“Well, hello, dog,” I say as I get out of the car. “I’m really glad to see you. Not that you’re staying. You do understand that you’re not staying, don’t you?”
Thump, thump, thump.
I feel nothing for the dog. But I am glad he is here because I am glad to know I am not stupid and I am glad to know that trust is still a commodity worth investing in.
The dog slowly lowers his head and, with a deep sigh, resumes his nap in the sun.
Maybe it seems early for this, but we’ve picked out a name for the baby we are adopting from China. In a way, you could say the name picked us; it took nearly a hundred years to get to us.
Alex’s grandmother, my grandmother. Both were named Anna. Which is a nice enough coincidence. But his grandmother and my grandmother, both of the Annas—they lived in the same town. Which would be a nice enough coincidence if it were just Detroit or Minneapolis or some other place people have actually heard of. But no. His grandmother and my grandmother, both of the Annas—they lived in Šiauliai, a tiny village on the northern tip of Lithuania, a town nobody has heard of, at least nobody who lives very far outside of Šiauliai.
So, Anna.
It’s another one of the coincidences, like the birthday. Anna.
We’ll name her after the grandmothers. We’ll name her after all the coincidences. We’ll name her Anna.
Just saying the name brings me comfort.
Today I need comfort.
It’s Sunday. Five days after I learned about my twelve eggs, five days after a dog helped rescue trust from the land of the stupid, five days after Alex testified for a father who now has the court-ordered right to once again see his children.
Sunday. A day most people are in church. Instead I am here in this doctor’s office in a large medical complex, with the lights low, and Alex holding my hand, and I have to pee. I have to pee so bad.
Anna. The thing is, if I just keep saying “Anna” in my head, I don’t have to pee quite so bad.
They said to please make sure I had a full bladder. They said the doctor can see better if the bladder is full. And I am a good girl. I drank those glasses of water this morning. And I drank two extra ones just to make sure. I am a good girl! I am going to wet my pants. I am going to explode.
Anna.
Pee psychosis! I am having hafta-pee psychosis. I am not prepared for this. I was not prepared for Friday, either. Friday, the day of harvest, yes, it happened on Friday, just as the woman with big glasses predicted. Harvest. I wish I had been prepared. I wasn’t expecting any of what happened. None of it was in my IVF manual. They gave me something, then put a needle in, they put me under, but not really under, because I could feel yanking, I could feel tugging and twisting, and at one point I dreamed, but it was more real than a dream, that I was being attacked by a shark. The shark, to his credit, wasn’t biting. He was more just a spearing shark. Spearing me in the stomach. I was glad he wasn’t eating me but confused that he was spearing me that way. But then I realized: Oh. I’m in the sea! But I don’t live in the sea.… I live where there’s air. I need air.
I awoke and my first thought was: air.
They said, “Six. We got six.”
Six viable eggs.
Into each of the six the lab technicians then injected one of Alex’s big manly hunkatomic-power sperms. They sent us home. They said they would call us and let us know. I don’t remember going home, I only remember waking up, really waking up finally, in my bed, and learning that it was now Saturday afternoon and the phone was ringing. They said, “Four.” They said, “You have four embryos here. They look good.”
Four.
Okay. Four.
It was a number. It was just—a number.
And the thing that got me, and still gets me, is that Alex and I seemed to be the only ones talking about anything beyond the number.
“You need to decide how many to transfer,” the nurse said on the phone. “Okay? Because you have four. Are you going to transfer all four?”
Um …
She said another option was to put in two now and freeze two, to be transferred later. She said it was up to us.
“Um.”
She offered no advice. The most I could get out of her was, “The more you put in, the better your chances of having one stick.”
Stick.
The goal was to now get one of these embryos to stick onto my uterine wall, where it could then grow into a baby. Getting an embryo to stick is the one remaining mysterious piece of the whole IVF equation. They don’t know why some stick and some don’t. They don’t really have any science to help that process along. They don’t know why embryos made out of older eggs tend to have much lower sticking power. They don’t know why, in some women, you can put in four and have all four stick, while in others you can put in six and have zero stick.
