I don’t know what to say. I got a voice mail on my phone from Zoe yesterday. She just wanted to know if I’d signed the paper yet. If I wanted to talk more, meet for coffee, ask her any questions.
I kept her message. Not because of what she was asking but because of her voice. She wasn’t singing, but there was a rise and fall to her words that made me think of music.
The thing is, I’ve already fucked up again. I don’t really want to tell Zoe I’ve come to a decision, but I have to. And something tells me she’ll be about as thrilled to have her babies raised by Liddy and Reid as I am to have mine raised by two dykes.
Wade Preston reaches into the pocket inside his suit jacket and pulls out his card. “Why don’t we meet next week?” he suggests. “We have a lot to discuss to get this ball rolling.” As Pastor Clive leads him away to meet some of the other congregants, he flashes that million-dollar smile at me again.
I have six doughnuts on my plate, and I don’t even want to eat one anymore. I feel sick, actually.
Because the truth is: the ball’s been set in motion.
It’s halfway down the hill already.
The night before I am supposed to meet Wade Preston at Pastor Clive’s office—he thought we might appreciate the privacy—I have a dream. Liddy is pregnant already, and, instead of just Reid being in the delivery room, there are dozens of people, all wearing hospital scrubs and blue masks. You can’t make out who anyone is, except for their eyes.
Pastor Clive is sitting between Liddy’s legs and acting as the doctor. He reaches down to catch the baby. “You’re doing great,” he tells her as she screams, pushing this bloody mess of baby into the world.
A nurse takes the baby and swaddles it, and when she does she gasps. She calls over Pastor Clive, who looks into the folds of the blue blanket and says, “Sweet Jesus.”
“What’s wrong?” I ask, pushing through the crowd. “What’s the matter?”
But they don’t hear me. “Maybe she won’t notice,” the nurse whispers, and she hands Liddy the baby. “Here’s your son,” she coos.
Liddy lifts up the corner of the blanket draping the newborn and starts to shriek. She nearly drops the baby, and I rush forward to pick him up.
That’s when I see it: he has no face.
Instead there’s just a mottled oval of lumps and boils, a seam where a mouth should have been.
“I don’t want it!” Liddy cries. “He’s not really mine!”
One of the masked observers steps forward. She takes the baby from me and begins to pinch the flesh into false features—a hill of a nose, two thumbprint eyes—as if the baby is made of clay. She gazes down as if it is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen. “There,” she says. She pulls off her mask and smiles, and that’s when I see it is Zoe.
I’m sweating when I walk into Pastor Clive’s office to meet with Wade, so much that I’ve nearly soaked through my shirt, and I’m figuring he’ll think either I’m a freak or I have some weird metabolic disorder, when in fact I’m just a little scared to tell him what I’ve been thinking all morning.
Namely, that I may be making a mistake. Sure, I want to help Liddy and Reid . . . but I don’t want to hurt Zoe.
Wade’s wearing another perfectly tailored suit, this one with a faint silver shine to it that makes him look the way Jesus always does in paintings—glowing, a little brighter than everyone else around Him.
“It’s good to see you, Max,” Wade says, pumping my hand up and down. “I gotta tell you, since I talked with you on Sunday, you’ve been at the forefront of my mind.”
“Oh,” I say. “Well.”
“Now, we’ve got a lot of background to cover, so I’m just going to ask you questions, and you do your best to answer them.”
“Can I ask you one first?” I say.
He looks up, nods. “Absolutely.”
“It’s not so much of a question, really. It’s more of a statement. I mean, I know I have a right to decide what happens to these embryos. But Zoe does, too.”
Wade sits down on the edge of Pastor Clive’s desk. “You are a hundred percent right, at least when you look at this issue superficially. You and Zoe both have an equal gametic claim to these embryos. But let me ask you this: Did you intend to raise these pre-born children in a heterosexual relationship with your ex-wife?”
“Yeah.”
“Yet, unfortunately, your marriage didn’t last.”
“That’s exactly it,” I burst out. “Nothing worked out the way we planned. And finally, she seems to be happy. It may not be whatI’ddo, or whatyou’ddo, but why should I ruin that for her? I always believed she’d be a good mom. And she’s said that I don’t have to pay child support—”
