Chapter Fourteen

The grounds of the Pembrook Theater looked like a sea of colorful masts as picnic blankets in a wild array of colors adorned the grassy hillside. It was a lovely end-of-summer night with a perfect 72-ish temp and a gentle breeze coming off the lake. As was the custom, people had brought picnic dinners and many of them were incredibly elaborate. Sarah loved to sneak a peek at all the different foods as she strolled around trying to find the perfect spot to lay out her quilt.

If truth be told, Sarah had been having mixed feelings about this whole "un-date" with Brad. On the one hand, she was thrilled to be able to see her favorite singer, Josh Groban, in concert. This would be the fourth time she had been able to see him perform live and she had never left disappointed. However, on the other hand, she was going with Brad and she had tried very hard to keep their relationship congenial but not too congenial. Since his divorce, he had earned a bad reputation for being a bit of a playboy and, in the past, that type of man had tended to be her undoing. She liked the way they were comfortable in their skin and comfortable with her skin. Those types of men tended to know their way around  a female body. Unfortunately, they also tended to know lots of females...and that was KNOW in the biblical sense. After a while, that wandering eye always wandered elsewhere and left Sarah feeling used like yesterday's dishes. As soon as Brad moved in next door, it was if he had a flashing neon warning light tattooed on his forehead screaming "DANGER!" She liked him like cotton candy....a little is lovely but she knew that large doses could be lethal.

Brad had sent her ticket to her via a messenger this afternoon, telling her he had a deal that was closing but that he would find her on the lawn. Brad owned a high-end real estate firm and he was always either closing a deal or about to close a deal or hoping to close a deal. He offered to bring dinner but Sarah insisted that the food would be her contribution to the evening. She liked cooking savory dishes even though baking was her first love. Creating a menu for a picnic was always a bit of a challenge. After all, one had to be able to serve and eat food while sitting on the ground and balancing a plate on your lap. Being a tad clumsy herself, Sarah was extremely cognizant of the messiness factor when creating her menu.

First, she made broiled tuna steaks with a wasabi cream sauce. The tuna was actually best served at room temperature so it would be perfect for the picnic dinner. Then she made a rustic pasta salad filled with broccoli florets and red pepper strips and black olives and lightly dressed in a balsamic vinaigrette.
Last, but hardly least, she brought 4 different cup cakes which they could sample and share: Brad's current favorite, RhuBarbie and Fen (a rhubarb cupcake with a cream cheese frosting with a hint of fennel), her number one seller: Sarah's Sanity (an insane combination of peanut butter cake and a chocolate ganache icing), the Lemon-Lavender cupcakes that Brad had taste-tested a few weeks earlier and a surprise cupcake that she had been working on perfecting.

As soon as Sarah found a spot that suited her, she began to unload the picnic basket and organize their meal. Like clockwork, Brad appeared at the top of the hill nearest her as she finished laying out the last item. She waved to show him where she was located, and he quickly made his way around the other concert goers to take his place on the quilt next to her.

"How did you find me? There must be over 500 people here already!"

"I have a great nose. I just sniffed around for the best food."

"Funny. Am I blushing? Seriously, how did you find me so fast?"

"Sarah, you and I are in sync."

"The band?"

"Ha! No,  we're  on the same wavelength. We dance to the same beat. I am the Zip to your Zap, the Ying to your Yang...."

"The peanut butter to my jelly?"

"Exactly!"

Sarah laughed. "You are incredibly full of shit. Are there really women out there who fall for those lines?"

"You would be surprised how easy it is to woo a woman."

"Why is that?"

"I'm no Dr. Phil, but if you seriously want to know what I think, I'll tell you."

Sarah nodded and motioned her hand for him to continue.

"I think it has to do with the way society sends a message to women..starting when they're girls, that sets a standard for them that is almost impossible to reach. If a man understands this, he can get any woman he wants to spread her legs for him."

"Ugh. That's really classy, Brad."

"OK...I know it sounds awful but women are socialized to believe that they are fundamentally lacking. We sell them millions of products to take hair off and take weight off and add weight to other areas..."

"Like boobs and butts?"

"Exactly. Women are supposed to be built like part Twiggy and part Beyonce."

"Not exactly a realistic goal for most people."

