“Do you ever look at a child and wonder if it’s yours?” she asked.
The question hit me like pigeon poop—unexpected, messy, unpleasant. “No.”
“Sometimes I do,” she said. “Especially if they look like you, like that one.”
I squinted at the baby. I wasn’t not bald, red-faced, or dressed in a onesie sailor outfit, and I was sure as hell not sucking on a Binky. He didn’t look anything like me. Hell, he didn’t look like anyone, except maybe another baby. “That’s flat-out crazy.”
“No, it’s not. You were a sperm donor in New Orleans, so it’s likely you have children here.” Her voice is tear-choked and aggrieved.
I feel unfairly accused of deliberately hurting her. I’ve tried to be nothing but supportive, but this whole infertility thing hasn’t been easy on me, either. “You knew I was a donor when you married me,” I said.
“Yeah. But I didn’t know we’d have trouble conceiving our own baby.” She brushed away a tear with her forefinger. “It eats me upinside to think that you may have children with another woman—or women.”
I reach for her hand across the table. “You can’t think that way,” I said. “It doesn’t do any good and it makes you miserable.”
“What if I can’t help it?”
“You can.” I had no idea if it were true, but I desperately wanted it to be. “Just don’t dwell on things you can’t change.”
That was months ago, but the conversation replays in my brain as I read the email on my computer screen now.
Dear Donor 17677:
Thank you for your recent inquiry. We are unable to change your email address due to security protocol. As your contract stipulates, we will only change your personal information if you properly answer the security questions. After three wrong tries, the system locks down.
Huh? I hadn’t tried to contact them, and I sure as hell hadn’t tried to change my e-address. I continue reading:
Per the terms of your contract, we cannot comply with your request to inform you of the number of births that resulted from your donation. We do not disclose that information, nor do we facilitate contact between donors and donor recipients or donor-conceived children under the age of eighteen. These policies were established and are enforced in order to protect the privacy and well-being of all concerned.
If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us at the above e-address or phone number.
Thank you,
Maria Martinez
Client liaison
CHAPTER FOUR
Jessica
I NEED TOseduce my husband, but I’ve forgotten how.
I drop a handful of vermicelli into the pan of boiling water on the stove and ponder it. I can’t be obvious; if I greet him at the door naked or in sexy lingerie, it’ll be too radical a departure from the way we’ve been with each other lately. I don’t want to make Zack suspicious.
Suspicious. The word makes me feel guilty. Well, Iamguilty; I’ve gone behind his back and done something that will make him furious if he finds out, and I feel terrible about it. I’m not sure how much, if anything, I’m ever going to confess; maybe I won’t need to tell him anything.
All I know for sure is that I desperately need to reconnect with him, and sex is the fastest way to do that. Sex is the glue that holds a marriage together.
Sex, and children.
Unfortunately, those are two things our marriage lacks, and I’m at fault for both of them. I tell myself it’s not anything I did or chose, so I can’t really be blamed,but still, the fact remains: I’m the one who’s defective.
And then there’s the lack of sex. That’s on me, too. The hormones I took for IVF made me feel half-crazy and bloated and depressed. There were hormones to stimulate my ovaries, then hormones to prepare my womb to nurture an embryo. None of them ever worked as intended. Although several embryos were produced and used in multiple IVF procedures—we used every single viableembryo—only one ever implanted. And that pregnancy, if you can even call it that, only lasted a week.
What it did, though, was give me hope—clinging, cloying, pathological hope, persisting even after the doctors said all hope was gone.
I’m accustomed to succeeding at whatever I put my mind to. I’m like NASA that way: failure is not an option. I’ve always been able to work harder, practice more, try a new method, or find a way around a problem. Why am I unable to succeed at something as basic as getting pregnant?
