The Choices We Make

I was pregnant.

I heard the front door unlock. I froze, clenching test number five—which also turned out to have two blue lines—in my hand. “Hannah? Where are you?” Ben called down the hall.

“Bathroom!” I shouted. Our first apartment was so small you could literally get from one end to the other in mere seconds.

“You weren’t answering your phone, so I tried you at work. Rebecca said you called in sick?” His voice got louder as he came closer to the bathroom. “Why didn’t you call me?” We were still in that sweet spot of our relationship, when the sniffles that sent me back to bed warranted a call to my boyfriend, who would worry and fawn over me and make me his mom’s pepperpot soup and leave work early to pick up aspirin and cough drops. Not that Ben wasn’t caring now, because he was still concerned if I wasn’t feeling well, but we had moved past the soup and care package delivery and into the more realistic scenario of a “feel better” text and finishing out the workday.

Ben knocked on the bathroom door.

“Just getting out of the shower,” I said, eyeing the mess of test-stick packaging all over the floor. “Give me a second.”

I heard him retreat and quickly shoved the test sticks back into the boxes, then crumpled them all up into the plastic pharmacy bag, which I shoved to the bottom of the trash can. I dumped out the rest of the soda and stuck the empty bottle under the counter, reminding myself to throw it down the garbage chute later.

When I came out of the bathroom five minutes later, Ben jumped up from the couch and walked toward me. He had loosened his tie and held a paper bag in one hand. He looked me over, trying to figure out what was going on, and placed his palm against my forehead. His hand smelled like soap and felt cool against my skin.

“I’m fine.” My voice wavered, and I cleared my throat. “Just a touch of the flu I think.”

Ben looked at me strangely. “I thought you were in the shower?”

“I was. Why?”

He ran his fingers down my hair. “Your hair isn’t wet.”

I opened my mouth to explain—just say you wore a shower cap—and then closed it again, thinking maybe now was the time to tell him about the five positive pregnancy tests in the trash. “Right. The shower.”

“What’s going on, Hannah?”

“Nothing,” I said, too fast and too high-strung. He noticed and swallowed nervously. It occurred to me he thought maybe I really was fine, but that something was wrong between us. “I promise. Everything is okay. Aside from whatever virus has taken over my body. Speaking of which, what’s in the bag?” I asked, reaching for it and opening it up.

“Some throat lozenges, aspirin and those fizzy tablets for your stomach. Oh, and a Snickers bar,” he said with a smile. “I was trying to cover all the sickness bases. And the chocolate bar is for me because I missed lunch.”

“Thank you.” I kissed him, then apologized for probably getting him sick—he didn’t need to know that would be quite impossible. “You are the best boyfriend ever.”

“I know,” he said, winking. “Now get on the couch and let me take care of you.” I raised my eyebrows, and he laughed. “I was thinking some tea and aspirin, but I’m open to whatever might make you feel better.”

I dutifully drank my tea and took the two aspirin he gave me, then let him snuggle me on the couch under hot blankets while we watched too many hours of television. But while I lay there in his arms, laughing at the television as if I was actually paying attention, all I kept thinking was how badly I had messed everything up.

* * *

For a week I panicked about the pregnancy. I told no one, including Kate, because I wasn’t yet sure what I wanted to do. I’m embarrassed to admit I even flipped a coin—three to one for keeping the baby, though I was never any good at sticking to coin tosses. In truth I was terrified by both prospects: becoming a mother or choosing not to.

But luckily—or unfortunately, as I’d say now—it wasn’t my choice to make. My body chose for me, and two weeks after those five positive pregnancy tests, I miscarried. There was a disturbing amount of blood, and cramping intense enough to send me to bed early in the afternoon with a hot water bottle, which is where Ben found me after work.

“Are you not feeling well again?”

“Not really,” I said, sitting up and plopping the hot water bottle to the side.

“Maybe you should go to the doctor?” He looked worried. “It’s been over a week.”

My guilt kicked into overdrive. “I’m not sick. But I need to tell you something.”

“Okay.” Ben sat on the edge of the bed and ran a hand up and down my bare shin, his forehead crinkled in anticipation of whatever I was about to say.

I took a deep breath. “I was pregnant.”

He stared at me for a moment, his mouth open in surprise, before asking, “Was?”

“I miscarried this morning.” I picked at some lint on my shirt, left there from the hot water bottle’s fleecy cover. I expected him to ask if I was okay, what happened, how I was feeling about it all, if I needed anything. Those were the questions I was ready for.

“You didn’t tell me.” It was a statement, wrapped in frustration.

“No, I’m... I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”

“How long?”

“What?”

“How far along were you?” Ben’s jaw was tight, his hands now on his lap instead of touching my leg. I knew the question he was really asking.

