The Mothers A Novel - By Jennifer Gilmore Page 0,74

woman about my age, spooning food into the mouth of a child in a stroller. I cocked my head and watched her, leaning in and smiling close to the child’s face.

“No,” I said, “what else?”

“If you go to a bris and if you are the one to give the baby to the rabbi. That helps. It’s good luck. Just do it. It can’t hurt.”

I rolled my eyes and shifted Ryan toward my chest as the woman took her child out of the stroller and rocked him to her. I watched Helen look at this mother we didn’t know.

Helen turned to her husband. “That’s the kid from Ethiopia, right?” she asked.

He shrugged, shoving food into his face quickly, before his baby was returned.

“I think it is. I think one of Michelle’s mom’s colleagues or something adopted it. In any case, she’s single.” She reached out and let Ryan grab her index finger. “And she went to Ethiopia three times or something.”

“That’s great!” I wanted to know what agency she went through and how long this woman had to wait. I wanted to know what the age of the child was when he or she arrived.

Helen looked at me. “That seems hard.”

I cocked my head. “What does?” I asked. “Which part, I mean? The going to Africa three times? The singleness?”

She nodded after a moment. “Mm-hmm,” Helen said. “Both.”

“Huh,” I said. I remembered the single woman being forced to leave that meeting at Smith Chasen and I felt happy for this woman who subverted those rules.

But I don’t think that was what Helen was referring to.

I looked out to the lawn filled with white people and white babies. And two or three Asian girls, each over ten years old. And then I saw Harriet sniffing around in a pile of dirty plates next to several mothers and children I didn’t recognize. I handed Ryan back over and stood up. “Gotta prevent a disaster here,” I laughed. “I’ll be back!” I said as I went to remove Harriet from the food.

Just as I had pulled her off of a plate of chicken legs, I saw our friends Carolyn and Michael, who, Michelle had told me, had placed three embryos—that joined donor eggs and Michael’s sperm—into a surrogate.

“Hey,” I said, trotting up to them, pitched sideways, as I held Harriet by the collar. “How are you guys?”

Carolyn was beaming. Michael too.

“Good news?” I asked, sitting down. I forced a wet Harriet, who wanted only to have a go at every plate of food on each blanket, to lie down next to me.

“Our surrogate is pregnant.” Carolyn straightened her lean tanned legs out in front of her and shook them. Her red patent flats flashed in the sun. “Eight weeks.”

“Oh, great!” I leaned in on her legs for a moment, emphasizing gladness. “I’m so happy for you guys.”

And I was. There is, after all, room for everyone. Maybe there is a magic pot after all. As Carolyn proceeded to discuss the drugs that this donor, her donor, had taken to stimulate her egg production, and the spas Carolyn had sent the surrogate to in order to prepare her for pregnancy, I thought, first, about how Carolyn was married to a man who worked in finance, and second, that she and I were really the lost generation. Because soon, technology would be perfect enough to tell us which of our eggs would work, and soon it would be efficacious and cheap enough for all twenty-year-old women to freeze them. It would become a rite—a right—of passage, and soon these women would be stomping through boardrooms and trading floors like warriors, unconcerned with that thirty-five-years cutoff our gynecologists began to warn us about when we were still in training bras. Single young women will freeze their eggs, and suddenly their clocks will tick as steadily and calmly as anyone else’s. They’ll start drinking whiskey and smoking cigars in back rooms. We’ll grow a pair and we will not be afraid to use them.

We will be cowboys.

“Twins,” Michael said.

“No way!” I hit him on the arm. I looked around for Ramon, but I couldn’t see him. “I can’t wait to tell Ramon,” I said, though that might have been a little bit disingenuous.

“Thank you,” Carolyn said. “I appreciate that, Jesse. And tell me what’s going on with you. Michelle tells me you’ve moved on to adoption. I hope it’s going well.” She looked into my eyes, to show me just how much she meant this and hoped I