The Paternity Test (29 page)

At last they came lurching—Richard frst, then Rina—like landlubbers searching for their sea legs.

“Hi,” I said, too loudly.

They both bleakly nodded.

“Sit?” said Stu, pointing to the couch’s free cushions.

“Thanks, Stu,” said Richard, but didn’t change position. He stood there, self-contained, steeled.

Rina took a seat, or let it take her. Stu was right: her eyes were all but zeroes.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “But honestly, I feel that I . . . that Pat and I deserve an explanation.”

“Of course you do,” said Richard. “You do. We’re so sorry.”

“We?” said Rina. “
Now
we’re ‘we’? Give me a goddamn break.”

“Easy, please. I thought we agreed to—”

“
You
agreed to. You.”

Richard cracked a mannered smile. “Okay, fine. Sure. But please, Ree. Can’t we not shout?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Let’s
whisper
about it. Tell it to them
real soft
.”

Richard clasped his hands before his chest ministerially. “The thing is—it’s a hard thing, obviously, for both of us—Rina and I, we’re getting a separation.”

“What? What are you talking about?” Stu leapt from his chair. It seemed he might go for Richard’s throat.

“Sorry,” said Richard, making a vague gesture of defense. “Didn’t mean for it to happen this way, but at this point, you’re right, you deserve to hear the truth.”

“But wait,” I said. “All because she wants a Jewish baby? A baby who is
actually
Jewish? Maybe it’s hard for a non-Jew to understand, I guess, but . . . seriously?”

“Not just that,” said Richard. “Irreconcilable differences.”

“Oh, please,” I said. “What are you now, a lawyer?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Really. I know you’ve gone to a lot of trouble, planning this whole weekend, and—”

“Don’t you be polite,” said Stu. “Don’t you dare be polite.”

“I told him I would do it how he wanted,” Rina said. “Born Jewish, converted—whatever. But it doesn’t matter. He’s already made up his mind.”

“Then why,” I said, pointing at him, “why’d you bother coming? I mean, what, you
just
made up your mind? Something about the drive up here just made you think: dump her?”

“No,” he said. “It’s just that . . . I guess I was confused. Or scared, I guess. Don’t know. Hard to explain.”

“Hard?” said Rina. “Hard? There’s only one reason, and it’s—”

“Ree, I’ve told you it’s not—”

“—because I’m infertile.”

“It’s not, Rina, it’s—”

“Of course it is! What else would it be?” Tears began to boil out from her eyes.

Stu thrust his face about an inch away from Richard’s. “You’re a schmuck, do you know that? From the moment I laid eyes on you, I didn’t like you. I tried to, for my sister’s sake. But my God! All your ridiculous ‘humor’? And your
‘Look at me, I worked on a kibbutz, I’m so holy’
? To say nothing of when you came here, as our guest, and accused Pat of making a pass at you.” He laughed thinly. “A pass? At you? As if, if there were an Uzi at his head, he’d so much as want to touch you. I don’t know why I never laid you out for that one. Or why, God, I ever invited you back.”

With that, he ordered Richard out.

“What do you mean, ‘out’?”

“I mean leave. Now!”

“But I can’t. We just got here, and Rina—”

“Shut the fuck up.
We’ll
take care of Rina,” Stu declared. He turned to her for confrmation, but Rina wouldn’t look up from her feet.

Richard was still standing there. I grabbed him with a bouncer’s grip and rammed him through the hallway, to the door. “Here,” I said, and clapped my free palm against his ass. “Here’s your grope, okay? Now get out.”

A man’s voice was jimmying the vacuum seal of sleep. Stu’s voice. Had he been speaking long?

“Hon?” he said. “I’ve been thinking. Maybe
you
should do it.”

I was still bobbing on the surface of my dreams. I knew, from the window, that day was coming close (the dark was graining, giving forth the shapes of trees and clouds). I had slept a couple of hours, I guessed.

We had stayed awake past two, Stu and I and Rina, shaky with the high of what we’d done. Rina did most of the talking: “I can’t fucking believe it. I mean, sure, we’d spoken before of maybe splitting up, but not unless . . . unless . . . I can’t fucking believe it.” Finally we had all given up, taken pills. Rina refused to sleep where she would have slept with Richard; instead she chose the couch, in the TV’s mottled glow. Stu and I had holed up in our room.

“Was I too harsh?” he’d asked. “Did I do the right thing?”

“The
only
thing,” I said. “I’m really proud.”

Then my pill had softened me; I rode a chute to sleep.

