“Your eggs?” I say, even though I know exactly what she is saying and exactly what she is about to ask me. I look at Tony. He is welling up, too. He covers Daphne’s hand with one of his.
“I had my tests last week and our doctor told us that my eggs are no good,” she says, sobbing now. “They are, like, total shit .”
“Daph I’m so sorry,” I say, standing to hug her.
She holds up her hand to stop me and then continues, “So Tony and I were wondering if if we might have one of yours.”
* * *
nineteen
“So why didn’t they ask your other sister?” Richard asks me after I’ve told him the whole story about Daphne’s worst fears coming true. About all of the tests. About the somber meeting with their doctor and his news that even in vitro with Daphne’s eggs would be a waste of time and money. I hadn’t planned on telling Richard the story, but I feel like I need to tell someone, and I don’t want to discuss the topic with Jess. She’s sensitive enough about her aging eggs as it is. Besides, Richard and I have just had sex, and I am feeling that surge of closeness, that urge to confide in a man who has just made me come. Twice.
Richard runs his hand through my hair and says, “Doesn’t Maura seem to be the more logical choice since she’s already had kids?”
I nod and say, “They had a few reasons for picking me First, I’m younger. Better eggs, I guess. Second, I think they think it’d be too weird, you know, if they used Maura’s eggs, then the kids would be cousins and siblings. Or at least half siblings.”
“That would be sort of weird,” Richard says.
“And the final unspoken reason,” I say, “is that Maura would never agree to it.”
“Why not?”
“She can be a bit selfish,” I say, instantly regretting the comment. I feel disloyal and I don’t want Richard’s opinion of Maura to be colored before he even meets her.
“Selfish how? Like stingy with her time? Like she won’t go pick a friend up at the airport kind of selfish?” he asks, pushing a piece of hair behind my ear.
“No Maybe self-centered is more accurate. She means well, but I think she gets her sense of empathy from my mother,” I say. “My mother will bitch for ages about the fact that Chanel discontinued a certain shade of lipstick, but then she’ll expect a cancer patient to just buck up and think positively”
“Yeah. I know the type,” Richard says. “But for the record, I don’t think it would be all that selfish to turn this request down. I mean, that’s a lot to ask.”
“You think?” I ask.
“Well. Yeah,” Richard says. “Sisters or not. It’s huge .”
I was hoping he’d say just this because I agree, it is a lot to ask. Still, I wonder if Richard is just saying so for my benefit.
“So what did you tell her?” he asks.
“Nothing yet. I told them I needed to think about it.”
“Were they okay with that?”
“Yeah. They seemed to be. Daphne said she understood. Tony thanked me for even considering it. Then we dropped the subject and enjoyed Daphne’s lasagna. Or at least I pretended to enjoy it, when all I could feel was the knot in my stomach.”
“So would you and Tony have to get it on?” Richard says as he playfully grabs my left breast.
“Very funny,” I say, pushing his hand away.
“Well? Would you?”
I roll my eyes and say, “Don’t be stupid There would be a surgery. An egg-removal sort of deal. Just like with in vitro.”
“You’d have to have surgery ?” Richard says, wincing.
I am thinking that men are such babies about pain, but I say, “That’s the least of it.”
“What’s the most of it?” he says.
I think for a moment and then answer hesitantly, “If I have a baby out there in the world, I think I’d think of it as mine .”
Richard blinks and then reaches past me for his glass of wine resting on the nightstand. “You’d think of it as yours? Or you’d want it to be yours?”
“Is there really a difference?” I say, thinking that in that sense, my eggs and my ex-husband might have a little something in common.
We fall asleep shortly after that, but then wake up sometime in the middle of the night, starting a full-blown conversation. It is a phenomenon that only occurs in the beginning of a relationship, when sleep seems to matter little. We are talking about Steven Gaines’s radio show in the Hamptons and how we should try to get one of my authors onwhen Richard blurts out a question about my thirty-fifth birthday. I have not told him a thing about my upcoming birthday, which is now only two weeks away. I try to remember if there was a time in recent years when people at work went out for drinks for my birthday. I don’t think it’s happened since my thirtieth. I’m not big on birthdays—although I don’t dread them, either. I’m just sort of indifferent to it. I mean, everyone has one, once a year, so I fail to see what all the annual fuss is about, at least once you pass your twenty-first birthday.
“How did you know about my birthday?” I ask. “Did Michael tell you?”
“No. Michael has yet to acknowledge to me that he even knows about us.”