Happy Family Part 3

Three: The Loneliest Number.

Cici's face is wet with tears. Sol can't tell if they're tears of joy or pain. He'd left the baby, who was still sleeping, in the car and gone upstairs to get Cici. She refused to come downstairs, even after he said he had a really, really big surprise-one she was sure to like.

Even before he opened the front door to return to the car he heard it: a wail that began to crescendo and showed no signs of abating. The baby hollered when Sol took her out of her basket, she screamed and kicked off her blankets-it was all Sol could do to carry her up the stairs and into the bedroom. The baby gulped and sputtered and Sol bounced her a little but was having no luck calming her down. Cici must have heard the crying because she was standing at the window, locked in place, facing away from Sol. Waiting for Cici to turn around felt to Sol like an eternity. When she did, her gaze was lowered and he could see tears wet her face. She took a few steps toward him and when she met his eyes it was as if she was seeing him, again, for the first time. Her expression so tender, so grateful, as she reached out toward the baby in his arms. "Per favore," she said.

Sol had a.s.sumed they'd talk a bit. He'd explain his decision, leaving out certain specifics, but in his mind, talking occurred. But now, there was no talking. Cici took the baby in her arms and began cooing and murmuring softly. "I'll just be downstairs, waiting," Sol mumbled after watching the circle close around his wife and their infant. "I'll leave the two of you alone, give you time to get to know each other."

Get to know each other? Sol feels like a galoot. He thinks it's going well, though, because every time he goes upstairs to check on them, they're clucking and cooing, and now the baby's quiet. He makes Cici a sandwich and brings it up along with the bag of bottles and formula and diapers Mrs. Beal had given him. "I thought you might both be hungry," he says. He lays down the care package, filled with things he isn't quite sure what to do with. The baby's in bed next to Cici, curled like a lima bean. Sol puts the sandwich down on the table next to Cici's side of the bed. She looks like a child herself. "Shhhhhhhhh," she says, pressing her finger to her lips and closing her eyes.

Sol spends the night on the sofa and the next day Cici and the baby sleep until noon. Sol tunes in to the Voice of America, which is broadcasting President Kennedy's response to Khrushchev. "I think that you and I, with our heavy responsibilities for the maintenance of peace, were aware that developments were approaching a point where events could have become unmanageable." Kennedy sounds so calm, so restrained. Listening to his voice makes the fact that the world has just been teetering on the edge of nuclear war seem unbelievable. The Soviets are going to stop building bases in Cuba and will dismantle their offensive weapons; they had blinked. High noon appears to be over everywhere in the world, including in his own home. Sol is greatly relieved. Why, then, does he still feel a sense of disquiet, like he's forgotten to do something but can't remember what?

Cici and the baby stay in their bedroom for three days and nights, until both are exhausted from the struggle to feed and be fed, until Cici's milk is flowing fully and the baby is sucking from her breast. Cici refused to use a bottle or formula, determined to nurse this child as she would have her own. Love starts to form underneath the crust of Cici's grief, and she is hungry to protect and keep close the new object of her affection. "I am your mama, and you are mia bambina," she says to the baby. "I am mama," Cici whispers until she can no longer picture the gray face of her son. "You are my baby. Mama will not lose you, tesoro mio."

Sol feels like a stranger in his own home. The closed bedroom door is a barrier between him and what is distinctly female. Sol is excluded from whatever is going on behind that door, and after days of it, he feels a mounting anger. Then again, shouldn't he just be happy that she's taken with the child, that they're forming a bond? Isn't this exactly what he wanted? But Cici is young and inexperienced, and what she needs is the advice of a more mature woman, like one of her sisters. Certainly not uneducated Cookie. He doesn't trust that Cookie, not anymore.

Sol has noticed that Cookie has a spring in her step since the baby arrived. Maybe because she has a free pa.s.s into their bedroom and he doesn't. Sol watches her disappear into the room and reappear with dirty diapers and dishes. Cookie makes trips to and from the baby's room, fetching clothing and ointment and rattles and returning with applesauce, corn pudding, mashed potatoes, yams. Sol has teeth he'd like to use and the rotation is getting tiresome. It's obvious that Sol isn't needed at home, so he calls the hospital and says he's coming back to work. He had another radiologist cover for him for a couple of days, but now it is time for life to return to normal.

