What The Nursery Needs...

Jason John Engel silently ground his teeth at his daughter’s whining tone. “I mean it, Maura, issues like this are nonnegotiable. The candy doesn’t mean I’m weakening, just that I’m willing to sweeten the refusal. Like I told you before, I can probably take you and a friend, preferably not Connie, to the mall this weekend, if you want.”

“No. Everybody else gets to go to the mall by themselves. It would be too embarrassing if anybody saw. I’d never be able to face my friends again.”

Jason shrugged, knowing he shouldn’t take her rejection personally, but doing so, anyway. “Fine. Then you don’t go.”

His twelve-year-old daughter, he noticed, ground her teeth exactly the way he did when frustrated. But she did take the candy bar. He waited until after her first bite. “So we’re talking again, right?”

Maura’s mouth stilled briefly as she stopped chewing and eyed him. Jason just hoped she wasn’t going to spit the candy all over him. He was wearing a good suit. Eventually she nodded her head in the affirmative.

Jason was afraid his relief was palpable in the car. It was scary how much control a twelve-year-old could wield with her moods and whims. It amounted . to emotional blackmail at times.

“By the way,” he said. “I want you to walk home from school on the opposite side of the street from now on. Did you see how easy it was for me to stay next to you and talk to you? If I’d have had a mind to, I could have easily hopped out of the car and grabbed you. On the other side of the street, you’d be walking against traffic, and it would be much harder for anybody in a car to harrass you.”

“Dad,” Maura began kindly, too kindly for Jason’s peace of mind. In his experience, that kind of patient tone boded nothing but ill for what followed.

“Maura, please, let’s not argue about this, too. Just do it, all right? Just do it.”

“Okay, fine, whatever.”

“Thank you,” Jason said fervently and meant it. He was so grateful, he pretended not to notice the heavy-duty eye rolling that accompanied the exasperated agreement. “Thank you very much.” He pulled around a corner onto his own street, and three blocks later pulled into his driveway.

Maura leaned forward interestedly as the car stopped next to the house. “Look, Dad, there’s somebody moving in next door.”

“Hmm?” Jason glanced up from collecting his briefcase and newspaper to see what had caught his daughter’s attention. “Oh. that’s nice. That house has been empty for so long I didn’t think anybody would ever buy it. Vacant houses lower the property values in an area. And, I suppose it’ll be good to have neighbors again, eh, Maura?”

“I wonder if there’s anybody my age.”

“Could be,” her father mumbled noncommittally as he fumbled with the door handle. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

Maura’s shoulders slumped more than usual as she walked around the rear of the car. “Look, they’re moving in a crib and a bassinet. I guess that means no friend for me.”

“Not necessarily,” Jason said as he pushed his key into the front door lock. “The baby could have an older sister and if not, think about the baby-sitting jobs that could come your way.” Money always appealed at this age. The thought of it should perk Maura right up.

It did, too. Her shoulders briefly straightened before she remembered to round them again. “Yes, Annie O’Connor had the cutest sweatshirt on at school yesterday, but she said it cost $38 and I knew you’d never pay that much for a sweatshirt. If I earn half baby-sitting, do you think you’d pay the other half, Dad?”

Jason set his briefcase down on the wooden floor of the front foyer and balanced his newspaper on top of it before tiredly rubbing his eye. “Uh, I’ll think about it, okay? Don’t eat any more of those candy bars before dinner, Maura,” he instructed as he noticed the fistful she clasped. “I don’t want you filling up on junk. Do me a favor and ration them over the next few days so I don’t feel so guilty about buying you such swill.”

Maura shrugged and crossed her fingers behind her back. “Okay, no problem, Dad.”

“Terrific,” Jason said, not believing a word of it. “I’m going to change, then see what I can put together for dinner. You’re in charge of a salad.”

“No prob.”

Jason merely grunted on his way up the stairs. Man, what a day. But at least Maura was more or less speaking to him again—if you could call this communicating.

Next door, Catherine Marie Nicholson let out a grunt. “There,” she said as she hefted another heavy cardboard box onto a stack of similar boxes in her new kitchen. “That’s the last of the dish boxes I think. Next time I move, I’m going to remember not to put so much in the boxes. These suckers are heavy!”

“Next time you move,” her sister Monica responded as she leaned against the countertops while she caught her breath, “you’ll have to give me more of an advance notice so I can be sure to have other plans for the day.”

“You don’t mean that,” Catherine assured her as she filled two cups with tap water and handed one to Monica.