But now Stu had woken me with “Maybe
you
should do it.”

I cleared my throat of morning crust. “Do what?”

“Go to see the doctor and get your counts done. Or no, skip the stupid test. Just do it.”

“Stu, come on, it’s—I don’t think you mean that. Not really.” The last time he had said this, he was bluffing.

“No,” he said. “I’m serious. The
goal
is what’s important. Now that we’re the only hope for grandkids . . .”

(He had phoned his parents after Richard left, to tell them. Walter’s response: “Don’t get used to anything—didn’t I always say? And here I did, I went and did: the thought of being an
opa
.”)

“The baby’d still be Jewish,” Stu went on. “It’s matrilineal. Don’t you think it’s time for you to try?”

“You know I would—I’d love to—if you want me to,” I said. Immediately the possibility started to build beneath me: a brick, another brick, a solid mortared block. “But still, how do
I
solve . . . you know, I’m not
your
family. Your dad could still call himself cursed.”

“Maybe he wouldn’t know,” said Stu. “Maybe he wouldn’t have to. And hey, what’re you talking about? You are so my family.” He turned to me and gently traced my jaw. “Think of how fucked-up it’s been, this pressure from my dad, all the ways it’s messed with me and Rina. And Richard, that little shit, I swear I won’t be like that! So hung up on ‘Jewish family’—his fantasy of family—he ends up wrecking the one he
has
.”

Should I have been surprised? Had Stu forsworn his Stu-ness?

The opposite: he’d found himself again.

Dawn had buffed the window to a dazzling pinkish shine. The light put an ember in Stu’s eyes. “Maybe I’ll try one more time?” he said. “Not sure why—it’s not like I’m holding out much hope. And then, if it still doesn’t work,
you
should do it. Wouldn’t that make sense? Don’t you think?”

And so it was that when Danny called, shortly before noon (“I know you’ve got your in-laws there, but Deb just double-checked. Today’s a go. What time can you get here?”), I was feeling oddly optimistic.

Being in Debora’s presence would still test me, I was sure. But Stu’s altered outlook, his new flexibility, offered me a kind of dispensation. Not that I felt pardoned for the things I’d done with Debora, or felt released to let us lapse again. But now that Stu had raised the chance that I might make a child with her—now that she and I might form a kind of sanctioned union—I suspected our outlaw lust might ebb.

Suspected it would? Convinced myself it should?

Stu explained to Danny about yesterday’s debacle: Richard’s ouster, our holiday party scuttled. Screw that, Danny told him; the party would be at
their
house. “Bring whatever goodies you bought, but we’ve got more than plenty—hamburgers, hot dogs, the works. Bring your sister, too. Take her mind off.”

Rina was appreciative, but no, she wouldn’t go. What could be more miserable, today of all days, than standing by while somebody else tried to have a baby? “All I really want?” she said. “I want to be at home.”

“But Ree,” said Stu. “Really? Richard’ll be there, won’t he?”

“No,” she said. “
Home
. Mom and Dad’s.”

We dropped her at the airport, on the way to Debora’s. Stu used up a buddy pass to buy her a discount seat.

“Thanks,” she said. She kissed him.

“For what? I feel awful.”

“The ticket,” she said. “And for standing up. For being my big brother.”

“I don’t know. I just wish—”

“Let me do the wishing. What I wish is for everything today to go perfect. I can’t wait to hear the good news.”

A hug to Stu, another to me, and Rina headed off—unself-consciously wiping away her tears. Just before the X-ray machine, she turned to wave good-bye. “Prepare yourself,” she called, her voice pinched but steady. “Auntie Rina will spoil that baby rotten!”

No gamesmanship, no strings attached, just unreserved endorsement. I wished I could hug her again, harder.

Back in the glary car, I asked Stu, “How do you feel?”

“Like I told her: absolutely awful.” Watery-eyed, he flipped down the sunshade. “But also, you know, probably more than anything?
Relieved
. For you and me. The plan we made this morning.”

I rolled down my window. Muggy air sloshed in, the stoked scent of not-quite-mustered rain. The only right word for it was
pregnant
.

Debora greeted us equally, with quick pecks to our cheeks—cordial but with hostessy reserve—and I knew I could trust her, and therefore trust myself.

Still, I couldn’t help a little stirring. She wore a baggy T-shirt, a pair of Danny’s gym trunks: clothes that, in their over-obvious body-masking purpose, only brought my focus to her body. Her hair was down, which made her look young, luxuriant, nervous. I wouldn’t have pegged her as anybody’s mother.

