Читать книгу: «The Other Mother»
You love your best friend. You trust her with your life.
But could you give her the most precious gift of all?
Alex’s life is a mess. She’s barely holding down a job, only just affording her apartment, and can’t remember when she was last in a relationship. An unexpected pregnancy is the last thing she needs.
Martha’s life is on track. She’s got the high-flying career, the gorgeous home and the loving husband. But one big thing is missing. Five rounds of IVF and still no baby.
The solution seems simple.
Alex knows that Martha can give her child everything that she can’t provide.
But Martha’s world may not be as perfect as it seems, and letting go isn’t as easy as Alex expected it to be.
Now they face a decision that could shatter their friendship for ever.
Provocative. Emotional. Affecting.
Share The Other Mother with your best friend.
Previously published as This Fragile Life.
The Other Mother
Kate Hewitt
Copyright
HQ
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2013
Copyright © Kate Hewitt 2013
Kate Hewitt asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
E-book Edition © June 2013 ISBN: 9781472017109
Previously published as This Fragile Life.
Version date: 2018-07-23
After spending three years as a diehard New Yorker, KATE HEWITT now lives in the Lake District with her husband, five children, and Golden Retriever. She enjoys such novel things as long country walks and chatting with people in the street, and her children love the freedom of village life—although Kate often has to ring four or five people to figure out where they’ve gone off to!
She writes women’s fiction as well as contemporary romance for Mills & Boon Modern, and whatever the genre she enjoys delivering a compelling and intensely emotional story. Find out more about her books at www.kate-hewitt.com.
Contents
Cover
Blurb
Title Page
Copyright
Author Bio
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Dedication
Extract
Endpages
Book Club Questions
About the Publisher
Chapter 1
MARTHA
It’s not good news. It never has been, so at least I’m expecting it and it’s easier to take. Except maybe it isn’t, because after I disconnect the call I bow my head and press my fingers to my temples and then I do something I never do. I cry.
I can hear the snuffling sobs I’m still trying to suppress echoing through the empty bathroom stalls at work. They sound awful. I sound awful, like some completely pathetic nutcase instead of what I am, which is a highly successful advertising executive with everything I’ve ever wanted.
Except a baby.
“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.
“What about some ginger tea?” Martha suggests. “It’s supposed to settle the stomach.”
“I’m fine,” I say. “Really. It was just a one-time thing.”
And still Martha says nothing.
I have this horrible feeling she knows, and I feel worse for trying to hide it from her, although, really, I didn’t exactly have time to tell her. Still I feel a certain cool kind of assessment coming from her, and I don’t remember what we talk about for the rest of the evening. Not much, anyway.
I’m exhausted by the time I head home on the subway, and then take the 14th Street crosstown bus all the way over to Avenue C. I live on the top floor of an old tenement building, which is as bad as it sounds, although I’ve never minded before. At least I have my own place.
Yet now as I climb the stairs I’m thinking all kinds of ridiculous thoughts. Like how hard these stairs would be if I were nine months pregnant. And how there is no way I could haul a stroller up six narrow flights.
It’s past eleven by the time I finally get back to my apartment, and I see it all through this new lens of quasi-motherhood, these critical and despairing eyes I don’t like. It’s one little room, about fifteen feet by ten, with a tiny sink, a two-burner stove, and a mini fridge tucked in one corner. The bathroom holds a shower stall and toilet, no sink, and besides the futon, a table, and a bookcase I have no real furniture. I keep my clothes in a jumble of plastic crates stacked on top of one another.
I sink onto my futon, and I no longer have the strength not to think about it. Not to realize how ridiculous and impossible and stupid this all is, to contemplate for one second the possibility of actually having this baby. Of being a mother.
I don’t even want a baby, do I? I’m pretty sure I don’t. Yet this isn’t even about want; it’s about something deeper, something fundamental and biological. This might be my last chance. My last chance for a life I never even wanted before.
Three days go by and I still don’t call that number.
