He chose a link at random and clicked. Beneath a picture of a beaming white man embracing an adorably chubby-cheeked toddler was text reading, “If you choose the private test option, a painless buccal swab （mouth swab） collection kit will be sent directly to you for sample collection in the privacy of your own home.”
Great, he thought, and imagined handing Gabe the kit—after dinner, maybe, while they were all together, him and Sarah and Dexter and Miles and Ruby and Gabe, watching a movie. Hey, Gabe, mind giving me a few epithelial cells? Oh, no special reason. Just curious.
Okay, then. He’d find an excuse to go to Gabe and Ruby’s place. He’d take Gabe’s toothbrush. Except how would he know which one was Gabe’s? Fine. He’d take both the toothbrushes. He’d take all the toothbrushes. He’d show up with replacement toothbrushes. An early wedding gift! He’d bring a bottle of champagne, and he’d ask them the last time they’d replaced their toothbrushes, and he’d give them the new ones and leave with the old ones. Maybe he could even give Ruby a blue toothbrush, for her something blue! Except, of course, Ruby would be suspicious. And Eli had never been good at lying to his daughter.
There was, of course, an obvious solution: Tell Sarah the truth. Tell Ruby the truth. But then Eli imagined his daughter, her face flushed with anger, mouth turned down, hair disordered and frizzy, because when she was anxious she’d take it out of its bun, then rewrap it, then take it out again, over and over. You cheated on Mom when she was pregnant with me? Then he pictured Sarah, the way she went pale when she was upset, the way her chin jutted out and her back got very straight. You have another child?
Maybe he could wait until Shabbat, keep track of the silverware that Gabe used, and send in his fork or his spoon. Would that work? Could the labs find the DNA in the midst of particles of roast chicken and gravy?
“Fuck!” he hissed. His office manager, who’d just come through the door, stared at him, her eyes very big behind her glasses. Eli made himself smile. “Lost at solitaire,” he said, and she’d nodded, still looking concerned.
The even more obvious solution was to just ask Gabe’s mother to tell him the truth. Did you and I have sex in New York City? Did you have a baby instead of an abortion? Am I Gabe’s father?
Except Gabe’s mother had turned herself into something like a ghost.
“No, my mom doesn’t do social media,” Gabe said when Eli asked, casually, if his mom had announced their engagement on her Facebook page. Eli had already looked on Instagram and LinkedIn and Twitter and couldn’t find her anywhere.
But Rosa had an email address. Everyone had an email address. She had a phone number, too, which Gabe was happy to provide when Sarah insisted that they FaceTime his mom and introduce themselves. Eli’s heart had almost stopped when Sarah proposed it. Then he realized maybe it was a good thing. Maybe he’d see Gabe’s mother onscreen and know, for sure, that she wasn’t the woman who’d called herself Jane. Or maybe she’d see him, and recognize him, and reach out on her own, and they’d figure out how to fix things together.
Eli made sure to be in front of the camera, completely visible during the call. He’d even tried to grow the goatee he’d worn back then, because Rosa would have remembered him with facial hair, except, with five days’ notice, he hadn’t been able to produce more than a sad, straggling mustache and a few wisps of beard. “Could you please shave?” Sarah had asked, the night of the phone call. “Please? You’ll have plenty of time to grow a beard before the wedding, but right now you look homeless.”
“You’re not supposed to say that,” Dexter called from his spot in the living room, where he and his brother were building a Lego Death Star.
“What’s that?” Eli asked.
“Homeless. We learned that in school. You’re not supposed to call people that. You’re supposed to say ‘housing insecure.’？”
“Got it,” said Sarah, leaving Eli thinking, not for the first time, how in the end, he’d probably have kids who could instruct him on the seventy reasons he should be driving an electric car but couldn’t find their own state on a map.
Eli had shaved. He spent the entire afternoon and evening before the call feeling like he was going to vomit, or scream, or scream and vomit at the same time. When the table was cleared and the FaceTime began, he braced himself for the sight of his old lover again, preparing for Rosa’s wide eyes, her look of recognition, the horrified expression on her face that would match the horrified way that he felt. But when the call finally happened, it was more bad news.