What Came First (35 page)

“Can’t we call Dommy’s?” Melva says. “Say he forgot to give us our crushed red pepper packets or something?”

In the waiting room, Dr. Sanchez and Eric aren’t laughing. Dr. Sanchez stands above Eric, arms crossed. Eric’s on the couch, elbows on knees, hunched forward. When he sees me, he stands up. I don’t know what to say. There’s plenty of pizza, but it’s not really mine to offer, even if there’s anything without meat.

“Guess I’ll see you at home,” Eric says.

“Oh!” All of a sudden I want him to stay. Instead I go, “I’ll walk you to your car,” and follow him out the door.

“Thanks for coming by,” I say. “It’s just, you know. Pizza Day.”

“Right.” He leans forward, gives me a superfast kiss on the mouth, and gets in his car.

Back in the office, everyone is sitting and chewing. Melva’s got one partially eaten crust on her plate already and is halfway through her second piece. I snag a piece of sausage pizza and a Diet Coke and sit at the end of the couch closest to Dr. Sanchez.

Pammy holds her can of Diet Sprite up high. “To Rosie.”

“To Rosie.” We all toast the ceiling.

Dr. Sanchez takes a long drink of his Sprite. He doesn’t look happy, exactly, but he looks like his mind is in a better place than most days, at least.

Melva chows down on her second piece of pizza and then goes to the counter for two more. Everyone’s quieter than usual.

Pammy goes, “It was nice of Eric to stop by. I’ll give him that.”

Melva snorts and plops back down on the couch, balancing her paper plate. “You couldn’t pay me to have that guy’s baby.”

Since it’s Eric’s day off, he’s at the apartment when I get there.

“You didn’t look real thrilled to see me today.”

“I was just—I didn’t expect you, that’s all.”

“You used to like it when I showed up. You know, back when you were at Sears.”

“That was different. There were so many people there. And it was in the mall.”

“And Dr. Sanchez wasn’t there.”

“Huh?”

“He has a crush on you.”

“That is ridiculous.”

Eric shakes his head.

“What happened when I was in the back, anyway?” I ask.

“Dr. Sanchez told me that I was an asshole.”

“He did not.”

“He said, ‘You need to treasure what you have
.
’”

“Yeah, because his wife died. Not because he has a crush on me.”

“And then he goes, ‘If you can’t see how amazing this woman is, you’re a fool and you don’t deserve her
.
’”

“He really said that?”

“He’s hot for you, babe.” Now he’s grinning. Like it’s real. Like it’s funny. Like it’s something that he wishes would happen.

Suddenly I’m mad. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? If you could just pass me on to someone else so you don’t have to feel guilty about dumping me?”

He says no, but he says it too fast.

“I’m right, aren’t I?”

“Just because I said that your boss has a crush on you, that doesn’t mean that I—”

“If you don’t want to marry me, Eric, say it. Be a man and
just say it
!”

My ears buzz and my breathing is loud. The air around me feels thick and sour.

Finally, Eric speaks. “I don’t want to marry you.”

And then he leaves.

It was just one time.

I would say it didn’t mean anything, but of course it did. It always does, even if it’s with the man you’ve been with since you were eighteen years old. In that case, it can mean: I still love you. Or: You mean everything to me. If it’s infrequent enough or strained enough, it can mean, I’m staying with you because it’s the right thing to do. Or, Maybe this will help.

It was just one time.

The doctor told us to have sex. Darren and me, that is. After two weeks of daily hormone shots to stimulate my ovaries; after an additional trigger shot to make my eggs drop; after thirty-six hours of tender breasts and a cramped abdomen; after shaking with fear (and cold) in an outpatient room as the doctor slipped a catheter far, far inside me, his eyes on a black-and-white ultrasound screen as he harvested two, three, four eggs; after I’d slipped back into my clothes while Darren sat hunched in a visitor chair, playing a game on his cell phone, that’s when the doctor told us.

“Studies indicate that intercourse before implantation increases the odds of success.”

I said, “What?”

Darren looked up from his phone.

“Something in the seminal fluid sends a signal to the uterus to prepare for implantation. That’s the theory, anyway.”

“But Darren’s sperm count . . .” I didn’t need to finish. The doctor knew our story.

“Doesn’t matter,” the doctor said. “The reaction is to the seminal fluid, not the actual sperm.”

“That’s—wow,” I said.

Lips tight, Darren went back to his game with renewed concentration. I hoped the doctor would think he was at least checking e-mails or something.

“You might feel a bit sore from the egg harvesting,” the doctor told me.
Egg harvesting.
God
,
I hated that phrase. It made me feel like I’d fallen into a sci-fi movie.

“But we’ve got three to five days until the embryos will be ready for insertion,” the doctor continued. “If you can have intercourse once in that time, good. Twice, even better.”

