Authors: Kerry Reichs
M
aryn was overwhelmed with rage. She wanted to slappity-slap happy couples on the streets. She saw pregnant women and wanted to shout that they didn’t appreciate their luck. She wanted to scream at a mother berating her child. You have no idea how good you have it, Maryn’s anger accused. She wanted to yell at her bookkeeper for dodging his wife’s call. Don’t just avoid what you don’t want to deal with, Maryn wanted to warn. You’ll be sorry.
It wasn’t that Maryn minded being alone in the world. Her parents had died years ago. They hadn’t been particularly close and she didn’t feel a keen loss. She didn’t hate her ex-husband, Andy, though he was the cause of her current problems. It would be like being annoyed at the lawn mower rather than the neighbor who cranked it up at six
AM
. She didn’t have the energy to hate his new wife, Summer, though Maryn found Summer’s pretense of trying to re-create her boyish husband into “Andrew” laughable. Andy was a perpetual child, lovable and biddable. Pliable and forgettable. Maryn had been busy battling breast cancer when Andy left her, but it didn’t pass her notice how quickly she’d adapted to his absence, how small the gap in her life, and how easily filled. No, she didn’t hate Andy.
But now, five years after her divorce, Andy was driving Maryn to impotent rage. It was a gooey black presence, and she carried it like an alien in her stomach, aware that it might burst out at any time and savage an unsuspecting victim for the million hurts she sustained each day. It could be the secret smile on a woman as she rested a hand on her swollen belly. It could be a coworker showing off pictures of the family vacation to Yellowstone. It could be twentysomethings swearing they would never be single when they were forty. Hah! She wanted to shout, You think you know? Hah! Just wait and see what life does to you.
It didn’t bother Maryn to be surrounded by younger, beautiful women. Los Angeles was teeming with them, but Maryn didn’t consider it worth considering. Everyone was attractive when they were nineteen. She’d been a knockout herself. She’d had her fun. The hardest part of passing through her midthirties had been coming to terms with no longer being the most attractive person in the room. She was still good looking, sure, but in a mature way. She had wrinkles. She had a belly. She had one fake breast.
At first it had been hard to watch the formation of permanent lines around her mouth, between her brows. The slackening of her skin. The transformation of her hands into her mother’s hands. But, she’d accepted it. Maryn didn’t believe in lying about her age or in Botox. It seemed to her that if you were a great beauty when you were young, you went one of two ways in your forties. You could fight to preserve your youthful looks at all costs, pursuing plastic surgery, collagen, eyelid lifts, tummy tucks, chemical peels, liposuction, you name it. Or you could recognize that you’d had a good run and age as beautifully as you could. Maryn knew she couldn’t compete with the nineteen-year-olds anymore. Or even the twenty-nine-year-olds. But she’d age into a good-looking older woman, probably better than most.
Don’t get her wrong—her face lotion retailed at $98 per wafer-thin bottle, and she’d have Philippe keep her swinging auburn tresses free of grey as long as she was ambulatory. But Maryn didn’t want to wage an all-out war against age. She’d expended a lot of energy, and one breast, to beat cancer. It seemed foolish to waste emotional wealth on a battle that you simply couldn’t win. Maryn didn’t believe in God particularly—not that she
didn’t
believe in God, to be honest, it was more that she didn’t think about him (or her)—but she sort of believed that when time eroded your looks, it was because God figured you had the strength of character not to care anymore. It never occurred to Maryn to wonder what strength of character God attributed to homely children, because, as a beauty, she’d never had to. There was a confidence in that as well. Marginal self-unawareness made life a little easier. Not that life was easy right now.
No, Maryn was fine with her wrinkles and the extortion she paid to touch up her roots. It was happiness that made her rage bubble over like oobleck, sticking to everything it contacted. This morning was textbook.
“Here’s that electric stapler you wanted.” Maryn had stopped by Staples.
“Oh my god!” her assistant Kay shrieked. “Is this the Swingline Optima?!”
The oobleck pressed on Maryn’s brain. “I don’t know. The guy picked it out.”
“This is, like, totally awesome. It staples seventy sheets at a time. It’s, like, the gold standard of staplers!” Kay effused. “I love it, I love it!”
“Jesus, get a life Kay, it’s a stapler not a pony!”
“There’s a lifetime warranty.” Kay’s voice was tiny.
Maryn felt like she’d trod on a kitten.
