John felt cheered up by the fact that he had at least bothered to return the call – and had done so personally. He would try him again in the morning. He ran through the rest of his messages; there were a couple from earlier in the day that he hadn’t yet listened to, both from Sweden. One from a friend from Uppsala University, who was coming over to Los Angeles this fall, and another from his mother, chiding him for not calling her to tell her how the visit to the obstetrician went today. It was now early morning in Sweden; too early to call either of them.
He hung up and checked his email. Over a dozen new ones since he had gone out to the bar, but nothing that looked important. Nothing from Dettore.
Bastard.
Suddenly he looked around, puzzled, aware that the room did not feel right. There seemed to be something missing, but he couldn’t figure what. Or maybe it was just that the photographer had messed some things around.
His cellphone rang, startling him. It was Naomi. She sounded so scared, so vulnerable. ‘Where are you?’
‘Offish. In the offish. Jush leaving.’ I got you into this, he thought. Anything that happens is my fault. ‘I’m sorry – been tied up – I had to do shish interview – she knows you – still feel like going out? A Mescixian – ah – Mexican? Or some shush – sushi -?’
He was aware he was slurring his words but there was nothing he could do about it.
‘John, are you all right?’
‘Sure – I – I sh – shhhure-’
‘Are you drunk? John – you sound drunk.’
He stared at the receiver, helplessly, as if waiting for some guidance to come out of the ether. ‘No – I-’
‘Have you spoken to Dr Dettore?’
Very slowly, taking great care over each word at a time, John said, ‘No. He – heesh – I’ll try in – in – morning.’
Oh Christ. John closed his eyes. She was crying. ‘I’m coming darling – I’m – on way home now.’
‘Don’t drive, John. I’ll come and collect you.’
‘I could – cab – call cab.’
After a few moments, her voice sounding more composed, she said, ‘I’ll collect you. We don’t have money to burn on cabs. We can pick up a takeaway. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’ Then she hung up.
John sat very still. He had a bad feeling; that shadow in his mind was growing. There definitely was something missing in this room. What the hell was it?
But that wasn’t the source of the bad feeling. Nor at this moment was it Dr Rosengarten’s diagnosis, nor the fact that Dettore was unavailable. He was fretting about what he had said to the journalist. Trying to remember exactly what he had said. She was a nice lady, kind, sympathetic, fun to be with. He sensed he’d been a bit indiscreet, said a bit too much, more than he had intended.
But it was off the record, wasn’t it?
19
Naomi’s Diary
I can’t sleep. John is snoring like a hog. I haven’t seen him drunk like this in a long time. Why did he get so smashed? Sure, we’re both upset by Dr Rosengarten, but getting drunk like this doesn’t solve anything.
And he had lipstick on his face.
I spoke to my mother and to Harriet. Both of them rang, wanting to know how it went today. I told them that the obstetrician was happy, that everything was fine. Harriet lent us her entire savings – what could I say to her? That everything is fine except – oh, yes – one small detail – it’s not a boy, it’s a girl?
Surely the gender genes are the easiest of all the genes to manipulate? As I understand it, females have two X chromosomes, males an X and a Y. Separation of these is being done around the world in the most primitive of labs. If Dr Dettore can’t get even this simplest element right, what assurances do we have about everything else we’ve discussed with him?
And, just supposing that everything else is fine, what problems would a girl have with the genes we’ve selected? We asked for our child to be six foot tall because we had a male in mind. We chose height and physical build for a male.
It’s all wrong.
John is pretty certain Dr Rosengarten has made a mistake. It’s possible – I didn’t like the man and he wasn’t interested in us. As John said, we’re just little people to him, we don’t matter.
God, I hope he has made a mistake.
And there’s something else that’s on my mind. Sally Kimberly. He says she told him we were friends. That’s rubbish. It’s true that we worked together, and normally I get along with most people. But she was a bitch. Hard as nails. We disliked each other intensely and made no bones about it.
In fact, there are very few people I’ve ever disliked quite so much as Sally Kimberly.
And now her lipstick is on John’s face.
20
Naomi was awake; John could hear the faint crushing sound of her eyelashes as she blinked. The light from his alarm radio seemed intense, bathing the room with a spectral blue glow that was irking him. Outside in the distance a siren skirled, a familiar mournful solo, the discordant music of a Los Angeles night.
His head was pounding. He needed water, tablets, sleep. Desperately needed sleep. He swung his legs out of the bed, carried his empty glass to the bathroom, ran the cold tap, swallowed two Tylenol and padded back into the room.
‘What’s going to happen to us?’ Naomi said suddenly as he got back into bed.
John felt for her hand, found it, squeezed it, but there was no pressure back. ‘Perhaps we should think about termination – an abortion?’
‘It never mattered to me, John, whether it was a boy or a girl. All I wanted was for our child to be healthy – I would have been perfectly happy not knowing the sex, like a lot of other people, just knowing that he or she is normal. I don’t want an abortion, that would be ridiculous – you can’t make a decision to abort your baby because you wanted a boy and you are getting a girl.’
There was an uncomfortable silence. The issue was far deeper than that and they both knew it.
‘Ships have communication problems sometimes,’ he said. ‘They rely on satellites and can’t always get a link – I’ll try again in the morning.’
There was another siren out there now, and the bass horn blasts of a fire truck.
‘I don’t want you to have an abortion,’ he said. ‘Not unless it’s-’
She waited some moments and then she prompted, ‘Unless it’s what?’
‘There are some tests that can be done now in labs here in the States – they can pick up all kinds of stuff about the foetus.’
She snapped the bedside light on and sat up, angrily. ‘This isn’t some disposable product, John. This isn’t some lab experiment in a Petri dish or a bell jar – some – some fruit fly or something.’ She pulled the duvet up and crossed her arms protectively over her belly. ‘This is my child – our child – that’s growing inside me. I’m going to love her, or him, no matter how he – it – turns out. I’m going to love this creature whether she grows to four feet tall or seven feet. I’m going to love her whether she’s a genius or retarded.’
‘Darling, that isn’t-’
She interrupted him. ‘You brought up this whole idea in the first place and you talked me into it. I’m not blaming you; I came to this with my eyes wide open; I’m as responsible for the decision as you are. What I’m saying is that I’m not walking away from this. Maybe whatever is going on – Dettore screwing up on the gender – maybe this is Mother Nature’s way of keeping some kind of a lid on the sanity of the world. I think the day mothers start aborting their babies at the first sign that they’re not turning out how they expect them to be, that’s the start of a very slippery slope.’
John sat up too. ‘If you’d known about Halley – about his condition – before he was born – would you have gone ahead and brought him into the world knowing what future he faced?’
She said nothing. Then, turning to look at her, he saw a tear trickling down her cheek. He dabbed it with his handkerchief. Her face was all clenched up in misery.