SARA LET THE WATER run down her back, through her hair, and over her ears, filling them completely and blocking out the world. Her eyes were closed, and she could feel the air trapped inside her lungs as she held her breath, letting the water cover her entire face, her nose and mouth. When she couldn’t hold it any longer, she emerged and gasped for air, her blood pumping and her head light.
She had learned this trick as a child, this way of shocking herself back from something she no longer wanted to think or feel. Or both. That she was doing it on the eve of Thanksgiving, the day of being thankful, made her sad beyond words.
She was about to go under again, a second round of shock therapy, when she heard Nick yell out from their bedroom, “Great dinner, babe! Really great.”
She turned off the water and opened the door, reaching for a towel. “Thanks.”
Then came the next question. “You coming to bed?”
It was totally predictable and dreadful all at the same time. “Just a sec . . .”
The dinner should have been great. It had all the makings of a great dinner. The turkey was made and set to cool. The china was pulled from cupboards, dusted off, and set on the table. Wine was poured, and cartons of mashed potatoes, green beans, and gravy were nuked in the microwave and placed neatly in serving dishes. Sara had removed the plastic from the dining room floor, dusted and vacuumed until the air was clean and the room suitable for food consumption. Still, without draperies or paint, it had felt barren as they all sat down for the feast.
Sara reached for a towel and dried her face, then wrapped the towel around her body. Was it her imagination? No. It was there. As the plates were filled, a strange silence had taken over the room. It was the same silence that used to fill her house when she was a child and her parents were thinking things they didn’t want to say. Like the night they met her sister’s fiancé, or the morning after Sara blew her curfew. They loved a good heated debate, and they were not ones to shy away from the discussion of personal business. But there were some things that could not be said, some arguments that could not be waged, because once they were, they could never be taken back. And Sara knew exactly what they had not wanted to say earlier that night as they sat around her table.
It had been written on their faces, these lovely people who did not know how to fake it. As they walked through her enormous house that was now being expanded, as they listened to her vent about Roy the Contractor, Nanna, and her litany of other problems, she had seen their expressions morph from genuine excitement at seeing her new life to an almost grave concern. Then Nick had emerged from his man cave in a cashmere sweater, his hair just a little slicker than he used to wear it.
Through the turkey and cranberry sauce, they had learned that their once-intellectual daughter hadn’t read the paper in weeks, hadn’t even followed the latest Nick Kristoff series in the op-eds. And as they listened to the story of the Barlow Halloween party, the description of extravagance and the way their daughter had been transformed into a spendthrift queen about to be beheaded, their faces had again taken on the look that Sara dreaded. It was as though they had marbles in their mouths that they could neither expel nor swallow.
And she knew now, as she looked at her own face in the bathroom mirror, exactly what they were. Marbles filled with worry, with misgivings, and worst of all, wonderment at what had become of their daughter. It pissed her off and made her sad all at the same time. What had they expected? Had they not been thrilled that for once she brought home a man who was not a self-centered child yearning to roam the world? They knew Nick’s age, and hers. And it wasn’t hard to do the math when Annie was born seven months after their elopement. None of this had been charted out, and yet they had the nerve to be surprised at her life and where it was taking her.
“Hey.” It was Nick, startling her from the doorway.
With the towel wrapped tightly around her body, she turned to face him with a smile.
“You almost done?”
“Yeah. Almost.”
She could feel him wanting to come in, come closer. Maybe pull the towel away and feel her next to him. But he didn’t. “I’ll be in bed.”
“I’m coming in a second.” She turned back to the mirror and thought about the pills she had removed from her purse and stored in the back of her jewelry box. She hadn’t taken one for two weeks, hoping to clear her system before the tests were taken next month. After his prodding and pleading with her, she had finally given in to Nick’s request, and they were now headed down the path of the fertility doctors.
It was the dead middle of her cycle, which Nick had memorized, and this was precisely why he was in there, waiting. She had managed to avoid him for the seven days since her period ended. Her parents, the house, headaches, and tiffs with Nanna that she invented in order to explain the bad moods. What did she have left, besides the truth?
She brushed her teeth, flossed, and gargled. She tweezed the stray eyebrow hairs that were growing in around the edges. Then came the moisturizer, one for her body, another for her face. She brushed her hair.
Walking slowly, she turned out the light and headed for her closet. He was lying still beneath the covers. Was he sleeping? There’d been a lot of wine, then an after-dinner scotch with her father in the man cave. She took out her thick flannel pajamas and buttoned them all the way up. She hung the wet towel on the rack. Then she tiptoed to the bed.
As she pulled back the covers on her side and slipped beneath them, she heard him sigh and roll over, reaching for her. “Great dinner,” he said again, wrapping his arms around her. “You are amazing.”
Shit, she thought. Flattery. It was the gold standard of marital foreplay, but it also meant there was no escape. He started kissing her neck, moving his body closer to hers, pressing against her. Under any other circumstances, she would have found all of this a turn-on. His tongue on the outside of her ear, strong hands reaching under the tightly buttoned shirt. But tonight she was just afraid. She wanted the sex, Christ did she miss the sex. It was the rest of it that had her wanting to run like hell from this bed, this house—this entire life, if she were honest with herself. Biology was cruel.
