Jack’s three daughters looked at him, concerned.
Jack thought he had better explain. “The lawyer said he was going to stir things up in court. He wants to do it through legal channels and in a way that will get publicity. It’s going to be painful for a lot of people. Not least the fathers who thought that their own sperm would be used and not donor sperm.”
Kat narrowed her eyes at him. “What could your mother have been thinking? Really?”
As it happened, the prospect of talking about her made Jack feel better. Anything to feel closer to her again.
“She was always ready to defy people for me,” he said eagerly. “Even those closest to her.” He began to tell his daughters about the first time he met his new grandparents, twenty-five years ago…
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Immediately after the funeral of his original parents he had been very fragile. Each night he would go to sleep in Davinia’s arms. She rocked him and assured him that they would be together forever. Giving himself over entirely to loving her was such a relief. She was his rock to lean on.
On the morning they were scheduled to visit her parents he awoke at dawn and snuggled against her, her long red hair tickling his ears. The birds were singing loudly outside the window. He sat up and looked down at the long, pale face on the pillow, (this was before her cancer) framed by her long red hair that lay loose around her.
He leaned close, almost brushing the tip of her long nose with his cheek. She was breathing gently. Then her eyelids fluttered and her eyes opened and she gazed blearily upwards. Then her blue eyes focused on him. She smiled. “Morning Bubi.” She sat up and put her arms round him and kissed him.
“I’ll get you some strong, sweet tea, mom,” he said eagerly.
“Oh Jack, you’re such a treasure.”
He knew exactly how she liked tea now and it was something he could do quite easily.
She had wrapped a silk dressing gown around herself when he arrived back in the bedroom. Jack thought that she looked rather like a great bird lady from side-on, with her long, beak-like nose and the dark gown wrapped around her sort of looked like folded wings. He sat beside her as she sipped her tea and she put her free arm around him and gave her small contented sigh.
“Your new grandma is strict, but you’ll do fine,” she told him. “They have a big garden. It’s like the countryside. Tati – My Dad – likes to grow vegetables as a hobby now. Everyone gets on with my Dad.”
“I’m excited to meet him,” said Jack grinning.
“My boychik,” she said fondly. He had noticed that when she was feeling emotional she spontaneously used German or Yiddish words which are often very similar to each other. In her household, they had spoken both these languages. She used the Yiddish word for ‘Dad’ to refer to her father, but did not use the Yiddish for ‘mom’ simply because she loved her dad more. That she said 'my boychik' to Jack meant she loved him more as well. It had to mean that. Jack hoped it did…
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Davinia’s mother Ariella was a formidable old lady. She had silver hair, but reminded Jack somewhat of Davinia in her looks. She greeted him politely and suggested that he go and see the garden with Davinia’s father, Abe.
They whiled away a pleasant half hour gathering radishes and other vegetables. Abe was very agreeable, easy to talk to as well, although his accent was a bit heavy. Suddenly Jack heard Davinia yelling from inside the house.
“Grandpa, what’s happening?” exclaimed Jack.
“Best not worry about it, Jack,” said Abe mildly. “Stay out of it and let it resolve itself.”
Back in the house, Jack could tell that Davinia and her mom had been arguing. Davinia’s pale cheeks were flushed pink and she was glaring at Ariella. Jack would not have wanted her blue eyes fixed on him with that expression! Fortunately she gave him her usual tender look.
There was a feeling of tension in the air as the four of them sat at the table, Jack squeezing in beside Davinia at one end. Ariella was at the opposite end. “I can lead the brachah rishonah. Though everything else I do displeases you, mother,” said Davinia and her voice seemed to bite. Abe looked from Davinia to her mother apprehensively.
“Don’t start in front of the boy,” said Ariella wearily.
“He’s my son – I get to decide what he hears and keep that in mind,” said Davinia coldly, but she squeezed Jack’s hand in reassurance.
Davinia’s voice was curt as she recited the Hebrew grace and her bad mood persisted throughout dinner.
She turned to Abe. “I’ve made a small breakthrough in my cancer research, Tati. There’s hope. If I only had more funding…” she gave a wry smile. Then she rounded on her mother. “If I actually cured cancer tomorrow, would that be as big a deal as religion?”
