A week later I reinserted the fertilised egg — a healthy, growing blastocoele, pinhead size — painlessly, uneventfully, without need for anaesthetic, through Miss Tennessee’s cervix.
I celebrated the positive pregnancy test with Tad a week after that: champagne before dinner, a bottle of Krug Rosé, his favourite. He extracted the cork, and poured the creamy, foaming liquid into a pair of crystal flutes which he had also supplied.
‘You realise this is very much our child,’ he said, passing over a glass.
‘Then here’s to us,’ I said.
We clinked vessels, and sipped, Tad briefly. He still had more to say: ‘There’s an amusing symmetry to it, chérie. I provided the sperm cells — in a sense. You retrieved the eggs.’
I rested the cold rim of the glass against my lips, allowing the tiny, fizzing bubbles to tickle the inside of my nose. He was smiling at me, thick-tipped, but there was a darker undercurrent here. I didn’t find it quite so amusing: the spinster and the ‘tragic deviant’ (his words) had somehow joined forces to produce a baby.
He still wasn’t finished: ‘We manufactured these cells, Mother, as surely as if they popped out of our own gonads.’
‘Scanlon helped,’ I reminded him.
‘Speaking of whom — where is the man? He should be celebrating with us.’
Since the fertilisation, Scanlon had dropped from sight. Hourly during that first week I had climbed the fire stairs to check the growing blastocoele, and dawdle in the Cell Lab partly in the hope of seeing him. Once or twice I pushed at his office door: locked. His staff claimed, whenever questioned, to have ‘just’ seen him, that I must have ‘just’ missed him. I knocked on the door of his home each night: no lights were burning, no doors opened. At the end of the week he rang me, long distance, seeming at first more interested in the progress of the fertilisation than in me. Once again his excuses were entirely plausible. He was ‘terrible’ on phones, he apologised. And too busy to see me, snowed under with Tiger interviews. He hoped we could ‘find time together’ soon.
‘He’s in Tasmania this week,’ I told Tad.
He laughed: ‘Let me guess: the Tiger is going home?’
‘Scanlon has won some award down there. Tasmanian of the Year. There’s to be a civic reception in Hobart. The keys to the city.’
‘What a thrill that must be.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with Hobart.’
‘For a weekend. If you take a couple of good books.’ He sipped at his pink fluid again before continuing: ‘Or a congenial companion. Is Heather Sims with him?’
‘I suppose. It’s her home town. Why?’
His eyes slid away from mine: ‘Nothing. Nothing at all. Tell me, how is Mary-Beth taking the good news?’
‘Thrilled, sums it up. Mary-Beth wants to take me shopping on the weekend.’
‘Maternity clothes?’
‘And a few things for me. She plans to improve me. A crash course in fashion sense.’
‘You could do worse, chérie.’
I shrugged: ‘Maybe. I’ll need something to wear at the party.’
‘What party?’
I glanced at him across my champagne: ‘Surely you’ve received your invitation?’
He shook his head: ‘It must be in the post.’
I laughed: ‘I’m sure it is in the post. You played your part, Daddy.’
He smiled, and raised his champagne flute: ‘I’ll believe an invitation to the White House when I see it. But here’s to moving up in the world.’
We sipped, together.
‘Let’s enjoy it while we can, Tad. I’m still worried about birth defects. Using laser light bothers me, there’s a possibility of gene mutation. We’re stumbling about in the dark.’
‘You’ve arranged an ultrasound?’
‘Next week. Even that is too early to see much.’
‘You’ll be able to see if it doesn’t have a head.’
‘Don’t joke. Please.’
I performed the scan myself; this was my baby in many senses — or mine and Tad’s. I wanted no intermediaries at First Glimpse. Especially if it had no head. Or arms, legs — whatever. Also, to get any kind of image at seven weeks takes some expertise. The human embryo is little more than a fish, a fingerling glued to the uterine wall. A leech. I spent some time sliding the probe across Mary-Beth’s oiled, water-bloated belly, eyes on the screen, pausing occasionally to select an image for printing.
From time to time she lifted her head from the pillow: ‘Everything okay, Mara?’
‘Head back. Relax your tummy muscles. Everything looks fine.’
She stared at the ceiling: ‘Should I be having other tests? What if there is some kind of defect?’
‘Don’t worry. Everything that can be accounted for at this stage is accounted for.’
Head. Trunk. Two arm-buds, two proto-legs. I waited, immensely relieved, for the films to be developed as she dressed: yellow pleated skirt, yellow and cream blouse. Even the simple things look good on the Miss Tennessees of the world.
Hollis Schultz was waiting in the anteroom; he rose eagerly as I entered. His wife might have delivered an actual child that day rather than its first grainy black and white image.
He uttered familiar words: ‘Everything okay?’
I beckoned: ‘Come and see for yourself.’
He followed me into the viewing room; as the films emerged from the developer I pressed them against the screens. Mary-Beth joined us; we stood for some time in front of the glowing images. Each dark square of film was surrounded by a margin of white light, a rectangular halo.
I pointed out the few visible features. Mary-Beth listened in silence, but there was a glow to her face, a radiance that was more than reflected light from the screens. Her husband, oddly, did not seem quite so pleased.
‘Are you certain there’s nothing wrong?’ he repeated, as if hoping otherwise.
‘There’s nothing wrong,’ Mary-Beth said. ‘And now we’re going to set a date for that shopping expedition, Mara. No more excuses. You need something for the party.’