MILO

How to explain?

1) His immune system was a paranoid schizophrenic.

2) A peanut was not just a peanut; it was an enemy combatant to which there was only one response: Attack! Attack!

3) He was fifteen years old and he was a prisoner of war.

Okay, maybe that was too dramatic. Milo wasn’t literally imprisoned. He was just allergic to dairy, eggs, wheat, gluten, all melons, citrus, tomatoes, potatoes, peanuts, tree nuts, coconut, fish and shellfish, soy, and casein. He occasionally—but only occasionally—had to be hospitalized for an allergic reaction. There was that time in sixth grade when he’d eaten a coconut bar on his class camping trip. He had asked the head teacher, who had asked the mom who made the bars, if they were okay for him to eat. Lists were checked and double-checked. Milo had been assured that the bars were safe. No one knew about the coconut. He had never eaten coconut before, and he had never been tested for it. He had no idea he was allergic until he took a bite of coconut bar and his throat closed up.

That visit to the hospital had been crazy. Random details still floated around Milo’s brain: the starfish ring on the nurse’s finger, the antiseptic taste of the tube they jammed down his throat, the crushing pain in his chest as he gasped for air and found none. Had there been a light, or a tunnel of some sort? If there had, he didn’t remember it. But in the moment when he woke up and Suzanne and Frankie were hugging him, crying and laughing, he knew that he had dodged a bullet. According to the attending physician, Milo had been clinically dead for three minutes.

There had been lesser reactions. Times he had needed to use an inhaler because his chest was tight, or an EpiPen because his mouth was suddenly tingling and his lips were swelling up like balloons. Milo was used to it. Used to wearing a medical alert bracelet. Used to checking ingredients. Used to carrying Benadryl and epinephrine at all times. If he ate the wrong thing, he could die.

Milo knew this and, for the most part, acknowledged that being alive was preferable to being dead. But sometimes he just wanted to eat pizza and french fries like a normal teenager. He wanted not to be the skinniest kid in the locker room. He had been called Twiggy since he was ten years old. Or Skeletor. Or Skindiana Bones. There were so many good nicknames. It was hard to pick a favorite.

Milo knew he wasn’t alone. His moms—growing up gay in the Midwest—had endured their share of name-calling. They’d told him all about it. Dykes! Carpet munchers! They had suffered, Milo was sure, more than he ever had. Still, could they blame him for wanting his life to be easier?

The TGFB1 gene. That’s what Milo’s allergist had mentioned at his last appointment. Dr. Daignault was referring to a new study reported in Science Now, suggesting that a single genetic aberration of the “transforming growth factor beta 1” could explain everything from hay fever to food allergies to asthma. One mutated gene could be responsible for Milo’s whacked immune system—one mutated gene that he didn’t get from Frankie because they shared no DNA, and he didn’t get from Suzanne because she wasn’t allergic to anything. “What about Milo’s biological father?” Dr. Daignault had asked as Milo and his moms sat on the hard orange chairs in his office. “Any known allergies?”

“Lactose,” Suzanne had answered. “And ragweed pollen.”

“Anything else?”

“Not as far as we know.”

“Have you considered asking Milo’s biological father for some genetic testing? Could be instructive.”

Ask his father for genetic testing? It was one of those crazy moments when Milo heard the word “father” and remembered that he actually had one. Not just a sperm donor: a father.

Suzanne and Frankie had been open about his conception since Milo was a little kid. “A good and generous guy gave us some seeds so we could grow you!” The story sounded a lot like “Jack and the Beanstalk”: mysterious man, magic seeds. A fairy tale. For a long time, whenever Milo thought of his donor, he pictured a giant in the sky, strumming his golden harp. It was stupid, he knew. Juvenile. Just like it was juvenile to walk through Park Slope looking at all the dads and wondering if one of them could be his. There was no logic to it. For one thing, the sperm that made Milo came from a cryobank in Minnesota—where Frankie had gone to graduate school and where, presumably, Milo’s donor still lived—so the odds of him walking around Brooklyn were slim. Also, Milo had never seen a picture. Did the guy have a beard? Glasses? They could pass each other on the street and not even know they were related.

There was a baby album. Pictures of Suzanne pregnant with Milo, lounging on a beach chair, a glass of lemonade perched on her high, swollen belly. Suzanne looked different then. Softer. Her hair hadn’t gone gray yet. It was long and chestnut colored, and she wore it in a thick braid down her back. Her face, normally sharp and angular, looked round. There were pictures from the actual birth, Milo covered in slime—which he could do without—and about a million pictures of both his moms holding him, kissing him, feeding him, burping him. Frankie looked the same. Short and stocky, with flaming red hair cut close to her scalp and spiked up in front. There was a series of shots of Frankie holding Milo against her chest, tucking his little bald head under her chin. Milo liked looking at those pictures, but they weren’t the big draw. In the back of the album there was a pocket. And in that pocket was the personal profile for Donor #9677.

Race: Caucasian.

Ethnicity: Scottish-Italian.

Religion: Open-minded.

Milo must have read that piece of paper a thousand times. This man was his father. He was, according to the profile, six feet tall. He had hazel eyes. His hair, like Milo’s, was dark, thick, and curly. Did he have to get it cut every four weeks to avoid looking like a mushroom? Did he also have dark, thick eyebrows? What about body hair? These were the little things Milo wondered about. The big things—the TGFB1 gene, whether his father had been skinny, or nerdy, or a failure with girls, whether he ever wondered where his sperm went—stacked up in Milo’s brain like blocks, threatening to topple. There were so many questions.

