What Came First (15 page)

It’s beginning to feel like Donor 613—Eric Fergus—is my imaginary friend: real but not-real. I keep thinking about him. It’s weird. In all these years, I’ve hardly ever tried to picture him or imagine the sound of his voice. But the other night the kids were watching TV and apparently something was hysterical, because they began laughing in their identical wheeze-snort way that has always made me smile, and I thought:
Does he laugh that way, too?
There are other things I wonder. Are his fingers long and slender like Sydney’s? Does he share Harrison’s fascination with insects? I’m assuming he doesn’t share Sydney’s princess preoccupation, but you never know.

Friday and Saturday pass without any word from Laura. Sunday evening, after Darren has settled in with
his
imaginary friends on the computer and the children have gone to bed (with less fuss than usual—maybe the lactose-free milk is making a difference after all), I call her home number, which she included when she e-mailed pictures (
lots
of pictures) of her son.

“Did you talk to Eric Fergus?” Saying his name out loud feels weird. Forbidden.

I am sitting at the built-in kitchen desk, which is covered with bills and announcements and kindergarten forms, several of which require my immediate attention.

Laura says, “I did.”

“And? Is he our guy?”

“Yes. At least I think so.” She doesn’t sound excited. “We need a paternity test to confirm. I found a lab near him that would do the test, but he hasn’t agreed.”

“Does that mean he doesn’t want to give you more of his . . . you know. Man juice?”

“I haven’t asked him yet,” she says, not even pausing to chuckle at my use of the phrase “man juice
.
” “I . . . he hasn’t gotten back to me. When I called Thursday night, a woman answered. His wife, I assume. And he sounded really uncomfortable. So I thought we could talk when he was alone. But now I think, maybe I screwed everything up. By calling out of the blue, I mean. I should have sent him a letter instead. I shouldn’t have taken him by surprise like that.”

I am shocked to hear Laura Cahill sound anything less than self-composed. It makes me like her . . . even if she doesn’t think “man juice” is funny.

“Are you going to call him again?” I ask.

“Oh, yeah. I’ll give it a couple of days and try again. I don’t give up easily.” She laughs. (And that wasn’t even funny.)

“Did you ask him about lactose?” I say.

“No, I, uh . . . didn’t get around to that.”

“What did he sound like?” I ask. In other words,
Who is this man?
What is it about him, about his genes, that made my children the way they are?

Laura says, “Just—normal. His voice was medium deep. No accent or anything.”

“No. I mean, did he sound edgy? Irritable?”

Suddenly I’m irritable. I go to the freezer and rummage around.

“He sounded surprised,” she says. “Like a guy who’d just been told he had a child he never knew about.”

I freeze—and not just because I’m standing in front of an open freezer. “Three children.”

“Excuse me?”

“
Three
children were born from his . . .” Don’t say “man juice
.
” “Donations. That we know about. Didn’t you tell him about mine?”

So this Eric guy knows about perfect Ian but not my imperfect twins? Even though their very flaws were probably written in his DNA? While I know I have no right to be angry—Laura Cahill owes me nothing, after all—fury flood my veins . . . just as my hand lands on an unopened sleeve of Girl Scout Thin Mints. That gives me strength.

“Give me his number.”

“What?”

“His number. I’ll call him.” I pull out the column of cold cookies and shut the freezer.

“I don’t think that—”

“Give it to me. And that DNA place, the lab. For the paternity test. Give me that information too. You spent all this time tracking him down. You can’t just let it go. No offense, but you’ve already blown your first impression, so give me a shot. Besides, there are questions I need answered.”

“If his wife answers—”

“I’ll say I have a wrong number.”

Half a sleeve of frozen Thin Mints gives me the courage I need to call Eric Fergus. I take the phone to the backyard. Since the computer room—also known as Darren’s Happy Place (at least by me, in the safety of my own mind)—faces the front of the house, Darren won’t hear anything. Not that we ever open the windows, anyway; the temperature is too extreme. It hit ninety today, but the evening is chilly. One of the many weird things about Arizona: with no moisture in the air, once the sun goes down, the temperature drops
like that
.

Ketchup streaks darken the glass table next to the mesh safety fence that surrounds our tiny pool. For dinner I prepared a nutritious spread of chicken nuggets, oven fries, canned corn, and Gatorade, but no crumbs dirty the table or the concrete underneath. Desert birds are more thorough than an army of Dustbusters.

My hands shake as I push in the numbers Laura gave me. As feared, the wife answers. Screw the wrong-number business: I hang up and retreat to the kitchen. All is quiet upstairs.

Wait. Hold. Were there any more Thin Mints in the freezer?

Just like that, life is good again.

Thirty minutes and another half sleeve later, when my cookie intake has moved me from self-assured to self-loathing, I return to the outside table (wearing a jacket and carrying a sponge this time; birds are one thing, but I despise ketchup-sucking ants).
It is a far better thing I do than
. . . One ring. Two rings. Three rings—

“Hello?”

Damn. It’s the wife.

I hang up. This reunion business must wait until tomorrow. I’m out of cookies.

I’m about to yank open the back slider when the phone rings in my distressingly chubby hand.

“You just called?” she says.

Crap! My first instinct is to hang up, but then I realize that she knows where to find me. I shut the door and take a step backward.