“I’m sorry. That was a terrible thing to say. I have a horrific headache.” She’d fled to her office, and later given Kay a Starbucks gift certificate.
Maryn’s problem, and the fount of her viscous rage, was impotence. Literally and figuratively, Maryn was impotent. Treatment for cancer had rendered her infertile. This didn’t preclude having a child—she was capable of carrying an implanted embryo to term. And she had the embryos.
Of course
she’d planned for this eventuality. Prior to beginning her cancer treatment, Maryn and Andy had undergone the necessary procedures to freeze fertilized eggs. At thirty-four, it had been no problem. Maryn was as proficient in egg harvesting as she was in everything else. They’d easily secured a good number of follicles in a single procedure.
Maryn had done everything correctly and there was nothing to prevent her from unfreezing an embryo and having a child. While not in Maryn’s life plan, the divorce didn’t make a difference. Maryn wasn’t intimidated about raising a child on her own. Andy had fled at the first sign of chemo vomit, and Maryn had fought off breast cancer alone. Pregnancy would be a walk in the park by comparison. A can of corn, as Andy would say.
Maryn was secure in her job as Vice President of a company that transported horses around the world. She liked to say, “There will always be wealth and there will always be horse racing, so I’ll always have a job.” Maryn loved her job. She enjoyed sassing the grooms who flew with the horses. She liked to finesse her high-brow clients. She joked to friends that she’d be right with them, but first she had to FedEx a horse. Maryn used to be a joker.
Maryn had a hefty salary and vested shares in TC International. She had secure accounts with Middle Eastern breeders, Kentucky racers, and several companies that liked to transfer horse-owning executives to foreign locations, ensuring Maryn of five-figure bonuses each Christmas. She had the wherewithal for all the health care, nannies, private schools, high-end safety-tested nursery furniture, tutors, ballet lessons, and summer vacations to France a child would ever need. Maryn had everything in order except one small thing.
Maryn needed Andy’s consent. One unuttered little yes was going to blow up the works. And she was impotent to do a single thing about it.
Maryn went to her Andy Zone in preparation for the call and picked up the phone.
“Andy Knox,” came his chipper Midwestern greeting. Maryn was relieved that despite his new wife’s pretentions, he wasn’t pretending to be an Andrew.
“Andy, it’s Maryn.”
“Maryn!” His voice was warm, as if it was her regular afternoon call to plan dinner. The frozen lake surrounding the vault of Maryn’s memories of Andy softened to allow a hairline crack. She hardened herself.
“Andy, you haven’t returned the paperwork I sent you.”
“Um. Yes.” Wariness crowded out warmth.
“Why not?”
“Why not? Maryn, you can’t just ask me, ‘Why not?’ like you’re asking if I can stop for bread and milk on the way home. This is a big deal.”
She’d once been fond of his old-fashioned folksiness. Today she found the clichés annoying. Who bought bread and milk anymore? Bagels and nonfat creamer were more like it.
“Andy, this
was
a big deal years ago when we first decided. It was a big deal when I had to take drugs and undergo painful medical procedures. Now it’s paperwork. You don’t even have to leave your office.”
“That’s overly simplistic and you know it. We aren’t negotiating who gets the sofa. We’re talking about fertilized embryos, which will become children.”
Seven, to be precise. Seven healthy fertilized eggs that glowed like gold nuggets in Maryn’s mind, the barrier between her and childlessness.
“The reason I harvested eggs was so I could have children later. You came to terms with your concerns back then. It shouldn’t be difficult to allow me to use the eggs for the very purpose that I froze them. They’re my eggs.”
Maryn was an expert arguer. She could talk him into or out of things so thoroughly that for weeks afterward he couldn’t recall what he’d actually wanted. If she’d tried to talk him out of divorcing her, they’d be married today.
“First of all, they’re not
your
eggs. They’re fertilized embryos. They have
my
sperm,
my
DNA, and
my
chromosomes. Any child conceived by those eggs will be as much my child as yours.”
Maryn sighed. Andy was making his bullet points. She wouldn’t be able to bulldoze him. Andy’s defense against her was scribbling lists of his points and refusing to agree to anything without hanging up and thinking about it. She could practically see his rounded hand.
1. Embryos have MY DNA
“Second, things are different now. I’m married to Summer. We plan to start a family of our own. It wouldn’t be right for me to start a family with you.”
2. Summer
“I’m not asking you to start a family with me. I’m asking you to let me start a family on my own. I don’t want help and I don’t want money. I don’t need anything but your signature. It won’t affect your life at all. Let me try, Andy.”
