"You"ve done so much for us already. Sell the furniture. Take the money and travel." She had given them a large sum of cash for their wedding, enough to make a huge downpayment on their brownstone with a sizable portion left over to defray some of the costs of renovations.
"Jack, please. I have no one else to spend my money on. You"ll get it now, or you"ll get it later when I leave it to you. You might as well enjoy it."
There was no arguing with the logic of Anna.
Jack started to dial Anna"s number now, but changed his mind. It was probably too early for a Sat.u.r.day morning. He"d call her later. He walked into his little office off the master bedroom, spread out the stack of folders, the files with the closest deadlines on top. The coffee was brewing. Stuart was out of the house already, at the paint store or Home Depot. Quiet weekends were a thing of the past. Between the sanding and painting and replastering, the continuous stream of carpenters and kitchen refacers and tile men, they never seemed to do anything but house projects.
He shuffled through the papers on his desk, retirement portfolios from a scattering of professionals-university professors, nurses, accountants-who had hired him to sort through the confusion of stock and bond investments, aggressive growth funds and the like. He was reliable and thorough and his consulting business was steadily increasing through referrals. But all of this should have been done Friday afternoon. He had three phone meetings on Monday, with all three clients expecting guidance and advice. He"d gotten off to a slow start, a sluggish awakening to a gray, overcast day heavy with clouds. It had been raining for days.
Back in the bedroom, Jack stretched out to rest for a half an hour before starting to work again. He closed his eyes, inhaled the scent of fresh paint and wood varnish, heard the hiss of tires on the wet asphalt outside. Anna had shown him the beauty in days like this; the gloomier the weather, the brighter her house burned. Birch log fires, soup, soft lights and candles ablaze in every room, even the bathroom. He picked up the bedside phone, dialed.
"Jack," she said.
"How"d you know it was me?"
"Just did. How did your checkup go yesterday?"
"My numbers are in the middle of the acceptable range. And you were right about my fatigue. I am slightly anemic."
"What did they tell you to do?"
Jack heard the screeching of strapping tape. "They put me on prenatal vitamins. Straight iron tablets can be...I forget what they said. Something about too harsh."
"Yeah. Well, what you don"t use of the prenatal vitamins, you can give to Greta."
"So, you still think it"s bad that we"re trying to do this."
"Well, I"m giving you a Chinese Chippendale baby cradle. So, I think the idea is bad, but if a baby manages to get here, the little fella needs someplace to sleep, doesn"t she?"
"Of course. No baby of mine is sleeping in anything from the softer side of Sears. Wait, I"ll have to call you back, I guess. Someone"s downstairs."
Jack walked to the staircase. "Stuart?" he called.
"Cabinets," a voice called back, and Jack backed up, heart pounding. It was the s.e.xy carpenter. Dark and tall, and totally ripped; he wore polo shirts that showed off his shoulders and arms.
Jack washed up, put on clean clothes and went downstairs. "Hi," he said. He couldn"t remember the man"s name. Why did Stuart do this? Why couldn"t he hire heteros.e.xual workers? Why would he hire this man who looked like Antonio Banderas? Wasn"t their life enough of a soap opera without bringing Mr. Swinging Tool Belt in? Welcome to this week"s episode of Gays of Our Lives. On today"s show, watch Stuart walk in just as Jack and the Mr. Fix-It Hottie are engaged in a pa.s.sionate exchange of Tongue and Groove.
"I brought laminates and solids, both in birch, as Stuart requested, and some samples in alder." He looked over at Jack, smiled. "Wanna take a look?"
"You bet," Jack said. "Can I get you some coffee?"
"I"d love some." Jack felt the man"s eyes boring into him as he took down mugs, poured the hazelnut French roast that Stuart always made far too weak-and getting weaker, since Greta was often here and complained about the strong coffee. He was aware of everything suddenly, his senses sharpened. He smelled the man"s shampoo and aftershave, the wood in the sample book, felt the grit from the imperfectly swept floor under his bare feet.
He put the mug and the sugar and cream on the breakfast bar, then sat on the stool beside the man. "I forget your name, I confess," Jack said.
"Michael," he said, smiling and extending his hand.
Jack took it. Strong and warm, calluses on the palm. Jack felt the heat radiate from the center of his body to his extremities. He bent in close to look at the samples, listening to the litany of price versus quality materials, dovetail joints versus glue or nails. With every page he turned in the book he seemed to move closer to Jack, until finally, now into the high-end hardwoods, the entire length of Michael"s arm was against Jack"s. There was no mistaking this. The other couple of times he"d been here Michael had flirted with him-well, Jack had to admit that he"d flirted back-but there was no mistaking that this was an invitation.
Michael looked up at him and smiled wider. "What do you think?"
"I like the birch. But I"m deferring all decisions to Stuart and his impeccable taste."
Michael nodded, enclosed his hand around Jack"s wrist. "Is this a Rolex?" He took Jack"s hand in his, pretended to study the watch.
