by David Plotz
She ordered a liquid-nitrogen tank full of Coral. As she drove home, the tank riding shotgun in her car: “I was thinking, ‘My kid is sitting next to me!’ ”
In 1986, Samantha’s son, Alton, was born—a year later and 1,500 miles west of his half brother Tom. Alton, she said, had grown up a very happy child, and a gifted one. Prodded by me, Samantha recited a litany of his achievements. He was a first-class pianist. He had had a piece of sculpture in a children’s art show at Harvard. He studied dance. He was interested in marine biology. Samantha said she offered her son every intellectual opportunity she could: “I do expose him to great minds whenever I can, and great books and music. These inspire him to seek deep levels in whatever he does.” But Samantha said that he drove himself, and she had to restrain him from doing too much.
Alton wasn’t close to his father, who was recently divorced from Samantha. Around the time of the split, Samantha had told Alton that Coral was his real father. He had been unperturbed, she said. He had told her he was relieved and that he had always known his father wasn’t his father, even if he hadn’t known it. But Alton had not asked her any questions about Coral and expressed no interest in finding and meeting him.
It didn’t surprise me that Samantha was a divorcee. Almost all the parents I heard from were mothers who had divorced or were planning to divorce. This made sense: Married couples would be much less likely to share the secret that their children were the result of sperm donation, because the husbands usually pretended to be biological fathers. With the husbands out of the picture, divorced mothers were much more willing to share the Repository secret with their children, and even a stranger like me. There was a second reason why newly single mothers tended to seek me out. The divorces had shrunk their families. They hoped that I could help them find new relatives for their kids, either half siblings or donor fathers. The intact families, by contrast, weren’t searching for anything.
Samantha and I struck up an energetic correspondence. We e-mailed a lot, mostly about Repository business or my latest story, but we also chitchatted about her work or Alton or my daughter. So as soon as Tom told me he was a Coral boy, I e-mailed Samantha the news. She answered instantly, “Wow, is there any chance of connecting with them?”
I gave Samantha Mary’s e-mail address. The two moms corresponded briefly, each bragging about her son (his college courses, his hobbies) and asking lots of questions about the other boy. They agreed to let Tom and Alton—the brothers—talk to each other.
I was curious—and anxious—about what would happen. As far as I could tell from reading professional literature and newspaper articles, this was only the second or third time that sperm bank half siblings would meet. Tom and Alton would be inventing an entirely new relationship: although half siblings have existed for as long as men have been cheating dogs, the sperm bank brother was something new. Regular half siblings have a known father in common: They share a family history, a name, a life. But sperm bank half brothers have only DNA in common; their shared father is a complete blank. Coral was not a real person to Alton and Tom. They didn’t even know his name. The only thing they knew about him was that they didn’t know anything about him.
That paternal void was not the only obstacle. I also feared circumstances—nurture—would make it tough for the two boys to get close. By the time I put them in touch, Tom was sixteen and a rising junior in a decent public high school, Alton a rising freshman in a superb one. Tom lived in a middle-class house in a run-of-the-mill midwestern suburb, Alton in a beautiful house in the heart of Cambridge. Tom whiled away his time on the usual pursuits of the teenage boy—video games, wrestling, girls, rap—while Alton was a serious student musician and artist. Both moms were strivers, but they lived in different worlds. Tom’s mom had battled her way to a bachelor’s degree and a job in technical support; Alton’s had earned graduate degrees at the best universities in the world and was one of the top women in her field. Was mere blood thicker than these differences in background, temperament, interests, and income?
Tom was over the moon when I told him about Alton. He couldn’t believe he had a brother already. Once the mothers gave permission, Tom fired off a chatty, boisterous e-mail to his new brother, Alton:
Hi! I dont have much of an idea what to tell you about me. So ill just tell you anything that pops into my head. Right now im in a band named infernal. We’re a rap group. OK stop laughing now. I have a lot of fun making music and my friends think I am the best person in the group at being able to “catch” the beat. College has been an important part of my life. Also I have about 19 credits at college and a 3.8 gpa. The classes I have taken include English 1, English 2, Psychology, American Government, Principles of Microeconomics and a bunch of computer classes . . . I am also spending time with my girlfriend Lana. Shes a really nice girl from Russia. Russian is her first language but you can barely tell when your just talking to her cause she doesnt really have an accent, but when I go to her house though it is really weird like hearing her give her dog commands in Russian. . . . Um what else . . . I have three cats and one of them me and my friend Mike found wandering outside my house (the poor kitty only had three legs so we had to take it in), no we didnt call it tripod. Well thats about all that I can think of to tell about me right now, ask me some questions in your reply so I will have a better idea in what your interested in finding out about me.
Alton answered cheerfully:
I’m not sure where to begin so I guess I’ll just start in a random place and go from there. I’m 15. . . . I play the piano, though not as seriously now, and if you have an mp3 player (I hope) you can hear me play a solo piece in Italy . . . I know I was rushing but it was the last night in an 8 concert series and it was late at night and the room was hot with a bunch of sweaty old italian ladies and their expensive perfume.