“It’s not a signature, it’s a baby. You’re not talking about unfreezing a TV dinner. I’d know that my child was out there, needing care and support. Being a father is a big responsibility.”
3. Responsibility
“Don’t think of it like that. You wouldn’t be the father any more than a rancher is a cook. He provides the steer, but it’s the chef who creates the meal. It’s like the house. We bought everything together, but now you have nothing to do with it, and aren’t responsible for cleaning and repair. I maintain it and pay for it by myself. You have a shiny new house. I bet you never miss the old stuff.”
“A baby isn’t furniture, Maryn. I can’t forget all about it. What kind of father walks away from his own baby?”
“What kind of husband walks away from his wife?” It was out before she could help herself and she was shaken, unsure where it had come from. They were silent in the aftermath, like a bus had crashed through the plate-glass window of their civil facade, shocking everyone.
“Not a good one, Maryn,” Andy finally said quietly. “I don’t want to make the same mistake twice.”
Tears really do prickle, Maryn thought.
“Andy, please,” she whispered. “It’s my only option.” Though she tried not to think about it because it threatened her icy lake, Maryn knew Andy truly was a good person. “Please.”
“I need to think about it.” And he hung up.
The phone was emitting a fast busy signal when Maryn finally replaced the receiver. Still, she sat. For the first time in a long time the shiny black oobleck of her rage had abated. In its place crept a cold grey mist that blurred her vision and chilled her bones.
I
need to think about it,” Andy said, though every chord in his gut shrieked, “
No, no, no!”
so loudly he thought his ex-wife could hear it over the phone. He couldn’t refuse Maryn outright. She’d be a wonderful mother.
As he heard her hiccup in a breath, like a tendril of hope, panic’s talons dug deep.
“I have to go,” he said, “I’ll call you.” He hung up hastily. He shouldn’t have given her hope. He had no idea what to do.
Andy dragged a tired hand over his face. Maryn hadn’t changed her tactics in five years apart. He stared at the points he’d scribbled on his deskpad.
1. MY sperm
2. Summer
3. Children!!!
4. NOT furniture
Andy wished it was as simple as dividing marital furniture. Was that where the expression “easy chair” came from? He wanted to promise Maryn a recliner, a leather sofa, a table made of rubies, an ivory throne complete with castle, a diamond tiara, a fur coat, and an emerald scepter. Anything that could make a woman forget what she’d lost. Anything that would let him walk away from his guilt. But of course it didn’t work that way.
He was resting his forehead on his fingers when there was a knock and his office door opened. His senior partner, Jacqueline Mann, led a man and a woman into the room. Was it four o’clock already? Andy straightened, tightening the knot of his silk tie and resisting the urge to give his hair a spit and a lick. His cowlick was likely to be standing up like a third-grader’s on picture day.
“This is Andy Knox. He’ll be handling your real estate settlements.” Jacque was all professionalism, resisting even the slightest frown at Andy’s rumpled appearance. “Andy, these are the representatives for the Cornin account.”
“Pleased to meet you.” Andy stuck out his hand. He ignored their looks of dismay. His youthful appearance did not inspire confidence.
Jacque did not believe in ignoring client alarm. “Of course, I’ll be working closely with Andy on this part of the project,” she assured them.
Andy didn’t mind. It comforted him to know Jacque would be supervising. She was assured and competent. No one questioned her authority or intelligence. With her short hair and her name she even seemed like a man.
“Please, have a seat.” Andy gestured expansively at the fancy leather chairs his wife had insisted upon.
As always happened, the clients warmed toward Andy, seduced by his blond-haired blue-eyed good looks. Andy had learned early on that this was the case. People liked good-looking people. Add designer office chairs and an easygoing charm and you were aces. When the pair departed, it was smiles and firm grips all around.
Jacque gave him her crisp “well done” nod as she led the clients out. Andy was pleased. He was capable at his job, but he didn’t consider himself a real lawyer. Real lawyers strode confidently into courtrooms and yelled at narrow-minded judges, exposed prosecutorial misconduct, and exonerated wrongfully accused clients. Andy’s job involved boring administrative work, preparing the same filings year after year. It was a great scam created by the Bar that an attorney was required at all. You didn’t need a law degree for Andy’s job. But he had one, which made him happy because it had made his mother so proud to say, “My son the attorney.” His wife, Summer, also called him Andrew-a-Partner-at-Cayce-Lanfranco-&-Moody, as opposed to Andy, which everyone else called him. Technically, he wasn’t a partner, only Of Counsel, but he never quibbled. Summer knew how to promote.
