Expecting: A Novel

by Ann Lewis Hamilton

  “I’d like that.” Hooray, no tongues.

  They’d gone to All Saints, married at an Episcopal church in Reno (Laurie’s hometown), and, when they moved to Sherman Oaks, found another Episcopalian church close by. But these days Laurie’s relationship with God is on serious hiatus. For how long? At least until she gets past the anger stage.

  The only way she’s found to avoid anger is by sleeping. Work for Grace, come home, nap. When she’s asleep, she’s pregnant again. Waking up is the worst time of the day, the slow slide of dream state to reality. Nope, not pregnant. A look at the clock. How long before I can go back to sleep?

  ***

  Stage three. Bargaining. “If I get pregnant again, I’ll be a better wife. And a better friend,” Laurie tells Grace. “I won’t say fuck anymore.”

  Grace nods. “You could join the Salvation Army, stand in front of a kettle, and ring a bell at Christmastime.”

  “Maybe.” Laurie sighs. “If only there weren’t so many children lurking out there. I hate that.”

  At the mall it must be Discount If You Bring a Stroller Day. Laurie hurries to Bloomingdale’s, past the play structure. Mothers, nannies, a few dads, a thousand children. She watches a child sneeze on the nose of a plastic cow and another child runs over and gives the cow a kiss. When I’m a mother, I won’t let my children play in a germ-infested, unsanitary place like this, she vows.

  And she realizes, hallelujah, she’s ready to move on to the next stage.

  ***

  Stage Four is depression. Laurie doesn’t like that; it seems like a step in the wrong direction. She could ask Alan what he thinks, but he’s been spending a lot of time at his office. At his office so he can avoid coming home, Laurie suspects. Not that she’s a joy to be around. She wears the same pair of jeans every day, thinks about touching up her highlights, decides there’s no point.

  When she sees Alan, she waits for him to say something. A dumb joke would be okay, she wants to tell him. But she doesn’t say that. And he doesn’t make a joke. And their lack of connection and communication, shared baby loss dance continues.

  She reads constantly. As long as the books don’t involve pregnancy. World War II novels about Anzio or Guadalcanal. Nonfiction about the sinking of the Andrea Doria, the fire on the Morro Castle.

  ***

  “Are you sure you want to go to Kristi’s baby shower?” Grace asks Laurie.

  “Yes,” Laurie says. Grace and Kristi and Laurie met a few years ago in a book club that lasted three months when one of the women insisted on only reading Maeve Binchy. Kristi is Laurie’s age. “Plump and proud,” she calls herself. Her husband is as round as Kristi is. “Well-rounded,” he says, patting his tummy.

  Laurie thinks she’ll be able to manage a baby shower; she’s been okay around Grace and Emilie. Grace’s husband, Hal, brings Emilie by the office sometimes, and Laurie only occasionally feels a catch in her throat, like when she watches Hal and Grace squeeze Emilie between them and make “an Emilie sandwich.”

  Kristi’s baby shower is held at a house in the Hollywood Hills with views of downtown L.A. “On a clear day, you can see Catalina,” a woman says to Laurie as she hands her a mimosa. There are dozens of blue balloons everywhere, a three-tiered cake with Monsters, Inc. characters on top and “It’s a Boy Monster!” piped around the side. Kristi is hugely pregnant and squeals each time she unwraps another adorable, infant-sized sleeper or baby blanket. She oohs and ahhs over Laurie’s gift: a matching sweater and hat set with a friendly bear print. “Ben is going to look like a little bear cub,” Kristi says as she holds up the hat with tiny round ears.

  Laurie smiles at Kristi and doesn’t tell her the gift was sent to her by a Chicago cousin for her first pregnancy. Laurie couldn’t stand having it around the house, and regifting doesn’t count if you’ve had multiple miscarriages, right?

  She makes it through silly shower games that involve sipping wine from baby bottles and trying to diaper dolls while blindfolded. But she’s not unhappy when Grace announces it’s time to leave.

  “I think you handled that most impressively,” Grace says in the car. “How many mimosas did you have? Eight?”

  “Two. I’m not sure I can deal with another shower for a while.”

