She tried to smile. ‘Well, the good news is, we don’t have to try anything. The bad news is, that’s because nothing will work.’
The little vertical wrinkle he got between his eyebrows, the only noticeable age sign on his tanned and handsome face, appeared. He ran his hand through his thick salt-and-pepper hair. His eyes, such a beautiful, clear light blue, clouded over. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. He reached across the glossy tabletop and took her hand. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he repeated. Then he looked down at his plate and they both sat there for several moments in silence.
While they’d been going through this process, they’d long ago made a Real Deal on it: if either Karen couldn’t conceive, or if Jeffrey’s sperm was weak, they wouldn’t try in vitro or donor insemination. Both of them agreed that it was immoral, not to mention painful and humiliating, to spend that kind of money and effort to make their own genetic product when the world was filled with unwanted babies. Now, looking at Jeffrey’s bowed head, knowing it was her fault that they couldn’t have a child, she wondered if he regretted the deal.
‘Are you still hungry?’ she finally asked him.
‘Only for you,’ he said. And, taking her hand, he walked her away from the table, across the gleaming, empty floor, and down the hall to their bedroom. The light in there was dim and the bed – a simple Shaker pencil-post – was made up in her favorite Frette sheets. Jeffrey drew her to it. He stopped and wrapped his arms around her. Then he nuzzled her neck and began whispering, his voice husky.
‘Oh, baby, it will be all right. Look at the up side: no more thermometers, no more calendars, no turkey basters, no more wasted sperm samples.’ He kissed her on the nape of her neck and she felt a shiver run down her back. ‘All my sperm for you, now,’ he told her. His arms were so long, and they felt so good wrapped around her. He was a big man, and one of the things she had loved about him was how he managed to make her feel small. She leaned her body into his. ‘I love you, you know,’ he told her.
‘Prove your love,’ Karen said, and they fell onto the bed, hungry for one another.
Afterward, as she lay in his arms, the beautiful sheets rucked up and wrinkled around her, she turned to look at his profile. It was perfect, and if she cast it in gold it would pass for the head of an emperor on a Roman coin. Karen ran her hand along Jeffrey’s sternum and down the thin, soft line of hair that ran from his chest over his stomach to his groin. It was so sweet. He was so sweet.
‘I was thinking of looking for my mother,’ she murmured.
He turned over, ready to go to sleep. ‘Didn’t you have enough of her tonight?’ he asked.
‘No, I mean my real mother.’
He was silent for a few minutes. Karen almost thought he had fallen asleep. ‘What for?’ he said. And she heard him sigh.
‘I don’t know. I just feel like I want to.’
He turned over again, this time on his back so he could see her. ‘Why open a new can of worms?’ he asked. ‘Don’t we have enough to deal with at the moment?’ He put his left arm out so she could lie against his side. She felt comforted by his warmth.
‘Jeffrey, you honestly don’t mind? About the baby, I mean.’
He hugged her closer. ‘Karen, I think I gave up a long time ago. We’re so lucky already. Why should we have everything? It would only tempt the gods.’
‘Don’t be superstitious,’ she told him, though she was herself. ‘Anyway, we can have everything. I’m going to call Sid tomorrow and get him working on an adoption. I was talking to Joyce and she said they have a very good contact in Texas.’
Jeffrey rolled onto his side, away from her, and cradled his head in the crook of his elbow. ‘What are you talking about?’ he asked.
‘A private adoption, Jeffrey. It’s more expensive but a lot easier than going through the state. We might be too old for that already. And apparently there are a lot of babies available in Texas.’
‘You know what’s wrong with you? It’s not a problem with your ovaries. It’s a problem with your head. You’re obsessed. It runs in your family.’
‘What?’
‘Your mother is an obsessive, your sister is an obsessive, and your nieces are obsessives. You are obsessed with this baby thing.’
Karen didn’t think it was the time to mention that if obsession ran in her family she hadn’t inherited it genetically. ‘What’s so obsessive? Don’t you want a baby?’
‘Karen, I don’t want some stranger’s baby, especially one from Texas. I’m a New York Jew. What would I do with a little cowboy?’
‘Love it,’ she said.
Jeffrey pulled away from her and sat up. ‘Wait a minute.’ His voice sounded flat, ‘I always felt we could live without a baby. You were the one all gung-ho. I did my part. Now it appears that we can’t have one of our own. Okay. Okay. I accept that. But I don’t want to raise somebody else’s.’
Karen felt her stomach tighten and the flesh went clammy on her back and thighs. She sat up, too, and looked across the bed at her husband. He looked back at her.
‘Come on Karen! Not “the look”; I don’t want “the look.” You can’t expect me to go for this. We never discussed it. It was not plan B. Adoption was not plan B. You never know what you are getting in a deal like that.’
‘I never knew you were so opposed to adoption.’
‘You never asked. You wanted your own baby. That’s what we discussed. I wasn’t wild about the idea but I don’t think men usually are. It’s a natural thing. But this isn’t natural. And look what happens. Look at the Woody Allen thing. And Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson. When celebrities adopt, there’s always trouble. And then there’s all the heartbreak when a birth mother reneges. Not to mention the genetic roulette that you’re playing. Wasn’t Son of Sam adopted? And that serial killer in Long Island? Like I said, you never know what you’re getting in a deal like this.’
‘But Jeffrey, I’m adopted.’
‘Yeah, but not by me. I knew you were adopted, but I also knew who you were and how you had turned out. That’s different than nurturing some illiterate, promiscuous, white-trash, trailer-park scum’s offspring. Who knows how they’d turn out?’
‘I can’t believe you’re saying this.’ Was that why he’d been so cool to the idea of her searching out her birth mother? Karen put her hand out, touching his shoulder. Did he think she was the offspring of some promiscuous, white-trash, trailer-park scum? And was she? She realized she didn’t have the courage to ask him. ‘Please, Jeffrey,’ was all she said.
Jeffrey shrugged her hand off his shoulder. ‘I can’t believe you’re asking this,’ he said. He threw his feet over the side of the bed and walked across the room. The light from the window hit him across the shoulders and down one long, lean flank.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked.
‘I’m hitting the shower,’ he said.
To Karen it sounded like he wanted to hit her.
Karen never did get to call Lisa the night before and left way too early to do it the next morning. Karen got to her office by half past seven, but that was nothing new: ever since she’d had a single employee – Mrs Cruz from Corona, Queens – she’d gotten in early. All these years later Mrs Cruz was still with her, now one of her two chief patternmakers, supervising a workroom that held over two hundred