Javier and I stop at a hotel and get a room. The storm is too rough and we can’t see. He wants to break up, and I am spinning through the universe, unable to stop. I am catatonic. I am sitting in an armchair staring. I have not removed my shoes, winter coat, scarf, or hat. Javier is sitting on the bed. He doesn’t know what to do and I don’t care that he’s in over his head, that I’m scaring him and he’s terrified to speak in case I break.
I am so old. I am forty-one and have nothing. I am forty-one and losing the only something I’ve ever wanted. Without Javier there is no Frankie. For four weeks I had a family, and now it’s being taken from me, although it has never been mine to keep. He’s not losing anything. He has a family; he’s had one all along. He’s safe and I am out.
Why can’t I get a family? How is it that I keep getting closer and closer but never achieve the goal? There seems to be some trick that I don’t know, a code I can’t crack. Who can teach me?
“I don’t know what I’m saying,” he says. “Can we not make any decisions right now?”
I don’t know if I’ve even blinked. Javier thinks he’s broken me, but I broke a long time ago.
* * *
I once admitted to him that if we broke up I’d be devastated.
“You won’t be devastated,” he said. “I don’t have that much power.”
“You do, just not in the way that you think. I have more at stake than you do,” I said.
“Let’s not dwell in the negative. Let’s look at the light,” he said.
I was glad we were on the phone so I could roll my eyes.
* * *
Ever since I met Frankie, when I have imagined the future, all the places I once occupied alone are now filled with thoughts of her. She is my motivation, my real-life Frankie Bird. Every store I go into, I look for things she might like. Silly things I see or hear, I tuck into the Frankie part of my brain, eager to watch her buckle with laughter, tears licking her cheeks. Sure, I imagined Javier in my future, but it was all about Frankie.
Frankie could have been my daughter. I felt that; I know she felt it, too. She might be the only child I’ll ever have. What if she needs me? What if I let him leave me, and Frankie has no one to turn to when she’s in pain? I can’t let this happen. We cannot break up. We have to make this work.
I know that Javier embodies my last chance at having a biological baby, and I also realize that the anxiety I feel about losing that chance is, paradoxically, what is ruining it. But I can’t stop. Even though I know I would be fulfilled and satisfied with just Frankie, the fear of never having a biological child becomes a worry stone I cannot stop rubbing. I cannot stop pressuring him about having a baby, about getting married, about creating a family, even as I’m unconvinced he is the right partner for me. Even though I know, if I had to, I could just have a baby on my own.
My therapist tells me to take the baby thing off the table and see if that changes things. When I tell Javier I’m going to do that, he is instantly relieved. I am surprised at how quickly my anxiety recedes the second I let go of something. Maybe it’s knowing that I’m not losing everything—I still have Javi and Frankie.
A few days later, alone at the farmers’ market, I run into Max and Jane. Jane is pregnant. I’m happy for them, but still, sadness flakes off my body, and I hope they don’t see it.
“We need your naming input,” Max says. “Come over for dinner and we’ll begin the proceedings.” I look forward to dinner, yet the whole exchange makes me feel outside of time, in a place the world can’t reach. Everyone advances, and I stand still watching them pass me by. Down at the bread stand, partners are discussing what to buy for dinner; mothers are strapped to their babies; fathers are pushing strollers. People hand their money over to the vendors with gleaming, wedding-banded hands. Everyone has someone; no one is mine. Later I run into Franklin and Iris, who is about to pop. I offer my help to them, too, but they’re all set.
“Can you tell me?” I ask.
They look at each other and smile. Iris leans in and whispers, “Frances Wren. Either Frankie or Bird for short.”
At first I think it’s a joke, that I must have told them; but no, I never told them. My entire future slips out of me, like my own water broke, and I swallow my urge to yell, “No! That’s my name and you can’t have it!” Instead I force a smile and say, “That’s the name I was going to give to my daughter.” Then, head down, I hurry home.
Upstairs, I leave my produce on the floor, climb into bed, and cry. I feel forgotten, somehow, like I don’t exist on the same linear plane as everyone else, as if I am nothing but a witness to their realities. I’ve named so many babies, given so much advice, saved so many relationships, set so many people up; the couples I introduced got married and created families, and now I feel like I barely exist anymore.
