The Genius Factory

by David Plotz

  Samantha had lost the crusading enthusiasm she had when we first met. She had believed adamantly that DI children had a right to know their donor fathers. In our earliest phone conversations, she had grilled me about my attitude toward that question. I had explained that I thought kids did have a moral right to know but that you couldn’t force donors to have a relationship with their offspring, merely to acknowledge them. This satisfied her, but again and again she had reminded me that we were on a crusade, not merely to find Donor Coral but to show the world the importance of children’s genetic rights. The reality of Jeremy had deflated this.

  “My thoughts have clarified as the result of the adventures of the past few months. We should not place great stock in meeting donors and half-siblings,” she wrote me glumly. “One can develop a friendship with DI relatives, but a familial relationship is unlikely.

  One of Jeremy’s Repository sons, Alton, wanted nothing to do with him. But what about the other son? What about Tom? Unlike Alton, Tom had longed to find his donor dad. Did he still want to meet Donor Coral? Before Samantha’s relationship with Jeremy went south, she and I agreed that it was time to tell Tom the truth. He had been kept in the dark long enough. I called him on his cell phone. I reached his voice mail. It was a new message:

  Hi, you have reached my answering machine, because I have amnesia and I feel stupid talking to people I don’t remember. So at the sound of the beep, leave my name and please tell me something about myself.

  I was not quick enough to leave the right message, which would have been “Tom, I have your name: It’s ‘Sampson.’ Instead I just said, “Call me. I have some news.”

  CHAPTER 11

  DONOR WHITE FINDS HIS JOY

  Donor White and Beth couldn’t quite believe their good luck. The Father’s Day e-mail from Beth unleashed a torrent of correspondence. Through the rest of June 2002, Beth and Roger wrote each other daily. They exchanged photos. The Repository had let Roger see pictures of Joy only when she was out of focus or too far away. For the first time since she had been a baby, Roger saw what his daughter really looked like. He thought she was beautiful. He bestowed his highest compliment: she was not merely pleasing, she was “highly pleasing.”

  Roger’s e-mails to Beth stretched longer and longer. It all spilled out of him: his father’s mathematical genius, his mother’s poetry, his family’s Revolutionary War history, his eighteen other White children. He apologized to Beth for his nearsightedness and hoped he hadn’t passed it on to Joy. He asked every question he could think of about Joy. He was voracious; no detail of Joy’s life was too trivial for his fatherly soul. He loved it when Beth told him how Joy had ridden twenty miles on a bicycle when she was six years old, how she had shone in last year’s Nutcracker, how teachers loved having her in class, how she had written a book report about the ice skater Michelle Kwan.

  Yet Roger found himself curiously ambivalent about actually meeting Joy. He felt embarrassed about himself—that maybe he wouldn’t live up to Beth and Joy’s expectations of him. He explained his recent illness to Beth, partly to reassure her that it wasn’t genetic but also to warn her that he wasn’t the same strapping man he’d used to be. He didn’t want anyone to see him like he was now, maybe not even his lost daughter.

  Ambivalence nagged Beth, too. As the correspondence rushed forward, Beth told Joy . . . nothing. Beth didn’t let her know that her other father had been found. Eleven years ago, Beth had trusted Donor White enough to let him meet Joy. Seven years ago, she had trusted him enough to exchange letters with him. And she trusted him now, but, as they say in Washington, “Trust but verify.” It was one thing to trust a man you would never meet, a man who didn’t know your last name. It was something else to trust a man who hoped to be your child’s (semi-)father. And it wasn’t just Roger whom Beth had to worry about. Joy already had a dad and—since Beth had remarried—a stepdad. How many fathers could the girl handle? Beth waited a week, two weeks, three weeks. She read Roger’s e-mails carefully, searching for warning signs. She saw none. This was a good man. Beth knew that he was not going to be Joy’s father. She knew that Donor White would not try to supplant her ex-husband in Joy’s heart—and wouldn’t succeed if he did try. But she thought Donor White could be the grandfather Joy didn’t have.