I like computer graphics a lot. Ok, I admit it, I’m a total comp nerd, but who isn’t nowadays. . . . I also have a pet but mines a dog. Her name is, well wuddya know, it’s Lana. She is a four legged golden retriever and I think I have a picture of her on my website. That’s all for now, it’s great to talk to ya.
Tom responded eagerly, confessionally:
Actually I don’t have an Mp3 player right now cause I killed my other computer on accident. . . . So yeah as soon as I get my computer fixed ill listen to your music. It sounds pretty cool though. Im not sure what else to tell you about me. I guess I should tell you right off the bat so it doesnt come as a surprise later, but right now im stuck going to group therapy. Why you ask, because last year when I was in school they found “suicidal” lyrics in my bookbag to a song I was writing. What they didnt know and didnt care to know is that I was trying to write a song against suicide becayse that was about a week after my friend Eden tried to commit suicide by swallowing about 50 tylenol and we wouldn’t have found out if she hadnt collapsed in front of us . . . well anyways that had a profound effect on me seeing one of my close friends in the hospital because she tried to commit suicide, so I was writing a song about it when the school found it, so I ended up getting suspended and I have to go to therapy right now. I have found that most of my friends dont care about it cause most of them believe me that I was writing a song about how it is a bad thing to do that, but I have some friends who wont hang around me now because they think I am going to hurt them or myself. So I thought I would tell you, so it wouldn’t come to a shock later. That was a depressing song when we got it finished, most of my songs aren’t like that though. I usually write songs that make people laugh. . . . My band’s website is still under construction since my friend mike basically wrote the site and I just did the HTML coding and since every other word he says is a cuss word its got a lot of cussing in it. I mean this guy uses about six cuss words to describe a newborn puppy. Hes my best friend though so I cant complain too much. I thought I would warn you though that there is a good amount of cussing on the site though so that when we get it up and I give you the address (if you want it) you wont be surp
rised and offended . . . we decided to put up a website so we could take online orders for our CDs, cause last year we released the cd and sold about 70 copies to people, most of whom don’t even like rap music and found out there were still a lot of people who said that if they had heard a sample of our music and liked it they would have bought the CD. , , , , wow ive been talking wwwaaaaaayyyyyy too much, you probably stopped reading about 1 page ago :-). Well anyways write me back when you get a chance.
—Tom.
Alton wrote back:
That’s rough about your friend, I’m sorry. How long do you have to be in therapy? The only therapy I ever did was when my parents broke up and all the dude did was nod his head and say, “interesting” or “hmm.” Oh well. But think of it this way: those people who won’t hang out now are the one’s who wouldn’t stick by their friend, so I guess they would not be a true friend anyway.
That’s cool about your band though, that you’re selling CDs . . . I can’t rap or play guitar though, so I could never do that. I think my mom sent a picture of me to you, at least she said she did . . . did you see it and do you look at all like me? That would be very cool.
Anyway I have to go, so write me back . . .
Alton.
Samantha, who had been hearing about the e-mails from Alton, wondered if the two boys were brothers at all. They seemed so different: Insane Clown Posse versus classical piano, suicidal friend versus golden retriever. The two moms exchanged photographs. Mary thought the boys looked very similar; Samantha thought they didn’t. (As the independent arbiter, I agreed with both of them. At first glance, they didn’t look much alike, but they share extremely deep-set blue eyes, a wickedly strong chin, light brown hair, and a unibrow. And there was something—maybe a look, a cant of the head—that made them look like brothers.) Mary assured Samantha that Hazel had checked the records: Coral was definitely Tom’s dad, too.
Tom was in great spirits. He had a father, even though he hadn’t found him yet. He knew his real dad was a brilliant man (160 IQ!), a family man, and an accomplished man. For the first time in his life, Tom knew what it felt like to be proud of his father. Even better, Alton seemed as if he were becoming a friend and maybe even a real brother.
There was even better news, but Tom didn’t know it yet. I was keeping a secret from him, a secret of Samantha’s. One day while we had been talking, Samantha had confessed, “I know Coral’s first name. And I know what he does.”
“Excuse me?” I said. Samantha said she had not told me everything about her 1985 visit to the Repository. Julianna McKillop had not merely shown her a photograph of Coral, she had revealed Coral’s first name and profession. “When I was holding the picture of Coral in my lap, Julianna said, ‘Oh, you better give me back the picture of Jeremy.’ Julianna was incredibly embarrassed that she had said his name. She also told me Jeremy was a doctor, and I asked what kind, and she said surgeon. She told me that Jeremy had been in practice near Miami. She told me that Jeremy was open about being a donor, that he had gone on a TV program to talk about it. And she told me that Jeremy would be happy to meet my son when he was a teenager.”
