‘Congratulations, Karen,’ he said. He raised a glass unsteadily. ‘We who are about to die salute you.’
Everyone at the table, most of them in the process of gathering their things, stopped.
‘I’d hoped to get the award tonight, but homosexuality isn’t as fashionable as it once was.’ He shrugged. ‘Res ipsa loquitur. That’s Latin for “the facts speak for themselves.”’ Willie grinned, his head skull-like. ‘Pretty appropriate, don’t you think? A dead man speaking a dead language.’ His voice dropped, and he bent his head. ‘This was a hard night. I’d hoped to win. I don’t have any children. I would have liked to leave behind something that would make sure I’m remembered,’ he whispered.
‘I’m sorry, Willie,’ Karen murmured.
Carl stood up. His lover had died just two years ago. ‘Let’s go, Karen,’ he said. Jeffrey, who had been off to fetch coats, returned and helped Karen into hers. The table broke up, leaving Willie standing unsteadily alone.
Defina took Karen’s arm. ‘Don’t take it personally,’ she whispered. ‘You know how it is with gay men designers: it’s always “chére, chére la mére.” And tonight you got hit with his mother stuff.’
Despite Defina’s attempt at comfort, it was an unpleasant ending to a wonderful night and Karen felt an immediate stab of guilt. Somehow she knew how Willie Artech, the spectre at the table, felt.
‘Jesus,’ Carl said as they exited the room. ‘In the face of eternity, who could care so much about an award?’
But Karen, clutching the Oakley plaque, her hand once again protectively over her belly, could understand how someone might.
The day after she received the Oakley Award, Karen sat numbly in Dr Goldman’s waiting room, trying to cope with his verdict. Irreparably infertile.
Somehow, she’d known all along. From the first, through all the tests, all the drugs, all the examinations, despite Jeffrey’s own doubts and his regimen of doctors, she’d known it was her and she’d known her condition was irrevocable.
It was odd, but the moment the doctor gave her the official news, Karen flashed on the idea of finding her real mother. But perhaps that wasn’t odd. Perhaps that was typical of barren female adult adoptees, she thought. How would she know? How many of us are there, she wondered? Are we a significant enough demographic lump to be charted as some baby-boomer subset? Have we already appeared on Oprah? Is there a twelve-step program or a support group for us?
She felt right now as if she could use some support. This was the punishment she got for being so happy only the night before. The Oakley Award, the glittering crowd, the happiness, all receded until it seemed as if it had happened some other year, or some other lifetime. It was dangerous to have been that happy. Here was the final proof.
After almost thirty months of trying, of unspontaneous, prescribed sex, painful, humiliating tests, medical specialists, and counseling, it had long been clear that something serious was wrong. Nothing to be so surprised about, she told herself. This was not unexpected. Here, at last, was the final verdict: irreparably infertile. No more searches for specialists, vaginal thermometers, doctor’s appointments in the middle of the day just at the exact moment she was ovulating. No more pain, expense, and bother. No more hope.
It stunned her.
Was it the hopelessness that put the idea of finding her real mother into her head? Karen didn’t know where the longing came from – this craving to feel whole that now a baby would clearly never satisfy. She hadn’t thought much about her real mother before – but now the need to search for her hit Karen in the stomach with a force that was almost nauseating.
She thought of Willie Artech – from all the events of last night, only his image didn’t seem to recede. Didn’t Jeffrey often accuse her of focusing on the bad things? Well, she couldn’t help what she focused on. Right now it was Willie Artech, dying, and wishing for children to make sure he was remembered.
But she didn’t want a child in order to be remembered – not exactly. It was more to connect her to the thread of life, to transform her and Jeffrey from a couple to a family. Well, for whatever reason she wanted a child, it wasn’t going to happen. Perhaps that was why, instead, she wanted her mother. Her real mother.
So here she sat in the ever-so-tastefully-decorated Park Avenue fertility clinic beside four women, all but one mirroring the pain and fear in her own eyes. Funny how they called the place a fertility clinic when only the sterile ones come here, she thought bitterly. Sterile and rich ones, she reminded herself. Dr Goldman had already cost what? Six or seven thousand? And this was how it ended. She winced. Money couldn’t cushion this blow, except to give you a glove-leather Barcelona chair to sit in while you tried not to lose your composure and your lunch right there, all over the Axminster carpet.
She felt like a completely different woman than the one who had been on the stage at the Waldorf only fifteen hours before. What had all of that meant? No memory of glory could lessen this pain.
She knew that she couldn’t tell her mother. Not either fact: that a baby was out of the question or that she wanted to search for her own natural mother. As always, Belle’s feelings came first. Belle was the punch line of that old mother-daughter joke: when the mother finds her daughter dead on the floor, a suicide, she cries out, ‘How could she do this to me?’ Oh yes, Belle would make a pity party out of this one. Belle only wanted to hear about Oakley Awards. She was comfortable around achievement, not failure.
Worse yet, Belle had been urging Karen and Jeffrey to have children for more years than Karen liked to remember. It would be awful now to have to admit that Belle was right. We should have tried to have a baby sooner, Karen thought. But I’ve been so wrapped up in my career. Carving out a place in the fashion world had been no day at the beach. And then, once I got a foot in the door, how could I not follow through? When my stuff really took off, with all the work, the success, and the travel, there just hadn’t been time. Babies, I figured, could always come later.
Except now they never would. Karen felt a stab of pain somewhere around her nonfunctioning female parts. Guilt? Phantom ovulation? She reminded herself that the doctor today had said that her infertility was not wholly age-related. ‘It’s quite possible that you’d never have been able to bear a child, although your condition is aggravated by age.’ Perhaps my guilt at waiting so long to try to conceive is misplaced, she told herself, and tried to believe it.
Not that her mother would ever believe that. Her mother would be more than eager to tell her not only that it was all her own fault but also that Belle had warned her. Belle wasn’t always right, but she was right often enough and vocal enough about it so that she seemed unassailable. Belle was a smart mother, but not a comforting one. Karen felt tears rise in her eyes, although she never cried. Instead, she took a steadying deep breath and blinked. At her age she was experienced enough to know that very few people had anything close to a good relationship with their parents, but at this moment she longed for a bosom she could weep on without constraint, blame, or guilt. No wonder men came to women for comfort: the lure of the breast was powerful. Yet Karen would never go to Belle for solace. Maybe it was no accident that Belle was so flat-chested. No lure there, Karen thought. Well, if men go to women for comfort, where do women go?
To their girlfriends. Karen had three: Lisa, her sister; Defina; and Carl, who was not anatomically female but could certainly pass for one in almost every other way. But Defina was still celebrating last night; Carl, though always ready to listen, was all the way over in Brooklyn; while at this moment Lisa was out on Long Island with Belle, waiting for Karen’s arrival. Karen sighed. Her stomach still felt as if it were about to heave. There would be no comfort until she got home to Jeffrey late tonight. And maybe not then. Because while he always reassured