  So on July 4, Beth told Joy about Donor White. The first thing Joy said was “I want to meet him!” When Beth mentioned that Roger had fathered eighteen other kids through the sperm bank, Joy celebrated: “Yay, I’m not an only child.” Beth calmed her daughter. They couldn’t meet immediately, Beth said. Roger lived in California, and he was in poor health. Still, that night Joy wrote an e-mail to Roger. She had nothing very profound to say. She told him how much she loved Harry Potter and ballet. She told him the names of her pets. She asked Roger what she should call him.

  Roger was thrilled finally to hear from his daughter. She’s so well spoken, he thought. He wrote right back. He suggested that Joy call him Roger. He promised to learn about Harry Potter and said the book he had loved when he was her age was Lorna Doone. A couple of days later, Joy e-mailed to say she had checked out Lorna Doone from the library. She instructed Roger to watch the first Harry Potter movie. If he liked it, then he must read the books. Roger’s correspondence with Beth slowed, but he and Joy started trading messages two or three times a week.

  A month later, Beth decided it was time for a visit. She still had friends near San Diego—holdovers from her California days—so she planned a visit with them at the end of August. Roger didn’t have enough room in his house for them—his only guest room was stacked high with chemical journals—and Beth knew she wouldn’t feel right staying there, at least not right away. I begged Beth and Roger to let me tag along on the visit. I tried guilt-tripping them (“You never would have met without me”), to no avail. They insisted this family reunion (or was it a “union” rather than a “reunion”?) be private. I didn’t blame them. Still, I was disappointed. They were making history. As far as I could tell, this was the first time an American child would meet her anonymous donor father.

  Beth and Joy showed up at Roger and Rebecca’s house at 9:30 A.M. on Sunday, August 18. There were no blinding lights, burning bushes, or gasps of amazement when father met daughter. Joy hugged Roger as soon as she saw him. She gave him a T-shirt, a prize from a recent soccer tournament. He offered her two T-shirts in return, souvenirs from 10K races. He worried that they were too large. Don’t worry, Joy said, I’ll use them as nightgowns. When Roger and his daughter talked, his wife, Rebecca, took Beth aside and thanked her for bringing Joy. Rebecca’s thanks was an act of grace that won Beth’s heart. After all, Beth and Joy had flown across the country to thank them.

  The four of them spent four happy days together—“perfect” days, Beth said. All the adults shared the same interest: Joy. Roger and Rebecca wanted to watch her and listen to her, Beth was happy to talk about her, and Joy was blithe enough to go along with all of it. Beth and Joy had toted a suitcase full of photo albums and videotapes across the country, and Roger and Rebecca passed many happy hours watching Joy grow from infant to adolescent. They watched the tapes of Joy’s ballet recitals, oohing and aahing at the right moments. Roger showed Joy his family scrapbooks, as well as the little black book where he commemorated his Repository kids. Roger unfolded a family tree and walked Joy through it all the way back to their Pilgrim ancestors. She delighted him by asking tons of questions about it: Where did that guy get his name? How is she related to us?

  They strolled on the beach, where Joy turned cartwheels, leapt over piles of kelp, and bodysurfed. She collected seashells for a keepsake picture frame. At night, they burned a candle that Joy had made. And they snapped endless pictures. I saw the photos a few months later. Joy, in sunglasses and shorts, all tan limbs and teeth, practically bounced out of the frame—jumping, mugging, hugging. Roger, the object of her hugs, looked stunned, as though he couldn’t believe he had received such a present.

  A few days after
Joy left, Roger e-mailed me: “Our home feels more lonely and empty now.” Rebecca had been anxious about the visit, Roger said, but Joy and Beth had won her over, too. Roger summed up Joy. He was giddy but still meticulous:

  I was not able to find one thing about her that I would wish to change, even down to the smallest of details. Let me attempt to list what I liked best about Joy, in order of importance: (1) she is healthy, happy, well mannered, modest, unspoiled, and is considerate of others; (2) she has obvious talent in dance and music; (3) she is athletic and does well in several sports; (4) she has a sharp and quick mind that allows her to take new facts and rapidly use them to make interpretations that are truly surprising for one only 12 years of age; and (5) her appearance is very pleasing. Indeed, I believe that most people would agree with me that she is beautiful, but Joy herself says that appearances are unimportant and that it is the quality of the person within that really matters. Needless to say, she has captured our hearts forever.

