Pam looked over at Christine and Marcus. “The stork is okay, right? I know this isn’t your baby shower, but I couldn’t resist.”

“Of course it’s okay,” Christine answered for them both.

Pam smiled, relieved. “Great!” She looked up at Marcus. “Marcus, so, do you want a boy or a girl?”

“I want a golfer,” Marcus shot back, and everybody laughed.

Lauren handed over the cake knife. “Christine, will you do the honors?”

“Grab your plates, kids!” Christine eyeballed the cake, then started cutting pieces.

“Isn’t somebody going to make a toast?” Melissa called out from the back of the crowd. “Marcus, how about you?”

“Sure, right, of course. Yes, I’ll propose the toast.” Marcus flashed a broad smile, his blue eyes shining, but Christine knew what he was really thinking.

“Go for it, honey!” she said, to encourage him. “They hear enough from me.”

Lauren snorted. “Ain’t that the truth.”

Everybody chuckled, holding their plates and looking at Marcus expectantly. They didn’t know him as well as the other husbands because he traveled so much, and Christine could tell they were curious about him from the interest in their expressions. Lauren used to joke that Christine had the Faculty Alpha Husband, since Marcus was an architectural engineer who owned his own firm in Hartford and probably made a better living than many of the faculty spouses, most of whom were also educators. The running joke was that it took two teachers’ salaries to make one living wage. But Lauren had stopped making her alpha-husband joke when it turned out that Marcus was completely infertile.

He’d been devastated by the diagnosis of azoospermia, which meant, literally, that he produced no sperm. It had come as a shock after they had been trying for a year and couldn’t get pregnant, so Christine’s OB-GYN referred her to Dr. Davidow, an RE, or reproductive endocrinologist. Christine had automatically assumed that she was the problem, since she was thirty-three years old and her periods had never been super regular, but tests revealed that she was perfectly healthy. Dr. Davidow had broken the news to them, choosing his words carefully, cautioning that male infertility was “a couple’s joint problem” and neither husband nor wife was “to blame.”

Marcus had taken the diagnosis as a blow to his ego, as well as his manhood, and it was a revelation for them both that a handsome, masculine college All-American could be completely infertile. Marcus attacked the problem with characteristic goal-mindedness; he ate enough kale to start a farm, since vitamin A was supposed to raise sperm counts, and he avoided tighty whiteys, bicycling, and hot tubs, the last not proving a problem since he thought they were disgusting. As a last resort, he even underwent the TESA procedure he’d dreaded, whereby Dr. Davidow had operated on his testicles in an attempt to find viable sperm, but it didn’t succeed.

I’m really shooting blanks? Marcus had said when it was all over, still in stunned disbelief.

They’d entered therapy with Michelle LeGrange, a psychologist employed by their fertility clinic Families First, and she had taught them that the key word was “acceptance.” Christine and Marcus had come to accept that they had a choice, either to adopt or to use a sperm donor. Christine would’ve gone with adoption so that Marcus wouldn’t have felt left out, which Michelle told them was common among infertile men, who didn’t make a “genetic contribution.” But Marcus knew that Christine wanted the experience of being pregnant, and he’d said in one session that he wanted a child to be “at least half-ours.” Michelle had suggested that wasn’t the best way to think about the decision, but there it was. After more therapy and tears, one night, they’d been sitting at the kitchen island, having take-out Chinese for dinner.

Marcus looked over, chopsticks poised. I made a decision. I think we should go with a donor.

You sure? Christine hid her emotions. It was what she wanted, too, but she didn’t want to pressure him.

Yes. We tried everything else. Marcus set down his chopsticks, moved his plate aside, and pulled his laptop toward him. Let’s find this kid a father.

Not a father, a donor.

Whatever. Let’s do it. Let’s make a baby.

So they’d gone on the websites of sperm banks, which had the profiles of their donors online, so you could search the physical characteristics of each donor before you chose, and in the beginning, Christine and Marcus felt uncomfortably like they were on Zappo’s, shopping for people. They wanted a donor who matched their blood type and phenotype, their physical traits, so the child would look like them. Marcus was an ash blonde with a squarish face, heavy cheekbones, and a strong jawline, and his parents were of Swedish ancestry. Christine was petite, five-three, with an oval face, fine cheekbones, a small, upturned nose, and long, straight, brown hair; her father was Irish-American and her mother Italian-American. Christine and Marcus both had blue eyes, his rounder in shape and hers more squinty but wide-set, and they both had decent teeth, never having worn braces.

Christine got used to the idea of shopping for a donor online, admittedly sooner than Marcus did, and she became obsessed with checking the bank websites, like Facebook for the infertile. She could “Like” and “Favorite” donors, and the banks refreshed their pages throughout the day—New Donors Daily!—although the tall blond donors were often Sorry, Temporarily Unavailable! Try Again Soon! Finally, Christine narrowed it down to three choices, the way she had when they’d bought their first house.

Donor 3319, Marcus had said, which was Christine’s first choice as well. Donor 3319 was on the Homestead Bank and had kept his name and identity anonymous, but he had nevertheless, like many of the donors, provided two photos of himself, one as a child and one as an adult. Donor 3319 had round blue eyes like Marcus’s, lemony-blond hair a shade darker than Marcus’s but more like her highlights, and a medium build, like a combination of them both. He reportedly had an outgoing and friendly personality, plus he had been accepted to medical school, which had been the clincher for Marcus. What had made the decision for Christine was that she’d loved the expression in his eyes, an intelligent and engaged aspect that showed interest in the world around him.

So they had phoned Dr. Davidow, who ordered Donor 3319’s sample, and when Christine was ovulating, she returned to Families First, where Dr. Davidow performed IUI, or intrauterine insemination, injecting the pipette of sperm inside her while she held hands with the nurse. Unfortunately, Marcus had been called back to a job site in Raleigh the night before and so was out of town when their child was conceived, but that was form over substance. He was back for the home pregnancy test, which they weren’t supposed to take but did anyway, its happy result confirmed later by the doctor. And in the end, Christine had gotten pregnant and Marcus was going to be a father, a fact he was still trying to wrap his mind around as he stood before the teachers in the lounge, about to make a toast.