My voice quieted; my heart beat hard in my chest. “I found out two weeks ago.”

He looked up at the ceiling and exhaled loudly. “How could you not tell me, Hannah?”

I started to cry, the first tears I’d shed since finding out about the pregnancy. “Honestly? I didn’t know how I felt about it. And I wanted to figure that out first. But I guess none of that matters now.”

“Does Kate know?”

I shook my head. “No. I didn’t tell anyone.”

Ben nodded, and I wasn’t sure what he was thinking. At least he didn’t look as mad as before. He didn’t say anything for so long I started to get antsy, needing us to get to the part where he forgave me and we could move on.

“Are you okay?” he finally asked.

I lay back against the duvet and closed my eyes. “Yes,” I said. He shifted to lie beside me on the bed, then handed me my hot water bottle, which I pressed onto my painful abdomen.

I swallowed hard, my next words coming out in a whisper. “What if I’m a crap mother, Ben?” My own mother had done what I considered to be a satisfactory job, but she probably wouldn’t win any parenting awards. In fairness, she had raised my sister and me mostly alone, and we hadn’t made it easy on her. I had also spent enough time with Kate and young Ava—who had just yesterday flushed an entire roll of toilet paper down the powder room toilet, resulting in a very expensive plumber visit—to question if I was cut out for motherhood.

Ben laughed a little when I told him about Ava and the toilet paper, which for whatever reason made me cry harder. Probably because I knew then he wasn’t going to storm out of the bedroom and leave me to my cramps and tears and regret. “Everyone thinks they’d be a shitty parent, Hannah. That’s what helps keep you on guard to try and do the best job you can.” The tears came faster, hot and fresh. “If you think you’ll be stellar, you get cocky and miss things. People have been doing it forever. You’ll figure it out.” I almost believed him. “You’ll be a great mom, and I can’t wait to watch you in action one day.”

I blew my nose, honking into the tissues he handed me.

“I want you to promise me something.”

“What?” I blew my nose again.

“If you’re not okay, or freaked out about something, you have to tell me. I know you have Kate, and Claire in an emergency.” I snorted. Claire was pretty low on my who-to-call-in-an-emergency list. “But I’m not going anywhere. I love you. And for what it’s worth? I know having a baby right now wouldn’t have been ideal, but we would have made it work. So, promise me. Nothing but the messy truth from here on out, okay?”

“Okay.” I nodded. “Nothing but the messy truth.”

Except I didn’t hold up my end of the bargain.

What I never told Ben, or even Kate when she hugged me later that day after I confessed to her as well, was that when I realized I was losing the baby I didn’t feel sadness, or despair, or even loss... I felt relief.

I was relieved I wasn’t going to be a mother.

And that’s the sort of messy truth you keep to yourself, because perhaps that one time when you whispered, “Please, I don’t want to be a mother...” to the universe, it thought you meant forever.

* * *

A few days after the Lyla and restaurant incidents, Ben and I were sitting in Dr. Horwarth’s office getting the news I knew was coming but was still not ready to hear. How do you prepare for the brutal reality of being told you will never carry your own child? You can’t, I realized, as his words washed over me along with the sensation of drowning—I was circling the same stupid drain I’d been circling since that first negative pregnancy test, all those years ago. Except this time there was no rescue mission planned, no life vest, nothing to keep me from sinking straight down to the bottom.

“Remember at the beginning of all this how I suggested you draw a line in the sand, deciding how far you’re willing to go and what you’re willing to put your body through to make it happen?” Dr. Horwarth clasped his hands on his desk, his face gentle with understanding.

But while he might have understood what we were feeling on an intellectual level, the pictures of his smiling family displayed on the corner of his desk suggested he really didn’t get it, couldn’t get it.

“I remember,” I said, my voice breaking. Ben held my hand, like I expected him to, like he knew he should and had so many times before. But it brought me no comfort today.

“I’m wondering how close we are to that line now. I’m willing to keep trying. We can do another round of IVF...but I’ll be honest,” Dr. Horwarth said, pausing for a moment. “I’m sorry to say I don’t expect to have different results than what we’ve had.”

I was so filled with anger—at my body, at Dr. Horwarth, at Ben for sticking through this with me when he should have left to find a wife who wasn’t barren, at the woman in the waiting room who was having a hushed but excited conversation on her phone while she stared at her ultrasound photo, a smile stretched wide across her face. And tickling the edges of that anger was such a deep pain I was afraid of what would happen to me if I let it take over.

15

KATE

November

The waiting room was packed. Checking my watch I saw she was already twenty minutes behind. Settling in, I opened another magazine—this one with a young celebrity wearing a marshmallow-size diamond on her finger and declaring her three-month-long courtship “the time of my life”—and sipped my latte. While most might dread a trip to the gynecologist, I was always happy to be here. Not because of the exams—that would be going too far—but because Dr. Lisa Kadari’s practice had a self-serve latte machine, individually wrapped dark chocolate squares in a huge glass bowl and the best magazines. It practically felt like a holiday at her office.

