Terry Essig - What The Nursery Needs...

“Dad,” Maura began kindly, too kindly for Jason’s peace of mind. In his experience, that kind of patient tone boded nothing but ill for what followed.

“Maura, please, let’s not argue about this, too. Just do it, all right? Just do it.”

“Okay, fine, whatever.”

“Thank you,” Jason said fervently and meant it. He was so grateful, he pretended not to notice the heavy-duty eye rolling that accompanied the exasperated agreement. “Thank you very much.” He pulled around a corner onto his own street, and three blocks later pulled into his driveway.

Maura leaned forward interestedly as the car stopped next to the house. “Look, Dad, there’s somebody moving in next door.”

“Hmm?” Jason glanced up from collecting his briefcase and newspaper to see what had caught his daughter’s attention. “Oh. that’s nice. That house has been empty for so long I didn’t think anybody would ever buy it. Vacant houses lower the property values in an area. And, I suppose it’ll be good to have neighbors again, eh, Maura?”

“I wonder if there’s anybody my age.”

“Could be,” her father mumbled noncommittally as he fumbled with the door handle. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

Maura’s shoulders slumped more than usual as she walked around the rear of the car. “Look, they’re moving in a crib and a bassinet. I guess that means no friend for me.”

“Not necessarily,” Jason said as he pushed his key into the front door lock. “The baby could have an older sister and if not, think about the baby-sitting jobs that could come your way.” Money always appealed at this age. The thought of it should perk Maura right up.

It did, too. Her shoulders briefly straightened before she remembered to round them again. “Yes, Annie O’Connor had the cutest sweatshirt on at school yesterday, but she said it cost $38 and I knew you’d never pay that much for a sweatshirt. If I earn half baby-sitting, do you think you’d pay the other half, Dad?”

Jason set his briefcase down on the wooden floor of the front foyer and balanced his newspaper on top of it before tiredly rubbing his eye. “Uh, I’ll think about it, okay? Don’t eat any more of those candy bars before dinner, Maura,” he instructed as he noticed the fistful she clasped. “I don’t want you filling up on junk. Do me a favor and ration them over the next few days so I don’t feel so guilty about buying you such swill.”

Maura shrugged and crossed her fingers behind her back. “Okay, no problem, Dad.”

“Terrific,” Jason said, not believing a word of it. “I’m going to change, then see what I can put together for dinner. You’re in charge of a salad.”

“No prob.”

Jason merely grunted on his way up the stairs. Man, what a day. But at least Maura was more or less speaking to him again—if you could call this communicating.

Next door, Catherine Marie Nicholson let out a grunt. “There,” she said as she hefted another heavy cardboard box onto a stack of similar boxes in her new kitchen. “That’s the last of the dish boxes I think. Next time I move, I’m going to remember not to put so much in the boxes. These suckers are heavy!”

“Next time you move,” her sister Monica responded as she leaned against the countertops while she caught her breath, “you’ll have to give me more of an advance notice so I can be sure to have other plans for the day.”

“You don’t mean that,” Catherine assured her as she filled two cups with tap water and handed one to Monica.

“Oh, yes I do.”

“I’ll make it up to you. How about if I take Amy all day Saturday? You can spend it pottering around doing whatever you feel like.”

Monica set her cup down after chugging the liquid. “What kind of deal is that? You adore Amy. You’re always trying to get your grimy little mitts on her so that you can have your monthly ‘kid fix.’ When are you going to break down and have one of your own?”

“Actually, I’ve been giving that a great deal of thought lately,” Catherine admitted to her sister.

“Yeah? Come to any earth-shattering conclusions? Like time to stop being so dam picky and marry Gerald?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Catherine made a dismissing gesture. “I’ll never be that hard up. Gerald and I had already been out looking for a diamond when I discovered he was seeing Caroline Neeley on the sly. That poor girl had no idea Gerald had proposed to me, the dirtbag. No, forget Gerald. Forget men. I’ve come up with a different approach entirely.” She reached for the cleaning supplies she’d stacked in one corner. “Help me wipe out the cabinets and lay some shelf paper so I can start emptying these boxes, will you?”

“Having a baby is not exactly a do-it-yourself kind of project, you know. You’re a natural nurturer. It’s why you keep borrowing Amy. It’s why you keep falling in love with the cribs you sell in your kids’ resale shop. You need children of your own to feel fulfilled. You know that and I know that. You’ve been looking for Mr. Right for close to five years now,” Monica said as she grudgingly picked up a sponge. “Why give up now? Twenty-seven isn’t that old. You’ve still got time.”

“Nope. Gerald was the last straw. I give up. I’m throwing in the towel. I decided just last night, as a matter of fact, that it was time to move on to plan B.”

“I didn’t know there was a plan B.”

“There wasn’t. Now there is. It’s simple. Go to a sperm bank.”

Monica almost fell off the ladder she was standing on. “What?”

“You heard me. Cut out the middle man, go directly to the source. From what I understand, people do it all the time.”

Catherine dunked her sponge in her bucket and began to wipe out the interior of a bottom cabinet. Her plan made perfect sense to her. One had to be flexible in this life. A determined person could always find a way to achieve her goal.

