Day Twenty-Four #3
Lally exhaled like she was being unfairly pressed, even though she was the one who started it, the one who was lurking uninvited on Jesse’s doorstep.
“I’m not surprised. You’re the passenger in your relationship, Jesse, always have been.
You should use this time away from Norman.
” And then, as if she were worried she had been too harsh, she added, “I’m glad you’re writing. ”
He spun his michelada in a circle. “If you can call it that.”
“Your life needs some purpose, Jesse. Apart from Norman, I mean. That’s true for both of us, if I’m being honest. I meant what I said earlier.”
Jesse cocked his head. “Are you asking me to join Scientology?”
“I want the embryos.”
Jesse sat very still, like one might in the presence of a bee or a T. rex, hoping to become invisible, then shook his head like a cartoon character that wasn’t sure he’d heard something right. “You want the what?”
“Don’t make me ask twice.”
He replayed her words in his head. “I didn’t hear you ask once.”
“I would like the embryos, please.”
Jesse suddenly wished he employed a stenographer so he could read her back the transcript. “Still not a question.”
Their waiter approached. “I see you have drinks?” Jesse glanced up to find himself face-to-face with the waiter, the very one he and Norman would flirt with. “Oh, it’s you. Where’s the other one?”
“The other one?” Lally asked, catching up.
“The hot daddy,” the waiter said with a smile.
“Okay,” Jesse said, cutting him off. “Hot daddy’s sister and I are going to need a moment to decide.” The waiter took Jesse’s hint and in a flash they were alone again. Jesse did his best to explain. “Norman and I come here a lot. We’re maybe a little too familiar with some of the staff.”
“Like the waiter, for instance?”
Jesse nodded. “Now I follow him on Instagram and he posts three shirtless stories a day, all in the same pose, and like—am I supposed to hit the fire emoji every time? When did his self-esteem become my full-time job?”
Lally stared at him like she was willing the clock to go back three minutes. “Not all of the embryos, mind you. Not necessarily. But some.” She paused with a pained expression on her face.
“Oh my god, are we still talking about this?”
“May I have access to more than one but less than all of the embryos we created?” When he failed to respond, she held Jesse’s gaze and challenged him. “Jesse.”
“Lally.”
“You’re not doing anything with them!”
Jesse wondered how Lally could possibly know that, unless she had called the medical facility they were employing for cryopreservation, and he highly doubted they would give her that information.
“This is really a conversation Norman should be a part of.” It was, of course, a cowardly loophole; Norman might never again be part of this conversation.
But it was, in the moment, something Jesse was willing to exploit.
“Should he?” Lally crossed her arms defensively. “You don’t want to be parents anymore. And that’s fine. You want to do unspeakable things to the waiter. I don’t judge! But you shouldn’t punish me because of it.”
In one sense, she was right. (Although not about the waiter, as both he and Norman had become rather vanilla—they wanted to do regular speakable things.) But in regard to the embryos, should Norman have a say?
The embryos in question were the product of an egg donation from Lally fertilized by Jesse’s sperm thanks to the miracle of IVF, created before the pandemic, when Jesse and Norman thought after marriage what they should do next was have kids.
“What could you possibly want with the embryos?”
Lally put both hands on her hips and Jesse saw her as he had when they were younger, the kid sister he never had. “I thought I could put them in a jar like sea monkeys and keep them as pets.”
Jesse responded flatly, “Oh, that’s nice.”
“I want to be a mother, Jesse.”
“So, be a mother.”
“Do you know how old I am? My eggs were borderline geriatric when we harvested them. Not to mention I’m single.
C’mon. I have perfectly healthy embryos sitting in a freezer ripe for the taking.
This may be my only chance. Don’t make this more humiliating than it already is.
” Lally turned her wineglass three times on the table before picking it up to sip.
Jesse blanched at her phrasing. I have. Legally, Lally had nothing. She made them sound like a bowl of Halloween candy rich people leave unattended with a little note that says, Help yourself. “They’re not ‘ripe for the taking.’ ” Jesse made obnoxious air quotes to convey his disgust.
“These babies are my best option.”
Jesse downed the last of his drink in one spicy sip and motioned to their waiter for another.
Babies. They had all been specifically told not to think of the embryos that way so that it wouldn’t be traumatic if they had the unused ones destroyed.
If they needed proof, they were told babies would die in the freezing process, where embryos—embryos lived. “You have other options.”
Lally shook her head no. “None as good as this one.”
“You could adopt.”
“As a single woman my age who travels? I’m not the most ideal candidate.”
“What about one of those Romanian children that turns out to be an adult? You could adopt one of those.” Lally didn’t find that at all funny, but Jesse told her to think about it—she could have a spread in People. “I can’t be the father of your child.”
“Oh, but I could be the mother of yours?”
“You weren’t going to be the mother of our child, you signed paperwork to that effect.”
“Genetically. You know what I mean.”
Jesse fished his phone out of his pocket and stared intently at his lock screen.
A small part of him hoped that Norman would call at that moment; even if the caller ID said Out of Area and it was most likely a telemarketer he would answer with the highest of hopes.
Alas, his phone betrayed him and the silence in the room became deafening.
