I feel my face flush. “I’m remarried. When I called, you said I needed to come in with my spouse.”
The nurse looks up at me, and then at Vanessa. If she’s surprised, her face doesn’t register it at all. “Just wait here,” she says.
Vanessa looks at me as soon as she leaves her desk. “What’s the problem?”
“I don’t know. I hope there’s nothing wrong with the embryos . . .”
“Did you read that article about the family that was given the wrong embryos?” Vanessa asks. “I mean, God, can you imagine?”
I shoot her a pointed look. “Nothelping.”
“Zoe?” At the sound of my name, I turn to find Dr. Anne Fourchette, the clinic director, walking toward me. “Why don’t you two come into my office?”
We follow her down the hall to the paneled, posh space that I must have been in before but have no recollection of seeing prior to this. Most of my visits were in treatment rooms. “Is there a problem, Dr. Fourchette? Did you lose them?”
She is a striking woman with a fall of prematurely white hair, a bone-crushing handshake, and a drawl that extends my name by three or four extra syllables. “I’m afraid there was a misunderstanding,” she says. “Your ex-husband has to sign off on the release of the embryos. Once he does that, we can schedule a transfer.”
“But Max doesn’t want them. Hedivorcedme because he didn’t want to be a father.”
“Then it’s really all academic,” Dr. Fourchette replies brightly. “It’s a legal technicality we need to cover before we can schedule your appointment with a social worker.”
“Social worker,” Vanessa repeats.
“It’s something we routinely do with same-sex couples, to address some of the issues that you might not have considered. If your partner has the baby, for example, Zoe, then once he’s born, you’ll have to formally adopt him.”
“But we’re married—”
“Not according to the state of Rhode Island.” She shakes her head. “Again, it’s nothing to worry about. We just have to get the ball rolling.”
That familiar wave of disappointment floods me; once again this baby track is full of hurdles.
“All right,” Vanessa says briskly. “Is there something Max has to sign? Some form?”
Dr. Fourchette hands her a sheet of paper. “Just have him send it back to us, and as soon as we get it, we’ll call you.” She smiles at us. “And I’m really happy for you, Zoe. Congratulations to you both.”
Vanessa and I don’t speak until we are outside the clinic, riding down together in an otherwise empty elevator. “You have to talk to him,” she says.
“And say what?Hey, I’m married to Vanessa and we’d like you to be our sperm donor?”
“It’s not like that,” Vanessa points out. “The embryos already exist. What plans doeshehave for them?”
The doors slide open on the ground floor. A woman is waiting, with a baby in a stroller. The baby is wearing a white, hooded sweater with little bear ears sticking up.
“I’ll try,” I say.
I find Max at a client’s house, raking out mulch and twigs from the flower beds in preparation for spring landscaping. The snow has melted as quickly as it arrived, and it smells like spring. Max is wearing a shirt and tie, and he’s sweating. “Nice place,” I say appreciatively, looking around the grounds of this McMansion.
Max wheels at the sound of my voice. “Zoe? What are you doing here?”
“Liddy told me where to find you,” I say. “I was wondering if you’ve got a minute to talk?”
He leans on the rake and wipes the perspiration from his forehead, nods. “Sure. You want to, uh, sit down?” He gestures to a stone bench in the center of a hibernating garden. The granite is cold through the fabric of my jeans.
“What’s it like?” I ask. “When it’s blooming, I mean?”
“Oh, it’s pretty awesome, actually. Tiger lilies. They should be up by the end of April, if I can keep the beetles off of them.”
“I’m glad you’re still doing landscaping. I wasn’t sure.”
