‘I guess that says something about what we managed to do together. I finally got into your head just a bit.’
‘Incorrect. Not just a bit. You are the only person who has succeeded in understanding me. It commenced when you reset the clock so I could cook dinner on schedule.’
‘The night we met.’
‘The night of the Jacket Incident and the Balcony Dinner,’ I said.
‘What didn’t I guess?’ said Rosie. ‘You said I got seventy-five per cent. I’m guessing ice-cream.’
‘Wrong. Dancing.’ The Science Faculty ball in Melbourne, where Rosie had solved a technical problem with my dancing skills, had been a turning point. Dancing with Rosie had been one of the most memorable experiences of my life, yet we had never repeated it.
‘No way. With me like this.’ She put her arms around me briefly, demonstrating how her modified shape would have interfered with dancing. ‘You know what? If we had gone out tonight, something would have gone wrong. Something crazy. It would have been different from what you planned but better and that’s what I love about you. But now, crazy isn’t going to work. It’s not what I need. It’s not what Bud needs.’
It was odd, paradoxical—crazy—that what Rosie seemed to value most about me, a highly organised person who avoided uncertainty and liked to plan in detail, was that my behaviour generated unpredictable consequences. But if that was what she loved, I was not going to argue. What I was going to argue was that she should not abandon something she valued.
‘Incorrect. You need less crazy, not zero crazy. You need a scheduled optimum amount of crazy.’ It was time to explain my analysis and solution. ‘Originally there was only one relationship. You and me.’
‘That’s a bit simplistic. What about Phil and—’
‘The domain under consideration is our family unit. The addition of a third person, Bud, increases the number of relationships to three. One additional person, triple the number of binary relationships. You and me; you and Bud; me and Bud.’
‘Thanks for that explanation. We wouldn’t have wanted to have eight kids. How many relationships would that have been?’
‘Forty-five, of which ours would have been one forty-fifth of the total.’
Rosie laughed. For approximately four seconds, it felt as though our relationship had been rebooted. But Rosie had rebooted in safe mode.
‘Go on.’
‘The multiplying of relationships initially led to confusion.’
‘What sort of confusion?’
‘On my part. Regarding my role. Relationship Number Two was your relationship with Bud. Because it was new, I endeavoured to contribute to it, via dietary and personal maintenance recommendations that you reasonably considered to be interference. I was annoying.’
‘You were trying to help. But I need to find my own way. And for once Gene is right—it’s a biological thing. Mothers are more important than fathers, at first anyway.’
‘Of course. But your focus on the baby has reduced your interest in our relationship, due to simple dilution of time and energy. Our marriage has deteriorated.’
‘It happened gradually.’
‘It was sound prior to the pregnancy.’
‘I guess. But I realise now it wasn’t enough by itself. I guess I knew that at some level even back then.’
‘Correct. You require the additional relationship for emotional reasons. But you should not discard another high-quality relationship without investigating all reasonable means of retaining it.’
‘Don, looking after a baby isn’t compatible with the way we used to live. Sleeping in, going out drinking, turning planes around…it’s a whole different life.’
‘Of course. The schedule will have to be modified. But it should incorporate joint activities. I predict that, without the intellectual stimulation and craziness that you have become accustomed to, you will become insane. And possibly acquire some depressive illness as predicted by Lydia.’
‘Depressed and insane? I’ll find stuff to do. But I’m not going to have time to—’
‘That’s the point. Now that you’re going to be occupied with Bud, I should take total responsibility for our relationship. For organising activities, obviously subject to baby requirements.’
‘Relationships can’t be one person’s responsibility. It takes two—’
‘Incorrect. There has to be a commitment from all participants, but one person can act as champion.’
‘Where did you get this from?’
‘Sonia. And George.’
‘George upstairs?’
I nodded.
‘So, the experts are onto it.’
‘Experience rather than theory. The psychologists we know all have failed marriages. Or, in your case, marriages at risk.’ This was a weak point in George’s advice also, but I did not think it was helpful to inform Rosie of his marital history.
‘I think most couples,’ Rosie said, ‘even the ones that stay together, just accept that the relationship has to take a hit for a while.’
‘From which the participants never recover.’ I was drawing on George’s experience again. And possibly Gene’s. And potentially Dave’s. ‘My proposal is that we attempt to retain as much of our previous interpersonal relationship as possible, subject to baby demands. I offer to do all the required work: you merely need to accept the objective and offer reasonable cooperation.’
