Thursday morning, Gretchen took advantage of a lull in the action after lunch to ask a favor – Veronica, it seems, had been after her to become the first unmarried woman in history to bear ten live babies who survive to star in a cable television show. “What’s the word for that, anyway,” she asked, “I mean, what comes after ‘nonuplets?’”
“Commitment to an insane asylum, I should hope,” I grumbled. “Why does Veronica want you to do something totally asinine like that?”
“Veronica doesn’t see it that way, Mr. Collins,” Gretchen explained. “She’s presenting it as a media deal. According to her, I can get rich from book contracts, movie rights, a television series, talk show interviews, speaking fees, product endorsements and the general mindless adulation that everyone lavishes on people who breed like rabbits, dropping obscenely large litters of tiny humans. She says people think they’re irresistibly cute.”
“And, why,” I continued, “of all the people she could pitch this idea to, did she choose you?”
“Uh, well, since I’m your private secretary,” Gretchen speculated, “I guess she knew me and how to contact me and all…”
A pregnant pause, as it were, ensued. “Well, then, as they say at the delicatessen,” I prodded, “’And what else?’”
Gretchen blushed, which, with her a creamy white Pennsylvania Dutch complexion, is quite a spectacle. “Ah, she says that I’m young enough, healthy enough, and… have the right… anatomy for it.”
“So you do,” I observed, “with your long, sturdy legs and wide pelvis, like a good brood mare.”
Gretchen broke out laughing, of course – I wouldn’t have said something like that if I wasn’t sure she would. She did, after all, grow up on a farm. “Yeah,” she admitted, glancing down at her body – she’s built like a brick spring house, to be sure – “I’m not exactly a fashion model, but when I go out, if I don’t get hit on ten times, it’s a miracle.”
“Normal males are genetically programmed for your body type,” I explained. “It’s the one most men really prefer.”
Gretchen smiled shyly. “You think so?”
“Absolutely,” I affirmed. “And so I shouldn’t suppose you’d have any problem finding a young gentleman to have ten children with, if you wanted them. But what’s the attraction in having ten of them at once?”
“I don’t know,” Gretchen shrugged, “I’m not even sure I like kids all that much. But Veronica keeps on calling me, talking about how much money we can make.”
Alarm bells went off in my head. “’We?’”
“Yeah,” Gretchen replied, a bit uncertainly. “She’s talking about a fifteen percent commission.”
“For what?”
Gretchen paused briefly, recalling. “Um, stuff like putting me in touch with a fertility clinic, arranging for health insurance coverage, getting a winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics to act as the anonymous sperm donor…”
“Okay,” I interrupted. “I get the idea. Gretchen,” I implored, “you must not, under any circumstances, agree to this… this… mendacious scam! Veronica’s entire scheme reeks of pure, unbridled greed and absolute, unprincipled evil – particularly the part about using a winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics.” I pointed to my PC screen. “Do you see that?”
While I had been admonishing Gretchen about the folly of Veronica’s big idea, I had been searching the Web for a close up picture of what a multiple-birth mother’s post-Cesarean abdomen looks like. “There – that’s you after delivering ten babies in one sitting.”
“Oh, my God!” Gretchen shrieked. “Mr. Collins,” she said, still panting from the adrenaline released by viewing the horrific vision I had presented, “I guess if someone like you is so certain that something is bad, then I sure as hell won’t do it!”
“Excellent,” I proclaimed, probably betraying my sense of relief. “Now, please, take the rest of the day off and promise me you won’t answer any more of Veronica’s telephone calls, text messages or e-mails.”
Needless to say, I was rather anxious to speak with Veronica about this business, but, true to her usual habit of keeping extremely irregular hours, I didn’t get a chance to confront her in person about it until around three o’clock this afternoon, when she came down to the kitchen in her nightgown to prepare her breakfast.
“Gretchen tells me you’re looking to turn her into a celebrity and become her personal manager,” I began, presuming that putting it that way would throw her off guard.
“That’s right, Tom,” she chirped as she popped multi-grain organic bread slices into the toaster, “I hope you won’t mind me turning your private secretary into a millionaire.”