"That"s a Rolex. And this," he said, holding up his left hand, "is a wedding band." He smiled, squeezed Michael"s hand once and left the kitchen, shaking. He went into the downstairs guest bedroom and dialed Stuart"s cell phone. Out of range, apparently. He sat on the couch with the morning newspapers. He would stay here until Michael left. He didn"t trust himself. Didn"t trust that his intentions would naturally override his desire-they rarely had before. He felt very much like he did those years ago with Hector, a feeling of physical craving, the drug-like need of the l.u.s.t Hector inspired.
He"d come very close once in the month or so since he and Stuart had married. It was a man he had met in an all-night grocery. Jack had, in fact, gone as far as getting into the man"s car and reaching into his wallet to check for condoms. But something had flashed in his head then, an image of the memorial service they had for Flynn. It was raining lightly that morning, but the light inside the chapel was anything but dreary. There was brightness within, as if the day were sunny and cloudless. The stained gla.s.s made it seem even brighter-a few too many haloes, for his taste, though he did like the way the very queenish-looking Saint Augustine held those tablets, like they were his cards at drag bingo-but it was more as if his perception of the light was changing. When the service started, he was impossibly heavy, leaden with sorrow. He had to reposition his body every three minutes because his spine felt so collapsed and brittle under the weight. But little by little a peace settled over him. By the end of the short service he knew everything would be okay-he, Anna, they would all manage. The image that came to him in the chapel was that of an enormous chandelier with thousands and thousands of tiny lights, some of which flickered then burned out. He imagined he could feel Flynn around him, a light that continued with him and Anna and Marvin, switched off somehow, no longer illuminating, but somehow still there. Here.
This was what came to him in the stranger"s car and Jack knew he couldn"t do it, couldn"t ever cheat again. There was the vow to Stuart, of course, though that wouldn"t have been enough to stop him then-or now, with the s.e.xy carpenter-despite his great love for Stuart. It was the image of Flynn, of her pa.s.sing, of her in his thoughts that made him over several brooding days formulate a theory of sorts. Every human being, he believed, must do one of three basic things during his lifetime: leave something living, create something lovely, or make something better. Jack would never father a child-biologically anyway-and he had no talent for anything artistic, so the option left to him was to make something in the world better. He had no great humanitarian instinct, didn"t, in fact, even really like most people, so he decided to start with himself. He needed to try to make himself a finer and more ethical person. From that, something else might grow. He might be able to help raise a wonderful child; someone who wouldn"t make bad or hasty decisions out of a poor sense of self-worth and the arrogance it engendered. A child who would grow up to be a kind and generous human being who would know, by Jack"s example, never to take any loving relationship for granted. And if nature had any role in personality, Stuart"s child would have a much better chance of being nice than would a child a.s.sembled out of his DNA. Jack had been bitter and miserable so long that it couldn"t help but have an effect on his gene pool. Cynicism was a terrible trait, he knew, a kind of immorality all its own.
Hours later, Stuart still wasn"t back. When Jack woke up from a nap on the couch in the study it was three-thirty, and he hadn"t heard from Stuart all day. He peeked outside. It was raining hard. He started to dial Stuart"s cell, but cut the call when he heard a car pull up. He looked out: Greta, minus her daughter, which could only mean one thing.
"Jack!" she said, and rushed in.
"You"re ovulating," he said.
"Stuart"s stuck in traffic, and I"m fertile."
He took her coat, closed the front door. "What do you mean, stuck? It"s Sat.u.r.day. How much traffic can there be?"
"There"s a four-car accident on Storrow Drive, and they have everything blocked off."
Jack dialed Stuart"s number.
"I"ve gone exactly three feet, Greta," Stuart said, without first saying h.e.l.lo.
"Where are you?" Jack asked loudly, above the hiss of the line and the honking horns.
Stuart groaned. "Not you, too. I"ve been harangued six times in the past hour by Greta. There is nothing, I repeat, nothing I can do about this."
Jack heard the windshield wipers going full-speed. "I"m not calling to harangue you. Greta"s about to ovulate."
Stuart sighed. "Oh hey, there"s something I haven"t heard twenty times."
"And I"m asking you, once again, where are you?"
"Intersection of Beacon and Charles."
Jack hung up. "How long is the egg viable?"
"I recently read a study that said there"s a window of just a couple of hours. n.o.body knows for sure. But now"s the time. I feel it."
"Well, maybe it"ll keep." He was going to say maybe she should stand in a cold room to delay spoilage, but realized how ridiculous that was. "Maybe you can stay fertile for a while longer. Can you?"
Greta flashed him a look. "How would I know? You think this is something I have a say in?"
"Testy, testy," Jack said.
"Sorry. But I haven"t ovulated like this in months. I"m disappointed. I thought this would be the shining moment."
He thought for a minute. "Okay. I have an idea. It"s unusual, and it"s risky, but it might work."
"Anything, yes."
"Upstairs in the bedroom are cartons of books. Start ripping them open and look for men"s magazines, anything with naked, aroused men somewhere in their pages. Don"t ask why, just do it."
From the downstairs bathroom, Jack got out one of the kits made up of the various apparatus to get fluids from one body to the next, without those bodies actually touching. Greta had a.s.sembled and left multiples of the kits in both bathrooms, a gesture that Jack found oddly touching, like Valentines left anonymously for strangers.
