by Tiana Cole
Mark kept going, gripping tight onto my shoulders to stop me rocking up to the headboard because he was really going for it hard. I started getting turned on because the friction against my clit was amazing. Still, I wasn't bothered about coming. All I wanted was for Mark and me to make a baby. Just one tiny baby and my life would be complete.
Mark was coming, I could tell. A deep, hard thrust and a grunt followed by tiny ripples of his body and his semen seeped into me. I smiled giddy with the possibility.
“Careful how you come out,” I said.
“I know, I know,” he replied and gently pulled his cock out of me.
I kept my legs raised and grabbed the pillow from under my head and tucked it beneath my hips. I got his pillow, too, and tucked it under for good measure. I needed to keep as many of those little baby makers in there as I could.
I bit my bottom lip. I knew we'd done it this time. I could feel it. I looked up at Mark and smiled. He got up, his cock still wet and went to the bathroom.
I heard him in the shower and after about ten minutes, he came out and started getting dressed into his jeans and the new t-shirt I bought for him. He sat on the bed and put on his sneakers.
“Where are you going?” I asked him.
“Out,” he said. He had his back to me.
“I thought I'd make dinner.”
He turned around and looked at me. “You look busy.” He got up and left the bedroom.
“Mark!” I called out.
I heard the front door close and he was gone. Maybe I should have been a little more attentive to him and at least kissed him. I was so focused on the task at hand.
***
It wasn't always like this for me and Mark. I mean our love making. It was never this forced or mechanical. I know Mark wouldn't really call it love making now, just trying for a baby. We had been trying for eight of the ten years we'd been married. Most couples would probably have given up on trying, but we were still going. The OBGYN said it only took one time for my body to be ready. I was so tired of trying and ready to be a mother.
I remember, all those years ago, before we decided that we wanted to have a child, our sex life was amazing. And I remember that I fell in love with Mark practically on the day I met him.
It had been at a party. A good friend at the time, Hayley, told me about the party and I nearly didn't go. I wasn't in the mood but she persuaded me. I didn't want to stay long but the music was good so I danced a bit and stayed on beyond the hour I had given myself. I was glad I did because in walked Mark. I had no idea who he was but I couldn't take my eyes off him.
“Staring much!” my girlfriend, Hayley said to me.
“I'm trying to be subtle,” I replied.
“Subtle as a bull in a China shop,” Hayley had laughed.
But he was gorgeous and I couldn’t help myself. His hair was a lot longer back then and I had a thing for men with long hair for some reason. When he came over to talk to me I nearly blew it, though. It's just that I got really nervous.
“Hi,” he said holding a bottle of beer in his hand. It had taken him a long time to get up the nerve to talk to me. We were smiling awkwardly from across what was slowly becoming a very crowded room. Plus the music was getting louder by the second.
“Hi,” I'd answered and turned away. I was pulling a face at my friend, Hayley, one that said, 'Oh my God, he's actually talking to me.' I had no idea he could see my stupid expression in the reflection of the mirror just behind Hayley. Inevitably he walked away.
“Where did he go?” I asked my friend and she just shrugged.
Later, when I saw him on his own in the kitchen, I summoned up the nerve to take action and find out what drove him away. I tapped him on the shoulder.
“That was bit rude,” I told him. “I said, hi, and you just walked away.”
“I thought you were grimacing to your friend, like you didn't like me or something. I thought I wasn't your type maybe, so I made it easier on you and left.”
“But you are, you are my type,” I blurted out and people turned and stared at me. Admittedly, I was rather drunk at the time, or I never would have been so bold. “I was making more of a hell yes face, as dumb as that sounds.” He smiled.
“You're my type too,” he said. And from that day on, Mark and I were inseparable.
Hayley and I weren’t friends anymore. I’d chased most of our friends away once they were able to have children because I was always the one still trying. I know they didn’t mean to be uncomfortable around me, but they were. Since it was the only thing I cared about, it was easy to see why they didn’t want to be around me with their babies and their happiness. I drove them away by not being able to have children, and I had come to terms with that. At first Mark had an ‘us against them’ mentality towards the whole thing.