Chapter 3
MARTHA
Alex is pregnant. It beats like a bass drum through my mind, giving me a headache. Alex is pregnant. I count the symptoms silently, the throwing up being the most obvious one of all. She took one look at that fish and heaved. But there were others, I think as I lie in bed next to Rob that night. She looked pale, drawn. She put all the blue cheese in her salad to one side. She seemed a little dizzy when she stood up. She’’s pregnant.
I haven’t told Rob my suspicions, and I don’t intend to, not yet. He’d probably be happy for her, the way he’s happy for everybody, and her fertility would highlight my own failure as a wife, a woman.
I am furious that I can’t get pregnant after five years of trying and Alex can just fall into it. It’s probably a mistake. Alex isn’t seeing anyone as far as I know, and her life isn’t exactly set up for a baby. I can’t imagine her as a mother.
And then I realize that maybe, probably, she won’t have it. It’s early. She could still have an abortion. She probably will have an abortion.
And I feel a chill enter my soul, a terror I don’t understand. I know, on a purely analytical level, that what Alex does with her pregnancy has no bearing on my life. Yet I can’t escape this inexplicable fear that slips coldly through me, that somehow her ending this pregnancy will end something for me.
It’s absurd, because everything’s already ended for me.
I feel Rob’s hand rub my back, sleepy, half-hearted. “You okay?” he asks, and I wonder why he is asking. Am I tense? Can he feel it? He’s been so careful with me since the last IVF attempt, and I felt as if we were moving on. Just a little, but my soul was healing.
Now everything feels ripped open and raw.
“I’m fine,” I say, and Rob rolls over and falls fast asleep, slack-jawed and snoring. I lie there, staring up at the ceiling, everything in me tight and taut and angry. And all I can think is, Alex is pregnant. Pregnant. And I’’m not.
Alex and I have been friends, first by default and then by choice, for over twenty years. Our parents are neighbors in the same Connecticut suburb; they’ve been friends for even longer than we have. When we were growing up we were thrown together at all those awkward family functions, dinners and drinks parties and days at the beach. At first we circled each other warily, too different from one another to attempt to find any common ground. Alex is younger than me by a year, but in junior high she seemed cooler. She had the indifferent air of a rebel, even though I don’t think she actually did anything that rebellious. Still, I was the do-gooding people-pleaser: I got straight As; I had braces; I wore knee socks pulled up high until seventh grade. Alex seemed cool to me.
Looking back, I know Alex intimidated me; she was friendly but also indifferent, dreamily in her own world. I think even then I was both jealous of the kind of comfort she had with herself, and grateful for her overtures of friendship—playing video games in her family’s basement, wandering over to our neighborhood playground to hang out on the swings—even as part of me resented it, and the fact that I needed it, that I was the needy one.
Then my braces came off and I lost the knee socks, I grew three inches and two bra sizes and in tenth grade I was suddenly, superficially cool. It was a low-grade kind of thing; I was never in the actual popular crowd. But I had a boyfriend, I got into Yale, and my father bought me a navy-blue Mazda convertible for my seventeenth birthday. I was cool and Alex, who had never quite pulled together the rebel look, who had average grades and a random assortment of arty friends, no longer was.
And part of me was glad about that.
We were still friendly during all those tediousget-togethers, although I at least felt more smugly in control. I doubt Alex even noticed. At school, we stayed in our separate groups and never spoke, hardly even saw each other. We were in different years, after all.
Then my junior year in college I came home for summer break, intending to get some crappy job and make some money before going back to Yale. I hadn’t got the internship I wanted and I was feeling pretty low, and so I ended up fighting with my mother, which wasn’t, to be honest, all that uncommon an occurrence. Well, actually it was; since I was about sixteen I’d managed my mother as best I could, which mostly meant avoiding her, especially if she’d been drinking.
But that night we argued, I don’t even remember about what, and my mother locked me out of the house, and I ended up going across the street and knocking on Alex’s door.