By the seventh day of Cici's sequestration with the baby, Sol's back is tied in knots from sleeping on the living-room sofa. Rather than knocking softly on the door and speaking to his wife through a baffling of wood, this morning he barges in, unannounced. Cici is sitting up, a pillow under her arm and the baby nestled at her breast. Her hair is clean and pinned up and she wears no makeup. Sol can't remember ever seeing her look more beautiful. Without taking her eyes off the baby, she motions for Sol to come around beside her. All the words he planned to say-that she needed to snap out of this ethnic nonsense and feed the child some proper formula, that he would be coming back to their bed tonight-are silenced. A breeze from the open window releases the faint scent of powder and something b.u.t.tery, almost like caramel. "Come, amore mio," she says. He sits next to her on the bed as she turns the baby toward him. The child has the strangest eyes. They are two distinctly different colors; one blue and the other hazel, heading into green. The baby is alert, locking right onto him. Is he supposed to hold her? He hesitates and Cici puts the baby over her shoulder and pats her back for a burp. She's cooing in some version of Italian baby talk, making round circles on the baby's back. "Shhhhh, cara mia, tesoro mio, cherie, cara." Cici looks so peaceful now; except for the scars on her stomach there's no outward sign anything bad has happened. Sol feels uncomfortable perched on the edge of the bed; should he slide his legs up, spoon into the family? He picks one leg up and slides an arm around Cici's shoulders. Is he supposed to watch her and the baby making eyes at each other in wonderment? He tries. The baby has spit bubbles on her mouth and Cici blows on her face, laughing her delicious laugh. But this new position is no more comfortable for Sol than the other, and he waits for Cici to notice and readjust. But she is too busy sniffing the top of the baby's head. Is Sol supposed to sniff it too? Is he supposed to feel something immediately toward this child that bears no resemblance to him, that is not his flesh and blood? Clearly Cici does. Cici squeezes his hand and tells him to breathe, right there; she kisses the baby's downy head. Sol realizes the baby is the source of the caramel smell, the scent he couldn't describe mingling with new car. Sol has a dawning dread that he may have made a mistake, one that can't be undone. They are now three. He feels the unevenness of the number, the potential for gaps, for triangles.

"Don't you want to know her name?" Cici says. She sounds fragile and terribly lovely. It makes Sol want to inhale her voice and sail away. When she finally looks up at him, her gaze fills him up. It feels like forever since she's done that. "It is Cherie," Cici whispers. "Ma cherie amour. Is perfetto, no?"

She's named the baby their term of endearment? The name she calls him when they make love? "Perfect," he says weakly as he walks out and quietly closes the door.

And what of the baby in all of this, the newly minted Cheri (without an e because Sol wanted there to be at least a letter of difference between his pet name and hers)? She inhaled the soft woolly smell of blankets, the powdery, sticky scent of white cream, and vanilla from the long hair that she grabbed as it tickled over her face. And there was the smell of something else that was put into her mouth, wet and soft, not like the salty-tasting fingers that touched her lips. This thing that was pressed into her mouth, that made her cough and choke and was dry at first and then became liquid that tasted sweet and slightly bitter. Sometimes it tasted different, it made her sneeze; she'd smell it on the cloth that would wipe her face or on the front of her when she spit it up. The source of the smell, the liquid, had big soft lips and big soft hands that sometimes pressed her hard into the smell, wanting her to drink more when she was full. The source of the smell clutched her and made noises that she'd heard before but that sounded different, like they needed her to respond. Like they were waiting. The smell would sometimes be so close she felt she couldn't breathe and then she'd cry and get pulled closer and closer so she stopped crying to get away. The smell opened its lips and closed them over and over again making "Mmaaa," and then "Maaaa." "I am your mama," so that one day she would know the smell was Mama, so the smell had a name.

Cheri sleeps with Mama and dreams of things she'll soon forget. A woman in a blue dress dances barefoot on the moon. "I'll fly you to bliss," she says, twirling to a chorus of voices spoken in words she doesn't yet know; "Terry's on the mound at the bottom of the ninth and the pressure is on"; "If I'd wanted another kid I'd go knock up Mab." "Cheri, amore mio, I am here. I will never leave you," she hears as she opens her eyes, as the smell reaches to embrace her, to take her in, grasping tight, too tight. "Never, ever."

Part II.

Chicago, 2002.

