What Came First (36 page)

Darren glares at the computer screen. He jabs at his keypad, pulling up a Fantasy Football site.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

His face is so tight, his lips are turning white.

“It was an emotional time,” I say. “I was hurt. And angry. I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t look at me.

“I wanted a baby. So much.”

Finally, he speaks. “No matter whose baby it was?”

“I thought you were okay with a donor. At first, anyway. I know you didn’t love the idea, but adoption just—” All of a sudden I realize what he just said.

“Oh my God. You think Harrison and Sydney are . . .” And just like that, I see it too: the thick, dark hair. The brooding eyes. The quick tempers.

“There’s no way,” I say, even as I try to picture Ashlyn and Brianne Plant, steeling myself against a resemblance. “The doctors would have known when they implanted the eggs.” (Would they have? Twenty-four hours later?) “I didn’t get pregnant before that even with hormone shots and IUI, so there’s no way . . .”

Hormones. I’d taken plenty before the egg harvesting. Could I have dropped more eggs afterward?

“I don’t think it’s possible,” I say. When he doesn’t respond, I add, “We can get a paternity test, if you want. Just to make sure. It would be easy because . . .” Because I have the number of the clinic that has already analyzed Eric Fergus’s DNA. But Darren doesn’t even know about Eric: just one more dirty secret.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Darren says. “Not really.”

That’s when I know: I’ve lost him.

Ian doesn’t even like Axel—with complete justification, I might add. The one time he came over to our house (a quid pro quo situation following a six-hour swim and playdate at Axel’s house, followed by dinner at Islands), he threw LEGOs at the cat and talked incessantly about poop. Chickens, humans, cats: no one’s excrement potential went unmentioned.

In addition to making fart noises in the classroom, Ian once told me, Axel has been known to whisper an inappropriate word to the girls.

“Which inappropriate word?” I asked.

“I don’t want to say it.”

“What’s the first letter?”

As there’s a lot you can do with a
B,
I probed further. “What’s the second letter?”

He looked up in the air, considering.
“U.”

Now I was really confused. “Whisper it.”

His eyes widened.

“It’s okay,” I told him. While I disliked the idea of encouraging my son to repeat an obscenity, I needed to know just how badly this Axel kid had corrupted him.

He leaned forward and said, in a stage whisper, “Boobies!”

“It’s spelled
B-O-O,
” I said. “Not
B
-
U.
”

He frowned.
“B-O-O-B-I-E-S . . .?”

“Yes.”

“That’s how you spell ‘boobies’?”

“Yes.”

“B-O
-
O
-
B—”

“Enough, Ian.”

He pressed his lips together and looked at the ground. “Sorry for being inappropriate.”

“It’s okay.”

“And for saying ‘boobies.’”

Because of this conversation, when Axel’s mother called one evening last week to see if Ian could spend a long weekend at their house on the Colorado River (“His sister’s bringing a friend too”), I felt confident saying that I didn’t think Ian would be comfortable spending three nights away from home but that I’d ask him.

“Sure, I’ll go,” he said.

“But you don’t like Axel,” I reminded him.

“He’s okay.”

“You said he’s inappropriate.”

“He’s better this year.”

“The River is four hours away. If you’re unhappy, I won’t be able to come get you.” (I’m bluffing, of course; I’d gladly drive to the desert to pick him up, if he so much as hinted that he wanted to come home.)

“I want to go,” he said. “Axel said they have a boat.”

“It’ll be hot there,” I said.

“I want to go.”

I’ve left work early to pick up Ian from sports camp. He’s all ready when Axel’s family arrives at one o’clock, the four of them plus his twelve-year-old sister’s friend stuffed into a dirty, black, boatpulling SUV. I haul Ian’s duffel bag down the sidewalk while he races ahead.

Axel’s mother, Terri, a busty blonde with power shoulders and tanned, meaty thighs, bounces out of the passenger seat. The boat sticks out into the street. An image flashes through my mind: our local teenage chicken-hitting driver zipping around the curb and colliding with the boat. The idea shouldn’t please me, but it does.

“Laura!” When Terri embraces me, I have no choice but to hug back even though we are cordial acquaintances at best.

“Thanks again.” I take a step back. “For taking Ian. He’s really looking forward to it.”

“No, thank
you
! For letting him
come
! ’Cause Axel would drive us
crazy
if his sister had a friend along and he didn’t!”

Next, Axel’s red-faced, hefty father gets out of the car.

“Hot!” Pete says. “Ninety-seven degrees. Says my thermometer. And the River? It’s gonna be, what? Twenty more’n that? Whooh!”

“Better you than me,” I joke, though I’d gladly spend a weekend in the Sahara if it meant I could be with Ian.

I pass the duffel bag to Pete. He straddles the trailer hitch, pops open the back window, and shoves the bag next to a bulky Coors cooler.

I gesture at the cooler. “You don’t drink while you’re driving the boat, do you?” I try (and fail) to project a casual tone.

“’Course not.” He grins and gives the duffel bag one more pat before slamming the window shut. He doesn’t meet my eyes. He is lying.

Ian has settled and strapped into the third row of seats, next to Axel, too far from the door for me to kiss him.

I lean in next to Axel’s sister, who is singing along to whatever is playing on her iPod.

“Have fun, buddy,” I say to the back row. “Call you tonight.”