To clear my mind, I go with some friends to a Saturday-afternoon African dance class at Mark Morris, my third time trying the class. For a while I am happy: the rhythm of the drums, the vibrations of our bare feet on the wood floor; this is what I need to get my mind off everything. But as we dance across the room in sections and I lag behind, still unsure of the steps, I suddenly feel quite singularly alone. The next group can’t begin until I’ve crossed to the other side, and no matter how fast I go, it’s not fast enough. It’s clear to everyone ahead of me that I’m not one of them, and I’m even ruining things for the people behind. There’s never been a place for me. Once I thought there was, but I was wrong.
Javier and I have been together nearly a year, and as I hurry to catch up with my group of dancers, I’m struck by how little of that time we’ve spent together. He’s hardly ever in New York. If I want to see Frankie, I’ll have to go to Maine and face my jealousy about Meredith. I’ll have to wait a year till they leave the island. But can I really trust what will happen next? Can I drag myself through another year of this uncertainty? My body tells me no.
Not even for Frankie? I ask it.
No.
My body always knows, even when my brain tries to override it. But what even my brain has to agree is this: To Javier, I am not a priority. I’m cut out of his decisions because I’m not part of his family. I’m sideswiped by an epiphany. To Javier, Meredith is still his wife. They’re still enmeshed, although she has a boyfriend and he has a girlfriend. Javier, I’m nauseated to realize, already has a family. To make one with me would be redundant.
I stop dancing. I stand off to the side, struck and encased by this discovery. Profound dread forces me out of the classroom and outside. He has no incentive to move toward me. I’m in this relationship alone.
I have to break up with Javier.
I try to talk myself out of it on the way home. On a whim, I pull out my calendar and count up the days that we have spent together in the last ten months. Sixty-three. I have a choice. I can continue on, feeling like I’m chasing a family who doesn’t want me, or I can cut myself free. I can take that pain out of my life.
I sit on the edge of my bed, trying to breathe. Breakups undo me, and I don’t want to come undone. For once, I just want to break up with someone without worrying I’m going to die. When I try to imagine the worst that can happen, I can’t seem to see or feel anything. My feelings go dark. The worst that can happen is that I will stop existing. I know I faced this same sense of extinction onstage, but it’s never felt like an option in my personal life. Maybe the only way to get through this is to pretend I’m onstage.
I call Javier, trying to keep the image of my bombing but not dying onstage in my head, but when he picks up, I fight back the urge to throw up. I breathe, and I tell him, as calmly as I’m able, that I can’t do it anymore. He doesn’t seem upset. He may even be relieved; I can’t bear to think about that. I will write Frankie a letter and send her a package. I’ll call her. I just need a few days. As I put the phone down, I wait for the devastation to set in, wait to spiral off into an endless world without a bottom. But the anguish doesn’t come.
I wait. I am sad and empty, but for the moment, that’s all. When the welling in my chest begins to take shape, and the world expands before me, vast and frightening, I move toward the panic—although I don’t want to. Wait! Wait! I say to the world, or maybe to myself—wait! I am being pulled toward my new stark reality of being without a family, of never getting what I want, when I remind myself how my body felt when I took the baby thing off the table. It was just a decision, a simple choice, but it shifted my feelings. I realize that I have a choice right now. I’m the one who makes the feelings; the emotions don’t already exist in the world, waiting to trap me. Usually, I let the emotion happen to me, following it until I lose control and need someone else to care for me; but what if I just decide I can care for myself, that I know how? That I am not going to die because I’m without Javi. I can believe my feelings are not facts, just as I told Frankie.
The groove I’ve worn into my life is there, I suddenly see, because I’ve followed it. After every breakup, I have always followed the helpless groove it led me into. But if I made that groove myself, that means I can make another, different groove; and if I keep following that one, maybe I can get myself out of this cycle. The degree to which I fall apart is a choice.
I breathe deeply, and I make the choice. I was fine before Javier, and I’ll be fine without him. I can want a family and feel sad I lost this one; but, I remind myself, I want a family who wants to be my family in return. I’m saddest about Frankie. She’s the person I really need to mourn, and that loss is different. I know I’ve lost the island, too, that I’ll never be able to return because the island is Javier’s, just like Frankie is his, and I am still looking for something to call mine. But at least I had it. For four incredible weeks, I had a family.