I still remember how she opened the door: messy, rumpled, as if she’d just rolled out of bed although I don’t think she had. She didn’t look surprised to see me, even though we hadn’t spoken properly outside of family functions in years. She just smiled, said, “Martha, hey. Come on in,” and asked if I wanted a drink.
We drank beers out on her back patio; she was there alone, because her parents had gone on some golfing vacation for a couple of weeks. They travelled a lot, I remember, and Alex always seemed to have the house to herself.
I remember feeling a kind of vague, appalled pity for her, which I have probably felt on some level ever since. She hadn’t got into a good college; it was decent, some random place in Maine, but it wasn’t the kind that opened corporate doors. But then I couldn’t see Alex knocking on those doors, either. I remember watching her that night, in a sort of amazed fascination. She was drinking her beer almost absently, so unfazed by everything: her own wandering life, my sudden appearance, the limits of possibility on her own existence. She didn’t mind any of it, and, even though that horrified me, part of me was, I think, just a little bit jealous. To be so at ease, so relaxed and assured that life would unfold as it was meant to, like a map…! Yes, I was jealous.
At that point, of course, college was everything to me. I’d made Phi Beta Kappa my junior year and even though I hadn’t got the internship I’d wanted I was focused. I had a double major in English and Media Studies and I volunteered at an ad agency in New Haven during the school year. I had ambition, I had plans, I had everything, and Alex’s art major and aimless plans seemed awful to me.
And yet, despite our differences, we became friends. Real friends, not just ones forced together for yet another cocktail party or barbecue. I like being around Alex, mainly because she’s so different from me. She’s one of the few people who can actually make me belly laugh, although admittedly it’s rare. And she’s so relaxed about everything that when I’m with her I find myself unwinding just a little, just enough. Sometimes I wonder what she sees in me; maybe she needs one person in her life who gives her good advice, who tells her like it is. I like to think that she needs someone like me.
But now? If she’s pregnant? I feel as if it could change everything.
I wait three days and then I call her. I suggest we meet for coffee at a little place on Twenty-Third Street, halfway between my work place and where she is a barista. I take a cab and get there early; I order an iced latte and take the table in the corner.
She arrives twelve minutes late, which annoys me just a little because this is my lunch break, and I generally don’t take hour-long lunches. But that’s Alex, and I get that. Like I said, we’re different.
I smile, stand, place my cheek a half-inch from hers. We sit, and I ask if she wants a coffee. She shakes her head.
And then I say nothing, because for once I have no plan, no bullet points to cover. I want to ask if she’s pregnant, and yet I’m afraid to at the same time. Then Alex does something she hardly ever does; she takes the lead. She smiles and sighs and says,
“I know you know.”
And then suddenly it’s easy. “You’re pregnant.” She nods. I let out a shuddery breath, although I’m not sure what I’m feeling. Vindication? Jealousy? Relief? It’s all mixed up. “How far along are you?” I ask and she just shrugs.
“I’m sorry,” she says after a moment, and I stiffen.
“For what?”
“It just…it doesn’t seem fair, does it?” She looks at me with dark, sorrowful eyes and my throat starts to ache.
No, it damn well doesn’t seem fair, but weirdly I’m glad she’s acknowledged it. “What are you going to do?” I ask quietly.
“I don’t know.”
I feel a little better hearing that, although I’m not sure why. “What about the father?”
“I haven’t contacted him.”
“You’re not—dating?”
She lets out an abrupt laugh and shakes her head. “No.”
“Well.” I sit back. “I want to support you.” This sounds trite, and yet I mean it.
“I thought I was going to get rid of it,” she says in a low voice, not looking at me. “I mean, no-brainer, right? There’s no way I can have a baby.”
I don’t reply to that. “And then what happened?” I ask.