“’Kay.” He barely even looks up, too engrossed in the spare Nintendo Axel has brought along.

I stand in my driveway until the SUV and boat are out of sight, thinking,
I have entrusted my child to people who drink beer while driving their boat. I have entrusted my child to people who named their son Axel.

By the time I realize I should have gone back to the office rather than working from home, it is too late. Between Carmen and Ian, I am almost never alone in the house, and the quiet, empty space only serves to amplify my loneliness. Last night I dreamed that Carmen called from El Salvador to say she wasn’t coming back. I awoke in a cold sweat. At least tomorrow is a workday; overtime will be my salvation.

For now, though, it’s just me and the chickens. And the cat, of course, but he’s asleep underneath my bed and not much in the mood for conversation. I work on my laptop until six o’clock, when I figure enough time has passed for Ian to have arrived at the River. Terri’s phone number is affixed to my refrigerator (also listed on my computer and programmed into my cell).

“Laura! Hey!” Children yell and laugh in the background. At least, I think they’re happy sounds.

We exchange pleasantries (they stopped at Taco Bell for an early dinner; it’s hot in the desert), and then she calls Ian.

“Hi.”

“Hey, buddy! Having fun?”

“Yeah.” Do I detect any uncertainty in his voice?

“What have you done so far?”

“We just go here. We’re going for ice cream later.”

“Fun!”

“Yeah.”

“I miss you. I love you.” My voice catches.

“I love you too.”

“Call me anytime,” I say. “If you want to talk, or . . .” I catch myself before I can say
if you want me to come get you
.

When we get off the phone, I pull some leftovers out of the fridge for the chickens—last night’s pasta salad, made from a kit.

The doorbell rings.

Face pleasant but stern, I open the door, prepared to say thanks, but I don’t want your magazine subscriptions, contracting services, candy bars, or religion.

“Hi,” Eric Fergus says.

I am not prepared to say anything.

“Can I come in?”

I step out of the way. He passes the threshold and pauses, looking around.

“He’s not here,” I say.

“Oh.” He shifts his weight. “Then I guess I—”

“Have you eaten anything?” I blurt.

It’s Eric’s idea to eat outside with the chickens, and it isn’t until I’ve set the bowl and plates on the table that it hits me: my yard looks like crap. I mean that literally. There is chicken crap on the walkways. Chicken crap around the patchy grass. Even chicken crap on a lounge chair.

What the chickens haven’t crapped on, they’ve largely eaten. We have no weeds, true, but we don’t have much of a lawn left either.

“The chickens were a mistake,” I announce.

Eric, who has just opened the coop, stops throwing pasta at the greedy birds. “No, they weren’t.”

“They were supposed to teach Ian responsibility,” I say. “But he doesn’t clean up after them. And they were supposed to be calming. That’s what everyone said—nothing more soothing than hanging out with your chickens. But what’s soothing about witnessing the slow destruction of my yard?”

Eric chucks pasta into the coop. “They’re cool. It’s like you’re living on a farm or something.”

“But I’m not. That’s the thing. We’re not on a farm. Ian is not growing up in some rustic, homey paradise with a laid-back earth mother. Instead he’s just got me and my commute and my endless insomnia. I think the chickens were supposed to make up for all of the things I couldn’t give him. A father. Brothers and sisters. A normal life.”

“Who’s to say what’s normal? I grew up with two parents, two brothers, and a sister. And look how I turned out.”

He isn’t joking or looking for argument: he says it as a statement of fact. And then he goes back to chucking pasta.

“If I open a bottle of wine, will you have some?” I ask.

“Sure.”

He follows me into the kitchen, puts the pasta bowl into the sink, and leans against the counter as I stick a corkscrew into a bottle of Merlot that someone from work gave me for Christmas.

“Does this mean you’re not going to use a different donor?” he asks.

I stop my twisting. “No. I could keep going with the IVF . . . but it’s so expensive. We weren’t even able to afford a cheap vacation this summer. Plus, the doctor said . . .”

I swallow hard and twist the corkscrew violently, push down, and pull up. The cork releases with a satisfying pop.

“What did the doctor say?” Eric asks, twenty seconds after I assumed we’d dropped the conversation.

“He said I’m probably just too old. That I could try using a donor egg or a surrogate, but considering how many failed attempts I’ve had, the odds of me becoming pregnant are so slim that it would be foolish to keep pushing my body this way.”

Eric says, “I’d like to donate again. That’s part of the reason I came here. To tell you that.”

I take a deep breath and exhale every shred of hope I’d been carrying around. “It’s too late. It wouldn’t work. And I . . . I just can’t go through that again.”

I pour the wine into two big glasses. I give one to Eric and take mine, along with the bottle, out to the shabby backyard.

The wine smells and tastes vaguely musty. I try to remember who gave it to me. A case of regifting, perhaps?

Eric and I sit at the teak table. I scoop some supermarket-bought Cobb salad onto his plate, trying to minimize the bacon.

“Do you date?” he asks.

I freeze, salad servers poised over my plate, and search for the appropriate words for this kind of situation—the only problem being, of course, that hardly anyone has ever been in these circumstances before.

“You’re a lovely man,” I say. “But given our . . . connection . . . in addition to the age difference, I don’t think it would be wise to pursue any kind of a romantic relationship.”