The Paternity Test: A Novel

Fifteen

167 fif­ teen Horse­ shoe crabs are among the old­ est spe­ cies on earth. Iron­ i­ cally, the very trait that led to their sur­ vi­ val—a ­ uniquely ­ adapted im­ mune ­ system—now threat­ ens their fur­ ther ex­ is­ tence. An ele­ ment in the ­ crabs’ blood ­ reacts to all con­ tam­ i­ nants, which makes the blood use­ ful as a test for phar­ ma­ ceu­ ti­ cals: if the blood ­ reacts, the batch of drugs is ­ tainted. To fill in­ dus­ trial needs for this nat­ u­ rally help­ ful sub­ stance, thou­ sands of crabs are gath­ ered every year. The crabs, after being bled, are ­ brought back to the sea, but many of them die in the pro­ cess. Many? Some? Find stats to sup­ port this. Some die in the pro­ cess, and this, along with ­ fishermen’s over­ use of crabs as bait, and so on and so forth. Clas­ sic case of nat­ u­ ral order being dis­ turbed by hu­ mans, and too: the thing that saves you also may doom you.­ E-mail Steve. Any con­ ceiv­ able ob­ jec­ tions? Isat on the deck, in sudsy morn­ ing bright­ ness, vig­ or­ ously scrawl­ ing on my note­ pad: every cell and syn­ apse tuned to work­ ing. Blue jays ­ pecked coyly at bird­ seed on the ­ feeder; squir­ rels leapt from tree to tree above— all God’s crea­ tures, doing what we ­ should. 168 The phone rang in­ side, and I ­ thought: Let Stu get it. Just be­ cause I­ worked from home—bare­ foot, in the sun—­ didn’t mean I ­ didn’t need to work; but Stu, at the cot­ tage, was sim­ ply, ­ freely home. (He’d ­ called in some chits again with Cyn­ thia, his sched­ uler, and ­ traded for today and to­ mor­ row off, to be on hand for ­ Debora’s ov­ u­ la­ tion.) Plus, the phone— Get it, al­ ready!—was al­ ways for Stu, ­ lately. His ­ mother would call, then Rina, then Wal­ ter, Rina again . . . all the Nad­ lers mo­ bi­ lized in cri­ sis. The ­ trouble’s ­ source was Rich­ ard: a ­ change of heart, a waf­ fling. Not about ­ whether to adopt, but from whom. Rina had as­ sumed they would find a Jew­ ish child, a child whose birth ­ mother was Jew­ ish. ­ Harder, of­ course. More ­ costly. But con­ ti­ nu­ ity was price­ less: the chain back to Abra­ ham, un­ broken. Rich­ ard had ­ agreed, at first; it ­ seemed a ­ no-brainer. “What else would we do?” he said. “Get some Chi­ nese baby? Sorry, folks, but ­ Ling-Ling Fein­ berg? ­ Doesn’t quite sound right.” But now ­ Richard’s rabbi—his ­ parents’ rabbi, ­ really—was warn­ ing they would make a big mis­ take. The logic was ob­ tuse to me, but Stu tried to help me under­ stand. Say a Jew­ ish woman got preg­ nant in adul­ tery, or even, God for­ bid, in in­ cest. Her baby, in of­fi­ cial Jew­ ish terms, was a bas­ tard, which meant it ­ wouldn’t be el­ i­ gible, ever, for Jew­ ish mar­ riage—and, for the Or­ tho­ dox, that was like a death. Okay, so: what did that mean for Jews who were adopt­ ing? A Jew­ ish birth ­ mother could in­ sist ­ things were ­ proper—her baby ­ really, ­ really ­ wasn’t a bas­ tard—but how was there a way to truly know? Safer to adopt a lit­ tle gen­ tile, then con­ vert him, in which case the dan­ ger would be ­ skirted, for con­ ver­ sion, if done prop­ erly, was fool­ proof. Fine, then, said Rina: “con­ vert” the Jew­ ish baby! Just in case, bet­ ter safe than sorry . . . But the rabbi ex­ plained that a Jew­ ish ­ mother’s stand­ ing at the birth was what clas­ sified her child; no mam­ zer, no bas­ tard born of some­ one who was Jew­ ish, could ever ­ change its ­ status as a bas­ tard. “Wait,” I said, when Stu con­ veyed this. “Let me get this ­ straight. Some­ thing that you know is fake is bet­ ter than a thing with an in­fin­ i­ tes­ i­ mal ­ chance of being fake?” 169 “Ac­ cord­ ing to the black hats, yeah. It’s driv­ ing my ­ father...