Irina sat sobbing, her face buried in her hands. Sitting across the room I just stared at her, too stunned to feel the anger and grief I knew would be coming.
I was vaguely aware of tears on my cheeks, as I gazed past her out the window to the beautiful sight of the sun sliding down into the Pacific. It was a spectacular sunset that couldn't have meant any less to me at that moment.
She lifted her head and I saw her face again--that gorgeous, perfect face, the face of the woman I had known since we were children, and had loved so deeply for the past eight years. She was saying, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," in a choked voice, so that I could hardly hear her.
And all of a sudden I couldn't stand to be there--I literally couldn't bear it. I got to my feet and headed for the door, hearing her cry out behind me, "no, Tommy! Please don't go!"
The Porsche was still right in front of the house and I sped down the driveway to the canyon road, then tore down the road at a dangerous speed. I didn't know where I was heading--and then I remembered the cliff. Our favorite spot in Malibu, in all of California.
I was there in less than fifteen minutes. I parked the car and walked up the dirt path through the low brush until I reached the spot. I was on the edge of the American continent, maybe 250 feet up, looking out over a cliff that hung over the Pacific ocean.
Irina and I had joked, in one of our happy and loving moments, that this would be the perfect spot to commit suicide, with a picturesque jump to our deaths on the rocky shore below. We could laugh about it then, I thought--when we were both so contented that the very idea of suicide was an absurd joke. Now it didn't seem so funny.
I knew I wouldn't jump, though--I couldn't do that to the twins. If for no other reason than Earl and Lily, I knew that sooner or later I would get into the car, drive back up the hill, and face the nightmare that my life had just become.
I must have sat there for two hours or more, looking out at the Pacific as the sunset turned to dusk, then to darkness. How did I get here? How had Irina and I arrived at this point--this moment of such pain and despair?
****************
Nothing ever happens for just one reason--that's something I know. There are always a lot of factors that come together to lead to an important event, whether it's something wonderful or disastrous.
For nearly seven years Irina and I lived happily together in Madison. My work went well, and later on spectacularly well, as I'll tell you about in a minute. But even before then I was quickly making enough money for us to afford a small house south of the Arboretum, in a nice part of the city.
About a year after we lost our baby Irina started school again, majoring in accounting. It was difficult for her socially at first because of her face, just as it had been at Denison. But at least this time she had a husband to come home to. Academically she did brilliantly and finished in two years, graduating magna cum laude in May 2003.
She was looking at job offers from three good firms in Madison when one of life's big surprises fell into our lap. Irina had joined the congregation of the small Russian Orthodox Church in Madison, and had made a number of friends there. Her interest was not so much religious as cultural--before her mother's death Russian art and the Russian language had been part of her life, and she wanted to maintain a connection to it. I joined her occasionally, but for the most part she went to church on her own.
About a week after her graduation, Irina came home from Sunday morning services with a very strange look in her eye. She was somehow giddy and yet serious at the same time. She made us a beautiful lunch, then took my hand and led me into the bedroom for some lazy, mid-afternoon lovemaking.
And when we were done, lying relaxed in one another's arms, she finally let me know what was going on.
"Tommy, is it all right if we talk about something serious?"
"Of course," I said.
It turned out that the seventeen year-old daughter of Irina's friends the Lementovs, from the church, was pregnant with twins. Tatiana was a smart girl who had taken a couple of college courses at the University and been seduced by her (married) history professor. Terrified of what her parents would do, she hadn't told them about the pregnancy until the fourth month--and now it was far too late to consider an abortion.
"They're planning for her to give the children up for adoption, and--well, Tommy, do you think we could possibly consider taking them?"
Irina looked up at me, hopeful and worried. We had talked a little about adoption, in those grief-filled days after Walter's death, and agreed that it was something we might think about "sometime in the future". But now, nearly three years later, I realized we'd never returned to the subject.
How did I feel about it? I felt excited, judging by how fast my heart was beating. I loved Irina and our life together--but the prospect of children and a real family seemed marvelous to me.
"I don't ... really know," I said to Irina, keeping my face serious. "I've heard that an awful lot of mothers pretty much abandon their husbands once there are children in the house. You might move me into the guest room, or even stop cooking for me. I don't think I'm willing to take the risk."
She was on the verge of an angry reply when she saw my face broaden into a wide smile, and she laughed instead. "You stinker! For a moment I thought you were..."
