What Came First (24 page)

Predictably, at two, Harrison and Sydney were more Terrifically Terrible than Terribly Terrific. Weirdly, that is the year I look back on most fondly. They were two! They were supposed to be terrible! I’d compare tantrum notes with other mothers, and I’d always win, which I foolishly put down to my children’s strong-willed, independent natures.

Sherry is either doing a birthday book or several birthday pages. She trims pictures of Ashlyn and Brianne—wearing party hats and diving into cake—into ovals and stars and squares. (Nothing says “scrapbook rookie” like a dependence on shape templates.) In the photos, Sherry’s girls are younger than when I first met them, their faces rounder, their eyes bigger. They only smile in a couple of shots. With their sour expressions, intense eyes, and dark coloring, they almost look like they could be related to Sydney and Harrison. Sherry’s husband, Lane, is Greek, his grandfather’s last name altered at Ellis Island.

For the first time in years, I think of the conversation that marked either the-beginning-of-the-end or the-end-of-the-end of our friendship. Over coffee one morning, long into my adventures in infertility, I told Sherry that Darren and I had agreed to use a sperm donor.

I thought she’d be happy for me. Instead, she said, “I think you’re being really selfish.”

“In what way?”

“You get to have a baby but Darren doesn’t. You should just adopt. There are a lot of kids who need homes.”

“It could take years to adopt.”

“You could get an older child. Or a special-needs child. But to get pregnant by a stranger? It’s like it’s all about you and your ego that you have to have a kid with your genes.”

“Your kids have your genes!”

“That’s different. It was easy for Lane and me. We didn’t waste thousands and thousands of dollars on medical treatments.”

Darren was right: Sherry wasn’t edgy. She was just mean. Now, all these years later, Annalisa leans over the table to check out my pink page, which shows Sydney done up in her various Disney princess getups: Snow White, Cinderella, Ariel.

“Adorable!” Annalisa says. “And she looks just like you. I mean, look at that! Not a bit of your husband there!”

Sherry looks up from her page. “Why should there be?” Her voice is flat, her face hard.

I freeze. Everyone else pauses in their cutting and pasting to glance at Sherry. Tara raises her eyebrows and says, “
Some
one needs a glass of wine.”

“I’m not drinking,” Sherry says between her teeth.

“I meant me.” Tara pops up from the table and clicks over to the counter, where the bottles, glasses, and veggie tray have been crowded together to make room for the late arrivals’ scrapbook supplies.

For the first time ever, I like Tara.

Hands shaking, I select a photo of two-year-old Sydney smacking her brother with a star wand. After trimming with one of my scallop-edged scissors, I glue the picture onto the pink paper. Underneath, in gold ink, I write,
Sydney casts a spell on Harrison!

I’m pissed at Melva for calling Dr. Sanchez, and she’s pissed at me for not going with him when he showed up.

“He had to call his nanny to come watch his kids and everything,” Melva says.

“I never asked you to call him.”

“What? You’d rather I just leave you stranded at the beach with no way to get home?”

“Eric was still there. Once he was done with . . .
them
. . . I was gonna call him.”

We’re eating lunch at Target again. Pammy needed tampons.

“What was she like?” Pammy asks, stirring her yogurt. “The mother.”

“A cougar,” Melva says. She has just finished her first burger and is moving on to her second. Whenever Melva is pregnant, she craves red meat. She says it’s for the iron.

“You didn’t even see her,” I remind Melva.

She slaps the table. “I forgot there was a pizza party after the baseball game. And there was no way I could get out of it. I’m sorry, okay?”

I turn to Pammy. “The mother was a cougar.”

We all burst out laughing. It is a huge relief. I can’t afford to be pissed at Melva when I’m this pissed at Eric.

Not about the lunch. As he’s reminded me like five times, that was my idea. But to go to the beach with them when he’d seen how upset I was? What the hell was that? And what about our engagement? I’ve tried talking to him about rings and vows and china patterns, and every time he changes the subject.

Once we got back from the beach and were speaking again, I explained. “I was okay with a lunch that was just a lunch. You know, to just meet and talk. But it felt like it was more than that. Like she wanted something more.”

“She does. She wants my sperm.” Just like that! All casual, like he’s saying,
She wanted to borrow a pen.

“She wants another kid.”

“Is she insane?”

“It’s not that big a deal.” He was looking at me like I was insane. Which was so unfair.

“Not that big a deal? Eric, are you serious? You’re supposed to be having a kid with me, remember?
Me!
Except I’ve got no ring, and there’s no wedding on the calendar. But now this complete stranger comes along and you’re all, like, it’s so not a big deal that she has one of your kids, now she can have another.”

“He’s not my kid. And I told her no.”

“But you wanted to tell her yes, didn’t you?”

He clenched his jaw like he was so annoyed and said, “You make it sound like I’m cheating on you and I’m not. I never have and I never will.”

“So you’re saying you feel nothing for that little boy?”

“It made me feel good. To know that I’d helped someone out, made a difference in someone’s life—that means something.”

“You didn’t
make a difference
in someone’s life, Eric, you
created
someone’s life!”

“And I’m supposed to feel bad about that? I’m supposed to feel guilty? Did you
see
them together, Ian and his mom? They have this great rapport, this happy life . . . and part of that is because of what I did. When I think about what kind of difference I’ve made in the world, this is it. Helping Laura get pregnant was probably the best, most purely altruistic thing I’ve ever done.”

We were quiet for a long, long time. My skin tingled with the tension. My gut hurt.

Finally, I said, “Fine. Sure. You wanna give this lady more of your sperm? You want to help
make a difference again
, you go do it.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Really. This means a lot. I’ll call her tomorrow.” He kissed the top of my head, went into the bedroom, and shut the door.

