My Korean Deli_ Risking It All for a Convenience Store - Ben Ryder Howe [100]
FEAR FACTOR
LIKE MANY CAREER-MINDED WOMEN, GAB HAS ALWAYS WORRIED about waiting too long to have children. Being the sort of hyperorganized, goal-oriented person that she is, she even had a specific age as her deadline: thirty-two. Thirty-two was the year because thirty-five was when the increased risk of birth defects kicks in, and she wanted enough time to have at least two kids before then.
If only her husband would comply.
During the summer, after things settled down at the store, we started trying to initiate “the plan” amid all the, uh, complications that result from having a potential audience of family members in close proximity. Knowing that one’s in-laws are upstairs and capable of barging in at any second can make one fatally fearful and hesitant; however, it also has the potential to inject an element of danger and excitement! After all, here we were, a married couple in our thirties, a period during which physical romance often loses its adventurous thrill, having to tiptoe around and be secretive. It was like being teenagers again, except that when you’re young you’re in the mood all the time, so you don’t mind running out to the gardening shed on a moment’s notice (as opposed to thinking, “Right now? But Fear Factor isn’t over yet”). Also, when you’re young you heal faster after falling with your pants around your ankles into a box of gardening tools.
So we spent the summer being adolescent and wishing our bodies would follow suit. However, our attempts at reproduction have failed, boosting Gab’s impatience to a Kay-like level of intensity. Among other risks, she’s been leaving Pottery Barn Kids catalogs and how-to-get-pregnant books all over the place, which is alerting Kay to our efforts.
“She go to doctor again?” Kay asked me the other day while Gab was at the ob-gyn. Part of me thinks that Gab wants Kay to find out, because when she does she will drag Gab to her herbalist in Flushing, who will give her praying mantis ovaries or some such concoction guaranteed to get results. This scares me, though, because what if instead of Gab she focuses on me, and makes me go on a diet of rhinoceros horn or wolverine testicles? Or what if she just decides this is the last straw? “American man, he can’t do nothing, not even make beautiful wife pregnant!” (Donald Barthelme: “What an artist does, is fail.”) Maybe she’ll conclude that I’m not worth wolverine testicles.
Then one morning I pull myself out of bed and, as usual following a night shift, wake up with only half a brain. I’m dying for a cup of coffee, but as I drag myself into the kitchen I realize it won’t be necessary, because before she left for Manhattan, Gab stuck a little present on the refrigerator door that provides all the jolt I need. No, it’s not a sonogram showing that at long last she is with child; it’s a note from her ob-gyn with the name of a male fertility clinic and some handy advice on masturbation, titled “PATIENT INSTRUCTIONS FOR COLLECTION OF SEMEN SAMPLES.”
After ripping the note down and checking the house to see if Kay or anyone else has seen it (thankfully, I’m the only one at home), I call Gab at her office and demand to know what she was thinking.
“Well, we’ve just been having so much trouble,” she says. “I thought it was time for you to get some help.”
“Time for me to get some help? How do you know it’s not you?”
“Don’t worry,” Gab says calmly. “I’m getting tested too. Fair is fair.”
“Well, it doesn’t seem fair to me that I have to have my ‘struggles’ broadcast to the whole family.” (“Must-see