The Other F-Word Read online

  Religion: Open-minded.

  Milo must have read that piece of paper a thousand times. This man was his father. He was, according to the profile, six feet tall. He had hazel eyes. His hair, like Milo’s, was dark, thick, and curly. Did he have to get it cut every four weeks to avoid looking like a mushroom? Did he also have dark, thick eyebrows? What about body hair? These were the little things Milo wondered about. The big things—the TGFB1 gene, whether his father had been skinny, or nerdy, or a failure with girls, whether he ever wondered where his sperm went—stacked up in Milo’s brain like blocks, threatening to topple. There were so many questions.

  Suzanne and Frankie were an open book; they always had been. Everything they knew about Milo’s donor, they’d shared with Milo. Nothing was hidden. Nothing was shameful. If anything, his moms were proud of the choice they’d made. Every Father’s Day, they sent a card to the Twin Cities Cryolab and flowers to Dr. Caroll, the obstetrician who had performed Suzanne’s insemination. They showed up for Family Day at Milo’s elementary school with a poster board collage about sperm donation. They even included a photo of Hollis Darby-Barnes, Milo’s half sister. Hollis Darby-Barnes, whom—for reasons Milo wasn’t entirely sure of—he had just texted.

  The idea sprang out of nowhere. Not, in truth, because of his appointment with Dr. Daignault, but because Milo was mad at Frankie for telling him he couldn’t go to JJ Rabinowitz’s New Year’s Eve party. Frankie was a certified helicopter mom and JJ was a professional screw-up, who yesterday had left a baggie of pot in his open backpack right there on Milo’s bed where Frankie could find it.

  Frankie had tried to call JJ’s parents, but they were in Europe. So she flushed the pot down the toilet, which was tantamount to flushing Milo’s friendship with JJ down the toilet.

  “I’m sorry, kiddo,” Frankie told Milo after JJ left. “I’m just doing my job as a responsible mother.” She had tried to give Milo a hug, to show that she was on his side, but the damage was already done. There would be no New Year’s Eve party at JJ’s—or rather, there would be a New Year’s Eve party at JJ’s, but Milo would not be going.

  “Why are you punishing me for JJ’s weed?” he demanded.

  “I’m not punishing you,” Frankie said. “I’m protecting you. JJ doesn’t make good choices.”

  Frankie wasn’t wrong. How many times had JJ come to school baked this year? But that was beside the point.

  “You don’t trust me,” Milo said. “You don’t believe I can make my own decisions.”

  “I do trust you, but my job as a parent isn’t to be your friend. My job is to keep you safe.”

  Frankie really believed what she was spouting, but that didn’t make Milo any less mad. He wanted to say it—the one thing that he knew would hurt her: You’re not my real mother, and I don’t need to listen to you. If he were to be very honest with himself, sometimes he actually felt this way. Suzanne was his real mother. It was her egg. She grew him. Her vote should count for more. If Suzanne weren’t married to Frankie, she would let Milo go to JJ’s party. Heck, she would join him.

  Because of Frankie, Suzanne was stuck at home playing Scrabble on New Year’s Eve. Right now, Milo could hear her shouting from the kitchen. “‘Za’ is not a word!”

  “Yes, it is,” Frankie said calmly, “and it’s worth thirty-two points.”

  “You’re full of it!”

  “You’re welcome to challenge me.”

  “Milo!” Suzanne shouted.

  Milo heard his mother but didn’t answer. If he ignored her, maybe she would move on to the dictionary and leave him alone. He had enough to think about right now. Like how Hollis would respond to his text. Pls? I don’t want to do this alone. Did he sound pathetic? He sounded a little pathetic.

  “Milo!” Suzanne hollered.

  Milo sighed and slid his phone into his pocket.

  Suzanne was in a mood. She wanted to go dancing at the Cubbyhole, to “ring in the New Year right,” just as Milo wanted to “ring in the New Year right” at JJ’s party. Suzanne was ticked, Milo knew, not about the word za, but because she could be break-dancing on the bar right now. But no. Now that Frankie knew about JJ’s party, she suddenly wanted a “quiet night at home,” and Suzanne rarely said no to Frankie. When Frankie said go to bed earlier, Suzanne went to bed earlier. When Frankie said eat more kale, Suzanne ate more kale. Frankie wasn’t just Suzanne’s wife or Milo’s mom; she was their jailer.

