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“Come on, Martha,” I say aloud. “Pull yourself together.” And it almost works, my little self-scolding, except another sob tears at my chest and comes out of my mouth, an animal sound I absolutely hate. Plus I’ve got snot dripping down my chin; if anyone saw me they’d think I was falling apart. And I’m not. I am absolutely not.
“Pull yourself together, damn it,” I snap, and my voice is a sharp crack in the silence, a warning shot. I take another deep breath, tuck my hair behind my ears, and let myself out of the stall.
I stare starkly at my reflection because I’ve never been one to shy away from the harsh truths. Like the fact that I’m thirty-six and have gone through five rounds of IVF and none have worked. I’m essentially infertile, and I’m not going to have a baby of my own.
That’s too much to take right now, so I focus on the immediate damage. My reflection. My make-up is a mess, my supposedly waterproof mascara giving me raccoon eyes. My lipstick is gone, and there are marks on my lip where I’ve bitten it. I don’t remember when.
I set about repairing the worst of it. I take a travel-sized bottle of make-up remover and my make-up bag out of my purse. I even have cotton balls, because I am always prepared. Always organized, always with a to-do list and a bullet-point plan, and within a few minutes my make-up is repaired, and I fish through my purse for my eye drops since my eyes look pretty reddened and bloodshot. I’ve thought of everything.
Except this.
Despite everything pointing to it, I haven’t let myself think about failure.
Tonight I’m going to have to go back to our apartment and tell Rob it hasn’t worked again. It feels like it’s my fault, and it is, really, because it’s my body that is rejecting the fertilized eggs. And even though I know he’ll be easy and accepting about it because he always is about everything, I can’t stand it. I can’t stand the thought of admitting defeat, failure, even though I know that I must.
This is the end of the road. Five rounds of IVF. Over sixty thousand dollars. Not to mention all of the doctor’s appointments, the investigations, injections, invasions. All pointless, wasted.
We agreed a while ago that we wouldn’t try again.
And so we won’t.
I tuck all my equipment back in my bag, zip it up, give my reflection a firm no-nonsense smile. Yes. Good. I look good; I look pulled together and in control as usual, as always.
And I act as if I am for the rest of the day, going over ad copy and giving a PowerPoint presentation for our new account, an environmentally friendly laundry detergent. I hesitate for only a second, not even a second, when the screen in front of the dozen listening suits turns to an image of a mother tickling her newborn baby’s feet. I’d forgotten I’d put that one in there, but of course you’ve got to have the baby shot when it’s laundry detergent, right? It’s all about the perfect family. The perfect life.
Resolutely I stare at that image and drone on about how Earth Works will transform lives. As if laundry detergent actually makes a difference. I feel like Miss America simpering about world peace, but it’s okay because everyone is listening and nodding and I know this is working, I’m working, because I’m good at what I do. I’m amazing.
And when the day is over I take my trench coat and my briefcase and I wait for the C train to take me uptown to the two-bedroom preWar Rob and I bought two years ago, when property prices were low even for Manhattan and it seemed like such a good investment. That was right before the third IVF attempt; I was still high on determination.
The apartment is quiet and still when I let myself in, and I’m glad because I’m not quite ready to face Rob yet, even though I know this is more my heartache than his. He’s always been okay with not having kids, but then Rob has been okay with most things in life. In that respect we are totally different.
I walk through the empty rooms that smell faintly of the lavender cleaning spray our housekeeper, Melinda, uses. Everything looks neat and in its place, and the sense of order soothes me. I feel my calm returning, my sense of self, and the pain and the crippling disappointment start to recede.
By the time Rob comes home fifteen minutes later I am the epitome of organized calm. Dinner is cooking, I’ve opened a bottle of wine, classical music is playing on the sound system.
“Hey,” Rob says as he strolls into the kitchen. He has shed his blazer and is carrying it over his shoulder, hooked on one finger. He drops a kiss on the back of my neck and hangs his coat over one of the kitchen chairs, loosens his tie.
And for one blind, blazing second I am furious; I am overwhelmed with a silent rage. Didn’t he know Josie—the fertility specialist—was going to call today? Or did it not even cross his mind all day, maybe not even all week, since I went in for the embryo transfer? So typical. Sometimes easy-going becomes thoughtless, even cruel. I take a deep breath and when I speak my voice sounds normal, light.
“Hey.”
“Work okay?” Rob asks and takes a beer out of the fridge.
“Fine.”
“You had that presentation today, right?”
“Right.” He remembers that, but not this? I take a breath, flip a piece of chicken. “Josie called.”
“Oh.” Rob stills, the bottle of beer halfway to his lips. “Shit. It’s not good news, is it?”
