The Paternity Test (19 page)

“Right, but what they don’t know: we set aside
more
money. Only a thousand bucks for each—‘only,’ but believe me, even that was hard enough, back then. The good thing, though—that money? Today it’s . . . guess how much.”

“Walter, it’s unseemly,” Ellie said. “Please just tell.”

“What, unseemly?” He raised his arm so quickly that I flinched. “Okay, see, the notion?” he said. “The money wasn’t for you. For your
kids
. Saved up for the day your frst was born. But now, you know, since . . . now that you . . .”

“Lord!” said Ellie. “Just take it already.” She thrust the gift at Rina.

Rina opened the envelope. She saw the check. She gasped.

Richard took it next, and echoed his wife’s noise. “Walter, Ellie—no! It’s too much.”

Walter wiped his eyes. “On this—” Again, he faltered. “On your
future
, you think that we would skimp?”

Stu leaned across the table, trying to see the numbers, but Richard held the check beyond his view. “Walter,” Richard said. His voice was hushed, clubby. “The appreciation. How? Is your broker a magician? A measly thousand bucks into
thirty
!”

Walter chuckled wishfully. “He’s good but not that good. It wasn’t just one thousand, it was two. It’s both. See?”

I did see, immediately. That chauvinistic prick! But Stu, for another beat, didn’t seem to get it; he looked puzzled (stumped by the
puzzle
of the math) but not yet enraged by the unfairness.

“We realized,” said Walter, his arm on Stu’s shoulder. “What’s the point of holding on to the grandkid fund for
you
when you’re . . . well, when the two of
them
”—he winked at Richard and Rina—“when adoption is such a costly thing?”

Now Stu understood. His lips went thin, bloodless.

But gosh, no, not both of the funds—we couldn’t take Stu’s away!
That was what I kept expecting Richard to cut in with. That or something grand and Solomonic:
Bring me a sword. Half goes to the one, half to the other
. Where was the craftsman of family harmony now?

Pumping Walter’s hand, that was where. “So generous,” Richard said. “We’re just . . . we’re flabbergasted.”

“Oh, Daddy!” Rina cried. “This just means the world to us.” She came around and hugged him, bouncing on her toes. Her queasiness had seemed to find its cure.

“Now are you happy,” said Ellie, “that you hid the Afkoman?”

“I’d happily hide a hundred more,” said Richard.

Walter slugged his coffee down, then tipped his cup toward Stu. “What do you say, brother Stu? Proud of your little sis, the mom-to-be?”

“
Uncle
Stu,” said Ellie (like Glenn correcting Milo). “Of course he’s proud. Proud as can be. Look!”

Tell them
, I thought.
For fuck’s sake, Stu
. But Stu just palely smiled.

All but choke a soda jerk for fifty measly cents, but fifteen grand robbed, and not a peep? Worse than the money lost: the absolute erasure.

A bloat made of emptiness was rising in my chest. It boiled up and burst within my mouth. “Stu and I,” I said, “we’ve got our own surprise.”

Now he met my glance: a look of fearful scolding.

Walter said, “A better surprise than mine? Good luck with that.”

Oh, Stu’s eyes: so very small, so smallened.

Why? Shouldn’t his parents be elated by our plan?
Another
grandchild. This one from their son, their stalwart son, whom they had wrongly thought a full stop.

“I have a guess,” said Ellie. “You’re moving back to New York.” She clapped her hands. “The family close again?”

“No,” I said, “sorry. We’re staying on the Cape. But
family
, yeah— you’re on the right track.”

In one long liberating rush, I told them everything: Stu would be the father, the mother would be Jewish, the Cape was ideal for raising kids. Well, not everything; nothing about our streak of disappointments. I worked to keep my voice full of nerve. “And so,” I finished, “if all goes well, by next year—next Seder—we’ll have
two
new Nadlers at the table!”

I raised both my hands in a
how-about-that?
gesture, and held them there, as if to lead a chorus of good tidings.

The Nadlers’ mouths were open, but no glad song emerged. Stu was dumbstruck, too; he looked smacked.

“I know it’s out of the blue,” I said. “It takes some getting used to.” For me, too, I told them, at frst it had seemed odd. “But where a baby starts its life isn’t what’s important. Where it ends up, that’s what counts—same as with adoption. So,” I added, “mazel tov to Rina and to Richard. And mazel tov to me and Stu, also. Or, wait—can you ‘mazel tov’ yourself ? I don’t remember. I need some remedial Jewish lessons.” I laughed, but the sound only boomeranged around.

