Apples Never Fall

“No, she’s happily married, permanently settled in the US,” said Troy. “She’s ready to have a baby.”

“Well, I’m not surprised. She was ready to have a baby with you all those years ago,” said Joy bitterly. Claire and Troy had been in the process of going through IVF when their marriage broke up. Apparently Troy had been unfaithful, and at the time Joy had been so angry with him she hadn’t been able to look him in the eye for a good six months. She shivered violently. It was too hot or too cold in here.

“So, she and her husband have been trying for a long time now and apparently they haven’t been having any luck,” said Troy.

“Oh no,” said Brooke. “Tell me she doesn’t want to use—”

“Yes,” said Troy. He looked at his sister, who seemed to have guessed something that Joy couldn’t even imagine. “Yes, she does.”

“Use what?” asked Stan.

“Well, we’ve kept our embryos on ice all this time. From when we were doing IVF. Claire has been paying the storage costs. Anyway, now she’s wondering how I would feel if she … tried her luck with one of those.”

Joy felt like she was stumbling about in the dark for a light switch. “You mean Claire wants to have your baby? But I don’t understand, why can’t she do IVF with her new husband? Make some new … embryos?” She tripped over the word embryos. When she was getting pregnant, there had just been babies or no babies.

“She had low ovarian reserve back when she was doing IVF with Troy,” said Brooke, who remembered everyone’s medical histories. “She’s probably got no more eggs.”

“But you’d be this child’s father,” said Joy, and she saw Troy as a baby: the cutest and naughtiest of her babies. He’d wail so loudly each time he woke you’d think he was dying, and Joy would go running, tricked every time, and the instant she picked him up the crying would stop like a switch had been flicked and he’d smile that heart-melting smile, crocodile tears still wet on his fat rosy cheeks.

“She wants her husband to formally adopt the child as soon as it’s born,” said Troy, and Joy heard him trip on the word husband in the same way she’d tripped on embryo.

“But could you be involved? If you wanted to be involved?” asked Amy.

Troy shrugged. “She says it’s up to me, but what would be the point of me turning up every few months and taking the kid out to McDonald’s like some sad divorced dad? Better if it just thinks the cardiologist is its father, don’t you think?”

Joy was on a boat being rocked about on a stormy sea.

She met Stan’s eye. He looked stunned. She could tell he didn’t really get it. The brand-new possibilities and dilemmas created by modern technology, modern science, and modern thinking were beyond him.

“You like this idea?” asked Logan.

“No, I don’t like the idea at all,” said Troy, and there it was: a flash of anguish. “To be frank, I hate the idea.”

“Well,

then, mate, you’re not obliged—”

“But it could be Claire’s only chance to have her own biological child.” Troy lifted his hands in a hopeless gesture of surrender. “Her only chance. Ever. How can I take that away from her? When those embryos are just sitting there? It would be so cruel.” His voice dropped, and he moved his wineglass around in circles on the red-wine stain on the tablecloth, as if he could rub it away, which he couldn’t. That stain would be there forever.

Troy added in a small, remorseful voice, “Especially after what I did to her.”

Oh, for goodness’ sake.

This was exactly how Joy used to feel when Troy got in trouble as a kid, and he’d sit there in front of her and Stan, head hanging, hands dangling between his knees, looking so sad, remorseful, and bewildered, as if the actions he’d taken hadn’t been his choice, not really, but he was once again stuck with their consequences.

“I think I have to say yes, don’t I?” He looked up the table at Joy. “Don’t I, Mum?”

Joy sighed. She put a hand once again to her burning cheek and shuddered. She was freezing.

“Don’t you think, Mum?” said Troy. “I have to say yes?”

He needed an answer. He’d always looked to her, not his father, for answers to the moral quandaries in which he found himself.

I stole this CD, Mum, and now I feel bad about it. Should I just take it back to the shop and tell them? But I kind of scratched it.

“Oh, Troy.”

Joy thought of Claire’s parents. She and Stan had met them only a handful of times, but they’d liked them. Uncomplicated and kind people. They’d even played doubles against them. The mother, Teresa, had a nice double-handed backhand. Joy had been mortified when her son had broken Teresa’s daughter’s heart like that. She’d phoned her and told her she was so sorry and she was ashamed of Troy, and Teresa had been kind and gracious. If the situations had been reversed Joy would have been well mannered too, but cool and snippy. Now that nice woman would get Joy’s grandchild, and Joy wouldn’t be allowed to see it, to hold it or know it. What if the baby had Troy’s smile? And Claire’s beautiful red hair? Joy would have especially loved a redheaded grandchild!