Clark slowly replaced the phone, as apprehension twisted through his stomach.
“What’s wrong?” Lois asked.
“Mom says there is nothing to worry about, but she wants to see both of us tomorrow.”
“You’re worried?”
He tried to smile, but knew it wasn’t very convincing. “A little.”
Lois took him into her arms and held him. “If your mom says it’s nothing to worry about, maybe you should try to believe her – at least until tomorrow when we’ll know.”
Clark nodded.
Lois took his face in her hands and kissed him. “We can’t do anything about it tonight,” she said. “So why don’t you take me to bed?”
He smiled and pushed away his concerns. “Good idea,” he said, as he picked her up and carried her up the stairs.
Part 14
Martha Kent looked at the three faces around her table. Jonathan knew what was coming. His cheeks were already ruddier than normal. This would embarrass him, Martha knew that. The knowledge amused her and touched her in equal measure. He was a farmer, for goodness’ sake, and the son of the farmer. But he was also a gentleman and she loved him – both for his uneasiness and his willingness to push it aside.
Her gaze moved to Clark. He was eyeing his father with concern. Martha knew Clark wasn’t completely satisfied with her explanation for their sudden disappearance a week ago. The way he was looking at Jonathan now, Martha suspected her son was still concerned about his dad. Martha hid her wry smile. No, there was nothing wrong with Jonathan.
From there she moved to Lois. She also looked concerned; her eyes were on Clark. Of all of them, Martha was most apprehensive about the reaction of her daughter-in-law. Multiple times, Martha had tried to imagine herself in Lois’s position, but hadn’t been able to decide how she, Martha, would react and was still no closer to being able to prepare herself – and Jonathan – for what Lois might say.
The closeness between Lois and Clark was back. He barely seemed able to keep his eyes off her and she touched him at every possible opportunity. Their togetherness warmed Martha’s heart and gave her the impetus to do this.
She took a deep breath. Her eyes skipped around them again – from Jonathan – he gave her a little smile of support – to Clark who stared at her, his eyes anxious and to Lois who had taken Clark’s hand and was holding it tightly.
Martha needed to do this.
She needed to let them know that it wasn’t what they were thinking.
But the only way she would be able to convince them of what it wasn’t, was to tell them what it was.
And that was the awkward part.
She took another deep breath and they all turned to her expectantly. She looked at her son. “Clark, I’m sorry that we worried you,” she said. “But I can assure you that this is not about any health issues for either of us.”
His anxiety didn’t lessen. “Then what is it about?” he asked.
Martha had thought extensively about how best she should do this and still didn’t have a plan formed in her mind. She squarely faced Clark and Lois. “Your father knows what I am about to say,” she said. “But I want you both to know that this was my idea.”
“OK,” Clark said.
“I also want you to know that this isn’t easy. I want you to know that I ... we both ... have reservations about this. However you react, I want you to know that will be OK.”
“Mom,” Clark said tightly. “You’re worrying me.”
“There’s nothing to worry about,” Martha said. She could see Clark didn’t believe her. “I also want you to know that if you never speak of this again, we will understand. If you decide you want to pursue this, we will also understand.”
Jonathan put his big hand over hers. “Just say it, Martha,” he said in his quiet, steady voice.
Martha breathed deep again. “Clark, you came to me and told me you intended to offer Lois a divorce because you are unable to have children.”
Clark nodded, although Martha could see his discomfort at being reminded.
Lois must have seen it too. “We have worked through that misunderstanding, Martha,” she said. “It wasn’t Clark’s fault – there were some things we had both let slide.”
Martha nodded to Lois and then her attention turned back to Clark. “You told me to come up with a better solution than Lois leaving you,” she said.
“I’m not going to leave him,” Lois said firmly.
“I can see that, honey,” Martha said, with a smile for her daughter-in-law. She turned back to Clark. “But I thought about possible solutions and I remembered what you said about how difficult the usual methods had been for you ... so I ...” OK, she just had to say it. “I thought ... if you were to tell us when the time was right and then Superman could come to our back porch and collect a batch of donor sperm and take it back to Lois and ...”