Once the doctor left, I couldn’t even look at Darren. For a long time, we had sex only when the doctor told us to. Ever since we’d been told it would never make us a baby, we hardly did it at all anymore.

“Ready to go?” I asked the floor.

Darren slipped his phone into his pocket. We left without speaking.

Two nights later, I put on my very best XXL T-shirt and worked hard to seduce my husband: “We might as well get this over with.”

“Give me twenty minutes.” He was watching television in the living room.

I nodded and retreated to the bedroom, where I read a magazine. When a half hour had passed and still no Darren, I went back to the living room.

“Now?” I asked.

He looked at me and then at the floor. “I don’t think so.”

“What do you mean?”

“I just . . . can’t.”

I swallowed hard. “Of course you can. You always have before. You don’t have to like it.”

He shook his head. “Sorry.”

The next morning I tried again, waking early so I could get him before he was fully conscious. No dice. He recoiled from my touch and scrambled out of bed.

“I don’t want to do this.”

Tears spilling down my cheeks, I said, “Am I that repulsive?”

“You don’t need me to have a baby. Why do you need me for this?”

Just like that, my sadness morphed into anger. How dare he? I was doing this for both of us. Had the situation been reversed, I would have gladly used an egg donor—and for the sake of my future children, I would have chosen a tall blond woman with a really fast metabolism. Now it was all about Darren’s stupid male ego. That’s what had made the infertility treatments so awful, even more than all the painful physical stuff.

When Darren left for work, about forty minutes earlier than he really had to, my anger slid back into sadness and then landed with a thud on self-pity. I was unlovable. Unsexy. Infertile. My own husband didn’t want me.

I almost didn’t answer the doorbell, but I did. When I saw Lane Plant standing there, in a T-shirt and paint-stained jeans, I thought:
I shouldn’t have answered the doorbell.
At least he was wearing a shirt, for once.

Lane said, “I’m painting the eaves. Darren said I could borrow his tall ladder.”

I burst into tears.

Had the situation been reversed, had Darren rung the Plants’ doorbell to borrow something, only to be met by a tearful Sherry, he would have backed away in terror, mumbled some apologies, and fled to the safety of his own home. Emotions make Darren squirm.

But Lane wasn’t Darren. Without hesitation, he took me into his big hairy arms. Without hesitation, I threw my head against his chest and let my tears soak his T-shirt. He smelled like sandalwood—I don’t know the brand of his cologne, but it must be pretty popular because I’ll catch a whiff of it every now and then, and it always makes me shudder with shame.

He closed the front door. Not because he had any plans to seduce me but because the air-conditioning was leaking out. Or maybe because he didn’t want his wife or another neighbor to see me crying.

On the couch, I blabbered the miserable details of my miserable life, my miserable marriage. He didn’t say much, just stroked my back and said, “Mm.” And, “Ah, no.”

Finally, I told him about the hormone shots. The egg retrieval. My failed seduction.

“I’m disgusting,” I said.

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s true. My own husband . . .”

“You’re a beautiful woman.” His hand touched the back of my head.

“I’m not.”

“You are. Beautiful. Sexy.” He ran his hand through my hair, pulled my head to his chest.

“Then why won’t he . . . won’t he . . .” His chest was so warm. So strong. It smelled so good. That aftershave . . .

“Any man would want you. Any man.”

“My own husband . . .”

His mouth on mine felt sweet, friendly. I tasted toothpaste plus something sugary. Cereal, probably. Maybe a piece of fruit. And then his mouth was on my ear, murmuring, “Sexy. Hot. So hot.” And still it felt friendly.

We kissed for a long time. I hadn’t kissed like that since high school. His breathing grew heavy, his touch more insistent. I knew what was coming. Of course I did. And I could have said no. I could have stopped. I knew it was wrong.

And yet.

A baby. I wanted a baby so very, very badly. This could make the difference.

Is it better that I made the decision to sleep with Lane Plant from a place of clinical rationality? Or would it be more forgivable if I’d been driven by love or even lust? Does it even matter at this point?

Rather than asking Darren to pick us up at the hospital, Harrison and I take a taxi. When we get home, Sydney is munching Cheez-Its in front of the television while Darren, of course, is stationed at his computer. But instead of playing Sims or World of Warcraft, he just stares at his home page, a compilation of news and sports and weather. I don’t think he’s really seeing anything.

“Harrison wants to know what happened to the scorpion,” I say.

Darren looks at me for just an instant and then trains his eyes on his lap.

“The doctor thought that was really funny.” My voice is flat. “Harrison said he hoped no one killed it because it wasn’t the scorpion’s fault. I told him the scorpion probably just ran away.”

“It’s dead,” Darren says. “The teacher saved it so we could see if it was a bark scorpion, but I forgot to take it with me.”

“That’s okay.”