  “You were super brave to show up for this one.” Grace nods at Laurie. “Unless…you could always go to a shower and give a wildly inappropriate gift.” Grace thinks. “A grenade. Or a switchblade. Every baby needs a switchblade.”

  Laurie laughs. “A hot melt glue gun. A bow and arrow set—baby’s first eye patch.”

  Grace is laughing too. “Razor wire. A big bag of buttons. Straight pins.”

  “A pit bull.”

  ***

  Laurie’s feeling better. It helps to have a sense of humor about loss. I can beat this, she tells herself. She runs into a friend at the dry cleaner and Laurie’s put on a clean pair of jeans today and made a hair appointment. Her friend asks if she’s heard the news—their mutual friend Rachel is having twins. Twins! Can you imagine?

  Laurie smiles, feels her lips sticking to her teeth, tells the friend she can’t wait until the baby shower.

  Lightning rods. Surgical scissors. A bottle of yummy antifreeze.

  ***

  Stage Five. Acceptance. Not easy—acceptance feels remote, light years away, but she’ll try. Look toward the future, not dwell on the past. She’ll comfort herself with clichés, like toasty warm blankets on a cold stormy night. And sure enough, her depression begins to lift.

  Alan is still quiet. Quiet at home, quiet at a visit to Dr. Liu’s office where Dr. Liu talks about recurrent pregnancy loss and tells them they could keep trying the old-fashioned way—he smiles here—or they could see a fertility specialist.

  “What do you think?” Laurie asks Alan when they get home.

  He doesn’t answer right away. “A test-tube baby?” he finally says. “Is that what we have to do?”

  “I expect the fertility doctor will tell us. And I’d rather have a test-tube baby than no baby at all, wouldn’t you?”

  Alan hesitates. “Of course. Sure. But the idea that we’re not in control of this anymore, that we have to depend on outside people, it’s just…” He trails off.

  “I know.”

  “I want it to be normal,” Alan says.

  “Fertility treatments are normal. We’re lucky they have them now. What did they do thirty years ago?”

  Alan doesn’t say anything and Laurie wonders if Alan would be happier living thirty years ago. He wouldn’t have to change his wardrobe.

  He is looking at Laurie. “But is it okay if we keep trying the other way?”

  “The other way?”

  “A roll in the hay. Bouncy bouncy. A little meat injection—” Alan begins to grin. And Laurie realizes she hasn’t seen him smile like that in weeks.

  “Meat injection?” Laurie laughs out loud. “Okay,” she says.

  “So right now. We’ll show ’em we don’t need any stinking fertility doctors.” Alan wiggles his eyebrows up and down.

  “What? Right now? I have to make dinner.”

  “We’ll order pizza. Come on, you’ll be the appetizer.” He grabs her hand and leads her to the bedroom.

  ***

  At the office on Monday morning, Laurie is supposed to be searching online for bowling alleys in the Valley. “Something vintage. Or with a ghost,” Grace suggests. Instead, Laurie is thinking about Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. What did she look like? Thick braids wrapped on either side of her head like Princess Leia? Laurie goes to Wikipedia and is surprised to see a photo of a tan, handsome woman with short hair. Born in Switzerland, one of triplets. Naturally her mother was fertile. Everyone is fertile and carries a child to term unless they’re Laurie.

  She moved to the United States in 1958 to work and continue her studies in New York. She had
four miscarriages.

  Four? No wonder Elisabeth Kübler-Ross knew about stages of grief. After two she must’ve thought, Uh-oh. And how do you try again after three? Did people continue to tell her, “Don’t worry, it’ll work out next time”? Did Elisabeth Kübler-Ross snap back at them, “Yeah, what the hell? Maybe the fifth fucking time is the charm.”

  But she had two children. After all that, a boy and a girl.

  Laurie touches the photo on her computer screen. That’s the message Laurie is supposed to take from this. After all, not everybody died on the Hindenburg or the Andrea Doria. Some people are survivors. Like Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.

  Like Laurie.

  Alan

  The fertility clinic is in Beverly Hills. The waiting room has lots of dark wood bookshelves and Alan whispers to Laurie he bets the books are fake and wants to pull them out, but Laurie tells him to sit down. She is nervous; he watches her twist the wedding ring around and around on her finger.

