Part 5 – Mommy Confusion
"Megan's really nice," Nena said as Colby opened the door to their home. "What about her?"
"Nena, I said drop it," Colby grumbled.
"Or Amita!"
"Not Amita," Colby snapped.
"So who—"
"Nena," Colby said, for what felt like the twelfth time in the last five minutes, "Don't worry about the mommy yet, please?"
"What mommy?" Charlie asked, standing by the entry table with a handful of mail.
"Mommy?" Alan asked, coming in from the other side. "Whose mommy?"
Charlie's face lit up. "Cole, do you mean that you're okay, you want to?"
"Amita makes good babies, we know already," Nena said.
"Amita?" Charlie asked, his face turning confused.
"What's this about Ojas?" Alan asked.
"No, not Oh-jus," Nena said. "A different baby."
"A second baby?" Alan asked. "Amita's pregnant again already?"
"Wait!" Colby said loudly. The other three stared at him. He took a deep breath. "Nena, please go read your book for now. Alan, we'll talk to you in a minute. Charlie, could we talk in the family room, please?"
"Don't want to read my book," Nena whined. At Colby's face, she added quickly, "I'll go outside."
"I'll, uh, go into the kitchen," Alan said, his eyes bright with curiosity.
"Thank you," Colby said, as calmly as he could. He took Charlie's arm and steered him towards the couch.
"Cole?" Charlie asked cautiously. "You mean it?"
"Yeah, Charlie," Colby said with a smile. "I know I'm a day early, but I've been thinking hard about it and I mean it, I want us to have a baby."
"Yes!" Charlie said, throwing his arms around Colby.
"It's gonna be a lot of work, Charlie," Colby warned. "You have no idea. Hell, I have no idea."
"I know, I know," Charlie said, pulling back from his hug to show a huge grin. "I know, I just think … I just think it's right."
"Yeah," Colby said, feeling an answering grin on his face. "It feels right to me, too."
"But … Amita?" Charlie asked uneasily.
"No, no," Colby said quickly. "That's Nena, she's trying to figure out who the mommy is gonna be."
"Oh …" Charlie said. "She knows we need a mommy?"
"Well, she has a kind of interesting view of the process, involving play-dough and doctors, but yeah, she knows we need a mommy."
"Well," Charlie said, "That's really the next issue that …"
"What?" came a loud shout from the kitchen and out stormed Alan, Nena on his heels.
"Charlie got Amita pregnant?" Alan demanded. "What the Hell?"
"What?" Charlie gaped.
"I'm gonna strangle you!"
Charlie jumped up from the couch. "No, Dad, wait, no!"
Colby couldn't help it, he burst into laughter.
Alan glared at him and Colby laughed harder.
"I said Megan too!" Nena insisted.
"You got Megan pregnant, too?" Alan said with horror.
Charlie caught Colby's eye and began to laugh, too.
"What on God's Green Earth makes this a laughing matter?" Alan shouted.
Charlie and Colby fell on each other, laughing so hard tears were coming down their faces. Nena began to giggle and clap.
Finally, the absurdity of Nena's claims seemed to sink in to Alan and he smiled wryly. "Okay, alright, sorry for jumping to wild conclusions, but could somebody explain to me what's going on?"
Colby nodded and managed to gather himself together, wiping his cheeks. "Sorry, Alan, but you should have seen your face, and Charlie acting like a teenager in trouble."
Alan shrugged, his face now red with embarrassment.
Colby sobered up. Telling Alan was going to be a big step towards committing to this.
"Have a seat, everybody," Colby said.
Once everyone had taken a seat – Alan on the chair, Nena on the coffee table, Charlie and Colby on the couch – Colby took Charlie's hand.
"Do you want to explain, Charlie?" Colby asked.
"Go ahead?" Charlie pleaded.
Colby nodded, figuring as much. "So, Alan, Charlie and I would like to make you a grandfather again."
Alan's eyebrows shot up. "How?"
"Well, we haven't figured out all the details yet, but we're planning on using Charlie's …" Colby's eyes strayed to Nena. "Charlie's genetic material and a donor for the … female genetic material, possibly from the same place that Charlie donated his genetic material to. We're thinking surrogacy for the pregnancy."
Alan's eyes had grown wider as Colby talked and now his mouth was a big 'O'.
"Daddy," Nena said in frustration. "What are those words?"
"What it means," Colby said carefully, "Is that we're going to go to a special place where mommies who want to help people like us have saved pieces of their … pieces of their hearts. We'll go there and take Charlie's piece of his heart and this mommy's and put them in another mommy's tummy where they will make a baby and she'll protect it and take care of it until it's time for the doctor to take it out."
"Two mommies?" Nena blinked. "There's a mommy store?"
Colby hid a smile. "Sort of. But it's not about money, it's a place where mommy-less families, or families with sick mommies, can get a baby."
"Ohhh," Nena said thoughtfully.
"A surrogate?" Alan asked. "Don't they always end in custody cases?"
"I don't think so," Colby said. "But we've just began to talk about this. We haven't done the research and figured out the details, but … we want to do it. We want to have and raise an Eppes baby."
"Wow," Alan said, rubbing his face. "Wow."
"Yeah …" Colby agreed.
"What's next?"
Colby met Charlie's eyes and said, "Well, we need to get your agreement, since you live here."
"Are you kidding?" Alan asked. "You've got it. Then what?"
Colby smiled at Alan's eagerness. He'd probably forgotten how much work a newborn was. "Next is research, I guess."
Charlie said, "I need to phone that place – 'Repository for Genitive Diversity' I think it was called."
"And I want to talk to Don and Will, too," Colby said, squeezing Charlie's hand. "This is gonna be a family project, in the most literal sense possible."
Nena said, "And I wanna go to the mommy store!"