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While abortion continues to grab national Center Stage, those battling with infertility are forgotten, overlooked. In vitro fertilization ,or IVF, and other high tech reproductive modes are now collectively known as Assisted Reproductive Technologies , or ART. These techniques, also including GIFT, ZIFT, ICSI, and FET, --and most of the rest of the alphabet-- consume couples desperately seeking their own children. It is to these people, and those who support them, that Window of Opportunity is dedicated.
CAST
The setting is a large dining room, mostly empty, dark. A black cake, with most of its many candles burning, sits on a large dining table Down Center. Walls are only suggested by a hearth and fireplace that glows red, Stage Right. The Upstage wall is a long china hutch. Tall drapes hang over a window to suggest the Stage Left wall. With branches of rosemary, flowers and garlic in many vases spread about, the cake, streamers hanging from the ceiling, and balloons rising from one of the two chairs at the dinner table, there is somewhat of a romantic, festive look to the room. But the mood of the two people is the opposite.
An excerpt from Window of Opportunity by Roger Iverson Copyright © 2005
ZINNI OK, forget the money, Albert! Suppose we didn’t have to pay any money. Suppose, suppose we lived in a state that allowed insurance companies to pay for reproduction like they do for abortion. Just suppose. Would you use a donor egg then?
ALBERT What, if insurance paid for it?
ZINNI Yeah!
ALBERT Listen, Honey, I didn’t marry a donor wife. I married you. Because I loved you. And I don’t want to make a baby with anyone else!
ZINNI You don’t ‘make it’ with the donor. You never even see who she is! It’s just like when we did our IVF cycles. All you do is donate your sample.
ALBERT Whoa… Just a minute here, now… “Donate my sample?” You make it sound like you’re running some kind of non profit, charitable organization, here! (As if on the phone,) “Hello, United Way? Yes. I’d like to donate my sample, please! Well I’d prefer more often than once a month… One lump sum? My gosh, do people really do that? I don’t think I’ve got it in me, thank you anyway!”
ZINNI What do you want me to say: ‘give it all you’ve got?… Hold up your end of the bargain?’
ALBERT Well…
ZINNI ‘Take matters into your own hands?’
ALBERT Ah, no, thank you.
ZINNI ‘Show ‘em what you’re made of?’
ALBERT I get it, already!
ZINNI ‘Do what you do best?’
ALBERT No!
ZINNI ‘Have it your way!’
ALBERT Enough!
ZINNI Donating your sample is simple. All you do is go back up to the clinic…
ALBERT I know what the procedure is, Zinni. We tried it with your own eggs, for the IVF cycles, remember?
ZINNI That’s what I just said…
ALBERT For me, it means another trip back to that little magic room dominated by a black vinyl sofa. “Donating my sample” means fumbling through well dog-eared magazines that I normally wouldn’t even touch, frantically cursing myself for not being ambidextrous. It means trying to pace myself so that I neither take too long, arousing suspicion outside about what decrepit acts are going on in there, nor should I take an embarrassingly short time. It means not using any kind of lubricant for fear it may contaminate “my sample.” Then, when I’ve, “taken matters into my own hands,” it means I carry a little Chinese to-go carton down the hall where I delicately turn it over to a cute little brunette, with hazel eyes, who knows not to shake hands with me! Considering everything, even the small positive reinforcement that’s involved, “donating my sample” means an experience in humiliation.
ZINNI Well, don’t you have it rough. Meanwhile I was across the hall, laying on my back, knees in the air, while they sucked my lousy eggs out of me with an 18 inch needle! And that was only after you had given me hormone shots twice a day for three weeks! And the emotional roller coaster those put me on… Humiliating? Try dehumanizing! For some reason, Albert, I just can’t feel sorry for you taking a trip to Black Vinyl Sofa Land.
ALBERT I know… You got the worst of it…
ZINNI Well then, why? If I get the worst of it, why can’t you just go along and support me?
ALBERT I don’t know. It’s the money. That’s part of it, but…
ZINNI But what?
ALBERT Well I’m thinking that we’ve been trying for three years and, well it seems to me that it’s… You know, out of our hands…
ZINNI What do you mean, out of our hands? We’re on the verge of making a child!
