“If we can’t use something, someone else can,” he’s often reminding Clementine. As a reuse architect, he practices what he preaches both at work and at home. But I didn’t want that box in the house, despite knowing I would soon need it. Why would this month be any different from the last twelve, or the twelve before that?
There’s a knock at the door and I jump.
“Dinner’s ready, Tilly,” Wyatt says. His voice is low, deep, full ofthe southern drawl that still melts my insides. I raced up to our bathroom as soon as Clementine and I got home, Wyatt’s train still some minutes behind ours. There hasn’t been an opportunity for an in-person greeting yet with my husband, which is good. Even though he never makes me feel broken, somehow always says the right thing, and has the best damn shoulder for crying on, I need a few more minutes to myself.
“Almost done,” I reply. Wyatt knows tomorrow is test day—it’s in his calendar too. But after all these years, he never asks me outright about any of it. He relies on the information delivered to our joint calendar, telling us when to have intercourse, scheduled like any other appointment. I don’t want him to see the tampon on the countertop. To understand what it means—not yet.
“Clem’s barely holding it together,” he adds, chuckling on the other side of the door. “She’s already put the candles on the cake.”
Happy birthday, Tilly.Today I turn thirty-nine. Everything is supposed to be different than it is. Poppy and I were supposed to be celebrating together. “Out in a jiffy,” I say through the still-closed door, and Wyatt retreats.
I know Clementine will be helping Shelby set the table for my birthday dinner. Maybe pruning sprigs of herbs from our indoor vertical garden for the broiling chicken. Stanley, my mother-in-law Shelby’s rescue dog, is likely whining, overexcited about the chicken. Clementine usually sneaks him a bite.
Setting the unopened tampon to the side, I press my palms into the countertop and turn on the tap—which runs for only five seconds to conserve water—and wait for the predictable tears to come. But they don’t, which makes me even sadder.
“Why don’t you get the tattoo?” Wyatt asks after we’ve gone to bed, when I confess (as emotionless as possible) that my period arrived. The fiddle-leaf fig tree in the corner of the room glows softly as Wyatt envelops me in a bear hug and I try not to cry, keeping my eyes fixed on the luminescent leaves.
It’s one of my birthday gifts, the fig, and something I’ve been wanting all year. The plant’s bioluminescence reminds me of the glow of the blue-green lava lamp I had as a teenager. I wish I still had that lamp, but it was a relic, far too energy hungry for today’s regulations. I wonder how it was repurposed, or if it simply ended up in the trash.
“Maybe…I’ll think about it,” is my response to Wyatt’s question about the tattoo. In Toronto, where the Canadian regulatory body has yet to approve this technology, it’s not even a consideration. But the biomedical tattoos are popular here, especially the fertility trackers that have become commonplace. There’s even talk of them being mandated soon.
I’ve so far avoided the fertility tattoo, made up of three triangular-shaped dots that turn purple during ovulation and seafoam greenwhen the pregnancy hormone is detected. Wyatt has asked about it before, but he’s pushier tonight, which both surprises and grates on me. Ultimately, this should be my decision—my husband used to agree. But I suspect he too has grown tired of our monthly routine, of my resistance. Of the disappointment.
“You should try it, babe,” he says. “Nick told me it’s more precise than your watch, and the latest version ups your chance of pregnancy by twenty-one percent.” This last part is delivered with enthusiasm, and I can’t help but smile at my husband’s golden retriever energy.
Nick Rojas is Wyatt’s best friend, but he’s also biased, as he heads up Savannah’s pro-fertility governmental program, MotherWise. Nick also believes every woman of childbearing age should have the tattoo implanted. Nick can be kind of an asshole.
“Besides, it only lasts for six months,” Wyatt says. “Maybe by then we won’t need it anymore.” I almost cave, acknowledging I’m not alone in my desperation for this to work.
However, I can’t bear another thing to pay attention to. Another reminder of my current inability to conceive, despite having done so twice before. Which is what I say a moment later, because I’m not getting the tattoo, and I don’t like lying to Wyatt.
He drops it, but I know we’ll have this same conversation next month if nothing changes.
—
The pandemic that led to the alarming US population decline arrived like a whisper. Most people had no clue they’d contracted the virus. At least not until men started showing up at doctor’s offices and fertility centers, wondering why they were unable to start, or grow, their families. Soon it was discovered that these young, should-be-virile men had inexplicably low sperm counts. In some cases, no sperm was found in the semen samples. It was then the scope of the problem came to light.
The scientists hadn’t learned this yet, but MorA (Mosquito-BorneOligospermia-Related Ailment deemed too tedious)—carried by theAedesgenus mosquitoes—targeted sperm, altering its DNA integrity. Because there were no physical manifestations of the infection, it went unnoticed.
Sperm banks were decimated after couples failed to have children on their own. Scientists and medical experts argued in circles about the cause. Then a scientist studying mosquito-borne diseases accidentally discovered a new virus. When it came out that this virus was believed to be the cause of the male infertility problem, everyone panicked. Pools, ponds, and fountains were drained, and people spent more time indoors. Eventually, experts figured out how to genetically modify the mosquito species that carried MorA, eradicating the virus, but human live birth rates continued to plummet.
In what felt like a race against time to boost population, the government created aggressive campaigns focused on increasing birth rates. While the men were most affected by the virus itself, it was the women who would bear the burden of everything that came after. Women were expected to become mothers, and mothers were expected to keep having children.
Wyatt was thankfully spared, the two of us not yet living in the United States when MorA took hold. We tested negative for the virus, Wyatt’s sperm deemed “excellent, more than up for the task.” My advancing age—a pregnancy in one’s late thirties deemed “geriatric”—was initially considered a possible issue, but tests revealed a still robust supply of healthy eggs. We simply couldn’t get pregnant, and no doctor or fertility expert could explain it. Including the one we visited last month.
Your body knows what to do, it has done this before, the doctor said, patting my knee as she offered a paternalistic smile.Relax! Have some fun, but try to stick to the schedule.
Having fun and sticking to the recommended “schedule” were diametrically opposed, but I knew better than to bring that up. The digital prescription note arrived on my watch a moment later (a glass ofwine, intercourse every other day, make each other laugh!), and I managed to hold back tears until we were out of the lab.
Shush, Tilly, you are no such thing, Wyatt said, when I apologized again for being barren. We stood there waiting for the elevator, and he wrapped me up in his arms. He murmured maybe weshouldtry to relax, have more fun. I nodded, though I didn’t understand what that really meant. On the train home we discussed IVF…maybe it was time? Fertility treatments are subsidized but come with a plethora of requirements, including the sharing of health records—something I’m unwilling to do, for reasons I’ve not shared with Wyatt.
Wyatt and I went quiet after that, him watching the news and me staring out the train’s window, my lips silently whispering a prayer that Clementine would not be an only child.
Much later I would remember that prayer and wonder what (or who?) had been listening. I could never have imagined the price for getting exactly what I wanted.
“Clem, where’s your water thingy?”
I’m crouched at the kitchen island, checking through the drawers, searching for Clementine’s HydraPod. She’s at a new school this year, and even though it’s only the second week, there have been a couple of hiccups—including “us” (me) forgetting the HydraPod twice already. I rummage further and my annoyance ramps up along with my grumbling. I don’t need a conversation with the school’s administrator over this.
