* * *
My MacBook’s computer screen shifted to reveal the smooth-featured face of a baby.
“And hello to my favorite niece.”
My sister pulled Emily back from the screen and set her down, probably in a playpen where she could crawl around with her twin brother Henry at their home in Manhattan. The names were a nod to my sister’s favorite romance author.
“How did you know?”
“Did you think putting her in a blue onesie was going to fool me?” As if that so-called gender signifier, a relatively recent cultural construct in fact, could fool me about which of my sister’s twins were on screen.
“It duped Dan. He picked her up and had an in-depth conversation about boy things before I fessed up.”
“Probably good that Emily is receiving the same treatment from her father, even if it is accidental.”
Cat laughed. “Don’t worry. Between you, Violet, and our uber-successful aunts, my daughter will have no issues recognizing that girls rule the world.”
True. Since Cat and I came to live with my dad and the love of his life, Violet, we had become fully immersed in the Chicago Rebels world where the Chase sisters owned the franchise and made the major decisions. The male players were largely pawns on the chessboard controlled by these powerful women. They could hire, fire, trade, or bench them at their whim.
Emily and Henry would grow up in a world with strong female role models, and I hoped to do my part. What else could the eccentric aunt provide?
“Could I say hello to Henry?”
“Of course!”
Cat lifted her son into her lap. “Look, buddy! It’s your aunt Franky, the smartest woman you’re ever likely to meet.”
“I’m sure he’ll eventually meet someone smarter.”
My sister grinned. “For now, you are the smartest. Henry, did you know your aunt is a world-famous malacologist? What’s that, you ask? Oh, she studies snails and slugs for a living. And she writes articles and gives lectures at Lakeshore University in Chicago. And she should be running her own department, but some man came in and stole her job.” She kissed the top of her son’s head. “Don’t be that guy, buddy.”
I could feel my face forming a frown, one that my mother would have despaired of because it made me “undateable.”
“It might be a little early to project the woes of academia’s gender gap on my nephew.”
“The earlier the better, I say.” She raised her son’s hand in a wave, and I committed to memory the sight of his chubby fist and soft, dark curls—a little more reddish in hue than his sister, which is how I could tell the difference—before he left to join Emily off-screen.
Cat turned back to me. “So, has he started yet?”
The “he” was Dr. Marcus Bilson. After a year-long process to find a new chair for the Biology Department at Lakeshore University, the selection committee had decided to hire an outside candidate. Someone with less teaching experience, a Y chromosome, a louder voice, and a sexier specialty: fruit flies. Malacologists, scientists like me who studied mollusks such as snails and slugs, were rather low on the academic specialty rung.
“He has, but we have yet to schedule our first official meeting.” However, we had already met unofficially, which I neglected to mention to my sister. Dr. Bilson and I had, as they say, “history.” “Don’t worry too much about me not getting the job. Department heads end up pushing a lot of paper around. The research suffers, and while it might seem like the next logical step in my career path, this way I can continue contributing to the scholarship.”
Or something else. I realized now that being passed over for the department head position might have been a blessing in disguise. I could devote myself to a new enterprise.
Every time I saw my niece and nephew, or ran into any of the numerous Rebels kids, my heart boomed, my hormones went into overdrive, and a little voice inside my head chanted, “Want, want, want.” If I couldn’t be the “mother” of a department, perhaps I could be the real thing. At thirty-eight years old, I had left it late, but it wouldn’t be impossible. Cat was thirty-nine when she had the twins, and medical advances had progressed to the point that women in their forties were birthing children safely.
Like all my projects, this one would require research and a sound methodology. I was a scientist, and I would approach it using a logical and reasoned rationale.
Finding a suitable partner, a man who would want me and a child, would be an improbable task, if not impossible. I had considered hooking up with someone at a bar or online for a one-night stand, but the dubious ethics, not to mention my complete lack of game in attracting a mate, made me eliminate that option quickly.
Which left a sperm donor, preferably a man who wanted no part of my or my baby’s life. This way, I could control for as many variables as possible. For the last ten months, I had been gathering data on likely candidates and had drawn up a shortlist. I had undergone a physical checkup and investigated hormone treatments to stimulate ovulation. Other than my age, there was no reason why I couldn’t get pregnant.
I just needed the male genetic material. Quickly.
“Franky? Hello?”
“What? Oh, sorry.”
