Love, Carry My Bags

by Everett, C. R.

  “You about done?” Glenn asked, peeking his head in. I nodded, feeling empty and vacant, rather than energized with the prospect of new opportunities on the horizon.

  “You okay?” Glenn asked while packing up the port-a-crib, the last possession that laid any claim to the house as being our home.

  “I don’t want to go,” I said, barely able to speak. We hugged in a trio, me weeping uncontrollably, Sydney asleep, Glenn like a rock. Leaving Seattle, my home, was agonizing, as if torn from my first true love.

  “I don’t want to go either,” Glenn said, shutting us into the loaded truck. Sprinkles beaded on the windshield and glistened under the streetlight as Glenn ran back to lock up. The rain’s pitter-patter was drowned out when Glenn punched the garage door button, then raced through before it closed us out for good.

  * * *

  “Why do we need the 2800-square-foot house with a view? Why can’t we make do with 2100 square feet?” I asked Glenn, quickly seeing my dream of full-time motherhood being smashed to pieces. “That’s what we had in Seattle and it was fine.”

  “I want to see the mountains. Plus I felt cramped up there. You knew I wanted to move. We were going to move into something bigger anyway and you were fine with it.”

  “I was fine with it because you made me be fine with it. I gave in.” I said, wiping my tears of frustration off Sydney’s head, wetting down her hair while we argued. “At least there, we were going to be living on an island. It was something.” I sat Sydney on the floor and watched her crawl after David. “Here it’s a matter of a few blocks difference and an extra great room. It’s not worth lowering my quality of life by being stressed-out because I have to work full-time—for what, an extra 700 square feet and a view?”

  “You’re not lowering your quality of life. It was the same as before. You worked in Seattle.”

  “Yeah, and I was stressed-out. I was hoping for some relief here. I thought with the cost of living being lower I could be a stay-at-home mom.”

  “The house with the view will have a better resale,” Glenn said, appealing to my financial-sensibility side, but I knew he could care less about that finer point. And he could care less about me being a full-time mom. “My mom worked full-time and I turned out fine,” he said.

  “Good for her,” I said, irritated with his comparison. “You know I love your mother as much or more than my own, but I’m not your mother and Sydney isn’t you.”

  * * *

  We moved into the large home with a view the same day I started my new job with XB.

  “I told them I wasn’t coming unless they offered you a job as well,” Glenn told me after my no-stress, check-the-box interview. “Reject their first offer. You can get five thousand more.”

  He was right, and before my first paycheck came in, Glenn said, “We’ll need to get a new living room outfit to fill up this room . . . and another TV, with surround sound, of course.”

  Sydney’s bedroom had the mountain view. So did the spare bedroom next door, which would have been perfect for a brother or sister, a fact that gnawed at my gut now that our cost of living and daycare was cheaper and our incomes higher. Why hadn’t we waited to decide about the snip snip until Sydney was a year old like we originally said we would? The question ravaged my mind, especially after visiting with the neighbors and their two children.

  “Alex just loves his baby sister, Gracie,” the neighbor, Noreen, said while her two-year-old cradled the baby, feeding her a bottle, and showering her with slobbery kisses. “They are so cute!” She turned to me and said, “When are you having another one?”

  I fought the welling tears in my eyes. Rather than explaining the details and saying ‘never,’ I managed a contained, “I don’t know” and dabbed my eyes when she looked away.

  After stewing in a depressed funk for five days, I said to Glenn, “I want another baby.” I broke down in quiet, grieving sobs and explained, “After seeing Noreen and her kids . . . . And now that our circumstances are all different . . . . We shouldn’t have gotten you fixed . . . . How was I supposed to know things would change?” I cried harder, anguishing over our premature decision, kicking myself for having suggested it even though it seemed like the thing to do at the time. I felt robbed. I berated myself for being so stupid. Hindsight left me emotionally scrambled. I kicked myself harder for not expecting the unexpected and not making sound plans to accommodate what I didn’t know.

  “Well, it’s a little late now,” Glenn said.