Rosie got up and began to make a fruit tea. I recognised this as code for Just shut up for a few minutes, Don, I’m trying to think.
I went to the cellar and drew off a beer to manage my own emotional state.
When Rosie sat down again, she had done some insightful thinking. Unfortunately.
‘I think it matters more for you, Don, because you haven’t connected with the baby. You haven’t talked about the third relationship. You’re still focused on you and me. Most men transfer some of their love to their children.’
‘I suspect the transfer will take some time. But if I don’t accompany you, then I’ll have zero input. You consider me worse than zero as a father?’
‘Don, I think you’re wired differently. It worked with the two of us, but I don’t think you’re designed to be a father. I’m sorry to put it like that, but I sort of thought you’d come to the same conclusion.’
‘You didn’t think I was wired for love. You were wrong. You may be wrong again.’
Gene came out of the bedroom. ‘Sorry to interrupt, guys, but I have to go to this medical school thing. You’re not going out?’
‘No,’ said Rosie.
‘Come with me, then. Both of you.’
‘I’ll stay,’ said Rosie. ‘I’m not invited.’
‘Partners are. You should do this. It’s your last night in New York. Don won’t say this, but it’s the right thing for him.’
‘You really want me to come?’ said Rosie to me.
‘If not, I’ll stay home,’ I said. ‘I want to make full use of the time remaining in our marriage.’
As we were leaving, my phone rang. I didn’t recognise th
e number.
‘Don, it’s Briony.’ It took me a moment to remember who Briony was. B1. B1 never contacted me directly. I prepared myself for conflict.
‘I can’t believe what you’ve done,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘You haven’t seen the New York Post?’
‘I don’t read it.’
‘It’s online. I don’t know what to say. None of us would have guessed.’
I opened the door to my bathroom-office to check the New York Post website, and Rosie was sitting on the edge of the bath, facing the Bud tiles.
‘What are you doing in here?’ I asked. I was not being aggressive; the question was intended in its literal sense.
‘I came in to steal one of your sleeping pills. For the flight tomorrow.’
‘Sleeping pills—’
‘Stilnox. Active ingredient Zolpidem. Third trimester, one tablet. No adverse effects. Wang, Lin, Chen, Lin and Lin, 2010. It’s more likely to make me take my clothes off and dance around the plane than harm the baby.’
She resumed looking at the Bud tiles. ‘Don. These are just amazing.’
‘You’ve seen them before.’
‘When? I never come in here.’
‘On the night of Dave the Calf. When Gene fell in the bath.’
‘I saw my supervisor thrashing around naked. I didn’t take time to check the pattern on the tiles.’ She smiled. ‘But this is our baby—Bud—every week, right?’
‘Wrong. It’s a generic embryo, foetus…Baby Under Development. Except Tiles 13 and 22 which were copied from the sonograms.’
‘Why didn’t you share this with me? I was looking at pictures in the book and here you were drawing the same pictures—’
‘You told me you didn’t want a technical commentary.’
‘When did I say that?’
‘Twenty-second of June. The day after the Orange Juice Incident.’
Rosie took my hand and squeezed it. She was still wearing her rings. She must have noticed me looking.
‘My mother’s ring is stuck on. It’s a bit small and my fingers have probably puffed up a bit. If you want yours back you’ll have to wait.’
She continued looking at the tiles as I located the New York Post article.
Father of the Year: A Celebratory Beer After Saving his Child for Lesbian Moms.
I was aware that journalists were frequently inaccurate, but the article, by Sally Goldsworthy, exceeded my imagination as to the possibilities of misreporting.
Don Tillman, an Australian visiting professor of medicine at Columbia and leading researcher on the link between autism and liver cancer, donated his sperm to two lesbians and then saved the life of one of his babies. In true down-under style, Professor Tillman drank a pint of beer to toast the emergency caesarean section he performed in his Chelsea apartment, and said he had total confidence in the ability of the two mothers to bring up his children without any involvement from him.
And he showed that he’s learned something about America, too.
‘Of course lesbian parents are not average,’ he said. ‘Hence we should not expect average outcomes. But it would seem un-American to seek averageness.’
There was a photo of me, posing with my Santoku cook’s knife as the photographer had requested.
I showed Rosie the newspaper article.
‘You said this?’
‘Of course not. The article is full of ludicrous errors. Typical of science reporting in the popular press.’
‘I meant the quote about not-average outcomes. It sounds like you, but it’s so…’
I waited for her to finish the sentence, but she seemed to be unable to find an adjective to describe my statement.