Lying here on this table, having to pee, I’m glad of that. I’m glad that there is no way to control the sticking. I’m glad there’s one piece of this puzzle that is still fully—and only—in God’s hands.
But mostly I am not glad. Mostly I just have to pee so bad. Where is the doctor? Why is this taking so long? The nurse was in about a half hour ago to apologize for the delay—but that was a half hour ago.
And the urgency of having to pee, the actual pain now in my bladder, the immediacy of all of this, creates panic. Hafta-pee psychosis. Well, it certainly contributes to the panic. How many embryos do we put in?
I can’t believe we are receiving no guidance on this question. This enormous question. Where is the guidance? This was not in the manual.
Well, to be fair, they gave us a chart. Age of woman along one side, number of embryos on the other, and in between little percentage markers indicating chances of pregnancy.
But I’m not talking about numbers.
I’m talking: embryos.
What are they? What is my responsibility to them? Do I have any? And what if I put four in and all four stick? What am I to do as a forty-year-old woman with four babies growing in me?
“Selective reduction,” they say. Just get rid of a few of them.
See, now wait a second.
I don’t know! I don’t know where I stand on these matters! And shouldn’t someone be asking me? Shouldn’t there be something in that big three-ring binder that helps guide me through some of these questions?
There is nothing. That’s what gets me. There is nothing.
This is an industry. This is the fertility industry. This is the business of making humans. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing human about it.
This is what gets me.
And I have to pee so bad.
Anna.
The only thing that calms me down is thinking: Anna. And the feel of Alex’s hand. I am lying on this table, and he is seated here up by my head, and he is holding my hand. I am so glad for this hand. And I am so glad for Anna. My baby. Wherever she is, somewhere in China, most likely not even born yet, which is quite beside the point. I feel her. I know her. She’s waiting for me. Well, I’m coming! I’m coming, sweetheart!
Sweetheart.
A baby.
It’s so human.
It’s: air.
Anna.
The doctor comes in, finally. “Hello,” he says. “I am so sorry to keep you waiting.”
Well, that was nice. That was … human.
He is a puffy man with a full head of jet-black hair and a small ruby-red mouth. He wastes no time. Without pausing to chat or even to look at my face, he walks directly to the end of the table opposite my head, takes the chart from the nurse, lowers himself out of sight behind the sheets with which my knees are draped. “So, four,” he says. “We are transferring four.”
“Actually, we had some questions,” Alex says, craning his neck to be seen.
“Yeah, we’re not sure about—” I say.
“Oh, you have to put in four,” the doctor says. “Oh my, yes. I would highly recommend—I mean, you didn’t go through all of t
his to … dispose of them.”
“Dispose,” I say. “No, but there’s the option to freeze—”
“Oh,” he says. “I can’t recommend that. We don’t know how many will survive the freeze. You could easily lose two in a thaw. I’m telling you, you have to put in four.”
“But—” I say.
“We don’t want—” Alex says.
And the doctor stands up, looks at Alex, and then looks over at the clock on the wall. He looks at the clock?! He’s got, what, a lunch date or something?
We’re here trying to figure out what in God’s name we’re supposed to do, and we really mean in God’s name, and this guy is looking at the damn clock, and I have to pee so bad I may vomit.
“So, okay, four?” the doctor says.
I think, If I just say four, can I then go pee?
We say four.
The procedure takes seconds.
I feel nothing.
Afterward the nurse prints out a picture of my uterus with the four embryos allegedly in it, which are not visible to the human eye. She says we should call in ten days for the pregnancy test. She types “GOOD LUCK!” on the bottom of the page and hands it to me as I rip it out of her hands and bolt off the table and race toward the bathroom door.
But it isn’t the bathroom door. It’s a closet. A damn closet. I am lost in The Land of My Own Wrong Turns.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A-roo! A-roo! A-roo!”
