Making Babies

“I am now.”

“Any kids?”

“No. Now, about your buying sperm—”

“Did you want any? When you were married?”

If ever a man wanted to kick himself for opening his big fat mouth, it was Mitch at this moment. He rubbed his brow with the heel of his hand. “It’s all ancient history, Elaine. I wanted a lot of things before I realized the ramifications. It’s a common mistake. Like wanting a child while ignoring the ramification of not knowing who in the hell fathered it!”

The waterfall of questions Elaine had about his marriage dried up in the face of having to defend herself. Just as, Elaine suspected, he’d intended.

“I will know as much or as little about the donor as I care to,” she refuted. “It’s up to me. I can request an information sheet so detailed I’ll know what he eats for breakfast.” She picked up the library book about artificial insemination and tapped it. “It’s all right here. Plus, at some sperm banks the majority of donors are graduate students, so I can expect the father of my child to be motivated and intelligent.”

Mitch took the book from her and began paging through it. “Yup. Takes a real brain trust to masturbate into a paper cup.”

Elaine grabbed the book. “I was referring to my donor’s commitment to higher education. Also, I’ll know his area of interest,” she shot back, “so I can avoid the law students.”

Mitch nodded, acknowledging the gibe before he pointed out, “And for this information, you are trusting the people you are paying to provide you with the sperm. Is that correct?” He folded his arms over his chest, and Elaine thought the posture made him look so smug, she shoved a bag of frozen peas at him so he’d have to uncross his arms.

Without being told, Mitch turned to put the peas away, but when he saw the jumbled contents of her freezer, he began rearranging items as he spoke. “You’re not going to have any idea who this guy really is.”

“Yes, I—”

“Proof, Elaine. You’re not going to have any proof. They can tell you he’s a Stanford medical student, and for all you know, you’ll be giving birth to Joe the three-legged harmonica player’s baby.”

Elaine stared at Mitch’s back while he reorganized her small freezer. She had a sudden stinging urge to pitch beets at his head. She was planning to do what thousands of women before her had done, and she needed a shot of courage, dammit, not ten reasons why this disaster could outstrip the Titanic.

“What concerns me most, though, is your idea that you’ll be better off if the father isn’t involved.”

Elaine pulled a beet out of the bag and raised her arm.

“You may avoid the issue of visitation rights,” he continued, moving frozen foods, “but you’re also going to be on your own financially while Mr. Genetically Gifted is running around, avoiding responsibility for you and the child he fathered, which, I think you’ll have to agree, says something about a man’s character.”

“Is that why you haven’t had children? Because you don’t want to take responsibility for them?”

“That’s right.” He surprised her by agreeing. “You know what that’s called?”

“The Peter Pan Syndrome?”

“No! Integrity. It is called integrity.” Perfecting the alignment on a stack of frozen dinners, he stepped back. “There.” He moved aside so Elaine could view his handiwork.

Lowering the beet, she peeked in. Her freezer looked like a well-packed suitcase. Frozen dinners occupied the left side. Boxed vegetables were stacked in the middle, bagged items in the door. Her ice-cream containers formed a happy pyramid on the right. He had organized her freezer in one minute flat.

Chewing the inside of her lip, Elaine nodded. “Hmm. That’s beautiful. Logical and neat.” She glanced at Mitch, who was, she noted, mighty pleased with himself. “You know, a year ago I would have taken a picture of this so I could duplicate it myself. Back then, ‘Order’ was my middle name.” Reaching in, she put a hand on a frozen dinner in the middle of the stack.

“Hey, careful, you’ll—” She pulled the dinner, and the top portion of the stack slid to the right. “—make them fall,” Mitch finished.

“But I don’t appreciate logic much anymore,” she told him matter-of-factly, tossing frozen lasagna and kung pao chicken on top of the vegetable boxes. “I don’t care about neatness.” Grabbing a container of ice cream on the bottom of the pyramid, she sent the entire structure tumbling. “I had a neat and organized life, and you know where that got me? I come home every day to a neat, organized empty house.” She began shuffling the contents of the freezer as she spoke. “Now I want messes.” A bag of peas landed on the ice cube tray. “I don’t want everything divided and in its proper place.” Frozen blueberries hit the back of the freezer. “I want it all mixed up. I want what I want, and I don’t care what it looks like.” Slamming the door before the contents could spill out onto the floor, she whirled on Mitch. “So don’t touch my frozen foods!”

