The funeral.
Good God, the funeral. Jack did not know how he was going to get through this. Davinia Rothman, the lady who had been a mother to him for twenty-five years, was dead. Attending the wake was the most dismal time of his life, surrounded by a throng of Davinia’s relatives and business associates, many of whom he didn’t even know…
A lady with curly black hair and a long, aquiline face approached him. She introduced herself as Leah, Davinia’s cousin or something like that. He was barely even listening to her.
“It was always you. You were her favourite. That’s what she said.”
As if Jack needed Leah to tell him that…! Did she honestly suppose he did not already know? It was all he could do to force a smile in return.
Davinia’s photo hung on the wall above them, looking down at them imperiously… the face he had loved most of all. Her bright green face, framed with her long red hair. The light shining off her long, green nose. Her piercing blue eyes seemed to scan the scene below her.
Her green face had been the result of her experiments. She was an accomplished surgeon in the field of gynaecology and had always been determined to find a cure for breast cancer. It had become deadly serious for her when she became riddled with breast cancer herself. The experimental cure she found was in the form of the green mask made of synthetic cells. Once fused with her face, it had halted the spread of the cancer cells for years, but sadly not forever. If only he could have helped her discover a full cure… Still, her work had made her famous. He had always glowed with pride for her. Now he felt cold and empty. Lost without her. At the funeral, she was not there to oversee it, so he had been at the back while her blood relatives took all the front rows in the synagogue…
A strange man, perhaps some distant relative, approached him now, dressed all smartly in a black suit. He was asking Jack to come into a side room …
“Is this really the time?” said Leah sharply.
“I am a lawyer and legal matters cannot wait,” said the strange man unctuously.
Jack followed the lawyer numbly into a side room.
“You are Mr John Rothman, nee Lilywhite?” said the lawyer without preamble.
“Of course,” muttered Jack. Perhaps Leah was right. He did not need to be dealing with a lawyer’s nonsense right now.
“You are the sole inheritor of Miss Davinia Rothman, although her relatives contest it.”
“I’m sure they do.”
The lawyer shuffled through a sheaf of papers. “You are her adopted son and you never moved out… you were certainly not a genetic dead end.”
“What do you mean?” said Jack sharply.
“There have been ah… investigations into her clinic. You were employed there, I understand.”
“Yes, I was.”
“And you were a sperm donor there?”
That felt like an insulting personal question coming from this lawyer. “What business is that of yours?”
“It is my business… there has been investigations as I have said and it turns out that the only sperm used was your own. It has come to light that your sperm was used instead of sperm from anonymous donors or the patients’ husbands. Your sperm was all that was circulated for the hospital chain’s national supply. Your sperm was all that was exported to other countries! Your relationship with your adoptive mother was strange and creepy and she obviously had made strange plans around you… It could very well be that you have fathered two hundred thousand sons and daughters.” Jack was stunned. This made no sense… No, he couldn’t take it in, especially not today.
Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
The lawyer thrust a folder at him. “Thousands of your offspring have already reached the age of majority. They’re going to sue to know your identity. Us lawyers will have a field day. Keep in touch…” The lawyer laughed and strode off, leaving Jack reeling.
----------------------------------------
00O00
Back home in the house he had shared with Davinia, Jack lay back on the sofa, trying to calm himself and get his thoughts in order. He had first known Davinia when he was seven. She had been his mother’s gynaecologist. She always said she loved him as soon as she saw him and wished he was hers. How well he remembered that day… He was in the waiting room with his mother and Davinia strode in. She had had a pale, normal face then. The sunlight had glinted off her red hair that rippled and bounced as she turned to them. When she first saw him, she grinned from ear to ear and her blue eyes shone. She became a family friend as well as a physician at that point and she certainly adored him. She had joked that his parents should sell him to her.
When he was eight, tragedy had struck. His parents had been killed in a car accident and he was left alone… but not alone. Davinia had adopted him. He had become closer to her than he ever had been to his mother… When he was ten she had suffered from breast cancer and he had been terribly afraid. He had dreaded another bereavement – dreaded losing her as well. But then she had put on that green mask that became stuck on her face and halted the spread of the cancer. That had been all he wanted. Not to lose her. He could not bear to ever move out and leave her… but now at thirty-three he had lost her and was alone. She had finally succumbed. He thought of Davinia now as he closed his eyes. He thought of how she would have comforted him. She would have put her arms around him at this point or maybe rested his head in her lap as he looked up into her smooth and shiny bright green face. What would she have said?