Somewhere in the Middle.

Eggs.

Monday morning is the cruelest time for undergraduates, especially when they're sitting in the dark, and she suddenly knows she's lost them. Cheri Matzner stands in front of a projector while the ancient fertility idols and horned G.o.ddesses shown in the slides flow over her like a traveling tattoo. She can practically hear her students' heads dropping onto their desks. She can't wait to be free of these baby birds with their mouths and laptops open, partially because it's her last semester teaching and partially because her dine-and-drive breakfast of fried dough and coffee is repeating itself in new and unusual ways. Where did she put all those antacids she just bought? Not in her pockets where she needs them. Cheri always said that forgetfulness was for amateurs and the elderly; if she lost track of something, it was on purpose. She'd blame it on the hamster wheel of fertility treatments she's been stuck on for the past year but this is an off-month. A break from hormones, injections, and, thanks to the threadbare state of her marriage, s.e.x.

The filled lecture hall confirms her worst fear: she's become an academic, someone who tells people the answer is in books; worse still, in books written in dead languages. She's a long way from who she was when she came to the University of Chicago six years ago as the rebel in Ancient Near Eastern Studies, that radical professor with the tattoos, piercings, and past career as a cop with the NYPD. Blame it on the looming bra.s.s glow of tenure or on the erosion from all the loathsome paperwork and departmental service hours, but any idealistic notion she had of shaking up the dusty status quo of academe through teaching undergrads is long gone. But Cheri doesn't like to lose at anything.

"Who's been to a prost.i.tute?" she asks, flicking on the lights. "Has anyone been to a prost.i.tute, used an escort service, Internet hookup? Anyone?" The students look at each other quizzically, wondering if Cheri is serious. Some s.h.i.+ft in their seats. "I won't tell your significant other-it's a purely sociological question." A guy with facial hair like Jesus finally says: "In Vegas for a cousin's wedding there were hookers."

"Okay, weddings, good. Anyone else?"

"A kid I knew in junior high got a b.l.o.w. .j.o.b at his bar mitzvah. His big sister's friend came up to him and, you know, did it. She was in high school so it was a big deal."

"Did you all line up and watch?" a neighboring girl snaps.

"We were h.o.r.n.y boys, what do you think?"

"The point is," Cheri says, "in both the wedding and the bar mitzvah, there's a ritual. Let's take Riley's example. A bar mitzvah marks a pa.s.sage into manhood. The initiate receives a s.e.xual favor from his big sister's friend. What do we think of this ritual? Yes, Rachael?"

"The girl was degrading herself; she was probably doing it as a dare, not because she wanted to. It shows how women are brought up thinking they have to wors.h.i.+p the phallus and they get nothing in return."

"Why is everything about degrading women?" Riley says. "The girl was the one with the power. She was older, she approached him-she had the control."

"Oh, please," a girl wearing a beanie says. "The girl was a s.l.u.t."

"Okay, in about a minute, we've called this girl powerful...a victim...and a s.l.u.t." Cheri writes the words on the chalkboard. "Who knows what she would have been called in ancient Sumer?"

Rachael raises her hand. "A sacred prost.i.tute?"

"A priestess. In the third millennium Riley's friend would have gone to the temple where a qadishtu-sacred woman-would initiate him s.e.xually. s.e.xuality wasn't disconnected from religion. It's not until the sixth century that the priestess is thought of as a sacred prost.i.tute and then, as the role of the G.o.ddess diminished, a harlot."

"Finally, we're back to prost.i.tutes..."

"Riley, since you're eager-define prost.i.tute. As we know it today."

"A prost.i.tute has s.e.x for money and it's illegal, except, I think, in Vegas. Although there are other ways to prost.i.tute yourself, for power or grades, for example."

"Let's say, 'to offer s.e.xual intercourse for money.' From a Judeo-Christian perspective, the holy woman becomes a prost.i.tute, the powerful woman a s.l.u.t. When we use the word virtue-the virtue of a woman-it's immediately linked to virginity. But imposing one concept of virtue on another isn't what we're supposed to do in a democratic society-that would be like having a national religion, right? So how we define words is affected by the prevailing point of view." She calls on a reedy kid who has had his hand up for a while.

"It comes down to what's moral. That's not something that s.h.i.+fts based on the times. I'm Catholic and I believe there is something wrong with prost.i.tution. Back then and now."