At the thought of his wife, Andy looked hurriedly at his Tag Heuer watch. Crap. He threw some files in his walnut leather briefcase and snapped the brass locks shut with an authoritative click. He always carried his briefcase because it was what lawyers did, even though he would not open it again until he was back at his desk tomorrow and removed the files. Case in hand, Burberry raincoat hung not exactly casually over his arm, revealing just enough signature plaid, Andy hurried out of his office and home to his wife, who would tell him what to do about Maryn.
As he paused for his driveway gates to admit him, Andy felt the usual twin emotions—pride that he lived in this glamorous and tantalizingly invisible Spanish Mission–style house in Santa Monica, and panic at the thought of how much he owed. Sometimes when he was waiting, tourists craned to see what important Hollywood shaker was sliding to privacy behind these gates. Andy loved that. But today there were no gawkers and the gates leered like juicy fangs of debt.
“What about that one in Brentwood?” he’d asked Summer after she’d decided this must be the house.
“Brentwood is part of Los Angeles,” Summer had replied without looking up.
Times like these made Andy wonder if he wasn’t very smart. Usually he’d let it go, so no one would catch on, but this time he persisted. “We both liked the other one better.” The modest ranch on Carmelina Avenue had delighted them with its pretty yard and sunny rooms.
Summer sighed and put down her pen, swiveling to face him. Her tone did little to diminish his feeling of stupidity. “Andrew. Los Angeles is the second-most-populated city in the United States, with the second-highest crime rate. It’s facing a one-billion-dollar budget shortfall for this year because of the mammoth bailout needed for the city’s employee pension funds. It’s not somewhere I want to send my children to school, when we have children.” Having children was a discussion Summer usually postponed. “Santa Monica is just better. Besides, think of your political aspirations.”
“Political aspirations?” Andrew wasn’t sure he would glamorize his vague attention to current events as “political aspirations.”
“You’ve never held public office and don’t have a political background. It’ll be a longer ladder to reach a meaningful position in a major urban center like Los Angeles. I don’t want to fuck around for years with you on the Brentwood Library Book Selection Board or the Safety Commission on Jailhouse Plumbing before we get a real leg into a position of value. Ronald Reagan went straight to Governor of California and so can you.”
“What about parks and recreation?” Andy was passionate about green space. He appreciated the beach, but it wasn’t the same as a wide swath of green grass for throwing a football.
“Andrew, parks and recreation in the city of Los Angeles isn’t about green spaces. It’s about prying Sureño gangs out of dusty barrios in Compton. Besides, whites are a minority in Los Angeles, under thirty percent of the population. In comparison, over forty-six percent of the population is Hispanic or Latino. The mayor’s name is Antonio Villaraigosa, with City Council members Reyes, Cardena, Alarcón, and Huizar among others. You don’t stand a chance.”
While everything Summer was saying was strictly factual, it made Andy uncomfortable in ways he couldn’t put his finger on. Was it racist to speak flat facts if they carried an aura unfavorable to a specific race? Or was his the oversensitivity conservatives ranted about, blinding liberals from finding solutions because they wouldn’t acknowledge a politically incorrect problem? Growing up in Nebraska they didn’t talk about race all that much. There’d been only one black family in Andy’s town.
Summer sensed Andy’s discomfort. She rose from her desk chair and moved to the sofa, patting the cushion next to her. Andy sat.
“Besides being beautiful, and close to your office,” she said, “Santa Monica has the political benefit—for
you—
of being over eighty percent white. It has an older average voting-age population, and over ninety percent have a high school education, with close to fifty-five percent having a bachelor’s degree or higher. That will help you run an issues-based campaign.”
Summer’s certainty that Andy would run a campaign, that he had
issues
, caught him a bit by surprise. He wasn’t opposed to the idea of running for City Council—it sounded great. But it would never have occurred to him before. He was more likely to organize a Fantasy Football league than a political rally. Summer spewed census details; Andy was sports stats.
“Maybe you should run,” Andy said. “You’re smarter than me and you already know all about it.”
Summer had a mind like a trap. Any piece of information that made it into her brain was stored forever. During her morning weather forecast, if she said something like, “The last time we had this much rain in Glendale was in 1972 when they got seventeen inches in four hours,” she wasn’t reading off the cards. She knew it.