“We’re very proud of all you’ve done, dearest,” said Abe.
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Davinia grinned at him. “We’ll continue to make you proud, my boy and I. I’ve a feeling we’ll change the world someday.”
Afterwards she went with Abe and Jack into the garden where she played with her son, pretending to be a witch swooping down on him. She grabbed him and they laughed as they rolled around in the grass and then feeling silly, they rubbed their noses together.
“Is everything… alright?” asked Jack as he gazed into his mom’s shining eyes. He had not forgotten her quarrel with Ariella.
“Oh Bubi, it’s nothing you should worry about. With my mother – it’s part religion and part getting her own way. She thinks I should have stayed in her religion and then got married to a wealthy Jewish man… and then she questioned my decision to adopt you and I told her off. I think I’ve heard the end of it. Just a moment, you’ve got dirt on your face…” She licked her finger and then wiped the dirt off his cheek. “Anyway, my love for you is unlimited. And forever. I don’t care who I have to upset in order to make that clear. My mother – or anyone at all. Someday, maybe I’ll find a way to reshape the world for you.”
Jack felt a strong upsurge of affection for her. She did love him and nothing was going to upset that. “I love you,” he said and kissed her on the very tip of her long nose. She grinned her watermelon grin and kissed him back. It was at that point that he realised he loved this unique and wonderful person more than anything and that he loved everything about her – her strength, her intelligence, her love, her temper, her red hair and her big, bony nose; indeed, everything that made her who she was. Losing her was completely unthinkable.
That evening he enjoyed playing with her in their private indoor swimming pool much more than he had enjoyed the visit to her parents. They played a game called Escape the Blob. The board game Escape the Blob has a number of different smiley face pieces called Swamp Hoppers and the Blob piece is a huge female blob that tries to catch them and keep them inside her. Since she doesn’t have a mouth, her intentions are unclear. Does she want to imprison or take care of them?
Davinia had a swimming cap on that concealed her long red hair and threw her long nose into greater prominence. Jack smiled. He loved Davinia so he loved her look.
“I’m the Blob. Here I come!” Davinia raised her arms in the air and slowly lunged after Jack as he laughed and splashed around in the shallows. She scooped him up in her arms. “Got you, you sweet little hopper.” She kissed him on the forehead as he giggled madly.
“I wanna go in the deep centre,” he said, pointing towards the centre of the circular pool. “I guess I’m ready for the wave machine too.”
Davinia gave him that stern look of hers. “You’re not going in the deep water until I’m satisfied you’re a strong enough swimmer.”
“Please may we have the wave machine on, mom? Please?” He gave her a beseeching look.
“Can those eyes get any bigger?” She sighed. “Alright, I’ll switch the wave machine on, but I’m keeping hold of you.”
When the waves were on, Davinia picked him up and waded into the deeper water. Then the waves arose and swept them both into the shallows, Davinia’s arms tightly around her son.
“Aua!” Davinia was washed up into the shallows in a sitting position. The force of the wave had wrinkled her swimming cap. Her arms were still wrapped around Jack who was giggling madly.
He grinned into her face. “Again! Again! See mommy? It was fine with your arms around me.”
She sighed. “Alright. You’ll always be fine as long as you’re in mommy’s arms.”
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The girls had been listening to Jack’s story intently. “I like that story,” said Kristen. “And Davinia was right to defy her mother for you.”
“If she had actually obeyed Ariella, then basically none of us would be here!” chirruped Kat. “What’s to regret?”
“Oh God, yes. I’m so glad my mother had fire in her. I would not trade the past twenty-five years for anything.” Jack felt cold and shuddered at the idea of being looked after by anyone except Davinia. In this investigation into her strange deeds he could retrace her footsteps and keep thinking about her. That would stop his grief crushing him. It had to…
Aloud he said: “We should check her lab first and go over her old notes. That’s a good starting point.”
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Back in the gleaming, sterile lab, Jack wondered what the future of the practice could be? What would be done without his mother’s genius?
