Baby For The Bear

He waited for Samantha to answer, to say something. She didn’t. She only lay there giving him the kind of expression one makes when trying not to break out into a broad smile—or crack up entirely.

“What?” he blurted. “WHAT?”

On the edge of mirth, Samantha said, “That…is really human of you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Have you talked to your own father about being a father? If you haven’t, I think you should. Because what I just heard…that was my father.” She patted him on the chest while he stared at her, mildly dismayed. “That was my dad, the night of my parents’ thirtieth anniversary party, when he and Mom and everyone were all swapping stories about them and their marriage. The things you just said, those were all the same things my father said when Mom was expecting me. Well, not the part about the penthouse and the CEO salary, but the rest of it. My father said all those things. I think every man who’s going to be a father says those things. Or at least thinks them. A man expecting to be a father, I don’t care what species he is, I think all that stuff goes through his mind.” She rustled his chest hair, comfortingly. “It’s natural. You’ll be scared and nervous about it for a while. But when you get used to the idea, you’ll look forward to all the things you’ll do with your cub. My dad said it was like that for him when I was on the way.”

A little less worked up, Ken made a long, puffing exhale, as if breathing out his fears.

“The stuff I’ll do with my cub,” he repeated. “Helping him through his first change into a bear and back again. Having little father/son bear wrestling matches with him. Taking him camping and being bears with him out in the forest, and teaching him how to catch fish right out of a stream with his claws. Being a dad.” Now his whole manner changed. Where he was shocked, anxiety-ridden, overwhelmed with the responsibility of it all, now he was calmer, dreamier. Samantha watched years of good things unfold in Ken’s imagination.

“So a son is what you want?” Samantha asked.

Ken snapped back to reality and turned sincere. “Well…yeah. I mean, as a man, as a male, when I think about having a cub, I naturally think about it being a male. A boy.”

“What if it turns out I can’t help you with that?”

“Oh, Sammie, listen. Listen, Sammie, I’ll be grateful for whatever we have. If it’s a girl—hell, men say they want sons all the time, but if I had a daughter, the kid would have me wrapped around her little claw. Weren’t you and your dad like that?”

Rolling her eyes, Samantha said, “Well not so much his ‘claw’—but I was sort of ‘Daddy’s Princess,’ like a lot of girls are.”

“See? If we make a little girl cub, I’ll be fine with it. It’s the ‘father’ part that matters. I’d do basically the same stuff with a girl as I’d do with a boy. And I’ll love her, no differently than I would a boy.” He looked up at the ceiling. “Having a cub, though… I’ll have to do things to make the penthouse safe, or maybe buy an actual house somewhere. And maybe hire a nanny, a governess. So much to think about, and we’re only at the part of trying to make the little fuzzball.”

“Yeah…” Samantha whispered. And she shifted from resting against his chest to lying down beside him and joined him in staring at the ceiling.

“Sammie?” Ken said again.

“Yes, Ken.”

“There’s something else.”

“What?”

He turned his head to the side to look over at her, took her hand, and replied, “You.”

She looked over at him in return. “Me?”

“You. What about you? I’m doing it again, only thinking about what I’m going to want and what I’m going to need and how it all affects me. But what about you? Sammie, you’re doing the most special, important thing in the world for me. Have I told you how grateful I am for that? You’re going to go through all the things a pregnant woman goes through, including the delivery—for me. I can’t tell you what that means to me.”

Samantha squeezed his hand. “I know.”

“But maybe… Sammie, maybe we haven’t thought this all the way through. We decided against the in vitro. We decided it’d be better for us if we did it naturally. We’ve been loving trying to do it naturally. And you know I’m going to take care of you, all the way. But we haven’t thought about—or talked about—what comes next for you.”

“What comes next is we finish the arrangement, you take your cub…and we both get on with our lives.”

Her voice choked a bit as she said it, and Ken caught it. “You hear that? You hear what you just did? We’re just putting it out here now, but Sammie…this might have more of an effect on you than you think it will. You’re going to be carrying this cub, taking care of yourself to take care of it, dealing with the whole experience of being pregnant. And then, Sammie…you’re going to become a mother. Just like I’m going to become a father. This cub will be a part of both of us. It would have still been a part of us if we’d done it the other way, but doing it this way, we’re both going to feel that. And under the arrangement we have, you don’t have any obligation to the cub or me once you’ve given birth. But Sammie, be honest. Can you walk away and not have anything to do with the cub—or me—after all this?”

Now all the fears and anxieties that had plagued Ken only a moment ago came rushing in on Samantha like roaring waves of the ocean. Giving voice to them brought them thundering down and cascading on top of her. This whole thing had evolved in a particular way, first from an almost impersonal exchange; a transaction of cash, eggs, and sperm, and a deposit into her by a medical procedure. Then it became something much more intimate, more personal, with the doctor eliminated as the “middleman,” so to speak, and the whole thing carried out by them alone, by the meeting of their bodies. And what a beautiful meeting it was; the greatest pleasure, joy, and satisfaction of Samantha’s life. Up to this moment she had thought of it all only in terms of the rewards: physical, s*xual, monetary. It had been a way of ensuring a good life for herself. But now the reality of the other life that was involved, and what that life would mean to her and to Ken, was flooding her heart even as Ken’s seed flooded her womanhood each time he came into her. With a sharp inhale, she put a hand to her mouth and rolled to one side, away from him.

Seeing Samantha lying next to him and turning away in sudden pain drove a spike of pain through Ken’s own heart. He reached for her, put a hand on her shoulder, and snuggled closer to her. Fearing the question, but needing to ask it all the same, he did. “Sammie…do you really think you can do this?”

“What choice do I have?” she said, with her back to him and the pain ringing in her voice. “We made the agreement.”

“Agreements can be unmade.”

Now she did turn back to him, and her eyes were wet. “And what happens to me then?”

“We can make another agreement, another arrangement.”

Bitterly, she asked, “You mean like a severance? A severance for an employee? Or…or what, like a ‘kill fee’ for someone working freelance?”

“We wouldn’t have to be that cold about it.”

“But that’s what it would be, wouldn’t it?” She sounded so stung. Ken hated to hear her this way. “A lump sum payment, and then we go our separate ways, right?”