  Roger was besotted with his daughter. Everything she did was stupendous, everything she wrote was brilliant, every dance was perfect. When I slipped up and referred to her as a thirteen-year-old, Roger rebuked me: “Why David, she is only twelve! Don’t you know she won’t be thirteen till September?” Everyone, he seemed to believe, must know everything about Joy. She deserved it. Once when he told me a little story about something she had done—a small, sweet favor—he was so happy that he wept. Roger was amazingly, sometimes awkwardly, grateful to me. He called me “an agent of destiny.”

  Roger started referring to Joy as “my daughter.” But he was sensible enough to know that she didn’t feel the same overwhelming love for him. She was his daughter, but he was not her father. He accepted that. “I realize that her feelings toward me are more diluted by the fact that she has a father and a step-father, whom she cares about very much. This is perfectly acceptable to me, because Joy has enough room in her heart to find sufficient affection for me, I believe.”

  During the months after the visit, Roger emerged from the coffin where he had buried himself during his illness. His sickness had made life feel pointless. He had thought he had squandered his good years on work and was fading into a useless, incapacitated old age. Joy revived him. He started consulting again for the chemistry companies he used to work for—surprised and gratified that his expertise was still in demand. He wrote magazine articles about his hobby, Civil War history, and gathered string for a biography of his favorite general, Stonewall Jackson. (He even pitched me an article for Slate, though we didn’t publish it.) Roger also became a kind of fairy godfather of sperm banking. He visited the online sperm bank chat sites, particularly the Donor Sibling Registry forum, where children and sperm donors hunt for each other. He recounted his happy reunion with Joy, hoping to inspire other kids and donors. It could happen to them, too.

  Roger and Joy kept e-mailing a couple times a week, easy little messages, nothing deep. He reveled in the chitterchatter. He gravely considered her plans to plant tulips in the garden. Was her new “invisible” retainer really invisible? he asked. Next time she visited, would he even be able to see it? When she wrote him a few sentences, he responded with a few pages. He couldn’t help it. His happiest moments were when Beth asked him for advice about Joy—everyday things, such as, should she quit soccer to have more time for ballet? He loved that they thought his opinion mattered—or even that they pretended that it mattered.

  Finding Joy made him both more and less curious about the other eighteen White kids. Sometimes he really wanted to search for others, but then he checked himself. What if they weren’t marvelous like Joy? “Joy is a home run with the bases loaded,” he told Beth. But maybe the others were broken-bat singles or even pop-outs. Roger did consider following up with the son he knew about—Jeroboam, the boy who had once greeted him, “Hello, Man in the Hat,” as he jogged by. Roger learned that Jeroboam was now at the local high school, where he ran track. Roger thought he might go watch his son at a track meet. Then he’d figure out what to do.

  A few months after Beth and Joy returned from their visit with Roger, I drove to Pennsylvania to see them. I had only talked to Beth on the phone, never met her. I was curious if finding Roger had been a life-changing experience for them, too.

  They lived in a small rural town—not a hick town, it had a college. Beth and Joy met me in front of the Dairy Queen, and we drove over to her house on the outskirts of town, where they lived with her husband. There was a big backyard, and countless dogs were underfoot. The house was a welcoming kind of house—a house, in fact, with a “Welcome” sampler mounted in the front hall. Joy’s soccer trophies and beauty pageant ribbons filled a glass case in the living room.

  Beth was tall and pretty, in a serene way. She had long blond hair, wonderful teeth, and great posture. Joy looked like her mom, but with more mischief in her face. She was built like a dancer, with long limbs and hardly an ounce of fat. She was ebullient, where her mom was quiet. Joy seemed a little younger than the thirteen-year-olds I knew in Washington. Her small-town childhood may have sheltered her from cynicism and low-rider jeans.

