He Can Do Her No Wrong

At one point, Shelly even gave him a power point presentation showing endless charts and bar graphs illustrating fertility cycles down to the half hour. She even wrote events, reminders, and tasks into Hayden's calendar. She accepted no arguments or excuses. It didn't matter if it was the middle of the night or if Hayden was in an important business planning meeting, he was at her beck and call. On more than one occasion, she barged into a meeting room at his office and demanded that they 'go to lunch.'

"But, Honey, it's only 9:30 in the morning? I'm in an important meeting."

Shelly would glare and stare him down silently until he caved. He would make his apologies to the meeting attendees as he made his hasty exit from the room. He would hear snickers behind him because no one was fooled. No one, however, his bosses included, dared say a word. They all were more afraid of the predatory Shelly than Hayden was.

Hayden wasn't complaining, mind you. Shelly never tired of nor made the act of intercourse seem like an obligation or a duty to her. She was singularly focused, but every individual encounter designed to create a life was as filled with as much passion and love as their first time together. When he complimented her on her commitment, or was it begging for mercy, he was never really sure. Shelly would simply reply. "Our baby will be born from love, not an act of physical sex." And so, it went on.

Shelly refused to admit defeat, but as time wore on, she conceded that they needed to go get tested. She hated to do it because she believed love would triumph over biology. As well as everything else!

Even when confronted with the facts, Shelly tried a hundred different homeopathic 'cures,' each of which she was sure would result in the conception of their love child. Hayden was certain that a few of the most horrible smelling and tasting of them would kill him. He wasn't confident it would have been a bad thing, had they. At least he would have gotten some sleep.

And the facts were, Hayden's swimmers were as barren as the Sahara Desert in the summertime.

When Shelly finally had to admit defeat, she was devastated. She wouldn't eat but gained weight. Shelly became lethargic to the point that her supervisor had to sit her down. Hayden became concerned for her health as she continued to get worse. Finally, her company placed her on extended medical leave.

For Hayden's part, he felt inadequate on so many levels. He at first thought his inability to father a child was the worst he would ever feel in his life. But that soon gave way to the feeling of helplessness and hopelessness concerning his ability to help Shelly through her depression. Oddly, Shelly never once blamed Hayden. She never questioned his 'manhood' or expressed disappointment towards him.

He confided his feelings about a lack of self-worth and apologized to Shelly for his failures. But he did so only once. Because when he did, she got angry and snapped at him. "Quit being weird. We'll be fine." She would hear no more of his foolishness.

But they weren't, and things got worse. Shelly was diagnosed clinically. There were various drug and therapy regimens for her, but she was lackadaisical in following them. Her doctors became so concerned they initiated conversations with Hayden about the possibility of institutionalization after Shelly quit her normal hygiene practices and started to make disturbing obliques references to harming herself.

Hayden never fully understood how Shelly could feel guilt over his being sterile, but somehow in her mind, she had failed. It was truly an odd dynamic.

Hayden felt he wasn't strong enough to make that decision, so he prolonged giving the doctors an answer. Finally, though, Shelly began to follow her doctors' directives and slowly began to return to near normal. It was near normal because to Hayden, it appeared as if the spark was gone from her. Shelly's normally bright eyes, which always had a shine in them, remained dull and lifeless.

She returned to work, and although productive, she wasn't the same dynamo that she had been previously. Her supervisor discussed it frequently with Shelly, always making sure to remind her that her work was still better than most of the staff, but she missed the old Shelly.

At first, Hayden tip-toed around her. He was worried that any minor misstep would send her back into the abyss. Finally, after several weeks of her being back at work, Hayden sensed that Shelly's fire was returning. The twinkle in her eyes started to come back. Maybe it was going to be okay after all.

One evening after a quiet meal at home, she gave him a coquettish smile and asked, "Why don't you make love to me anymore, Hayden? It's been so long. Don't you love me anymore?" She said with false anguish and lust in her eyes.

Hayden immediately leaped for her right across the dinner table. Their lips collided with such force Hayden was surprised that neither of them had lost any teeth! Surrounded by a few broken dishes and several articles of clothing with food stains on them because they had been removed too late, Hayden lay naked on his backside, gasping for breath. With only one earring left in place, Shelly sat astride him with her eyes tightly closed. Her face was a portrait of wantonness. She gently rocked her hips as she reached her third orgasm. She growled and collapsed on Hayden's chest.