Come on, Stu, I thought. Don’t just let me
hang
...

Walter f nally turned to me, his mouth no longer slackened but screwed into a pout of distaste. “A woman who would have a child for cash, she must be crazy—and
that
would be the mother of your baby?” He held his gut, a bomb that he might toss.

“No,” I said, “she’s not like that at all. Wait and see! Debora’s . . . you’ll just love her. Especially you, Walter. An immigrant, too, like you—so much gumption.”

“Hold on, now.
Debora?
You’ve hired someone already? It’s more than just . . . you’re telling me it’s
happening
?” He wheeled to Stu, fiery-eyed, righteous.

“Yeah,” said Stu. (The meekness of his voice. A gutless grunt.) “A couple of months,” he said, “we’ve been trying.”

Ellie said, “Who knows this yet? Rina, dear, did
you
know?” To Stu again: “You tell your parents last?”

“News to me,” said Rina. “News to me! Even when I went up there and told you what we’re doing . . . even
then
you didn’t say a thing?”

“But Rina,” I said, “Stu was only trying to be thoughtful. Trying not to steal the stage from you, from your good news.”

“And,” said Stu, “we wanted to keep this private, just in case.”

“In case
what
?” said Ellie. “In case you find a different mom and dad? Someone else to tell about your lives?”

Stu crushed a matzo crumb into the holiday tablecloth. “In case,” he said, “something went wrong.”

“Something?” shouted Walter. “The whole damn thing is wrong. Ask me, it’s nothing else but wrong.”

A fog of quiet socked us in. A New York sort of quiet: car alarms, the screech of someone’s bumper being hit.

Richard was the only one who hadn’t spoken yet. Richard, with the check still in hand. “So much hate is out there,” he said. “It hurts you guys. It must. But you both know—I hope you do—that that’s not how I feel.” He touched my wrist. He furrowed his brow humanely. “And so,” he said, “you know it’s not from prejudice when I tell you: this thing you’re attempting is misguided.” He and Rina had also considered the option, he confessed: egg donors, surrogacy, a seeming miracle cure. But here was what his rabbi, thank Hashem, had helped them see: To turn a person—a woman—into a
paid incubator
, to make the gift of life into a chit? This was an affront to God. A slap to human dignity. “The woman signs her life away. Can’t do
x
and
y
. Can’t—get this!—make love with her husband. Slavery,” he said. “It’s nothing less than slavery.”

“No,” said Walter, “you know what it’s like? The Nazis, is what. Mengele! Engineering babies in a dish.”

“It isn’t, Dad,” said Stu.

“Oh, no? Please enlighten me.”

“We don’t, well . . . there isn’t any dish.”

That was the extent of Stu’s defense? There’s not a
dish
?

“
I’ll
enlighten you,” I said. “You want a clearer picture?”

Ellie thrust her napkin at me, as if to stuff my throat. Too little, too late: she couldn’t halt my outburst.

“Stu whacks off and cums into a cup—okay, you picture that? And Debora’s husband shoots it up inside her.”

“Stop,” said Ellie. “Not at this table. Stop!”

“Well,” I said, “I’m not . . . I mean”—my tongue’s senseless motions, twitching like a beast after slaughter.

“Grace,” she said. “The Grace after Meals. Please. Let’s skip to that.”

A flash in the pan. That was all my courage.

“No!” said Walter. “The Afkoman. First we have to eat it. I won’t let this . . . this filth wreck our Seder.”

“Okay, then, fine,” Ellie said. “The Afkoman.”

Afikoman, Afikoman
—a crunch of nonsense syllables.

When Stu handed a piece to me he kept our skin from touching. The matzo turned to mortar in my mouth.

Our next try with Debora also failed. This despite her conscientious diet of Robitussin (two teaspoons, three times a day, eight days straight), designed to thin her vaginal secretions. Despite, too, our method’s fine-tuning: Stu did his business now straight into the Instead Cup, not a drop lost in the specimen cup or syringe; Debora stayed in bed, hips high, for two hours, then kept the Instead Cup, for two further hours, deep inside, snug against her cervix.

So diligent, so loyal to the cause, our surro was. I was glad I’d thought to bring her something from New York: a T-shirt from the zoo, emblazoned with a two-toed sloth, upside-down, smiling. Hang Tight! I’d bought the same, in kids’ size, for Paula. “I know they’re dumb,” I’d said, handing Debora the gifts. (I did this while Stu was in the bathroom, getting busy; Danny, in a heads-up bid to avert a scene like last time’s, had whisked Paula out to the back yard.) “But hey,” I said, “they’re
Brazilian
. The guy in the zoo shop told me. The sloths, not the shirt— that’s from China.”