ALBERT I mean God, Zinni. God! If God had meant for us to make a child by now…
ZINNI Don’t finish that sentence. Don’t you dare finish that…
ALBERT It’s part of it, though. It’s part of what I feel. You, of all people, should agree with me that God…
ZINNI Stop right there. That’s absurd! We don’t have wings but we flew to Hawaii anyway, didn’t we? You drive in your car every day to Seattle. Or is that wrong also?
ALBERT No. I just have to think there’s a plan, here. Something bigger than us…
ZINNI But we can be part of that plan. You just can’t pick and choose which technology comes from God. It all does or it all doesn’t. Who cares! Albert… God gave me a brain to conceive what my body cannot. That’s real. And it will not be any less of a miracle, a mysterious and beautiful miracle, if we have a baby using a donor egg.
ALBERT You asked me. It’s what I’ve been thinking.
ZINNI I’m trying to create a baby for us! To bring life into this family, into this house, and you stop me at every turn!
ALBERT That’s not true. I don’t stop you from your New Age medicine garbage.
ZINNI What New Age medicine?
ALBERT This new olfactory idea of yours.
ZINNI You mean Aroma Therapy? That’s not my idea. It’s European. Everyone’s talking about it on the news groups.
ALBERT Zinni, honey, I really don’t think inhaling rosemary and garlic all day long is going to help you ovulate a healthy egg.
ZINNI It helped a couple in San Diego. She had the same exact problem I do.
ALBERT How long did they use it?
ZINNI Eight months.
ALBERT Eight months! We’ve been using it for one week and already our home smells like a Chinese pharmacy!
ZINNI Well, all the better. With over a billion people, the Chinese certainly know how to make babies!
ALBERT Right… And with all this garlic around, we’re also safe from any lurking werewolves.
ZINNI I know it’s a straw. I’m grasping at straws. That’s all I have left if we don’t use a donor egg. Are you going to stop Aroma Therapy now, too?
ALBERT Honey, I don’t stop you from anything… I didn’t stop you from having two hundred and fifty dollar injections twice a day.
ZINNI That’s not fair, Albert. I got those for far less money over the Internet…
ALBERT And I don’t stop you from prowling the news groups on the Internet each night or from sending e-mail to people we’ve never even met about our personal sex life!
ZINNI Making connections with other women like me is very important. It’s a network, my only outlet! I need to communicate with someone.
ALBERT But you “communicate” the exact moment you last ovulated, how we set the alarm clock for 3:30 AM so we wouldn’t miss “our window of opportunity…” You “communicate” how many sperm I produce!… OK, OK, so I’m proud of how many sperm I produce. Two hundred and fifty million is nothing to sneeze at. But it’s just a hair personal, don’t you think?
ZINNI No one knows who we are! We’re just names on the Internet.
ALBERT I have this recurring nightmare where I’m in line at the Queen Ann Thriftway using my Amex to buy ice cream and the checkout lady runs my credit card through the computer to see if it’s good. We all stand around in line with nervous smiles. Then the computer makes this low drawn out whistle and flashes on it’s screen, “250 MILLION SPERM!” And the lady behind me says, “Oh, you must be Albert!”… Then everyone applauds.
ZINNI That’s ridiculous!
ALBERT There’s no sex in making a baby any more, Zinni. With us it’s become a regimented, quality controlled, product oriented business…
ZINNI We’ve got to stick to the schedule…
ALBERT Except in this business I get no relief!
ZINNI Most men would love to be in your position.
ALBERT My position?… My position has given me chronic back pain and robbed me of any ounce of moisture I have ever had. This is the mere carcass of a man you see before you…
ZINNI You’re going off the deep end, Albert…
ALBERT I feel like an empty hand lotion dispenser!
ZINNI Calm down…
ALBERT You don’t love me for my body… You just want my sperm!
ZINNI Calm down and eat your dinner… (To herself) …Sperm Boy.
(They continue to eat. As he eats, he grabs a couple of the cell phone brochures and reads them.)
ZINNI People are so insensitive.
ALBERT (Reading and eating.) What?
ZINNI Like Peggy last week.
ALBERT You saw Peggy?
ZINNI We went out to Red Robin for lunch. I told you. Remember, she showed up with her baby?