  Even when you presented a logical argument, like the one Milo had presented yesterday—If you let me go to JJ’s party, I won’t drink beer. You know I won’t; I’m allergic to gluten—Frankie wouldn’t listen. She had been this way for as long as Milo could remember. Overprotective. Smothering. “A buzz kill,” as JJ would say.

  “You’ll thank me one day,” Frankie said.

  I’ll thank you one day? Ha! It was one of those times when Milo wished he had a brother or sister, it didn’t matter which, just someone to turn to and say, “Can you believe this crap?” He had said it to his English springer spaniel. “Can you believe this crap, Pete?” But Pete had just looked at Milo with his usual befuddled expression.

  That was when the idea came to him. That moment, right there.

  Milo had gone to Suzanne’s desk, and he had turned on her computer, and he had found the email address for Pamela Barnes. You may not remember me, but we met seven and a half years ago … He had typed the message, and he had sent it. As big life decisions went, this one hadn’t been particularly well thought-out, but Milo didn’t care. He just did it. He set the wheels in motion.

  Now, while Milo was on his way to the kitchen to tell Suzanne that za was short for pizza—and it was, in fact, a legal Scrabble word—he heard a ping. He grabbed his phone from the pocket of his jeans.

  I’m out. That’s what the text said.

  Milo didn’t know what he’d been expecting, really. I’m in? Or a bunch of thumbs-up emoticons? Hollis Darby-Barnes wasn’t exactly a known entity. They’d only met once, when Milo was in second grade. But still, this was their sperm donor they were talking about. Their father. Milo would be lying if he said he wasn’t disappointed. Because … come on. Wasn’t she even curious?

  “Milooo!” Suzanne hollered again.

  She would never shut up. Suzanne was like the lion at the Bronx Zoo, roaring and roaring from boredom. She couldn’t stand being penned in. She needed to be on the African plains with the other lions.

  This is bullshit, Milo thought. It’s New Year’s Eve.

  Forget his moms.

  Forget Hollis Darby-Barnes.

  He was going out.

  HOLLIS

  Her phone buzzed in the middle of the night. She glanced at the clock on her bedside table. 12:07. Only seven minutes into the New Year and they were already at it.

  Buzz, buzz.

  Hollis didn’t need to look at her phone. She knew who it was. There were these girls from school—not Shay and Gianna, who Hollis sat with at lunch and sometimes hung out with on weekends. These girls weren’t her friends, not even close. They were known to call in the middle of the night. Hollis usually powered down her cell before bed so she wouldn’t have to deal. Whatever they had to say to her—Happy New Year, Slut! or Skank it up in ’16!—it would sound worse in the dark than it would in the daylight. Lately, Hollis had been erasing the voice mails without even listening. There would be plenty more where those came from. Texts. Tweets. Instagrams. The hits just kept on coming.

  Buzz, buzz.

  She’d let it go. It wasn’t like her mother could hear the phone vibrate. Leigh was downstairs, conked out on the couch in front of the fireplace, where she slept every New Year’s Eve so she could ring in the New Year with Pam and her stupid cat.

  Buzz, buzz, buzz.

  Jesus. Didn’t they have anything better to do tonight?

  Hollis grabbed her cell off the bedside table and, without even glancing at the screen, pressed it to her ear. “What do you want?” Slut. Skank. Ho. It would be o
ne of the three. They weren’t very original, these girls. Hollis would respect them a lot more if they called her something with pizzazz. Floozy. Trollop. Harlot. Strumpet. There were so many better—

  “Hollis?”

  A boy’s voice. Not Gunnar’s. A voice she couldn’t place.

  “Who is this?” she said.

  “What?” There was noise in the background. A lot of noise.

  “Who is this?” Hollis said again, louder.

  “Milo.”

  Hollis felt a jolt of—what? Surprise? Relief? She wasn’t sure. “Where are you?” she said.

  “Party. Big party. Hollis?”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “A little.”

  “Should you be drinking, with your medical condition?”

  “Probably not. But listen—”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I’ve been doing some research.”

