Making Babies

How far along was she? When had she decided to get pregnant? Had she decided to?

And then it hit him. She was living here alone. No sign of anyone residing here with her and no mention—so far—of anyone moving in. No ring on her finger.

“Who is he?” The question sounded like Mitch had forgotten to move his jaws when he asked it.

Elaine reclaimed her wrist from his grasp with effort. “What is the matter with you?”

“Sorry,” Mitch bit out, referring to her wrist only. He still wanted information. “Who,” he said, controlling his temper with an effort he could only characterize as monumental, “is the sonovabitch who got you pregnant?”

For just a second, Elaine thought she might have blacked out and missed something. She eyed Mitch suspiciously. “Are you deranged?”

With one swift move, he grabbed her library bag, spilled its contents onto the partly cleared counter and waved his hand accusingly.

Oh, the books. She looked from them to Mitchell, who, at the moment, appeared as darkly forbidding as a character from The Scarlet Letter. Amusement tugged at her. He looked like he wanted to avenge her honor.

Biting the inside of her lip, she shrugged. “Just a boy I know.”

Mitch stepped forward with awful menace. “A boy you know?” he repeated as if he wanted to give her a chance to amend that.

“Well…” She reconsidered. “Knew.”

Watching him, Elaine almost wished she could pull a little plug to release some of the pressure she could practically see building in his head. “Don’t get so upset. I’m raising the baby on my own.”

“You had unprotected sex!”

“I suppose that would be true. Yes.”

“With a minor!” Mitch practically roared.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Elaine laughed. Taking her first stab ever at playing absolutely fluff-headed, she rolled her eyes. “He wasn’t a miner. There aren’t even any mines around here. He worked for Lou’s Hardware. On school breaks.”

Mitch appeared to be in serious danger of becoming a cardiac statistic.

Elaine had no idea what had got into her. She was normally such an agreeable person. Yesterday afternoon after Stephanie’s unpleasant arrival, something in her had broken loose. She’d lost her final grip on the calm, circumspect, unchallenging woman she had become. She was going wild, and she rather liked it.

She did not, however, want to be responsible for Mitch having to start on blood pressure medication.

With her bottom still backed against the fridge, she leaned her upper body toward him. “I’m kidding,” she said, noticing for the first time that his scowl turned positively boyish when he became confused. “I’m not pregnant,” she clarified. “It was just a joke.”

“A joke.”

“Yes.”

“You’re not pregnant?”

“No.”

Mitch glanced at the bags near his feet and pointed. “What about the books?”

“You must not have looked at all of them.” Reaching into the Barnes & Noble bag, she handed him two thin volumes. Alternatives in Conception and Daddy Invisible—Everything You Wanted to Know About Artificial Insemination But Were Afraid to Ask.

“I am planning to have a baby,” she elaborated. “On my own.”

Mitch studied the titles, flipped the Daddy Invisible book over and scanned the back cover.

Crossing her arms again, Elaine leaned back against the refrigerator and waited patiently for the light to dawn.

It did. Mitch tapped the word Artificial. “You’re going to use…”

“A sperm donor. Yes.”

“Ooo-kay.” He tossed the books onto the counter and released some of the tension with a breath. “Whew. You know, I thought maybe you were getting reckless since your divorce. Some women do. They go temporarily…” He made a circling motion near his temple and whistled.

“Insane?” Elaine laughed. “No.”

“No.” Smiling, pressing his thumb and two fingers against his eyelids, Mitch chuckled with her. In a move so unexpected, Elaine never saw it coming, Mitch put both hands on the freezer unit above her head, bracketing her with his arms and growling into her stunned, upturned face. “You’re Just Out Of Your Ever-Lovin’ Mind!”

Chapter Four

Autumn sunlight streamed through the window, causing tiny dust particles to sparkle like diamonds in the air, while a very tall, very outraged Mitch Ryder stood over Elaine, trying to intimidate her with his superior reasoning skills. She felt perfectly unintimidated.

He did have her backed up against an open refrigerator, however, and her tush was beginning to freeze, so she sidestepped to the left, slipping around him to dig through another bag on the counter.

“Put this in the freezer, would you?” she requested, handing him a carton of frozen tofu lasagna.

