My mom has rented our house to a famous film director and his family. I feel conflicted now about seeing his movies. I’m on my way uptown to meet my mom when I run into Haruko again. Last thing I remember, she was set to break up with Connery, and I assume that’s what she did.
“I have the best news!” she announces near the mailboxes.
“What’s that?” I ask.
She puts her hand on her stomach. “I’m pregnant.”
“Oh my God. Whoa. Wow.”
“Yeah, I know. Connery and I are getting married.”
“Oh. Wow. Okay. Um…are you happy with that decision?”
“Oh yes! Babies change everything. Marriage too. I’m on cloud nine.”
“Good for you,” I say, even though I mean “poor baby.”
Since Frankie was in my life, however briefly, the idea of having a newborn baby has become less appealing. What I really want is a Frankie, which means finding an already existent kid who needs a mother figure. But then my grandmother Puggy died and left a little money to each grandchild. Kara pointed out that it was enough for one round of IVF. I made the mistake of mentioning the idea to my mom, who has heard me wonder aloud many times whether or not I should have a baby on my own. She suggests I make another appointment at the fertility clinic, despite hearing about the previous visit, and despite the fact that I’m still ambivalent about having a baby on my own. I know she wants me to have a baby, but how do I know what I want until I have it? I didn’t know I wanted a Frankie until I had one.
“What if I have a baby and regret it?” I ask my mom.
“You won’t.”
I close my eyes, preventing myself from growing visibly angry. What if Melissa dies? What if Baba dies? What if we lose this house? What if something bad happens when I leave? My whole life the answer has always been the same, but “It won’t” is not an answer; it’s not even true.
Before I can come up with a response, we’re summoned into the doctor’s office. He has the results of my blood test, and it is bad news. I can feel the heat rising, its burn in my chest. Loss. Even when I’m ambivalent, news of loss bumps me out of the world.
“With your blood results, I can tell you that you have less than a one percent chance of getting pregnant, even with IVF. It’s not uncommon for women your age to come to me and think we can make miracles happen, and we can, just not the miracles you expect, or even want.”
There it is: I missed it. There had always been time, and now time is gone. All my ambivalence and anxiety led me here, ensuring I would never be able to make the family I wanted. I’m the one who held me back; this is my fault. I will never have a biological child. I will never know what a child of my genetic material will look like. I won’t have the experience my siblings had, my friends have, my mother had. I don’t have a child because I waffled, and I don’t have a partner because I waited each time when I should have left. Decisions meant loss, and so I didn’t decide and now the decision has been made for me. I can’t have children. I can adopt, or get an egg donor, but I cannot make my own baby.
The dread is gone, lifted; in its place is sadness, but also relief. The decision has been taken from me; now I can’t choose the wrong thing because there is no longer a choice. I missed the window. Was I so afraid to make a mistake that I unconsciously did this on purpose? After all, if I really wanted a baby, wouldn’t I have made it happen somehow?
When I look at my mother a grief wells inside me. I look away, so I don’t find myself dissolving into a fetal ball on the office floor. I manage to wait to fall apart on the street outside, where my mother hugs me and doesn’t know what to say.
When we part I walk for a while, all the way across town toward Sixth Avenue, each block a sample of upcoming seasons to walk through. The crisp first breath of winter, fire smoke followed by a shocking pocket of warmth, and then I look up, called to the sky, a lifelong reflex. It’s not yet four thirty and the sun is beginning its descent, and my body responds with a tightening of dread in my chest. Dread that every evening will find me suffering from countdowns for the rest of my life. Why does this still happen to me? My body has always reacted to the sun this way; the sky and I have a private relationship that is not mine to end. What does it want from me? What is it trying to tell me? I try to do what my therapist has trained me to do, to follow the feeling to the very beginning, to when I first felt it, and identify the association. Of course: It’s telling me that soon it will be bedtime and I’ll have to leave my mom. That soon I’ll have to go to my dad’s. It’s telling me that the day is dying, that things are ending and all the distractions of the day are quieting, creating more space for me to worry about all the ways I have to say good-bye.
But I am not a child anymore. Can I change my association to the sky? What if I simply decide it’s the best time of day and not the worst? I look at the sunset and tell it, You are so pretty. You don’t scare me. And for a moment, it doesn’t—and I feel released and in control of my feelings. Until I accidentally blink the moment away.
* * *
A few nights later, my little sister Rebecca calls to tell me she’s pregnant. I feel knocked a few feet deeper into my new reality of having “missed it,” but through the pangs of jealousy I’m excited for her. We talk about names and discuss her worries and the due date, and when we hang up, I surprise myself by not bursting into tears. I’m embarrassingly proud of this.
A few days later I receive a call from my dad. Immediately I worry something else bad has happened. The last time he called me in the middle of the day, it was to report that my grandmother Puggy, his mother, had died.
“Dad, hi. What’s the matter?” I ask.
“Everything is fine. I just thought I’d call and see how you were. I’m sure Rebecca’s news wasn’t easy for you to hear.”
I’m about to protest about how happy I am for her, insist that it’s no big deal, but I am so caught off-guard, so touched by this small act of attentiveness, that as I start to say, “I’m fine,” I burst into tears, something I haven’t done in front of him since I was small. And he sits with me there, on the phone, listening. As I realize he’s not going to crack a joke at my expense, I feel a shift inside my body: I am no longer crying for the baby I won’t have. Now I am crying because the person I least expected has shown up when I most needed him. The exact person I’ve spent my whole life afraid to need.