“Nope.” I smile, because I don’t know what else to do. I’m not going to cry again. Ever. Rob has never seen me cry, not once. No one has, not since I was about fourteen. I glance down at the chicken, using all my concentration on flipping another piece. Oil spatters and lands on my wrist, but it almost feels good because at least that pain is quantifiable, manageable. At least it ends.
“Martha.” Rob puts his beer down, pulls me a little bit towards him. I resist. “Martha, I’m sorry.”
And then I go, because I need to, I need this. Him. His easiness takes the edge off me, just a little. I rest my forehead on his shoulder and he puts his arms around me; for the first time since I got the news I can imagine feeling normal again. Maybe even happy.
“It’s okay,” I say. “After four tries, we didn’t have high hopes for this one, did we?”
“Still,” Rob says.
“I know.” My throat is tight and I swallow to ease the ache. “I was expecting it, really. And to be honest, it’s a bit of a relief. I mean, no more trying, right? We agreed on that.” I say it matter-of-factly even though there is a question in my heart, bursting in my lungs.
“Right,” Rob says, and he sounds so sure.
“So at least we can close the door on this. That’s a good thing.” I’m nodding, too much. I stop. Rob doesn’t say anything, just looks at me and I feel my own eyes fill. I turn away quickly to flip the chicken.
Everyone knows the basics about IVF. It’s difficult, it’s expensive, it doesn’t often work. I knew those basic facts even before I did all the research, scoured websites, read books and articles and even medical journals. But no one tells you just how difficult it really is. Or the fact that by the time you consider it as an option, you’re already desperate. You wanted to be pregnant yesterday, and one of the first things the doctor tells you is that it’s going to take a while. First you have to take the fertility drugs to stimulate your ovaries into producing more eggs. Tricking them, essentially. Then you have to get the eggs, and, trust me, that’s not as easy as it sounds. I had to take two days off work, the first for the actual procedure, which requires sedation and local anesthesia, and the second because I had such bad cramps afterwards.
So now you’ve got the eggs. The man gives the sperm; at least that part is pretty simple. The doctor puts the egg and sperm together in a process called insemination; this is what happens when people have sex and get pregnant. For people like me and Rob, think Petri dish.
And then these fertilized eggs are now embryos; they are little hoped-for babies. Except they’re not, because every time I’ve gone to have the embryos transferred to my uterus, suspended on a speculum and inserted into my cervix, it hasn’t worked. They don’t take. Those embryos—what happens to them? I often wonder that. Do they just wither and die like plants out of water? Do I pee them out right away? I’ve never asked my doctor. It seems like a silly question.
In any case, I went through this grueling round of pokes and procedures five times and so it makes sense to be done with it. We can’t afford any more rounds, not really, and then of course there’s the emotional toll. After the fourth round I was, I admit, a little low. Rob talked about the emotional toll then, said he was worried about me. About us. I asked him to try one more time.
But that’s not going to happen this time. I know that even though part of me wants to keep trying. I hate the thought of just giving up. It’s so not me, and yet here we are, eating our dinner in silence, knowing it’s over.
I know there are other options. I cannot even tell you the number of people who have lectured me about adoption when I mentioned I was going through IVF—which wasn’t that often, because it is not the kind of thing you just drop casually into a conversation.
“Haven’t you considered adoption?” someone always asks, round-eyed, as if they can’t believe I wouldn’t give some poor, needy child a home. The people who ask this question usually have children of their own, or, if they don’t, they haven’t considered adoption themselves. It’s always a great option for someone else.
And I have considered adoption. Briefly. I read an article in The New Yorker on someone who did psychological evaluations for children being adopted from Russia. It terrified me.
Then I went on a website for domestic adoptions in the state of New York. There was something slightly disturbing about the way the site was set up, a sort of point-and-click at the child you want. They had little write-ups on each child, usually with something about how ‘Sam has challenges with his temper and self-control, but in a patient, loving home he will thrive’.
I closed my browser window on that one.
Then there were the other options. Surrogacy came to mind, since the whole reason we went down the IVF route is because my Fallopian tubes are blocked, but I hated the thought of another woman carrying my baby. Mine. And the legal ramifications are, of course, tricky. In fact, when I did an evening’s worth of research on it, I discovered that surrogacy is illegal in some states, and the genetic parents’ rights aren’t even recognized. Scary stuff, and nothing I wanted to get involved with.
Besides, I thought then I could beat this. It felt like a challenge, and I’ve always been good with challenges.
Except now I’m not.