His outrage unflagging, Mitch grabbed the carton and tossed it into the freezer.

“And this.” She passed him a pint of soy ice cream.

He took it and placed it atop the lasagna. “Why didn’t you have children with Lowry if you’re so keen on becoming a parent?”

Elaine glanced at him. “So I wouldn’t be a single parent, you mean?”

He caught the irony the first time. “All right, nothing’s forever. At least you’d know who the father is.”

“Yeah, that’d be a real bonus. I’d get to see him and his new wife every weekend.” She removed a package of frozen organic Tater Tots from the grocery bag and held it out. “Maybe I don’t want to know who the father is. If I’m going to be a single mother, anyway, this is simpler. You can’t argue over visitation rights with a sperm donor.”

Mitch turned to throw the Tater Tots into the freezer and slammed the door. “Yeah, let’s talk about that. You’re going to have a baby with someone you know nothing about. Great concept.”

Elaine smiled as if she’d taken his words at face value. “I know! So much better than marrying someone and then finding out you know nothing about him. As a divorce lawyer, I’m sure you know what I mean.”

After a brief, unfruitful pause during which he tried to come up with a rebuttal, Mitch angled his head. “Touché. I’m sure every one of my clients and my ex-wife would agree, but—”

“Ex-wife?” Elaine gaped. “You were married?”

He actually winced. “A long time ago.”

“You? I thought you were a serial bachelor.”

“I am now.”

“Any kids?”

“No. Now, about your buying sperm—”

“Did you want any? When you were married?”

If ever a man wanted to kick himself for opening his big fat mouth, it was Mitch at this moment. He rubbed his brow with the heel of his hand. “It’s all ancient history, Elaine. I wanted a lot of things before I realized the ramifications. It’s a common mistake. Like wanting a child while ignoring the ramification of not knowing who in the hell fathered it!”

The waterfall of questions Elaine had about his marriage dried up in the face of having to defend herself. Just as, Elaine suspected, he’d intended.

“I will know as much or as little about the donor as I care to,” she refuted. “It’s up to me. I can request an information sheet so detailed I’ll know what he eats for breakfast.” She picked up the library book about artificial insemination and tapped it. “It’s all right here. Plus, at some sperm banks the majority of donors are graduate students, so I can expect the father of my child to be motivated and intelligent.”

Mitch took the book from her and began paging through it. “Yup. Takes a real brain trust to masturbate into a paper cup.”

Elaine grabbed the book. “I was referring to my donor’s commitment to higher education. Also, I’ll know his area of interest,” she shot back, “so I can avoid the law students.”

Mitch nodded, acknowledging the gibe before he pointed out, “And for this information, you are trusting the people you are paying to provide you with the sperm. Is that correct?” He folded his arms over his chest, and Elaine thought the posture made him look so smug, she shoved a bag of frozen peas at him so he’d have to uncross his arms.

Without being told, Mitch turned to put the peas away, but when he saw the jumbled contents of her freezer, he began rearranging items as he spoke. “You’re not going to have any idea who this guy really is.”

“Yes, I—”

“Proof, Elaine. You’re not going to have any proof. They can tell you he’s a Stanford medical student, and for all you know, you’ll be giving birth to Joe the three-legged harmonica player’s baby.”

Elaine stared at Mitch’s back while he reorganized her small freezer. She had a sudden stinging urge to pitch beets at his head. She was planning to do what thousands of women before her had done, and she needed a shot of courage, dammit, not ten reasons why this disaster could outstrip the Titanic.

“What concerns me most, though, is your idea that you’ll be better off if the father isn’t involved.”

Elaine pulled a beet out of the bag and raised her arm.

“You may avoid the issue of visitation rights,” he continued, moving frozen foods, “but you’re also going to be on your own financially while Mr. Genetically Gifted is running around, avoiding responsibility for you and the child he fathered, which, I think you’ll have to agree, says something about a man’s character.”

“Is that why you haven’t had children? Because you don’t want to take responsibility for them?”

“That’s right.” He surprised her by agreeing. “You know what that’s called?”

“The Peter Pan Syndrome?”

“No! Integrity. It is called integrity.” Perfecting the alignment on a stack of frozen dinners, he stepped back. “There.” He moved aside so Elaine could view his handiwork.

