“Rascal,” she said. She smiled at him for the first time, with a look of the old fondness.
“It’s the first drink I’ve had in weeks,” she said. Her smile faded; she looked stricken. “Was that it?” she asked. “All the drinking I did in college and after? Or the drugs?”
At Princeton, Susanna had very briefly tried a very narrow range of drugs: marijuana, Adderall, ecstasy. She didn’t care for any of them and had gone cold turkey by the end of freshman year. A friend of a friend had asked if she was a Mormon. Susanna preferred alcohol, sweet drinks that made her drunk in an hour, whiskey sours, margaritas, vodka punches, daiquiris. She would have liked cosmos, but by the time Sex and the City hit the airwaves she had left cocktails behind for wine.
“You didn’t miscarry because of drink or drugs,” Sam said. “There are dozens of reasons women miscarry. Often very good reasons.” He wanted to move off the topic of drink and drugs, drugs especially. He didn’t want to spook Susanna; he didn’t want her worrying about his genetic material. His drug taking, like others who would become doctors, had been catholic and irresponsible. Most of it had been at Princeton but some he kept up through his twenties. He had never injected heroin, he drew the line there, but he had tried almost everything else. He hadn’t liked meth; he had used coke only on weekends in social situations; he preferred Percocet to Oxycontin; he loved hallucinogens, especially LSD. He had smoked weed almost every day sophomore year, until his adviser said he was getting a reputation in the department as a druggie. “Does Harry know?” his adviser asked. He had been Harry’s sophomore adviser, also Will’s. Sam recognized a threat when he heard it. Harry had never used, and took a hard line against all drugs. Sam thought he would tell their parents if he knew. Sam didn’t care about his Princeton reputation, only his West Sixty-Seventh Street one. He stopped smoking during the week. He spent the weekends stoned, avoiding Will. The other boys were comparatively abstemious. Will had done a little cocaine. It was hard to close a deal in Hollywood in the ’80s and ’90s without doing a line. Jack smoked weed, one or two tokes a night. He didn’t drink. Tom had had a bad trip with marijuana brownies sophomore year. He became paranoid. He called Sam in a panic. Sam stayed on the phone with him through the night, telling him the next morning he shouldn’t do drugs. Sam was in his first year of medical school. Tom took his advice as he would a doctor’s. Sam saw it as the dawn of his bedside manner.
“The good news is you got pregnant,” Sam said. “You’ll get pregnant again. You’re not to worry. I have a doctor friend at Mount Sinai, a top-notch fertility specialist and a class human being. He’ll make sure you get your baby, whoever the dad is.”
“I like women gynecologists,” Susanna said.
“For fertility, the best ones are men. The only ones are men. A kind of Frankenstein impulse to create life. Women already create life. They don’t have the same test-tube urges. Trust me on this.”
“I have a D and C tomorrow,” Susanna said.
“I know,” Sam said. “I’ll take you. Three thirty, right?” Susanna nodded. It had been so long, maybe forever, she thought, since someone had taken care of her. She started to cry again.
Sam took her hand, the way his father had taken his mother’s, those times when his emotions got the better of him. “I’ll be the second-best father ever, if you give me a chance.”
Susanna didn’t say anything.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Is it AIDS, HIV?” he asked.
Susanna didn’t say anything.
“I was planning to get tested. I’ll show you the results.”
“OK,” she said.
“Was Charles the father?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Joe?”
She shook her head again. Sam didn’t care about Charles. He could push him out. He would have been jealous of Joe.
“Who was it?” he asked.
“Parthenogenesis,” she said.
—
Sam called a Realtor the next morning. “I want two apartments, good-sized, next to each other. A large, rambling, five-or six-bedroom apartment that could be divided in two would also work. Maybe one that belonged to Orthodox Jews. I need two kitchens, or the possibility of two. Each apartment should have at least two bedrooms, preferably three. At least two bathrooms in each and a powder room too. Washer-dryer connections in both. Dining rooms if possible; if not possible, then large living rooms. Southern exposures desirable. Doormen. Live-in super. Elevator. West Village or Gramercy or West End Avenue between Seventy-Second and Ninety-Second. Fourth to eighth floors. Decent condition preferred. Can you do it for three million? How long would it take to find this?”
After speaking with his Realtor, Sam called his lawyer, a junior partner at Maynard, Tandy. Sam asked for a brief tutorial on real estate law and child support. The partner was, as Sam expected, disapproving. Sam got annoyed, the spirit of his father coursing through his body. “I didn’t ask for advice,” he said, the way his dad might. “I asked for information.” As with Rupert, the young partner regressed. “I’m sorry, sir.” Sam wondered if he’d have to change lawyers, the humiliation this one now no doubt was feeling being almost complete. Why couldn’t he just say, “Right”? Sam thought. Sam apologized for being so short-tempered. “Thanks for your help.”
Sam next called Susanna. She was at her office. “I’ll take off tomorrow to mourn,” she said.
“Would you please meet me for lunch?” Sam said. “I mean, not for lunch. For Perrier. You can’t eat. Twelve thirty at Coogan’s Bar. I have a proposition. I’d like you to hear it.” Susanna agreed.
Sam called his internist, another old pal from medical school, to schedule a checkup. “Also an AIDS test,” he said.
“Do you need that?” his doctor asked. “I did one five years ago.”
“I need one,” Sam said.
“Shit, Sam,” his doctor said.
“No, it’s not what you think. I broke up with Andrew,” Sam said. “I want to be a sperm donor, a father really, for Susanna’s baby.”