  “Yeah?” She was thirsty. She could still taste moo shu shrimp on her tongue, remnants of the Lamest New Year’s Eve Ever.

  “Hollis?” Milo Robinson-Clark said. “We’re not the only ones.”

  That was the thing about Chinese food. It tasted good while you were eating it, but then, hours later—wait. “What?”

  “There’s this website,” Milo said. He sounded like he’d raised his voice, but the noise in the background still made it hard to pick out, so Hollis pressed the phone closer to her ear. “The Donor Progeny Project.”

  “What?” Hollis said. Not because she hadn’t heard him. She heard, but what was he telling her?

  “He has five kids. There are five of us.”

  MILO

  He woke up in his own bed, still wearing his clothes from last night. Fully functional except for his tongue, which felt like it was wearing a sweater. The vodka. He’d brought a bottle of vodka to the party as a peace offering, to make up for Frankie flushing JJ’s weed down the toilet. How much had he drunk … three shots? Four? The taste had been awful at first, like battery acid, but when the heat hit Milo’s chest, then his belly, suddenly it was like his whole body—every cell, every follicle—was filled with warmth, and he realized, standing on JJ’s coffee table, surrounded by dancing bodies, that this is why people drink.

  Someone was knocking on the door. Milo felt a moment of panic. He’d left the apartment after his moms were asleep, but when had he come home? How had he come home? His memory was hazy. Maybe Suzanne and Frankie had slept through it, but Milo was still in his clothes. This would raise suspicion. And if it didn’t, the missing bottle certainly would. He’d taken it from the cabinet above the refrigerator—a full liter of Grey Goose—and he hadn’t even thought about how he would replace it. He’d stolen Suzanne’s vodka.

  Pete, who had been asleep at the foot of the bed, now looked at Milo with woeful eyes. Pete knew.

  Milo had never stolen anything in his life. He’d never snuck out. He’d never drunk alcohol. JJ had. JJ was a master delinquent, but not Milo. How to explain? The fact was that until this week Milo had never been invited to a party. Okay, this wasn’t strictly true: he had been invited to parties when he was younger—birthday parties, the ones thrown by parents, where the whole class got invited and everyone went home with a balloon. But all that stopped in seventh grade. Groups formed. Sports teams. Kids Milo had hung out with in elementary school started drifting away with other kids. It didn’t happen overnight, but that’s how it seemed. One day he had friends and the next he was … well … the weird, skinny kid eating beets in the cafeteria when everyone else was eating pizza bagels.

  JJ was new this year—a transplant from the Buckley School. JJ was tall, good-looking, and loaded. The fact that he’d chosen Milo as a lab partner was as much a mystery to Milo as to anyone. But he had. And he’d invited Milo to his New Year’s Eve party—the first high-school party Milo had ever been invited to—and Milo wasn’t about to let something as trivial as an overprotective mother stop him from going to his first high-school party.

  “Milo?” Frankie’s voice. Door opening. Pete, lifting his furry head in anticipation. Treat? Walk?

  Crap, Milo thought. Crap, crap, crap.

  It wasn’t just Frankie walking into his room; it was Suzanne, too. Both his moms in their pajamas. Frankie in her brown fleece robe, Suzanne in some multicolored silk number, bare feet pointed out like she was about to teach a ballet class. Frankie pulled the swivel chair over from Milo’s desk and sat. Suzanne perched on the bed beside Pete, pelican legs folded beneath her.

  “Hello, Pete,” Suzanne said, giving his nose a pat. Then, “Hey, kiddo.”

  Milo nodded. He didn’t trust his voice.

  Frankie slid her hand into the pocket of her robe, and when she pulled it out, she was holding Milo’s phone.

  “You want to tell us what’s going on with you?” she said.

  Where to begin?

  The truth was, Milo hadn’t had a real conversation with either of his moms since before seventh grade. Not about anything that mattered. And he wasn’t about to start now. What good would it do? Suzanne and Frankie didn’t want to hear about him changing for gym in the bathroom stall to avoid comments about his chicken chest. They didn’t want to hear that he got a boner every time he saw Hayley Christenson walk down the hall. And anyway, did Milo want another “open dialogue” about puberty from his mothers? Did he want another “masturbation is healthy” proclamation at the dinner table? Hell no. What Milo needed was a man to talk to. Not Dr. Daignault. Not his moms’ gay friend Charles, who once took Milo out for ice cream in an attempt to jump-start—at Suzanne and Frankie’s request—a painfully awkward conversation about male anatomy. Milo needed a father. He felt guilty for thinking this, because even though they drove him crazy, he loved his moms and didn’t want them to think that they weren’t enough.

