by Nancy Thayer
At the same time, an evil demon of self-pity inside her taunted in a whining nasty tone: So you see? He can make babies. He has proof. You are the one who can’t make babies. You are the one who is failing. Now you know beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Chapter Ten
In early November, Sara went up to Boston to meet with Linda Oldham of Heartways House. HH was starting a new line of romance novels, contemporary stories about women who had careers and talents and who would actually be allowed (although discreetly) to make love with a man instead of only panting and fainting and being fragile. Linda wanted Sara to oversee the series, and Sara agreed as long as she could stay in Nantucket. She would come in to the office at least twice a month for meetings. She would have a great pile of manuscripts to sort through and she would be in charge of setting down the guidelines for the series. It was a challenge for Sara, and she was excited about it; this was work she could believe in, for she did believe that the best world of all for women held both work and romance.
After the meeting with Linda, she took a taxi to Cambridge and walked up the winding slate walk to Fanny Anderson’s house. It had been a mild dry fall, so that the trees bristled and clicked with leaves that had become sere and crisp but had not yet fallen. Sara stood at the front door but did not knock. She looked around, at the gold chrysanthemums rimming the walls of the house, at the lawn sloping to the wrought-iron fence where leaves that had fallen caught in bunches between the rails. At one time, she had been slightly afraid of this house, and it had held an air of mystery for her. Then it had become a place that excited her, challenged her; and now it welcomed her, it held her own secrets as well as Fanny’s.
Stone-faced Eloise opened the door when she finally knocked: this much had remained the same. The heavy blue curtains were pulled tightly shut in the living room, and a bright fire gleamed from the fireplace, filling the room with warmth and light. The cats were in their usual cold-weather spots, stretched in front of the fire. Fanny was on the sofa, her favorite spaniel next to her, its head in her lap. As Sara entered the room, she saw that Fanny was unusually agitated. Her smile trembled and she stroked the dog’s head and ears with quick, nervous hands. Oh-oh, Sara thought, what could have gone wrong?
At first they talked about the easy things, plans for Christmas and the weather, Sara’s new job for Heartways House. But after Eloise had brought in the tea cart, Fanny said, “Sara, dear, I have a problem.” Even in her distress her words came with the slow lilting ghost-of-a-Kansas drawl. “Well,” she laughed, “foolish me, I suppose most people wouldn’t think of it as a problem. And that exacerbates it.” She laughed again, stroking her spaniel’s silky head. “You see, I’ve had this letter,” she said. “From England. From my publishers there. They say Jenny’s Book has won an award. Quite a bit of money and a great deal of prestige. The Shelburne Prize.”
“Oh, my God, Fanny,” Sara said. “That’s absolutely fabulous. That’s wonderful. Well, good Lord! How marvelous. The Shelburne Prize is really a feather in your cap.”
“Oh, yes, I know it is, I suppose,” Fanny said. “But you see there is a problem. The letter states that in order to receive the award I have to attend an awards ceremony. I have to accept it personally, and be prepared to give a small speech. In England. In January.”
“Well, you can do that!” Sara said. “Good heavens, Fanny. England! The Shelburne Prize!”
Fanny stared at Sara. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it and looked down at the dog in her lap. She stroked the dog in silence.
“You can’t mean you’re thinking of not going?” Sara asked, almost shrieking. “Oh, Fanny!”
Fanny looked up. “Well, my dear, I did tell you that I haven’t left this house for four years. I have explained to you how I feel about going out. And this would be not only going out but going abroad. And going back. It is quite conceivable that I will run into people I used to know when I was in London. Old acquaintances, old colleagues—even old lovers. I really don’t know if I can face all that.”
“Oh, Fanny, what nonsense,” Sara said. “There isn’t a writer on earth who wouldn’t go to hell and back to receive the Shelburne Prize, and you’re only being asked to go to England. You have to go. You can’t let your vanity get in the way here. Besides, you know that everyone else will have gotten older, too, if that’s what you’re worried about, but you will have the triumph because you’ve produced a book that’s won the prize. Oh, Fanny, you have to go, I won’t let you not go!”
