Lecretia's Choice

by Matt Vickers

  ‘If you want to leave me, I’ll give you half of everything,’ she said. ‘You can move out. I’ll give you money. You could start a new life and meet someone else. You could still have a family. I want you to be able to have children. It doesn’t seem right that I’m stopping you from doing that.’

  She seemed serious. In my mind’s eye, I could see a long corridor with a light at the end. Every door along its length burst open, and through each I could see other possibilities, away from here, free of fertility treatments and free of New Zealand, free of despair. I could walk through any of these doors with a few simple, heartbreaking words. Lecretia had put me at the threshold of a life alone, a life different from this, and possibly better, but a life without her.

  I opened my eyes.

  ‘No,’ I said, and every door but one slammed shut again, as quickly as they had opened. ‘No matter what happens, Lecretia, I want to be with you.’

  Chapter 8

  WE RESUMED OUR IVF treatments again at the fertility clinic, but now we had exhausted our publicly funded options, and would need to pay the costs ourselves. A cycle of IVF, with all the procedures and monitoring and storage and tests and drugs, costs a little over $10,000, a sum that we could manage, just, through our savings and thrifty living. There was nothing else that we wanted to spend our money on.

  In March 2009 we began our third cycle, the miscarriage still a raw and painful memory. But we found hope and resumed the vitamins and healthy living that seemed to have helped last time. Lecretia only produced seven viable eggs, four fewer than the previous cycle. Still, two of those were fertilised and two were transferred.

  The tests were negative at the end of the month. She did not become pregnant.

  Lecretia didn’t let these trials affect her professional life, though, putting them to one side when she was at work. She was enjoying her role at the Law Commission. She had already completed, under Geoffrey Palmer’s direction, a review of the War Pensions Act, recommending to government a fairer deal for New Zealand’s veterans. She visited the Ohakea air force base and was taken up in an Iroquois helicopter, whose pilot decided that the seduction of her shriek was such that he executed a series of evasive manoeuvres to elicit more of them.

  One day she visited the attorney-general, Christopher Finlayson, in his office at the parliament buildings with Geoffrey. Mr Finlayson is a fearsomely intelligent man, and fastidiously tidy. His office, by all accounts, is immaculate. When you enter parliament you’re asked to wear a sticker that indicates whether you’re a visitor, a tourist, or from the press. Lecretia sat in front of Mr Finlayson’s mahogany desk and listened as Geoffrey and the attorney-general discussed points of law.

  Lecretia’s sticker came loose from her suit jacket, and cartwheeled through the air, landing sticky side down on the desk. Neither Geoffrey nor the attorney-general noticed, as they were deep in conversation, but Lecretia was horrified. She went to retrieve the sticker, but when she went to pull it away from the desk, it remained resolutely stuck to the varnished surface. In panic she used her fingernail to dislodge it, hidden behind her forearm, but it would not come free.

  Geoffrey stood to leave, and Lecretia could only follow. She shook hands with the attorney-general and departed with Geoffrey, mortified that she’d left evidence of her visit.

  In 2009 Lecretia began work on the Sale of Liquor Act, reviewing the laws in New Zealand that specify how alcohol is marketed and sold. She liaised with people representing hospitality groups, liquor companies, emergency services and addiction groups. Her chief discovery, after looking at the evidence from other countries and New Zealand, was the huge social and economic harm caused by alcohol consumption, and that the most effective tools the government had at its disposal for dealing with that harm were reducing opening hours and increasing taxes. She knew these weren’t popular recommendations, but the evidence was clear, and she was convinced. As part of her research she accompanied Geoffrey on a ride-along with emergency services on Friday night in Courtenay Place, Wellington’s central party zone, where we had first met. They were joined by Cate Brett, an impressive and intelligent journalist and editor who was brought on board to balance their legal horsepower with her enviable media savvy. Lecretia and Cate took an instant liking to each other and became firm friends.