“Ex . . . cuse me?” I pace the concrete and do my best to sound like I don’t know what she’s talking about.

“Someone just hung up on me. I called star-sixty-nine and got this number.”

Double crap! I hate star-sixty-nine!

“Oh! That.” I force a laugh. “I was trying to call someone and I dialed the wrong number.”

The moon is so bright, it’s like daylight out here. It makes me feel exposed.

“You called twice,” she says.

I don’t bother trying to play stupid. “Yes. Sorry. I must have written it down wrong.”

“Who were you trying to reach?”

“Somebody else. Nobody. A man.” I resume my pacing.

“Eric?” she asks.

Whoa! I wasn’t expecting that. I stop pacing.

“Um . . . maybe?”

“This is about the sperm thing, isn’t it?”

My craftiness deserts me. “The, um . . . it’s, um . . . Yes.”

She doesn’t say anything. There goes my brilliant first impression.

I sit at the glass table and keep my voice down, even though Darren, upstairs on the other side of the house with Sims friends, can’t possibly hear me.

“I don’t want to make any trouble,” I say.

“Tell me about your son,” she says.

“Just my son? Harrison’s, um. He’s very creative.” And then I get it. “Oh. You’re thinking of Laura. Ian’s mother. I’m Wendy. With the twins. Though I guess Laura didn’t mention them.”

She doesn’t say anything.

I say, “I’m married, so my kids have a dad. Not that I don’t think it’s not okay that Laura’s not—whatever. I just don’t want you to think I’m looking for anything on that front.”

She still doesn’t say anything.

“Hello?” I say to the dark desert air.

“Twins?” She starts to cry. Triple crap!

All of a sudden I feel horrible for this woman on the end of the phone. “Nobody’s trying to take anything away from you! Not your husband or your family or, or—anything.”

“He’s not my husband! I don’t have a family!” She cries harder.

I really, really, really want to hang up, to end this for both of us.

There is some shuffling on the line, and then a new, deeper voice comes on.

“Um, hello?” It’s him.
It’s him!

“Is this . . . Eric Fergus?” Without meaning to, I drop my voice to a whisper when I say his name.

“Yes.” He doesn’t sound so happy to be Eric Fergus right now, not that I can blame him.

“Congratulations. You’re the donor of twins!”

I’ve never been real good at breaking things gently.

“Oh my God.” His voice—which, as Laura told me, is medium deep and otherwise normal—turns hoarse. “So there are . . . so you’re a different . . . I assumed you were . . .”

Nerves make me babble.

“I’m not Laura Cahill. She’s the lawyer with the perfect child. Who called you Friday. I’m mommy number two. Wendy Winder. Laura found me through—it doesn’t matter. I’m the . . . my kids are not perfect. On the plus side, at least for you, I live in Arizona, so I’m not going to be running into you at the grocery store or anything. Speaking of which, have you ever had any issues with lactose?”

“With—what?” In the background, the woman is crying. Now I feel bad. More bad. Badder. But I can’t let that stop me. I need answers. I take a deep breath and try again.

“Lactose. Dairy. When you drink milk, do you get, you know. Aggressive?”

“From milk? No. I don’t really get aggressive from anything. Excuse me, I’m just, this is just . . . you’ve got two of my kids? I mean, kids from my, um . . .”

“Sperm. Yes. Assuming you are Donor 613. I bought my supply from the Southern California Cryobank, six years ago. Please. Just tell me. When you were a child—what were you like?”

“Um. Childish?”

That is so not helpful.

“Did you ever hit anyone?” I press.

“Well, yeah. Of course. I have two older brothers. They hit me, I’d hit them back. It was a survival-of-the-fittest thing. So your twins are . . .”

“Five. Girl and boy. Sydney and Harrison. What about other aggressive behaviors? Did you pinch, kick, bite? Spit? Maybe you banged your head against the wall?”

“So you bought my, um . . .”

“Man juice.”

He laughs. Not with a whole lot of joy, but still. I’ve got to give him credit.

“Right,” he says. “You bought my, uh, man juice, what? Six years ago?”

“Right.”

“Because I donated . . . it wasn’t that many times . . . but I donated three years before that. I guess I would’ve guessed it would all be gone by then.”

“We tried another donor first—one IUI and two in vitros—and it didn’t take. But your boys. One shot and—bingo. Twins. So thank you for that. Today you are a man. But like I was saying. I do have some questions. About your childhood, primarily. How about throwing things? Did you do any of that? I’m talking little objects. Toys, pencils . . . food. Did you break dishes? Did your mother have to hide the knives?”

“Of course not!”

The woman in the background has gone silent.

“Do any of your relatives have food allergies?” I ask.

“Do my . . . what?”

“Food allergies. Any family history?”

“I have no idea . . . So I, what you’re saying is—I was your second choice?”

“You shouldn’t dwell on that. Your boys got the job done, and that’s what mattered.”

He is quiet. I am quiet. Not good: I can’t stand silence and tend to blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. Such as: “So. Have you ever been in prison?”

“No!”

God, I’m drenched. Sweat and fear and . . . excitement. It’s all too much. I must have more questions. Oh my God. Of course! I’m supposed to be helping Laura.

I say, “Laura—the other mother—she wants to meet you. Just a brief little, you know, meeting.”

“I’m sorry. I just can’t.”