  “Maybe you could have it undone? A vasectomy reversal,” I said between sniffles, sounding hopeful that my far-fetched idea would take flight.

  “You want them to cut on me again?” Glenn sounded pained at the mere thought.

  “Uh, huh.” I sniffed again and wiped my eyes on my sleeves. “I don’t want Sydney to be an only child. She doesn’t have to be.” I felt as if there would be a giant gaping hole in my life if Glenn refused.

  “We can look into it,” he said, coming to terms with what he was signing up for. My heart soaring, I was about to jump up and shower him with kisses, when he went on to say, “But I’m doing it just for you.”

  “What do you mean, just for me? Don’t you want another one?” I asked, worried that he really didn’t want another child.

  “I’m good with one, but if you want two, that’s fine,” Glenn said as if he could take it or leave it. This was one time I was glad Glenn changed his mind. Gemini’s ‘round the world would be proud of his mind changing—he, a poster boy of contradiction.

  “You owe me,” he said. “We’re naming it Harley . . . because it’s going to cost me as much.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, feeling that his agreement to a vasectomy reversal was balancing the scales, not tipping them in my favor. “If it wasn’t for you insisting on moving to Whidbey and building a more expensive house, and saying you’d be too old for children if we waited, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

  “No, you wait a minute,” Glenn said, feathers ruffled. “We made the vasectomy decision together. In fact, you suggested it.” Somehow he thought that we had been of one mind, deciding from the same level playing field, not that his etched-in-stone attitude had backed me into it.

  “And a reversal will not cost as much as a Harley.” I jabbed at Glenn. “It’ll only cost a fourth as much. And we’ll have a lot more fun.” I plopped Sydney down in his lap. “See how fun she is?”

  Sydney beamed a gassy baby smile, spit up a warm aromatic swill down Glenn’s front, then rubbed it in with her dimpled hands, jargoning all the while.

  “Great fun,” Glenn pretended to sneer as he wiped off the curds. “Wanna play patty cake?” he asked, clapping Sydney’s hands together. She giggled as always, playing their favorite game.

  * * *

  We stared at the Ronald Millhouse, M.D. Microsurgical Vasectomy Reversal sign in the waiting room. The quiet, library atmosphere stoked our anxiety, that and the sterile, overly clean institutional smell. Sydney made the most noise, stacking, leveling, and re-stacking her blocks, until Glenn said, “You like airplanes?” to the man sitting next to him reading Aerospace Daily.

  “Oh yeah. I work on this one.” The man tapped the cover craft, flicking it with his nail. “She’s a beauty.”

  Glenn turned to me and whispered, “That’s a highly classified program. I’m surprised he said that.”

  “So you work at XB?” Glenn asked.

  “Yeah, California.”

  They continued to talk shop while the man’s wife adored Sydney, playing peek-a-boo. “I can’t wait ‘til we have one,” she said to me between a peek and a boo, “Stan’s first wife would have died, literally, if she got pregnant, so he had a vasectomy. One divorce and five years later, here we are.”

  I smiled politely, receiving the more information than I needed to know.

  “You?” she said.

  “Well,” I said, embarrassed, “we changed our minds.”

  I hoped she’d stop aski
ng questions. “I can see why,” she said, rolling Sydney a ball.

  The nurse called, “Mr. Conroy.”

  “Come here, honey,” I said to Sydney, hurriedly collecting her and her toys.

  As I turned to Stan’s second wife and whispered, “We have to go,” Glenn exchanged business cards with her husband.

  “Nice meeting you,” Glenn said to the couple as he followed Sydney and me into Dr. Millhouse’s office.

  “How long ago did you have the vasectomy?” Dr. Millhouse asked.

  “Six months,” Glenn answered, very businesslike.

  Dr. Millhouse gave us a quizzical look. “Is she yours?” he asked, pointing to Sydney who was crawling around the office floor, fondling a stuffed, blue, google-eyed sperm.

  “Yes,” we answered.

  Dr. Millhouse continued to look puzzled, then said, “Most of my clients are on their second marriages,” which prompted me to give the highlights of our peculiar situation.