I flipped through the pages—past silly articles on celebrities who did things just like us regular folk, like pick up their own dry cleaning and wash their cars—and put the magazine down a couple of minutes later. Scanning the other titles, I picked up the latest copy of Femme and turned to the food and recipes section. It was nearly Thanksgiving, and Hannah had done a two-page spread on putting a holiday-worthy feast on the table in under an hour. Seeing her smiling face in the corner thumbnail photo made me think about how she’d looked nothing like that happy woman at our drink date the other night—her eyes red rimmed, her ponytail disheveled and her spirit broken.

She’d tried to cancel on me; she wasn’t feeling well and didn’t want to infect me, and could we do it another night? When I showed up at her place thirty minutes later, saying that unless she was vomiting or running a 104-degree fever, she was coming with me, she’d gotten dressed without another word. Ben had watched her carefully as she left the room to get changed, after which we chatted about the nonimportant stuff like work and the girls’ recent soccer game until she came back out. But I knew he was worried, like I was. The past few months had taken a lot out of her, and it was as if whatever was chewing her up inside had just showed up on the outside for all of us to see.

Another twenty minutes and two magazines later I sat on the exam room table, waiting for the doctor. There was a knock, and a woman’s voice from the other side of the door. “Kate? You all set?”

Lisa Kadari was a petite woman with a big presence. She had thirteen-year-old twin boys—whom she had somehow managed to birth naturally at six and half pounds apiece—golden skin and hair that hung straight down her back in a glossy black sheet. When I asked her once how she got her hair so shiny, she’d said genetics and coconut oil. So I’d gone out and bought a giant tub of the stuff, slathering it all over my hair that night. I’d woken up with an oil-stained pillowcase despite the plastic shower cap and a new pimple on my forehead. That was the end of my beauty experiment with coconut oil.

She came in and took both my hands in hers in greeting, and I could see the remnants of a henna tattoo on her skin. “My cousin got married this past weekend,” she said, holding her hands out—her fingers splayed to show off the temporary tattoo.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, noting how intricate the designs were as they wrapped around her fingers and snaked up her arm in deep brown vines and leaves and starbursts, disappearing under the sleeve of her pastel-pink blouse, which poked out from her white coat.

“Thank you, I agree. Now, tell me, how are things?”

I dutifully filled her in for a minute or so on the girls and David and life before she asked, “And what can I do for you today?”

At this question I shifted slightly, clearing my throat and looking at my toenails, which I had fairly hastily polished that morning when I realized how ugly they looked bare. My feet were never going to win me any compliments, my toes slightly wonky and nails ridged thanks to years of dance class in too-tight shoes.

I wasn’t due for my annual physical for another seven months, and had been vague with the receptionist when I’d called to see if she could squeeze me in.

“I had a few questions...” My voice trailed, and then I laughed. “I have no idea why I’m so nervous all of a sudden.”

Dr. Kadari smiled. “Questions about what?”

“About another pregnancy,” I replied, the words tumbling out of me quickly.

“You want to have another baby?”

“No...that’s not what I want...” Dr. Kadari’s eyebrows rose slightly as she waited for me to explain. “David’s vasectomy might make that a tad tricky.”

“Yes, that’s the whole point of a vasectomy,” she said, laughing with me.

I took a deep breath and looked down at my toes again. “So, here’s the thing. I’m wondering if I’m in okay shape to get pregnant again. If my eggs are, you know, still young enough and all that good stuff.”

She rested her hands on her crossed knees and leaned back in her chair. “Well, you’re only thirty-five and have two healthy, beautiful children,” she said. “Of course we never can tell about egg quality based on age alone, but I’d say you probably have at least a few healthy ones left.” She winked and smiled, and I smiled back, feeling infinitely more relaxed.

“I’m considering doing something and I wanted to get your medical opinion before I say anything to anyone else. Is that okay?”

“That’s what I’m here for,” Dr. Kadari said. “So tell me, what is it you want to do?”

16

KATE

“I saw Dr. Kadari today,” I said, holding hands with David while we walked a few paces behind the girls. We had promised them after-dinner ice cream if they did their homework first, and we were on our way to make good on that promise.

“Oh, yeah? How is she?” David’s middle finger traced small circles on my palm, which tickled but not enough to pull my hand away.

“Good. Same. Tiny. Still with that perfect hair.” I sighed, running my other hand across my own hair, which was due for a wash.

David laughed watching me. “I hope you’re not thinking of pulling that coconut oil out again.”

“I gave that to Hannah ages ago. Apparently it’s great for baking.”

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