We don’t talk about it much over dinner, and I’m glad. Rob knows me, knows when to press and when to hold back, although maybe he just doesn’t care as much. I can’t always tell. That night in bed he reaches for me, and, even though I’m not much of a cuddler, this time I curl into him, tangling my legs with his, pressing my cheek against the steady thud of his heart as he strokes my hair. I don’t cry; I just lie there and let myself be held.
Maybe, I tell myself, this won’t be so bad. After a while it won’t feel so much like loss, like grief. At least we have each other, I think as Rob kisses my head. At least I have Rob.
Chapter 2
ALEX
This is how it happened; this is how it always happens. I got drunk. I finished work, I was meeting my friend Liza at a bar on Fourth Street and Avenue A. We had a glass of wine each, and then I saw Matt across the bar and he gave me the kind of goofy grin that convinced me I was half in love with him six years ago.
He came over, we talked, and at some point Liza must have made herself scarce because I don’t remember her going or even saying goodbye.
We went outside, still talking, giggling over nothing. It was early July and the air was warm and drowsy and I had a little buzz from several glasses of wine. We’d fallen into that kind of playful didn’t-we-have-a-fun-time-together routine that is the default for relationships that ended without really going wrong. We dated for a couple of months and drifted apart without any real reason why, at least not that I remember.
And it didn’t seem as if Matt remembered it either, because he was definitely working the flirt, and I didn’t mind. We were walking uptown, and then we were a block from my apartment, and suddenly we were right outside. We just somehow wandered right over there, and upstairs, and onto the futon in the corner of my studio.
Afterwards I lay on the futon nurturing the last of my buzz while Matt rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. Something about the way he just lay there made me feel faintly uneasy, but I let it slide.
“Shit,” Matt said. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Not exactly the kind of pillow talk you want to hear. I rolled onto my side.
“What is it?” I asked, because I thought maybe he’d left his wallet or his phone at the bar, something like that.
“This was a mistake.”
Oh. That kind of shit. “Probably,” I said, because it seemed better to agree with him, and I wasn’t imagining that we were going to launch into a full-fledged relationship or anything.
But then I saw that Matt was scrambling off the futon, searching for his jeans, muttering and cursing all the while. So this was a really big mistake, apparently.
I lay there, watching him, kind of bemused by how seriously he was taking everything. He finished dressing, stared at me.
“Sorry,” he said, and I almost asked what for, but he was already gone.
Now it’s three weeks later and I’m going over that whole evening, wondering how and why it happened, but of course I have no more answers now than I did then. I let it happen, as I’ve let most things happen in my life, because it’s so much easier. No expectations, and so no one is hurt. Not even me.
Except now I’m pregnant.
Termination, of course, is the most sensible option. It’s certainly the first one that comes to mind, because after I stare at those double pink lines for a second I’m reaching for my phone, scrolling through my contacts for the Margaret Sanger Center on Bleecker Street. I’ve had an abortion before. Two, actually. I had them early, when the embryo was no more than a couple of cells. I equated the procedures to Pap smears, and didn’t waste a moment regretting what was or wasn’t. It seemed like the right choice for someone in my position: feckless, fancy-free, without health insurance or in a committed relationship.
And I’m still all that, yet this time my thumb pauses on the button and I stare at the number and something in me thinks, Wait.
I’m thirty-five years old and I’ve read enough magazine articles and women’s health brochures to know that your fertility starts to decline at thirty-five. Also it’s more likely you’ll have a baby with genetic problems or disorders or whatever. Basically, at thirty-five, you start to get old.
I switch my phone off and stare again at the pregnancy test. I don’t know what to think. I’m not sure what I feel. I’ve never thought about motherhood, babies, that whole deal. I never saw myself as maternal, not really. My own mother wasn’t, even though she was your typical milk-and-cookies stay-at-home-mom, so maybe it’s genetic.
I throw the pregnancy test in the trash and I go to work at the little café where I’m a barista four mornings a week. For my other job—my real job, I like to think, even though it pays less—I teach art at an after-school program for disadvantaged kids. I scrape by, living in a sixth-floor walk-up on Avenue C, which is at least two avenues too far east for either comfort or convenience, and I have no savings and no health insurance. Not exactly the kind of life most thirty-five-year-olds aspire to, but it hasn’t bothered me until now.
Until a baby.
No, I can’t think that way. Won’t, because everyone knows it’s not a baby yet. It’s maybe a couple of cells. Barely visible to the naked eye. Anyway, I might not even be pregnant. False positives and all that, and even if I am pregnant, I could still lose it.
And so I don’t think about it, and I still don’t think about it, and then I wake up one morning and roll over on my futon and retch onto the floor. Morning sickness. And I know I need to start thinking about it, and I reach for my phone, and I still don’t call that number.