On the jukebox someone played a song from Carole King’s Tapestry; until this moment, it was an album that never failed to soothe him.
Eventually he laughed. The timing of it all.
The embryos had been in a freezer for seven years.
“Why is this funny?”
“It’s not,” Jesse admitted, and he signaled to their server for another round.
Lally glanced at Jesse’s phone, which he’d set on the table. “What if we call Norman,” she suggested.
“Long distance?” Jesse asked.
“You’re right. It’s late in Minneapolis.” A frown spread across Lally’s face. “Did you do something to him?”
Jesse’s face turned red as his new michelada was placed in front of him. He buried his face in the menu to convey that they had yet to decide. “Do something? Like what?” It was the first time it occurred to him that he might be a suspect in Norman’s disappearance.
“Relax, I’m kidding.” Lally lowered the menu in front of her brother-in-law’s face. “Unless you really did do something to him.”
“What? No. Of course not.”
They sat silently for a minute, listening to Carole move the earth under her feet while the sky came tumbling down, tumbling down.
Jesse didn’t know if he’d ever be able to hear that song the same way again.
“Is this what you meant by my life needing meaning?” Oh, god.
It was all sinking in. All Lally could do was shrug.
“How long are you planning to stay?” he asked, hoping to change the subject.
“I have the jump seat on an early plane to L.A. Then I’m working a morning flight to Philadelphia.”
“The City of Brotherly Love,” he said, since Norman was her brother.
And technically he was, too, by marriage and history, as they shared a lot between them, including nine embryos in a storage facility in Beverly Hills.
They sipped their drinks and waited to order food, and Jesse listened to snippets of other conversations in the absence of their own.
“I’m not asking you to be a father. You know that, don’t you?”
Jesse wasn’t really sure what she was asking.
“I’m just saying because I know you have issues in that department. You and Norman are off the hook. This is something I want to do on my own. I can do this entirely without you.”
Without you. The words bounced around inside his skull; he knew almost certainly they, more than the alcohol, would be the cause of his headache tomorrow.
Jesse had been without his entire life, at least as far as a father was concerned.
His mother, were she here, would cross her arms and scoff at the idea that he had been left without everything he needed, and she would certainly hate the idea of him in therapy, blaming her, no doubt, for what ailed him.
But what Jesse felt he needed, particularly when he was younger (and if not needed, certainly wanted from time to time), was a male role model.
Someone to teach him about masculinity. His mother had even wondered around the time of his coming out if that was what made him gay before Jesse adamantly squashed that offensive theory, explaining that was not how these things worked.
But maybe it is what made him commit at such a young age to a man—an older one at that.
His need for stability. His absolute fear of men leaving.
“Please. Let’s not talk about my father. ”
Lally tilted her head to the side, and her hair grazed her one bare shoulder.
Jesse knew what she was thinking. That he and Norman had called off their plans for fatherhood because Jesse hadn’t dealt emotionally with his own lack of one.
This was not true, but Jesse felt no need to defend himself against her silent accusations.
Lally opened her mouth to speak, and again Jesse said, “Don’t.
” His annoyance then gave way to sympathy.
For his entire adult life Jesse had had a partner by his side, and he suddenly felt for Lally, who hadn’t.
Everything he accomplished, he accomplished with someone, never stopping to think about the value of simply being in a relationship, if that vaulted him forward or held him back.
But now his eyes were open. Had he not had Norman, what might he have accomplished?
How many books might he have written if he hadn’t been so…
happy? Conversely, what leaps had he taken without thinking because the safety net of Norman was there?
Until now. Maybe he did need this time on his own. Maybe he needed to become a man of action. But he wasn’t going to let Lally entirely off the hook. “I can’t believe you’d say that about us wanting to be parents. You know what we went through.”
Lally’s demeanor softened. She even reached out for his hand. “You’re right. That was uncalled for. You didn’t deserve what happened to you.”
“And I don’t want to do things with the waiter.” Certainly not anymore. Unless “things” included schooling him in having a less irritating social media presence.
Lally studied him as he passed their table. “He’s cute,” she offered in a conciliatory tone.
Eventually they ordered dinner and Jesse got his tacos, the special that night.
Someone killed the jukebox in favor of karaoke.
They dared each other to sing, but neither did.
They even had a laugh or two. It was good, Jesse thought, to feel connected to Norman, to have a laugh with someone who’d known him nearly as long as his husband had.
“I’ll talk to Norman,” he said of the embryos at the end of their meal, and Lally thanked him.
That was all she wanted him to do. Jesse needed to keep her on his good side.
He didn’t need anyone running around looking for Norman half-cocked.
And with any luck, in a few days she would drop it. Lally was often that way with ideas.
Lally slept that night in his guest room, even though she protested and said she could Uber to an airport hotel.
“An Uber driver will never find you. Half the streets up here have no names.”
“I found you, didn’t I?” Lally protested. And Jesse had to admit that she had.
“Still. You’d better let me take you to the airport.”
“At the crack of dawn?” Lally shook her head like she couldn’t ask him to do that.
“I’m up early these days. Can’t sleep.” Eventually she relented.
But when Jesse woke the next morning, Lally was already gone. No note, bed made, barely any evidence that she’d even been there.
What is it, he thought, with this family?