What Came First (9 page)

Doug Hepplewhite arrives on time, a woman at his side. I assume it is his wife, but I am wrong.

“Linda Hepplewhite Smith,” she says, shaking hands. “Doug’s sister.”

“I’m so sorry about your mother,” I tell them, the words inadequate as always. “She was a lovely person.”

They nod. Doug Hepplewhite looks older than he did three months ago, when he came in to help his mother finalize her affairs. Already thin, he appears to have lost weight.

I pull out the trust and we get down to business. Dorothy Hepplewhite had no debt and modest assets. She has split her money evenly between her children, with a separate trust for her grandchildren. There is little confusion, and no controversy: only resignation and sadness. As I provide guidance regarding dissolution of her accounts and the sale of her home and car, her children sit next to each other in straight-backed chairs, holding hands, while Doug makes occasional notes.

It’s the hand-holding that does me in.

“I know this is a really difficult time, but let me say that your mother would have been proud of your absence of acrimony.” I flip a page. And burst into tears.

Doug Hepplewhite says, “Were you and Mother . . . close?”

Linda Hepplewhite Smith says, “Are you okay?”

I reach for a tissue. “So sorry. My apologies. Personal matter.”

The two bereaved children, still holding hands, remain strong in the face of my inexplicable breakdown.

I dab my eyes, take a deep breath, and get back to closing out Dorothy Hepplewhite’s life.

I am saddened by her passing, it’s true. Beyond that, I can’t help thinking, once again,
Ian just has me. And someday I’ll be gone.

The irony of my preoccupation with Ian’s genetic ties does not escape me. I do, after all, have a family of my own, and to say that we’re not close does not even begin to cover it. My mother lives with her second husband in Seattle, my father with his second wife in Reno. Not to be outdone, my brother, Mike, seven years my senior and a tenured history professor at UC Davis, lives in Northern California with wife number three. He always was an overachiever.

Early in life, Mike decided that he didn’t want children, which probably factored into the breakup of his first two marriages. Nevertheless, last summer, on his third time at the plate, he wed a woman with two girls, aged three and five. As I wasn’t invited to the wedding, I’ve never met any of them. Mike explained, “I’d really like to have you and Ian there, but if I invite you, I’ve got to invite Mom and Dad.” Having been seated between my silent, seething parents at the first two weddings, I considered my exclusion to be a reprieve.

My mother and stepfather visit once or twice a year, usually on their way to someplace more interesting. My mother has asked Ian, her only grandchild, to call her Nancy “because Grandma sounds so old.” My father has met Ian twice. At my stepmother’s invitation, we flew out to Reno shortly after Ian’s birth and didn’t see them again until Mike’s second wedding. When we said good-bye, my father shook Ian’s hand.

“Who was that again?” Ian whispered once my father walked away.

Ian shows considerably more enthusiasm for his uncle Mike—as do I. We usually see him once or twice a year, either because he’s visiting a nearby university or because he’s between women and doesn’t want to spend Christmas alone. Not surprisingly for someone who racks up wives so easily, Mike is warm, handsome, and charming. He’ll talk to Ian for hours on end about whales, stars,
Star Wars,
or whatever else Ian is consumed with at any given time. Once Ian goes to bed, we’ll laugh and talk for hours, trading crazy-parent stories and dour childhood memories that only we two can appreciate.

Every time Mike says good-bye, we promise to see each other more often. But life gets in the way. Or, more often, a wife gets in the way. Still, it’s a comfort to me, just knowing Mike is out there.

Friday afternoon, I leave the office at 5:01 and pull into my driveway thirty-seven minutes later. The weekend stretches ahead, long, lazy—and wet. A storm is expected to roll in this evening, with rain forecast through Sunday. I don’t mind one bit. Ian has a basketball game tomorrow afternoon, a piano lesson on Sunday. Otherwise, we have nothing to do but make popcorn, watch movies, and feed the chickens. Bliss.

The house smells like cheese and tomatoes and cumin. A casserole, something Mexican, bubbles in the oven. Sometimes Carmen makes dishes we can eat through the weekend. I’m never sure whether she disapproves of my dependence on takeout or whether she can’t bear the thought of us going two whole days without tasting her food. Probably a little of both.

A padded envelope sits on the kitchen island, surrounded by the rest of the day’s mail. I drop my handbag on the counter, pick up the envelope, check the return address: Helix Laboratories. My pulse quickens.

I leave the envelope on the island and head down the hall. Carmen is in my bedroom, putting away laundry.

“Something smells delicious.”

“Chicken enchilada casserole. Ian say he want it. But now he say he no home for dinner.”

“What?”

Carmen closes a dresser drawer. The room smells like lemon polish. “Alex’s mom, she call you?”

“No.”

“She call, say tonight is birthday party for Alex. Sleepover.”

“Tonight?”