  With her new working hours, Lecretia and I had time to cook and eat together, to go out and to keep the flame of our love kindled. We travelled to Abel Tasman National Park, and I took some of my favourite photos of her there, on one of the deserted beaches at sunset. We kayaked around the coast together. She sought out dancing lessons and cooking classes for us.

  Lecretia was also regularly going to the gym, and she was becoming very fit. She did aerobics classes and weights and had a personal trainer who helped her with her regimen and advised her on nutrition.

  In the middle of that year, we began our fourth cycle. This time there were six eggs, one less than the previous month. Again, two eggs were fertilised and implanted, one slightly more promising-looking than the other.

  Lecretia got pregnant. We were filled with hope again, but this time we remained wary. Before we’d even had time for a scan, the foetus was declared unviable and we prepared ourselves for a second miscarriage. The fertility doctors wanted to perform a biopsy on the foetus, to learn more about why Lecretia’s pregnancies weren’t coming to term. She was dispensed drugs to bring on the release of the foetus, and she took these at home with me. We were given instructions to collect the foetus and bring it to the clinic.

  The experience was awful. After taking the drugs, Lecretia complained of pains in her abdomen and pelvis, cramps and aches, and she felt nauseous. While she sat in the bathroom I crouched beside her with a flimsy purple ice cream container. After some time, a pinky-red-brown mass was expelled from her, while she wept and pushed her palm against the wall for support. We were confused and frightened and not completely confident that what we’d collected was the foetus that had caused Lecretia so much agony. But I transferred it to the medical container we’d been given and took it to the clinic. For all that effort, the tests didn’t turn up anything unusual. It was just a standard unviable pregnancy, with no chromosomal abnormalities. We had hardened ourselves to this possibility, but it still hurt. Our window of opportunity was closing. Lecretia was thirty-seven, an age where our chances of getting pregnant were becoming ever smaller.

  After the second failed pregnancy, I decided I wanted a change of scene on the work front too. I was doing well at the web design agency I was working at, but a couple of my colleagues had left to join a company called Xero, an online accounting software start-up based in Wellington. It was still early days, but the company had audaciously gone public in 2007, barely a year after it was formed. I was interviewed and hired, joining them as a business analyst in September 2009.

  Just before Christmas that year, Lecretia was working in her office when she suffered a fall. She broke her left wrist and had to wear a cast. It was my first experience of having Lecretia somewhat dependent on me. She required help putting on a bra and dressing, and I needed to do all of the housework and chores. It wasn’t a problem, though Lecretia’s high standards meant that certain tasks had to be redone and some cooking thrown out.

  Lecretia hated being dependent. It was against her character. She was a doer and a perfectionist. I rarely complained about caring for her, and she rarely complained about my help, but her frustration was clear. She wanted to get back to the gym so she could keep fit for our next cycle, but she compensated with various floor exercises.

  Once her wrist had healed, we had our fifth cycle of IVF in early 2010. This time, there were five eggs, one fewer than last time, but again, two embryos were fertilised and implanted. Again, the two-week wait, and again, the results were negative.

  Lecretia quietly reported her progress to her online community. We were getting used to negative results. Each setback remained heartbreaking, but we’d agreed, almost without talking about
it, that there was still a lot of good in our lives, and that whatever the future held for us, we would stay happy.

  Chapter 9

  WE PLANNED A trip to Europe, to visit Lecretia’s friends and her brother Jeremy in London. It would be the first time Lecretia had returned to Europe since she had worked there, and the first time we would travel there together. We decided to go to Italy and then to Spain, meeting Jeremy and his wife, Kate, in Andalusia, which we would explore together.

  Lecretia’s legal expertise had been achieving notice in Wellington circles. When the incumbent counsel was planning to step down as the justice adviser at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Geoffrey wanted to put Lecretia’s name forward as a candidate for a three-month secondment into the office. It was Lecretia’s dream job: operating at the centre of power and making full use of her legal skills to advise the government of the day. The thought of it terrified her, but before heading off overseas she agreed to let Geoffrey put her name forward for the role.