  Milo tried to shrug his shoulders under the blanket, without revealing his clothes. “Nothing’s going on with me.”

  “Let’s talk about these texts,” Frankie said, cupping Milo’s phone in her hand.

  Milo closed his eyes. This was the deal he’d made when they first bought him a phone: full parental access. They had his password. They had his consent to monitor all activity. He’d signed a contract.

  “Texts?” he said, playing for time. His stomach was flipping around like crazy. Had he done something stupid last night? Had he inadvertently forwarded a naked photo to the whole school? Or, worse, had someone at the party taken his phone and done something to mess with him? This was entirely possible.

  “The 612 number,” Frankie said.

  The 612 number? Milo opened his eyes. His mouth was so dry. He would kill for a glass of water.

  “Honey.” Suzanne squeezed Milo’s leg through the blanket. “Why didn’t you tell us you were in touch with Hollis Darby-Barnes?”

  Milo almost laughed. Here he was, afraid that his moms had found out about the party—the sneaking out, the vodka, some idiot thing he’d done with his phone while he was drunk—and all they were talking about was Hollis Darby-Barnes. They’d seen his text asking Hollis to help find their sperm donor, and her text back to him saying—wait a minute … a memory was forming in the back of Milo’s mind. JJ’s bedroom … JJ’s laptop … the Donor Progeny Project. Had he really gone onto that website last night and plugged in his information?

  To his mothers, Milo croaked, “He has five kids.”

  Frankie gave him a funny look. “Who does?”

  “My sperm donor.”

  Suzanne let go of his leg. “You started looking?”

  “Yeah,” Milo said. “I started looking.”

  * * *

  They’d talked about it, the three of them. Right after the appointment with Dr. Daignault they’d gone out to lunch at Taco Pacifico—one of the few restaurants in Brooklyn where Milo could eat safely—and discussed the possibility of finding his donor. Suzanne had been pretty cool about it, but Frankie was another story.

  “Instructive? He thinks it would be instructive to
ask this man we’ve never met to undergo genetic testing?”

  “Information gathering, Frankie,” Suzanne said calmly. “That’s all Dr. Daignault is suggesting.”

  “Opening a can of worms is what he’s suggesting.”

  “It’s a noninvasive procedure. It’s a Q-tip swab on the inside of the cheek.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Ma,” Milo said to Frankie. “Didn’t you hear what he said? There was a whole article written about this gene. My donor might carry the mutation.”

  “And?”

  “And that could explain why I’m allergic to everything.”

  “And?” Frankie persisted.

  “And … I don’t know … it might help me.”

  “How?”

  “What?” Milo said.

  “How would it help you to know that he carries this aberrant gene? If he actually does.”

  Milo didn’t have an answer for that. And even if he did, Frankie wasn’t in a listening place. Frankie was off and running.

  “Here’s what I don’t get … I’m unclear on how finding your sperm donor is actually going to benefit you. If I knew that it would … oh, honey, of course I would say let’s track this guy down. I would pin him to the floor and swab his mouth with a Q-tip myself. But it’s not like finding him is going to make an anti-allergy pill appear out of the blue.”

  “I know that,” Milo said.

  “It takes years to develop drugs.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re not going to find him and suddenly be able to eat a peanut butter sandwich.”

  Suzanne had stopped her right there. She said Frankie needed some air. She said Frankie needed a margarita. But later that night, when Milo was in bed, he could hear his moms arguing again.

  FRANKIE: He’s too young!

  SUZANNE: He’s not a little kid anymore, babe. It’s his decision.

  FRANKIE: It can be his decision when he’s eighteen.

  SUZANNE: It’s not about age, Frank. It’s about medical history. It’s his birthright to know where he came from.

  FRANKIE: Easy for you to say. You’re his biological mother.