The Paternity Test (34 page)

Danny said, “We’re here to get this settled, now, for good. Better to do it in person, I thought. I thought we owed you that.” He was sweating, veiny. The clenching at the corners of his jaw made little bolts. “But honestly, no,” he added. “I don’t owe you guys shit. I wanted you to look me in the eye.”

Debora seemed to shrivel further, staring at her hands. She picked at her Band-Aid’s peeling edge.

Help her, I thought. Shield her.

I feared I was too late.

“Let me talk, please,” I said. “Before you say a thing. I don’t know what Deb has said, but
I
was the one to blame, okay? I was the one who—”

“Seriously, Pat?” Danny thrust his palms at me. “Give me a break. You think I want the
details
?” The only thing that mattered now, he said, was how to deal with it.

It
, he said, as if the word were held with bloody forceps.

Or no, not
how
to deal, he said.
When
was what he meant: “We have an appointment, the day after tomorrow, at a clinic.”

“Wait,” I said. “You can’t be saying . . . no! No way, come on. Deb,” I pleaded, and reached for her, but Stu stayed my hand.

“Danny,” he said, “it’s not your plan to make alone, okay? It’s ours. We’re all in this together.” He spoke frmly but evenly, using his return-to-your-seats voice. “No matter what was going on between these two,” he said, “the thing is that—”

“Of
course
it matters. Jesus Christ!” said Danny. “Don’t you guys have any sense at all of right and wrong?”

“Yes,” said Stu. “I do. I’m just as pissed as you.” He shot a hardened glance in my direction. “But listen to me. Danny. We can’t overreact. Really, there’s no reason to be so rash. We’ve got time.”

“How would time change anything?” Danny asked. “What’s done is done. And
I’m
done. I’m finished. I never agreed to this. This was not the bargain I signed off on.”

I appealed again to Debora, who still avoided my eyes. “He makes it sound like, I don’t know, a business deal,” I said.

Danny snorted. “What do you think it is? That’s all it’s ever been. But now it’s through. We’re ending it. It’s over.”

Stu got up and took a step; his hands were stiffened blades. “You think you can intimidate us? You think you can? You can’t.” Now he started to drub Danny with
breach of contract, lawsuit
, hacking at the air with every phrase.

Danny stood up, too. “The contract? Ha! Ha!” He took from his back pocket a folded piece of paper, opened it, and read in acid tones: “‘The Surrogate promises that she will not have sexual intercourse with any man from the time of the signing of the contract until pregnancy has been confirmed by a physician. The Surrogate further promises that she will not engage in any action in which the possibility of semen other than that utilized in inseminations from the Natural Father could be introduced into her body, such that the possibility—’”

“Stop,” said Debora. “Stop, stop, stop!” The word was like a stone within a sling; she whirled and whirled it, keeping us all away from striking distance.

“Deb, do you feel safe?” I said. “You need a place to stay? I swear, I’ll call the cops if you—”

“Just stop,” she said. “You, too.”

The air between us quaked. My breath felt made of shards.

“The deal is void,” said Danny, and tossed the contract down. “Because of Pat. What
he
did.” He jerked his meaty thumb at me. “That contract doesn’t mean fuck-all now.”

“You’re wrong,” said Stu. “You’re wrong! That stuff is there for us—to let
us
void the contract if we want to. And plus, keep reading: No abortions, except for the surro’s health.”

“As if that would stand up in a court,” Danny said. “But we won’t have the time to find out, will we?”

I was on the floor now. I knelt in front of Debora. “You’re just going to
let
him, Deb? Don’t you have some say? I mean, it’s your . . . your body, right? Your baby, Deb. Come on!”

“Danny says that—”

“No,” I said. “What
you
say. What do
you
say?”

Debora clasped her hands together, locking something in. “Danny says we have to put our family frst,” she said. “And I,” she said. “I can’t,” she said. She squeezed her fingers tighter; interlaced, they looked like a grenade.

“What about the woman you’re ‘supposed to be’?” I asked. “The woman ‘made for having babies.’ How could you even
consider
?”

Her eyes, now, her green-brown eyes, chilled me with their nullness. “Pat,” she said. “Please.”

Please leave me be? Please save me?

Danny helped her up and walked her swiftly to the door, hugging her so hard she lost her balance. He was saying softly, “Don’t look back.”

