Sam takes my hand the second I join him at the door. His warm, large hand envelopes mine, and he pulls down the hallway, past a large leafy plant and the water cooler.
“Sam,” I say. “What’s going on?” “Let’s talk in your office.”
I pull my hand away from his and grab his elbow, yanking him into the nook by the copy machine. “No, let’s talk here.”
“Okay, but…” His eyes dart around. “Maybe we should get you a chair…”
He wants me to be sitting. Oh God. I think I’m going to throw up.
“Sam,” I say as patiently as I can. “Will you tell me what the hell is going on?”
Sam focuses his brown eyes back on my face. A deep crease forms between his eyebrows. “Janelle pulled out.”
“What?”
“I just got the call from Steve.” He rakes a hand through his light brown hair—his fingers are shaking. “He said Janelle changed her mind. She wants to keep the baby.”
“What?”
My legs feel rubbery. Sam was right—we should have gone to my office. Or I should have held out for a chair.
“Something about how her mother is going to help her or… I don’t know.” He sighs. “It all amounts to the same thing. She’s keeping him.”
“Is… is she allowed to do that?” I sputter. “Our contract says…” “She’s allowed to back out.” Sam shuts his eyes for a moment, then
when he opens them again, I notice for the first time they’re slightly bloodshot. “We can’t fight her in court for her baby. We’d never win.”
I’m starting to get tunnel vision. The whole world is disappearing and all I can see is Sam’s face in front of me. A lump forms in my throat, and I know I’m seconds away from bursting into tears.
“Abby?” His voice sounds far away. “Are… are you okay?” “No,” I whisper. “I’m not.”
I fall into his arms, and even though there are still some people in their cubicles who could probably see us, I let the tears fall. Maybe “let” is the wrong word. I’m helpless to stop these tears.
At least Sam is here. When he got the news, he was all alone. I can’t imagine what that must have been like for him. He wanted this baby as badly as I did. I can see in his eyes how devastated he is.
“I’ll drive you home, okay?” he says. “I’ve got the car.”
Home. Where the nursery is all set up for the baby we’re not going to get. How can we go back there? I can’t bear it. Also…
“The baby shower…” The thought of going back to the room with the giant diaper cake is like being stabbed in the chest. “I need to tell them.”
“I’ll talk to them,” he says. “You wait here.” Sam is such a wonderful husband.
It’s all my fault we can’t get pregnant. He’s normal. Perfect sperm. All- star sperm. I’m the defective one.
“You don’t have to…” I murmur.
“I’ll talk to them,” he says again, more firmly this time. “But don’t leave without me. Promise?”
I nod mutely. I’m not going to argue with him. “It’s going to be okay,” he says. “It will.”
Except I’m not sure who he’s trying to convince—me or himself.
Sam and I don’t say one word to each other on the drive home. Even Sam’s car is a depressing reminder of what we’ve lost. Ever since I met him, Sam had driven a 1997 Honda Civic. It was old when he bought it used, and it got to the point where he had to say a prayer every time he turned the key in the ignition. I begged him to trade it in for something safer and more reliable, insisting we had the money to get him any car he wanted, but he clung to that car like it was his first child.
Then when we found out we had a baby on the way for sure, without prompting, Sam got rid of his old Civic and got a brand new Toyota Highlander. It’s a big, safe SUV that has a car seat strapped into the back which we will probably never use. Just looking at that car seat makes me want to burst into tears.
I should have taken the subway home.
By the time we get to our apartment, my eyes are swollen and my cheeks are sticky with tears. Sam lets me out at the front so he can park the car. He won’t let me shell out the exorbitant fee for the parking garage below our building, so he spends half his time searching the neighborhood for open parking spots. He’ll drag himself out of bed at six in the morning on his day off to move his car to avoid getting a ticket. I had planned to insist on paying for the parking garage once the baby came, but that won’t be an issue anymore.
I feel a surge of resentment at Sam’s stubbornness about the parking garage as I trek up to our apartment all alone. I don’t want to face the open door to what would have been the baby’s room all alone. I catch a glimpse of the light brown wood of the crib and the yellow paint on the wall before I pull the door shut with a resounding snap.
My phone buzzes inside my purse. There’s no one I want to talk to right now, but I assume it’s Shelley, trying to say something comforting. I fish out the phone, and see the text message filling the screen. It’s from none other than my favorite boss, Denise:
Sorry to hear about your situation. I assume I can cancel your family leave totaling 12 weeks? Also, please let me know ASAP if you will require a personal day tomorrow.
For God’s sake, couldn’t the woman let me grieve for one hour? Denise used to be the woman I respected most in the entire universe, but now I hate her. I hate Denise. No, “hate” isn’t a strong enough word for what I feel for her. “Loathe” or “abhor” don’t quite do it either. Someone needs to invent a new word to describe the way I feel right now about Denise Holt.
Except none of this is Denise’s fault. And an hour ago, she was no more than an annoyance in my life, instead of the object of my seething hatred. So maybe I should hold off on answering her text right now, because I can’t afford to tell off my boss. My job is all I have anymore.