ALBERT What was she supposed to do with it, leave it at home?
ZINNI I asked her to leave it, but she brought it anyway. And she brought some friend of hers who I’ve never even met before and who, now get this… And who is eight months pregnant! Think of it, Albert! Eight months pregnant! Don’t you remember how mad I was?
ALBERT …No…
ZINNI I had to sit across from this hippo pretending to be interested and concerned about all her little pregnant problems. I was sick to my stomach! I couldn’t eat! So I left, came home early. You don’t remember?
ALBERT (Eating and reading, not looking up.) No. No, I don’t remember. People are so insensitive…
ZINNI She made me feel like the time I saw that fat woman slap her little boy across his eyes in Queen Anne Thrifty…
ALBERT People like that should go to Safeway.
ZINNI This stranger went on and on about how difficult it is to get out of bed late at night, how her husband has to wash her in the bath tub because she can’t reach any of her body parts. She had the nerve to tell me that she was sick and tired of being pregnant and that she wanted to just be done with the whole thing! I don’t know what kept me from reaching right across that table and slapping that undeserving, fat piece if…
ALBERT She’s just as deserving as you are, Zinni.
ZINNI She sat there and drank a Piña Colada, Albert! She went outside to have a smoke!
ALBERT Well, that doesn’t mean she’s undeserving of having a child.
ZINNI She’s polluting her fetus!
ALBERT Pregnant smokers have been giving birth to healthy babies for decades…
ZINNI Who’s side are you on, Albert? Because you can’t be rooting for her and pretend to be on my side!
ALBERT I’m not rooting for her. I just think that she…
ZINNI Well don’t think! Just agree!
ALBERT I agree. I agree! Whatever this is about, I agree.
ZINNI Real sincere, Albert… Listen: If you’re not for me, you’re against me!
ALBERT I’m for you.
ZINNI You don’t sound very committed.
ALBERT I’m as committed as you should be.
ZINNI What do you mean by that?
ALBERT Committed! You should be committed… To an institution! I mean listen, Honey… Your emotions are all up and down and sidewise. I can’t keep track of you!
ZINNI It’s the medication…
ALBERT And all we talk about anymore are your ovaries and my sperm… Your fallopian tubes and my sperm… Your hormone levels AND MY SPERM! These are not normal topics of dinner table conversation, Zinni. I don’t remember ever once hearing my mom and my dad talk about fallopian tubes and sperm at the dinner table!
ZINNI It’s the most important thing in my life.
ALBERT I know… I know it is. It is for me too. But, geez, we’re chasing away all of our friends, Zinni… Like Peggy. No one else wants to hear about our reproductive entanglements. But it is all, and I do mean all… It is all we ever talk about! I mean, geez… I’m even getting to the point where…
ZINNI What. What point!
ALBERT I just want to… I don’t know. I want to go on with the rest of my life… Well, I mean, you know, together… With you.
ZINNI …Well, I can’t say I blame you. I didn’t expect this, any of it. I’ve. It’s really changed things. I’ve been very… For the past 34 months I’ve taken hormones to make multiple eggs and thicken my lining. For 34 months I’ve prepared a place for life to begin inside me. But, life failed 34 times. For me, each… Every one of those months ended in death. But each time there was no one to share it with…
ALBERT Now Zin, I’ve always…
ZINNI No pastor to say words… No one to mourn with me. Even you said my actual miscarriage felt like a death to you. Well, I’ve been through 34 of those. So you’ll, you’ll just have to forgive me if the hormone shots and giddy expectations and unrelenting grief have me… They have me…
(ALBERT reaches towards ZINNI but she closes herself to him. He tries to eat. She drinks her glass empty. He refills her glass with wine.)
ALBERT Can you have alcohol?
ZINNI It’s not our window of opportunity.
ALBERT Good. This is a time you’re supposed to be happy, Zin. I don’t want you to be like this. Just… It’s your birthday, for crying out loud. Let’s… Let’s forget about that other stuff and celebrate. Let’s celebrate you, OK? (ZINNI nods her head. ALBERT serves more food to both plates and they eat.)
The play continues…
Pricing
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Copyright © 2006 Roger Iverson |