"You know, Shell, we'd better get off this table. I'm not sure that we aren't exceeding the manufacturer's recommended weight limit. It would be embarrassing to have to explain our injuries to the paramedics."

She ignored his warning, raised herself by placing her hands on his chest, and earnestly began her search for orgasm number four. Hayden was going to protest, but Shelly ferociously grabbed a hand full of his chest hair in each of her clenched fists and went back to work. Hayden saw that her grip was beginning to draw blood, but he resigned himself to death, forever scarred, but satisfied. If only his life had been that simple.

A few weeks later, after Shelly had almost screwed Hayden to death, they sat quietly in their den after finishing dinner, Shelly finally spoke. "Honey, I want to talk with you about working on starting our family again."

Hayden felt the air whoosh out of his lungs like he had been hit by a two-by-four. He sank back into his chair, the nightmares of the previous months running swiftly through his brain. He felt himself getting dizzy. Sharp jabs of fear stabbed his heart. He couldn't go through this again. Not ever.

"Ahh, Shell..."

"Oh, relax, Hayden, I haven't gone insane." Shelly seemed to always know what was on Hayden's mind before he did. "I really do have a plan. There is someone I want you to meet. His name is Lewiston, and I've invited him to dinner on Friday so we can talk more about it then." She breezily strutted out of the den, leaving her stunned husband gasping for breath. Which Hayden had painfully learned, really wasn't all that unusual an occurrence in their relationship.

Hayden tried unsuccessfully to talk further with Shelly about it during the week. She would only respond that it would become clear when he met Lewiston.

That Friday night, the front doorbell sounded promptly at seven PM.

"Hayden, honey, please get the door," Shelly called to him from the kitchen. "I'm in the middle of finishing up the dinner. I'm sure it's Lewiston."

Hayden, ever the dutiful husband, did so. As soon as he opened the door, everything became clear to him. Staring back at him, and in just about the same degree of shock, stood his doppelganger. Well, maybe Lewiston didn't really qualify as a doppelganger. A look-alike was more accurate. He was ten to twelve years younger than Hayden. Two to three inches taller and quite a bit more fit than him. The hair color, skin tone, and eyes were a spot-on match. So, if this were Lewiston, he could definitely be mistaken for Hayden's younger brother, without question. If he wasn't Lewiston, then that would defy all logic and reason.

Hayden was too stunned to even confirm verbally that it was Lewiston, so he stood aside and motioned for the young man to enter the house. As he stepped inside, they both heard Shelly.

"Oh good, Lewis, I'm so glad you made it. Did you have any trouble finding our house?" she asked him breezily with a coy smile, as she dried her hands on the apron she was still wearing.

Lewis couldn't speak either, so he just shook his head, no. Hayden was studying Lewis' demeanor and it became clear that Lewis may have had a completely different expectation of what this dinner was all about. Hayden believed that Lewis was incredibly surprised to see Shelly's husband greeting him at the door. She had obviously used a pretense to get him here.

The dinner was uncomfortable for both men. Shelly, however, seemed oblivious to that fact and chattered on, controlling, and directing the conversation. She kept it light and focused mostly on work-related aspects of this meeting. It turned out that Lewis was fairly new to the area and had just started working at Eagle Graphics with Shelly as a creative content designer. Shelly simply said that she wanted Lewis to get more comfortable in the community as he was from across the country.

The awkward evening ended around nine-thirty, with no one having addressed the obvious elephant in the room. To Hayden, the whole evening bordered on the surreal.

After they said their goodbyes to Lewis, Hayden, still a bit confused and more than a little concerned about what had just transpired. He naively assumed that Shell simply wanted to have an in vitro procedure with Lewis' sperm to conceive their child. But she hadn't mentioned that fact to Lewis. If there was one constant in their relationship, it was the fact that Hayden was always wrong when it came to Assuming that he ever knew or even had a basic understanding of what was inside Shelly's head.

