What Came First (6 page)

I don’t talk about any of this at scrapbooking. I concentrate on my scallop-edge scissors, my aqua paper accents, my Chardonnay. There are only five of us tonight. None of us know the others very well.

Scottsdale Skipper—her name is actually Tara—is making a poo book. Her son Liam is almost four and still crapping in his pants. Tara hopes the perfect scrapbook will change that. She’s got pictures of Liam sitting on the potty and pictures of Liam brandishing his penis in front of the big-boy toilet. She’s got him modeling his Superman underpants. But all of that is a lead-up to the money shot: an eight-by-ten glossy of a perfect log poo floating in the bowl. It doesn’t even gross me out until Tara reveals, with a giggle, that the poo actually came from her husband.

We trade toileting stories for a while. (The twins trained themselves at two and two-and-a-half. For once, I can brag.) And then conversation turns to daytime talk shows.

“That surrogate couple was on yesterday,” Annalisa says. “You know, there’s that woman who got hired to carry twins? And after they were born, she handed them over to the adoptive parents? But now she and her husband want them back?”

“That is so selfish,” Tara says, affixing a brown border.

“I don’t know,” Annalisa says. “The woman who hired the surrogate, you know, the one who was going to adopt, it turns out she’s mentally ill. And she got arrested for drugs once. And the surrogate didn’t even know that.”

“That’s terrible,” Tara says.

“But whose egg is it?” the other woman asks. Tonight is the first time I’ve met her, and I’ve already forgotten her name. I think it’s Mary-something. Mary Ellen, Mary Beth, Maryann—one of those.

“They used an egg donor,” Annalisa says. “So neither one is really the mother.”

“But didn’t they use the father’s sperm?” Mary-something asks.

“Uh-uh. That was from a donor, too. So there’s four parents fighting over the kid, but none of them is even actually related.”

“That’s wrong,” Tara says. “I’m sorry, but it is.”

I’m tempted to ask Tara what she thinks is wrong. The fighting? The desire to have a baby at any cost? Or donorship in general? But I don’t dare say anything. There was a while when Darren and I thought we’d need both donor sperm and donor eggs to have a baby. Maybe it would have been better that way: more equal.

“Did you see that thing on
Good Morning America
?” Annalisa asks. “About the kids who had the same sperm donor?”

I keep my eyes on the bath shot I’m trimming.

“Their moms found each other on some Web site, and they all met for the first time on New Year’s Eve. In Texas, I think. The kids all looked alike. It was weird. And their parents said they even acted kind of alike, and that they all just bonded immediately, like, ten times faster than if they were strangers. And what was kind of neat was that a few of the kids have some kind of mild learning disability, and their moms said it’s been really helpful for them to talk to each other about it.”

“Was it just moms, or were there any dads?” Mary-something asks.

“Just moms. Two were single, and there was a lesbian couple.”

“If people want to live a gay lifestyle, that’s fine for them,” Tara says. “But I think it’s wrong to involve children.”

“You know, I used to feel that way too,” Annalisa says. “But then I saw this thing on the
Today
show, and—”

“Did they say what the Web site was called?” I interrupt.

At the kitchen table Monday morning, a cup of strong coffee helps me multitask through my fatigue. I check my e-mail while nibbling on a homemade breakfast burrito. We eat well when Carmen’s here.

Thanks to twice the recommended dose of Benadryl, I fell asleep shortly after midnight, but I awoke just after four, my head swirling with dream images of a man in a Speedo riding a horse while eating a Taco Bell beef chalupa. The Speedo was red. The chalupa was doused with fire sauce.

I blame it on the antihistamine.

Carmen hums a Spanish tune while unloading the dishwasher, which is jammed with the entire weekend’s dishes. Like many working mothers, I once worried that my son would love his nanny more than me. But it turns out that there is plenty of love to go around. Carmen is part of the family. I can’t imagine life without her, and neither can Ian.

Carmen has a family back in El Salvador: a grown son and daughter, both with young children of their own. More than twenty years ago, Carmen left her children in her mother’s care and fled to the United States. Ten years passed before she obtained a green card and was able to visit them. She did what she had to do to provide for her family; she says she has never regretted leaving. Whenever I am feeling worn down by the pressures of work and single parenthood, I think of Carmen and just how easy I really have it.

I have sixteen new e-mails since I checked last night. Some of my colleagues were working very late; others started very early. I make it a policy not to use the computer when Ian is at the table because I don’t want to set a bad example. But Ian is still upstairs in the bathroom; I woke him up fifteen minutes ago and checked the clothes he’d picked out for school. Ian has a tendency to dress without any regard for the season: shorts in January, sweatshirts in July.