“Oh, yes I do.”

“I’ll make it up to you. How about if I take Amy all day Saturday? You can spend it pottering around doing whatever you feel like.”

Monica set her cup down after chugging the liquid. “What kind of deal is that? You adore Amy. You’re always trying to get your grimy little mitts on her so that you can have your monthly ‘kid fix.’ When are you going to break down and have one of your own?”

“Actually, I’ve been giving that a great deal of thought lately,” Catherine admitted to her sister.

“Yeah? Come to any earth-shattering conclusions? Like time to stop being so dam picky and marry Gerald?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Catherine made a dismissing gesture. “I’ll never be that hard up. Gerald and I had already been out looking for a diamond when I discovered he was seeing Caroline Neeley on the sly. That poor girl had no idea Gerald had proposed to me, the dirtbag. No, forget Gerald. Forget men. I’ve come up with a different approach entirely.” She reached for the cleaning supplies she’d stacked in one corner. “Help me wipe out the cabinets and lay some shelf paper so I can start emptying these boxes, will you?”

“Having a baby is not exactly a do-it-yourself kind of project, you know. You’re a natural nurturer. It’s why you keep borrowing Amy. It’s why you keep falling in love with the cribs you sell in your kids’ resale shop. You need children of your own to feel fulfilled. You know that and I know that. You’ve been looking for Mr. Right for close to five years now,” Monica said as she grudgingly picked up a sponge. “Why give up now? Twenty-seven isn’t that old. You’ve still got time.”

“Nope. Gerald was the last straw. I give up. I’m throwing in the towel. I decided just last night, as a matter of fact, that it was time to move on to plan B.”

“I didn’t know there was a plan B.”

“There wasn’t. Now there is. It’s simple. Go to a sperm bank.”

Monica almost fell off the ladder she was standing on. “What?”

“You heard me. Cut out the middle man, go directly to the source. From what I understand, people do it all the time.”

Catherine dunked her sponge in her bucket and began to wipe out the interior of a bottom cabinet. Her plan made perfect sense to her. One had to be flexible in this life. A determined person could always find a way to achieve her goal.

Monica, however, was not convinced. “That doesn’t make any sense at all. You’d be adding a middle man, not taking one away. The man is the source.”

Catherine pulled her head out of the cabinet she’d been scrubbing and threw her sponge into the bucket, splashing soapsuds on the floor. “Fine, if you want to play word games, be that way, but you know what I mean. If I really want a baby, which I do, I need to start rethinking the whole project. Otherwise it’s going to remain nothing but an unattainable dream.” She squeezed out the sponge and attacked the next cabinet in line.

Monica opened the cabinet next to the one she’d just finished. Her voice was muffled now and echoed slightly, but her disapproval was still clear. “You were always daydreaming and playing pretend as a kid. You’ve gotten a lot better about getting real. We’re all so proud of the way you’ve made your business succeed, but there’s such a thing as taking it too far. Just be patient. Some guy will turn up, and I’d hate to have you miss all the fun involved in creating a baby naturally. I meant what I said about you being a natural candidate for motherhood, Cath, but I know you like I know the back of my own hand, and I’m telling you I don’t think you’ll be happy doing it this way. You crave family. The whole shebang. You need the husband to go along with the kiddies. I know.”

“Yes, well, unfortunately, Prince Charming is taken, Monica. Cinderella got her claws into him before I even had a chance. I almost made a very bad mistake out of what I now see was desperation. I’m not going to risk it again.”

Monica sat heavily on the third step of her ladder. “But a sperm bank? It seems so cold—so impersonal. Your baby’s not going to know its daddy?” she asked weakly.

Catherine backed out of the cabinet and shrugged at her sister. “Desperate times call for desperate measures. A lady brought in the most beautiful four-poster canopy crib for me to sell for her last week. I brought it home. As a matter of fact, last night I also decided to decorate the spare bedroom as a nursery instead of an office. What do you think of that?”

“Oh, my God, you’re really serious about this.”

Catherine nodded emphatically. “You bet I am. I’m going to decorate that room, set up the crib, then fill it. I am not about to go sit in there every evening and get maudlin over the empty crib. I’ve got my college degree, my resale shop is doing fantastically well, and now I’ve even got my own home. Things aren’t going to get much more orderly than that, and so I’m going to bite the bullet. No time like the present, and all of that. I’m going for it, Mon.”

Monica stared at her sister. “I can’t believe this.”

Catherine nodded firmly. “Believe it.”

“Do you even know where there is a sperm bank?”