Fertility: A Novel (16 page)

After dinner, the three walked back to the apartment, picking up the pace as the late-summer breeze turned cool. Once home, Rick hung up his mother’s coat in the front hall closet, and Jeff excused himself to check his e-mail and make some calls. As much as Susan enjoyed Jeff — she could see what a good friend he was to her son from their earlier Kabuki dance of questions and answers — she was glad to have some time alone to visit with Rick.

“I’m going to have a beer. Can I interest you in one?” Rick asked, knowing what his mother’s reply would be, but deciding to err on the side of the good manners she’d taught him.

“Beer? Oh, no, dear. But if you have a tea bag or some decaf coffee I wouldn’t say no,” Susan said.

“Yeah, I’m sure we have one or both of those. Let me check. Jeff,” he yelled, “do we have any herbal tea?”

Jeff interrupted his work on the missive he’d started to a woman whose profile he’d read on JDate.com. He came out of his bedroom, showed Rick where he kept the tea bags and made a beeline back to his laptop.

Rick found a package of cookies to go with the tea. He realized he hadn’t been inside a food store since he’d gone shopping with Sarah months before. For years, Jeff had bought the toilet paper and OJ. Now that Rick was home more, Jeff got groceries for both of them, just totaling up how much was owed. Rick had no problem with paying up. He was just relieved to have some food to eat after coming home from work.

“Herbal tea, coming up. And cookies, just to show how civilized we guys can be,” Rick said. He brought the tray to his mother, who had kicked off her shoes and tucked her feet under her on the couch. He sat down in the armchair, beer in hand.

“Oh, thank you, dear. You didn’t have to trouble yourself by opening the package of Oreos.”

“How did you know I opened the package?”

“Oh, my ears are still functioning quite well, thank you. I heard you opening the package in the kitchen,” she explained, revealing her secret.

“Really? That would never have registered for me. I guess women’s minds must work in a different way,” Rick said. “At least that’s what I’ve come to conclude after my dealings with the opposite sex.”

“A revelation for you, dear?” Susan teased. “Yes, we’re wired somewhat differently. We’re generally better than men at keeping several balls in the air. I believe the perpetuation of the species depends on it.”

“You really think so?” Rick asked, interested in his mother’s take on the age-old Mars versus Venus dichotomy. “You think men and women are hard-wired differently?

“Well, let me be clear. In terms of sheer intellectual power, I see no difference. So you’re a fine doctor and a woman as intellectually endowed and committed as you would be as fine a doctor. However, as she’d be treating her patient she’d have in the back of her mind that she’d better call home to remind the sitter to help Johnny with his math homework. Between patients she’d also call the vet to make an appointment for the cat on her day off.”

“Sounds like a miserable way to go through life. As far as I’m concerned, the patients alone provide more than enough entertainment. But I don’t think being able to remember to call the sitter and the vet is a sex-linked characteristic. A man could do that if he had to,” Rick insisted.

“I think most men wouldn’t do it and maybe couldn’t do it,” his mother countered. “One thing at a time; by and large, that’s how men function. I know I am generalizing, of course, and there are exceptions to the rule, I’m sure,” Susan said, covering her bets as she sipped her chamomile tea.

“I don’t know if I buy that. I have a different explanation. The woman physician will have to make the call to the sitter because she’s hard-wired for kids — to make babies and raise kids. That’s what women want. It doesn’t matter what heights they’ve scaled professionally, how sexually alluring they are, how smart or how dim-witted they are. They all want babies. Consider it something I’ve gleaned from my experience with the opposite sex,” Rick said dejectedly.

“Is that so bad, dear? After all, where would we be without that drive to reproduce? I think it’s instinctual, don’t you?”

“It is. But if you ask me, we have far too many people already walking the planet. I’ve never had any interest in adding to the overpopulation problem. There’s nothing so exceptional in my genes that I think they should be passed on to the next generation.”

This last comment gave Susan the lay of the land. She guessed that her son had butted up against the drive to perpetuate the species perhaps one time too many — and perhaps most recently with a woman whom he liked but who’d insisted on children. She decided to keep her response light and positive.

