Amy Fusselman - The Pharmacists Mate and 8

McSWEENEYS

SAN FRANCISCO

Copyright 2013 Amy Fusselman

Cover design by Sunra Thompson.

All rights reserved, including right of reproduction in whole or part in any form.

The Pharmacists Mate was first published in the United States in 2001 by McSweeneys Books. 8 was first published in the United States in 2007 by Counterpoint Press.

McSweeneys and colophon are registered trademarks of McSweeneys, an independent publishing company with wildly fluctuating resources.

e-ISBN: 978-1-944211-13-4

www.mcsweeneys.net

Table of Contents

Contents

Dont have sex on a boat unless you want to get pregnant. Thats what my friend Mendis sailor ex-boyfriend used to tell her.

I want to get pregnant. Or maybe more accurately, I dont want to die without having had children.

I was a child once, with a dad. My dad is dead now. He died two weeks ago. I have never had anyone so close to me die. I am trying to pay attention to what it feels like.

I know its early, but I keep thinking hes still here. Well, not here, I know hes not here, but on his way here. On his way back here from somewhere. Coming here.

Of course, I dont think its my old dad in his old body coming here. Its my old dad, in a new form.

Thinking your dad might be coming in a new form is not so bad. Its like youre always excited, and getting ready, and listening for the door.

The big problem I have had in trying to get pregnant is that I dont ovulate. Thus, I dont get my period. I mean, I can go six months.

I dont know why this is. And after a million tests at the gyno, they dont seem to know why either. Everything looks okay.

My theory is that I am stopping myself from having my period. I am doing this with my brain. I dont know how I am doing it, but I am doing it. And I am doing it because as much as I want to get pregnant, I am also very afraid.

Before my dad was a dad, he was a guy on a boat in a war. This was World War II.

My dad had been studying pre-med at Virginia Military Institute. He had enlisted in the Army in 1944, but after a few months they discharged him because, my dad told me, They didnt know what they were doing with medical students. So my dad went back to school for a while, until my grandfather called him up from Ohio and said people at home were starting to talk, and they were saying my dad was studying premed just to get out of serving. My dad told me thats when he said the hell with it, and signed up for the Merchant Marine. This was in the fall of 1945. He was twenty-one.

My dad was the Purser-Pharmacists Mate on the Liberty Ship George E. Pickett. He kept a log from his first eight months at sea. He wrote a lot about his work.

Sample:

Chief Steward came to me today with a possible case of gonorrhea. Im going to wait until tomorrow to see how things turn out. Had him quit handling the food, at least.

Its funny to read things like that, because my dad never became a doctor. After the war, he went back to school and got his MBA.

Sometimes I think this problem with children is something that runs in my family. My brother, who lives in Houston and is ten years older than me, had a problem with children fifteen years ago. He was in Ohio visiting my parents (I was away at school), when all of a sudden the phone rang. It was his live-in girlfriend, telling him she had just had two babies, a boy and a girl. Twins.

My parents didnt even know she was pregnant. My brother flew back to Houston. The next thing my parents heard, they had given the infants up for adoption.

The whole thing was so shrouded in weirdness and secrecy that several years after it happened I called my brother just to make sure that it was true. Because all I knew was what I had heard from my parents.

And my brother said yes, it was true. He sounded pained. My brother and I are not very close. I didnt ask him more than that.

Another thing: my brother has a job selling high-tech sonar equipment to clients like the Navy, equipment they use to do things like search for John F. Kennedy Jr.s plane.

And another: I have always wondered if someday these kids might show up on our doorstep.

I am trying to get pregnant with Frank. Frank is my husband. He is 6'4". My dad was 5'7". Frank and my dad got along. Even though Franks full name is Frank, my dad always gave his name two extra syllables, and said it singsong, Frank-a-lin.

Frank and my dad were both born and raised in Youngstown, Ohio. When they got together they liked to talk about the town landmarks, Market Street and Mill Creek Park, places I didnt know because I grew up around Cleveland.

And it never came up in conversation, but long ago, even before I was born, my dad had made arrangements to be buried in the cemetery at the end of Franks street: Forest Lawn.

I want to talk to my dad, but my dad is dead now. I know we cant have a regular conversation so I am trying to stay open to alternatives. I am trying to figure out other ways we can communicate.

Right after my dads funeral, I came back to New York for a week of visits to the high-end fertility doctor. I had just started with the high-end fertility doctor, after nine months of getting nowhere with the low-end one.

I needed a week of visits to have my follicles monitored. I had just taken five days worth of clomiphene citrate, a drug that tricks your pituitary gland into producing extra FSH (follicle stimulating hormone) and LH (luteinizing hormone), two natural gonadotropins that encourage follicle growth.

A follicle-monitoring appointment at the high-end fertility doctor involves the following: getting there between 7 and 9 a.m., putting your name on a list, waiting until the nurse calls your name, going and getting your blood taken, returning to the waiting room with your arm bent around a cotton ball, waiting for the nurse to call your name again, and when she does, going to the examination room to lie on the table with your pants off so one of the ever-changing array of attractive resident physicians can stick the ultrasound probe in your vagina to measure how big the follicle is. You need a follicle to get to eighteen millimeters before they will give you the shot of hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) to make the follicle burst and release the egg.

After four mornings of this, a resident told me that one follicle, on my left side, had hit eighteen. So they gave me the shot, and then the next day I was inseminated.

And I was sure when it was over that I was pregnant, because unlike all the other times I had taken clompihene citrate, and been shot with hCG, and been inseminated, this time I was doing it with my dad being dead. And I was sure my dad would be trying to help me out.

But the morning I was supposed to take my pregnancy test, I got my period.

1/31/46: Eight days have now been spent in port at Pier 15 Hoboken, NJ. Ship still remains unassigned and unloaded. Vessel is of the Liberty type and called the George E. Pickett. It is manned and operated by the Waterman SS Co AT 0625. On 1/26 an adjoining vessel struck us and wrecked the No. 4 lifeboat davit. Hell of a racket. The crew is not a bad lot, but always clamoring for advances on their wages. The Old Man, A.C. Klop, a Hollander by birth, is as tight with money as they come. There are many bets being made among the crew as to our port of destination, but it still remains a secret.