“I know you’re tired, babe, but if we miss the next few days, we’re done for another month.”
He was feeling her lack of enthusiasm, being considerate. Damn him. Couldn’t he just be an insensitive prick once in a while? The guilt was digging in even deeper. How could she not want to have this baby? It wasn’t as though she was choosing between motherhood and some dangerous, exciting assignment overseas. Motherhood had already chosen her once, and it was a lifetime gig. Annie deserved a sibling. Nick deserved the family she had promised him when they made the plans and flew to Las Vegas without really knowing each other at all. Years had passed. She should have been used to this life by now, the life she’d accepted on impulse, but which had turned out pretty damn good for a twenty-seven-year-old. Couldn’t the rest of it just be noise? Noise that she could turn down?
Sara kissed him back. “I’m not tired. Just a little drunk.” She laughed in a naughty way as she peeled off the flannel pajamas.
“Really?” Nick pulled away until she was done, until she was naked with him beneath the covers. “How drunk?” he asked playfully.
Sara ripped the covers from the bed and climbed on top of him. “Pretty damn drunk.”
Nick was laughing as she held him down, kissing him hard, first on his mouth, then his neck. She moved down his body, licking his inner thigh, making him moan.
“Sar—you know I’m sucker for this, but—”
“Shhh . . .” She interrupted him and kept going, turning her own body around, wrapping her legs around his face. He resisted for about a second. They hadn’t done this for years, with the pregnancy, the birth, the breast-feeding, and then the mere presence of their child in the room next door—it had felt far too deviant.
“Sar . . . ,” he said again, in between the moans. “Sar . . .”
But she was not listening to his protests.
It wasn’t long before she felt his body give in, felt his release, then faked her own. She was far too disgusted with herself to feel any pleasure tonight. She rolled over, kissed his stomach, and headed for the bathroom. When she returned with a towel, the bliss had all but vanished, leaving behind an expression that captured his utter bewilderment.
“What?” she asked innocently. But he didn’t answer. Instead, he disappeared to the bathroom himself. Sara found her pajamas tangled up in the covers that lay on the floor. She pulled them on with hands that were shaking. What kind of evil had taken her over? How could she do this to the man who had given her everything and asked for nothing in return but the very thing she had promised to want as well?
She straightened out the bed and got under the covers on her side, the place she had come to dread. If she could take back the last ten minutes . . .
“Why don’t you just say it?” Nick was standing in the doorway now, his face flushed.
“Nick . . .”
“Just say it. I mean, Christ. What are you doing?”
She had no answer. She hardly understood it herself.
“Just say it!”
“Say what?”
He walked to the bed, fighting to shed his anger as he sat down beside where she lay. He reached out his hand and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Just say you don’t want to have another baby.”
He looked at her then, but she could not meet his eyes. Instead, she held her hands over her face, shaking her head. She should have known this would catch up to her. She was too young, still a child in so many ways, and he was a grown man. A grown man who loved her but would never understand.
“Please,” he said as he watched her cry. “I need to know why.”
She lifted her hands and managed to look at him. “I don’t know,” she said. It was the truth.
But Nick was confused. And why shouldn’t he be? She had been pretending for over a year, safe behind the birth control pills he would never know about.
“Is it me?” he asked, steadying himself for the answer.
“No—I love you. You know that.”
He smiled, but it was sad. “I know you love me. That’s not what I meant.”
Sara tried to deflect the question. “It’s me. . . .”
“Am I not a good enough father to Annie? Do you think I would love her less?” Nick choked on the words as they left his mouth, and Sara reached for him, taking him in her arms.
“No! God, no! Don’t ever think that. Not ever. You are the perfect father. It’s me. I swear to you. It’s me.”
Nick held on to her, and she could feel him fighting against the realization of the truth as it began to take hold. Their master plan, the one they had forged in spite of convention and their own doubt, had seemed to be working. Their love had lasted, weathering the storm of a quickie marriage, Annie’s birth, and the drastic change for Sara. And he had allowed himself to believe it would keep on working, that they were both looking forward to the next step, the second baby that would be the cement around their life together.
But he had not taken in the weight of the change for Sara. How could he possibly, having passed through those youthful years on his own terms, and without obligation? For him, they were frivolous in hindsight. If he could turn back the clock, he would, gladly, and spend his time being more productive. He could have shaved ten years off his retirement clock. She was lucky in his mind, to have jump-started the part of life that was substantive. Meaningful.
Still, for Sara, those years would always be things that were taken from her. And she ached for them, for her ten-speeder that was now a minivan, her radical, chain-smoking friends who had been replaced with older, jaded women whom she never would have chosen for her peers. Another baby felt to her like the last nail in the coffin that held her youth.
Nick pulled away and sat against the headboard. “So what now? What do we do now?”
Sara wiped her eyes one last time. “I don’t know.”
“Well . . . let’s start from the beginning. You don’t want another baby. What about the rest of it?”
“What do you mean?”
“The rest of it—the house, the town, staying home with Annie. Staying with me.”
She looked at him, shocked by his honesty. It was what they were both thinking, what she had been thinking for months. Still, it took more courage than she had to say it out loud. And it deserved an honest answer.
She reached over and took his hand, holding on to it tightly. Then she swallowed hard. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t know.”