'Bozo Barrett.' She tried it on for size.
'Christ, he'll be an incredible bruiser,' I continued, convincing myself further with each word I spoke. ' 'Bozo Barrett, Harvard's huge All-Ivy tackle.' '
'Yeah — but, Oliver,' she asked, 'suppose — just suppose — the kid's not coordinated?'
'Impossible, Jen, the genes are too good. Truly.' I meant it sincerely. This whole Bozo business had gotten to be a frequent daydream of mine as I strutted to work.
I pursued the matter at dinner. We had bought great Danish china.
'Bozo will be a very well-coordinated bruiser,' I told Jenny. 'In fact, if he has your hands, we can put him in the backfield.'
She was just smirking at me, searching no doubt for some sneaky put-down to disrupt my idyllic vision. But lacking a truly devastating remark, she merely cut the cake and gave me a piece. And she was still hearing me out.
'Think of it, Jenny,' I continued, even with my mouth full, 'two hundred and forty pounds of bruising finesse.'
'Two hundred and forty pounds?' she said. 'There's nothing in our genes that says two hundred and forty pounds, Oliver.'
'We'll feed him up, Jen. Hi-Proteen, Nutrament, the whole diet-supplement bit.'
'Oh, yeah? Suppose he won't eat, Oliver?'
'He'll eat, goddammit,' I said, getting slightly pissed off already at the kid who would soon be sitting at our table not cooperating with my plans for his athletic triumphs. 'He'll eat or I'll break his face.'
At which point Jenny looked me straight in the eye and smiled.
'Not if he weighs two-forty, you won't.'
'Oh,' I replied, momentarily set back, then quickly realized, 'But he won't be two-forty right away!'
'Yeah, yeah,' said Jenny, now shaking an admonitory spoon at me, 'but when he is, Preppie, start running!' And she laughed like hell.
It's really comic, but while she was laughing I had this vision of a two-hundred-and-forty-pound kid in a diaper chasing after me in Central Park, shouting, 'You be nicer to my mother, Preppie!'
Christ, hopefully Jenny would keep Bozo from destroying me.
17
It is not all that easy to make a baby.
I mean, there is a certain irony involved when guys who spend the first years of their sex lives preoccupied with not getting girls pregnant (and when I first started, condoms were still in) then reverse their thinking and become obsessed with conception and not its contra.
Yes, it can become an obsession. And it can divest the most glorious aspect of a happy married life of its naturalness and spontaneity. I mean, to program your thinking (unfortunate verb, 'program'; it suggests a machine) — to program your thinking about the act of love in accordance with rules, calendars, strategy ('Wouldn't it be better tomorrow morning, Ol?') can be a source of discomfort, disgust and ultimately terror.
For when you see that your layman's knowledge and (you assume) normal healthy efforts are not succeeding in the matter of increase-and-multiply, it can bring the most awful thoughts to your mind.
'I'm sure you understand, Oliver, that 'sterility' would have nothing to do with 'virility.'' Thus Dr. Mortimer Sheppard to me during the first conversation, when Jenny and I had finally decided we needed expert consultation.
'He understands, doctor,' said Jenny for me, knowing without my ever having mentioned it that the notion of being sterile — of possibly being sterile — was devastating to me. Didn't her voice even suggest that she hoped, if an insufficiency were to be discovered, it would be her own?
But the doctor had merely been spelling it all out for us, telling us the worst, before going on to say that there was still a great possibility that both of us were okay, and that we might soon be proud parents. But of course we would both undergo a battery of tests. Complete physicals. The works. (I don't want to repeat the unpleasant specifics of this kind of thorough investigation.) We went through the tests on a Monday. Jenny during the day, I after work (I was fantastically immersed in the legal world). Dr. Sheppard called Jenny in again that Friday, explaining that his nurse had screwed up and he needed to check a few things again. When Jenny told me of the revisit, I began to suspect that perhaps he had found the … insufficiency with her. I think she suspected the same. The nurse-screwing-up alibi is pretty trite.
When Dr. Sheppard called me at Jonas and Marsh, I was almost certain. Would I please drop by his office on the way home? When I heard this was not to be a three-way conversation ('I spoke to Mrs. Barrett earlier today'), my suspicions were confirmed. Jenny could not have children. Although, let's not phrase it in the absolute, Oliver; remember Sheppard mentioned there were things like corrective surgery and so forth. But I couldn't concentrate at all, and it was foolish to wait it out till five o'clock. I called Sheppard back and asked if he could see me in the early afternoon. He said okay.
'Do you know whose fault it is?' I asked, not mincing any words.
'I really wouldn't say 'fault,' Oliver,' he replied.
'Well, okay, do you know which of us is malfunctioning?'
'Yes. Jenny.'
I had been more or less prepared for this, but the finality with which the doctor pronounced it still threw me. He wasn't saying anything more, so I assumed he wanted a statement of some sort from me.
'Okay, so we'll adopt kids. I mean, the important thing is that we love each other, right?'
And then he told me.
'Oliver, the problem is more serious than that. Jenny is very sick.'
'Would you define 'very sick,' please?'
'She's dying.'
'That's impossible,' I said.
And I waited for the doctor to tell me that it was all a grim joke.
'She is, Oliver,' he said. 'I'm very sorry to have to tell you this.'
I insisted that he had made some mistake — perhaps that idiot nurse of his had screwed up again and given him the wrong X rays or something. He replied with as much compassion as he could that Jenny's blood test had been repeated three times. There was absolutely no question about the diagnosis. He would of course have to refer us — me — Jenny to a hematologist. In fact, he could suggest —
I waved my hand to cut him off. I wanted silence for a minute. Just silence to let it all sink in.
Then a thought occurred to me.
'What did you tell Jenny, doctor?'
'That you were both all right.'
'She bought it?'
'I think so.'
'When do we have to tell her?'
'At this point, it's up to you.'
Up to me! Christ, at this point I didn't feel up to breathing.
The doctor explained that what therapy they had for Jenny's form of leukemia was merely palliative — it could relieve, it might retard, but it could not reverse. So at that point it was up to me.
They could withhold therapy for a while.
But at that moment all I really could think of was how obscene the whole fucking thing was.
'She's only twenty-four!' I told the doctor, shouting, I think. He nodded, very patiently, knowing full well Jenny's age, but also understanding what agony this was for me. Finally I realized that I couldn't just sit in this man's office forever. So I asked him what to do. I mean, what I should do. He told me to act as normal as possible for as long as possible. I thanked him and left.