"Right. So that is where the lover of women comes in."

"You mean that is where he takes advantage of the fragile egos?"

"The societally damaged egos."

"OK. Then what?"

"Then he consistently and persistently tries to undo all of the media's messages in her head. He tells her she is thin enough and endowed enough and her hair is straight enough or curly enough and her skin is clear enough or tan enough."

"So he tells her what she wants to hear in order to get in her pants."

"No, it isn't as sinister as all that. He isn't making things up. She is perfect. He's just telling the truth."

Sarah tried to buy herself some time by putting the food on the plates she brought and pouring them each a glass of the chilled Sauvignon Blanc. She was really hating Brad a few seconds ago. She could feel her heart beat racing as she prepared to call him out for his insanely antiquated chauvinist words. But then, somehow, it sort of turned around and ended up someplace....well... sweet. Clearly, her radar was on the fritz. She really couldn't tell the good guys from the bad guys anymore.

After tons of compliments on the dinner, Brad suggested that they take a little break before indulging in the cupcakes. The warm-up act had ended and Josh Groban was taking the stage. Sarah tried to find a comfortable position but no pose felt completely right.

"Allow me," Brad said gallantly as he crossed his legs and put a pillow Sarah had brought with the quilt into his lap. He gently guided her shoulders downward and she lay back resting her head on the pillow. It was a surprisingly comfortable pose.

"You have all the moves, my friend."

"They come in handy sometimes."

The moon shining overhead, Groban's sweet melodies caressing her ears, Sarah was feeling unbelievably content. It didn't hurt that Brad had also been gently massaging her shoulders. She felt loose and liquidy like one of her batters. She must have drifted off into a light sleep because she was having a dream that she and Brad were in bed...together. WHen she jolted awake, there was a loud bang as their jaws collided. Apparently, he was leaning down to give her a soft kiss on her forehead just as she awakened.

"Shit!" Brad screamed. "Why'd you do that?"

"Ow! What were you doing? I fell asleep. I must have jumped up when I was waking up.
Why were you hovering?"

Brad looked slightly sheepish. "OK. Not hovering. You just looked so peaceful. I don't know. Something made me want to kiss you."

At this point, Sarah was sitting up and they were facing each other. "Ok...this is certainly awkward," she thought. So, she did what she always did when life got weird, "Time for cupcakes!"

Chapter Thirteen

The news about Saul had not been good, but after she cradled him and sobbed for the better part of the day yesterday, Miriam resigned herself to the fact that her beloved cat would need to be put to sleep. The other realization she had to accept was that she was not ready to put the cloning in motion. While she was used to being a problem solver, she was also fairly realistic when it came to her rare failures. Besides, she had moved on to bigger things. The idea of pulling a Victor Frankenstein, and creating a man, tantalized her. She had even reached out to a few scientists around the country who were doing work with organ cloning. Dr. Tal Bimni in North Carolina had had amazing luck with cloning kidneys and Dr. Stephanie Vinter at Columbia had successfully cloned a human heart. Mary Shelley based her theories on Galvanism, and her fictional doctor gave new life to dead tissues through electrical impulses. It was all terribly crude of course, by today's standards. The amazing thing is that all of this was no longer the stuff of horror films or science fiction. It was all possible.

Miriam was wrapped up in the flow of  sketching out her plan when the house phone rang. She was tempted to ignore it thinking that anyone whom she actually wanted to speak to would try her on her cell phone. However, after the fifth ring, she grabbed the receiver.

"Yes," she said in a tone that was noticeably clipped.

"Hi. Is this Miriam?"

"Who is this?"

"Is this Miriam?"

"Who is calling?"

This ping-pong like silliness might have continued if the male caller had not put a stop to it.

"Miriam. I know that's you. I recognize your sexy voice. This is Henry. Henry Gordon."

Miriam's voice softened and warmed as if one suddenly wrapped a popsicle in a fur jacket.
"Oh, Henry. Ha...makes me think of that old candy bar. But we aren't old, are we?"

"Certainly not. In fact, that would be why I'm calling."

"To remind me that I'm still young?" And there was a coquettishness in Miriam's tone that hadn't been there since she actually was young.

"After seeing you at Jeff's place last week, I'm sure you don't need any reminder. Speaking of Jeff, he said I shouldn't call you."

