“You’re fuckin’ with me!”
We realized Peter wasn’t being playful. Drew took the call off speaker.
“Peter, I’m serious. Susie offered us her eggs, and we said yes.”
“You can’t do that!” Peter shouted. “That’s fucked up! Seriously. Fucked! Up!”
Drew ended the call, shaken. His little brother’s opinion meant a lot to him.
The Tappons were an unusual family, to be sure. Drew was gay. His younger brother Matt was gay. Susie was a free-spirited college dropout. Peter was the straight man, in every sense. A good, hardworking heterosexual and a productive member of the community, he was the white sheep of the family.
Peter knew a lot about families. He was a social worker in Philadelphia. When he explained his job, you could see the pride he felt. He was one of the good guys. The government would come in and take kids away from their parents. His agency helped the parents get their shit together so they could resume custody, under the philosophy that the best place for a kid was with his own family. Peter had dedicated his life to helping families stay together.
Now he was telling us that our hypothetical kid deserved better than we were offering.
It certainly didn’t come from homophobia. Peter had earned his cred all through adolescence, when he was constantly forced to defend his gay brothers to his tough-guy buddies. He was fully behind us becoming dads, and he was excited to be an uncle. But our plan to use Susie’s eggs struck him as incestuous and weird. I’d never heard him this worked up before.
If Drew’s own brother felt this way, surely strangers would, too. Our family was going to be unusual enough with two dads, and now we were heaping on an extra helping of odd. It’s like if the Addams Family also did Civil War reenactments. You’d want someone to step in and tell them they were overdoing it in the creepy department.
Would everyone we met secretly be thinking, “That’s fucked up”? Would people look at our kid with pity, or derision? “You aunt’s your mom, huh? Sucks to be you!” Would our own kid resent us for the choices that led to his birth? Would she feel like an outcast forever?
We’d allowed ourselves to get so excited. Now we were having major doubts again, and Susie was on her way to see us.
Whenever Susie would visit, it was like summer vacation from school plus Christmas multiplied by puppies to the power of Disneyland. It was easily the thing Drew and I looked forward to the most all year—and we usually only got one Susie visit a year, so we did our best to cram 365 days of bonding into a week or so. Drew would take time off work. We’d play Wii and go shopping and see Harry Potter movies with large popcorns and extra, extra large drinks. We’d go to all our favorite restaurants, show Susie off to all our closest friends. Drew was never happier than when he was with his little sis.
We were determined to make this just like any other Susie visit, but Rainbow Extensions had their own plans. They set up a meeting to put Susie through their standard screening procedures. While she was there, they subjected her to a battery of psychological exams—even, against our wishes, an IQ test. They gave her a contract to sign, which said, in legalese, about a hundred different ways, that she would have no rights over any fetus created from her donated eggs. She couldn’t come anywhere near the baby without our express permission. The language was far harsher than anything we would have allowed if they had shown it to us first, but Susie signed it.
Things went smoother at Westside Fertility. We were eager for Susie to meet the head physician, a jovial middle-aged man named Dr. Saroyan, whom we’d grown especially fond of. We admired his honesty and his expertise. Drew and I waited while he gave Susie an ultrasound, and then he sat the three of us down to share the results.
“Your ovaries are perfect,” he began. “You have beautiful, beautiful follicles. You are perfectly ready to make babies, but are you sure you want to do it for these guys?”
One other thing we loved about Dr. Saroyan was his dickish sense of humor.
“I mean, you could do a lot better than them,” he went on.
“Yeah, but he’s my brother,” Susie played along. “I kind of have to.”
With a plaster replica of the female reproductive system and a tiny wand, Dr. S explained to Susie exactly what she was signing up for. Every month, a fertile woman produces dozens of eggs from her follicles. Typically, only one of these eggs will become viable. All these budding eggs duke it out, until one becomes so dominant that it absorbs all the others. That egg gets sent to the uterus for possible fertilization. This was sounding less like what I’d learned in high school health class and more like an ovarian cage match.
In vitro intervened at the point in the process before any one egg could be crowned champion. All the egglings were nurtured and allowed to grow to the point of viability. Typically, Dr. Saroyan would harvest upwards of thirty eggs from a single cycle. Then we’d stir in my 107 million sperm and hope to get a dozen or so fertilized embryos. Of those, we’d take the healthiest one or two and transfer them to our surrogate.
To get all those eggs, Susie would have to take hormones. A lot of them. And they had to be injected. By her. In her butt. The side effects could include nausea, abdominal pain, and general moodiness.
“How bad are the injections?” I asked.
“I’ve never had anyone drop out because of the drugs,” Dr. S assured. “But it’s a pain in the ass.”
Susie only had one question herself: “When do we start?”
Dr. S smiled, then he leaned in for a rare moment of seriousness. “What you’re doing for your brother is a beautiful thing, Susan, and you are a clearly very special person. I’m going to take good care of you.”
While Susie was at the fertility clinic, a nurse took a blood sample to test for genetic diseases. The only hurdle left was making sure Susie and I weren’t predisposed to any of the same horrendous maladies.
Well, there was one other hurdle, too—Mindy.