“Well, as your mother I might disagree with you on that point about your genes. I think you have exemplary genes. As an only child, you are certainly entitled to reproduce at least once without any guilt about compounding the global population problem. Speaking selfishly, of course, I would hope one day to be a grandmother. No pressure, dear,” she said with a little smile. “But all things being equal, I think you would be a fine parent, for a man that is,” she teased. “I recommend finding a good woman who can multitask and pick up the slack.”

This turn in the conversation was tying Rick’s stomach in knots. It made him crazy to think that just blocks away there was a fetus carrying his DNA, a fetus that Sarah had chosen over him. He wondered what his mother would make of that. He decided to mount a preemptive defense.

“I don’t know how you can advocate for the whole marriage and babies thing, especially after your experience. Think of how much better your life would have been if you hadn’t married him and had me,” Rick said, nearly spitting out the last words.

Her son’s brutal appraisal took Susan aback. Rick rarely spoke of his father, and she had never known exactly how he viewed their marriage. She knew he still smarted at the memory of the desertion. It had come at a terrible time, just as he was beginning his long recovery from the accident. At the ripe old age of five, he had been assaulted by an oncoming car and by a father eager to shed his family. Still, it stung Susan to think that her failed marriage had soured Rick on the possibility of creating a happy family of his own. She knew he dated extensively, and she had always assumed, wrongly it now appeared, that he would eventually want to settle down. Most devastating was his declaration that she would have been better off had he never been born. She had to set him straight.

Susan put her stocking feet back on the floor. “Rick,” she began, “how can you draw conclusions from a sample of one? I’m quite surprised. You’re a scientist and know better. For your information, your father and I were happy for several years. Things happened over time. You can blame him for his failings, which I admit are serious, but you can’t blame the institution of marriage. Of one thing I’m fairly certain: If you decide to marry, you won’t take the road he took.

“As for you, your existence on this earth is the best thing that ever happened to me. Hands down.”

Rick wasn’t convinced. “How do you know I’m not exactly like him? What? You think me incapable of leaving a wife and child high and dry? For all you know I may be a real chip off the miserable old block.”

“Rick, I think I know you. You’re not your father. I know he hurt you when you were a little boy. But you can’t allow that to influence the choices you make now. You’re too smart for that.”

“Well, maybe you don’t know me as well as you think. Maybe those genes dear old Dad passed on are manifesting in your precious boy. Did you ever think of that?”

Without hesitation, Susan threw the argument back at him. “Genes are just a starting point. What you do with them is up to you, Rick. If you don’t like how your life is going, you can do something about it. I didn’t raise you to be helpless, that much I know.”

“No, you poured your heart and soul into me. I get it. What I don’t get is how you can say I was the best thing that ever happened to you. Look at what I put you through, how I changed your life. Once your no-good husband took off, without me you could have enjoyed your career and probably gotten a heck of a lot more recognition. You could have had good times with your friends — male and female — traveling hither and yon, and doing whatever you damned well pleased. I was like a millstone around your neck.”

This was not the plucky, determined boy Susan had raised. True, after his dad left, his heart had been broken. But his grandfather — her dad — had jumped into the void, taking early retirement from his job at the auto factory so he could be at his bedside each day. After a long series of surgeries and months of rehabilitation, Rick had rallied. She didn’t feel she was sugarcoating things to say that he’d had a happy childhood, too. Now she had to try to get him back to his true self, which she believed to be nothing if not forward-looking and optimistic. She put down her mug and took both of his big hands in hers.

“Now you listen to me, Rick. I’m no Pollyanna and I’m no dummy. I am telling you that I wouldn’t trade being your mother for anything. You have been — hear me clearly — the most important thing in my life. I love my work, but the finest moments I have ever known have been as your mother. You have surpassed my every hope, my every expectation for a son. Never, ever think that I would have been better off without you. You are everything to me, and I can’t imagine my life without you in it.”

As she spoke, tears filled her eyes. To her surprise, her words had the same effect on her son. She kissed Rick’s hand and then wiped her face. “Don’t you ever doubt what I just said. You are the most important thing — the best thing — that ever happened to me.”

