What Came First (19 page)

I say, “The bug man makes the yard clean.”

“So the yard is nice for the bugs?”

“Exactly.”

Harrison presses his palms against the glass. “I want to be a bug man when I grow up.”

I pat him on the head. “I was kind of hoping you’d be a surgeon, but hey. Whatever makes you happy.”

The phone rings.

“I’LL GET IT.” Harrison lunges.

Sydney, wearing a Snow White gown and a lopsided tiara, comes tearing in from the toy room. “NO, I’LL GET IT!”

“I WILL!”

“NO, I WILL!” Sydney grabs the phone from the cradle.

“MINE!” Harrison grabs Sydney’s arm.

“YOU GOT IT LAST TIME—AARGH!”

Snow White is down for the count. She drops the phone. Harrison picks it up and presses the answer button. Score!

“Hello?”

He pauses. Sydney whimpers.

“Yes.”

He pauses again. Sydney begins to howl, softly at first . . .

“Yes.”

. . . and then not so softly.

“What?” Harrison scowls.
“What?”
He scowls some more and then hands me the phone. “I can’t hear her.” He goes back to looking out the window.

I cover the phone’s mouthpiece and go into the toy room. Sydney’s howl—it’s really more of a shriek at this point—travels, but it’s better than in the kitchen, and I can’t go outside with the exterminator here.

“Hello?”

“Wendy? This is Laura Cahill. I hope it’s okay to call. You said between nine-thirty and eleven-thirty . . .”

“Laura! Hi. My kids are on break this week. But it’s fine. We’re not doing anything right now.” Can she hear Sydney screaming? Does it matter?

“Did you . . . did the DNA results come back?” I ask.

“They did.” I hear her inhale. “Eric Fergus is Donor 613.”

I feel unexpectedly light-headed and not just because my eardrums hurt. “Wow. I’d kind of assumed he was, but having it confirmed . . .”

“I know.”

We are quiet for a moment.

I say, “So was he thrilled?”

“Ecstatic.” She snorts. “But he agreed to meet with us. Ian and me, I mean. We’re having lunch on Saturday. I thought you’d want to know.”

“I do. Thank you.”

Eric Fergus is nothing to me or my family. So why are my hands so damp?

Laura says, “Is there anything you want me to ask him?”

“I don’t know. Just the usual medical stuff, I guess. Ethnic background. That sort of thing.”

“Of course.”

“And also . . .”

“Yes?”

“Can you take his picture? The kids . . . they might ask questions someday. You know, if it comes out that their dad is not, you know. Anyway, if you could take a picture . . .”

“Of course.”

My left eye is twitching, and I can’t find Ian’s shoes. As much as I’d like to blame the shoes for the twitch, clearly it comes from getting only three hours (tops) of fitful sleep last night. But the missing shoes aren’t helping.

While I crawl around the living room, Ian plays with his Nintendo at the kitchen table, skinny legs swinging. He looks so handsome, in khaki shorts and an olive-green polo shirt. I made him change after he came down to breakfast in soccer shorts and an oversize, faded Maui T-shirt: appropriate attire for a day at the park but not for a restaurant lunch.

“You only get one chance to make a first impression,” I told him—thinking,
And a last impression too
.

So far I’ve located one green flip-flop, one tan flip-flop, and one black soccer slide. I peer under the couch.

“What about your sneakers? Do you know where they are?”

“Uh-uh.” His thumbs work the Nintendo.

I crawl over to a chair, put my face to the ground—nothing.

I say, “You might have to wear your dress shoes.”

“That would look dumb.”

“Not if you wore them with long pants.”

“That would look dumb too.” He looks up from the Nintendo. “Can’t we just go get another pair of flip-flops at Target?”

“We don’t have time.”

He shrugs and goes back to his game.

Darn it! I should have insisted Ian lay out his clothes last night, as he does on school nights. (Okay, truth: usually I choose the clothes, but I try to involve him in the process as much as possible.)

As much as I hate to bother her on the weekend, I call Carmen. Since Ian was wearing his sneakers when she left last night, she won’t know where they are, but she might be able to provide some clues about the flip-flops. In the name of tidiness, Carmen has a tendency to throw Ian’s shoes into the nearest toy bin.

Her phone rings three, four, five times and then goes to voice mail. I hang up, and just like that, an image hits me: a green flip-flop, mixed in a basket with Ian’s action figures. I saw it when I tucked him into bed last night.

I race up the stairs to his room, and there it is, right between Batman and a Ninja Turtle (Leonardo, I believe). Back in the kitchen, I hand Ian the pair. The sage-green flip-flops match his shirt, which in turn matches his eyes. Does Eric Fergus have eyes like that? No, his eyes are blue. That’s one of the few bits of information the sperm bank gave out.

I grab my purse and we are out the door, just as I notice the damage that crawling around on the floor did to my beige linen skirt and sleeveless white cotton blouse. Oh, well. There’s no time for ironing.

Ian buckles himself into the backseat, choosing the side with the DVD player. The dashboard clock reads 10:45. We are scheduled to meet Eric Fergus in Hermosa Beach at eleven-thirty. We should have just enough time.

