CHAPTER 37
Jessie
The milk in the bottom of Jessie’s mug was lukewarm now, the window of the wood stove dark. Jessie put the mug down and pulled the throw blanket up to her chest, snaking her arms beneath it.
“I did the right thing,” she said aloud, as if to close the floodgates on the memories that washed over her.
Jessie was not religious, nor New Agey. Science was her religion, and if there were things that science could not explain, still this did not shake her faith. There would always be new frontiers, new revolutions of understanding. Her friends, even her colleagues, sometimes spoke of the universe as a kind of God, as in, “The universe offered me this opportunity, so I had to take it.” She did not begrudge them this; we all make sense of our lives the best we can. But in her heart Jessie knew the universe to be indifferent to the struggles and aspirations of anyone. The universe merely provided the raw materials; it was up to us to build the life we wanted.
And yet, there was that cluster of cells that she had chosen to . . . Her mind would never settle on the right word for what she had done by not continuing with her pregnancy. She had no moral qualms about it; those were her cells, no more separate from her, no more human, than the egg that every month slipped undetected out of her body in a flood of menstrual blood.
Still, she could not deny that her choice had averted a life that could have been. And what was Laurel asking her but to make possible a life that otherwise would not be? She could not, in good faith, believe this, but still it felt to her as if she were being offered a chance for balance, the embryo she could make for Laurel standing in for the one she had disallowed. She did not need redemption; it wasn’t that. And yet, strangely, the idea that she could help to bring about a new—and wanted—life calmed a disquiet in her that she could not name.
Jessie woke sometime before dawn shivering and with a crick in her neck, her body still sprawled in the armchair. She wrapped the throw around her and walked down the short hall to her bedroom, purposely thinking only of the warmth of her bed. Despite this, her mind immediately reached for all the thoughts that had kept her awake the night before. But once her body was horizontal at last and the sheets began to warm against her chilled skin, her mind stilled and she slept.
When she woke again the sky was bright and cloudless outside her window. She cringed when she saw the clock, vaguely remembering waking just enough to silence her alarm. Now, it was almost nine-thirty. In general, Jessie disliked sleeping late, disliked the feeling that she had missed the best part of the day. But today Jessie felt grateful for the extra hours of sleep. Despite her late night, she felt clear-headed and rested, her mind quiet but alert.
She made tea, carried it out into her small yard, and drank it while she studied her garden plot. The kale and spinach seeds she had planted last weekend were just beginning to sprout. Her small fall crop of greens always moved her, how they grew even as the days shortened and the light waned, as if racing in their slow and steadfast way the coming of the cold.
Only when she had gone back inside and finished her usual bowl of oatmeal, topped with blackberries she had picked herself, did she allow her mind to return to her mother’s request. In the daylight, it did not seem as fraught as it had the night before. Her mother was asking her a favor, that was all. It was, she granted, a favor of some magnitude, but, really, was it that much to ask? She couldn’t help but be flattered that Laurel wanted her genes. On the genetic level, it even made sense to her. This child, if it was to be, would share Jessie’s mother. Generationally, it would be like a much younger sibling. A true biological brother or sister would share, statistically, half of Jessie’s DNA. An embryo formed from her egg would also share half of her genes. So what difference was there, really? If she donated the egg for this child, she would be no more genetically related to it than she would be to a true sibling. What did it matter how their shared genes came to be?
Jessie stood at the sink for a long time, her dirty bowl in her hands, gazing through the small window above the sink. Would it matter to her? she wondered. If she did donate the egg, would she feel some maternal connection to the child? She forced herself to imagine a baby in Laurel’s arms. Would she feel, in some undeniable way, that it was hers?
It was an effort to keep the picture in her mind, and almost immediately, she let it go. No, she felt no stirring of possession. Instead, she felt almost a repulsion, not of disgust, but as if she and this theoretical baby were similar poles on a magnet, gently pushing back against each other. No, Jessie thought, feeling strangely comforted by this image. No, the baby would not be hers.