Lowering the beet, she peeked in. Her freezer looked like a well-packed suitcase. Frozen dinners occupied the left side. Boxed vegetables were stacked in the middle, bagged items in the door. Her ice-cream containers formed a happy pyramid on the right. He had organized her freezer in one minute flat.

Chewing the inside of her lip, Elaine nodded. “Hmm. That’s beautiful. Logical and neat.” She glanced at Mitch, who was, she noted, mighty pleased with himself. “You know, a year ago I would have taken a picture of this so I could duplicate it myself. Back then, ‘Order’ was my middle name.” Reaching in, she put a hand on a frozen dinner in the middle of the stack.

“Hey, careful, you’ll—” She pulled the dinner, and the top portion of the stack slid to the right. “—make them fall,” Mitch finished.

“But I don’t appreciate logic much anymore,” she told him matter-of-factly, tossing frozen lasagna and kung pao chicken on top of the vegetable boxes. “I don’t care about neatness.” Grabbing a container of ice cream on the bottom of the pyramid, she sent the entire structure tumbling. “I had a neat and organized life, and you know where that got me? I come home every day to a neat, organized empty house.” She began shuffling the contents of the freezer as she spoke. “Now I want messes.” A bag of peas landed on the ice cube tray. “I don’t want everything divided and in its proper place.” Frozen blueberries hit the back of the freezer. “I want it all mixed up. I want what I want, and I don’t care what it looks like.” Slamming the door before the contents could spill out onto the floor, she whirled on Mitch. “So don’t touch my frozen foods!”

There followed a protracted pause that Mitch broke by asking mildly, “This isn’t about the freezer, is it?”

Elaine answered by stating emphatically, “I don’t need someone to take responsibility for me. If I ever get involved with a man again, it won’t be so he can ‘assume responsibility’ for me and my child.”

Mitch scowled. “That’s a bad thing? I’m the enemy for suggesting someone should look out for you?”

“That’s not what I said—”

“Good. Because I’m a lawyer. I make my living by injecting a note of reason into what might otherwise be a situation driven by emotion.”

“Oh, brother.”

“You may perceive my advice as unwelcome at this moment, but when you calm down, you’ll see—”

“When I calm down?”

“—how important it is to view a situation from all—”

“Out.”

“—sides.”

Elaine started shoving him toward the back door. “Go away.”

“You see? Right now, this is highly emotional.”

She opened the door, placed both hands on Mitch’s chest and shoved as hard as she could. Five feet four inches, one hundred and fifteen pounds of underexercised female wasn’t much of a force against one hundred and eighty pounds of well-muscled male, but Elaine had the element of surprise on her side.

Mitch stumbled back, tripping over the doorstep. By the time he caught and righted himself, she had closed the door in his face.

Two hours later, with a half-eaten sandwich on a table by her side, Elaine lay on her couch, reading. The tempeh Reuben turned out to be a seasoned soybean patty with Russian dressing and sauerkraut. It tasted okay and was guaranteed to be healthful, but Elaine had indigestion nonetheless. She wasn’t sure whether it came from the food or from rereading chapter six of Alternative Insemination, Every Woman’s Guide.

According to the book, which promised to walk the reader through the “joys and perils” of alternative insemination, the procedure wasn’t all that simple. Elaine would have to keep close track of her own fertility and because she wasn’t going to have sex to conceive, she wasn’t going to get more than one shot a month at this. Also, since she was thirty-seven and fertility tended to “nosedive” after thirty-five, there was no telling how many times she might have to repeat the expensive procedure. She might even have to consider treatments like Clomid. Also, the book strongly suggested having emotional support present because some women found the procedures stressful and mentally exhausting.

Tossing the book onto the coffee table, Elaine pressed a pillow against her stomach, rolled onto her side and thought. So far she’d told two people—Gordon and Mitch Ryder—about her plans. Their enthusiasm had been less than overwhelming.

She’d spent half her life supporting other people’s dreams and ideals. For once she expected no less for herself. But from what corner would the support come?

Her brother, Sam, had already given their parents grandchildren. Elaine suspected her mother and father had given up on her a few years ago. She truly didn’t know how they would react to her decision to pursue A.I.