Kat leafed through Davinia’s cancer notes. “The lawyer wants to drag her name through the mud in court? She’s done more against cancer than all other researchers put together, I guess. First, she invented the Mask of Life that slows breast cancer and then she found less drastic ways of slowing every type of cancer. Thanks to her research over the past decade, it’s possible to slow incurable types of malignant cancer so that you still have a good life for up to thirty years – and without even having to wear a mask you can’t take off.”
Maria was checking through the file on sperm donation. “If the lawyer makes up stories about her, he may want to look in here to find stuff out and then he’ll add or take away from the truth… I don’t know.”
Kristen was flipping through the notes on sperm vials.
“She also invented a type of tamper proof sperm vial. If anyone else tampered with the sperm samples the vials would self-destruct. That way it would always be the sperm she put in. Clever.”
Maria turned to Jack. “She made you put your sperm in special cups How often?”
This was sort of embarrassing, but Jack told them how it worked…
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At the onset of his puberty when he was twelve, Jack discussed what he was experiencing frankly with his mother. They sat on the couch while she listened intently. By this time she had contracted cancer and had put on the mask two years previously. She assured him that what he was experiencing was natural and this is when she insisted that his sperm not be wasted. She asked him what sort of girl he found attractive and he blushed and admitted that he liked red-heads.
Davinia gazed at him, the expression on her shiny green face difficult to read. “Your sperm is part of you, Bubi, so it’s precious. It should not be wasted.”
“What will you do with it?”
“Just keep it in storage - for now, but I want to keep it safe. I don’t like the idea of even a single potential child of yours, being lost, you know? In theory just one ejaculate from you could be used to make a lot of babies. Your babies.”
She gave him instructions on how to get his seed into the special cup in the privacy of the bathroom, using images of red headed ladies. He leafed through the magazines, wondering who would be most exciting. He found an image of a girl who played Mary Jane in a live action version of Spider-Man. She really was beautiful, but what was she missing? He did not love the actress, but surely that wasn’t necessary for this… Suddenly Jack had a thought. How would the red haired actress look with a Mask of Life on? He tried hard to imagine Mary Jane with a bright green mask permanently fused to her face and then the loving thoughts for her came…
Davinia was pleased with how much sperm he produced. “This is absolutely wonderful,” she said, when she had diagnosed the quantity of seminal fluid, the sperm count and mobility. She was grinning from ear to ear. “So many men don’t have a high enough sperm count or their swimmers are lazy. And it varies, how many vials a single ejaculate can fill. We must collect as much as possible from you, darling, so we’ll always have a record of how well you’ve done. And I’m sure we can do better still.”
She made up a rigorous exercise schedule and rules for his diet, of the kind she had compiled for sperm donors, but these were tailored specifically to Jack. An important part of it was stress management.
“I kept telling the guys I employed to be sperm donors, they shouldn’t let themselves get stressed out because that alone is enough to reduce their sperm count. But would they listen to me?” She shook her head. “Honestly, what did I pay them for? But you, Bubi, you listen to your mom.”
Davinia knew how to make exercise fun and recreational to reduce stress. They played a game in their swimming pool, trying to catch little robotic tadpoles that were pre-programmed to swim briskly around.
“Gather up all those little swimmers, Jack! I’m timing you!”
Jack swam after them as his mother called out words of encouragement.
“Bravo!” said Davinia, when Jack had gathered them all up. “But watch out for bandits who want to steal your little swimmers.”
“Bandits? Are there bandits here, mom?”
She grinned and tapped her long, green nose. “How about me?” She chased him around the pool, finally catching him. She was a big woman - over six foot in fact, so still bigger than him. She gathered Jack up into her arms and kissed him on the cheek as he laughed. “I’ve got you now, Bubi, so I guess I own your little swimmers.”
“You have a weird sense of humour, mom.”
“Do I?” She pulled a weird face.
“Definitely.” Feeling silly, they rubbed their noses together.
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At that moment, Jack’s reminiscing was interrupted by the sound of crashing downstairs and the voice of the lawyer from the funeral wake…
“I’m gonna ransack this crummy lab until I’ve got the evidence I need against that witch, or my name ain’t Billious Unction, qualified lawyer.”