“At two hundred thousand dollars per child from age zero to eighteen,” I pointed out, “with ten kids, she’s going to need two million dollars just to break even.”
Veronica’s hand, poised above a frying pan, froze in position as an egg slid out and hit sizzling saffron and roasted shallot butter.
“And that’s not counting your fifteen percent commission, either,” I observed.
Realizing that breakfast would have to wait, Veronica snapped off the gas burner, shut down the toaster and sat in the breakfast nook with her coffee, staring out the window, waiting petulantly for me to confront her. I wasted no time doing so.
“I bet you’re the reason,” she complained, “that Gretchen hasn’t returned a phone call or replied to a message from me in the last two days.”
“You bet I am,” I proudly told her. “Don’t you have even the least scintilla of decency? Trying to talk that poor young thing into becoming a media sideshow freak – you should be ashamed of yourself!”
“She’d make a lot more money than you pay her,” Veronica shot back.
“Oh yeah?” I taunted, “Maybe she’d have a larger cash flow, but what makes you so sure that after she’s raised ten kids and paid you fifteen percent of her income, she’d have a single dime more than if she just kept working for me and married some guy with decent job?”
Veronica sipped her coffee and sighed that world-weary, knowing sigh of hers. “Oh, Tom, don’t you see? That’s the difference between us – the reason we could never have gone on together after college. You look at things and say ‘Why?’ I look at things and say ‘Why not?’ Don’t you know that the Chinese character for ‘Trouble’ is the same as the one for ‘Opportunity?’”
“What I know is,” I whispered, “that Sun Tzu said ‘War is a serious undertaking.’ And so,” I hissed at her, “is procreation. It’s not a God-damn business venture!”
“Tell that,” she snickered, “to the fertility clinic doctors. And the producers of ‘Jon & Kate Plus 8,’ or those people falling all over themselves to get contracts going with Nadya Suleman.”
“And which people,” I quietly demanded, “might those be?”
“Why, you know,” Veronica asserted with a sweeping wave of her hand, “the usual people – the tabloids, the talk shows, the baby product companies…”
“Not this time,” I dryly informed her.
Veronica stopped, peeved at having been interrupted during an active moment of personal fantasy. “What do you mean, ‘not this time?’”
“For once,” I chided, “your unerring sense of the Zeitgeist proved seriously off-center. The California Medical Board is investigating Suleman’s fertility doctor. People are sending her hate mail. The Internet is buzzing with criticism. Did you see her first TV interview, the one she did with Ann Curry yesterday on NBC?”
“No,” Veronica fretted, looking down into her coffee, “I missed it. I had a long night out on Thursday.”
“Well, I saw it, and it was a complete disaster. She came on, obviously expecting the world to lay itself at her feet, and instead, Curry kept hitting her with hardball ethical questions. And it’s not just the ethical issues, either,” I insisted, “the reporters are focusing on the costs, the children’s prognosis, the fact that she’s a single, unwed mother…”
“How could they possibly do that,” she argued back, “when ‘Juno’ was such a huge hit? What was the matter with Suleman, anyway? Didn’t she talk passion? Didn’t she talk dreams? Didn’t she talk destiny?”
“Yeah,” I granted, “she certainly did. But the public isn’t buying ‘passion,’ ‘destiny,’ and ‘dreams’ anymore.”
Veronica was incredulous. “Impossible,” she shouted as she slammed down her coffee cup in protest. “Pursuit of personal passion, irrational luck, undeserved fortunate destiny and dream-driven behavior are the motivating factors behind thousands of highly successful Hollywood motion pictures, mini-series and syndicated dramas! They’re totally central to the American public’s world view!”
“Maybe they were,” I allowed, “until the economy collapsed and millions of them lost their jobs while the rest of them lost every sense of security they had ever had. The public has tumbled down the side of Maslow’s pyramid, dear! They’re at the bottom now, dealing with the safety and physiological factors, like their grandparents did in 1930! And ‘If you have octuplets, they will come’ just ain’t gonna make it with people in that situation!”
Veronica’s face fell, contorting into a mask of utter disbelief – I might as well have announced that Martians had landed and made off with all the virgin girls. “What are you talking about, millions of people losing their jobs? When the hell did that happen?”