Then she stopped, and looked into my eyes. "You would ... really do this, Tommy?"
"I would love to have children with you, sweetheart. And the idea that they'd be part Russian makes it even more wonderful. They'll probably be smart, too, even if their father was a son-of-a-bitch.
"I think we should do it. How much--"
But the rest of my question was smothered as Irina leapt upon me, filling my mouth with kisses and squeals of joy. We made love again, passionately, without another word being said.
Earl Lementov Lawrence and Lily Tatiana Lawrence were born on August 22, and became part of our family that very day. Giving up the children was hard for Tatiana, but she had gotten to know Irina and me and knew that we would be loving parents to them. She also knew that she could visit them whenever she wanted. And for the first year or so, Tatiana did come to see them at least once a month. After that, she went off to Duke University and we didn't hear from her much.
Irina had decided to put off taking an accounting job for at least a year--she was dying to be a full-time mother and nothing else. Everyone who's ever had a baby or two can imagine the chaos and confusion of our household for the first few months, as well as the joy in our hearts. Our babies were beautiful and smart, and we were fascinated by them. As they grew we were also amazed by the bond they seemed to have between them, as many pairs of twins do. We were perpetually sleep-deprived, and supremely happy.
****************
In my software design job in Madison, I was paired with a guy named Rick Torgerson, a recent graduate of Wisconsin who was a year older. It quickly turned out that we made a fantastic team. He was brilliantly imaginative but not always practical, and my down-to-earth approach helped provide pragmatic solutions to the creative ideas he dreamed up. Within a few months we were the stars of our department.
Even more than that, we liked each other and liked working together. I had introduced Rick and his girlfriend Lisa to Irina--after quietly explaining to them about her face--and the four of us got together frequently on the weekends for dinner or to go to the movies.
On one Saturday afternoon in June 2004,when the twins were about ten months old, the women were playing with the babies and Rick and I were idly talking shop--about some search algorithms our firm was working on, and how they might compare to what Google was up to.
Suddenly we looked at each other, as though lightning had struck us both at the same time. "It's a flaw, isn't it?" Rick said, and I nodded.
"Yup, I was thinking the same thing. The way they combine their searches isn't as efficient as it should be--as the rest of the structure is. I'll bet we could do better."
We sat at my dining room table and spent more than an hour sketching and scribbling and talking excitedly, dinner completely forgotten, while the long-suffering Lisa and Irina laughed at us and ate with the twins in the kitchen.
Rick and I got together the next day for several more hours, and by the end of the afternoon we thought we had something that might really be promising. We had a long discussion about whether to take this to our supervisor at work or keep it private and work on it only on our own, nights and weekends.
I argued that at least the birth of the idea came from work we'd done on company time, and that we needed to work out a deal with them. After some discussion, he agreed.
At the end of that week we sat down with Roger Handler, our project supervisor, to hash out an agreement. We gave him the bare bones of our idea and suggested that we'd share 20% of whatever profits resulted from our work, but that we would file for the patents and control the rest.
It took five more meetings, including two with lawyers for us and the company, but we got the deal worked-out. We agreed to let the company have 25% and to have first call on buying or licensing the software (rather than selling it to a larger company, which was the other likely possibility). They also agreed that Rick and I could use 50% of our work time on the project, but the rest of our hours had to go to our other responsibilities.
After 8 months we had our first patent in process; and after 21 months our improved search algorithm, by then protected by four different patents, was auctioned off. Not surprisingly, Google bought it--they didn't want any upstart company with a faster search engine competing with them.
I will never forget the day when I first knew that the deal, or something like it, was going to happen. It was 3-4 months before the actual sale, but Rick and I could see that what we'd created was going to make us a pile of money. I came home with flowers, a bottle of champagne and some strawberries, and said, "let's get the twins to bed--we need to do some celebrating tonight."
We ate a quick dinner, bathed and played with the twins, and had them in bed by 8:30. Then I pulled Irina into the shower and we washed and played with each other, just to get our motors running.
Then I brought the champagne and strawberries to bed. Proposing the first toast I said, "here's to my fantastic wife Irina, who is about to be a frightfully rich woman."
We'd been talking regularly about my work, of course, and Irina knew it was going well--but this was the first time I was absolutely sure that we were going to make a lot of money.
"How rich?" she teased. "Rich enough that I should stay with you? Rich enough that you're worth sharing this sexy body with?"