  Beth was clearly proud of Joy, but in an understated way. “She’s a good kid” was how she put it. Beth showed off Joy, but only because I asked her to. I spotted Joy’s report card pinned to the fridge. “There’s not much room for improvement.” Beth beamed, pointing to the unbroken line of As. I commented on the harpsichord in the living room—an unusual instrument for a thirteen-year-old. Beth asked Joy to play for us—Pachelbel’s Canon, and several variations on Cat Stevens’s “Morning Has Broken,” which Joy interrupted with “Drat” whenever she dropped a note. Joy gave me a tour of her room. It was all girl: canopy bed, wallpaper with a lily pattern, the requisite Harry Potter poster on the door, a shelf full of keepsakes.

  Joy asked if I wanted to see her ballet recital, so we ate take-out pizza in the basement and watched last winter’s Nutcracker. Joy gave a play-by-play on which girls were good and which were her friends and which part she hoped to dance next year. All the while she raced around the basement, doing twirls and leaps and splits.

  Joy was plenty smart, but was she a genius or superkid? I doubted it. Beth didn’t think so. Just as I saw much of Samantha in Alton, I saw much of Beth in Joy—their all-Americanness, their good nature, their grace. Joy wasn’t an Einstein, but she was the kind of girl that teachers want in their class, the kind of girl you want your own daughter to be friends with, the kind of girl you want your son to take to the prom.

  Joy loved talking about Roger. (That’s what she called him, not “Dad.”) When I first asked her about him, Joy sprinted down the hall to Beth’s bedroom and raced back carrying a careworn Playskool doll. “That’s the doll he gave me.” Joy showed off a lily pendant that Roger had sent her, which she never took off. (Lily was her middle name.) She pulled out her latest project: she was embroidering a sampler for Roger as a Father’s Day gift. Both mother and daughter were proud of Roger’s professional accomplishments, too. They handed me a photo of Joy sitting on Roger’s couch, cradling in her arms the three books he had written—all very abstruse technical manuals. “I don’t understand any of what he does,” said Beth, full of admiration.

  Beth chided me for still calling Roger a “sperm donor.” When he had held Joy as a baby, she said, he had “identified her as his in some strange and wonderful way.” Now that he had gotten a chance to meet Joy again and know her, he was not a sperm donor anymore, she insisted. He was a dad.

  But not really Joy’s dad. That was a more complicated question. Joy’s stepfather was out of the house when I came; Beth told me that he thought they should be careful around me, and he didn’t want any part in the story. And Beth would not tell me anything about Joy’s father, would not let me speak to him, and discouraged me from talking to Joy about him. His relationship with Joy, she implied, was strong and close, and it was none of my business. So I didn’t know whether the discovery of Donor White had altered Joy’s relations
hip with her father or not.

  Joy was at the ideal age for meeting Roger, in the oasis right before adolescence. The hormones of fourteen, the brutality of fifteen, the rage of seventeen were all awaiting her. Now she was still a girl. Meeting Roger had been a joyful adventure, but it hadn’t changed her conception of herself. She was too young, and too mentally healthy, for it to shake her identity. She was more interested in who would dance the Sugar Plum Fairy next Christmas than in who had given what sperm to whom. I was not sure that a thirteen-year-old could even really understand who Roger was and what he had done. Of course, she might comprehend it in the simplest sex-ed, making-babies sense. But how could a thirteen-year-old process the idea of a fifty-six-year-old man collecting ejaculated semen from a condom, freezing it in liquid nitrogen, and giving it to a reclusive eugenics-obsessed millionaire who had then FedExed it to women all over the country, including her mother? What box in a thirteen-year-old’s brain would that fit into?

  Joy’s feelings for Roger did not seem complex: She admired him. She liked him. She even loved him. But she was not asking herself why he had done what he had or how much of him was in her and what that meant. Joy’s life was not so unsettled that Roger filled a void. Like Alton, she had no void. Her father was still her father. She did not need to be completed.

  Beth told me a story from their visit with Roger. When the time had come to leave, Beth said, Joy had had a hard time saying good-bye to Roger and Rebecca. She had been choked up. But half an hour later, she had been playing happily with friends. “I told her that daily life was not going to change after meeting Roger,” Beth said. And it hadn’t. Roger had a new daughter. Roger had a new life. All Joy had—and it was plenty—was one more person to love.