Hugging the pillow tighter, she pondered. According to Every Woman’s Guide, she didn’t have a lot of time to futz around. At thirty-seven her ovaries were shrinking by the minute. For the first time, Elaine began to wonder whether she was fertile at all and what she would do if she wasn’t.

Would she be willing to undergo the invasive medical interventions mentioned in the book? Would she be willing to do it all alone?

The closer she inched—no, jogged, really—toward forty, the more aware she became that everything was changing, both in her body and in the way others perceived her. Younger women no longer gave her that telltale once-over to see if she was competition. At the supermarket when young men offered to help carry her groceries to the car, they really meant, Can I help carry your groceries to the car?

It didn’t matter how progressive or self-actualized she was: a thirty-seven-year-old divorcée was forced to find a new way to define herself.

Rising, pillow in hand, Elaine padded to the mirror above the sideboard in her dining room and looked at herself, searching for the balance between kindness and objectivity. At five-four, she was petite and still thin enough—despite Ben & Jerry’s best full-fat efforts—to buy size eight jeans. Thick reddish-brown hair that swung gently between her jaw and shoulders further contributed to her youthful appearance…until she looked into the mirror straight-on, and then…

Oy vey. When she examined herself head-on, her fair, translucent skin—a plus at age twenty—became a potential liability. Lines had formed.

Pursing her lips, Elaine pulled her shirt out from her waistband, unbuttoned the top button and tucked the pillow into her shorts. She felt only a little foolish, and once the pillow was in place, the effect it had on her was almost electric.

As if by magic, suddenly she had more than a worn sofa pillow under her shirt; she had an internal sense of purpose. Smoothing her T-shirt over her now expanded belly, she turned to view herself from the side, and of course it was silly, but for the first time in ages, she felt like she had an identity again. Like trying on a uniform before starting a new job and discovering the fit is just right.

And then for the teeniest, tiniest second she allowed herself to picture more than the belly; she pictured the whole kit ’n caboodle—one child by the hand, one on the way and the man, smiling that private, sexy, me-man you-woman smile that said, “Look what we did.”

The image was so darned appealing that the tiny second she’d meant to spend on it extended into another and another and then just one more, until finally Elaine sank into the fantasy like it was a tub of hot water, letting the image grow clearer and more detailed until it became obvious the man smiling at her was Mitch Ryder.

Damn it.

Reaching under her shirt, she yanked out the pillow.

A woman could get pretty disgusted with herself over this sort of thing.

Granted, he was the only eligible male she’d spent any time with in ages, and granted, he was attractive…in a straight-backed, bordering-on-pompous way.

But he listened. And he seemed to care, for some reason, what happened to her. And that was hard to ignore.

Elaine scrunched the pillow between her hands. In the end, she knew exactly why she’d pictured him. It was that night. The memory—or lack thereof—of that night hung over her like a rain cloud ready to burst, and the worst thing was Mitch’s silence. He knew what had happened, and yet he never mentioned it, never even alluded to it. He was an overprotective, overbearing, buttinsky, and yet every time she saw him there were a few seconds—usually right before he opened his mouth and ticked her off—when she felt…dare she admit it?…a surge of desire. A fleeting—and, really, it was fleeting—sense of the absolute rightness of being with him.

“Rrrrrggghhhh!” She smooshed the pillow as hard as she could to release some of her aggravation, then sent it sailing like a Frisbee back into the living room. She checked her watch—four-fifteen. A run along the river—that’s what she needed. When she set her feet to the pavement, her mind cleared. Seratonin rose; sanity returned. She hadn’t run in ages, but knew where her shoes and running shorts were without having to think about it and was ready to go fifteen minutes later.

Wrapping a scrunchie around her ponytail, she grabbed the remainder of a bag of French bread to feed to the ducks (according to Fertility Nutrition, white flour upset insulin balance and wreaked havoc on the hormones) and took an organic apple for herself. She felt virtuous before she was halfway out the door. She was being proactive. Not a whiner. She wasn’t staying home to worry or to obsess about a man; she was doing something good for herself and her baby-to-be.