Greta came down a few minutes later with The Joy of Gay s.e.x. "This is all I could find."
"Well, okay. Better than nothing."
Stuart stared straight ahead, told himself not to be disappointed. They could try again next month. Or maybe if she were as fertile as she claimed the shelf life of the egg would be longer. They had been trying for the past four months, and with each cycle Stuart"s certainty that he wanted a child grew stronger. But this time, according to Greta, she was so fertile it wasn"t funny; the test strip wasn"t a pale pink like it was last month, it was the color of a Mardi Gras float, as pink as a Mary Kay Cadillac.
Stuart put the car in gear when the car horns started honking, but saw that traffic still wasn"t moving. There was a man weaving in and out of the idling cars ahead. A man who looked very much like Jack.
Stuart squinted. It was Jack.
"Christ almighty!" Stuart said, as Jack opened the pa.s.senger door. "What are you doing?"
"I brought you a little reading material." He tossed the book onto the seat. "I realize they"re just line drawings, but you"ll have to use your imagination. Here are your works. And, I know this is the wrong thing to say to a man who has to beat off in traffic, but hurry. Greta"s in the coffee shop across the street with her panties around her ankles."
"What?"
"So to speak, of course. I told her to lock herself in the bathroom and wait."
"What?" he said again, looking down at the book in his lap, the sterile cup. "What? You"ve got to be kidding. This will not be happening."
Jack got in and closed the door. "You have to."
"Are you kidding? You want me to do that here? Surrounded by minivans and soccer moms?"
"You can do it. I"ll block the view on this side." He took off his raincoat and looped it through the handrail above the window. Jack reached over and turned up the music-The Traveling Wilburys, Anna"s music, he heard, missing her acutely now. She must have forgotten to take it out of their car.
Stuart started to speak. Jack turned the music down to tell him: "This is a golden opportunity. She might not ovulate next month. Or the month after that. None of us are all that young and fecund anymore. Get busy." He turned the music way up, loud enough so the people in the cars around them would hear, get annoyed, and turn their own radios up. Jack rocked back and forth and sang as loud as he could to give Stuart the illusion that they were alone.
"I don"t care about the car I drive," Jack sang, "I"m just happy to be here, happy to be alive...well, it"s ALL right!"
"Jack," Stuart said, through clenched teeth. "Shut up."
"Okey dokey." He peeked around the coat: The people in the car beside them were talking and laughing, paying no attention to what was going on.
Stuart hit the jackpot just as traffic started to move.
"See you at home," Jack said, and kissed him. He put the beaker inside his coat, under his armpit; even a minute at the wrong temperature could make the boys sluggish. "Why the h.e.l.l don"t they make lids for these things?"
"Probably because most people don"t treat them as to-go cups," Stuart said, and reached across Jack"s lap to open the door. "Don"t spill it," he called after him.
Greta was in the front of the line at the coffee shop, which extended nearly to the door with caffeine junkies craving their afternoon fix. Jack pushed and jostled his way up to her, some people shooting him dirty, then suspicious and alarmed looks, as if they thought it was a gun he was holding inside his coat. "Why the h.e.l.l aren"t you in the bathroom?" he said to her.
"Oh G.o.d, you"re here!"
"Yes, I"m here. Why aren"t you in position?"
The woman in line ahead of Greta turned around. Jack stared her down.
"I didn"t think you were coming."
He laughed. "Well, strictly speaking, I wasn"t. It took a little longer than antic.i.p.ated. He didn"t have a lot to work with, poor boy. Let"s go."
The two of them hurried to the back where the bathrooms were and he handed her the cup and bag with the mysterious female paraphernalia. The current guidelines, he"d read, indicated it might be useful to lie flat on her back for thirty minutes with her knees drawn up. It was crucial that she follow all this now, since she was so convinced of the egg"s viability.
"Greta? How"s it going in there?"
"All the boys are safely in the visitor"s center."
"Good. I know the floor in there must be disgusting, but you"re following the drill, right? Don"t get up."
"Yeah, I know. Can you go get my latte and bring it in?"
Jack turned, faced a line of astonished-looking women. "The ladies" room will be closed for the next twenty-nine minutes," he said.
Later, Greta sat on the couch with a book of baby names while Stuart and Jack painted the living room walls.
"Don"t you think you"re, well, counting your chickens?" Stuart said.
"I"m pregnant," Greta said.
The paint roller slipped out of his hand and landed on the coffee table. "You are? Already? I must have some strong swimmers."
"She doesn"t know that," Jack said. "You don"t know that, Greta."
"I do. I felt exactly like this when I was pregnant before. With the baby I lost."
"And how is that?"
"Like something has been plugged in and switched on." She looked back down at the book. "I"m ninety percent sure," she said.
"You know this within six hours?"
She nodded. "The first time, I knew immediately."
Jack and Stuart stared at her. Jack held fast to the notion that this early belief was as crucial as biology. Without a doubt in their minds, the three of them had willed it to be true and in this way faith was as responsible as flesh. In this way, Frances Ella-whom Jack would nickname Fella, to Greta"s annoyance-was as much his as anyone"s.