Authors: Kerry Reichs
“You’re already gone,” she said.
Andy waited a second, two. Shoulders slumped, he walked out the door, closing it as gently as he could. He only wished he could have shut out her haunted look as easily.
“Andrew!” Summer hissed. Silence had fallen. He was at the podium on the Santa Monica Pier. People were staring.
“So let’s get to work!” Andy wrapped up with false cheer, raising Victoria’s hand as much as her height would allow. Summer beamed and clapped, and the event organizer gave a thumbs-up. The boisterous crowd broke into teams and began dispersing. Andy wished he was at home.
The group decided that the motor-chair kids would cover the paved beach path, the younger kids would do the playground, and the older ones could venture down the beach with their buddies until they tired. Andy elected to go with the last group, hoping they’d be the most independent. He wondered if he was legitimately ill, he was so sweaty.
“Why should we trust you?” asked a skinny black boy with sloping shoulders.
“What?” Andy was aghast.
The boy looked confused. “I’m thirsty,” he repeated.
“Oh, of course.” Andy handed him a bottle of water from his pack. Then he panicked. Were these kids allowed to have water? Maryn could only have ice chips, though she’d begged and begged the nurse for a cool drink.
“Are you okay, mister?” the boy asked.
“I’m fine.” Andy struggled for a joke. “But if you drink that, make sure to use the bathroom before you go. You don’t want to have to dig a hole in the sand. We’d all watch.”
“No way, man.” The boy giggled, and walked jerkily into the office.
Andy thought about the woman on the pier pushing him to the ground, to get on with the necessary business of saving a child. He tried to shake the memory of Maryn seeking something from him, something he couldn’t give. Why didn’t he naturally do the right thing? Was his genetic makeup lacking some humanity chip that other people had? He would’ve taken a fishhook, done anything, for a pain exchange where he could take Maryn’s. He wasn’t sure where he’d gone wrong or what to do about it.
They set off in a gawky procession down the pier. Summer in the middle, holding hands, and smiling like the Good Witch Glinda. Andy hung behind. Summer jerked her head for him to join them but Andy shook her off.
“I’m the sweeper,” he called. “To make sure no one gets left behind.” Summer frowned. Shepherding strays didn’t yield photo ops. He didn’t care. The pier for him had become fraught with danger. He was desperate to keep these kids safe, though he felt puny against the threats.
As they were passing the entrance to Pacific Park, a boy about eight years old dashed out of the amusement area and raced down the pier, arms out, doing “the airplane.” Pedestrians dodged him, but no one paid particular attention. The people most likely to be the boy’s parents seemed to be far down the pier, dealing with a crying child. The boy zoomed perilously close to the edge. The déjà vu was uncomfortable. Was God testing him? The boy stumbled on the uneven boards, but kept going, unchecked. He steered his airplane toward a seagull perched on a piling. Andy leaped to grab the boy’s shoulders, arresting his momentum.
“Whoa, whoa there, champ.” Andy’s grin was almost maniacal.
The boy’s mouth dropped open in shock, freckles stark against his skin. He was wearing a cape with a giant
P
on a shield.
Andy crouched down. “You have to be careful on these boards, Super P. You could trip and end up in the drink.”
The boy kicked Andy in the shin, hard.
“Oof!” Andy recoiled, releasing the boy. The boy kicked him again, square in the nuts. Andy fell on his ass, nearly biting through his lip to suppress a howl, fighting the urge to go fetal. Blood throbbed in every cell as intense pain shot through him.
“Help! This man touched me! Pervert alert!” the demon yelled. People stopped and stared. Andy’s group straggled to a halt.
“Wait,” Andy croaked, reaching a hand toward the boy, the other cradling his privates.
“Keep your hands off me, homo!” the boy snarled. “Pervert molester! Queer!”
Andy was stunned at his language. Did a kid his age even know what a homosexual was? He realized people were staring and yanked his hand from his throbbing balls.