Now Jessie’s thoughts turned to Laurel. How much had it taken for her mother to ask her for this? She remembered the nervousness in Laurel’s voice on the phone the night before; it had not been an easy call for her to make. Jessie felt a sudden surge of tenderness for her mother, for the chain of losses that had unraveled throughout Laurel’s life. She thought of her mother’s failed marriages, first to her father and then to Kent, and of her mother’s despairing tears when Cactus had left her, too. Out of the chasm created by that last separation had crept a fear that Laurel would not allow to be assuaged: in the end, she would be unloved.
Jessie thought of her own solitary life. She had not had a serious relationship since she had moved to Oregon. Instead, she had her little house and garden, her students, the habits that sustained her: backpacking, running, reading, gardening. When she felt lonely, she crammed one of her two flowing skirts into her backpack and biked to the contra dance held at the college on Saturday nights. The music, the easy flirtation on the floor that lasted only until the end of the dance, the exhilaration of being swung almost off her feet—these things elated her. When she unlocked her bike at the end of the evening, the anticipation of the dark ride home alone elated her, too. Often she could feel her joy pushing so hard against her chest that she wanted to shout it out into the night.
Laurel, she knew, also knew such moments. Jessie remembered how they would both whoop after a long canter, grinning widely at each other until their cheeks hurt. Her sister knew them, too. “Like a bubble of life love in your throat,” Emma had called the feeling once. Whether other people experienced life in quite that way, Jessie wasn’t sure—perhaps they did. And yet, thinking of her mother and her sister, Jessie felt the web of their shared DNA, connecting them despite all the ways they had been severed from each other.
Still, that joie de vivre did not sustain Laurel as it did Jessie. Underneath there was always that gaping need for love. To such a need, Jessie could not relate; Jessie herself needed so very little beyond what she, alone, could provide. And yet Jessie saw what a powerful force it was for her mother. Again, she felt flooded with sympathy for Laurel, for the losses she had endured, yes, but even more for that deep well of need in her which seemed never to be filled.
And now, at last, Laurel seemed to have found her niche. She spoke of Jim and Sue as kindred spirits; she felt they understood her as no one had before. Miraculously, Laurel had stumbled across a family in which she felt that she belonged. And now they wanted to have a child.
Jessie thought of what it would mean to Laurel if she denied their request. Almost certainly, they would go to another egg donor. And if they did that, Laurel would be set, inevitably, just a little bit apart. Laurel would surely parent the child all the same, and yet Jessie did not doubt that her mother would forever feel the tenuousness of her ties to it. It might make no difference to Jim and Sue where they got the egg, so long as they were confident that their intelligence would not be diluted. But it would, Jessie knew, make all the difference in the world to Laurel.
Jessie could give her mother that. With one small cell, she could give her mother the chance to have her stake, to feel connected to her new family in a way that she would not feel without it. Jessie could imagine no gift her mother would value more, and thinking of it, she felt an excitement slowly rise in her. It was the perfect gift.
&nbs
p; As with all perfect gifts, Jessie couldn’t wait to give it. She put her bowl in the dish rack at last and went to find her phone.
On Sunday evening, Jessie’s phone rang again. This time, it was Emma.
“Hi, Em,” she answered. Jessie’s heart beat a little faster. All weekend she had wondered if she would tell her sister about her decision, but she had not picked up the phone. Suddenly, an irrational fear seized her that Laurel had called Emma, that somehow Emma knew.
“Do you have a minute?” Emma asked, and Jessie’s stomach lurched.
“Of course.”
“Good. Because I really want to tell you something.” Her sister’s voice was bright with excitement, and Jessie breathed easier. Laurel never talked to Emma; of course she hadn’t told her.
“Well? What is it?” she asked.
“Jessie, I met someone!”
“Really?” Jessie grinned. “Tell me.”