Danny seemed intent on making up for her low-keyness. Immediately he flled our hands with smoking burgers, with beers, then opened beach chairs, commanding us to sit. Despite the soupy heat, he sported a hooded sweatshirt, like someone trying to shed his gut by sweating. But why? Danny had no gut to shed. Before I could remark on it, he did a coy striptease, peeling the hoodie off to show his T-shirt. Snug and pink: Nobody Knows I’m a Lesbian. “Awesome, right?” he said. “How could you not love it?” His newest clients, he told us, a dyke couple in P-town (“No—they said to call them that, they gave me their permission”), owned a pair of shirts exactly like it, and seeing how he’d laughed at theirs, they’d bought him this, a gift. “Such great ladies, I’m telling you. I’m working on their carriage house, turning it into a bedroom for their daughter. Did I explain that? They had a kid together, one of them using sperm from the other’s brother. I know you guys would love them. You should meet!”

This was my frst time with Danny since Debora had told his secrets; I had thought my skin would crawl, for her sake. And yes, he was making me cringe a little with his overkill, the way he slathered words on top of words like too much frosting, but part of what repelled me was a twinge of recognition: I knew my own weakness for ingratiating blather. Mostly I was thankful: for how he strove to please, for throwing us this party of diversion. The glowing grill, the frigid beer, samba at full blast . . . not too bad a way to spend the Fourth.

We settled in, sun-doped, reveling in our summertime amusements. The clank-and-shout of someone’s nearby horseshoes game was soothing.

Paula was like her dad today, manically convivial. She dashed through the yard in a Stars-and-Stripes bikini, a frantic spider, weaving her web of cheer. She made us watch her soak herself, tumbling over the lawn sprinkler: cartwheel after cartwheel through its steady pulsing spray.

The day, like that dot-dot-dot of water, would drift on, I guessed: an afternoon of sentences elided. Left between the lines was the reason we had come. And: the reason I might mess things up.

Paula’s glee had given me a kind of contact high. Or maybe I was just a little drunk. Danny had been presenting me with one beer after another, as though each were a brilliant new invention. Stu was also drinking more, and faster, than was normal. (Debora couldn’t; she guzzled guaraná.)

Paula stripped her bathing suit and flounced about us, naked, squirming to the samba’s saucy beat. Debora said, “Behave,” but her heart wasn’t in it, and Paula took off streaking through the sprinkler. “It tickles,” she said. She did it again. “A hundred little pokies!” Then she called, “Okay, now
you
,” and ran to take Stu’s hand.

Stu said, “Nope! No way. No no no.”

“But why, Stu? Why not? I’ll do it with you, ’kay?”

“Because . . .” He braced himself against her munchkin tugging. “My birthday suit isn’t as nice as yours.”

The girl paused, perplexed, scanning her bare skin, and Stu took the chance to wriggle free.

“Mãe,” she complained. “Make him do it, Mãe.”

“I can’t,
minha filha
. Not if he doesn’t want to.”

“And what am
I
,” I said to Paula, stepping in, “chopped liver?”

Paula appeared spellbound by the kooky phrase; she stared.

“Why are you only bugging him,” I added. “Can’t I do it?”

“You!” she screamed, and galloped up, trilling a bright song: “Sprinkler sprinkler sprinkler sprinkler sprinkler.” Her smile showed me every tiny tooth.

My sneakers: off. Socks: off. T-shirt: doffed and twirled.

“Nice,” called Danny. “Show us a little skin.”

“Danny,” chided Debora, cutting her glance to Paula.

“Oh, she doesn’t understand. Do you, sweetie? Nah.”

True enough, Paula didn’t catch the dirty talk. She was busy laying down the rules for me to follow. “A hop on this foot, a hop on this, and then . . . and then,
jump
.”

“Hmm,” I said gravely. “You’d better show me frst.”

She did, then she bolted back—glistening, newly birthed. “See? Just like that. Like me.”

“Okey-doke,” I told her. “Here goes nothing.” A hop and a hop, a lumbering jeté. The water was so cold it almost burned.

“Now again,” she said. “Now together.”

We breasted through, holding hands, buoyed by the spray. We made a kind of clumsy, footloose sense.

The music got more drummy, and Paula started dancing. She still gripped my hand, so I was forced to join her. “Faster,” she said, her feet like popping corn. I didn’t think it possible (the beer had slowed my limbs), but somehow I kept up with her explosions.