I go on for another week, not thinking about it, except now it takes more concentration. Not thinking about something becomes an activity requiring determination, effort. And that’s how I’m not thinking about it when I take the 6 train uptown to have dinner with my friend Martha and her husband, Rob.
Martha and I are about as different as two people can be and always have been. I think that’s what makes our friendship work; we have never been jealous of each other, never in competition, never wanted what the other one has. We tease each other, in a good-natured way, because I think we’re both not-so-secretly appalled by the other’s lifestyle choices. But we can laugh about it too, and I think we both like the break from our lives that our friendship gives us.
Except now I’m wondering what Martha would feel if I told her I was pregnant. I never told her about those two abortions, because they’ve been trying for a baby for what feels like for ever. They gave up after the fifth round of IVF last month, and even though she doesn’t talk about it I know it bothers her. Martha can get very chilly and tight-lipped when she’s upset. That’s about as emo as she goes.
As I enter their building and the doorman waves me up—that didn’t happen the first time I visited—I decide not to talk to Martha about this baby. No, not a baby, never a baby. This pregnancy. This…issue. And it makes me a little sad, that I can’t, because, honestly, I think I’d like someone to talk to. And Martha usually has very sensible, no-nonsense kind of advice, not like my other friends, who tend to be a bit easy-going and even flaky like me.
I’m distracted as I greet them, giving Martha an air kiss because she doesn’t do hugs and making cheek-to-cheek contact with Rob because he’s a lot more in touch with his feelings, at least for a guy.
Martha is smiling, seeming relaxed as she tosses this fancy salad with home-made dressing. I don’t think she actually likes to cook, but she certainly likes to do things properly.
“How’s life in the ‘hood?” Rob asks as he hands me a beer without asking, and I take a sip before I think, Maybe I shouldn’’t.
What is going on with me?
“Fine,” I say. “You should come slumming downtown some time, Rob. Get a taste of the real New York.”
Rob pretends to shudder and Martha just smiles and shakes her head. It’s a long-running joke between us, how different our lives are. Martha and Rob have never even been to my apartment, and I think they’d be horrified if they went. It’s one step up from the ghetto in their world, but I don’t mind. I like my life. I do.
And it has no room for a baby in it.
I put my barely touched beer bottle down on the counter with a loud-sounding clink.
“Let’s eat,” Martha says cheerfully. “You haven’t gone vegan or anything, have you, Alex?”
“Actually, I’m on a fruitarian diet.”
“Fruit-what?” Rob says, and I roll my eyes.
“Joke. When have you ever known me to turn down a greasy burger?”
“I don’t think Martha’s ever made a greasy burger in her life,” Rob says as she brings the salad to the table in their little dining nook. He puts his arm around her and for a second she stills, as if she’s taking strength from that little caress. I see Rob’s face soften and I know he must feel protective of her since the last failed attempt at IVF. Watching them like this gives me a funny little ache, because I’m happy for them and yet somehow sad for myself.
They’re the ones who should be celebrating an unexpected pregnancy, a miracle. Not me.
I’m still thinking like that as we eat our salad, and I don’t pay too much attention to the conversation about a film festival Rob is judging, one of his hobbies.
“What’s up with you, Alex?” Martha asks as we finish the salad. She nods towards my plate, and I realize I’ve put all the bits of blue cheese to one side. I had the most ridiculous thought that blue cheese would be bad for the baby. I don’t know why I’m thinking this way, why part of me is acting like I’m actually going to keep it.
“Sorry,” I say. “Tired.”
“Hard week at work?” Martha asks with that teasing smile that lets me know she doesn’t really take my job seriously. She’s never said as much, but part-time barista work at thirty-five is pretty sad in her eyes. I know Martha feels I could have made more of myself; I went to a good college, I’m from an upper-middle-class home in Connecticut, I’m fairly smart. In Martha’s world I’m a failure.
“Yeah, work, I guess,” I say, trying to smile, because Martha has brought out the main course and it’s fish. It’s a fancy kind of fish, tilapia or something, in a lemon and herb sauce, but the smell of it is crazy intense. It smells like week-old mackerel to me and before I can help myself, before I can say anything more, I’m lurching upright and running to the bathroom off the front hall.
As I’m puking into the toilet I realize I haven’t even managed to close the door behind me, and Martha and Rob can hear everything.
I flush the toilet and rinse my mouth out, wash my face. After a few seconds I walk back into the dining room. Rob is looking bemused but Martha has gone very still, very alert. “Stomach bug?” Rob suggests, sympathetically, and I nod. Martha says nothing.
I don’t eat any of the fish. In fact, my little puking episode pretty much puts a damper on the whole evening, which is to be expected. I do manage a few forkfuls of rice, and I pass on the dessert and coffee.