Hayden closed the door behind Lewis. "Uh, Shelly, do you want to explain to me what this was really all about, or do I need to play Twenty Questions with you?"

"What do you think this was about, Honey?" Shelly had a knowing smirk on her face.

Hayden gave a deep sigh. Well, Twenty Questions it is then.

"What did Mr. Caldwell think was going to happen, when you invited him to dinner?"

Shelly was twirling a lock of her hair with her right hand impishly. "I might have misled him a bit, honey."

"Shelly, please tell me you aren't his supervisor?"

She continued to twirl her hair and blushed a little as she looked down at the floor.

Oh, dear god. Hayden thought of the implications and the possible ramifications of her tacit admission.

Hayden gave another deep sigh, more from exasperation than anything else.

"Let's cut to the chase, Shelly. You want to use him as a sperm donor to start our family. But he thought he was coming here tonight to have sex with you because you led him to believe that. Didn't you?"

"I did sweetheart, but I promise you, I didn't do anything wrong. I mean, other than a little flirting, anyway. I wanted to make sure he would show up."

She was embarrassed, but Hayden knew she wasn't lying to him.

Without missing a beat or giving Hayden too much time to think about it, she came at him from another angle. "So, what did you think, sweetie?"

Hayden was at least intuitive enough to recognize that since Shelly pretty much knew what he was thinking anyway, so playing dumb on the off chance he was wrong, wasn't really a viable option in this instance.

"Shelly, Honey, I don't think that even an in vitro procedure gets you off the hook with the whole sexual harassment issue at work. Life just isn't that simple anymore."

"I know that, Hayden. I will deal with that part of it. But our child isn't going to be born from a medical procedure. He will be born from an act of love. Shelly, with the smirk still firmly planted on her countenance, began counting off the seconds in her head. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three, one thousand...

Three and a half seconds is the time it took for her statement to register in Hayden's mind. He bolted from the room, desperately trying not to lose his dinner in the process.

Shelly followed him with her eyes as he slammed the bathroom door behind him. She exhaled and walked in the other direction shaking her head in amazement. Why do men have so much difficulty with understanding?

Hayden slept on the couch that night. For the first time since they married, they didn't sleep together. Shelly was miffed but not surprised. Hayden avoided her all the next morning by making sure his usual two hours of weekly lawn and garden maintenance took him four to complete.

"Hayden, are you planning to ignore me for the rest of our lives? Or are we going to sit down and talk about this like adults?" She was scolding him as if he were a child. "Besides, I think you may have misunderstood what I was saying to you last night."

"What part did I misunderstand, Shell? It was perfectly clear. You want me to go along with you making love to that kid...By the way, how old is he anyway?"

"He's twenty-one, Hayden. Give me a little credit, anyway." She crossed her arms and snorted in disgust. "And, you are wrong, I'm not going to make love to Lewis. I'm going to have sex with him. Then you and I are going to make love. It might be his sperm that fertilizes the egg, but it will be yours's that creates our child."

"What!" He sputtered. "Have you gone insane? Listen, Shelly, I know how much you want a family, but..."

"NO!" Shelly angrily interrupted. "How much...we want a family, Hayden!"

"Shell, I'm sorry, you are asking too much. I mean, even if you clean up first...I just can't do that Shelly...it's too..." He couldn't continue.

"Yes, you can, Hayden. And you will!" She closed the space between them and got right into Hayden's face. "We are going to have a family, period!"

They argued vehemently back and forth for several days. Hayden continued to draw a hard line in the sand with Shelly. She wouldn't give an inch either. At one point Hayden packed a bag and was headed out the door when Shelly stopped him in his tracks.

"Go ahead and run, you coward!" She turned and stormed off to the bedroom, slamming the door behind her. He could hear her sobbing hysterically. Hayden stayed. He didn't know if staying was an act of courage or cowardice, but he knew that he loved her too much to just walk away.

Shelly used the three most powerful tools a woman possessed to convince a man that her way was the right way. Food, sex, and tears. Lots of tasty food and even better sex. And sometimes, mixing sex and food together proved to be even more effective. She wasn't really certain that chocolate ice cream and syrup counted as food, but when she spread it all over her nude form while she was lying on the kitchen floor, then demanded that Hayden lick her clean, had served its purpose. He never stood a chance. Especially when she used her third secret weapon, tears. And she used those more than once a day.