"Really?" And Miriam could feel her defenses going up. Why the heck wouldn't Jeff want his father to call her? Didn't he like her? She'd always thought that he'd admired her when he was a young man.

"Nope, he said I should friend you on Facebook. When I told him I have a face and I have a book but I see no need to have a Facebook, he just shrugged and told me I should text you."

Miriam laughed.  "Perhaps you could have tweeted."

"Tweet, Schmeet. What are we? Birds?"

"Well, I completely disagree with Jeff about all this techno-babble.  And you can tell him that I said
 that calling was the perfect thing to do!"

"Believe me, I will! He's a smart cookie, but every once in a while I relish being able to tell him he's wrong."

"I know exactly what you mean!"

"I actually did have a reason for calling...other than proving my son wrong about contemporary communication skills."

"I'm all ears."

"That's funny. When I saw you, you seemed to have a few other body parts as well."

Geez! What was happening here? If she didn't know better, Miriam would have thought Henry was flirting with her! Could he be flirting? Would she even recognize flirting if it slapped her on the rear? It had been so very long.

"Look, I don't want to take too much more of your time, Mims, but I happen to have come into possession of two tickets for this Josh Groban kid at the Pembrook Outdoor Theater this weekend.
Jeff promised me its not that rap stuff. Swears we'll like it and it won't bust out our eardrums. What do you say?"

Miriam thought about it for a minute--because Miriam thought about everything before she did it...and then she said, "Sounds lovely."

So she had been mourning the loss of Saul, and then plotting the creation of a man, and then a man called and asked her out on a date. Life was full of surprises!

Chapter Twelve

Sarah's phone made a muffled DING sound to let her know that she had an email or text and she set down the Lemon-Lavender batter she was working on to pick it up. It was an email from Children Everywhere Inc. and the subject line read: Status change. Sarah was afraid to look. A few weeks ago, she had signed up to be notified of any news pertaining to Bao and Mulu Alem, but this was the first email she'd received.
"We are happy to share news of Mulu Alem. A couple in Toronto have just passed the preliminary stages of our investigation and are on their way to Ethiopia to meet the young boy they hope to include in their growing family. Another happy ending in the making for Children Everywhere!"

Sarah's stomach turned and she realized that she had that queazy feeling in her gut that always signaled a crying jag. "Shit" she thought, I am a crazy single lady loon who falls in love with a kid on the internet and imagines that I could be his mother. The only saving grace, she realized, was that she had not yet shared any of this news with Miriam. For the millionth time in her life, Sarah acknowledged that she had a serious and embarrassing medical condition called "Premature Sharing." She made a mental note to hold onto the private details of her life until they were no longer tenuous. Whether good news or bad, Sarah had a tendency to over-share and share too soon. She had discussed this often with Dr. Lingstrom, and Dr. L's theory was that it was a direct reaction to Miriam's policy of "Necessary Honesty." Since Sarah's mother shared only the information that she absolutely had to share, and even then she shared as few details as possible, Sarah had become a woman who had very few secrets.

In a few hours, Sarah would go to the computer and look at Mulu Alem's sweet face and bid him farewell and a safe journey towards his new life. She would send good thoughts out into the universe to      safeguard and protect the child who, she imagined, could have been her son. In the meantime, after a short break letting her tears fall into a cup of peppermint tea, she did what she always did to calm herself down, she resumed her baking.

Happily, discovering new combinations of ingredients for cupcakes had never lost its appeal for Sarah. She still often woke up having dreamt of a new combo in her sleep. Last night's dreams were filled with lavender fields and lemons. After an early morning trip to the local farmer's market, she began experimenting. After she got the first batch in the oven, the delicate scents of lavender and lemon permeated the air. When the doorbell rang, Sarah knew exactly who it was. Her next door neighbor always stopped by on his way to work in the morning on the days Sarah was road-testing new ingredients. He had a bloodhound's nose when it came to sweets.

"Hey Brad. As always, your nose has impeccable taste."

"Don't tell me. Definitely lemon. Lemon- Basil?"

"Close ....but no cigar. Lemon-Lavender. Aren't you late for work? Another hot date last night?"