I glance at my watch. How long does it take Sam to park a goddamn
car?
The landline next to the couch starts ringing. I don’t even know why
we have the damn thing, because all important calls come on our cell
phones. All we get on the landline are telemarketers. Then again, I wouldn’t mind yelling at a telemarketer right now. It might make me feel better.
I walk across the living room to answer the phone, but before I can make it, I trip on something and bash my knee on the coffee table. Our coffee table is one of those heavy marble tables with zero give, and damn, that hurts. I rub my reddening knee, searching for the object that tripped me up.
It’s a bassinet. The one that arrived this morning. Of course.
I yank the receiver off the hook, ready to scream at the voice that comes on the line. AT&T? Verizon? Progressive Auto Insurance? I’m not picky—I’ll yell at anyone right now.
Except the voice on the other line doesn’t sound like a telemarketer. It’s a young, female voice, slightly hesitant. “Hello?”
“Yes?” I say impatiently. My knee is starting to really throb. I should probably get an ice pack from the freezer to keep it from swelling too much
—that is, if I can walk. “What is it?”
“Is this… Dr. Sam Adler’s residence?” I frown. “Yes…”
“Oh, great,” the girl says. She lets out a giggle. “Um, my name is April and I’m in Dr. Adler’s calculus class, and I had some questions about the exam on Friday. Is he… available?”
I shouldn’t be surprised. A few years ago, we made our number unlisted because this would happen. Girls in Sam’s classes would track down the phone number of their handsome professor and call him, hoping for… well, I don’t know what they were hoping for exactly. He wears a wedding ring, so I guess they were hoping for a little something on the side. But then again, if that’s what they wanted, why would they call him at home? College girls are dumb.
If the calls he gets here are any indication, I hate to think what goes on when he’s on campus. Good thing I trust my husband.
“No, he’s not available,” I say tightly.
“Oh, too bad…” She giggles again. “Well, I could meet him somewhere to talk more. Like, maybe on Saturday night…”
Is this girl kidding me? This is far from the first time I’ve fielded a call from lovestruck coed, and usually, it’s funny. Sam and I laugh about it. But
right now, I don’t feel like laughing.
“Listen, April,” I hiss into the phone. “This is Dr. Adler’s wife and I would appreciate you not calling him at his home ever again.”
“Oh.” The girl’s playful tone disappears. “Sorry, I didn’t realize—”
The lock turns in the front door. Sam finally managed to park the damn
car.
“And,” I add, before he can come inside and stop me, “you are never,
ever to bother Dr. Adler again. If I hear you have contacted him—either here or on campus—I will make sure you’re reported to the dean for harassment. Understand?”
Sam walks into the apartment in the middle of that sentence. I’m not sure how much of my little tirade he heard, but his brown eyes go wide. Enough, I guess.
“Okay,” the girl says softly. “I’m sorry.”
“Good,” I say. And then I slam down the receiver.
That’s the best part about having a landline. You can slam it down. You don’t get the joy of slamming a phone down when you’re on a cell phone. What can you do—press “end call” really angrily?
Sam runs a hand through his hair, but does the thing he always does where he stops midway through his scalp so that his hair stands up straight. “Uh, who was that?”
“One of your students.”
His mouth falls open. “You talked that way to my student?” “Yep.”
I stare at him, daring him to scold me further. I don’t want to fight with Sam right now, but I will. It would be only too easy.
But he doesn’t take the bait. Instead, he crosses the room and plops down next to me on the sofa. He reaches for my hand, and just like that, all the anger drains out of me. And all that’s left is sadness. And emptiness.
I can’t believe we’re not going to have our baby. I wanted it so badly.
More than words can express.
Ironically, it was Sam who initially pushed for us to have a child while I resisted. Not that I didn’t want children—I definitely did, but not until I was at least thirty-four, when my career was on solid footing. Denise had ranted long and hard about what motherhood would do to my prospects at Stewart, and it had left an imprint. I wanted to wait. Thirty-five, I told Sam
when we got married. Maybe thirty-four, depending on how things are going.
Sam felt differently about it. His own father had been forty when he was born and then died suddenly of a heart attack when he was in high school. His dad never got to see him graduate high school or college, never got to see him become a professor, never got to be at his wedding. Although he’s in much better physical condition than his father ever was, Sam was terrified of being an “old dad” and missing out on large chunks of his children’s lives.
“I don’t want to die when my kids are still in school,” he said, his voice breaking.
So right after we got married, he started gently pushing for us to try for a baby. I was only twenty-seven at the time and it felt inconceivable. But when Sam hit thirty, his pleas became more insistent. And then Shelley and Rick decided to start trying, so I finally gave in.
When I first stopped my birth control pills, I was some combination of nervous and excited. I joked with Sam that I hoped it took more than a month or two to conceive. Still, I was surprised when my first pregnancy test was negative. As a healthy twenty-nine-year-old woman, I had always assumed that the second I missed even a single pill, I’d be instantly knocked up. It was a reprieve though—one extra month without worrying about the responsibility of impending motherhood. Sam and I laughed it off, saying this way we got to have more fun trying.