Suzanne and Frankie were an open book; they always had been. Everything they knew about Milo’s donor, they’d shared with Milo. Nothing was hidden. Nothing was shameful. If anything, his moms were proud of the choice they’d made. Every Father’s Day, they sent a card to the Twin Cities Cryolab and flowers to Dr. Caroll, the obstetrician who had performed Suzanne’s insemination. They showed up for Family Day at Milo’s elementary school with a poster board collage about sperm donation. They even included a photo of Hollis Darby-Barnes, Milo’s half sister. Hollis Darby-Barnes, whom—for reasons Milo wasn’t entirely sure of—he had just texted.

The idea sprang out of nowhere. Not, in truth, because of his appointment with Dr. Daignault, but because Milo was mad at Frankie for telling him he couldn’t go to JJ Rabinowitz’s New Year’s Eve party. Frankie was a certified helicopter mom and JJ was a professional screw-up, who yesterday had left a baggie of pot in his open backpack right there on Milo’s bed where Frankie could find it.

Frankie had tried to call JJ’s parents, but they were in Europe. So she flushed the pot down the toilet, which was tantamount to flushing Milo’s friendship with JJ down the toilet.

“I’m sorry, kiddo,” Frankie told Milo after JJ left. “I’m just doing my job as a responsible mother.” She had tried to give Milo a hug, to show that she was on his side, but the damage was already done. There would be no New Year’s Eve party at JJ’s—or rather, there would be a New Year’s Eve party at JJ’s, but Milo would not be going.

“Why are you punishing me for JJ’s weed?” he demanded.

“I’m not punishing you,” Frankie said. “I’m protecting you. JJ doesn’t make good choices.”

Frankie wasn’t wrong. How many times had JJ come to school baked this year? But that was beside the point.

“You don’t trust me,” Milo said. “You don’t believe I can make my own decisions.”

“I do trust you, but my job as a parent isn’t to be your friend. My job is to keep you safe.”

Frankie really believed what she was spouting, but that didn’t make Milo any less mad. He wanted to say it—the one thing that he knew would hurt her: You’re not my real mother, and I don’t need to listen to you. If he were to be very honest with himself, sometimes he actually felt this way. Suzanne was his real mother. It was her egg. She grew him. Her vote should count for more. If Suzanne weren’t married to Frankie, she would let Milo go to JJ’s party. Heck, she would join him.

Because of Frankie, Suzanne was stuck at home playing Scrabble on New Year’s Eve. Right now, Milo could hear her shouting from the kitchen. “‘Za’ is not a word!”

“Yes, it is,” Frankie said calmly, “and it’s worth thirty-two points.”

“You’re full of it!”

“You’re welcome to challenge me.”

“Milo!” Suzanne shouted.

Milo heard his mother but didn’t answer. If he ignored her, maybe she would move on to the dictionary and leave him alone. He had enough to think about right now. Like how Hollis would respond to his text. Pls? I don’t want to do this alone. Did he sound pathetic? He sounded a little pathetic.

“Milo!” Suzanne hollered.

Milo sighed and slid his phone into his pocket.

Suzanne was in a mood. She wanted to go dancing at the Cubbyhole, to “ring in the New Year right,” just as Milo wanted to “ring in the New Year right” at JJ’s party. Suzanne was ticked, Milo knew, not about the word za, but because she could be break-dancing on the bar right now. But no. Now that Frankie knew about JJ’s party, she suddenly wanted a “quiet night at home,” and Suzanne rarely said no to Frankie. When Frankie said go to bed earlier, Suzanne went to bed earlier. When Frankie said eat more kale, Suzanne ate more kale. Frankie wasn’t just Suzanne’s wife or Milo’s mom; she was their jailer.

Even when you presented a logical argument, like the one Milo had presented yesterday—If you let me go to JJ’s party, I won’t drink beer. You know I won’t; I’m allergic to gluten—Frankie wouldn’t listen. She had been this way for as long as Milo could remember. Overprotective. Smothering. “A buzz kill,” as JJ would say.

“You’ll thank me one day,” Frankie said.

I’ll thank you one day? Ha! It was one of those times when Milo wished he had a brother or sister, it didn’t matter which, just someone to turn to and say, “Can you believe this crap?” He had said it to his English springer spaniel. “Can you believe this crap, Pete?” But Pete had just looked at Milo with his usual befuddled expression.

That was when the idea came to him. That moment, right there.

Milo had gone to Suzanne’s desk, and he had turned on her computer, and he had found the email address for Pamela Barnes. You may not remember me, but we met seven and a half years ago … He had typed the message, and he had sent it. As big life decisions went, this one hadn’t been particularly well thought-out, but Milo didn’t care. He just did it. He set the wheels in motion.

Now, while Milo was on his way to the kitchen to tell Suzanne that za was short for pizza—and it was, in fact, a legal Scrabble word—he heard a ping. He grabbed his phone from the pocket of his jeans.

I’m out. That’s what the text said.

Milo didn’t know what he’d been expecting, really. I’m in? Or a bunch of thumbs-up emoticons? Hollis Darby-Barnes wasn’t exactly a known entity. They’d only met once, when Milo was in second grade. But still, this was their sperm donor they were talking about. Their father. Milo would be lying if he said he wasn’t disappointed. Because … come on. Wasn’t she even curious?

“Milooo!” Suzanne hollered again.

She would never shut up. Suzanne was like the lion at the Bronx Zoo, roaring and roaring from boredom. She couldn’t stand being penned in. She needed to be on the African plains with the other lions.

This is bullshit, Milo thought. It’s New Year’s Eve.

Forget his moms.

Forget Hollis Darby-Barnes.

He was going out.