"Nope. You'll be happy to hear that I've actually been up and productive for hours. Early conference call and I'm starving. Is it lunchtime yet?"

"This must be the part of the conversation where I invite you in to sample my wares."

"Said the spider to the fly."

Sarah laughed and motioned for Brad to sit down at the kitchen table. "You are so much more spidery than I am!"

"Spidery? Should we add that to the contemporary lexicon like sexting and bromance?"

"Speaking of bromances, how is that cute friend of yours, Steven, doing?"

"And once again you have wounded my fragile male ego. I stupidly introduce you to my perfect friend Steven and you become infatuated with him and I become the proverbial chopped liver."

"Funny. Your Jewish is showing. And, for the record, I am actually not infatuated with Steven. I tend to prefer my men more flawed, fragile egos and all."

And so the usual mildly flirtatious banter was off and running. Sarah forgot how much she missed this fun and frivolous distraction. Brad was not someone she would ever be attracted to romantically, but since she'd gotten to know him as her charmingly goofy and always hungry neighbor, he had grown on her. Nevertheless, she was always glad that she was his friend rather than his lover because he went through those incredibly quickly. In fact, she loved to tease him about his "playboy tendencies."

Brad had actually been married for about fifteen years to a woman named Lizette. Her real name was Elizabeth but she changed it to Lizette after college when she got a job as an intern at a famous fashion maagazine. That story always amused Sarah. She thought that information alone should have been a red flag for Brad, but men think with their eyes ( and other--lower- organs) and not their brains where romance is concerned. Sarah had never met Lizette but she'd seen photos of her and she was the kind of woman who made other women feel like they needed a diet and a makeover. Preferably yesterday. Sarah loved to tease Brad that his taste in women showed  a serious lack of imagination. His usual retort was that at least he was playing the game unlike Sarah who sat watching it from the sidelines. There was too much truth in that to make it seem funny.

Sarah actually enjoyed Brad's company, but he was also an uncannily talented taste-tester. Without fail, if Brad gave a new recipe the thumbs up, it became a top seller at Sarah's Sweet Cakes. Even when the combination of flavors seemed too odd or sophisticated to appeal to the average cupcake eater, if Brad raved about it, it sold. He called her the "Cupcake Whisperer," and she returned the compliment by calling him her "Taste Bud Buddy."

"I'm betting that these overtake Cinnamon Extreme Cream as your number three top seller."

"Seriously? That would surprise me but you are never wrong."

"Could I get that in writing?"

"Let me be more specific. You are never wrong about cupcakes!"

"Someday, you will learn to appreciate me for more than my taste buds. In the meantime, I will just feel tawdry and used."

"Get out of here so we can both get something done today!"

"Ok Miss Subtlety, I'm out of here." Brad was almost out the door when he paused and turned around.
"Are you still a Josh Groban fan?"

"Do you really need to ask. His cds play so much at the shop that customers  ask me if I own any other music!"

"Look, this is not a date, but someone at work gave me two tickets to his concert next week and I cannot honestly think of anyone who would enjoy it more than you."

Sarah ran up and gave Brad a giant hug.

"And I take it thats a yes?"

"Yes! Yes, yes yes! Is it at the Pembrook Outdoor Theater?"

"I think it is."

"Great! Then I'll be in charge of a picnic dinner."

"Perfect. Can we have lemon-lavender cupcakes for dessert?"

"Your wish is my command."

"Be careful. Be very careful. I watched way too many reruns of  'I Dream of Jeannie.' "

Sarah smiled and pushed him out the door. "Life is strange," she thought. "I woke up dreaming of lavender and lemon, got an email that ended my wishful thoughts of a little boy in Ethiopia and ended up with a not-a-date with Brad to see dreamy Josh Groban. Life is a dream!"