Fanny smiled. “I was hoping you would say something like that,” she said. “Because, you see, my dear, I thought I probably could go—on the condition that you accompany me!”
Sara felt her jaw drop in surprise. One thought before all others leapt to mind.
Seeing Sara’s expression, Fanny hastened to add, “I would pay all your expenses, of course, airfare and hotel. I’ll have loads of money and I wouldn’t dream of asking you to go with me unless you would permit me to pay your expenses.”
“Oh, Fanny, that’s so generous of you, and you know I would love to go with you, it’s only that—exactly when is the ceremony? What dates in January do you have to be in London?”
Fanny reached for a letter lying on a table near the sofa. “Around the middle of the month,” she said. “January seventeenth is the date of the ceremony. My agent there said that she is going to try to set up some interviews and my publisher is giving me a publication party and so on, so that if I could be there for an entire week it would really be the best thing. The dates she suggests are January fifteenth to the twenty-first.”
By now Sara knew each phase of her menstrual cycle as well as her own name. Certainly she knew beyond any doubt that the week Fanny wanted her to go to London was the week in January when she would ovulate. The week when she should try to get pregnant.
She was now thirty-five. There were not that many months left in her life when she would ovulate, when she had a chance of getting pregnant.
But how could she not go with Fanny? She knew Fanny wouldn’t go alone.
And perhaps she would be pregnant then. Perhaps by then it would all be settled.
“Of course I’ll go,” Sara said. “I’d love to go, Fanny. We’ll have the time of our lives. My God, you’re going to receive the Shelburne Prize. Do you have any idea how prestigious that is? How proud you should be of yourself? Oh, and Fanny, a week in London! We’ll have the most wonderful time!”
Fanny’s hands flew up to her hair. “I’ve been thinking all night,” she said, “whether I should put a rinse on my hair. There is so much white in it now. And I must go on a diet. And I suppose my clothes are hopelessly out of style—I suppose I should do some shopping.…”
Sara laughed and leaned forward, talking to Fanny about her hair, her weight, her clothes. The Trip. The Prize. It was all so marvelous. In the back of her mind a thought ran like a song: Fanny is going to leave her house! After all these years of hiding!
And, further back, thrumming like a drumbeat, murmured the worry: You’ll be missing a chance to get pregnant. You’ll be giving up one month’s chance to get pregnant. You’ll be going to London during the time you ovulate. What do you think you’re doing?
At the end of November, Sara’s period started again.
She could not believe it. She had done everything right this time, everything that could be done she had done. She was sickened with defeat. She did not know if she could get out of bed ever again. There seemed no reason to go on living.
She did get out of bed, finally, and spent the day in her robe, taking pills for her cramps, alternately drinking strong coffee and white wine, trying to snap herself out of her misery, trying to stop crying. She called Dr. Crochett, who said she must give herself a few more months before they tried anything else, such as progesterone or other medications or before they discussed something as expensive as in vitro fertilization. He told her tales of other patients who had not gotten pregnant for months, for years, and then who s
uddenly, for no reason at all, got pregnant. Sara realized that the doctor had been saying in his own way what everyone else had said to her: just relax.
In other words, there’s nothing more we can do.
By late afternoon Sara was nearly hysterical with grief. When she turned on the television, hoping some talk show would distract her, she found herself bombarded with commercials for diapers. She turned off the TV and forced herself to dress and go for a walk. It was a cold day and windy, but sunny. She had gone no more than six blocks when she saw two different mothers with babies in carriages. She turned around and returned to the shelter of her house. At times like this it was very hard not to think that the world was mocking her, that the world hated her.
She fell on the bed, still in her coat and hat and gloves, and sobbed. How had her life gotten into such a state? She had so blithely assumed that she and Steve would have children, when they married they had talked about having children, and life, what life was about, she had thought, was having a family. She wanted to nurse a baby, to change a baby’s diapers, to cuddle a baby, she wanted to read stories to a child, to comfort a sick child, to delight a child at Christmas. She wanted to share the joy of having a baby with Steve. She wanted to show Steve how much she loved him by having his baby. It was not fair, it was not right, it was not real! Their love was so good and strong and healthy and right that she should have gotten pregnant from the sheer force of their passion the first time around.