Summer blushed, for a second not a polished on-air reporter but a girl, awkward in praise, tucking her hair behind an ear so she wasn’t looking at him. “Flatterer.”
“I mean it!” Andy protested. “It isn’t my contributions that beat the pants off everyone at Trivial Pursuit.” They’d long since stopped playing at home because her drubbings were boring for them both.
She smiled. “I appreciate your vote of confidence, but being a politician is a man’s job.” Summer had some old-fashioned Alabama beliefs. “If I was elected to anything other than Magnolia Queen, my daddy would think I’d stopped shaving my legs and become a lesbian. That’s not how we do things down in Jasper.”
Summer had grown up outside of Birmingham. Though Andy had never met her family, they still lived in Jasper, Alabama—population: fifteen thousand people, four trailer parks, and two defunct coal mines. Summer’s family had come from all three. Summer didn’t talk about her life before she became a weather girl for WBPT 106.9 FM radio in Birmingham. She’d eviscerated her accent so completely, most people didn’t even know she was from the South.
Andy tugged her hair. “I know hanging out in Denny’s was fine dining in Jasper, but I’m not sure I’m cut out for it. Politicians seem to spend more time shaking hands over Breakfast Buster Platters than anything else.”
“That’s not funny, Andrew Knox.” She slapped his hand away, no humor in her look. “Being a politician is honorable and privileged. When Ronald Reagan came to speak at Maxwell Air Force Base in 1982, my daddy drove us all the way down to Montgomery just to stand outside the gates and wave little flags. I thought we’d come to see the king. He flew
on a plane
in and out of Alabama
on the same day.
I was so embarrassed to be in sneakers, I drew flowers all over them with a marker to make them look like fancy slippers.” She laughed at the recollection. “You can call me a redneck, but I still believe there is no nobler calling than getting elected. It’s American royalty.”
Andy knew if she mentioned her upbringing, it was important.
“You should be the one to run. You’d be a great queen.”
“No, sir.” She shook her head. “I’ll be Jackie to your Kennedy. A woman takes office when she’s a widow stepping into her husband’s shoes. Even in the ultraliberal People’s Republic of Santa Monica this is the first time they’ve had two sitting female council members, and that’s only because of political infighting over Housing Board control.”
“If I have to win so you can have my seat when I die, I guess we’re moving to Santa Monica.” Her happiness made her plain face almost pretty. He squeezed her hand. “You’ll be my chief of staff.”
“
Unofficial
chief of staff.” Summer smiled.
“What exactly will you be unofficially chief of staffing over?” Andy asked. “Besides green spaces?”
She shrugged. Now that his candidacy was settled in her mind, she was more interested in getting back to the dinner invitations on her desk. “Local concerns tend to remain static. Homelessness and affordable housing top the list.”
“Speaking of affordable housing,” Andy remembered. “That house on San Vicente is still out of our budget. Let’s call Dale and see if we can find something a little more within our price range.” He started to push off the stiff sofa.
Summer’s huge eyes swung back toward him like lanterns, pinning him in their beam. Andy froze.
“Andrew. The median home price in Santa Monica is close to a million dollars. There’s no way we can run a credible campaign from a crappy bungalow east of Lincoln.” For a second Andy thought he heard the bark of his ex-wife Maryn’s laughter. She’d have been unable to contain herself at the argument for a million-dollar headquarters to run an affordable housing campaign.
Summer continued, oblivious. “It’s imperative that we associate with the right community to facilitate your entrée into Santa Monica society. That house off San Vicente is perfect. It has a gate. I think a Baldwin lives on that block—one of the good ones. It has space for entertaining. It’s
the
address.”
Andy’s father hadn’t believed in debt. He’d drilled into Andy the importance of not being house poor. “It’ll eat you alive, son,” he’d warned. “Where’s the point in havin’ that extra bedroom if your home’s your nemesis? Better git somethin’ smaller and furnish it so’s you can relax and enjoy it a’ night.”
“But, Summer—”
Summer fixed him with her stare. “Andrew, either you want something or you don’t. I didn’t marry you to live a half-assed life of unaccomplished goals. I married you because I thought we had the same aspirations, to own a nice home, to raise a family, and to contribute back to the community. Don’t tell me I was wrong.”
Andy was confused again. He did want those things. But a mansion and a City Council seat seemed to be only one, very high-end, version of those things. “We do have the same goals. We can still have—”
“You don’t like the house?”