There followed a protracted pause that Mitch broke by asking mildly, “This isn’t about the freezer, is it?”

Elaine answered by stating emphatically, “I don’t need someone to take responsibility for me. If I ever get involved with a man again, it won’t be so he can ‘assume responsibility’ for me and my child.”

Mitch scowled. “That’s a bad thing? I’m the enemy for suggesting someone should look out for you?”

“That’s not what I said—”

“Good. Because I’m a lawyer. I make my living by injecting a note of reason into what might otherwise be a situation driven by emotion.”

“Oh, brother.”

“You may perceive my advice as unwelcome at this moment, but when you calm down, you’ll see—”

“When I calm down?”

“—how important it is to view a situation from all—”

“Out.”

“—sides.”

Elaine started shoving him toward the back door. “Go away.”

“You see? Right now, this is highly emotional.”

She opened the door, placed both hands on Mitch’s chest and shoved as hard as she could. Five feet four inches, one hundred and fifteen pounds of underexercised female wasn’t much of a force against one hundred and eighty pounds of well-muscled male, but Elaine had the element of surprise on her side.

Mitch stumbled back, tripping over the doorstep. By the time he caught and righted himself, she had closed the door in his face.

Two hours later, with a half-eaten sandwich on a table by her side, Elaine lay on her couch, reading. The tempeh Reuben turned out to be a seasoned soybean patty with Russian dressing and sauerkraut. It tasted okay and was guaranteed to be healthful, but Elaine had indigestion nonetheless. She wasn’t sure whether it came from the food or from rereading chapter six of Alternative Insemination, Every Woman’s Guide.

According to the book, which promised to walk the reader through the “joys and perils” of alternative insemination, the procedure wasn’t all that simple. Elaine would have to keep close track of her own fertility and because she wasn’t going to have sex to conceive, she wasn’t going to get more than one shot a month at this. Also, since she was thirty-seven and fertility tended to “nosedive” after thirty-five, there was no telling how many times she might have to repeat the expensive procedure. She might even have to consider treatments like Clomid. Also, the book strongly suggested having emotional support present because some women found the procedures stressful and mentally exhausting.

Tossing the book onto the coffee table, Elaine pressed a pillow against her stomach, rolled onto her side and thought. So far she’d told two people—Gordon and Mitch Ryder—about her plans. Their enthusiasm had been less than overwhelming.

She’d spent half her life supporting other people’s dreams and ideals. For once she expected no less for herself. But from what corner would the support come?

Her brother, Sam, had already given their parents grandchildren. Elaine suspected her mother and father had given up on her a few years ago. She truly didn’t know how they would react to her decision to pursue A.I.

Hugging the pillow tighter, she pondered. According to Every Woman’s Guide, she didn’t have a lot of time to futz around. At thirty-seven her ovaries were shrinking by the minute. For the first time, Elaine began to wonder whether she was fertile at all and what she would do if she wasn’t.

Would she be willing to undergo the invasive medical interventions mentioned in the book? Would she be willing to do it all alone?

The closer she inched—no, jogged, really—toward forty, the more aware she became that everything was changing, both in her body and in the way others perceived her. Younger women no longer gave her that telltale once-over to see if she was competition. At the supermarket when young men offered to help carry her groceries to the car, they really meant, Can I help carry your groceries to the car?

It didn’t matter how progressive or self-actualized she was: a thirty-seven-year-old divorcée was forced to find a new way to define herself.

Rising, pillow in hand, Elaine padded to the mirror above the sideboard in her dining room and looked at herself, searching for the balance between kindness and objectivity. At five-four, she was petite and still thin enough—despite Ben & Jerry’s best full-fat efforts—to buy size eight jeans. Thick reddish-brown hair that swung gently between her jaw and shoulders further contributed to her youthful appearance…until she looked into the mirror straight-on, and then…