"Mesopotamian families didn't have the structure and a.s.sumed relations.h.i.+ps of Western society. You need to put your judgments and personal beliefs aside-"

"But it's not a personal belief-the Old Testament makes it very clear that being a prost.i.tute is forbidden. A prost.i.tute is someone's daughter. That's about family structure and values." Cheri feels increasingly dyspeptic-is it the kid, the lack of antacids, both?

"As I was saying, this cla.s.s is not about a literal or religious interpretation of the Bible. If you're interested in that, take a course in the divinity school." Cheri moves behind her lectern to get the cla.s.s back on track. "In the Abraham cycle-the original dysfunctional family story-we have polygamy, concubines, surrogacy. All legal in Mesopotamian law. Hagar was like the sacred prost.i.tute, performing a vital function. In a tribal culture it was a numbers game; the more wives and concubines a man had, the more chances for children. The bigger the tribe, the greater chance of survival and nation building. Your next paper will be on Abraham's sons Isaac and Ishmael. Examine their two paths. Do you stay at home and inherit your father's kingdom, where his shadow looms long, like Isaac did? Or, like Ishmael, do you heed the call, either by circ.u.mstance or by choice, and leave home and become, like your father, a builder of your own nation?"

She can't make a clean exit. A few students lurk around the lectern after cla.s.s, trying to get her attention. There's gifted but unlikable Rachael who wants to talk about Cheri's book, which linked the advent of writing to the decline of the G.o.ddess. The Catholic kid, hugging his backpack like someone who never lends his books, and Riley. "My office hours are posted," she says, walking past Rachael and the backpack kid, but she can't shrug off Riley. "I'm serious about applying to the Near Eastern language program for grad school. I was thinking-"

"Based on how you do this semester, I'll consider writing you a recommendation. Now can I walk in peace?"

"Thanks, but that's not what I wanted to ask you. I heard you're going on leave to work with Professor Samuelson on that new Mesopotamian find? I want to apply to be your research a.s.sistant."

Cheri is surprised undergraduates have heard about Samuelson's project. She certainly hasn't been able to pin down the details. First, there's Bush's "axis of evil" rhetoric and accusations of WMDs, all of which make it impossible for Western archaeologists to collaborate with their counterparts in the museum in Baghdad. But there's also the black hole of McCall Samuelson himself, Cheri's department chair and head of the Oriental Inst.i.tute. Samuelson has yet to specify for Cheri-a mere mortal scholar-any details of her job description and critical path until they are able to get into Iraq. "Not now," she barks, and heads up the stairs to her office.

"They say it's a cache of cuneiform tablets, that it could be as important as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Is it true, they could trace back to the Old Testament?" Riley tags after her. "No job would be too small. I'll be your temple prost.i.tute. Not funny?"

In a few seconds she's alone at her desk, popping an antacid. Her office is anarchy. Scholarly books commingle with beach reads stacked randomly in teetering towers. There's a poster for Rock 'n' Roll High School signed by the Ramones; one shelf is home to the upper portion of a llama's skull and an aqua hookah worthy of Alice's caterpillar. Her coat is buzzing. She has several messages, most from Cici. Oh, for the freedom of the cell-free days when everyone wasn't available 24/7. Ever since Sol died, five years ago, her mother war-dials her if she doesn't answer right away. Then there's a message from her editor in New York, chirping, "How's that next book coming?" Her first book, an extended version of her doctoral dissertation, The Rise and Fall of the G.o.ddess: d.i.c.ks, Chicks, and Mythological Cliques, reached what her publisher called the "upper mainstream," a segment of the population Cheri knew well from Montclair-urbane professionals who thought being open-minded was listening to NPR in their luxury vehicles on their commute to work. How ironic that the people she fled from turned out to be her most receptive audience. In academic circles, her colleagues had denounced it as "populist," likely because it didn't have enough obscure, dense footnotes, and resented its success. Cheri sits back in her chair as the last message begins to play. It's from McCall Samuelson's secretary, saying he has to cancel the meeting that was scheduled for this afternoon. Again.