After six months, we weren’t laughing anymore.
Sam went to get his sperm checked. His boys were perfectly fine, and due to our relatively young age, my OB/GYN encouraged us to keep trying for another six months before we got too worried. Those six months went by, Shelley gave birth to her first child, and I still didn’t have a positive pregnancy test. It was time to investigate further.
And that’s when it all went downhill.
My doctor told me I probably had suffered some sort of infection that left deep scarring in my uterus and especially my fallopian tubes. Natural conception, she told me, would be impossible. We went straight for IVF, even though I was warned even that had a low chance of success given my “inhospitable uterus.” Sam gave me hormone injections at home to
stimulate egg production, but when they retrieved my eggs, those too were deemed to be “poor quality.”
I felt like an absolute failure as a woman. My uterus was damaged, my eggs were poor quality, and all our attempts at IVF were expensive disasters. I was wracked with guilt that my “normal” husband couldn’t have the child he wanted all thanks to me, even though he swore again and again that he didn’t blame me. Meanwhile, my boss Denise was utterly unsympathetic about my need to rush out to appointments with the fertility specialist, or about the meeting I had to reschedule when my single successful pregnancy aborted itself after three short weeks.
For a time, I was obsessed with trying to conceive. I dove into it with the same intensity that had made me so successful at my job. I went vegan for a while. I drank something called “fertility tea” that tasted like the dust from our coffee table. I visited every infertility forum in the country and became well-versed in the lingo: TTC meant “trying to conceive” as in “I’ve been TTC for three years with no luck.” AF meant “Aunt Flo”—the dreaded monthly blood that meant another failure. DPT meant “days past transfer” after an embryo was transferred into my uterus—a countdown until the next time I could POAS (“pee on a stick”).
And then every time a woman on the board would announce her pregnancy, we’d all congratulate her, but I’d get a sick feeling it would never be me.
If it were up to me, I might have kept going with IVF until we were destitute, but it was Sam who brought up the idea of adoption. It will still be our child, he said. I resisted, having heard horror stories from other women on the forums about adoptions gone wrong, but Sam again pushed until I gave in. He was right—we wanted to be parents and this was our only option.
Once we became immersed in the adoption process, I grew cautiously optimistic. I had wanted a child for what felt like forever now—it was a dream come true that it would soon be a reality. Unfortunately, nothing in the adoption process was quick. After carefully deciding on an agency, we had to complete a homestudy, which was the full body cavity search of the adoption process—the agency’s social worker visited us repeatedly, requesting every legal document that had ever been issued to us in our
lifetime. I didn’t understand how they couldn’t just look at me and Sam and realize we’d be good parents, but I guess there are guidelines.
After our approval, the search began for a child to match us with. Sam was open to older children, but I was adamant about wanting a newborn. During all those years of trying to conceive, I had dreamed of a tiny little infant, and I couldn’t let go of that. Sometimes I felt guilty about it, because I knew there were older children who needed homes, so we agreed our second adoption (and possibly third, if we got to that point) would be an older child. But I wanted to experience having a newborn. Just once. And it cost us a year of being rejected by multiple pregnant women until Janelle finally made our dreams come true.
Well, almost.
And now, after having it all for a very short time, we have nothing again.
“What now?” I whisper to my husband.
Sam drops his head back against the sofa, staring up at the ceiling, his eyes glazed. Sometimes I get so caught up in my own misery that I forget it means just as much to him as it does to me. He wanted a child even before I did. This is killing him—I can see it in his eyes.
“I think we should look into adopting an older child,” he finally says. I suck in a breath. “Sam…”
“I know,” he says tightly. “I know you were hoping for a newborn. I
know. But Abby, there are so many young kids out there who need a home.”
I look over at the tiny bassinet that nearly broke my knee. It’s trimmed in yellow ribbon with little pink flowers on it. Yesterday, when we still believed we were going to be parents, I had laid out a little outfit inside the bassinet. A blue onesie barely the size of my hand, paired with tiny yellow socks. I remember putting one of those little socks in my palm, marveling at how tiny it was. How could a human being have a foot tiny enough to fit into that little sock? I kissed the sock gently, knowing it would soon warm the tiny foot of my infant son.
I know it sounds silly, but I had my heart set on a newborn. I don’t feel ready to let go of my dream of holding an infant in my arms—of sliding a tiny foot into that little sock.
“We bought all newborn stuff,” I point out. “The clothes… the crib… the bassinet… the car seat.”
“So?” He rolls his head to look at me. “We can buy all new stuff. It’s just stuff, Abby.”
Yes, it’s just stuff. And it isn’t the stuff that’s made me hesitant to do
this.
“Everyone wants newborns,” he says. “But the kids in the
orphanages… they need parents so badly. I want to do that, Abby. I’m sick of waiting for a newborn. I just want for us to be parents to a child who needs us.”
He’s right, of course. I’ve got to let go of my stupid fantasies from my days of TTC. It also doesn’t escape me that if Sam wanted kids so badly, he could dump me for someone like April. His sperm is normal. I’m the problem.
But he’d never do that. “Okay,” I say. “Let’s do it.”