This wasn’t the only news, Samantha said. She admitted that she had been searching for Jeremy/Coral and thought she had found him. When she’d heard the Repository was closing in 1999, she’d written a letter to the director. She’d told him she had an implied contract with the Repository, that Julianna had agreed that the Repository would contact Donor Coral when Alton was a teenager. The director wrote back and said: Tough luck, that’s against the rules.
So Samantha had decided to find him herself. She was friends with several adoptees, and she had seen how they always wanted to find their birth parents eventually. She assumed Alton would want to know Coral one day. She had figured she’d better start looking now, while the sperm trail was warm.
Without telling her then-husband or her son—who didn’t yet know he was a sperm bank baby—Samantha had begun trolling the Internet for Dr. Jeremys. She combed through lists of surgeons in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa, looking for Jeremys, Jeremiahs, and Jerrys. Whenever she found one, she would send him an e-mail saying, “I am looking for a sperm donor named Jeremy who donated to the Repository for Germinal Choice. If it is not you, do you know who it is?” Most never wrote back. Some wrote back saying, “It’s not me, and I don’t know who it is.”
After a year and dozens of failed letters, she uncovered a lead. In late 2000, a few months before she saw my article on Slate, she got an unusual reply to one of her letters. A Dr. Jeremy wrote back, saying, “It’s not me, but I think I know who it is: Dr. Jeremy H. Taft.” Samantha followed the clue. She surreptitiously checked out Jeremy H. Taft. He was a celebrated, talented Miami plastic surgeon, and he was a perfect match for Donor Coral. He had an interest in math, significant musical ability, and the correct number of kids of his own (three). He had written a book, just like Donor Coral. Still, Samantha was ambivalent, because Jeremy H. Taft was sleazy. He had a huge practice, largely because he advertised his services on city buses, on billboards, and in magazines. On the other hand, Samantha discovered he ran a scholarship program for needy kids.
Whatever he was, he was definitely the right guy. He was the right age, had the right hair and eye color, the right marital status. He even looked like the picture of Coral she had seen. His personality fit. A man who would erect a billboard of himself advertising face-lifts was the kind of man who would go on television to brag about donating sperm.
Samantha told me she had written Taft two letters and so far received no reply. But she wasn’t sure she had sent them to the right address, and she wondered if the letters had been vague. She had also left a couple of phone messages at his office that had gone unreturned, but again, she suspected they had been too opaque. He might not have understood the communications because she’d never said straight out that she believed he was Donor Coral and had plenty of supporting evidence.
Samantha revealed this to me right at the time Alton and Tom started corresponding. She was sure Jeremy Taft was Coral, and she believed he would be glad to hear from her and Alton, as long as he was sure they were legit and not seeking money. So how could she reach him? She decided to write a much bolder, clearer letter. She would present all her evidence in its most conclusive form. She would also tug at whatever paternal feelings he had by telling him all about Alton. She would enclose a photograph: What man could resist a photo of his own handsome son? She drafted this letter:
Dear Jeremy,
I believe that you are the genetic father of my son Alton. He was conceived via a sperm donation from the Repository for Germinal Choice, and was born August 19, 1986. Julianna (from the Repository) slipped up and told me the donor’s first name when she showed me his photo in 1985. She also told me he was a surgeon in Florida and told me about his sister’s musical gifts. I knew of other attributes from the Repository’s description. It was not hard to find you with help from the internet.
Alton is quite an amazing and wonderful kid who would make you proud if you knew him.
He understands full well the fine balance between hard work and creativity. He is soft spoken and modest, with a sweet and happy personality.
His hobbies are computer games and mountain biking. He likes chess and nonfiction writing.
If you have any interest in contacting him, his e-mail address is . If you are at all interested in meeting him, I could arrange to bring him to Miami. We are now a tiny family of two and it could be quite wonderful for him to meet you or other members of your family, especially your parents or children. On the other hand, just a photo from you could become a cherished possession.
Samantha Grant
She attached a cute photo of Alton, sealed the letter and picture in an envelope marked “Personal,” placed that envelope inside another envelope, and mailed it to his office. No way could he duck it.
In the meantime, Samantha and I discussed whether to tell Tom about her discovery of Jeremy Taft/D
onor Coral. We thought we should keep it a secret for now. What if Jeremy wanted to meet only one child? It would be cruel to tell Tom that his father was out there but wouldn’t see him. And it would be unfair to Jeremy Taft to saddle him with two sons when he knew about only one. Besides, Tom was just sixteen; was he old enough to handle the information about Jeremy and the frustration of knowing he might never get to meet him? We agreed: until Jeremy Taft told her he wanted to meet Tom, we wouldn’t tell Tom or Mary about him.
Still, I felt guilty. There was one thing in the world that Tom wanted—to know his father—and I was depriving him of it.
CHAPTER 5
DONOR WHITE
Donor White’s entry in the 1988 Repository for Germinal Choice catalog.
The same week Samantha Grant left me her cryptic, anonymous voice mail, another mysterious woman called late at night. “I’m a mother of a ten-year-old girl from the Repository,” she whispered into my voice mail. “I want to talk to you.” Click.