Stu was calling after them—“You can’t” and “You won’t”—promising to stop them, to sue them, make them pay. Shouting that they’d hear from us tomorrow.

Neither of them answered. I heard their crackling footsteps, the engine as it roared and then retreated.

Where was I? Still kneeling on the floor.

Sorry to say, Danny’s probably right,” K.C. told us, setting down the contract on her desk. “The case law really isn’t in your favor.”

The last time we’d seen K.C., I’d liked her homely frankness, the way she hadn’t tried too hard to buff her ragged edges. Now I looked at her puffy neck, her wrinkled, too-tight suit, and wondered if we’d hired the wrong attorney.

“But
read
the thing,” I said. “‘The Surrogate agrees that she will not abort the Child, except if, in the opinion of her physician,’ etcetera, etcetera.”

“Yes, but did you see this subclause, here?” she pointed out. “‘A court may determine that a woman has the right to abort, or not abort, any fetus she is carrying, and any promise to the contrary may be unenforceable.’ The truth,” she added, “is that a contract’s only just a contract. Without a judge’s enforcement, it means nothing. And surro contracts, at least so far, have not fared well in court.”

“What the hell?” said Stu. “Why did we even bother, then? Just so we could pay you for the honor?”

K.C. shrugged. “What was your other option? Better than nothing.”

But wasn’t she saying our contract was exactly the same as nothing? Or worse than nothing, because it had allowed us to rest easy.

Stu and I had waited almost two hours to be seen. The paralegal had warned us K.C. might be gone till noon—something about a long divorce proceeding. But where else should we go? What else could we do? (Stu had called in sick the night before.) And so we’d sat in the anteroom, numbed by the smell of potpourri, staring at a brass sailor’s clock. Stu had not said much beyond a periodic “Son of a bitch.” The words did not seem aimed at me, despite how well I’d earned them, for Stu had turned his blame almost wholly, now, to Danny; maybe he had only so much blame to hurl at once. Every time the clock’s bells chimed, I cringed: a cold and brittle sound that made me think of Debora’s deadened eyes.

At last K.C. had bustled in, sweaty in her pants suit, and looked at us with weary recognition; she must have seen the turmoil in our faces. “Call my twelve o’clock,” she’d told the paralegal. “Reschedule.”

Now, in her office, she tipped back in her chair. “Start again,” she said. “I still don’t get the basics. Why did Danny and Debora change their minds, you think? What happened?”

Stu and I had agreed we would say as little as possible. How could K.C., or anyone else, hear the sordid details and not doubt our fitness to be fathers? But now I saw that our dilemma made no sense without them. We had to tell K.C. the whole truth.

Or no:
I
had to.

I couldn’t gauge, when I was done, how she was reacting. She looked as though she couldn’t, or didn’t want to, hide aversion: a turned-up chin, a tensing of her lips. But what repelled her: Debora’s and my affair, or Danny’s response?

“Listen,” I said. “I know I made mistakes. I know I did.” I looked at Stu, but he was staring down at K.C.’s desk, the wood deliberately scarred (
distressed
, they called it). “But that shouldn’t mean,” I said, “that Danny and Debora can just . . . just decide.”

“What you call ‘mistakes,’” said K.C., “are for you and your spouses to reckon with. Legally, I’m not sure they’re material.” She squared a piece of paper on her desk. “As I said, a judge might well discard the ‘no abortion’ clause, regardless of any breach or lack of breach by the signing parties. Judges aren’t in the business of compelling the birth of children.”

Breach
went banging around my skull. I kept getting stuck on the phrase
breech birth
: a hazard, backwards.

Stu said, “You’re telling us there’s nothing we can do? This is not some legalese at stake. This is a
life
.”

“Trust me, I’m aware of that. I am,” K.C. said.

“Okay, wait. Wait,” I said. I flipped the contract’s pages. “What about the clause where she agrees to a paternity test? Here it is: ‘. . . agrees to submit . . . establish the paternity.’ Doesn’t it also state that if a test
excludes
the Intended Father, that if he’s
not
the father, that’s a breach? But if Deb takes a test, and it shows Stu
is
the father, then they have no grounds to say that—damn, does that make sense? Maybe a judge would weigh that in our favor?”

