Jack did not think he could face going back to the clinic the next morning – indeed, he could barely face breakfast. It was a fine October morning and outside, the sun was bright and the falling leaves were golden brown, but it brought Jack no joy at all. As he sat at the table, he remembered the first time he and Davinia had breakfasted after she had stuck the green mask on her face to slow the spread of her cancer. He had only been ten at the time, but he could remember that morning as if it were yesterday. Davinia had cooked bacon, eggs, sausages and tomatoes for the both. They sat at the little table facing one another as they ate. The sunlight streamed in through the windows and shone off her green nose and cheeks and glinted off her fiery red hair. She took a mouthful of crispy bacon, causing her green cheeks to bulge. It was weird to watch the face he loved most so freakishly altered.
“To think I never tried pork until I was nineteen,” she said, mouth still full. “I really like the taste. Watch me savour the flavour.”
“That was because of Grandma and Grandad’s religion?” said Jack. He had no problem with calling Davinia mom, but it still seemed odd to call her parents ‘Grandma and Grandad.’
She smiled. Her lips were now a very dark green, almost black. “That’s right, Bubi. In all honesty, I think children should be left to make up their own minds about what religions – if any – work for them.”
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Jack felt tears rising. He looked at the table blinking furiously. To no avail. Two large teardrops fell onto the tablecloth. If there were only some way – any way – he could speak to her again. He sat on the sofa, trying to compose himself. He thought back to that day again… In the evening, they had cuddled together on this very sofa and he had told her just how fearful he had been of losing her. How well he still remembered…
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She had hugged him tightly to her. Her red hair obscured his vision. He felt the warmth of her maternal embrace and at the same time, he felt the cool, unnaturally smooth feel of her green cheek and smelled the sweet, musty odour that hung around her now.
“Oh my darling boy, mommy’s not going to leave you.” His tears made the front of her blouse damp. She rocked him and stroked his hair. After a while she spoke. “Look at me, Bubi.”
He turned his gaze upwards and focused on her shiny, green face.
“See what I have done? See my face? I invented a way to slow cancer so that we can stay together. I have a new, green face. I call it ‘the Mask of Life.’ That’s why I will live to take care of you.”
“I love your green face.”
She grinned and they rubbed their noses together. The smooth tip of her long, green nose felt cold and slippery. She gave a soft sigh of contentment.
“I want to invent more new things,” she said, her blue eyes bright with tears of happiness. “I want to revolutionise fertility and give joy to other women – joy like you’ve given me.”
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As he sat on the same sofa twenty-three years later, Jack pondered this once again. Davinia had wanted to bring joy to other women. The same joy she had experienced by being his mother. Had she been saying that she wanted to give other women children just like him? His own biological children? The fruit of his own loins? And had that meant making him a father fifty thousand times over before he was eighteen? And a father of two hundred thousand now? He must search for the answers.
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At Maria’s house he was greeted cordially enough by Maria’s mother, Gabriela. However, he could tell she was uneasy. As she led him into the back room she kept shooting him furtive looks with her dark eyes. She was probably in her early forties, so she had been an adult when she had Maria… but he had been a child. It made him uncomfortable to think of it. How must it feel for her?
Maria leapt to her feet as they entered the living room and gazed at him, her hazel eyes (so like his own) wide. She was tall for a woman and pale like him, whereas her mother was small and brown. There could be no doubt that he was her biological father.
Gabriela’s eyes flickered uneasily from father to daughter. “You get to know each other now?” she suggested and then made a hasty exit.
“D-Dad?”
“Yes, I’m here,” said Jack and then hastily added something that sounded a bit more profound – “You’re the first of – of my children I’ve visited. I did not know until yesterday that I had fathered a lot of children.”
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“You wanted to see me first?”
“Yes, but can this be our secret? Kat and Kristen are second and third. I may have two hundred thousand sons and daughters…”
Maria ran up to hug him. He smelled the sweet smell of her shampoo.
“Of course it’s our secret. I’m number one!” She smiled at him. “Oh yeah, I want you to see another of my videos,” she said. She pointed at a basket lined with a blanket. Inside lay three tiny kittens, fast asleep. “I’m looking after baby kitties. I’ve told my viewers how much to feed them and how to wipe their butts to make them poop.”
She picked up a kitten and held it next to her perfect face. He reflected once more how Maria did look like him, although her nose was shaped somewhat like her mother’s. “You have to keep looking after them until they’re six weeks old or find someone who will. They can’t feed themselves ‘til then.”
Jack thought it cute that his daughter was so maternal. He thought of how Davinia was delighted each time she delivered a patient’s new-born baby. Had they all been his? Every single one? He remembered how she would grin widely and how her green face seemed to shine…
Kat and Kristen arrived soon after and he hugged them both, one after the other. How long would it take him to hug every one of his kids?
“Heyyy,” said Kat, grinning into his face as she hugged him.
“I knew you’d answer me, I just knew it,” said Kristen, her voice trembling a little.
“Of course,” he said soothingly. Her dark blue eyes shimmered with her tears. She really was a beautiful girl. He felt profound regret that he had not been part of her life as she grew up. Was it a comforting thought that at least he had a lot more children still in their mothers’ wombs? Maybe about ten thousand of them.