“Technically,” I responded, “it’s been going on since last October, at least, but it’s really taken off since New Years.”
“Okay,” Veronica conceded, as if for the sake of some theoretical argument, “say that has happened – a lot of people lost their jobs lately. So what? How does that affect their interest in multiple-birth mothers and their adorable clutches of cute, cuddly little babies?”
“First of all,” I remarked, “there has been a huge fire storm of negative comments about the cost.”
“The cost?” Veronica was incredulous. “Why should anybody care about that? Suleman’s health insurance paid for the whole thing!”
“A year ago,” I commented, “yeah, sure – you could have said that and people would probably have bought it. But not now. Today, as they lose their jobs and write COBRA checks to keep their family’s health care coverage, folks are much more aware of the fact that they are footing the bill for people like Ms. Suleman – and in her case, we’re talking well over three hundred thousand dollars, and still counting.”
“Three hundred thousand?” Veronica offered a ladylike snort of Hollywood elite derision. “Why would anybody be upset about three hundred thousand dollars? My ex-husband’s car cost more than that!”
“And I’m sure,” I needled, “that everybody whose ex-husband’s car cost more than three hundred thousand dollars will be likewise absolutely fascinated with Ms. Suleman’s litter of artificially produced bastards. But the rest of the population – not so much.”
Veronica sat back, crossing her arms defiantly. “Be that as it may, Tom, I’ll have you know that your own brother-in-law, Henry Palikowski, whose opinion is highly respected at Pabulex, was very enthusiastic about sponsoring Gretchen when I pitched the project to him; and Pabulex is the Mercedes Benz of baby products, Tom, the absolute pinnacle!”
I shook my head sadly. “It figures you’d go after Hank with your cockamamie proposal. Fortunately, for him, anyway, he married my sister Rose, and, what’s more, Hank couldn’t keep his mouth shut if his life depended on it.”
“Ha!” Veronica tossed her raven locks mockingly. “I bet I can get Pabulex to fund the entire enterprise!”
“Really,” I sneered, “you actually believe that? What about Ms. Suleman’s presentation, huh? That alone might be enough to kill the multiple-birth market for years.”
Veronica leaned forward, incensed. “Kill the market? What about her presentation?”
“Well,” I related, “Judith Regan – you remember her, of course, she’s O.J. Simpson’s literary agent – she says Suleman’s killing the market because Suleman ‘seems so selfish and irresponsible.’ And let’s face it, Veronica, if anybody knows a selfish and irresponsible personality when they see one, it’s got to be O.J. Simpson’s agent!”
“Incredible,” Veronica mused, sipping her coffee in the midst of a deep funk, “just amazing. How could anyone have anticipated that an unemployed woman on disability who already had six children wouldn’t play as a sympathetic character in an octuplet birth scenario?”
“I can’t say,” I reflected, “but word on the street is, she’s so unsympathetic, her accomplishment has sparked widespread calls for reform of the IVF industry. She’s already been called a ‘poster child regarding the need for more regulation.’ On top of that…”
Veronica’s cell phone belched out “Takin’ Care of Business.” She answered it. “Hi, Hank! Tom and I were just talking about you, Pabulex and how we can make Gretchen a star… what? You did? And what did Rose say? Oh, come on, Hank, your wife didn’t really say that about me, did she? Well, I’m sure she meant it in a good way… yes… of course… are you sure about that, Hank, because I can take this to Gerber/Nestle, Johnson and Johnson, Playtex, you name it… Look, [expletive], do you know who you’re talking to here? I can get meetings at Paramount, I can get meetings at Universal, I can get meetings at Warner Brothers and MGM! What do I care about your lousy baby products company? Yeah, well, I’m sorry too! Goodbye!”
Veronica slammed her cell phone on the table top vehemently, then put her head down and began to sob. “All that work, Tom… all the time I put into this! Babies are cute, Tom, multiple babies are big, big news… babies sell, damn it! How… how, Tom, could that [expletive] cow turn out to be so obviously self-centered, greedy, unempathetic and [expletive] repulsive?”
“I don’t know,” I confessed. “Maybe it’s because she was an only child.”