But she hadn’t. And she wasn’t pregnant now. She felt useless and cursed and insane.
Just before Steve came home, she rose and washed her face and calmed down. Now that she knew how strongly he, too, wanted a child, and how he blamed himself for their failure, she felt it necessary to protect him, to play down her own disappointment. So she put on more mascara and she put on a loud rock ’n’ roll record and she put on steaks to fry in butter and mushrooms and wine. She pretended to be optimistic even though her heart was breaking.
It was the middle of December. It was, in fact, the middle of Sara’s menstrual cycle; the fifteenth day, and The Day according to her test.
Outside, everything was dusted with a sugary sprinkling of snow. Inside, the house was clean and beautiful, for Sara had gotten creative and energetic with the Christmas decorations. Trying to keep active and optimistic, trying not to sink into a state of apathetic mourning, she had thrown herself into getting ready for Christmas with all the vigor she could muster. On Saturday night she and Steve were giving a huge Christmas party for the group and just about everyone else they knew on the island. Sara had brought an enormous tree with her from the mainland and had taken days trimming it with handmade cranberry and popcorn chains and red satin hearts and flashing stars made from mirrors and with the box of decorations that her mother had recently mailed to her, decorations that had been hung on the Christmas trees of her childhood. She had draped laurel on the staircase banister and over the mantels in the living room and the dining room, and a wreath of native grasses and berries, tied with green velvet ribbon, hung in the kitchen window.
Because it was sunny and warm for this time of year, Steve had gotten up early and left to work on the house he was in charge of restoring. Sara had come from the bathroom, where she had just used the kit, to find him dressing. She almost said, No! You can’t go now, you have to come back to bed first! But she knew he was concerned about getting work done on the house whenever the weather allowed them to work outdoors. She could wait until tonight. She just wished that the day would hurry. She felt her egg ticking inside her like a clock, saying, Hurry, hurry, fertilize me, before it’s too late! She was nervous, impatient, even anxious. She could not let this day pass by without making love.
At least today was the day she had invited Annie Danforth for lunch. Sara set out quilted red placemats and matching napkins and put red tapers in the silver candlesticks. She had made a quiche and a small salad and bought a nice white wine. This was the first time she had invited anyone to lunch on Nantucket. She felt as young and excited as a child about to have a friend for a sleepover.
Annie had a master’s in English literature, but like many other women on the island—or any English major anywhere—she could not find a job that called for her particular qualifications. So she had started her own dressmaking and sewing business and was doing very well. But she loved to read and longed to talk about books and for the first part of the afternoon they indulged themselves in book talk. Sara was delighted, partly to find someone who loved books as much as she did, but also because she had wanted to put off any mention of children until late in their conversation so that she would not seem too interested in the subject.
“What luxury,” Annie said as Sara brought in a pot of strong tea to counteract the effects of the wine. Their dessert, raspberries in whipped cream flavored with Chambord, waited before them in crystal bowls. Annie waved her hands, indicating the room around them, the world around them. “This gorgeous day, and your house is so beautiful and this lunch is so good. And it’s so peaceful here.”
“I know,” Sara said. “It is peaceful. But that’s partly because Steve and I don’t have any children yet.” There, Sara thought, wasn’t that a subtle enough nudge in the right direction?
“Do you and Steve want to have children?” Annie asked, stirring her tea.
“Mmm, I think so,” Sara said casually. She couldn’t reveal her painful secret just yet. “Do you and Wade?”
“Oh, we’ve always wanted to have a family,” Annie said. Her face grew serious. “But we knew we had to save a little money first and get our lives organized! It took me a while to figure out what I was going to do here, since I couldn’t use my English degree. And it’s taken forever to get our house in shape. But Wade is thirty-three and I’m thirty-five. So we decided we’d better get started. It’s such a hard decision to make.”