“A sloth . . . well. Why not bring me something
nice
? A toucan?”

“I asked for a toucan. No, I did! They—”

Feigning indignation, she hurled the shirt aside. But later, when she summoned me and Stu back to the bedroom (smells of sweat and cough syrup muggy in the air), she wore it like a winning team’s colors. “I love this. I
love
,” she said. “Danny, find the camera.”

“What?” he said. “Seriously?”

“Paula should wear hers, too. Go and get her changed. Make it quick.”

I’d worried, when Stu and I agreed to use a surro, about how we’d honor such a debt. The moral, not financial, obligation. But Debora’s outsize joy, now, for just a silly shirt, made me think the most valuable thing we were giving her was treating her as someone worthy of value.

Debora, from her perch in bed, caught us up on news, the most important piece of which was: she had hosted a Seder! The very frst she’d hosted for the Neumans. “You see, Stu?” she said. “See how you inspire me?” Danny’s entire clan had come from Brockton for the evening, and everyone assured her she had done a lovely job. “Next year in Hyannis,” they all joked. The funniest part: Paula had actually
liked
to eat the horseradish, the way it made her eyes swell with tears. “A Jew, no? Even at her age. It’s in the genes!”

And how, she asked, was our Seder? A nice trip to New York?

Shit, I thought. Here we go again. I was already up to my chin with telling Stu I was sorry:
Sorry I spoke too soon. I should have let you tell your folks. I know I should have chosen different words
.

“Go ahead, explain,” he said. “Tell her about what happened. You’re the one who’s so good at divulging.”

“I don’t know, Stu. Maybe it’s better if—”

“No,” he said. “Go on.”

Fine, I did. Described the Nadlers’ protest of our plan (omitting mention of grandkid funds, and also Dr. Mengele), trying my best to show its comic aspects. “They’re sure you’re being used,” I said. “A woman enslaved, they think.”

“Ai,” said Debora, “look at how I’m chained in bed. Help!”

Paula, from downstairs, called, “Mãinha? You okay?”

“Yes, yes,
filhinha
.” Debora laughed. “I am perfect.”

“But listen,” I said, seriously, “I understand their fears. They’re older, and old-fashioned. Surrogacy is new. We knew they might need a little coaching.”

“Oh, ‘we’ did? We knew?” said Stu. “Is that why ‘we’ just ambushed them?”

Debora scooched up higher on the bed, inch by inch, as though trying to keep intact a house of cards atop her. “I told you about my parents, no? The way they thought of Danny? A sex tourist, they called him. A loser, full of lies. And me they called a stupid fool, to love him. After I left I wrote to them. For years I wrote them letters. Nobody would even send an answer.” She brushed her hands briskly:
that’s that!
“But then, when I have Paula, and send to them some photos? Then my mother mails to me a dress she made for Paula, a dress cut from one I used to wear: yellow flowers all around, and little shining suns. My mother, she had kept that small old dress for all those years.”

I was about to thank her for that shot-in-the-arm story, but Danny bustled in, camera around his neck, holding up a peevish, bucking Paula.

“Please,” he said, “don’t say now you want her in that dress. I just barely got her into the T-shirt.”

“The dress was just a story,” Debora said. “About parents. About, you know, giving them some time.”

“Giving them some time?” said Stu. “That’s what I was trying to do, but—”

“Stu,” I said.

“Forget it, Pat. Just drop it.”

At least he had the sense not to keep fighting in front of them. We made our excuses and went home.

Stu hadn’t spoken to his father since the Seder, but finally, after a couple of weeks, Walter Nadler phoned. According to Stu, the talk boiled down to this:

“Money’s always the issue, Stu. People just lose their heads.”

“Dad, it isn’t about the money. Truly. It’s way beyond that. What it’s about is treating us as equal.”

“Not the money—you sure? Okay, then, forget it. Rina will get the full amount, as planned. And as for what
you’re
planning to do . . .”

“Giving you guys a grandkid?”

“Your private life is your business, Stu. But please, keep it private. Spare your mother and me the details, yeah?”

Stu tried to spin this as a minor sign of progress, but afterward he lapsed again to sulking—a state that only worsened, later that same day, when Debora called to tell us that the Robitussin, the hours in bed . . . none of it had done a bit of good.