“I can’t believe it, Jessie. I really can’t. She’s just too perfect. Honestly, I didn’t think it was possible.”
“Oh! So she’s a she.”
“What? Why? Are you surprised?”
“I don’t know. But . . . it doesn’t matter. Go on.”
There was a brief pause. “I forgot what I was saying.”
“You didn’t think it was possible.”
“Oh yeah. Well, that’s it, I guess. I just never thought I’d meet someone like her. I mean, I honestly never thought I’d meet a woman I liked who was also interested in me.”
“But you did before, right? You met Ana.”
Emma snorted. “Yeah, I guess. But that was in college, you know? Everyone’s a L.U.G. in college.”
“A lug?”
“Lesbian Until Graduation.”
“Oh. I wasn’t.”
“OK, not everyone. But you know what I mean.”
“I guess.”
“Anyway, I always sort of thought Ana was an aberration. I never thought I’d meet someone else.”
“Emma, don’t be silly. It just takes time. Everyone feels that way.”
“No, Jess. That’s not what I mean. It’s just . . . Do you remember that movie Chasing Amy?”
“I don’t think—”
“You know, about the guy who starts dating the lesbian?”
“I don’t think I saw it, Em.”
“Well, there’s this guy who starts going out with this really beautiful lesbian, and his roommate can’t believe it. So he asks him, ‘What do a lipstick lesbian, the tooth fairy, and Santa Claus all have in common?’”
“And?”
“That they don’t exist. That there’s no such thing as a lipstick lesbian. I saw that movie with Ana, and God, we were indignant. We were fem, and we were lesbians. But since then, I’ve wondered. I mean, how many really fem girls out there really do want to be with another woman? I mean, be, you know? Not just fool around ’cause they’re bi-curious.”
“Bi-curious?”
“Yeah, you know. Want to know what it’s like and all that.”
“Oh, right. But, Em, tell me about this woman you met. You still haven’t said anything.”
“That’s just it, Jess. Katherine’s totally fem. I mean, when I met her, I couldn’t even believe she was a lesbian. We’ve laughed about it. She kept trying to come out to me—”
“Come out how?”
“Well, for example, she told me that she had written her senior thesis on lesbian poetry. You know, Audre Lorde, bell hooks? But I still wouldn’t believe it.”
“So what happened?”
“Well, Meg had introduced us. You know Meg, my friend from college?” Emma paused. “Come to think of it, Meg and Becca are both pretty fem.”
“Emma, you were telling me about Katherine.”
“Right. So I asked Meg later, ‘Is Katherine queer?’ And she asked me what planet I was living on. So, well, then I just called her.”
“And?”
“And we went out to dinner last night.” Emma sighed happily. “And then we kissed.”
“And?”
“And nothing. But it was great.” There was a momentary silence. “Jessie? You wouldn’t believe her skin. I still can’t believe it. It’s unbelievable.”
Jessie laughed.
“Seriously, her skin is . . . It’s just so smooth. I don’t think I feel like that.”
“Feel like what?”
“So soft.”
“Oh, Emma, stop.”
“I’m serious. But anyway, Jess, what’s going on with you?”
Jessie thought about her conversation with Laurel and her appointment at the fertility clinic in Portland next Monday, when they would do a baseline hormonal screening and an ultrasound of her ovaries. If everything went smoothly, the woman on the phone had told her, they would start her on meds as soon as her next cycle began, and harvest her eggs twelve to fourteen days after that. That was the verb they had used—harvest—as if her body were the earth, bearing fruit. Jessie felt slightly overwhelmed at how fast it would all happen. Within a month her decision would no longer be theoretical, an embryo formed from her egg implanted in Sue’s womb.
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell Emma all of it, but she held back. She felt that she had spent the last few days in a bubble of clarity, of goodwill. When she had told Laurel that she would donate the eggs, her mother’s gratitude had overwhelmed her. Even Sue had called to express her thanks. Never before had Jessie felt such magnanimity.