Hayden made several futile attempts at setting rules and boundaries.

"I won't be in the room while you, I mean when, you and he..."

"Yes, you will. But he will leave before we make love."

"You have to clean up...I've read that..."

"No, I can't, and you know damn well why not. I don't care what you've read. We are not having this discussion again. When I tell you to take your pants off and get on the bed that is exactly what you are going to do!"

"I don't think, I, um, you know, could perform... I mean given the situation..."

"Then take a damn pill!"

"This cannot happen in our bedroom and on our bed! I'm drawing the line, Shell, I mean it!"

"It is absolutely going to happen on our bed. Our child will be conceived in our bed! If you are such a wimp, you can go buy us a new bedroom set after we're pregnant. But it's going to happen, so deal with it."

After losing each point of the argument, Hayden would leave the room and lock himself away in his office. It went on and on, but both knew that Hayden had already lost the battle. He was very familiar with the 'irresistible force paradox.' The problem Hayden had was that while Shelly may have indeed been an irresistible force, where she was concerned, his immeasurable love for her prevented him from being an 'immovable object.'

Was he a brow-beaten fool, or some Don Quixote-like character for Shelly? He had no answer for that either. He had no free will. He was a prisoner of his love, and he could do her no wrong.

On a Wednesday morning before leaving for work, Shelly casually mentioned to Hayden that Lewis would be joining them Saturday. That was it, then she walked out the door. Hayden was sure that Shelly specifically planned it this way. It would be so like her. From her perspective, they had talked it death. There was nothing more left to say.

Hayden remained frozen in place, too thunderstruck by her pronouncement for his mind to absorb its ramifications. It's one thing to talk about something, but the reality of it is entirely different. He managed to find his way to work without killing anyone. He told his assistant he was not to be disturbed. He spent the next eight hours wasting the company's money as he deliberated the various ramifications and practicalities of the 'fight or flight' conundrum he was mulling over.

Around four O'clock in the afternoon, Hayden gave up and decided to drag his sorry ass home because he wasn't getting anywhere, hiding behind his desk. At least he thought that would give him a couple of hours to ponder his problems before Shelly got home. When he pulled into his driveway, Shelly's car was already in the garage. Damn, how does she do that? She must have a camera in my office, or she has a telepathic thing going on.

Hayden knew he was going to get ambushed again, so he decided to go meet his fate. When he entered the house, he heard Shelly crying. Jesus, she doesn't fight fair. She was sitting at the breakfast table looking morose still wearing her work clothes with her Royce leather laptop bag at her feet. She looked up sheepishly at him.

"Hayden, baby, I-I-I've done something terrible."

Oh crap! You mean this nightmare is going to get worse? "What's wrong, Shell?" He didn't really want to ask, but he figured pretending she wasn't there and just walking upstairs wasn't a smart move at the present time. He collapsed into the chair next to her and held her hand. This caused another outburst of sobbing and wailing from Shelly.

When she'd calmed herself sufficiently, she offered quietly. "Hayden, I need to tell you the truth. I haven't been completely honest...I mean... I love you so much."

Ah shit! It is going to get worse.

"The thing with Lewis, well..."

Damn, she did cheat with him, fuck!

"No, honey, I didn't cheat, well at least not in the biblical sense, but I was going to. That was my original plan..."

That's it. It's a Vulcan Mind Meld thing. As soon as she touches me, she can read my thoughts?

"Hayden, you know how desperately we want a family...and as soon as I met Lewis, I had a thought that... well, I would just, you know...I mean if we kept to our schedule and I just, you know, slept with him behind your back, then, well, then everything would be fine.

"I just couldn't lie to you though. We are too perfect, and if someday you found out? That was too horrible to think about. Anyway, I asked him to come over and I was hoping that you would be on the same thought wave as me..."

"We were on the same thought wave, Shell. It's just that I don't agree with your plan..."

Shelly moved to sit on Hayden's lap. "You have to trust me, baby. I love you and only you. We can make this work, please, Hayden, don't fight me on this. I will make it perfect for us. I promise."