One Good Egg: An Illustrated Memoir Read Free Page A

half-convinced I’m not fertile. Friends tell me the sperm pool is drying up due to pollution, preservatives, and pay TV. The way I see it, if I’m fertile, that’s great. Fine adventures ahead. If not, that’s also okay— other adventures ahead, but I’m hoping, a bit afraid.
Love, Steve
    Another nine days later:
Hey Suzy, Guess what—I’m fertile! All the results came up okay.
More later, xxx, Steve
    L orene brought me shoes from Italy. And a baby board book in Italian. And my baby’s first toy. I was looking into his bead eyes, imagining that baby, when Lorene said, “I shouldn’t have. Here,” she reached for him. “I’ll keep him. I’m sorry. You’re afraid I’ve jinxed you.”

    “No,” the thought hadn’t occurred to me. “I’m afraid.” I hesitated. “I’m falling in love.”
    “Oh.” She laughed for a few uncomfortable seconds. “Me, too. But we know better.”
    I agreed. Neither one of us was about to trade a lifelong best-friendship for another short-lived love affair.
    And for a full fourteen days we didn’t. Then the night before I was leaving for Milwaukee, we kissed good-bye.

    HOROSCOPE: LIBRA
    When two Libras come together in a love affair, they form one of the most agreeable, romantic and well-balanced relationships around . . . Libra loves to be in love, and two together spells relationship bliss.
     
    I would have a week on my bike, cycling through Door County (the tip of the thumb of Wisconsin) to consider, reconsider, and re-reconsider what we had done. But by the time I changed planes in Minneapolis, I was convinced I had done one of the best things in my life.
    There was another sign written in the stars. We both loved the name Aurora for a girl.
Aurora
ORIGIN Latin; meaning DAWN , Aurora Borealis, Aurora Australis – Northern and Southern Lights named after Roman goddess of dawn. This name is popular in Italy, Norway, Switzerland.
    I came up with D ILLON (Steve’s last name) J EAN (Lorene’s last name) B ECKER for a boy. Steve “quite liked the ring to it.”
    “Dildo Pecker?” Lorene nixed it. “You can’t do that to a kid!”

    I n the month that followed, Lorene moved in little by little. A pillow, the dog’s bed, an extra cutting board, her favorite bowls, the popcorn popper. Her music would be drifting out of windows I had never opened when I came home from my morning bike rides.

    We hadn’t decided that we would live in my house forever. Hers held a hundred years of family history and I was willing to move. But it was a decision we didn’t need to make for now. It was more than enough to know that we would spend the rest of our lives together. We planned to have a small civil union in Vermont the next summer, with a big after-party. And sometime before then, we each promised to propose to the other.

    We spent the Fourth of July in 2001 at an old farmhouse in Vermont. It had been my college mentor’s retreat—no phone, no cell service, no TV. I had been given guest privileges in perpetuity. The weekend was unseasonably cold and rainy, and Lorene and I were wrapped up in a quilt, eating homemade strawberry ice cream in front of a fire. The dogs slept on the couch behind us.
    “What are you thinking?” I asked, fishing for something to think about as I stared into the fire, possibly stumbling upon a big thought, like a whole new room in her head.
    She took my bowl and set it down, and then she held my hands. “Will you marry me?”
    The question took me by surprise; but I didn’t have to think about the answer. “I will,” I said.
    We decided we would be married on that hearth, like the farmers up the road fifty-some years before us.

    We met a couple of my old friends for dinner. I was starving by the time we ordered. Barbara smiled at me while we waited for our slices. “You got what you wanted.”
    “Hope so. I was actually too hungry to know.”
    The three of them were laughing. “I meant Lorene and the baby.”
     
Have you ever thought there