  Dr. Julian’s office is more dark wood, possibly more fake books. Dr. Julian leans against his desk. He has a Ralph Lauren tan and he’s wearing Italian loafers with no socks; late forties, with short, silver hair and a jazz patch. He speaks softly and confidently about multiple miscarriages, possibly caused by uterine anomalies, fibroids. All are treatable.

  “But you want to know how to have a baby. That’s why you’re here.” Dr. Julian puts his hands together, making a little “here is the church” building with his fingers. “A diagnosis can be difficult. Sometimes we never find out the cause. But we’ll do every test available.” He nods at Laurie. “You and your partner.”

  We’re not playing tennis, Alan wants to say. I’m her husband, not her partner.

  “The sooner you start the testing, the better. And that’s why you’ve come to me,” Dr. Julian says. “Because I’m the one who can give you a baby.”

  His tan is fake, Alan decides, imagining Dr. Julian on a tanning bed. Flipping over when the timer goes off.

  ***

  “You seemed grumpy in Dr. Julian’s office,” Laurie says when they get in the car. “Didn’t you like him?”

  “No. ‘I can give you a baby.’ Who says stuff like that?”

  “Maybe he can give us a baby. That’s why we went there, right?”

  Alan sighs. “I suppose if Dr. God can deliver—no pun intended—we have to put up with him.”

  Laurie moves close and nuzzles into his neck. “I hope we have all boys. Who look just like you.” She pauses. “Only sexier. More buff.”

  “You don’t get more buff than me.” Alan flexes his bicep and Laurie giggles.

  At dinner, Laurie runs her finger around the rim of her wineglass. “There’s also adoption,” she says carefully.

  “I think adoption would be great. We’ve talked about it before.” Before seems like centuries ago, back when they were dating and imaging their future—how they’d marry and their children would pop out, one after the other. No miscarriages or complications would be involved. Alan and Laurie, their charmed lives. Adoption was mentioned, but almost as a fallback. The thing you do “just in case” or once you have two or three of your own.

  Alan realizes how shallow that sounds now. Shallow and stupid. “Your own.” As if adopted children don’t belong to you? Aren’t part of your family? And yet… “But a stranger’s baby?” Alan says to Laurie. “Suppose the mother is a meth addict, or we do an open adoption where we’re always in contact with the birth parents. Is that what we want? Sharing a child?”

  Laurie sips her wine. “There are risks in having biological children too. Who knows what’ll happen? Babies don’t come with a warranty.”

  Alan nods at Laurie. “Yeah. But shouldn’t we let Dr. God try his Dr. God thing first? Haven’t you always wanted to have somebody inject dye into your fallopian tubes?”

  “No,” she says. “My dream has been to jerk off in a doctor’s office so people can examine my sperm.”

  She grins at him and he has to laugh.

  And then he thinks about it. “So…how exactly are they going to examine my sperm?”

  Laurie smiles at him again. He doesn’t laugh this time.

  ***

  Alan enjoys being married to Laurie because she’s his best friend—and not in that fake what-they-say-on-eHarmony-ads way, but in a real way. Sometimes she reminds him of Matt, his best friend when he was growing up—the perfect hang out, share jokes, belch-the-national-anthem-with pal. His relationship with Laurie is like that. Minus the belching. Plus, he gets to have sex with her.

  He told his parents when he was nine he was never getting married because if he did, he wouldn’t see Matt anymore.

  “Matt and me, we’re going to visit every country. There are almost two hundred, isn’t that incredible?”

  “Incredible,” his mother said.

  She didn’t believe him. But he was sure he’d never find a girl who was fearless, who’d eat bugs and sleep on floors with spiders crawling on her face. What girl would do that?

  On their first date, a Dodgers game, Laurie told Alan one of her dreams was to visit every country in the world, even the hard to get into ones, like North Korea and Cuba. Alan had found his female Matt.

  ***

  The night before Laurie has her first test, he has a nightmare. He dreamed he was in Cuba with Laurie and she was wearing a baby carrier, and when he bent over to look at the baby, inside the carrier he was surprised to see a large bottle of dark Cuban rum.