  “We don’t tend to be normal,” I said, in conclusion, while Sydney pounded the stuffed sperm on my lap, babbling.

  “So you’ve successfully gotten pregnant, together, once,” he continued, taking notes in a health history.

  “Twice,” I said, looking down. “We lost one.”

  “Miscarriage?”

  “Yes. I didn’t even know I was pregnant.” I felt awkward discussing the personal details. Glenn listened while trying to hoist Sydney onto his lap.

  “No!” she protested, then quieted down after he let her go.

  “Well,” Dr. Millhouse said, “since it’s only been a few months since the vasectomy, and you’ve successfully gotten pregnant together before, I don’t see any reason why a microsurgical vasectomy reversal couldn’t be successful for you. This should be a piece of cake, one of the easiest cases I’ve had.”

  His prognosis eased our minds and loosened our wallet. He guaranteed his work, his presentation, sound, and he had references.

  “Let’s do it,” Glenn said. “Cut me up, get it over with.”

  We scheduled the procedure for the next month. When Dr. Millhouse emerged from the operating room, he said to me, “One of the clamps slipped, so it took a little longer than I planned. I was only able to put three stitches on that side, but you should be good to go.” As he headed off toward his office he said, “Come back in six weeks and we’ll do a count.”

  Elated, my mind swirled with the happy prospects of moving on, building the family I needed and wanted more than anything else—an astounding conundrum no one who knew me fifteen years before would have guessed, not even myself. Thrilled, I announced, “Sydney, you’re going to be a big sister,” as I lifted her high in the air.

  After six months of letting nature take its course and going nowhere, I bought an ovulation detector. $200. A small additional price to pay for a much-wanted child.

  “Why don’t you wear these?” I handed Glenn boxers, and absconded with the briefs. “They’re supposed to raise your sperm count.” I handed him bottles of zinc, coenzyme Q10, selenium, and vitamins C and E. “And take these.”

  He took them religiously.

  Somewhere during the next year of carefully timed sex, engaged in for the sole purpose of procreation, not enjoyment, complete with raising my ass on pillows after the act, Glenn said, “Remember that guy at Dr. Millhouse’s office, Stan from XB?”

  “Yeah,” I said, tucking one more pillow beneath my butt.

  “He wants me to come and work on the project out there in California,” Glenn said, hoping I wouldn’t say it was totally out of the question.

  California is the place that everyone who doesn’t live there wonders why anyone would want to live there; and Californians wonder why they feel that way.

  “California?” I said. David hopped onto the bed and settled down on my chest. Focusing my attention on him, I said, “Oh hi kitty,” and kissed him between the ears. “The project?” I asked, looking back toward Glenn.

  “It’s a great opportunity,” Glenn hurried to say, itching to go. “I can’t tell you what the project is, you know that.” He stopped to cough, clear his throat. “By the way, Stan’s wife is pregnant,” he added while tucking my ovulation detector back in the drawer.

  “We haven’t even been here two years!” I said, frustrated at the short time we’d been in the house and the long time it was taking to conceive.

  I stroked David’s fur, trying not to think.

  * * *

  “Maybe we should have you tested again,” I said to Glenn eleven months after we had moved to California and still not pregnant. “Maybe it didn’t work.”

  “Fine,” Glenn said, poring over papers he had brought home from XB.

  I found an infertility clinic forty-five miles away.

  “We need a fresh sample; they said fresh within an hour.”

  * * *

  I discreetly slid the paper sack across the front desk. The office assistant handled the situation as if I was making a routine bank deposit. My discomfort only slightly lessened when I came to think that the other ladies in the waiting room had far more precarious procedures in store. Things like hormone injections, egg extraction, and embryo implantation produced far more anxiety than passing sperm across a reception desk.

  “I’ll let you know,” she said.

  Fifteen minutes later they handed me the report. The results showed nothing. As in, there was nothing to see. Sperm count—zero. The vasectomy reversal had not worked. Perfect timing, testing, vitamin popping, head standing, and boxer short wearing had no chance to succeed.

