six inches toward him.
“I said
pour,
woman! Can I get a ride home, by the way? I left Susan the car today.”
“How were you planningon getting home if I didn’t drive you?”
Didier grins,
beau-laid
. “I knew you’d drive me.”
Bryan Zakile saunters over to their table and bellows, “
These
three are clearly up to no good! Want to hear my fortune? ‘You will leave a trail of gratitude.’”
“‘In bed,’” adds Didier.
“You said it, not me.”
“Not I,” mutters the biographer.
Bryan flinches. “Thank you, grammar Schutzstaffel.”
She dragsher fork through the Golden Lilies. “I’m not the one who teaches English.”
“He don’t really teach English either,” says Didier. “His subject is the beautiful game.”
“If only that knee had held up,” says Pete, “we’d be watching Bryan on telly. Who’d you be playing for? Barça? Man United?”
“Hilarious, Peter, but I was All-Conference for three years at Maryland.”
“That is tre
mend
ously impressive.”
The biographer smiles at Pete. Surprised, he smiles back.
Sometimes he reminds her of her brother.
She can’t use the ovulation predictor test when she wakes up, because first morning urine isn’t optimal for detecting the surge of luteinizing hormone that augurs the egg’s release. She has to wait four hours to let enough urine accumulate in her bladder, and in these four hours she can’t drinktoo many fluids, lest she dilute the urine and skew the results. Instead of coffee, she toasts a frozen waffle and gnaws it unbuttered at the kitchen table. She stares at the bookstore photograph. The shelf where her book will go.
Between first and second periods, in a stall of the staff bathroom, the biographer inserts a fresh pee-catching tab into the plastic wand of the ovulation predictorkit and squats over the toilet. The instructions say you don’t need to absorb the whole stream, only five seconds’ worth, which is good because the opening spray goes wide of the stick. She has to keep moving the stick around under herself to find it. Count to five. Rest the stick on some toilet paper on the metal tampon receptacle, angled just so, to allow the caught pee to wend its way throughthe stick into whatever mechanism tests it for luteinizing hormone. Which takes a minute or longer.
She wipes her wet hands, pulls up her jeans, sits back down on the toilet. During this minute or longer, while the digital display blinks—it will turn into an empty circle or a smiley-faced circle—the biographer sings the egg-coaxing song. “I may be alone, I may be a crone, but fuck you, I canstill ovulate!”
She checks: still blinking.
Woman who is thin and ugly. Withered old woman. Cruel and ugly old woman. Witch-like woman. Stock character in fairy tale. Woman over forty. From the Old Northern French
caroigne
(“carrion” or “cantankerous woman”) and from the Middle Dutch
croonje
(“old ewe”).
Still blinking.
Through the bathroom wall come shrieks of girls whose ovaries are youngand juicy, crammed with eggs.
Still blinking.
What is the total number of human eggs in this building right now?
Still blinking.
How many of the human eggs in this building right now will get sperm pricked, cracked open, to produce another human?
She checks: smiley face!
Bloom of delight in her ribs.
I may be forty-two, but I can still fucking ovulate.
“Hello, yes, I’m calling becauseI got my LH surge today—Okay, sure …” Holding, holding. “Yes, hi, this is Roberta Stephens … Yes, right … And I surged today … Yeah … And I’m using donor sperm so I wanted to—Okay, sure …” Holding, holding, bell shrilling; that was the second bell; she’s late for her own class. “Okay … Yes, I’ve got more than one donor in storage, but I’d like you to use number 9072.”
Donor semen is frozen shortlyafter collection and thawed shortly before insemination. In between, millions of sperm lie arrested, aslant, their genetic
“I said
pour,
woman! Can I get a ride home, by the way? I left Susan the car today.”
“How were you planningon getting home if I didn’t drive you?”
Didier grins,
beau-laid
. “I knew you’d drive me.”
Bryan Zakile saunters over to their table and bellows, “
These
three are clearly up to no good! Want to hear my fortune? ‘You will leave a trail of gratitude.’”
“‘In bed,’” adds Didier.
“You said it, not me.”
“Not I,” mutters the biographer.
Bryan flinches. “Thank you, grammar Schutzstaffel.”
She dragsher fork through the Golden Lilies. “I’m not the one who teaches English.”
“He don’t really teach English either,” says Didier. “His subject is the beautiful game.”
“If only that knee had held up,” says Pete, “we’d be watching Bryan on telly. Who’d you be playing for? Barça? Man United?”
“Hilarious, Peter, but I was All-Conference for three years at Maryland.”
“That is tre
mend
ously impressive.”
The biographer smiles at Pete. Surprised, he smiles back.
Sometimes he reminds her of her brother.
She can’t use the ovulation predictor test when she wakes up, because first morning urine isn’t optimal for detecting the surge of luteinizing hormone that augurs the egg’s release. She has to wait four hours to let enough urine accumulate in her bladder, and in these four hours she can’t drinktoo many fluids, lest she dilute the urine and skew the results. Instead of coffee, she toasts a frozen waffle and gnaws it unbuttered at the kitchen table. She stares at the bookstore photograph. The shelf where her book will go.
Between first and second periods, in a stall of the staff bathroom, the biographer inserts a fresh pee-catching tab into the plastic wand of the ovulation predictorkit and squats over the toilet. The instructions say you don’t need to absorb the whole stream, only five seconds’ worth, which is good because the opening spray goes wide of the stick. She has to keep moving the stick around under herself to find it. Count to five. Rest the stick on some toilet paper on the metal tampon receptacle, angled just so, to allow the caught pee to wend its way throughthe stick into whatever mechanism tests it for luteinizing hormone. Which takes a minute or longer.
She wipes her wet hands, pulls up her jeans, sits back down on the toilet. During this minute or longer, while the digital display blinks—it will turn into an empty circle or a smiley-faced circle—the biographer sings the egg-coaxing song. “I may be alone, I may be a crone, but fuck you, I canstill ovulate!”
She checks: still blinking.
Woman who is thin and ugly. Withered old woman. Cruel and ugly old woman. Witch-like woman. Stock character in fairy tale. Woman over forty. From the Old Northern French
caroigne
(“carrion” or “cantankerous woman”) and from the Middle Dutch
croonje
(“old ewe”).
Still blinking.
Through the bathroom wall come shrieks of girls whose ovaries are youngand juicy, crammed with eggs.
Still blinking.
What is the total number of human eggs in this building right now?
Still blinking.
How many of the human eggs in this building right now will get sperm pricked, cracked open, to produce another human?
She checks: smiley face!
Bloom of delight in her ribs.
I may be forty-two, but I can still fucking ovulate.
“Hello, yes, I’m calling becauseI got my LH surge today—Okay, sure …” Holding, holding. “Yes, hi, this is Roberta Stephens … Yes, right … And I surged today … Yeah … And I’m using donor sperm so I wanted to—Okay, sure …” Holding, holding, bell shrilling; that was the second bell; she’s late for her own class. “Okay … Yes, I’ve got more than one donor in storage, but I’d like you to use number 9072.”
Donor semen is frozen shortlyafter collection and thawed shortly before insemination. In between, millions of sperm lie arrested, aslant, their genetic
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