Ian appears in the doorway, a duffel bag slung over one shoulder, a sleeping back over the other. “Mom, we gotta go. The party started already. And we need to get a present for Alex.”

“But . . . what . . .”

“At school today, Alex asked if I was coming to his birthday party. He said he gave me an invitation, but he didn’t.”

“Isn’t Alex the one who makes fart noises during class? I thought you didn’t like him.”

“That’s Axel, not Alex. Alex is cool. Mom, we really gotta go.”

“But, but . . . I thought you didn’t like sleepovers. Remember that time you stayed over at Kevin’s house? And his mom called me at midnight to get you because you were scared?” In all my life, I’ve never been so happy to be called at midnight.

“I wasn’t scared. There were all these crickets in a cage for his lizards, and the crickets made so much noise I couldn’t sleep. Mom,
we have to go
!”

Disappointment makes my stomach hurt. There will be no dinner together. No movie. Just me and a really big casserole.

On the way out, we pass through the kitchen. The padded envelope is still sitting on the island.

“Give me one minute.” I grab the envelope and duck into the bathroom. It smells of the same lemon as my bedroom. I rip the envelope open, scan the directions, and emerge brandishing a cotton swab.

“Open your mouth. I need to scrape the inside of your cheek.”

Ian has always been full of questions, and I expect him to demand a detailed explanation. I haven’t decided whether to tell him the partial truth—that a DNA analysis can shed light on his ethnic background—or the whole truth: a Y-line DNA test could lead us to his donor. I was going break the news slowly, gauge his reaction carefully. Now there’s no time.

But Ian is so anxious to get to the birthday party, he doesn’t ask questions, just opens his mouth so I can get my sample and then hurries into the car, which is still warm from my drive home.

Later, much later, after I’ve tried watching a movie and reading a book, only to find myself pacing around the echoing house, I grab my purse and the Tyvek envelope containing the salivasoaked swab. The rain comes down in sheets, but the post office is less than a mile away. A blue mailbox stands at the edge of the tiny parking lot.

The envelope falls with a thud.

Two weeks later, I receive an e-mail from Helix Laboratories. They tell me that Ian is a male of Northern European ancestry, which is not much of a surprise. And then, the big news: Ian’s Y chromosome matches two individuals in Helix Lab’s extensive database. By 37 and 42 percent.

In other words, we have failed to track down any close relatives. I have met another dead end. If I sign a release, Helix will add Ian’s results to their public database, but I don’t want to give up that kind of control.

Per your request, we will notify you of any future Y-line matches of greater than 50%,
the e-mail tells me. A name might pop up a year from now. Or two. Or ten. By then it will be too late.

I’m so over Donor 4317. Something about him just never felt right. Plus, once I broke down and read all of his boring medical stuff, I saw that there was a ton of cancer in his family, and that’s not something you want to mess around with.

Right now I’m torn between two lovers. Nonlovers. Whatever. First, we’ve got Donor 5429, just a few miles away from me at the Southern California Cryobank. He’s six foot four with brown hair and hazel eyes. He does triathlons and plays the drums. And he cries at movies.

Eric? Never cries.

Bachelor Number Two’s money shot is in cold storage on the other side of the country, at the Northern Florida Sperm Repository. But that’s okay. No long-distance relationship issues there. They ship! My baby could be a jet setter before he’s ever born!

Bachelor Number Two, aka Donor 81GH2, calls himself a “nerdy jock.” How cute is that? Plus, he says he can’t wait to have children of his own someday.

Sometimes I daydream about meeting 5429 or 81GH2. We’d fall in love, get married, and then,
finally,
have babies together. I wouldn’t even mind about his other little donor children running around somewhere in the United States (or even Europe). I’ve never been a selfish person. And anyway, he wouldn’t love those other kids. They’d be like distant cousins he’d never met.

I’ve decided that 5429 is named Lucas and 81GH2 is named Shane. Or maybe Crispin.

Eric doesn’t know that I’ve been cruising sperm donors. I’ve been waiting for just the right moment to threaten to have someone else’s baby. If that’s not a wake-up call, I don’t know what is. In the meantime, thinking about these guys, trying to imagine their voices, smells, and eyes, makes me feel more in control of my destiny.

Friday night we have dinner at Eric’s mom’s house. She lives in Glendale, which is north of L.A. In other words, the drive is a nightmare, especially on Fridays.

I don’t know how it’s become a thing, but practically every Friday, Eric calls and asks me if I’m doing something because his mom is cooking dinner. His mom’s nice and all, but it kind of sucks that her dinners are the closest thing Eric and I have to dates.

Eric and I started going out a couple of years after his father died. Since my dad died when I was little, Eric and I had a bond, right from the beginning. Sometimes I wonder if that’s the problem in our relationship. Maybe he associates meeting me with how bad it felt to lose his father. Or maybe the real problem is that he just doesn’t love me enough.