“What the hell’s going on here?” puffed a red-faced man.
“That homo grabbed me!” The kid pointed at Andy. “He
touched
me! I yelled just like you said, Dad.”
The ham-fisted man turned toward Andy. “Are you bothering my boy?”
“Andrew?” Summer hurried as fast as her heels would let her. She looked shocked to find him on the ground for the second time. “What’s going on?”
“I was afraid he’d fall in . . . he was running so close to the edge . . . ,” Andy trailed off. It sounded lame. He looked up at the man. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”
Behind Summer, the pale, fragile Heal the Bay, Heal the Body children stared. He felt their collective doubt. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Tears welled in his eyes.
“Andrew!” Summer hissed. “Get up.”
But Andy couldn’t move. It wasn’t his tender genitals. He stared at the caped boy, his beefy father, the waifish children, but didn’t see any of them. He saw a woman as pale as her sheets, the remains of her red hair shocking against her colorless skin. He saw blood spreading across another woman’s white shirt. He was breaking open but there was no good red blood inside him. There was nothing but nothing.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He repeated the mantra endlessly, rocking on the boardwalk, feeling the morning’s rain seep through his pants, cold against his skin.
M
aryn unconsciously smoothed her hair when she saw him. Andy looked like a kid bouncing in his chair.
“What do you want, Andy?” Maryn slid across from him. Seeing that he’d ordered her usual root beer evoked twin emotions of irritation and nostalgia. She went with irritation. “I have a busy day.”
“Thanks for meeting me.” His face was open, happy. Was he emotionally retarded? They were suing each other. “I took the liberty of ordering you a Cobb salad because I know you’re squeezing me in. You look great!” he said.
She pointed to her temple. “Squint lines from busyness at work.” She pointed to her cheeks. “Deep grooves from clenching my jaw in anxiety.” She pointed to her eyes. “Shadows from lack of sleep due to stress.”
He pointed to his face. “On TV every morning above a banner reading
EVIL VILLAIN
.”
A reluctant smile escaped her. “I didn’t think you were a born politician, but you are relentlessly cheerful.”
“It only took someone else telling me I’d dreamed of it my whole life to get me started.” He grinned.
“How can you be so relaxed? I’m suing you, the conservatives are baying for your blood, and your wife is terrifying.”
“Don’t forget being called a pervert on the pier last week! With everything this crazy, there’s something calming in the fact that only I have the power to make things worse.”
Her panic spiked so fast Maryn saw stars. What was he going to do?
“Andy . . .”
“Maryn, I give you consent to use the eggs.”
“. . . please don’t . . . I . . . what?” It took a second to sink in.
He handed her a familiar document. It was creased and bore what looked like a smear of cream cheese, but it was signed. It had a Post-it note attached that read:
1. Maryn is not my enemy.
2. I want her to be happy.
3. If you can’t change something you don’t like, change the way you think about it.
4. It’s the right thing to do.
“You’ll make a wonderful mother.”
Maryn didn’t know what to say. She took the consent document with a shaking hand. “Thank you, Andy.” She couldn’t help it. She started to cry.
“Don’t do that! I’m trying to make you happy here!”
“Sorry.” She wiped her face with a tissue. “What made you change your mind?”
“Time to think.”
She gave him a look.
“I’m a Midwestern guy! I don’t talk about my feelings.”
She waited.
Andy got serious. “I’ve made mistakes. Sometimes the accumulated weight of them stops me dead in the street. But for all their terribleness, they’re familiar and they’re mine, and I wouldn’t change them.”
Maryn noticed wrinkles she’d never seen before around Andy’s eyes. It startled her that he looked like a man, not a boy.
“I hate disappointing people so badly that I couldn’t deal with you. I don’t know if ending our marriage was a mistake—I certainly wasn’t there for you—but how I acted was. Because I couldn’t handle the idea of disappointing you, I didn’t acknowledge how selfishly I acted at all.”