Monica, however, was not convinced. “That doesn’t make any sense at all. You’d be adding a middle man, not taking one away. The man is the source.”

Catherine pulled her head out of the cabinet she’d been scrubbing and threw her sponge into the bucket, splashing soapsuds on the floor. “Fine, if you want to play word games, be that way, but you know what I mean. If I really want a baby, which I do, I need to start rethinking the whole project. Otherwise it’s going to remain nothing but an unattainable dream.” She squeezed out the sponge and attacked the next cabinet in line.

Monica opened the cabinet next to the one she’d just finished. Her voice was muffled now and echoed slightly, but her disapproval was still clear. “You were always daydreaming and playing pretend as a kid. You’ve gotten a lot better about getting real. We’re all so proud of the way you’ve made your business succeed, but there’s such a thing as taking it too far. Just be patient. Some guy will turn up, and I’d hate to have you miss all the fun involved in creating a baby naturally. I meant what I said about you being a natural candidate for motherhood, Cath, but I know you like I know the back of my own hand, and I’m telling you I don’t think you’ll be happy doing it this way. You crave family. The whole shebang. You need the husband to go along with the kiddies. I know.”

“Yes, well, unfortunately, Prince Charming is taken, Monica. Cinderella got her claws into him before I even had a chance. I almost made a very bad mistake out of what I now see was desperation. I’m not going to risk it again.”

Monica sat heavily on the third step of her ladder. “But a sperm bank? It seems so cold—so impersonal. Your baby’s not going to know its daddy?” she asked weakly.

Catherine backed out of the cabinet and shrugged at her sister. “Desperate times call for desperate measures. A lady brought in the most beautiful four-poster canopy crib for me to sell for her last week. I brought it home. As a matter of fact, last night I also decided to decorate the spare bedroom as a nursery instead of an office. What do you think of that?”

“Oh, my God, you’re really serious about this.”

Catherine nodded emphatically. “You bet I am. I’m going to decorate that room, set up the crib, then fill it. I am not about to go sit in there every evening and get maudlin over the empty crib. I’ve got my college degree, my resale shop is doing fantastically well, and now I’ve even got my own home. Things aren’t going to get much more orderly than that, and so I’m going to bite the bullet. No time like the present, and all of that. I’m going for it, Mon.”

Monica stared at her sister. “I can’t believe this.”

Catherine nodded firmly. “Believe it.”

“Do you even know where there is a sperm bank?”

“No, but how difficult can they be to find? You read about people using them all the time in the newspaper.”

“Usually because there’s been a problem. All the sperm defrosted or somebody’s is missing. Something awful like that.”

Catherine shrugged off Monica’s concern. “Well, they’re not going to publish the normal day-to-day success cases, are they? You know the press. They only publish the grimmest of the grim.”

“I don’t know, Cath. I mean, what if you got overfertilized and ended up with sextuplets or something? I hear that happens all the time at those places. How would you handle a multiple birth all by yourself? You’d be too tired to run the shop.

“And besides, I bet you don’t have even the foggiest idea how to find a sperm bank or what to do or say if you did. Do you know anybody who knows anything about this? Outside of the newspaper stories, I mean. Those all seemed to be in California, as I recall, and you don’t want a baby born with a need to go surfing. He’d be in for a real disappointment here in South Bend.”

“All right, so I’ll rule out any sperm that might have originated in California.” Catherine agreed with a shrug. “It’s a big country, even without California. I’m sure there are plenty of other sperm out there. And think about this, Mon. Doing it this way I can have the absolute baby of my dreams. I can probably just give them a checklist of attributes I want. Blond hair, blue eyes, IQ over 120.”

Monica rolled her eyes, and Catherine gave her a disapproving look.

“Quit being so discouraging. I’m telling you, my plan is scientifically sound. I’d have a say in all that stuff, whereas if I sit around waiting to fall in love, I’d have to take whatever I’ve fallen for. Gerald wasn’t all that hot looking, but he was smart and seemed nice enough—or so I thought. This way, I can have it all. Oops, we’ll have to finish talking about this later. Here comes dinner.”

And in fact, before Catherine could even pull herself to her feet, the back door opened to admit Monica’s husband and their twelve-year-old daughter, both carrying bags brimming over with small white cartons of Chinese takeout.

“We’re back,” Don Davies announced as though a broad-shouldered six-foot-two man stood a chance of going unnoticed. “And we’ve got supper with us. You two find the plates and silverware yet?”

“We’re not quite ready,” Catherine said as she emptied her bucket into the sink. “We got kind of distracted,” she confessed with a glare at her sister. “But I know what box they’re in.” Catherine had known Donald a long time. The man got cranky when he got hungry. It was best to keep him fed. “Everything go okay?” she asked as she began to rearrange boxes to get at what she hoped was the right one.

“Yep,” Don assured her as he began pulling cartons from the bags and setting them on the kitchen table. “This smells good. I’m starving. We returned the rented van—you owe me an extra twenty-seven bucks, by the way—dropped off John, picked up the food and came right back. Todd and Mary Fran take off?” he asked, naming several more relatives who had helped with the move.