THREE TIMES THEY IMPLANTED in Juliette the laboratory embryos conceived from the eggs of the beautiful Brazilian donor and Nico’s sperm. On all three occasions our tribe awaited the results for weeks, with souls hanging by a thread. We invoked the usual sources of magic. In Chile my friend Pía and my mother went to our national saint, Padre Hurtado, and left donations for his charitable works. The image of that revolutionary saint, which all Chileans carry in our hearts, is that of a young and energetic, black cassock-clad man with a shovel in his hand, hard at work. His smile is not in the least beatific but, rather, clearly defiant. It was he who coined your favorite phrase: Give till it hurts. Following the failure of the first two, the third embryo implant took place in the summer. Lori and Nico had for a year been planning a trip to Japan, and they decided to go anyway. If their dream of having a baby came true, it would be their last vacation for a while. They would receive the news there; if it was positive, they would celebrate, if not, they would have a couple of weeks to themselves, intimate, quiet time in which to resign themselves, far from the condolences of friends and relatives.
One of those early mornings I woke with a start. The room was palely illuminated by the subtle splendor of dawn and the night light we always leave on in the hall. No air was moving and the house was wrapped in an abnormal silence; I couldn’t hear the rhythmic snoring of Willie and Olivia, or the usual murmuring of the patio palm trees dancing in the breeze. Beside my bed were two pale children, standing hand in hand, a girl about ten and a boy a little younger. They were wearing clothes from the 1900s, lace collars and patent leather high-top shoes. It seemed to me that there was sadness in their large dark eyes. We looked at each other for a second or two, but when I turned on the light they disappeared. I waited a moment, hoping in vain that they would come back, but finally, when the galloping of my heart slowed, I went on my tiptoes to call Pía. In Chile it was five hours later but my friend was still in bed, embroidering one of her patchwork bags.
“Do you think those children have anything to do with Lori and Nico?” I asked.
“No! Of course not! They’re the children of the two English ladies,” she replied with calm conviction.
“What English ladies?”
“The ones who visit me. The ones who walk through the walls. Haven’t I told you about them?”
On the scheduled day, Lori was to call the nurse who coordinated the treatment in the fertility clinic, a woman with the vocation of a godmother, who handles each case with delicacy; she knows how much hangs in the balance for these couples. Because of the time difference between Tokyo and California, Lori and Nico set the alarm for five in the morning. As they couldn’t make international calls from the room, they hurriedly dressed and went down to the front desk of the hotel, where at that moment they found no one to help them. Fortunately, Lori knew there was a telephone booth outside. They went out to a side street that during the day was seething with activity, thanks to popular restaurants and shops for tourists, but at that hour was deserted. The antiquated booth was straight out of a ’50s film, and the phone could be operated only with coins, but Lori had thought ahead and brought enough change with her to call the clinic. Blood was pounding in her temples and she was trembling as she dialed the number with a prayer on her lips. Her future was being determined in those instants. From the other side of the planet came the voice of the godmother. “It didn’t take, Lori. I’m so very sorry. I don’t know what happened, the embryos were the very best. . . ,” she said, but Lori heard no more. Stunned, she hung up the receiver, turned, and fell into her husband’s arms. And that man, who at first was so resistant to the idea of bringing more children into the world, sobbed openly; he had been as passionate as she about the idea of their having a child together. They embraced without a word, and minutes later stumbled out onto the empty, silent street, gray in the predawn. Columns of steam rose from the grates in the sidewalks, lending a phantasmagoric air to the scene, a perfect metaphor for the desolation they felt. The rest of their time in Japan was spent convalescing. They had never been so close. In their shared sorrow they came together at a very deep level, naked, defenseless.
Something in Lori changed after that experience, as if a glass had broken inside her and the obsessive desire that had been her hope and her torment had drained away like water. She realized that she couldn’t live with Nico if she were in a swamp of frustration. It wouldn’t be fair to him. Nico deserved the kind of happy devotion he had tried so hard to build between them. She realized that she had come to the end of a tortuous road, and that she must root out her obsession about being a mother, if she was to go on living. After having tried every possible resource, it was obvious that a child of her own was not to be her destiny, but her husband’s children, who had been with her for several years and who loved her a lot, could fill that void. That resignation didn’t happen overnight; she was sick in body and soul for nearly a year. Lori had always been slim, but within a few weeks’ time she lost so much weight that she was nothing but skin and bones, with large, sunken eyes. She injured a disk in her back and for months was close to being an invalid, trying to function with painkillers so strong that they made her hallucinate. At moments she despaired, but the day came when she emerged from that long grieving, her back healed, her soul at peace, transformed into a different woman. We all could see the change. She gained weight, looked younger, let her hair grow, painted her lips, resumed her yoga and long walks through the hills, but now as a sport, not an escape. We heard her laugh again, the contagious laugh that had seduced Nico, something we hadn’t heard for a long, long time. At last she was ready to give herself to the children with all her heart, with joy; it was as if a fog had dissipated and she could see them clearly. They were hers. Her three children. The children the shells in Bahía and the astrologer in Colorado had predicted for her.