The Last Romantics(91)

Renee took Carl down to the hospital cafeteria, where he insisted on paying for their coffees. They sat at a small table overlooking a paved courtyard where fat pigeons fluttered and clucked. It was 4:00 p.m. The cafeteria was empty and overheated, smelling of pasta water and Windex. Across the room one lone window was open, and brief, tantalizing bursts of fresh air washed over them. With each one Renee breathed more deeply.

“Dr. Renee, you ever want kids?” Carl asked her.

Melanie would often ask Renee personal questions—What’s your favorite movie, Dr. Renee? Do you ever smoke pot?—but Carl never had, and for a moment Renee was taken aback. She sipped her coffee and considered Carl’s question. Had she ever wanted kids? She remembered a discussion with Jonathan not long after they’d met. This was shortly after Joe’s engagement party, still almost two years before the accident. Jonathan’s no to kids was as emphatic as Renee’s own, though she admitted to him one point of ambivalence. On a practical level, she liked the idea of creating newer, fresher, better Skinners. Our mortality weighed on Renee. Given our father’s example, it seemed any of us might disappear at a moment’s notice. With our bad luck and genetics, how would the Skinners continue? The pressure had lifted a bit with Caroline’s three, but those children were Duffys, not Skinners. It was clear even then that I was unlikely to become a mother, so it had to be Joe or herself, Renee, keeping her maiden name, procreating with a certain degree of independence or an extremely understanding partner. When she explained this to Jonathan, he had smiled and said, “Joe is a born father. Look at him. I bet he’ll have three wives with two kids each. At least. Don’t worry. We’re off the hook.”

Renee had laughed, but she’d also felt relief. Jonathan was right: the Skinners would endure.

But now, here in the institutional hush of the empty cafeteria, sitting across from her dead patient’s husband, Renee realized with a small, terrible shock: Joe will never have children. Renee felt loss again, not of Joe, her brother, but of possibility. Of the future.

Renee still had not answered Carl’s question. She was forty-two years old. It was no exaggeration to say that she and Jonathan had everything they’d ever wished for.

“No, I’ve never wanted kids,” Renee answered at last. “Not really.”

Carl shifted in his chair, gripped the coffee cup but did not drink. “Well, Melanie wanted me to give you her eggs. That’s what she said. She said she wanted to donate them to you. She didn’t have any sisters. And her friends—it’s hard to maintain friendships when you’re in the hospital for so long. She admired you, Dr. Renee. She cared about you.”

Carl’s phone began to beep. “Oh, shit,” he said. “I’m late for work. Overnight shift. Dr. Renee, think about it, okay? You and that boyfriend of yours. Kids. I’m not having any, not without Mel around, but she’d love it if a part of her was tumbling around the playground. Or learning how to play the violin or be a doctor or whatever. I’d really love it, too. I wouldn’t bother you. We could make whatever kind of legal agreement you want. Anyhow, I gotta go. Think about it, Dr. Renee. Just think about it.”

Carl left the cafeteria, but Renee sat for a while. Perhaps twenty minutes, perhaps an hour. She held on to her coffee until it grew cold.

Renee told no one about the eggs. She filed away their existence into a compartment that contained the things she did not want to think about. The man in the car. Luna Hernandez. The ring. Those bruises on the thin, fragile skin of Joe’s forearm. That night on the balcony at the party. And so Melanie Jacobs’s eggs remained frozen in a basement laboratory in New York-Presbyterian Hospital while, fourteen stories above, Renee went about her profession. She transplanted lungs and kidneys from the dead into the living, she taught medical students and residents about cross matching and pulmonary function tests. Her patients were young and old, responsible and careless, and grateful, all of them, grateful beyond words for what she and her team had granted them. Time.

*

I was at work when Caroline called to invite me to lunch. It was two days before an environmental conference on the Paris Accords, and I had been spending long hours at the office, writing speeches for Homer, researching our position papers. At night I was working on a new project, the Love Poem, about a man and a woman who lived in a hot climate, who in many respects appeared different in background and aspirations, but who had discovered in each other something rare.

My assistant, Hannah, put the call through. “Caroline something,” Hannah said. “I didn’t catch the last name.”

I paused. “Masters?” I said, referring to one of our major donors, heiress to a shipping fortune and, thankfully, dedicated to ocean preservation. She was fifty-five years old and looked thirty, as was the job of an heiress.

“No,” said Hannah.

I thought of other Carolines I might know.

“Duffy?” I said.

“Yes! I think that was it. Duffy.”

“Hm.” The line was blinking red; Caroline remained on hold.

“Who’s Caroline Duffy?” Hannah asked.

“She’s my sister.”

“Sister? But I thought her name was Rachel.”

“Renee. Renee is one sister. Caroline is the other.”

“Oh, two sisters! That’s a lot of sisters. You’re so lucky to have sisters! I only have a brother, and he’s younger and totally ridiculous.”