“I was being sarcastic,” I told the empty air.

Now, in the Target café, I drop the bomb. “He’s going to do it again. Donate sperm.”

Melva almost chokes on her second burger.

“Even though you told him not to?” Pammy says.

“That’s the thing,” I admit. “I told him he could—but I was being sarcastic! I thought he’d get that.”

“You and Eric have some serious communications issues,” Melva says. “Can’t you tell him you didn’t mean it?”

Miserable, I shake my head. “It’s too late. He already told her he’d do it, and today he’s at some lab, getting tested for AIDS and hepatitis and whatever.”

“Didn’t you make him test for that before you, you know?” Melva asks.

“No. I knew he was . . .
God
.”

“How old is she?” Pammy asks. “The mother.”

“I don’t know. Old. Forties, maybe?”

“She probably won’t be able to get pregnant,” Pammy says.

“I didn’t mean forties is old,” I say, too late.

“Pfft,” Pammy says. “Of course it’s old. Especially if you’re trying to have a baby.”

“Cougar,” Melva says.

“Maybe you can go with him,” Pammy says. “You know, when he donates. So it could be something you do together.”

She checks my face.

“Or maybe not,” she says.

My office may not have much of a view, but it offers convenient ladies’ room access. Ever since Eric Fergus called to say he would donate after all, that has been an enormous plus, as I can gauge the probable level of stall occupancy based on the number of women passing my office. If Marissa thinks it odd that I’ve suddenly started leaving my door open for an hour or so after lunch, she hasn’t said anything. Nor has she commented on the fact that I’ve begun visiting the restroom every afternoon between one forty-five and twofifteen, handbag slung over my shoulder. I have new appreciation for Marissa’s all-consuming fascination with her cell phone.

There are three stalls in the ladies’ room; unfortunately, my favorite, the one farthest from the door, is occupied. After shutting myself into the first stall, I unzip my bag and pull out the ovulation predictor kit, which is basically a pee stick not unlike a pregnancy test. According to numerous Web sites, it yields the most accurate results if used around two o’clock in the afternoon. Unwrapping the stick from its package, I do my best to be quiet, but as I’ve discovered over the last couple of weeks, there is no way to avoid the foil’s crinkle, which I can only hope will be mistaken for a tampon wrapper.

Mercifully, the woman in the other stall flushes just as I begin the undignified task of peeing on the stick. For accurate results, the stick must lie flat, so while the woman washes her hands, I lay it on top of the toilet-paper dispenser, which I’ve covered with a torn piece of seat cover.

Then, I wait. The stick has two small boxes, one with a dark purple line, one without. Soon, whether I’m about to ovulate or not, a purple line will appear in the now-blank box, indicating the presence of luteinizing hormone, or LH. Up until now, the second purple line has been lighter than the comparison line, meaning the LH is at normal, low levels. It takes ten minutes to confirm a negative result. If Marissa has been paying attention to the length of my bathroom breaks, she must think I have intestinal issues.

A minute goes by. Two minutes.

If the second line on the stick is as dark or darker than the purple comparison line, it indicates a surge of LH, which in turn indicates that ovulation is imminent. It’s no big deal if the results come up negative. There’s no reason to experience that cold rush of disappointment. There’s always tomorrow. And the day after that. And the next.

Three minutes have passed. Three and a half. Surely a little peek won’t—

It’s purple. Dark purple. Darker than I’ve ever seen. But is it as dark as the comparison line?

I wiggle up my panty hose, rearrange myself, and flush. Other days, I’ve simply thrown the negative test strip in the stall receptacle. Today I take it to the sinks, where the lighting is better. My heart races as I stare at the strip.

It’s a match.

The door swings open, and Kim Rueben, the partner specializing in divorce, strides into the room and finds me holding my pee stick. In her hooker heels (copper today, and surprisingly chic with a cream suit), she has got to be six feet tall.

Feeling oddly guilty, as if I were caught holding a joint and not a pee stick, I swallow hard and wait for her to grill me.

Her eyes flick to my hands. “Hi, Laura.”

“Hi, Kim.”

She closes herself into a stall. I take a final look at the strip to make sure I read it correctly, and then I wrap it in paper towel and place it in the trash. It feels like I’m throwing away evidence.

Back at my office, I tell Marissa, who is checking Facebook on her phone, that I’m back and I’d like her to hold my calls.

She looks up. “Oh. Were you gone?”

I shut myself in my office and dial the Orange County Center for Reproductive Health, a fertility clinic in Irvine.

“We can see your husband tomorrow at eleven for the collection and you at three for the IUI,” the nurse tells me.

“Isn’t three o’clock too early? According to my research, the optimal time for intrauterine insemination is thirty-six hours after the LH surge, and that’s only twenty-five.”

She pauses. “Thirty-six hours from now would be, um . . .”

“Two o’clock in the morning. I understand that. But can’t we go a little closer than that? Six P.M. tomorrow? Or maybe very early the next day?”

“No. Sorry. Would you rather wait until your next cycle?”

“No! Three o’clock will be . . . fine. I’ll see you then. Actually, I’ll be there for the eleven o’clock, as well.” I pause before closing. “He isn’t my husband, by the way. I barely even know the guy.”

Eric doesn’t answer his cell phone. When the voice mail picks up, I disconnect and dial his home phone, only to have it ring and ring. I try the cell again.

“Um. Yeah?”

“It’s Laura Cahill, and I’m ovulating.” Today, I have no prepared remarks, and my heart feels like it is going to climb right up my throat. It’s amazing how awake I feel, considering I only slept about three hours last night.