“And now?”
“This election’s a hot mess. I caught myself watching them dissect me on the news one night, thinking, ‘Ha! They don’t even know the worst bits.’ It shocked me that I knew there were worse bits.”
He looked at her.
“The reason I didn’t want you to have the eggs was because I didn’t want a child to come into this world and learn what a coward I was for leaving when my wife got cancer. That’s not a good enough reason.”
He cleared his throat and took a sip of water.
“You don’t have to keep paying for my shame.”
The years fell away, the lake around her heart thawed, and Maryn recognized the Andy she’d married. She didn’t say anything, just nodded. She might not be able to completely forgive, but at least she could have the good parts back.
“Oh look, my Cobb salad’s here!” Maryn’s peace offering was changing the subject.
“That looks fantastic.” Andy accepted gratefully.
“So tell me about the campaign.” Maryn forked a bite of salad. It was as if she’d never tasted lettuce before, it was so crispy and delicious.
“Oh lord. If I never see another Denny’s . . .”
“We’ll ask you to lie here for sixty minutes following the procedure,” Dr. Singh said.
“Legs up the wall?”
“Not necessary,” Dr. Singh reassured her. “These stirrups have caused more pregnancies than all the fraternities of UCLA.”
“What about after?” Maryn chewed her lip. It was maddening that she didn’t have a more active role in making this work.
“Limit physical activity for the remainder of the day. This doesn’t require total bedrest, but extend the footrest on the La-Z-Boy and watch a movie. Tomorrow you can get back to normal activity. Avoid heavy bouncing of the uterus.”
“How do you bounce a uterus?” Maryn knew she’d be lying on the sofa with her legs crossed until she had a positive pregnancy test.
“Waterskiing, horseback riding, uterus-bouncing sex.”
“Since you’re going to have to clear the cobwebs on your way in, I’m not worried about the uterus-bouncing sex,” joked Maryn. “But just in case Ryan Reynolds tumbles from a hang glider into my living room, when will we do a pregnancy test?”
“You’ll either get your period or we’ll run a blood test after fourteen days. If embryo implantation has occurred, the HCG hormone will be detectable.”
Maryn could eat delivery pizza for fourteen days as she lay on the couch with her legs crossed, no problem. Or maybe she’d eat Chinese and Indian. Those countries had terrific populations.
Dr. Singh patted her arm. “The human body is designed with enough sense that coughing, sneezing, and gravity will not cause the embryos to ‘fall out.’ ”
“You can run a pregnancy test after ten days, can’t you?”
Dr. Singh smiled. “We could do that.”
“And can you give me a shiny purple pill that will make me pregnant?”
“We can offer some luteal-phase support. Estrogen tablets and progesterone suppositories can increase the chances of implantation.
“Give me the works.”
“Have you considered how many eggs to transfer? Our goal is a singleton pregnancy. It’s by far the safest.”
“I get that,” said Maryn. “I do. But I’m more afraid of failing IVF than twins.” In the back of her mind she thought,
If I have twins I get two for one, no more fighting. One and done.
How nice.
“Implantation rates decline with age. I recommend transferring three embryos as a reasonable balance of pregnancy success against the risk of multiples.”
“Sure.”
One and done
. Maryn crossed mental fingers.
“I’ll insert a catheter through the cervix and deposit the fluid containing the embryos into the uterine cavity. The procedure should take between ten and twenty minutes. You may feel minimal discomfort, but no pain.”
“If the catheter accidentally gouges out my eyeball and pokes through the top of my head, it’ll feel like a tickle from God compared to what I went through to get here,” said Maryn. “Let’s roll.”
“Would you like to see a picture of your embryos?”
Maryn would. Her throat was too constricted for speech. She nodded, the crinkling paper runner her answer. It looked like a grainy image of a Venn diagram on Mars. She clutched the photo above her face, staring hard at the nuggets, willing fetal heartbeats into them.