” she said. “Come on. The Brazilians, we have a saying, okay? ‘Between the beginning and the end is always a middle.’ You understand? So please, now. Please try to relax.”

Yeah, I wished.

I kept trying to picture what was going on inside her. If life was being formed—from infinitesimal to inf nite—shouldn’t we be able to hear the bang?

What do you think it’s doing now?” I asked Stu over breakfast, talking to the back side of his
Times
.

“Assuming that she . . . ,” he said. “That everything went—”

“Well,
don’t
you?”

“Of course I want to. Hmm,” he said. He folded shut the paper. Took a bite of his bagel, ruminated. “Week one? Swimming down the fallopian tube, I’d guess.”

“But what’s it
doing?
I mean, is it being . . . human yet? Does it have a, like—I wish there were a word besides
soul!
”

“I think it’s sort of early to get quite so metaphysical. Remember, hon, right now, it’d only be as big as—”

“I know,” I said. “A period.” I tapped the
Times
. “I know.”
Period
was the fallback word the op-ed writers used in their justifications of stem-cell research. When churchy types, against destroying embryos, preached of “human life,” the columnists all scoffingly responded:
Human life? At that stage? It’s barely the size of the period after this sentence
.

I’d tossed off that argument myself, on occasion, and I was still in favor of the research. (Sacrifice some embryos to save whole groups of people? A trade I was more than glad to make.) But not with glee or glibness now. Not lightly anymore. Now I felt what an embryo could contain, how
huge
it was.

Which scared me. And also honestly thrilled me.

If Stu felt the same, he wasn’t letting on. “A period,” he said. “A period. Can’t those guys come up with something smarter?”

“What should they say? Isn’t that just the size?”

“Fine, but do they all have to use the same comparison? Why not something . . . I don’t know . . .” He fiddled with his bagel. “Like poppy seed! It’s perfect, right? ‘Seed.’ The double entendre?”

When I didn’t respond, Stu flicked one such seed at me. “Well?” he said.

“Come on, Stu. Just stop. You’re being silly.”

“
You
come on.” He took his
Times
and raised it again between us. The paper didn’t muffle (and wasn’t meant to) his next line: “Tell me you’re not becoming one of those people.”

Mostly, though, we got along. Joined in hopeful anxiousness, even if Stu rarely gave it voice.

The closest he came was something he said in Provincetown one day, riffing on a wholly different topic. We’d set aside the day for each other, and Stu suggested P-town—which might, in itself, have been a clue: the gayest spot this side of over the rainbow. Was Stu itching for queerness, a break from “family values”? Then again, the day-trip options from Sandy Neck were limited; it could have been that P-town was convenient.

We did the requisite beachfront brunch, a walk along the jetty, and then warmed up with Far Land Provisions coffee. Now we were gallery hopping, eastward on Commercial Street, and found ourselves admiring a handsome woodcut. The piece was huge—six feet wide, maybe, by four feet high—but filled with fine, fingerprint-like whorls. It showed a ship at wharf, in an old brickwork harbor: a placid scene that shouldn’t have been foreboding, but it was. The sky was etched with furling gusts, like snickers of the gods.

“Isn’t it just astounding?” said the husky gallery owner, himself a mix of handsomeness and menace: gruff gray beard but boyish sweet-tea eyes. “I had two, but the other was just nabbed by the Currier Museum. This is the tenth of ten, then they’re gone.”

“Gone?” said Stu impishly. “I bet he just prints more.” He flashed a chummy grin that said he saw through all the huckstering, the fib of
Hurry! While supplies last!