Another shrug. She still won’t look at me. “I don’t know. I keep meaning to call and then I just—don’t.” She glances up at me and I see a surprising welter of pain and confusion in her eyes; I’m so used to seeing Alex seeming laid-back to the point of indifference, the emotion surprises me. “I’ve had two abortions already,” she says and looks away again. I feel a cold ripple of surprise; I didn’t know that, and I’m surprised she didn’t tell me. We’ve been good friends, maybe even best friends, since college. Since that night I showed up on her doorstep and she let me in, no questions asked.
She sighs wearily. “I don’t know. I’m being stupid. I mean, there’s no way I could keep a baby. I don’t even have health insurance. And in any case…” She pauses, lowering her head so her hair falls in front of her face. “I can’t really see me as a mom, can you?”
No, I can’t, but this doesn’t seem like the time to say it, so I just murmur something unintelligible.
“I mean, I’d probably forget it somewhere, I’m that flaky,” she says with a little laugh that still sounds sad. “And you know, babies are so full on, aren’t they? They don’t just go away when you’re tired of them or whatever.” I say nothing and she laughs again and shakes her head. “Listen to me. Just the fact that I’m saying all this proves my point, right?”
I have a terrible feeling that she’s asking this question because she wants me to tell her that it doesn’t, that she’d be a good mom, she can do this. I don’t say any of it. The words bottle in my throat so I can barely swallow, because I know what I want now, and I want it so badly. “You don’t have to keep it,” I hear myself saying, and I sound weird, distant, as if someone else is talking and I am floating up above the table, watching this play out.
Alex stares at me, frowning, clearly waiting for more. And there is more. “You don’t have to keep it,” I say again, firmly now. “But you don’t have to get rid of it either. You could give it to me. Rob and I could adopt the baby, Alex.”
Chapter 4
ALEX
I hear what Martha says and I am both completely shocked and not surprised at all. I stare at her, my thoughts tumbling through my mind in an unholy kaleidoscope, so I can only snatch at fragments: if she adopts this baby, I’’ll see it all the time. We’’ll have to explain to our parents. I’’ll be pregnant and yet I won’’t have anything at the end. Martha will be so happy.
I shake my head. I’m not sure what I want to say or even think. “Martha—”
“Just think it over,” she says quickly. “I know it’s a lot to process, and of course there’s a lot we both need to think over. It’s a big deal.”
Hell, yes. It’s a very big deal. And still I just stare.
“Only if you want to,” she adds. “I mean, if you’re really sure you don’t want to keep it yourself. It’s an option, that’s all.”
An option that changes everything. How can I turn it—her—down? How can I get an abortion now, without seeming totally selfish? And if I did want to keep it, how could this not always be between us? The baby Martha could have had. The baby I shouldn’t have, that I feel as if I don’t deserve because I didn’t want it in the first place. Because I can’’t be a mom.
“Of course,” Martha continues, “Rob and I would make it worth your while.”
“You’d…pay me?”
“No, not pay,” Martha says. A faint blush touches her cheeks. “That’s illegal, in any case. I just mean we’d make sure you were taken care of, Alex. The medical bills and everything. I mean, even maternity clothes can be expensive. You know, the whole thing could kind of be fun. Almost…almost like we’re both pregnant, you know?” She smiles, and for a second I am reminded of years ago, our senior year of college, when we went to Fort Lauderdale together for spring break. We had an amazingly silly, fun time, just the two of us, kicking around on the beach and in bars, goofing off.
That vacation cemented our friendship so much that even when our lives veered in dramatically different directions, we still met up for coffee or dinner or a glass of wine. I was Martha’s maid of honor, even though she had three gorgeous, accomplished friends from Yale who could have easily stepped into those shoes. She told me she asked me because she was going to be tense enough dealing with her mother, and she needed someone to help her relax.
And even though I’ve rolled my eyes at her controlling and OCD tendencies, I’m glad to have someone like her in my life. I’ve needed someone like her in my life, because if I didn’t I’d just flake out completely. And I know, I absolutely know, she’d make a wonderful mom. A little strict maybe, and probably totally by the book, but still, a good mother.