“What’s eating you, Bubi?”
“What was that lawyer talking about? You using my sperm for two hundred thousand patients? That the anonymous donor program wasn’t real? You using my sperm instead of the women’s husbands?”
She stroked his cheek. “Don’t you trust me, Jack? When I have a plan, don’t you believe in me?”
“Of – of course I believe in you…”
She tapped her long green nose. “Then you know what I did was for the best. I want to make the world a better place. Talk to our beautiful babies.”
He woke up with a start. He had just dozed off, but in his dream, Davinia had seemed so real. Suddenly he felt a surge of anger. How could she leave him in this mess? He thought about the folder the lawyer had given him and opened it. Inside there was a pile of details of grown up children all wanting to contact him. In this file, they were all eighteen or nineteen. If they were his, then some were conceived when he was just twelve…
He thought back to when he first began puberty. He and Davinia had discussed it openly. She knew that the onset of puberty was different for different boys. He had been about twelve and three quarters when his puberty began. She had been firm that his sperm not be wasted. “Your little swimmers come from you, Bubi,” she had told him. “They each have your genetic code – your blueprint. Each one is potentially your child. None of them should be wasted.” So she insisted that each time he masturbated, he deposit the sperm into sealable cups as samples for her to study and later when he turned eighteen, to possibly use as anonymous donor sperm… she did not say she used his seed every single time!
He thought of Davinia. She had always called the children born from her fertility clinic “our beautiful babies” and kept baby pictures of them. She had a huge photo album and a wall covered with the pictures. He rushed over to look at the wall once again. Was it his imagination, or did all the babies have a striking resemblance to him? What was the theory? That new-borns look like their biological fathers at first so that the fathers will instinctively care for them?
The babies who had now grownup wanted to contact him. He opened the lawyers file and leafed through the papers. A couple of his children referred to their YouTube accounts. That was something he could check out immediately.
One girl, a certain Maria Flores Garcia, had made a video appealing to him directly. He was immediately struck by how she resembled him, with a pale, oval face, hazel eyes and thick, dark hair. She said that her mother was Mexican, but nothing else about her personal circumstances. It was clear she was a cat owner, because her cats kept poking their heads inquisitively into the video and mewing. “It would be lovely if you would contact us,” she said earnestly, tears shining in her eyes. “I’m sure none of us want money or anything… I just want to know you!”
His heart went out to her. He must contact her first. There were other YouTube accounts from his offspring. One of the profiles caught his eye – that of a young lady who used a photo of herself in fancy dress as her avatar. She had painted her face green, probably cosplaying Miss Martian or Gamora or a character with green skin, but he felt a pang at how this reminded him of Davinia and an urge to hug her tight to comfort himself.
He clicked on her video about the anonymous sperm donor who had sired her. Her name was Kat. She was an extremely beautiful young woman, with snapping brown eyes, pale, porcelain skin and long auburn hair tied back in a ponytail. She was a perky young lady. “I’m really excited that you might be watching this, Dad,” she said, grinning into the camera. “I’m thrilled to have so many brothers and sisters. Look at us! A whole army, desperate to meet you! I’ll love you forever if you let us know you.”
A number of his offspring had added their video replies. One in particular piqued his curiosity. A gorgeous young lady with long blond hair, named Kristen. Her appeal struck a chord. “I – I need to know you Dad. I know we all do… but in family photos I used to try and draw you in with crayon… Don’t you want to know me?” Her voice trembled and tears shone, bright as diamonds in her blue eyes. “Aren’t you glad to be my Dad?”
He gazed back at her, taking in her freckled nose and cheeks, her dark blue eyes, her glossy light red lips that quivered with her emotion. A desperate scheme formed in his mind. He could talk things over with these three daughters and swear them to secrecy until such time as he decided to officially reveal himself to all his children. He contacted Maria anonymously by private message and agreed to meet her at her house with some information while her mother and grandmother were there with her. She would invite Kristen and Kat to be there too. Maria responded very enthusiastically...
The moment of truth was coming!