It's gray and dreary outside. Hyde Park looks particularly New England-y today, its brick homes and tree branches dusted with weekend snow. Cheri has just enough time to try to track down Samuelson before heading back to the land where twins are made in petri dishes. At thirty-nine, any time off from fertility treatments counts in dog years. Her life has been co-opted by the microscopic of egg and sperm for so long now that she's forgotten what it's like not to think about it. She's burned out on more than baby birds, and her career has suffered because of it. She needs to get her head back in the game and would love nothing more than to be in the thrall of something bigger. Piecing together the puzzle of humanity's ancient past is what drew her to Mesopotamian studies in the first place. Teaching was never Cheri's pa.s.sion. It was research and translation that thrilled and sustained her. Nothing compared to holding a clay tablet in her hands, knowing she would be the first person to read it in thousands of years. Translating known languages was a cakewalk compared to the linguistic detective work of deciphering cuneiform. She's always dreamed of being first in on a new discovery, having her translation become the benchmark for every subsequent generation of scholars. Now that she's part of Samuelson's team translating tablets rumored to be of biblical importance, this kind of lasting contribution is within her grasp. But first, she has to break out of the fog of infertility and pin down Samuelson about her job description.

Cheri walks past a row of Thai restaurants on Fifty-Fifth Street, heading toward the lake. She's heard Samuelson has been meeting with someone from the British Museum but she was supposed to be his primary-and only U.S.-cuneiformist. Her husband's words return to her: "You can't trust someone with two last names. Pace yourself; if you get caught up in every perceived slight, you'll run out of energy for the real heartache."

From their accidental discovery in 1991 by a Sunni villager digging a ditch near the ancient city of Ur, the Tell Muqayyar tablets have been a tangled web of happenstance and politics. The clay tablets-most in fragments-were no sooner found than separated and dispersed on the black market. Over the years, some were confiscated and returned to Iraq's national museum; others landed in the British Museum. They would have moldered in bas.e.m.e.nts, along with thousands of other undeciphered tablet fragments, were it not for a plot twist. A cuneiform scholar from the British Museum stumbled onto one of the illegal fragments in a London antiquities shop and noted that its seal impression corresponded with a stone cylinder seal on doc.u.ments he'd recently cataloged. Now it was a tale of two inst.i.tutes, each with broken pieces of related texts and its own ideas about how to a.s.semble and translate them. Neither could proceed without the other's fragments, so a third party was needed to mediate. Last year, when it looked like Iraq was opening back up, McCall Samuelson, as the United States' most experienced Mesopotamian archaeologist, was tapped to lead an international team of scholars in reconstructing and interpreting the tablets. Rumors swirled that the ancient doc.u.ments could trace back to Abraham. Proving that the original biblical patriarch was a real historical figure was, indeed, the holy grail of archaeology.

Cuneiform scholars.h.i.+p was a small and rarefied field and one that was not immune to the petty politics and social climbing that was the blood sport of academe. Many of her colleagues were vying for a spot on Samuelson's team, and while Cheri knew Peter Martins-the scholar who had found the fragment at the London antique shop-and knew he'd put in a good word for her, it was both a relief and a triumph when she was named last month to his team. Involvement in a project of such prestige qualified her for the leave of absence she was desperate to take. It also stopped the clock on her tenure review while pretty much guaranteeing she'd receive it upon her return.

Her ears sting from the lake-locked chill and she needs nicotine. She turns her back to the wind, cups her hand, and lights up. Delicious. She tells herself she'll quit when she's pregnant and heads toward a green canvas awning that says The Woodlawn Tap. It's an old journalist's hangout, a dump known for its grilled cheese sandwiches and collection of reference books. She steps inside, walks around the horseshoe-shaped room, and spots Samuelson in his usual back booth, reading the Tribune and the Wall Street Journal in tandem. His back stiffens and he pretends not to see her. A man who functions from the neck up, he has the incongruence of the hands and thick frame of a butcher.

"Am I interrupting?" Cheri says.

"Oh, Professor Matzner," he says, putting down his papers then clasping his sausage-like fingers together.

"I wanted to check in and see how things were progressing. I know Dennis Donohue was in town last week."

"I'm working with quite a few parties on this, as you know."

"And is there any news on how we might proceed? Obviously, n.o.body is getting into Iraq at the moment, given the current politics."

"Fits and starts, my dear. We've dealt with worse blows from UN sanctions in the past. Whatever happens this time, the prudent course is to take the long view. I believe we'll resolve the situation, just like we did in Nippur."