“So what do you expect out of this arrangement?”
Susie shifted in her seat across from Mindy. “I just want to make my brothers happy.”
I was kind of hoping when Mindy met Susie that she’d jump up and shout, “She’s awesome!” like she did with us, but clearly, it wasn’t going to be that easy, even if Susie was prepped for all the standard questions. She’d talked so much about donating her eggs this week that she stayed composed and confident through even the toughest queries.
“It’ll be their kid, not mine.”
“I’m not ready to have a kid. But I’m ready to be an aunt.”
“Because I love them. They’re my brothers.”
Susie aced the interrogation, but Mindy was suspicious. She started digging deeper.
“Why is it you never learned to drive?”
“I guess I just don’t want to grow up,” Susie confessed.
“Really? Because this is a very grown-up thing you’re doing for Drew and Jerry.”
Pretty soon after that, the Kleenex came out. We talked about Jack a little, but mostly we talked about Susie. Her life and her dreams. Her pride and her sadness. Her desires and her demons. I was so impressed with how she handled herself—and so nervous about the decision we were making.
Mindy had the right idea. If we wanted to be sure Susie was doing the right thing, we had to play hardball.
“We’re going to need boundaries,” I said, “and we should talk about them. Susie will be more than an aunt but less than a mom. I love you, Susie, but if we have this kid, you’re going to have to watch us make a lot of mistakes and know that you don’t get a say in it. We’ll decide where he goes to school, what she wears, whether we circumcise, how to discipline, what to buy them for Christmas, all the billion decisions parents have to make. And you’re not going to like everything we do. We’ll probably screw this kid up a million different ways, but they’ll be our million ways.”
All I wanted was for Mindy to give us her thumbs-up, but as the clock ticked away and our session came to an end, she conspicuously avoided saying “yes.” She didn’t say “no,” either, which was just as frustrating.
What she said was that it would be complicated. Forever. We were entering into a gray area. Like Rainbow Extensions had told us, we were pioneers. Sometimes, pioneers got lost.
On our way home from the appointment, we were more confused than ever. That’s when Peter called—for Susie. They talked for a long time. He asked her questions even tougher than the ones Mindy had asked. He knew just what to say because he knew Susie so well. She cried some more. And gradually, Peter came to understand. He’d grown up in an unusual family himself, and he loved them all dearly. He would get used to our unusual family, too.
Peter let Drew know that his opinion had changed. “I think what you’re doing is pretty cool,” he said. “I’m really happy for all of you.”
I realized that other people might share Peter’s initial response. There would always be strangers who would think we were a bit fucked up. But that didn’t mean we shouldn’t proceed. It just meant we’d have to educate people, to show them what a functional family we had and demonstrate that our family, like any other, was built out of love.
For Susie, nothing had changed. She had made up her mind, and she was going to help her brothers. Drew and I decided we were ready as well. We were going to make a baby with Susie.
It was time to hitch up the wagon and head into uncharted territory.
10
What’s-Her-Womb
Susie flew home. It had been an emotionally raw week, full of tears, laughs, and the kind of squinty-eyed, staccato wheezing that’s hard to identify at first but that usually ends up being tears. We had discussed every aspect of Susie’s home life, her work life—and, with toe-curling awkwardness, her sex life. In meetings with doctors and shrinks, I learned everything I never wanted to know about Drew’s little sister and was terrified somebody might ask. I heard about her ovaries, her hormones, and the glorious womanly flow of her menstrual cycle, all the murky female potpourri being gay was supposed to exempt me from. I listened as the doctor described how he planned to retrieve the eggs by lubricating a rubberized wand and inserting it gently into her—okay, I couldn’t handle any more. This wasn’t how I’d expected making a baby would be. It was all so intimate.
Thankfully, we could put that behind us now and start imagining what our baby might look like. A little kid who was biologically related to both Drew and me. The possibilities fascinated me. Would she be tall like a Tappon or mousy like a Mahoney? Would he have Drew’s handsome brown eyes and warm smile or my cowlicks and swirling freckle patches? How would our unique features merge into one warbling little miracle?
Project Infant had evolved. For the first time, we could imagine having a kid with roots in both our family trees. We could hold up our own baby pictures and marvel at the resemblance. The feeling was overwhelming, a mixture of euphoria, curiosity, and more than a little narcissism. It was a feeling, we realized, that straight couples experience all the time.
Choosing our egg donor was a major step for sure, but thanks to Kristen Lander, we were still in a holding pattern. There was no way Susie could carry the baby for us. That was just too complicated, too emotional, and besides, she wasn’t interested in being knocked up. So we were back to womb hunting. The excitement of making our huge decision was muted by the reality that we were still missing a gigantic piece of the puzzle. Even with three adults ready to make a baby, we remained one short.
My mind wandered to Kristen. For all I knew, she regretted dumping us. Maybe she thought about us every day, stared at our application photos, and pined for our embryos, ever more convinced she’d passed up on her Messrs. Right.
The solution was obvious: crawl back to her in tears, a broken man begging for a second chance.