That is one distinctive bark, that beagle bark. The beagle is off in the woods, chasing a scent again. Maybe a turkey? A fox? The point is, he’s come to life. For his first few days and nights all he did was sleep soundly on that willow tree stump. Then, suddenly, he sprang to his feet, looked around and stretched, first his stubby front legs, then his back ones. There he stood, his tail wagging, his nose in the air as if sampling the smells of the wind, his little legs happy and free. It was like watching a wind-up toy that just got wound.
“A-roo! A-roo!”
“That is one enormously weird bark,” I’m saying to Skippy. I’m down at the barn, brushing my dear mule on this cold January afternoon.
“A-roo! A-roo!”
If you didn’t know that noise was coming from a dog you might wonder if it was coming from an animal at all. It sounds almost mechanical, industrial, like maybe the shrill sounds of a rig pumping oil from the ground, or the squeaking brakes of a runaway train.
It’s been weeks and I have not yet found the dog’s owner. No answers to my ad in the paper. I took his picture and gave it to Caroline. She had Sammy post it on the bulletin board. So far, no one recognizes the dog.
Wendy, one of my friends from the city, called to say she might be interested in adopting him if his owners are not located—she’s always wanted a beagle, a beagle she imagined naming Fletch. But then when she came down to meet the dog, you could see the disappointment in her eyes. She liked him just fine, thought he was one adorable dog, but he was not, she said, Fletch. She stood on my porch smiling, but shaking her head. I said I understood. He’s a hunting dog. Clearly, he’s lived his life in the great outdoors. He’s not even house-trained. He’s just not a dog you’d see on the end of a leash prancing down a city street.
One thing Wendy did before she left, though, she came up with a name for the dog. It came to her, an inspiration. She said, “Sparky!” This was before he had finished with his rejuvenation sleep, this was when he was still just lying there, a snoozing lump.
“Sparky,” I said. It was a good name, full of irony and mystery. And it stuck.
Sparky, Skippy, Sassy. It’s getting a little hard to keep all these names straight. Too many “S” names on this farm. Definitely. Not that Sparky is staying.
I’m not opening my heart to Sparky. No. At least not any further than it’s already opened. (Barely a crack.) Because I already have three dogs. So forget it. I’ll find his owner or I’ll find him a good home. That’s the least and that’s the most I can do.
There is not enough of me to go around. Not now, anyway. I mean, let’s review. Four embryos. One baby on her way home from China.
Five. I am now, potentially, the mother of five. I am the old woman who lives in the shoe with so many kids she doesn’t know what to do.
“Five,” I say to Skippy. His winter coat is like a luxurious tan blanket. It covers a stocky body that is pure power. I’ve got the brush just along the ridge under his mane, one of his sweet spots. He has a lot of sweet spots. What a sweet mule.
“Next year at this time, Skip, next year I may have five children so I probably won’t have time to do this.” Skippy appears to be listening, but I’m not sure the comprehension is there. He’s staring straight ahead, blinking his huge, soft eyes slowly, sort of like a child does when his mother is breaking the bad news about going to the dentist.
Four embryos. I can’t believe this.
Chances are slim, of course. But I shouldn’t have let them put in four. I agreed to four only so I could go pee. That’s no way to make a decision. That’s like a sleep-deprived prisoner; pretty soon he’ll agree to anything.
Right now I am filled with regret. Right now I think I made the wrong decision—all of it. I shouldn’t have bothered redeeming my one-free-IVF coupon. I should have just said, “No thanks.” Why didn’t I just say, “No thanks”? I am not, after all, a woman who has spent her life longing to become pregnant. I am a mom in need of a child. And I can love any child. And I came to this motherhood role late, and so I came to it with what Mother Nature has to offer: an adopted child, or two, or three. Why didn’t I just stay on that path, the path that felt so right? Why did I veer off onto this path?
Why?
Well, why not? What’s so unusual about this? What’s so unusual about wanting to have a baby?
I want to have a baby. That’s the truth of it. I want to make a baby with Alex. Of course I do. Is that so abnormal?
Is that so wrong? Is that not the most natural thing in the world to want?
That is the most natural thing in the world to want. It’s the whole reason the world is still even here. All those babies being born, all those species keeping themselves going.