  * * *

  Glenn peeked in on Sydney and me hamster dancing in the office with computer animated bee-bopping rodents, volume turned up. Sydney giggled a toddler-sized belly laugh as she switched up her dance moves to match the gray one, bouncing up and down. I wiggled, hopped up and turned around, in sync with the tan and white, reaching over to tickle her. Glenn shook his head, leaving the room, choosing not to join in our fun.

  “Just a minute, honey,” I said to Sydney, leaving her to jam without me. I hopped after him. I had news.

  “I found a specialist, Glenn. Comes highly recommended in re-do reversals. Fixes botched jobs all the time,” I reported excitedly.

  “What’s his name?” Glenn asked, going along, resigned. He looked past my shoulder at Sydney, who was taking it from the top, again, ‘paws’ bent in front of her.

  “M.L. Gordon. Highly recommended,” I repeated, knowing Glenn valued word-of-mouth recommendations.

  Dr. Gordon, the nicest human on earth, explained everything in great detail.

  “I use twelve or fourteen sutures hooking the spaghetti back together,” he said, showing us a diagram of the vas, “not four.” He said ‘four,’ like any micro surgeon with half a brain, would not use that few. “Four—leak like a sieve, if they even hold, as you well know.”

  “The only guarantee I make is that I’ll do my very best.” He went on, elaborating about the procedure, “The sutures are thinner than a human hair, wanna see?”

  He acted like an excited boy, eager to show off his coolest stuff. He showed us a barely visible thread and a microscopic curved needle that resembled an eyelash. “No problem,” he said, “We’ll fix you up—or un-fix you up, rather. Good as new.”

  The re-do reversal surgery took place September 13, 2001. I worried that the catastrophe of the Twin Towers would affect Dr. Gordon’s work, and prayed that his professional nerve was rock solid and steady.

  “Keep Sydney off of me,” Glenn said, resting in the recliner at home, balls on ice.

  “Sure. Do you want peas or corn?” I asked, my head stuck in the freezer, at the same time passing Sydney a chewable vitamin.

  “Just get me something,” he said, short on patience.

  “Well, you know, the surface area might be different—little round balls versus almost cubes,” I teased.

  It wasn’t funny.

  Glenn’s look told me so.

  “Daddy, will
you read me a book?” Sydney asked, holding Jay Jay the Jet Plane.

  “Come here, Sydney, I’ll read you a book,” I said.

  “Why can’t Daddy read to me?” Momentarily distracted, she bent over to kiss David, vitamin falling out of her mouth, bouncing off David’s head, and onto the floor.

  “Don’t eat—” Glenn said just as Sydney popped the vitamin back into her mouth.

  “He’s busy,” I said.

  Just as Sydney started to say, “He’s not busy, he’s just sit—” David jumped into Glenn’s lap, landing in just the wrong spot. Kitty sailed across the room, then I heard, thud, as he hit the wall.

  “Damn cat,” Glenn said, adjusting his bag of peas.

  * * *

  Dr. Gordon handed Glenn a specimen cup. “Go in there and make a deposit,” he said, showing Glenn into a small room wallpapered with ‘stimulating photos.’ This time I didn’t mind him getting off on a peep show.

  “Want to help me?” Glenn asked me on his way in.

  “No, you can spank your own monkey.”

  After Glenn returned, Dr. Gordon peered into the microscope. “Have a look,” he said, offering me a view.

  “Wow, it’s covered,” I said, observing a slide full of wriggling, speed-racing sperm.

  “Let me see.” Glenn pushed me aside.

  “After the last reversal, the slide had one or two limping sperm,” I said.

  “Just enough to fulfill the guarantee,” Glenn said, sneering and still bitter.

  “Dr. Millhouse never told us you needed a sperm count of twenty million. Not two,” I said, airing the last bit of my own frustration.

  “Well, you have a swarm of little guys—or girls, excuse me—now,” Dr. Gordon said, upbeat.

  We tried for another child at our first opportunity a few days later. Unsuccessful.