“But we’ve chaaaaaaanged!” I’d wail. “We have an egg donor now. C’mon, baby! It’ll be different this time!” Maybe I’d hold up a boom box on her front porch or rush to intercept her in an airport, something bold and psychotic like in a romantic comedy.
It could work. I knew it could. But just to make sure, I did what any snubbed ex would do: I cyber-stalked her. Using an assumed identity, I logged onto a surrogate message board that I knew Kristen frequented. Yes, it had come to that.
And there it was, at the top of the screen. An item titled “Finally matched!” Kristen bragged to her surro-friends that she’d found the world’s greatest IPs and was prepping for her embryo transfer.
It was too late. She’d moved on. If I was a spurned ex-boyfriend, then I had just read the love of my life’s wedding announcement.
Then came the worst part, Kristen’s sign-off: “I’m so excited to be working with guys that have their act together.” Aw, so she was still thinking about us.
Maxwell from Rainbow Extensions had more bad news. Susie’s blood tests were in, and it turned out she was a carrier for Tay-Sachs disease, a gruesome genetic affliction whose sufferers had a typical life expectancy of four. My blood would now be tested, and if I was also a carrier, that meant no baby with Susie.
Maxwell told me not to worry, that Tay-Sachs wasn’t common among people of Irish ancestry, like me. He actually seemed to know what he was talking about. He was thoughtful and empathetic. Maybe Rainbow Extensions finally got their act together.
Maxwell promised to call me with the test results in two weeks. When I didn’t hear from him, I started to worry.
“Rainbow Extensions. How may I direct your call?”
“Yes, can I speak to Maxwell please?”
“Who?”
“Maxwell.”
“Maxwell who?”
Oh, shit. Was this really happening again?
“Maxwell Denver, my caseworker. Is he there?”
“I’m sorry. He no longer works here.”
This couldn’t really be happening. For a moment, I wondered whether this entire episode of my life was a prank, someone’s elaborate revenge on me for Fu-Ling. Maybe Rainbow Extensions was an accounting firm my friends converted into a surrogacy agency during the boss’s lunch break. Maybe the actress portraying “Kristen Lander” had a hard time keeping a straight face during our “meeting.” Maybe I was being Truman Show’ed. It seemed more plausible than the next most likely theory, that Rainbow Extensions was run by the absolute dumbest people on Earth.
Eventually, I got someone on the phone who explained why Maxwell had left. It seems the upper management had finally realized that a shake-up was in order, so they were moving their corporate headquarters away from the L.A. office and asking all their caseworkers to relocate. And where had this gay surrogacy agency decided they could operate most efficiently?
Alabama.
Maxwell refused to move there, probably because he was gay himself and probably because it was insane. But that left me with a big question.
“So who’s our new caseworker?”
“You won’t be assigned a new caseworker until you’re matched with a surrogate. Until then, you’ll have the same caseworker.”
“But you just told me our caseworker is gone.”
“Well, you’re kind of in between stages, so I think you’re going to have to wait until you’re matched to be assigned somebody new.”
It was frustrating, but I’d almost forgotten the reason I called. “Can you tell me the results of my blood test? I need to know that I’m not a carrier for Tay-Sachs, or we’ll need a new egg donor.”
“I’m sorry. Only caseworkers are supposed to give out that kind of information.”
Yes, without a doubt, Rainbow Extensions was full of idiots. “I don’t have a caseworker!” I shouted.
“Well . . . I guess it’s okay.” She put me on hold for a minute. When she returned, her voice was grim.
“What? Are you serious?”
“I’m afraid so. You’re a carrier for cystic fibrosis.”
“What?”
“It’s very common among the Irish.”
“I wasn’t calling about cystic fibrosis.”
“It’s okay. As long as your egg donor doesn’t also carry it, you’re fine.”
“She doesn’t have that. She has Tay-Sachs!”
“Oh, well then you should get tested for that.”
“I did! That’s why I’m calling.”
“Oh. It must be negative or it would say here. I’ll have your caseworker look into it.”
I hung up the phone.
I didn’t hear much from Rainbow Extensions for the next couple of months. Not only were we in caseworker limbo, but we were three thousand miles and two time zones away from their new main office.
When we did manage to speak to someone, they assured us we were on the waiting list for both a surrogate and a caseworker and that an appropriate person would call us at an appropriate time. Until then, we should just go away.
So I decided I would go away.
To Iceland.
Everyone tells you when you’re having kids to do all the things you won’t be able to do once you’re up to your neck in bibs and butt cream: dine in nice restaurants, see movies, hit the beach in Cabo. So I made an inventory of goals I wanted to accomplish before becoming a dad, a baby bucket list. And at number 1 was Iceland.
A few years earlier, I had been looking for an exotic setting for a screenplay I was writing. The more I learned about Iceland, the more perfect it seemed, not just for my story but for me. It was a tiny, untamed nowhereland, only a small fraction of which was inhabitable. The rest was made up of mountains and glaciers, volcanoes and lava fields, geysers and waterfalls—one breathtaking freak show of nature after another. There were only three hundred thousand people in the entire country, yet they had their own language, currency, and culture. And all of it was positively adorable.
Mommy Man Page 11