Except mules. See, mules are sterile. “Skippy, I don’t know if you can possibly understand any of this,” I’m saying. Skippy will never father a child. Is he bothered by this? I suppose not. But I’m really not sure the comprehension is there.
“I just shouldn’t have put in four,” I say to him. “But I had to pee, Skip,” I say. “I was having hafta-pee psychosis.”
What do you do when you think you may have made a wrong turn and there is no chance to right it? What on earth do you do?
You brush a mule, that’s what you do.
You get grounded back in the here-and-now.
You say to God, “Whoops.” You say, “I think I may have taken a wrong turn.” You hope He is a loving God. You hope He is listening. You hope the comprehension is there.
You pull at your mule’s mane, untangle, and comb. You think: Four. And your heart goes thump, thump, thump with fear. And so you try, you force yourself back to your mule, back to the here-and-now, a time and a place that exist like a blip, like a soaring sparrow there is no way to climb aboard.
Chances are less than slim, of course. In fact, given my age, and fertility history, the odds are that none of the embryos have stuck. Zero. But the thing is, four. It is actually possible I am pregnant with quadruplets. I’ll find out something tomorrow. Tomorrow I take the pregnancy test.
“The thing is,” I’m saying, flipping Skippy’s mane over. “If the choice is between having zero or four, I’m praying for zero.” Because I can’t … selectively reduce. I know myself, and I know I can’t. Nor am I likely to be physically capable of carrying four babies. “If the choice is between having all of them stick, or none of them stick, then please let it be none.”
It’s good to talk to God through a mule. It takes the pressure off somehow.
“Please,” I say into the
crisp winter air. “Please don’t let this happen.” Please let me be a normal person, pregnant with just one.
Skippy’s leaning his big head toward me. It’s his way of saying “My ear, please. It is now time to scratch my ear.” Mules are famous for their big ears, of course, and their ears are extremely sensitive, their ears are the key to their hearts. Earn the right to scratch a mule’s ear, and you have really gotten somewhere.
Skippy likes it when I gently grab his ear with the tips of my fingers and rub it up and down, inside and out. See, he’s lowering his head now, showing his trust. His head is now down by my knees.
Aroo! Aroo! Aroo!
Skippy doesn’t even take note of the odd bark in the distance. Like the rest of us here at Sweetwater Farm, he’s grown accustomed to it.
“Well, thanks for listening, Skippy. You want me to pick your hooves?” It’s not his favorite grooming event, but it needs to be done. Our horses and mules have the run of perhaps twenty acres, and we always have to make sure that their feet don’t pick up stones or thorns.
Just then Marley appears, prancing up and popping his nose through the barn gate. “Hey, Marley boy, what’s up?” I say to him, even though I already know the answer. He’s usually a few steps ahead of Alex. He has a way of announcing Alex, like a bugle blaring, da-da da-da dum! Nothing like having a husband with a poodle heralding him.
“Sorry I didn’t join you sooner, sweetie,” Alex says, popping his head in. “Did you brush Maggie?”
“Nope. She’s waiting for you.”
“Good,” he says. “I was talking to George on the phone.”
“Oh?”
“Actually, it was Pat who called. She’s stuck on the Food Network again.”
“Oh, jeez.” Ever since George and Pat redeemed the certificate we gave them for a free Dish Network satellite system, they’ve had problems. And every time they have a problem, they call me, which I don’t mind, of course. It’s just, well, what happened was, shortly after George got his system going, he got a certificate in the mail for a free satellite dish he might give to a friend (and it wasn’t even his birthday), so George did, he gave it to a friend on Daniel’s Run Road. And then, guess what? The guy on Daniel’s Run Road got a certificate in the mail for a free satellite dish he might give to a friend, and let’s just say this thing is catching on. Problem is, any time any of these people have a satellite dish question, they call the person who gave them the certificate for the free dish, and that person calls the person who gave it to him, and mostly it all funnels back to George or Pat, at which time George or Pat calls me for troubleshooting advice. Which I don’t mind, of course. But I have to say the potential here is starting to scare me.
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