"That was before 9/11. Who knows if Tony Blair has any real evidence of weapons of ma.s.s destruction, but it's pretty clear that he and Cheney are building a case for invasion."

"Governments may enact all sorts of Sturm und Drang, but much can slip twixt the cup and the lip. One thing experience will teach you is-know enough to know when you don't know. Leave it to those who do."

A waiter appears, bearing iced tea.

"Sugar, please," McCall says, "the real stuff." The waiter looks at Cheri, but before she can order a drink, Samuelson waves him off. "In any event, while n.o.body wants bloodshed, one could make an argument that a regime change-if it's done with the framework of an international coalition and blessed by the UN-would be in the best interests of the Iraqi people as well as archaeology." He sits back and nods, seemingly satisfied at the wisdom he has just bestowed on Cheri.

But, to the evident annoyance of McCall, Cheri charges on. "Politics aside, I'm sure you must be considering how you'd like your team to proceed until we can get access to the tablets in Baghdad."

"There are many moving parts to consider and, rest a.s.sured, we are considering them all."

"I understand," she says, trying to sound calm as she clenches her hands under the table. "I'm bringing this up because, as you know, I've cleared my teaching schedule in the fall to be fully available to you. My publisher is waiting on my second book and I'm trying to plan my time."

Just then, a stately man walks up to the table, holding his coat in his hand. "Professor Matzner, Dr. Donohue," McCall says. "Professor Matzner is a cuneiform scholar and one of our professors. She was just leaving."

"Nice to meet you," Cheri says with a too-firm handshake, and with that, she is dismissed.

Cheri presses the gas pedal of her Jeep, listening to the engine cough and then die, cough and then die. Samuelson's condescension infuriates her. Her hand trembles. It's a tic, an old hangover from her love affair with amphetamines. When the engine finally catches, she drives west on North Avenue to get to the Kennedy Expressway.

"Men can't handle women being direct. You have to appeal to his ego," her oldest friend, Taya, had advised when she'd complained about Samuelson. "Or, better yet, make a donation. He probably chairs some archaeology foundation that needs funding. You may live like you don't have money but you inherited a boatload from Sol so f.u.c.king spend some of it to help yourself for once. Or if all else fails, you could always f.u.c.k him." Unfortunately, Taya's only knowledge about the pressure points of academe came via an affair she had with a visiting professor from Russia when she and Cheri were undergraduates at NYU.

The direct approach with Samuelson had failed her before. Last March when Saddam Hussein held an international conference in Baghdad and invited leading Western archaeologists to attend, Cheri made it known that, if Samuelson was willing to break the U.S. sanctions, she'd be on board to join his staff. The official purpose of the conference was to mark five millennia since the advent of writing. But the gathering was a flas.h.i.+ng yellow light to international scholars saying, Come back in, the water's fine. American archaeologists knew that if the U.S. didn't lift its embargo soon, they'd be the last in and lose the best sites. Going to the conference ensured McCall Samuelson and their university a place at the table. When her name didn't appear on his staff list, she confronted him. "My mistake," Samuelson said, "I presumed you would understand the politics. The Iraqi government reviews the staff list. Do you think they won't vet and veto someone with a Jewish last name?" She pointed out that she wasn't Jewish. Her parents were registered Catholics and she was an agnostic. "If you think that matters to Saddam Hussein and his Baathist cultural committee, you have no business being involved," he'd answered.

Samuelson was part of the archaeological establishment. He had a long history of good relations with the Iraqi authorities prior to the 1990s sanctions-they protected his sites, gave him logistical support, helped him achieve professional fame. And as repulsive as it was, Cheri had to admit Samuelson was right. They wouldn't have let her in for an event at Saddam's invitation. Now, as a scholar on Samuelson's team and with the British as a key element, it was different. She felt worse than idiotic; she felt naive.

Cheri was no stranger to being mistaken for a Jew. In her prior life as a cop in the NYPD, she'd been subjected to sn.i.g.g.e.rs of "bagel b.i.t.c.h" and worse but refused to use the "I'm not a Jew" defense, since it implied that their anti-Semitism was wrong only because they'd made an incorrect a.s.sumption about her. She had no love for the name Matzner or the man it came from, and she had considered changing it when she married Michael. But who wanted to live her life as Cheri s...o...b..