But to my baby?
Martha is still staring at me, waiting for what? An answer, already? “Sorry,” I finally mutter. “I’m still processing all this.”
“Of course you are. I am too. I’m sorry to spring the idea on you like that. It just popped into my mind.” She bites her lip, and for a second she looks more uncertain, more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen her. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”
And I don’t answer, because I’m still reeling, and part of me is thinking, Yeah, maybe you shouldn’’t have.
Martha returns to work a little while later; I don’t remember what the rest of our conversation was like. She talked about some ad account for women’s running shoes she was working on and I just blanked out. I still feel blank as I take the 6 train down to Union Square and then walk across to the Sunflower Café on Third Avenue.
I’ve been working at the Sunflower for ten years; it’s a funky little place with a relaxed atmosphere and a laid-back owner, Julia, who actually cares about her employees, all three of us. It’s me, Jasmine, and Eduardo, and I get along with both of them.
As I walk in I see it’s me and Eduardo on duty today, and I put my bag in the back and slide on my apron without really meeting his eyes. I still feel weirdly blank, and I’m not sure I can manage a normal conversation.
Eduardo is cool about it though; he just moves over to give me room at the cash register while he’s on the espresso machine, since he’s better at it than I am.
“You okay?” he finally asks when there is a lull in business and the café’s four tables are empty. It’s a beautiful day in early August, warm but not too hot, sunlight gilding everything in gold. Everyone wants to be outside.
I nod, although I feel a little dizzy and definitely nauseous; I’m still reeling from Martha’s suggestion. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I say and Eduardo doesn’t reply, just raises his eyebrows. I know I’m not fooling him. And then, maybe because he’s a pretty nice guy or maybe just because I’m still so dazed from my conversation with Martha, I blurt, “I’m pregnant.”
Eduardo doesn’t say anything; he seems totally unruffled. And why shouldn’t he be? He’s not pregnant. He’s about ten years younger than me, gorgeous, Latino, a dancer. He’s in a modern dance troupe and I’ve seen some of his shows. I kept my eyes on him the whole time; he moved with a sensuous, sinuous grace I didn’t notice when he was working the espresso machine.
I let out a shuddery breath and stare at the cash register. “I don’t know what to do.”
“What are you thinking about doing?” Eduardo asks, and I can’t tell what he thinks about anything from his tone.
“Well,” I say slowly, “termination seems the obvious choice.”
“But?”
“But I don’t think I’m going to do that,” I say, and with a jolt I know I mean it. I really don’t want to go down that road this time, although my feelings about why not are too difficult to untangle right now. Maybe I want to try to be different, but I’m not sure how different I can be. “I can’t have a baby, though,” I say and Eduardo just waits. “I mean, my life is totally not—I live in a walk-up. On the sixth floor. I have no health insurance. I have no money.”
I shake my head at the sheer impossibility of it all and then Eduardo says softly, “But?”
“But?” I repeat blankly, even though I know what he means. Do I want this baby? I can’t think past the impracticalities, the impossibilities. It’s as if a brick wall has been built in my mind, and I can’t see past it. I certainly can’t go around it.
But I know I don’t want to get rid of this baby.
Do I want to give it to Martha?
I think of her and Rob at dinner the other night, the strength and sorrow I felt from both of them. I imagine how happy this baby could make them. I know they’d be good parents. Rob would make up for her OCD tendencies, her need to micromanage. They’d balance each other out in parenthood just as they do in marriage. They’d be perfect, a perfect team. At least they’d be a lot better than I would. I know this, and yet weirdly it hurts. In this moment I wish, bizarrely, that I were different. I almost wish I were more like Martha.
“You have time,” Eduardo says quietly. “Even if it feels like you don’t, you do. Don’t rush into anything.”
After work I head home, because I’m too tired even to think of doing anything else. I’m working at the community center tomorrow, teaching basic drawing to twenty-two nine-year-olds, and I need to go over my lesson plan. Not that my job is really about lesson plans; it’s more about just being there for the kids, offering them a different outlet. I love it, and for a second I think that if I can be a good teacher, maybe I could be a good mom.