  After a brief stay in London, we travelled to Rome, and Lecretia delighted in showing me what she described as her favourite city. She took me to the Trevi Fountain, the Forum, the Pantheon, and the Galleria Borghese, and we braved the crowds at the Vatican to see the Sistine Chapel. I was overcome with the beauty of the place.

  The scale of the Vatican forces you to think about divinity. It is either the truth, or the biggest compounding of lies in all of history. What I sensed was not holiness or grace, but more its opposite: the idea that nothing is real and everything is permitted, that the world is made up of storytellers and listeners, and that stories are the most powerful force in the universe. They can intertwine with one another, becoming stronger, creating patterns and motifs that become part of traditions or belief systems until truth is indistinguishable from fiction. Stories can compel people to go to war, to act against their interests, to sacrifice themselves, to hate or to love others, or to justify unspeakable acts in the name of good. Each of us is like a thread woven into that tapestry of stories and the Vatican is like a giant knot through which millions of threads run. Though those threads might be spun from lies and fiction, there is no denying that the knot exists, warping the fabric for all of us.

  We visited friends in Turin, and were invited to a family lunch outside of the city. We ate outdoors in the sun at a long table under a shady tree. They served us local dishes, including carne cruda, which is minced meat, served blood-red and raw, seasoned with lemon and garlic. I was also brave enough to try tripe with tomato.

  From there we spent a few days on the coast of the Ligurian Sea in Levanto, before exploring the Cinque Terre. From Corniglia, the third of the five villages, you can look out across the blue Ligurian water, but it is impossible to tell where the sea ends and the sky begins. Then we went north to Florence, and stayed at an apartment a few blocks from the Duomo. I was reading Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, and instantly fell in love with Florence in a way that I hadn’t with Rome.

  One morning, Lecretia prepared for her Skype interview for the position in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. I set her up on our laptop and she spoke directly to her tribunal of interviewers. I wasn’t present for the conversation, but I returned after an hour at the small museum at Dante Alighieri’s birthplace.

  ‘How did it go?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lecretia said. ‘But now I really want the job.’

  ‘You’ll get it,’ I said. ‘You’re perfect for it.’

  ‘I don’t have the experience.’

  ‘I’ve never seen you fail at work, darling. You’re an amazing lawyer.’

  ‘But this is a much bigger role—I’m not sure I’m ready.’

  ‘No one is ever ready to take a step like that the first time. It’s a choice. Step up and give it your best shot, or someone else will.’

  ‘Well, there’s no guarantee I’ll get it.’

  ‘No, but I believe in you.’

  Soon after that we found out that Lecretia had been appointed, and she would begin as soon as she returned from holiday. She was thrilled. We celebrated by wandering through Florence, enjoying the paintings in the Uffizi Gallery and crossing the Ponte Vecchio. We had lunch in a little wine cellar, and bravely ordered bruschetta with lard and honey, which turned out to be absolutely delicious.

  With Italy behind us, we travelled to Spain, and Lecretia loved luxuriating on the broad and sandy Barcelona beaches. We explored the Sagrada Família, Gaudí’s famous cathedral-in-progress. We made a promise to return one day, when it was finished, in 2026. We then travelled to Granada to meet with Jeremy and Kate. We visited the Alhambra and sampled the tapas bars. We went to the steaming public baths at Hammam Al Ándalus.

  In Seville, we wandered around the labyrinthine streets. Lecretia really struggled with them. I often walked faster than her and would find myself charging ahead, then having to turn back to wait for her to catch up. There were moments when she would stand still, looking around for directions, waiting for me to come and rescue her.

  Was this the first sign something was wrong? It is hard to know—I had always been the navigator. We didn’t encounter the same problems in Córdoba or Ronda or Málaga, but she would stop and ask where we were, sometimes, prompting me to pull out my map and check we were still on track.