Cheri gets on the expressway bound for the suburbs. The irony is that she'd never had an affinity for babies. She didn't know what to do with small, helpless creatures. As an adopted child, Cheri was intimately aware that some people should never have children and she was afraid she might have inherited the propensity to abandon her young. So it was a shock to her when, as she was heading toward forty, she started thinking, Well, maybe. When maybe turned into yes, she a.s.sumed reproduction was an inalienable right-you didn't need a permit to have a child like you did to have a handgun-and her body would comply.

All roads lead to donor eggs. Cheri knows Dr. Morrison will push this as the only viable option. She's tried everything else: four failed rounds of inseminations with FSH injections and two in vitro fertilizations that didn't implant. Using eggs from a twenty-something increased her risk of multiples. Giving birth to and caring for a litter? Out of the question. She likes to think she has an open mind, but does she want another woman's child taking root and growing inside her? What twisted strands of lineage and dysfunction would she nourish and would she be able to love whatever she pushed out of her v.a.g.i.n.a as much as if it had had her own faulty strands? Then again, she was genetic mystery meat and could have any number of unknown hereditary conditions to pa.s.s on to her child.

As she nears the exit for the expensive Fertility G.o.ds, Cheri's cell phone vibrates. She steadies the wheel with her knee and fishes around in her purse for her phone, almost rear-ending an old Saturn station wagon that suddenly decides to switch lanes. From the insistent buzz, she can tell it's Cici. She finally retrieves the phone and pulls over.

Cici seems to be midsentence already by the time Cheri answers. "Where have you been, cara? You could be dead on the street, bleeding. I could have been dead and bleeding on the street."

"Then there would be nothing either of us could do, so what's your point?"

"What if I need something, what if I need a check, or money?" Cici shouts, just in case there's a bad connection.

"That's what banks are for. Or any of your bookkeepers."

"I do not like speaking to those people, you know this, and the pug, he have diarrhea, on the Persian rug in the hallway. And Gristedes on Park, they no want to deliver, it is impossible, they deliver for fifteen years and now they say no?"

"Mom, what do you want me to do about it from here? Ask Cookie."

"She is so smart she can change the mind of Gristedes? Why you not pick up the phone when I call? What is wrong? You sound like you are not paying attention."

"Nothing. I'm fine."

"You think you may be pregnant? Is not too late. It is five in one hundred who become pregnant once they are forty, and the Down's, there is the Down's, and the r.e.t.a.r.dation...but we get the best doctors for that and of course help for you."

"I'm getting off the phone now."

"Aspetta, I am with Marcella at Berg-a-dorf's: aubergine or crana-berry?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Towels. Yes, she has sheets they are a schifo blend, and no linens for the table, can you believe? Marcella cannot believe. Aubergine or crana-berry?" Cici uffs and then mock whispers: "You and Michael, you are still trying, s?"

"Thanks and hanging up now."

As Cheri pulls the phone away from her ear to hit End Call, she hears Cici prattling on. "Aspetta, cara, we need to discuss your big birtha-day. For the party, I am thinking-" Cheri pushes the b.u.t.ton before she can hear what, exactly, Cici is thinking.

For her entire s.e.xually active life, Cheri worried about getting pregnant. When she was sixteen she tricked Cici into taking her to the gynecologist by saying it burned when she peed, then she asked the doctor to give her a diaphragm. He had shown her a plastic v.a.g.i.n.a, wearing it like a hand puppet as if she didn't know her own anatomy. She wasn't having s.e.x with anyone in high school, but Taya was, and Cheri wanted to be prepared. She couldn't have imagined that now she'd be worried about not getting pregnant.

Michael asked about birth control on their first date. They'd met at Yale; he was a rangy director with cult status and packed film-studies cla.s.ses, and she was a rising postdoctoral candidate twenty years his junior. They'd met at a screening of his famous exquisite corpse doc.u.mentary, Disco, Doughnuts, and Dogma. After the Q&A, Michael wove through the crowd of genuine acolytes and poor undergrads there for the free booze and asked Cheri out for a drink. They spent the first part of the date wrapped up in each other's words, and by the end, they'd s.h.i.+fted to mouths and as many body parts as they could possibly touch in public. She was on the pill, she'd told him. "Do you want kids?" he'd probed. "Not at this instant, just in general."

"You're getting pretty personal pretty quickly."

"You know this is not just any first date, right?" He held eye contact. She knew.