“Screw them,” he said, “we’ll get new friends.”
I knew, he really missed them after a while and we didn’t get new friends. We simply stayed in the same situation for years, with just each other to lean on.
We went everywhere together and moved in with each other almost straight away. Our first apartment was in a really expensive part of New York but it was tiny. We could hardly move before we bumped into each other. But that was fine because all I ever wanted was to be that close to Mark and he felt just the same.
Then came the wedding. It was the wedding of my dreams. Outdoors, a bright sunny afternoon, on a hill overlooking a lake. The flowers were yellow and purple, my bridesmaids dresses a gorgeous lilac, and my man standing there waiting for me, for the rest of our lives together. A light breeze moved towards me and I felt more alive than I ever had.
Everyone we knew was there.
With everyone watching us we said our vows to each other. It felt like a dream, just pure bliss. The entire time I couldn’t help but smile at him and look deep into his eyes. I couldn’t help but almost forget to say ‘I do’ since I was just so giddy and excited to be marrying him.
A few months into our marriage we had still not picked a place for our honeymoon. We couldn’t decide. Mark wanted it to be the perfect place and I was determined to be his perfect wife.
“How about Paris for our honeymoon?” Mark had suggested.
“The city of love? A bit corny,” I told him over breakfast in the coffee shop downstairs from our apartment.
“So why not be corny? You know some French. Let's do it. I've never been to Europe.” Mark was the most expressive man I'd ever known. The most romantic. Most of the guys I knew would be happy to go to a ball game and grab a hot dog rather than go to Paris. I knew then that we would always be together.
It was like a dream honeymoon, too. Although we were in coach for the flight, Mark made sure I was comfortable. Almost, too comfortable. Several times we had to stop kissing so we wouldn’t scar those around us. Each time Mark would ask for a glass of wine for us, we would whisper to each other in the dark plane. We spent the first few days making love in the hotel room.
On the bed, the floor next to the bed, the bath and one time in the elevator. It was one of those hand operated ones like in a movie and Mark jammed it so it seemed like it was broken down. He lay me on the floor and kissed me. I had so many loud orgasms, Mark had to cover my mouth so as not to give the game away. That just made me more excited, trying to be quiet. But I'm sure when the elevator got going again, the concierge knew damn well what we'd been up to. Especially as my hair was all fanned up at the back and Mark was zipping up his pants.
We laughed all the way back to our room.
But most romantic of all was how Mark pleaded for me to extend our stay at the end of the two weeks.
“But Mark, I'll get fired if we stay.” I was sitting up in bed and feeding him a croissant. Breaking it apart into small pieces and putting into his mouth.
“I just want more of this,” he said. “We may never get a chance to have a break from our normal lives like this again.”
“I'm sure we will,” I told him.
“But what if we don't?” His eyes were full of concern, it was like he saw something I didn't and I was afraid that what he was saying might be true. So we called our respective bosses, said that a bad flu virus had spread through our part of Paris and we'd be home as soon as we were cured. We weren't fooling anyone but we were lucky enough to both keep our jobs when we finally got back.
Back home in New York, we were so into each other we alienated our friends. It's like we were fused together. Our bond was unbreakable. Having a baby was the furthest thing from our minds in the beginning. Who would have thought that all these years later it would be the only topic of conversation we ever really had.
***
When my period didn't come, I stopped at the drugstore on the corner and went through my usual routine – I bought three pregnancy testing kits. The three top rated ones. Being doubly sure the test was accurate was never enough for me, I had to be triply sure of the result. I was so excited as I darted along the sidewalk for home. Mark was not back from work and I was hoping against hope that I'd have some good news for him. I couldn't count the number of times I'd peed on a stick and wished I could throw my arms around Mark's neck and say, “We did it, we're having a baby!” The years of trying and fighting, of wishing and hoping would finally all be worth it. I felt like everything would fall together beautifully once there was a baby in the mix.