Chapter Eleven

"Damn it all to pieces!!!!" Miriam paced back and forth across her living room wearing a deep tread in the already well-worn carpet. She was awaiting another call from Dr. Lin with results on Saul's biopsy. Though she was not terribly self-aware, Miriam had learned that she was one of those people who was a wide angle worrier. Some people get bad news and they obsess about that particular event or situation. They look at it from each direction and dissect it as if trying to deconstruct it to its cellular level. Miriam, on the other hand, took the thing she was worried about and then broadened her gaze, as if she were looking at her world through a wide angle lens. Suddenly, everything was fair game; Saul's illness made her think of her own health and that lead to a whole host of other concerns that bothered her. Because she was a problem solver rather than a problem dweller, she kept track of each and every concern, from the life-threatening to the trivial, in order to eventually combat or resolve it. This is the way her current list looked:

1. Waiting for results of Saul's biopsy.
2. Made her think of her own health concerns...a colonoscopy that needed to be scheduled. A mammogram due soon. A new arthritis pill that made her stomach hurt. An odd sensation in her left elbow.....
3. This made her think about being alone as she aged....
4. Which lead to her obsession about dying alone and being found days later as a smelly rotting corpse. You would think that someone who had spent her career in the medical field would not be so squeamish about natural bodily decay, but it freaked Miriam out terribly.
5. Her dying alone made her think about loneliness which inevitably made her think of Sarah and how unlucky she had been in love. "I wish," she thought for the thousandth time," that I could find a good man for her myself"  Enough of this silly internet dating that felt risky and unrewarding. Surely, she should be capable of figuring out a better solution. Just then, her pacing lead her right into Saul who was curled up in his usual spot near the tassel-like fringes at the end of the rug. Today, Saul was much too tired to mess up the tassels. Today, he simply seemed content to keep an eye on them.
6. Seeing Saul brought Miriam's attention back to issue #1, the state of Saul's health. This made her think about her work in the lab and the cloning process that she had begun. She knew that it was a long-shot but she was amazed by the advances that had occurred in that area and confident (perhaps a bit over-confident) in her ability to replicate the work that had been done in other labs around the world.
7. Somehow, in Miriam's odd little mind, cloning Saul merged with the worries about Sarah into a radical and revolutionary question: "Why couldn't I make a man for Sarah?"

The idea took Miriam so completely by surprise that  her legs literally crumbled beneath her and she collapsed, next to a startled Saul, on the tasseled rug. It wasn't the worst idea she'd ever had, she thought. Of course it was risky and wild but most great moments in her life had begun that way. It was risky and wild for a woman to go to medical school when she had, and yet that had turned out well for her. Miriam tried to think of the kind of man she would construct for Sarah. Physical characteristics came into her mind first. He would need to be:
Handsome not pretty. And not so handsome that people would find him unsympathetic.
Tall. Not gigantic but at least 6'2".
He should have Semitic qualities but she would compromise on the nose. No need for a killer size schnoz on this guy.
Dark wavy hair, the kind that looked like you had good genes not like you were wearing a toupee.
Large hands because well Miriam believed the old adage about finger length matching other body parts in proportion and she was still of the school that believed that size mattered.
With the physical attributes out of the way, Miriam began to consider the character of this man. After all, he would be her son-in-law and she would want him to be gracious and respectful and loyal and solicitous  But she had no patience for sissies or sycophants and knew that any man she made would have one hell of a backbone.
Miriam had spent about forty minutes compiling a list of traits before the following question pushed its way into her consciousness: What would Sarah want?
First of all, Sarah would want Miriam to stay far away from her love life. That was a given. So Miriam moved beyond that, as she moved beyond most givens in her life. Sarah would want him to be smart, both book and street, and she would want him to be a foodie and a democrat and heterosexual..very, very heterosexual!
Miriam thought she would also want him to like dogs more than cats, books more than television, wine more than liquor, casual more than formal, beaches more than mountains, good works more than good thoughts, sex more than sleep.
For a moment an odd word popped into Miriam's brain, a word she had spent very little time thinking about during her entire life. The word was SOUL. As a scientist, she had spent her life focusing on things that could be seen, things that could be taken apart, things that could be explained. A soul was part of that other world, the world that Miriam felt less interested in. Or, maybe she just felt less comfortable with that world. She was a fixer of problems, a fixer of bodies, and four-letter words like LOVE and SOUL had remained mysteries to her.
 "Every damn thing is available on the internet these days," she thought with a grin on her face, "maybe I should try www. souls.com!"
The phone rang, jolting her out of her reverie, and Miriam braced herself to learn Saul's fate. While she was still enormously concerned for her beloved feline's welfare, her thoughts were only partially consumed with Saul. "Whatever happens," she thought, "I have a plan."