I saw my parents, tears in their eyes, a hand clamped over my mother’s mouth.
They didn’t know what we were going through—we hadn’t shared. To them, it would all be upside, all joy.
“You’re making me feel old!” Sylvia would say, throwing her arms around us. “A great-grandchild.”
We held each other at the door. Leo was going to work—he was helping a director friend with some postproduction at a studio in Hollywood—and I was heading to the clinic to confirm the pregnancy with a blood test.
“Call me as soon as you hear,” he said. He kissed me hard. “I love you so fucking much.”
I had never walked in the doors to the clinic and had this reception before. All the nurses—Becky and Jaime and Tenacity and Shayanna—were beaming.
“We knew it!” they said. The relentless positivity of Reproductive had annoyed me in the past, it felt like a mosquito buzzing, but now I welcomed it. Wehadknown, hadn’t we?
I held up my crossed fingers to indicateNot yet, to say,I am being cautious, but it was just a front. I was already drunk on joy, already calculating a due date, letting the past two years fall away in a dissolve ofit was all worth it.
And then the call came. In the middle of Party City. I was there buying tissue paper. In my hand was a full sheet of white and something yellow with pink flowers on it.
“This isn’t a good call,” Becky said. She didn’t drag it out. “You’re not pregnant.”
Any line, however faint, meant positive. Any line. There had been two of them, three times over. “What do you mean?” I said.
I wanted it to be true so badly. I wanted to be pregnant even if it was a chemical pregnancy. I’d find myself jealous of women who had miscarriages. I longed to just know I could. To experience the beginning, even if it wouldn’t last.
“The trigger shot must have lingered in your system a lot longer than it usually does. We don’t see this often, but your HCG level is only 2.7. It would have to be over five to be a pregnancy. I am so sorry.”
I wasn’t pregnant. I’d never been pregnant. I just had some medication in my system, and probably indigestion.
I put the yellow paper back. I called Leo.
“Honey” was all I got out before I started crying.
“I’m on my way.”
I beat him home, got in bed, and when I heard the door open, I remember feeling an overwhelming sense of guilt. That he didn’t deserve this. That he thought he was having a baby and now hewasn’t because ofmybody. Because of what it could not or refused to do.
That was the first time Leo expressed it, that maybe we were going too far.
“Are we sure?” he said, as we held each other. “I don’t want you to go through this anymore.”
“We have to,” I said.
He didn’t fight me on it, not yet—and that was over a year ago, now. And every month since we have carried on. The thing about infertility is the absolute idiocy of hope. The bottomless well of it. The way it refreshes and refreshes and refreshes. After every retrieval, after every failed phone call, after the comedown off the hormones and drugs there it is again. Waiting.
I blink back the memory as Leo answers the phone.
“Hey,” he says. I can hear the flood of city sounds behind him. “We’re reversing. I can’t really talk.”
“Oh, OK,” I say. “How is it going?”
I hear his voice get distant. “I don’t think we need it. Does lighting want it?” Then he’s back. “Hey, babe, I’ll call you later, OK?”
He doesn’t wait for my answer before hanging up.
I take out my computer and go through my emails methodically. In fifteen minutes flat I’ve answered them all, plus attached two documents to our bookkeeper, Peter, and sent the requisite 1099s a client requested for two ill-advised part-time employees she definitely cannot afford.
The truth is, being a CPA is a little like being a teacher. Not in practice—we are not impacting the world, at least, not with any great significance—but they are alike in the schedule. There are crunch periods—finals, tax season, but the summer is mostly off.Even Wagner doesn’t really go into the office all that much from June to Labor Day. I like the cyclical nature of my job.
I can hear the house has quieted. I take my laptop back down with me, hoping the kitchen has cleared.