Locking the front door, Elaine dropped her keys in her pocket and prepared to head out. As she turned toward the porch steps, however, she stopped short. A tall, slim woman dressed in pleated, straight-leg trousers and a man-tailored shirt that looked like it was pressed to within an inch of its life peered in the window of the apartment next door. She had thick dark hair cut in one of those choppy, supershort cuts Elaine so admired, but which made her look like a little girl whose brother had played “barber” on her head.

The other woman, however, looked just right in the charming cap of hair. Her bone structure was strong and classic. Her entire appearance telegraphed confidence, a woman who could be counted on to lead the crowd rather than follow. With a tanned, ringless hand, she rapped on the window, obviously frustrated when there was no immediate response.

Elaine stepped forward. “May I help you?” The stranger turned toward her with penetrating brown eyes. “I live next door,” Elaine explained, hoping to appear helpful rather than nosy. She gestured. “The apartment you’re looking at is vacant. Are you hunting?”

Taller than Elaine had first thought, the woman looked first at her then at the duplex as if the question didn’t quite compute.

“Hunting?” Then she burst out, “You mean apartment hunting? Here? God, no!” She surveyed the old wooden eaves, the broad concrete porch with its hairline fractures and actually shuddered. “I’m looking for Mitch Ryder. He left this address on my answering machine.”

Elaine took another, longer look at the brunette, who appeared to be in her early thirties, and glanced at her watch. “Ah, he was here, about…hmm…an hour ago? Maybe?”

The other woman frowned, and Elaine knew she should wash her own mouth out with soap. Could she be a bigger fake? She knew darn well Mitch had been in the apartment as recently as fifty-two minutes, forty-five seconds ago, because her watch had a sweep second hand and that was when the hammering had stopped. But she wasn’t going to parade her interest in front of a woman whose long neck and lithe body could make Audrey Hepburn look stumpy.

“Do you know when he’s coming back?”

“No.” At least that was the truth. “No idea. Sorry.”

“Thirty-six years of impeccable reliability, and he has to screw it up now—” peeking through the window again, Mitch’s visitor appeared to be speaking mostly to herself “—when I am absolutely, freakishly starving.”

“Would you like an apple?” Elaine held it up, feeling a bit like the wicked stepmother in Snow White. Was this woman Mitch’s girlfriend? Come to think of it, she couldn’t remember his ever bringing a date to the office get-togethers.

The brunette looked at the apple, but shook her head. “Nah. I don’t want to kill my appetite. I want beef. I hope he brought clothes to change into.” Still mumbling, she tried the front doorknob, surprising both of them when it turned easily and she was able to wait inside. As she crossed the threshold, Elaine heard her say, “Jeez, what was he thinking? He could have had two condos in Lakewood for the price of this place.”

Elaine fought a terrible desire to go back into her apartment, station herself behind the curtains and wait for Mitch to return, but that nosy image was just too awful, so she directed herself down the porch steps. She was halfway to the sidewalk when she heard, “Oh, hey!” She turned. “Thanks, uh…”

“Elaine.”

“Elaine. Right.” And with that the brunette disappeared inside the apartment again and shut the door.

Elaine stared at the closed door for a time. Well, obviously he did see women and obviously he liked them slender as grass, tall as elms and surprisingly offbeat. Fine. Wasn’t any of her business.

Setting off down the steps, Elaine prepared to outrun the emotions she wanted no part of. By the time she reached the corner, she was practically sprinting.

When she returned an hour later, the porch steps looked like the side of Mount Hood. Her pronounced limp was the result of a rather painful attempt to jump over a Chihuahua that had crossed her path at the park. Elaine’s knees were not what they used to be, apparently; she’d successfully avoided crushing the tiny canine, but her knees had buckled upon landing. Neglecting to warm up hadn’t helped.

Before she’d jogged ten minutes, her chest had felt like thick rubber bands were holding her ribs together. Lord, how would she work and care for a baby on her own when she was this out of shape? Plus, now she was starving. Her stomach growled, her legs groaned. She was too tired to go out for food and too hungry to think that tofu anything would satisfy her tonight.

Trudging to her door, she saw that the light was on in the vacant apartment. Vacant, but not empty. Mitch and the woman were seated on the floor, smiling and laughing as they helped themselves to bags of food laid out between them on the carpet.