We tilt over Antigua’s bay. Me by the window, Monica unfortunately in the middle, while some guy who appears to be hot and mildly irritated marshals his bulky mass in the aisle seat. I notice his armrest is raised. His thick legs leaking into her space like some consuming blob in a low-budget movie.
Be kind, I tell myself, retrieving my copy of New Psychotherapist from the holding net attached to the seat in front.
Monica releases her safety belt, twists her body while the guy inches back, allowing her to pass. I dare him to notice her ass. Go on, I goad in my mind. But he looks away, instead glancing at the queue for the toilet snaking down the plane’s narrow aisle, Monica falling in at number six. I gaze out of the small oval window. The lights from life below shimmering, long stretches of island roads shaping a fine chain of luminous white.
I reach up and twist the cool air directly above Monica’s seat, the gentle squall of wind catching my shoulders, now cushioned by a red Tempur-Pedic neck pillow. Removing my tan loafers, I notice a small blister on my big toe. This the result of a long walk on the island yesterday, Boxing Day—my mind largely preoccupied with Monica’s admission that she wants to mother a child—both of us wandering, mostly silent, while fishermen hauled gigantic coral nets of barracuda and blackfin tuna. Part of me had longed for the sight of a sparkling Christmas tree, a turkey, cranberry sauce, and all the trimmings. Tradition needling me in the chest.
“Why don’t you want another child?” she asked.
“I didn’t say that,” I answered.
“But you don’t. I can tell.”
We walked a little farther, more silence.
“I’m old,” I eventually offered.
“You’re scared,” she snapped back.
“Maybe I am, maybe losing Clara and raising Susannah alone has been too much for me. Is that such a bad thing, that I’m scared? That I take seriously my role as a parent?”
“Susannah was already grown when Clara passed. This is about you feeling you weren’t a good enough dad. And it’s also about your dad.”
“That was harsh,” I say, irritation growing. “And what about my dad? What’s your point?”
“My point is that you’re constantly doing your best not to be him. Not to mess up as he did.”
“And?” An edge to my voice now.
“And you’re not him. You’re you.”
“But I’m flawed, just like him,” I said. “And I’m tired. And old.”
“And cynical,” she spat.
I took her hand then, which she quickly withdrew.
“You know, if you’re not open to having another baby,” she warned, “this could be a deal breaker.”
“I understand,” I said.
Of course she wants a baby. Why wouldn’t she?
I imagine most women do at some point in their lives. The empowerment of their bodies opening the door to possibly one of the most miraculous and uncharted moments in their life: the dazzling array of emotions on sight of a first child, no words entirely worthy, or strong enough, for that first mother-child gaze.
I smile softly to myself, remembering how simple it had felt to imagine children when I was a young man. How Clara had pinned me to a tree, hitched up her skirt, demanding I make her swell. There was optimism back then (and sexual zeal), as well as a hopeful willing that zips to the left side of your brain and has you believing love will afford anything. But my fifty-five years have slowed me down.
I close my eyes, trying to picture Monica, a new baby, and me flying as a trio. The baby crying, Monica pacing up and down the aisle; an hour later, exhausted and resentful, cutting me a look: time to swap duties. I strap on the baby sling—click, pull—and start walking. Secretly wishing I could stuff the baby in one of the overhead bins to drown out his or her screams so I could get back to reading The New Yorker or listening to the podcast I downloaded the night before.
It doesn’t feel right, Monica and me becoming parents together. Even the idea of marriage gives me the feeling of having a pillow pressed down slowly over my mouth, chest cramping from its need for air. Panic takes some people to religion, volunteer work, drink, or despair. I settle on avoidance, the idea of additional loss or conflict not welcomed because I survived so much of it with Clara and my father. Clara as she lay in a hospital room, and gone from me. And my father as he took another pull of whiskey.
I casually flick through New Psychotherapist, packed with book reviews and ads for professional development, landing on a feature about transgenerational trauma. How unbelievably fitting. A man in his late fifties with pale skin and a carved jawline is holding a baby, the headline: legacies of loss: why dealing with our past shapes the future. The baby is fat and pink. A marshmallow chin with one solitary tooth. In his hand a yellow silicone teether. His father looks straight at me, and I wonder while flying closer to the gods whether the universe is conspiring to send me a message—older dad, legacy of loss—then hear Monica’s words again: This could be a deal breaker.
Suddenly engulfed, I take a black marker from my jacket pocket and draw a mustache above the baby’s heart-shaped lip, adding a beard. His face eventually littered with hateful, envious marks and scratches of ink. On his peach-fuzzy forehead I draw an upside-down cross—the mark of Satan—feeling an urge to deface him while remembering Clara. How she’d broken down after the miscarriage of our baby boy, already into her third trimester. A boy we agreed to name Joel. There were complications. A raging temperature. I found her trembling in cold sweat on the bathroom floor, howling. I’d looked down at her empty body, curled like a jellybean, forlorn and terrified.
She was never the same after his death. The loss of him carried around inside her and causing all manner of somatized pain. I blamed Clara’s cancer on him, baby Joel, because he refused to fight for his life. I’d needed someone to charge. To blame. Someone to be angry with, so I made it him, baby Joel, because I am not a religious man and found it easier to direct my rage at someone who was dead.
Babies; I wish for no more.
Monica returns to her seat and I hide my scrawl, the chubby baby now disappeared. She adds a sweater to her shoulders. Next to her, the hot heavyset guy takes out a family pack of chili-flavored Doritos from a carrier bag stuffed under the seat in front of him. He opens the bag and daintily places a single orange triangle in his mouth, slowly crunching. He licks a finger, sticky with coral dust, and then offers Monica the scrunched foil packet.
“No, thank you.” She smiles. “Just eaten.” Then pats her tummy.
She looks at me, sad and longing. The desire of a giant. Her ache for a baby felt in my own belly as she swings her legs beside mine.
She attempts to kiss my mouth.
And I smile kindly, keeping my lips tightly sealed.
“Move over a little,” I say, turning away and reaching for my eye mask. “I need a little space.”
Monica stares at me. “Take all the space you need,” she says, a bite to her tone. Her stricken face now turned away, the look of a woman soured and unloving.