But even I’m not that optimistic. I know being a teacher and being a mother are two totally different things.
Back in my apartment I collapse onto my futon, exhausted, nauseous, heartsick. My mind is churning with Martha’s words and my thoughts. I imagine her holding a baby, the baby I gave birth to, and it seems so impossible and yet there is something so right about it too. Martha might be tense, unemotional, even cold, but she’s also been one of my closest friends.
She’s given me brisk talking-tos when I needed them, when I’d broken up with yet another low-life commitment-phobe. She wrote a personal reference for my job at the community center. I’ve drunk more wine at her kitchen table—she doesn’t allow it on the sofa—than at anyone else’s.
But now? This? It feels so much bigger. Scarier. And even though I don’t know what of, I know I’m afraid.
Lying there watching the evening sunlight streak slanted patterns onto the floor, the room hot and airless, I realize I need to get in touch with Matt. I haven’t even thought about him since that night, that oh-so fateful night that started this all. But if I’m not terminating this pregnancy, which I think I have now accepted that I’m not, I need to tell him I’m pregnant.
Don’t I?
I don’t really know the ethics of this kind of situation. If I give the baby up for adoption, does Matt need to know? Does he have legal rights? What if, God forbid, he wants the baby?
I roll over onto my side and reach for my laptop. The Internet is slow this time of day, whenever everyone is returning home from work and going online. It used to exasperate me, the thought of all those nine-to-fivers scurrying back to their bolt holes and plugging into cyberspace. Sitting there impatiently waiting for a search engine to load, I sympathize a bit more.
I type biological father rights adoption into the search box, and find a site about New York State adoptions laws. I read that biological fathers only have rights if they’ve been living with the mother for at least six months prior to the birth. It surprises me, that little wrinkle, because it seems so…arbitrary. What if you’d been living with someone for five months before the birth? Five and a half? Does the father have no rights then?
I keep reading, now about the biological mother’s rights in an adoption. It seems like nothing happens before the actual birth, and even after the birth the birth mother—me—has forty-five days to change her mind. I read that if the birth mother does change her mind, the adoptive parents can contest it, and there is what is known as a ‘best interests’ hearing. A custody case. A legal battle.
It all sounds awful, so embittered, everything a minefield. Of course, it wouldn’t be like that with Martha and me. We’re friends, after all. Yet I still feel a churning inside me as I push the laptop away and roll onto my back. It’s getting dark now, the sunlight fading into dusk, turning all the colors to gray. Below me I can hear the squeak of my neighbor’s bed springs, the tinny sound of his TV. I’ve squeezed past him on the stairs, a tough-looking guy with a buzz cut and tribal tattoos all up his arms. He usually mutters a grumpy hello.
Do I need to tell Matt? Not legally, apparently, but ethically, morally? I think I do. He obviously regretted our reunion, but we got along when we dated and I think he deserves to know. It’s his child as much as mine.
I reach for my cell phone and scroll through my contacts. He’s still there; I never deleted him, but then I never delete anyone. Still, it’s been six years and he left in a hurry. I’m not anticipating him being happy about this call, but I suppose a little part of me still hopes.
A woman answers, laughing, clearly with someone. I hang up.
I lie there, the phone pressed against my chest, feel that fragile little hope blow away like so much ash. I’m not even sure what I was hoping for. It’s not like I thought we were going to get together, turn into some family.
I blink in the oncoming darkness and wonder what to do now. Who was that woman? I know it could be anyone, his sister, his friend, his wife. We didn’t exactly get into any deep conversation that night five weeks ago.
After a few minutes of just lying there, not thinking, I pull the laptop back towards me and log onto my Facebook account. I’m not a huge Facebook user, but I still have an account and a random couple hundred friends from various stages of life: high school, college, early twenties, some other teachers at the community center. Matt is on my friend list, and after a second’s hesitation I message him.