  “A chip off the old block,” Laurie said to him. “Not to mention one hundred proof.” She pulled out her diaper bag to reveal it was stuffed with cocktail glasses and fresh limes. “Would you like a Cuban daiquiri? They’re quite tasty.”

  When he wakes up, he thinks about telling Laurie the dream but reconsiders. He’ll keep his freaked-out, rum-bottle dream to himself.

  Laurie goes through her testing—ultrasound, X-rays, hysteroscopy, blood work. Nothing shows up. Alan does blood work as well, and when that’s done, it’s time for the sperm sample. They say he can come into the doctor’s office or bring in a specimen from home.

  “Specimen doesn’t seem like the right word,” he tells Laurie.

  “What’s better? Your ‘bodily essence’?” Laurie suggests.

  A clinician at the fertility clinic gives him a small plastic bottle and a paper bag and tells him morning semen is best. He imagines collecting his specimen, driving to Beverly Hills, and getting mugged by a kid who takes the bag, looks inside, and says, “Whoa, what’s this? It looks like jiz.”

  “It’s my bodily essence,” he tells him before he’s pistol-whipped into unconsciousness.

  And how does he go about collecting his specimen at home? Laurie volunteers to buy a sexy French maid outfit.

  “You think this is funny,” he tells her.

  “No,” she says. “But we have to promise we’ll laugh. Even at the lowest point.”

  “We haven’t had the lowest point already?”

  “I hope so. Are you sure about the sexy French maid outfit?” She winks at him. “Ooh la la.”

  ***

  The morning he’s supposed to deliver the specimen, he goes into the bathroom with the plastic cup, sits on the side of the tub. Who should he think about? Laurie? He closes his eyes. He remembers watching her take a shower, unaware he’s come into the bathroom. She rubs soap up and down her arms, across her chest, under her breasts. She’s smiling, unselfconscious. She might be singing. He tries to hear the words, but he can’t make them out. Smooth and white and soapy, her body is as attractive as it was when they met. Maybe more attractive.

  He opens his eyes and remembers hearing Laurie crying in the bathroom after the first miscarriage. Or was it the second? He’s not sure.

  He doesn’t want to do this, be alone in a bathroom with a vial and a ridiculous job to do. But there’s
no way around it. It might be easier if he doesn’t think about Laurie—not that he doesn’t find her desirable. She’s the most desirable woman he knows. But if he thinks of her, he’ll see the pain in her eyes. He needs someone more anonymous. Neutral. If he could track down a Victoria’s Secret catalogue, that could work. There’s probably one in the house. Or the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. He likes how they paint suits on the models. He imagines having a job like that, trying to carefully maneuver a brush around a nipple.

  Just when he’s considering going out to the den, something slides under the bathroom door. A Maxim magazine with Jessica Alba on the cover. When he looks more closely, he can see Laurie has stuck a photo of her own face on Jessica Alba’s body. From behind the door, he can hear Laurie laughing.

  “Not funny,” he calls out to her. “I’m taking this seriously.”

  Her laughter trails off down the hallway.

  ***

  It’s good she’s laughing now. But suppose they have a serious problem? He originally assumed the miscarriages were related to Laurie, but the problem could be his. What will they find in his sperm? He’s got to have enough. Millions, right? And at least his sperm was okay before; it’s not as if he’s shooting blanks.

  But there could be something inside his sperm that doesn’t work or isn’t compatible with Laurie. He’s heard about complications with antibodies. Is that what this is about? And the solution will be something easy, like taking vitamins—or having more sex.

  Suppose he has bad antibodies and needs to have some kind of penis surgery? Something involving a glass tube they stick up your dick. And pull-y things they put on your balls. And the worst part—to do it right, they can’t use anesthesia.

  What happens if he finds out his sperm count is five? And his motility is zero? There’s no way he could have impregnated Laurie. So the first two pregnancies—Dr. God will shake his head at Alan and say like Maury Povich, “Clearly you were not the father.”

  ***

  A knock on the door. “Need another magazine?”

  He looks down at the Maxim and realizes he’s been reading an article on “Motorcycle Mayhem.”