She hoped her words had hit their mark, reaching her son’s place of vulnerability and offering balm to the wound that made him feel himself unworthy of being his mother’s son.

* * *

That night was the only time during the visit that mother and son spoke so frankly. The following morning, Rick and Jeff awoke before six to the aroma of freshly brewed coffee, home fries, bagels and eggs. Susan had gotten up at five, assessed the household food stocks and gotten to work preparing a hot, sit-down breakfast. As a mother she saw it both as her duty and her pleasure to provide her son and his friend with this small bit of comfort in their stress-filled lives. As they ate, Susan tried to gauge Rick’s frame of mind, but all she learned was that he still enjoyed his eggs over easy.

After they finished breakfast, the three went their separate ways, promising to meet at the end of the day for another dinner out. That night they chose an Ethiopian restaurant. Both the food and the novelty of eating without utensils were to their liking. They spent most of the night discussing the politics of health care reform, a matter near and dear to them all. Jeff and Susan agreed that a single-payer system on the order of Medicare would be the easiest and least expensive way to get one hundred percent coverage in the population at large. Rick protested, pointing out that low reimbursement rates and paperwork were driving good doctors to opt out of Medicare. If that was the single-payer system they were endorsing, he would have to count himself out. The heated but friendly discussion had a salutary effect on Rick. It had been a long time since he had been interested in debating anything.

The next morning Susan did a modified reprise of the breakfast she’d created the day before, substituting croissants she’d picked up at a French bakery for the bagels. The breakfast was a hit and they were all sorry when it came time to leave. As they emerged from the apartment building, Susan reached up and hugged them both, giving each a pat on the cheek for good measure. As she headed down the street toward the subway station, she turned to catch a parting glimpse of her son and his friend as they joined the current of pedestrians.

* * *

The couple of days Rick spent with his mother gave him the chance to see her in a new light. It dawned on him that at the very same time she’d had a child on death’s door, she had been face-to-face with the crumbling of her marriage. After being tossed aside like last year’s fashion, she had made sure that both she and Rick survived; and more than that, she had given him the chance for a good life. After doing that for him, she had actually said he was the best thing that ever happened to her.

He realized that his mother was like some of the parents he’d met at the hospital — parents who had left no stone unturned to help their child survive a medical crisis. His mother was like that. He had been — and still was — one of the lucky ones. The least he could do in return was not piss away his life drinking beer in front of the television. It was time to get his act together.

He started by cutting back on the beer and forcing himself to run every day. He felt more present and alive from just those changes in his routine. He still had no real interest in women, which was a worry. But he mulled over his mother’s take on marriage. The fact that someone who’d had such a resounding failure could possibly endorse it made him laugh out loud.

Her endorsement aside, he couldn’t imagine how marriage might ever be in the cards for him. There was no way he could see himself as a husband. The word actually stuck in his craw. And if there had ever been a woman he’d consider for a lifelong contract, it was Sarah. But he’d let that ship sail. He knew that the only way to move forward was to somehow come to terms with how much he missed her. He’d just have to follow his mother’s example and find his way out of the dead end known as regret.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

One of Sarah’s pleasures during her pregnancy was thinking about how to rearrange her apartment to make it ready for the baby. She would indulge in her reverie after returning home from work or while lingering over a cup of tea on a Sunday morning. It was only when she got into bed, in the minutes before she fell asleep, that her thoughts turned to Rick.

Their last night together had been startling in more ways than one. She had never had a lover like him. Their bodies were perfectly suited to one another; their attraction was nothing short of electric. Merely holding hands with him was an erotic experience. But she knew that his appeal went beyond sex, revelatory though it was. She admired the work he did and his dedication to helping extremely sick children. She had to smile when she thought about how he had handled himself in the settlement meeting with the Arkins and their lawyer — how everything had been riding on him and how he had finessed the situation. She thought of their long runs together, and how easy it had been to be with him. Counter to expert prognostication, he’d made her pregnant. It made her happy to think that he was the father of her child.