Ilena stared at the photographs on the wall of the fertility doctor’s office. Babies of all sizes and shapes in varying degrees of open-mouthed wailing.
“Are we actually doing this?” Ilena said.
Jonah reached for her hand. “We’re exploring our options. Unless you don’t want to?”
“Do you not want to?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Me neither.”
“Okay, then. Options. Exploring. The choice, ultimately, is ours. And remember, we define our choices, not the other way around.” Jonah waved the fertility treatment brochure at her. “And hey, good news. We can still have sex during ovarian stimulation. At least until your ovaries expand.”
“Expand? They’re going to expand? Will I need a bigger belt?”
Jonah pretends to study the brochure intently. “Hmm... this suggests you simply walk around naked. Airflow is good.”
Ilena tried to smile, to laugh, but she couldn’t because shewas failing. She let go of Jonah’s hand. “This is a lot, and it hasn’t even started.”
Jonah shifted in the chair to face her. “We’re lucky though. To live here, in a state where these treatments are covered by insurance and we couldn’t ask for better doctors and hospitals. Your eggs, my sperm, this is top-tier, five-star, champagne and caviar, Four Seasons all the way.”
He was trying so hard, and her heart nearly burst with love for him. “I know all that, and I’m grateful for it.” Ilena closed her eyes, thinking of all the pregnancy tests she’d taken over the past few months—so sure so many times, and yet all those single lines on the plastic tests added up to nothing. “It’s just... a part of me is disappointed in myself.”
Jonah winced as if he’d been hit by a brick. “We don’t even know if something’s wrong yet, let alone if it’s attributable to one of us.”
“I’m sure it’s not you.”
“And I’m sure it’s not you either.”
“It’s us, then? We aren’t meant to be parents?”
Jonah ran his hand through his hair, sending his cowlicks in a thousand different directions. “All I know iswe’remeant to be. That’s enough for me.”
The door to the office opened, and in came the smiling woman who would help determine their future. As the doctor sat at the desk in front of them, Jonah searched Ilena’s eyes, waiting for a response.
“Me too,” Ilena said, not realizing how much weight two little words could hold when they became a lie.
26
Mallory
Sunday Evening
Three DaysAfterthe Outing
From her bedroom closet, Mallory extracts a boxy fuchsia blouse and wide-legged pants, striped in pink and white. “Seriously?” She holds up the offensive pieces. “Is she part clown?”
On the floor by her feet, Harley wags his tail.
“I’ll consider that agreement.” She riffles through the hangers, past sundresses with fruit on them—a banana, seriously,Mallory?—and light-wash jeans and lacy cardigans that skim the floor. There’s no consistency here. Soccer mom from 1985, children’s librarian, a seventy-five-year-old widow. Her eyes widen. “Think ‘I’ve got nothing to wear’ would get me out of this?”
Harley rolls onto his back.
“Yeah, me neither,” Mallory mutters.
And her mind returns to her dad. A dad who calls her “MallieMoo.” A dad who loves her mom. A dad who didn’t leave.
A dad who could have her arrested.