‘The quote is correct,’ I said. ‘Do you disagree?’
‘No, not at all. I don’t want Bud to be average either.’
I emailed the link to my mother. She insisted on copies of all mentions of me in the press to show our relatives, regardless of accuracy. I included a note that I had not impregnated any lesbians.
‘That’ll explain why we’re flying business class tomorrow and not sitting in Guantanamo Bay,’ said Rosie. ‘They didn’t want a headline saying Hero Surgeon Harassed by TSA for Being Exceptional.’
‘I’m not a surgeon.’
‘No, but you’re exceptional. You were right about the blood and mess phobia. I just had to do it once. We were a good team, right?’
Rosie was right. We had been an excellent team. A team of two.
38
The subway was full of people wearing Santa hats. Had I been acceptable as a father, I would one day have played that role. I would have been required to do all the things my own father had done. He had been an expert at producing non-average gifts and experiences for Michelle, Trevor and me.
I would have had to learn a whole new set of skills and master numerous activities. Based on observations of my parents and of Gene and Claudia, some of the activities would surely have been joint projects with Rosie.
The faculty party was held in a large meeting room. I estimated the number of guests as 120. Only one was unexpected. Lydia!
‘I didn’t realise you were employed by Columbia,’ I said. If she was a colleague, there was surely some further ethical problem with our interactions.
She smiled. ‘I’m with Gene.’
As is usual with these occasions, there was low-quality alcohol, uninteresting snacks and too much noise for productive interaction. Incredible to collect some of the world’s most eminent medical researchers in one place and then dull their faculties with alcohol and drown out their voices with music that they would probably require their children to turn down at home.
It took me only eighteen minutes to consume enough food to eliminate any requirement for dinner. I hoped Rosie had done the same. I was about to find her and suggest we leave when David Borenstein made an amplified announcement from the stage. I could not see Rosie. She might not realise that the commencement of formalities was our signal to depart.
‘It’s been a big year for the College,’ said the Dean. I might as well have been back in Melbourne; the Dean at home would have used the same words. It was always a big year. It had been a big year for me too. With a disastrous ending.
‘There have been some significant achievements,’ the Dean continued, ‘and these will all doubtless be given due recognition in appropriate forums. But tonight I’d like to celebrate a few that may not…’
As the Dean called researchers to the stage to receive applause for achievements in support and teaching, showing poor-quality videos of them at work, I began to feel better. It was not my destiny to raise children directly, but there was every possibility that one day a good father—someone who was making a valuable contribution to his child’s upbringing—would choose not to drink alcohol to excess as a result of a genetic test that indicated he was susceptible to cirrhosis, and would survive to raise his child. That test would be a result of my six years of work breeding mice, getting them drunk and dissecting their livers. Perhaps a lesbian couple would make better
and more confident decisions about bringing up their child thanks to the Lesbian Mothers Project of which I was a part. I would have perhaps forty-five to fifty years more to make contributions, to live a worthwhile life.
I was going to miss Rosie. Like Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday, I had been granted an unexpected bonus that was destined to be temporary because of who I was. Paradoxically, happiness had tested me. But I had concluded that being myself, with all my intrinsic flaws, was more important than having the thing I wanted most.
I realised that Gene was standing beside me, jabbing me in the ribs with his elbow.
‘Don,’ he said, ‘are you okay?’
‘Of course.’ My thoughts had blocked out the Dean’s words, but now I focused on them again. This was my world.
‘And, in the same spirit as the Australian Nobel Laureate who swallowed bacteria to demonstrate that it would give him an ulcer, one of our own Australians put himself on the line in the cause of science.’
Behind the Dean, a video recording had appeared on the screen. It was me, on the day I had lain on the floor and allowed a lesbian couple’s baby to crawl over me to determine the effect on its oxytocin. Everyone started laughing.
‘Professor Don Tillman as you’ve never seen him before.’
It was true. I was amazed to see myself. I was obviously happy, far more so than I remembered. I had probably not fully appreciated my emotional state at the time, due to my focus on conducting the experiment correctly. The video went for approximately ninety seconds. I became aware of someone on my other side. It was Rosie. She was gripping my arm hard and crying, profusely.
I had no opportunity to determine the cause of her emotional state, as David added, ‘Or perhaps he was practising—Don and his partner Rosie are expecting their first child in the New Year. We have a small gift for you.’
The Rosie Effect Page 34