His three fine daughters stood to attention as he confided his fears in them. “After losing my mother a lawyer showed up at the funeral and sprang all this on me… I had no idea my sperm was used so much. I thought it would be used occasionally and even then, only when I turned eighteen. If it had, none of my kids would be grownup now. I’m trusting you three to keep this a secret until I can find out exactly what’s going on.”
Maria glanced at Kristen who nodded, her blue eyes bright. “You can rely on us, always.”
“I think we should start by looking for clues, Dad,” said Kat comfortably. “It’s like a real mystery to solve, you know?”
“I have a clue,” said Maria. “Another video…”
This video was on an old fashioned video tape. Maria shoved it in an ancient video player connected to an old TV and flicked through the channels.
“Wow, very twentieth century. Perhaps a museum would bid for this TV?” said Kat.
A picture swam into focus. It was of Maria’s birth. Jack had seen so many births already that none of it phased him, although Kristen and Kat looked on with wide eyes as Maria was born in a hot slippery rush. And Davinia was there as the obstetrician, to gather the screaming baby into her arms and talk soothingly to her.
“My precious baby, I love you so much. You are the first of many…” she cooed to the bawling Maria, her green face looking quite radiant with happiness. “There now…” she spoke soft words of endearment in German and then in Yiddish. Jack had come to understand both languages perfectly since she became his mother. She said that she loved Maria as much as she did her Bubi – what she always called Jack when he was little. She also cooed that she would have many more proud moments like this.
She looked really sad in the moment she had to hand the screaming bundle to Gabriela. “If only I never had to let her go…” Her dark green bottom lip quivered. “You have a truly perfect daughter, Gabriela. I made sure of it. That’s my gift to you. I know she’ll make you happy and you’ll never feel alone again… She – she’s just so like him. Like the donor I mean. New-borns look like their biological fathers… it’s nature’s way of telling us who they are.”
Seeing this footage of his mother being so emotional made Jack ache with a painful mixture of love and terrible sadness. At that moment, he wished more than anything that he could just run home and be in her arms and have her comfort him.
“Wow, the doc really loved you, Maria,” said Kat. “I mean, she could barely let you go.”
“It’s sweet,” said Kristen.
But Jack’s mind was racing. His mother had known Maria was his and she had been planning to repeat the moment of being the first to hold a new-born baby that he had fathered.
“Are you OK?” said Kristen, gazing at him.
“I – I think we should all go and look over another clue,” said Jack shakily. “But that was definitely a start.”
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The four of them went back to Jack’s house – now only Jack’s house.
“Woo! Nice place! Very fancy!” said Kat, grinning as she looked around. “Like being in a magazine.”
Jack switched on the HDR TV screen. He played some footage of an event Davinia had organised – a meetup for her patients to whom she had given children. There were different types she organised, depending on the age of the children. This event had been for the four year old children and their parents. It had taken place just last Summer in a field with a bouncy castle and ball pond set up.
Davinia was there, mingling happily with the crowd, her ruddy hair glinting and the sun shining off her green cheeks, her grin as broad as a watermelon. Did she know then that the cancer was about to kill her? If she was in pain, she had certainly never shown it.
“The kids all look like you, Jack,” said Maria, stroking her cheek pensively as Jack himself sometimes did.
“Yes, it’s remarkable,” said Kat. “Normally you could single Jack out in a crowd, but he does look like the kids, just like he looks spookily like you. And that’s even though you look mixed…”
Davinia had played happily with the children, at one point lying back in the ball pond while one of the climbed on her. She stood and lifted him in her arms, her long red hair dishevelled.
“That little boy really looks like you, Jack,” said Kristen. She was right. He looked exactly like Jack had done when he was little.
Davinia gazed at the little boy intently. “God, I love you so much I wish your parents would sell you to me,” she said, her voice trembling with emotion.
Exactly what she used to say to Jack before she adopted him…
“You wanna be my mom?” asked the little boy.
“You are my family already, little Bubi,” she assured him and kissed his forehead. “I’ll talk to them…”
The three girls oohed and awwwed. “It’s because he reminds her of you,” said Kristen, although Jack had worked that out for himself. He happened to know that Davinia had felt a powerful emotional need to help rear the little boy whose name was Chris. She had told him about it the next day. How well he remembered her words…
“I just miss the old days so much. When you were my little Bubi. Those days were so special.” She bit her dark green lip. “I really want to raise another little son.” Jack had reacted with bemusement at the time. Chris already had a mother and father who had not been agreeable to the idea of their son living with Davinia part of the year. She had kind of sprung the idea on them…
And Chris had had a father who was supposedly his biological father. Supposedly…
This topic had been bothering him. “That little boy was supposed to have been conceived with his father’s sperm, not with mine. Same goes for a lot of the children there. Think about that…”
Kat looked a little pale. “It’s a really weird form of cuckoldry then, isn’t it?”
Maria flicked a strand of her long dark hair away from her face. “It’s clear your mom wanted to spread your amazing genes and she wanted to raise one of your children. She got emotional around us, I can see that. It’s like – she wanted there to be more of us, no matter what.”
“The lawyer wants to blow the secret wide open in an embarrassing court case,” said Jack. “I’m afraid… For a start, what will those cuckolded fathers do?”
Kristen gave him a sharp look. “You are afraid of what they'll do?”
He nodded.