My BlackBerry is fully charged, but I plug it into the car charger, anyway. That will make it easy to reach in case traffic is so heavy that I need to call Eric Fergus to say we’ll be late. His numbers, added to my contact list last night, seem inappropriately intimate, mixed in with the information of so many people from my day-today life. Of course, maybe I’m just feeling that way because of last night’s dream date, which I managed to squeeze into my three hours of sleep.

In the dream, I stood in a dim, red-walled room. A buff, shirtless man in blue jeans faced me from the other side. His hair was light brown, his eyes were pale. He looked like the kind of guy you see on shopping bags and billboards: shiny, sculpted . . . perfect.

Without saying anything, we crossed the room, met in the middle, and kissed. With tongue. After a while, we fell (or melted) to the floor, and rolled around for a bit. And then, on the soft red floor, we did it. We consummated the dream date, which would have been fine—wonderful, really. After all, it’s not like I’m seeing any action during my waking hours. Only problem was that when I woke up, my entire body flushed and tingling, I realized that the man in my dream was Eric Fergus.

“You nervous?” I ask Ian as we pull onto the 91 Freeway, working hard to keep my tone casual.

“No,” he says from the backseat.

“Good. Because there’s no reason to be.” My armpits are already damp, and it’s not even seventy degrees outside.

“Can we go swimming after lunch?” he asks.

“What? You mean in the ocean?”

“Yeah.”

“No! The water’s too cold, and the air . . . besides, you don’t even have a swimsuit or a towel.”

“Details.” He heard me say this once. Normally, it’s funny coming from him. Today I have to force myself to laugh. There’s no reason for me to be nervous. It’s just lunch, after all. If only I were half as laid-back as my son. Or as his donor.

“Perhaps it’s best for us to meet on neutral territory,” I suggested to Eric Fergus once he agreed to get together. “A restaurant? Maybe down at the beach?”

“Sure,” he replied.

“Is that okay?” I asked. “Because I want this meeting to be as comfortable for you as possible.”

“Yeah, it’s fine.”

“I was thinking a Saturday afternoon,” I said. “Unless Sunday is better.”

“Either works.”

Once I’d decided on Hennessey’s, a pub in Hermosa Beach known for its ocean views, I called him back to confirm—using his cell-phone number this time.

“So we’re all set, then?” I asked.

“Yup.”

“And you’ll be there?”

“Yeah. Sure. Of course.”

“Um. I don’t mean to be . . . it’s just . . . last time, the Skype call—my son was very disappointed.” It needed to be said. He needed to understand that standing us up a second time was not an option.

When he didn’t respond, I said, “I need your assurances that, barring some unforeseen complication—by which I mean something major—you’ll be at the restaurant when you say you will.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Because your girlfriend said it was okay to meet us.”

“Yeah.”

That’s what he told me: that he’d bailed on the Skype call because his girlfriend was upset about it, and that he was agreeing to lunch because his girlfriend said he should.

Now, on the drive to the beach, I am trying to picture Eric Fergus’s controlling girlfriend when a tan SUV swerves in front of me. I hit the brakes and steer toward the next lane, just missing a little orange car.

“Jerk!” I pound the horn. Adrenaline courses through my veins with such force I fear it will drip out of my ears.

“Mom!” Ian scolds.

“Sorry, buddy. I shouldn’t have—I just got . . . sorry.”

My armpits have soaked half-moon sweat marks onto my white cotton blouse.

But it’s okay! Really!
Everything will be okay.
Ian will remember to put his napkin on his lap and chew with his mouth closed. We will tell stories about our life together: the vacations, the family dinners, the chickens.

I’ll hold off on asking for more sperm till we’re done with the meal. It’s not the kind of thing you discuss over food. Besides, by then we’ll be more comfortable with each other. He’ll have seen what a devoted mother I am and what a great kid Ian is: so sweet and funny and smart. Such a good student . . . at least most of the time.

To get my mind off of our lunch, I say, “So buddy, when we get home, we’re going to get right to work on your times tables.”

“Tomorrow,” he says.

“Good idea,” I say. “We’ll go over them today, and then we can do it again tomorrow. Right?”

“Mm.”

“You’ve got the test on Tuesday, remember. This time you’re going to ace it. Right?” He hadn’t aced it last time. Actually, he’d failed it, his paper coming home with a line for a parent’s signature and a hastily drawn sad face.

“Can I watch a DVD?” he asks, his hand already poised over the play button.

“Yes. But when we get home . . .”

“I’ll feed the chickens,” he says.

“And do your times tables.”

He laughs. “Oh, yeah.”

Thanks to the carpool lane, we make wonderful time—until the lane ends and we’re forced into the sluggish mass of cars.

I hate being late. There’s no excuse for it. If we had just left the house fifteen minutes earlier, as originally planned. If I had only set Ian’s clothes out last night. If only we didn’t live in a place with such hideous traffic. If only, if only . . .

It’s 11:34 by the time I find street parking near the Hermosa Beach Promenade: not terrible, but late nonetheless. I put the car in park, turn off the ignition, and throw the car keys in my purse in one fluid motion.

The DVD player turns off with the car. “Can I finish watching the scene?” Ian asks.

“Buddy, we’re late!”

“It’ll only take like a minute.”

“No!”

By the time we cross the street and hurry past cafés and T-shirt shops that line the promenade, it is 11:38. Hennessey’s Tavern is the last restaurant before you hit the sand. There is no one waiting by the door except the hostess, a pretty young woman with pierced nose.