  We returned to New Zealand, and her new job, in July 2010. She threw herself into it, informing me after the first day that she’d had a security briefing and that she couldn’t share any parliamentary business with anyone, even me. But I know how much she enjoyed those three months, and how well she performed. In October 2010, the chief executive of the DPMC, Maarten Wevers, sent a letter to Geoffrey at the Law Commission praising her performance, singling out her contribution to a range of urgent legal issues arising from the Canterbury earthquake, a contribution for which he said he was especially thankful. ‘If we were ever to need someone in future for a similar assignment,’ he added, ‘I’m sure Lecretia would be on our list of persons to approach.’

  Lecretia returned to the Law Commission, but set a goal of returning to the DPMC one day in the role that she’d held for a few short months. And the door was open to her to do that. She’d seen her future.

  We resumed our lives, and elected to opt for one more round of IVF. In this cycle there were only four eggs, and only one was fertilised. It didn’t look great, but it was implanted, and it didn’t take. Her doctors were no closer to knowing why. Though there was nothing wrong with the blastocysts, they just wouldn’t develop into pregnancies. After exhausting all other possibilities, the doctors decided that Lecretia’s eggs must be the problem and that our best chance was to search for a donor.

  While contemplating this, Lecretia took up classes in cake decoration. She was learning how to craft flowers out of sugar. She used to bring her creations home: delicate roses, tulips, leaves and more. I hadn’t seen this artistic side of her before. I think it brought her happiness to be creating something simple, with her hands, that was beautiful and small and sweet.

  One night, driving home alone from a class, she ran into trouble. The weather was terrible, and as she approached a slight bend, she hit a parked car on her left, writing off her car and doing a lot of damage to the other. She walked away shaken but unharmed.

  A nearby resident took her into his house to look after her while the tow truck arrived. There had been accidents before on the bend, he said. I taxied out and picked her up, while our car was towed away. After that, Lecretia encouraged me to do more of the driving, too scared to get behind the wheel herself.

  Christmas in 2010 was to be at Debra’s again. I drove us up to Auckland on Christmas Day. It was a beautiful day, and Debra had set up tables outside, on her driveway, with a marquee. It was almost like a wedding reception. We had a glorious day with Lecretia’s aunts and uncles.

  As we left in the afternoon and walked out to the car, Lecretia did something strange. She walked past our car, and opened the door of the one behin
d it, another white car, which happened to be unlocked. Then she sat in the passenger seat, staring at me, as if to say, ‘What are you waiting for?’

  ‘That’s not our car, Lecretia!’ I said.

  She was momentarily confused, until she realised that she was indeed in the wrong vehicle. She got out and we laughed about it, but mixed with her laughter, I can remember now, was embarrassment and confusion.

  Shortly after Christmas, while spending a few days at her parents’ home in Tauranga, Lecretia started to talk to her mother about the fact she was getting headaches. She’d spoken to her GP about them, and been prescribed pain relief, but it hadn’t worked all that well. After talking to Shirley, she resolved to get a referral to see a neurologist, just in case.

  When she got home, Lecretia and I discussed the next steps in having a child. We talked about possible donors. I had my preferred donors and she had hers. We agonised over who to approach and how to ask them. It is illegal in New Zealand to pay someone to be a donor for you, but there are certain US states where you can. Lecretia investigated this process, and became convinced that it was the right choice for us. She chose a clinic in San Diego.

  Lecretia would have been a wonderful mother. She was so caring and generous and kind, and had so much warmth and heart. Like her, I wanted our love to be expressed through children. But I was obsessed with the idea that the child should be fully ours. Lecretia was special, and her children would be special. A child born from a donor egg would be hers, but it wouldn’t be like her, wouldn’t share her beauty, or her spirit—and that was what I wanted. It seemed so petty, but I couldn’t get past it. Was I being selfish? Did I love my wife too much? Did I not love her enough?

  I took a lot of convincing. I felt that if the child was not biologically hers I would have to choose to love it. But for her there was no such doubt—her desire to be a mother was the source of her love. A child to call her own, no matter its origins, would be like a vessel that desire would flow into, allowing it full expression, transforming it into a mother’s love.