But Emma, she guessed, would not see it that way. And Jessie did not want her sister’s perspective muddying the waters of her own clarity.
“Not much, really,” she said vaguely. “So, what’s Katherine like?” she added. “Besides soft?”
It was so easy to change the subject; Jessie would keep her secret to herself.
CHAPTER 38
Emma
Katherine and Emma had kissed just once before, as they stood in the narrow entryway of Katherine’s apartment. They had met for dinner last Saturday in Bernal Heights, and though Katherine’s apartment was in the opposite direction of the BART station where Emma would catch the train home, she had insisted on walking her home.
“That’s ridiculous,” Katherine had scolded her, laughing. She shook her head slightly, her straight blonde hair glancing across her shoulders. “I don’t need you to walk me home. I do it all the time.”
“I know,” Emma had protested. “I don’t mean it like that. But can’t I just walk with you? I’m not ready to say goodbye yet.”
Katherine had smiled and held out her hand. “Well, if you put it like that.”
The feel of Katherine’s hand in hers, so soft and small, had preoccupied Emma all the way to her apartment. They had walked in silence, which Emma was glad of, for she was unable to concentrate on anything but the smooth, narrow fingers laced inside her own. By the time Katherine gestured with her free hand to a small Victorian house, divided into duplexes— “That’s where I live.”—Emma was already wet with desire.
They had kissed easily that night, each moving toward the other without awkwardness, but after a few moments, Katherine had pulled away and smiled at her.
“Call me?” she had said.
Emma had nodded vigorously, trying to hide the disappointment she felt. She felt elated by their kiss, and yet the fact that Katherine had been the first to step away had wrenched something inside of her. She had had to bite her tongue to keep from asking if she could go inside with her. Instead, she had reached for the other woman’s hand, kissed her palm, and hidden her face in it.
“Don’t go yet,” she had wanted to say then, but knew better. She couldn’t let Katherine sense the need that had suddenly opened up in her. Instead, she had smiled lightly and said goodbye, turning to go even before the door had fully closed. She had walked to the corner without looking back, but once she was out of sight, she had let out a loud whoop of joy. “Katherine,” she whispered. She could not believe her luck.
Their next date was a week later,
in the East Bay, where they had dinner at a Thai restaurant on Piedmont Ave. It was still light when they left the restaurant, so Emma led Katherine to the small rose garden a few blocks away, hidden in a residential neighborhood.
“Wow,” Katherine said. “This is beautiful. How did you find it?”
Emma grinned. “Isn’t it? I was just running in this neighborhood one day, and I thought I’d see what was down this street.” She was glowing with pride, as if she had planted the roses herself instead of merely stumbled upon them. “I love it here,” she said, and bent down to smell an orange rose. She could not stop smiling.
As they meandered through the small garden, Emma kept sneaking glances at Katherine. She was petite, like Emma, with slender arms and legs. Her blonde hair was perfectly styled, her skin golden and smooth. As they walked, Katherine’s hand found hers, and Emma felt her heart beat faster. She glanced around the garden; there was no one else there. When Katherine followed a path toward a mossy fountain, pulling Emma gently along with her, she felt her mouth go dry. She stopped and tugged on Katherine’s hand, so that the other woman swung around to face her.
“What?” Katherine said, but her green eyes were bright and inviting: she knew. She parted her lips as Emma kissed her. Emma let go of Katherine’s hand, releasing it only so that she could hold her face with both hands. Softly, she stroked the fine hair behind her ears, followed the smooth curve of her jaw with her thumbs. Almost of their own accord, her hands moved down Katherine’s neck to trace the raised ridge of her collarbone, the neckline of her tank top. She could hear Katherine give an almost inaudible gasp beneath her kiss, and Emma felt she couldn’t stop. She slipped her fingers beneath the fabric of the tank top, felt the silky fabric of Katherine’s bra against her fingertips.
Give, a novel Page 31