Both Clark and Lois stared at her – eyes wide, jaws hanging. Then, in unison, their eyes swung to Jonathan.
He looked right back, not flinching although Martha didn’t need forty-two years of marriage to know he was supremely uncomfortable under their gaze. “We *did* go to the medical testing clinic in St Louis,” he said quietly. “I had ... all the tests ... and there is no medical reason why this wouldn’t work.”
“And if it did work,” Martha added hastily, “We would never think of the child as ours. It would always be yours – ours to enjoy as grandparents, but nothing more than that.”
“The father on the birth certificate would be Clark Kent,” Jonathan said. “And no one need ever know anything different.”
“It wouldn’t be the first secret the four of us have kept,” Martha said. She studied the faces of her son and his wife. It was obvious neither of them had the foggiest notion of what to say. She stood. “Jonathan and I are going to the barn. If you’re not here when we get back, we’ll understand. You have a lot to talk about.”
Lois and Clark nodded, both still dazed.
Jonathan stood and took her hand. Together they walked to the door. “It’s your decision,” Martha said. “Totally your decision.”
||_||
Lois sat, stunned, in the Kent kitchen.
Speech was not possible.
Complete thoughts were difficult enough. She’d start one and then jump to another before the first one had even found completion.
A child?
With Jonathan?
Her instinct was to recoil from that.
But why?
Why was using him as the donor any worse than an unknown man?
It was.
Jonathan was Martha’s husband. And she was Clark’s wife.
But, there would be no contact – they would be in different states, miles apart.
But *Jonathan*?
For Clark, this would make their child as close to him as possible. He couldn’t be any closer to Martha and Jonathan if they were his biological parents. For his child to carry Jonathan’s genes – surely that would mean a lot to Clark.
The child would be a ‘Kent’. In every way, the child would be a Kent.
Or would Clark find it unacceptable that his father could do the thing Clark couldn’t do?
What if she wanted this and Clark didn’t?
What if Clark wanted this and she didn’t?
His hold on her hand was almost tight enough to be painful. She squirmed a little and his grip loosened and he gave her an awkward half-smile. “Wh ... what do you think?” he said.
“I don’t know what to think,” she said. “Do you hate the idea? Or do you think it is something we could consider?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what I feel and even if I did, I’d be hesitant to say it in case you thought I had made up my mind already.”
“I think we can agree that this is not a decision we should make quickly.”
“No. Whatever we decide, we would need to be really sure.”
Lois put her hand on his arm. “Clark, I want you to promise me something.”
“I won’t pressure you into anything,” he said. “I promise I won’t do that.”
“That wasn’t what I was going to say,” she said. “I was going to ask that no matter how difficult this gets, we will be honest about our feelings.”
Clark nodded. “Although it’s difficult to be honest when I’m not even sure what I’m feeling.”
“It’s OK to say that,” Lois said. “And it’s also OK to change what you’re feeling. I’m not sure either of us could be decisive right now.”
“What was your first reaction?” Clark asked.
Lois raised her hands, but could find no words.
“Be honest,” Clark said softly.
“OK,” she agreed. “My first reaction was ... negative.”
“Because he’s my father?”
She nodded. “And because he’s a lot older than me and because he’s your mom’s husband.”
“That was my first reaction too.”
“It was?”
Clark nodded. “Then I thought about it and ...”
“And on some levels, it makes sense.”
“And it’s possible for you and Dad to be miles and miles apart and the ... the ... donation ... to get to you quickly.”
“Without any records.”
“So if the secret – the *other* secret - ever came out, we wouldn’t have someone we don’t know making the most of the notoriety of being the father of Superman’s kid.”
Their eyes met. Lois could see the hope in his eyes. But it was hope clouded by indecision. “We need to realise that even if we decided to go ahead, nothing is guaranteed,” she said.
“You would be devastated,” Clark said quietly. “If we tried and there was still no child, you would be hurt all over again.”
“We would still have each other,” Lois said. “And we’ve already established that having each other makes us two of the luckiest people on earth.”
Clark looked down. “We’re talking like we are willing to consider this,” he said.