I log on to the Donor Sibling Network, expecting a quick perusal of the site—followed by the familiar pang of disappointment. But finally, to my astonishment, someone has responded to my posting.

I can’t believe it. All this time, Ian has had a biological half brother and a half sister only a few hundred miles away. I feel happy and excited and scared and anxious all at once.

I want to reply right away, but Ian’s footsteps sound on the hallway. When he enters the kitchen, he goes right to Carmen.

Carmen squeezes him tight.
“Hola mi amorcito, como amenasaste?”

Two children share Ian’s blood.

“Bien, nannita.”
Yes, he has slept well.

Carmen and Ian say a few more things to each other in Spanish. I can’t understand more than a few phrases in the language but am thrilled my son is fluent—though of course that’s not what I’m thinking about right now.

Ian has a biological half brother and a half sister.

Ian slips into the chair next to mine and shoots me a sly grin. “No computer at the table, Mom.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

Two hundred miles away, two children are probably eating breakfast. Do they look like Ian? Do they sound like him?

I turn off the computer and slip it into my briefcase. I will open it back up and respond to the e-mail as soon as I get to the office.

Twins. She had twins. How could anyone get that lucky?

At the office, I stop by my secretary’s desk, where I find her sucking some enormous coffee beverage through a straw. With her free hand, she pokes at her cell phone.

When she sees me, she chucks her phone into her bag, grabs her computer mouse, and clicks a couple of times.

“Hold my calls, please, Marissa.”

She plunks the cup onto a pile of papers that shouldn’t have condensation rings on them. “No problem. I’ve got raging PMS, so nobody better mess with me.”

I blink at her.

“Team I?” she says. When I don’t respond—how would one respond to that?—she says, “You know. Too much information?”

My brain clicks a few times, and then I get it. “TMI. Right. I mean, no—not too much information. Just—hold my calls.”

I, along with the partner in the corner office next door, hired Marissa eight months ago, when our previous secretary, Carlene, went back to school to study phlebotomy. I wasn’t any closer to Carlene than I am to Marissa, but at least she was quiet.

Marissa says, “You already got one call this morning. Dorothy Hepplewhite died. I set up a meeting with her son for a couple weeks from now so you can go over the trust.”

That stops me short. Dorothy was one of my first clients, and one of my favorites. Widowed as a young mother, she had gone back to work full-time as an office manager while raising her children to be responsible and successful adults. When she first came to see me, over ten years ago, she was in her midfifties and had just received a diagnosis of early-stage kidney disease. While her death, following years of dialysis and an unsuccessful transplant, was far from unexpected, the news stings.

“Thank you,” I tell Marissa, pulling myself together. “Find out if there’s anyplace I can send a donation, will you?”

I shut myself into my small office. The furniture is standard issue: a shiny wood desk, two visitor chairs, file cabinet, and bookcase. Beyond vertical blinds, my one window looks out on the parking lot. The partners and some of the more senior associates have better furniture, more windows, mountain views. But they don’t have Ian.

My computer takes far too long to boot up. Finally, I reread Wendy Winder’s e-mail and begin to type.

I stop typing. What am I supposed to call her kids? Biological half siblings? I don’t want to frighten her away. And maybe I shouldn’t be quite so enthusiastic. I try again.

Ugh. Dreadful. I sound like a lawyer. Of course, I am a lawyer, but that’s no excuse.

Good enough. I add my work and mobile numbers and hit send.

The light of her life?
Is she kidding? Is she deranged? Is she medicated? (And if so, where can I get some?)

Rationalization. That has to be it. Laura Cahill must be one of those “God doesn’t give me more than I can handle” types. So she treats her child’s off-the-wall behavior as a challenge rather than the nightmare it really is. Of course, one kid is a lot easier to manage than two.

Unless . . . oh God. What if “light of my life” is a euphemism for a kid with a disability? Maybe her Ian has autism or spina bifida or some other handicap that brings out either the best or the worst in people. He looks normal enough in his picture, but that doesn’t mean anything.

That has to be it. There is no other reasonable explanation. Poor Laura Cahill. She is a stronger woman than I.

“Laura Cahill’s office.” The voice is professional but young. It catches me off guard. For some reason, I had assumed Laura Cahill was a stay-at-home mother like me.

“I was . . . I’m calling for Laura Cahill. What kind of office is this, exactly?”

“A law office. Sullivan, Zurheide and Poole.”

“Oh. I didn’t realize she . . .” I don’t dare finish the sentence:
has a big job and makes pots of money.
Maybe her son isn’t handicapped, after all. Maybe she just works so many hours that she hardly ever sees him.

“Can I speak to her?” I ask.