And how wonderful that would have been after eight years of trying. After all, it should be my turn for crying out loud. All our married friends had managed it. My younger sister. Mark's younger brother.
But, all that aside, I was convinced that this time, this would be it. God knows how much we'd spent on IVF only to be disappointed. I'd borrowed a fortune from my parents to keep it going but the doctors said we were throwing money away. I'd pleaded with them to tell me why it wasn't working and why couldn't I get pregnant.
In the end, all they could say was that there was nothing wrong with either of us and maybe when we stopped stressing about it, it would happen. I remember storming out of the clinic, furious. They called themselves experts in fertility but they still couldn't give me the result I wanted.
Was one baby too much to ask for? They had nothing concrete to say so I'd gone back to the old method of taking my temperature and hoping for the best. My OBGYN had been with me from the beginning, and she was the only one who still believed it was possible for me to get pregnant. She was the only encouragement I had as I was pretty sure Mark had given up a couple of years back. He kept telling me we could adopt, but I refused. I wasn’t willing to give up on my dream of having a child who was a little me and a little Mark.
I hovered over the toilet bowl and urinated for all I was worth. Then I put the stick on the floor in front of me and waited for the pink line. My elbows were on my thighs, chin in my hands. A minute can take forever when you're a woman desperate to conceive. The line didn't do what it was supposed to. A negative result showed so I drank some water and prepared to test the next two sticks. Both were negative.
I picked up the sticks, threw them at the trash basket in the corner and fell in a heap on the bathroom floor. I cried and cried. I couldn't control the sobs. I cried so long that my throat got so dry, all I could do, in the end, was make a choking whimpering sound. I tore off a long strip of toilet paper and used it to dry my eyes and blow my nose then I started all over again. I was a complete wreck and still I cried. When I was too tired to cry anymore I just lay there, like a wounded puppy and took jagged breaths in and out.
I heard Mark come home but I couldn't move.
“Libby!” he called. “You home?”
I couldn't answer. I couldn't pick myself up off the floor. Mark went to the kitchen and opened the fridge. He must have gotten a beer out. I'd told him time after time to limit his drinking to the weekend, the alcohol would ruin his sperm. But he never listened. Maybe he thought I wasn't home and he'd sneak in a crafty drink that wasn't under my watchful eye.
He didn't realize I was doing it for our own good. Christ, when I got pregnant he could drink champagne for a year for all I cared. Of course I had no proof alcohol would actually mess up his sperm, but we couldn’t afford to do anything that might hold us up.
I heard the television go on and tried to get up. But I'd worn myself out and I didn't have the energy to budge. Eventually Mark needed to use the bathroom and walked in, nearly shoving the door into my head as I lay on the bathroom rug.
“Jesus Christ, Lib. I thought you'd...what the hell happened?” He got on his knees and immediately spotted the pregnancy tests I'd tossed and hadn't quite made their target. “Oh,” he said.
“Oh? Is that all you have to say?” I sat up and wiped my nose with the back of my hand.
“Libby, you can't do this to yourself every month. You'll drive yourself nuts.”
“You mean like the way I'm driving you nuts?” My throat was hoarse.
“I never said that.”
“You didn't have to. I see the way you look at me sometimes, like I'm obsessed or something.”
“Libby...”
“That's it! You think I'm obsessed. Well pardon me for wanting to feel like a complete woman, Mark.”
“You are a complete woman, Lib. Please don't make us go through this again. I'm tired.” He helped me up and turned me to face the bathroom mirror. “Look at your face. How long have you been in here?”
Mark was right. We had gone through this before. And again, and again. Each time I thought I we had finally done it, made a baby, I would run and test as soon as I could. Each time I would cry on the floor and Mark would comfort me. He would keep telling me that I was a complete woman since we had each other. That me being pregnant wouldn’t be the deciding factor of me feeling like a complete woman. Mark would always try to convince me that not being able to have kids didn’t make me less of a woman. I always thought he was wrong.