“I know,” Sara agreed. Now, she thought, tell me what a surprise it was that you didn’t get pregnant right away.
“But we did make the decision, and I stopped using my diaphragm. That was a whole year ago.” Annie looked into her tea. “I guess we thought I’d get pregnant right away,” she said, her voice dropping. “It’s really been a hard year for us, because it didn’t happen that way. I mean it didn’t happen instantly like we thought it would.”
“I know,” Sara agreed. She almost added that she and Steve were having trouble, too, but Annie was engrossed in her own account. Sara listened, feeling the words come like balm over the wound of her lonely infertility.
“You wouldn’t believe how hard something like this is on a marriage. I didn’t think much about it for about six or seven months, although every month when my period started I was disappointed and then pretty upset. But then I know we’re older and it probably does take longer. And the first few months we didn’t pay any attention to the times when I might be fertile, I mean we just made love whenever we wanted to and didn’t try on any certain day. But then I started reading up on how to get pregnant and sort of tried to maneuver Wade into bed on the right days. That was fun. But I still didn’t get pregnant. You can’t imagine how funny that made me feel.”
“Oh, I can imagine,” Sara said, sympathetically. She felt that when her turn came to talk, her sorrowful tale would rush from her like lava from a volcano, leaving her purged, cleansed, relieved, and fresh for a new beginning.
“Well, about two months ago I suggested to Wade that perhaps we should see a doctor because I wasn’t getting pregnant. Man, you should have seen his reaction. Talk about macho defense mechanisms! He freaked. No way was he going to let a doctor fiddle around with his equipment! We had a terrible fight. The worst we’ve ever had. This fertility stuff really strikes at the deepest fears and feelings. God, I was really scared for a month. I thought our marriage might be ruined. I couldn’t even get Wade to talk about it. I felt so lonely.”
“Oh, you should have called me,” Sara said, and almost began to say, “because I’ve been going through th
e same thing.” But Annie kept on talking.
“So finally I bought this thing called an ovulation-response kit. It’s sort of like a home chemistry unit, it tells you exactly the day you ovulate. You have to do a little test with your urine every morning during the middle of your cycle. Well, I used it, but I had to sneak around to do it because Wade would have hit the roof if he knew I was using it. Sometimes he’s just such a caveman I can’t believe it. Anyway, I did use it last month—” Annie raised her eyes and looked at Sara. Her smile was so radiant that it took Sara’s breath away. She knew what Annie was going to say before she spoke. “Sara, I’m pretty sure I’m pregnant! I haven’t told anyone yet—I haven’t even told Wade! Please don’t tell anyone. I could be wrong. But I don’t think so. My period’s three weeks late.”
Sara smiled, and behind the facade of her smile her entire body switched into an alternative mode that focused on survival, evasion, and pretense. “Annie, that’s fabulous!” she said. “Listen, since you used a home ovulation test kit, why don’t you get one of those home pregnancy testing kits?”
“Oh, I have,” Annie said. “I’ve used three of them. They’ve all said positive—I’m pregnant. God, I can’t believe it. I have an appointment with the doctor on Friday. I want to be sure before I tell Wade. I don’t want to be just maybe pregnant, I want to be really pregnant.”
“Oh, I’m sure you are,” Sara said. “It sounds like it.”
“Well, my breasts are tingling at the nipples,” Annie said. “And yesterday, while I was sewing? I just fell asleep. I’ve never done that before. I’m so tired and sleepy these days I can’t seem to get anything done. That’s not like me at all. And—”
Sara listened while Annie talked about the signs of her pregnancy and about when the baby would be due and about how she hoped it would be a boy for Wade’s sake. Sara smiled and nodded and oohed and aahed, and thought: Annie, you are so self-absorbed! Doesn’t it occur to you to wonder why I brought this up? Or what I meant by all those “I knows”? But Sara knew that now she would never confide her own problems to Annie. She could not let Annie know that while she had gotten pregnant after using the test once, Sara hadn’t gotten pregnant after using it several times, after a laparoscopy, after over two years of trying.