“I think we would be silly to dismiss it without thought,” Lois said.
“What do you want to do now?” Clark asked. “Stay here? Talk to Mom and Dad? Do you have any questions you want to ask them?”
“No,” Lois said. “I want to fly.”
“Home?”
“No, just fly. Being up there always clears my mind.”
Clark took a piece of paper and scribbled a quick note – ‘Thanks for everything, love Lois and Clark.’
Then he took his wife into his arms and together they lifted high above the earth.
||_||
The next morning, Lois and Clark remained at their table long after they had finished eating their breakfast.
They both had a cup of coffee. They both sipped intermittently. They both stared long into the nothingness as the silence engulfed them.
The morning’s edition of the Daily Planet lay on the table between them. Neither had given it more than a cursory glance.
Clark looked up and met Lois’s eyes. He tried to read what was in her face, but could determine nothing beyond lingering shock. “What do you think?” he said.
She lifted her hands. “I still don’t know what to think. You?”
“My mind is all over the place,” he said. “Sometimes I think there is no way we could do it. I mean, in one sense the baby would be my brother or sister – my father’s child.”
Lois nodded. “Except biologically you have no ties to Jonathan, so the child wouldn’t be your sibling.”
Clark tried to gather his splattered thoughts. “There’s something ... I don’t know ... there just seems something morally not right about my wife having a child with my father.”
“But I wouldn’t be *with* him.”
Clark glanced up quickly. “You think we should do this?”
“I don’t know,” Lois said. “Like you, there seems something ... wrong ... about it, but when I try to grasp exactly what is wrong, I can’t pinpoint it.”
“Do you have any worries that my parents would cause problems? Would want to have more input into the child’s life than we would want?”
“No,” Lois said. “I believe them when they said it would be their grandchild, not Jonathan’s child.”
“Would it make you uncomfortable being with my dad? Later, I mean. If you were pregnant, would you find being with him, with both of you knowing it is his child you are carrying, would that make you uncomfortable?”
Lois thought for a long moment. “With anyone else, maybe. But your parents are very comfortable people to be around.”
“But you’ve never had my father’s child before.”
She took his hand. “Clark, if this is going to work, we have to think of it as your child. Our child. Yours and mine. We can’t, even in our minds, think of it as your dad’s child.”
Clark nodded.
“How do you feel?” she asked. “Does this feel different to when we considered using an unknown sperm donor? How do you feel about your wife having a child that isn’t biologically yours?”
He sighed. “Lois, I never really told you this because I have absolutely no right to feel this way, but I was never totally comfortable with you having a child that had come from you and another man.”
“I understand that.”
He was surprised. “You do?”
“I would hate it if ... in other circumstances ... your sperm was used to impregnate another woman. I would feel like she had accessed something personal. Something that was meant for me and me alone.”
Clark nodded his understanding. “We can’t do this, can we?”
“I don’t know.”
“There’s too much involved. There’s Dad. Is it fair on him? Whatever he says, will he feel a responsibility for the child – a responsibility that he is too old to take on properly? There’s Mom. It was her idea and she followed up on the idea to suggest it to Dad and then bring it to us. But is she really OK with her husband fathering a child with another woman? Is it just going to dredge up all the hurt because she couldn’t give him the child they both wanted?”
“They must have talked about this.”
“Probably all the way to St Louis and back.”
Again the silence fell.
The clock had moved more than five minutes when Lois spoke. “I have an idea,” she said.
Clark looked up, hope flooding him that she had found some illumination that could guide them through this quagmire. “What?”
“I think we should go into the Planet for a few hours,” Lois said. “I need to talk with Ian and Perry and catch up with the stories that will run into this week.”
“And I should get up to speed too,” Clark agreed. “Try to hunt down some possible leads for tomorrow.”
“Then I think we should take in a movie this afternoon. Something light ... a comedy, maybe.”
Clark stood and offered her his hand.
She stood and hugged him. “We’re in this ... whatever *this* is ... we’re in it together.”
Clark resisted the urge to sigh and produced a smile for her. “We’re together, honey,” he said. “And that is all I want.”