“Mark I can't bear this. I feel like such a failure.” Tears began to involuntarily pour from my eyes.
“Libby, I can't go on like this.” Mark put his head down and backed away. He left the bathroom and I followed him into the bedroom.
“And you think this is easy for me?” I said.
“That's not what I mean,” he said. He was at the door but turned to look at me. “I'm done here, Libby. I can't stay in this marriage. It isn't even a marriage. All I see this apartment as is a baby making factory. Once a month we fuck and for the rest of the time you don't even want me near you.”
“That's not true Mark. We're in this together.”
“No Libby. This is all you. For years I haven't even been sure I still want a child. And the truth is I don't want to go on trying and I don't want to go on being here anymore.” He leaned back on the door and put his hands in his pockets.
“Because I failed you as a woman?” I sniffed.
“Because you failed me as a wife.”
“Mark, no!”
“Just like I failed you as a husband,” he said looking into my eyes. “I couldn't give you the thing you wanted most.”
“I want you Mark. That's what I want.” I ran to him and held his arms. He shrugged.
“You don't want me,” he said. “You want to be a mother. Be honest, Lib. That's your priority. It's all you live for and it's never going to happen... so that's it for us.”
“You're really going to leave me?” I pleaded. He touched my puffy face.
“Libby, you left this marriage a long time ago.”
He let himself out of the bedroom and I threw myself onto the bed. I didn't cry. I was out of tears. Everything Mark said to me was true. I'd blown it for us. I wasn't satisfied to try for adoption or even surrogacy, we'd discussed those options tirelessly. I just wanted that feeling of a child growing inside me. Feeling it kick. Giving birth. Feeding my baby. Feeling like a proper woman. I don’t know at what point I decided having a baby would make me feel like a proper woman, but I did.
I rolled onto my back and sighed. Just moment
s later the door opened and Mark put his head around the door. I sat up, about to smile. I thought he'd changed his mind. He just needed to catch his breath, I thought to myself. He'd threatened to leave me lots of times and never did.
“I'll grab a few things tonight and stay in a hotel,” he said in a voice I didn't recognize. “During the day tomorrow I'll come by and pack the rest.”
I turned to face him. “And that's it is it? You're really just going to walk out on me?”
“Don't make like you never knew this day would come Libby. We haven't touched each other with affection, laughed together, been on a date, anything, in years. When was the last time you told me you loved me?”
“But I love you Mark, I really do.”
“And I love you, Libby, but we don't know how to show it anymore.”
I watched Mark pull out his large sports bag from the closet and start filling it with his clothes, underwear, toiletries and shoes. He put a suit into the suit carrier for work the next day and grabbed a couple of ties. He threw those into the bag.
He went to leave but dropped the bag and came back in the room. I swung my legs off the bed. I smiled. Maybe he was going to try and talk it out some more before he just left. All he'd done was forget his toothbrush. He tossed that into the bag and came to sit beside me on the bed. He put a hand on my thigh.
“I'm so sorry it didn't work out, Libby.”
“It can work, Mark.” I grabbed his hand. “Forget about having a baby. Let's just admit it's never going to happen. We'll go on a vacation. Somewhere expensive, somewhere far. Let's move out of this apartment. I never liked it anyway.”
All the time I was begging him to stay he just kept shaking his head. Eventually he took my damp cheeks in his hands tilted my head towards him and kissed my forehead.
“I'm sorry, Libby.”
Mark picked up his bag and walked out of the door. I felt every fiber in my body go limp. The energy drained from me. I would have run to him and begged him on my knees not to go but that look in his eyes told me... he was finished. He would never come back. I realized he was right, I’d never be happy without a baby, but what was I going to do now? I sank to the floor and cried again, tears I didn’t think I had left.