“No,” said K.C. “I’m sorry. I just don’t see it working.” She leaned forward. Her neck bulged against her buttoned collar. “And plus,” she said, “I have to say—speaking as a woman, now, and not just as a lawyer—that any woman’s reproductive choices should be sacrosanct. If Debora wants to terminate her pregnancy for any reason, I’m not ready to help you block her path.”

“But no! That’s the thing,” I said. I pounded on the desk. “She doesn’t want to. I can’t believe she does. It’s
Danny’s
choice.”

K.C. squinted, as if her own emotions were in the distance. “But still, that’s between them, no? A marital decision. I’m not sure how I should be involved.”

I wanted to say what Debora had told me, privately, on the phone: that she could not be sorry for the life (
our
life?) inside her.
This is not a thing
, she had said,
to make us sad
. Telling this, though, would rub our bond in Stu’s face again. I had already caused him so much pain.

But Stu himself pressed further, coming to Debora’s defense: “He’s hurting her,” he told K.C. “Danny is. I think.”

“Hurting her how?” she said. “What makes you believe that?”

“A burn mark,” said Stu. “She claimed it was an accident— something in the kitchen. Sounded fishy.”

“Plus, she had a Band-Aid on her hand,” I said. “A fresh one. She could barely look me in the eye.”

K.C. swiveled. She unbuttoned her collar and wiped her neck. Undid her cuffs, too, and turned them up. The clock out in the anteroom rang with four sharp chimes.

“Okay, listen,” she said at last. “We can try your plan. Legally, to be honest, I have to think it’s useless. If Danny lawyers up, he’ll find that out. But maybe, just to buy a little time, it’s worth a shot.”

She would write a letter, she said, full of fancy language: cease and desist, interdict, enjoinder. Threatening legal action if the pregnancy were terminated before a paternity test could be conducted.

“Ten weeks is the soonest you can do a test,” she said. “Ten weeks at the least, for safe sampling. And so, if Danny’s cowed by this, it gives you two-plus months. Or, if not, you’ll slow things down at least by days or weeks—however long it takes for him to find a decent lawyer.”

Go have lunch, she told us; by the time we finished our meal, the letter would be waiting.

We thanked her and thanked her. I shook her small, firm hand.

“I hope it all works out for you,” she said.

We had called to give fair warning that we were coming over—the home phone and also Debora’s cell—but no one answered.

“Well,” said Stu, “why
would
they? Whatever we’ll say, Danny knows he doesn’t want to hear it.”

“And Debora doesn’t have her phone. He took it,” I said. “She told me.”

“Who is he, the Taliban?” said Stu. “What a dick.”

And so here we were, driving across Hyannis, about to show up unannounced, unwelcome, at their house. Or, perhaps, in Debora’s eyes, more welcome than we knew. I had crazy thoughts about abducting her and cutting her off from all the world, till she could have the baby. Would that make me the good guy, or only just as domineering as Danny?

“Maybe he’s not home,” said Stu, slowing for a stoplight. “Middle of a workday. Probably not.”

No, I thought. Just Debora. And maybe Paula, too. I pictured the girl: her twiggish arms, her uncorrupted smile. I wasn’t sure if I could see her face and not break down.

“But if he
is
there,” Stu went on, “let me do the talking. I know how to handle a guy like him.” He clutched the wheel, his trigger fingers tight.

I was happy to let Stu play the heavy, if need be. Eventually, though, I was hoping to soften our approach. That had been Stu’s way with me, it seemed, these past few days. By holding back, he had sped the pace of my atonement.

I clutched the lawyer’s letter: a crisp ivory envelope with K.C.’s name embossed in dark blue letters. Ten weeks it could earn us, in which to talk down Danny. A short span, but long enough to shift a life’s foundations. (Ten weeks back, I’d never slept with Debora.) Danny was at his angriest now, understandably so, ruled by his need to gain command. But time could change that; time could help me help him to save face.

Two and a half months, I thought. Beginning of October. Debora might be showing by then; the baby would seem more real. Danny might have had the chance to feel its beating heart.

Danny was in his driveway, hugging a clutch of grocery bags, stumbling toward the back of his Explorer. The bags bulged with dirty laundry, rumpled shirts and briefs. Blindly Danny groped to lift the hatch. He hadn’t seen us.

“Here, let me,” I said.

He startled. “What the fuck?”

“We tried to call,” said Stu. “Couldn’t get an answer.”

“Yeah, well,” said Danny. “No, you couldn’t.”