Hey Matt. Do you mind calling me? We need to talk. I give him my cell number just in case he doesn’t recognize it on his phone, and I’m about to close the window when I see an old message from Martha. Curious, I click on it.
It didn’’t happen.
It’s dated six months ago and I remember it was after her third attempt at IVF failed. That one affected her more than the others; we went out for a drink and when I asked her about it she spoke to me in this high, chirpy voice and then excused herself to go to the bathroom. Ten minutes later she came back with slightly reddened eyes, ordered another drink, and started talking about the latest literary masterpiece she’d read for her book club.
For Martha, that’s big emotion. Considering the dynamics in her family, I’m not surprised.
I stare at those three words and feel my emotions see-saw and slide around, an earthquake in my mind. How can I refuse her this? Why am I even hesitating?
Lying on my futon in my tiny, hot apartment, I cannot imagine a baby here. And what about a toddler? A preschooler, a six-year-old, a teen? A human being, totally in my care, dependent on me, loving me. Maybe. All of it is terrifying.
In any case, I don’t have the money. I have a couple hundred bucks in my checking account and that has to see me through the end of the month. And as for the rest… Childcare? Healthcare? I can’t even afford the maternity clothes Martha said were so expensive. What about diapers, baby food, a stroller, braces, college?
I suppose I could make it work if I had to; I could ask my parents for help. I shy away instinctively from that thought because, strange as it might sound, my parents aren’t really into being parents. When I was growing up most of my friends envied me my laid-back parents, the total lack of rules or curfews in my teenaged life. And I reveled in it, then.
But it’s made any kind of relationship between us now kind of…not.
In any case, I don’t even want a baby, not really. I don’t want to raise a child; I can’t have that much responsibility.
But I can have a baby for Martha, a baby who I know will be wanted and loved immensely. I know, however uptight Martha is, she will love this child absolutely.
My child.
My phone rings, and I see that it is Matt. I feel something close to relief, although it’s completely unwarranted. Still, someone to talk to. Someone who is, at least a little bit, in this with me. Even if he doesn’t know it yet.
“Matt?”
“Hey, Alex.”
“Sorry to bother you. I hope this isn’t a bad time.”
“Not really,” he says, but he sounds edgy. My heart sinks. I want him here, fully present and focused. I want him to have wanted to call.
“I called a little while ago and a woman answered your phone.”
“I know.”
He doesn’t say anything else and after a second I say, uncertainly, “Sorry.” No answer. I sit up, cross my legs, take a deep breath. “Matt, I’m pregnant.” Silence. After a second or two I hear him moving, closing a door. Clearly going somewhere more private. I lean my head against the wall, close my eyes.
“You’re sure?” he asks in a low voice.
I suppress a tired sigh. “Yes.”
Matt doesn’t answer, and that’s probably answer enough. But what was I expecting, really? He left my apartment cursing and groping for his keys.
“I don’t expect anything from you,” I say stiltedly. I have never had this conversation before. “I’m just calling you because I’m keeping the baby and I thought you ought to know.”
“You’re keeping it?” He sounds appalled.
“I mean, I’m not having an abortion,” I explain. “I’m thinking of giving it up for adoption.” And I know then that I really am, and I feel a weird mix of relief and sorrow.
“Oh. Okay.” He sounds relieved, and why shouldn’t he be?
“I just wanted you to know, in case—” I stop. He waits.
“Alex?”
“In case, you know, you had any objections.”
Another silence. “I don’t have any objections,” he says finally, quietly. “I mean, I’m sorry it happened this way. For you. For me. But if it makes some couple happy—”
Yes. Yes, it will.
“Okay,” I say, and my throat is tight. When I draw a breath it sounds ragged, revealing.
“I’m sorry, Alex,” Matt says, his voice sad. “I should have told you before. I mean—that night. The thing is…” He clears his throat. “I just got married.”
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