Late on a rainy afternoon in the spring of 2002, I drove us north on I-5. Bill and I had just finished a weekend class in Eugene, and the excitement about what we’d learned was like another passenger joining in on the conversation.
As the windshield wipers beat back and forth, we talked about one of the concepts the teacher had presented. The need for reciprocity in relationships. A balance of giving and taking. If one person gives too much and the other doesn’t find a way to give back, resentment enters.
In some ways this seemed obvious. But sometimes the giver doesn’t know they have given. Or the taker doesn’t know they’ve been given to. Sometimes we are blind to the most obvious things.
Pretty soon, the sky turned to dusk. Our conversation ran itself out. Anyway, I needed to focus on the road.
Bill rested his head on the headrest. He closed his eyes. I wished it wasn’t raining so hard and slowing us down. I wanted to get home and unpack and have a quiet evening before the workweek started.
Thoughts about what needed to be done at work tomorrow crowded out my excitement from the class. The sinking Sunday-night-weekend’s-over feeling made its way into the car and bumped aside the passenger of new learning.
I felt trapped. The thought of going to that job—day in and day out, for who knew how many more years—put a dread in my belly.
“God, I hate to think of going to work tomorrow.” I glanced sideways eyes at Bill. Hoping he’d agree I should hate it. Hoping he’d see what was behind my words.
He kept his eyes closed. But he was awake. I could tell by the press of his mouth, the small tremble in his cheek. His silence fed the gray, the dread. It nudged aside the closeness I’d felt for him all weekend.
He could at least agree, at least nod, at least open his eyes.
I’d started a writing project about the rape. I planned to find other women the rapist had assaulted. To see how they had come through it after all these years, and what was the same or different from my own coming through. I’d already interviewed one of the detectives on the case. His story of the police trying to catch the rapist had opened a whole new way of seeing how the impact of rape ripples out beyond just one victim.
The more I wrote, the more I wanted to write. I wanted to spend more time in the small room off our bedroom. That room no longer held the exercise equipment it had been filled with the day Bill’s aunts whispered that it could be a nursery. Now the room held a desk, a chair, a computer.
“I wish I could quit,” I said. A little louder, a familiar pleading sound in my voice. “I’m sick of it.”
The windshield wipers went back and forth, back and forth. Bill didn’t move. My words were old news. Not-even-worth-listening-to news.
I knew what he was thinking. We had such a good weekend. Why can’t you just enjoy the moment? Why do you have to spoil it with this same old complaint?
Water fanned up from trucks. The wiper blades weren’t doing much good. I wanted to shout at him. Listen to me. Look at me. Say something. Can’t you see how hard I’ve worked to please you? To not burden you with my wanting.
I wished he’d say, You should quit your job. Write full-time. I love you. I want you to be happy. To say it wildly and enthusiastically. Like I used to wish he’d be about having a baby. You want one, so I want one too. Whole conversations I’d had all to myself and then went on as if I’d had them with Bill.
His eyes were open now, as though he heard my thoughts through the harsh cut of water against metal. He stared straight ahead at the window, the rain, the road. His shoulders drooped down. He looked worn out.
He was sick of my wanting, my needing, my changing plans and agreements. I was sick of him not seeing what I’d given up for him. For not swooping in to save me.
Traffic had slowed for the rain. I eased up on the gas and made space from the car in front of me. I looked back and forth from the road to Bill. His profile. The curve of his head. His now mostly gray curls.
I opened and closed my hands on the wheel.
“I gave up having a baby for you.” My voice was easy, direct, calm. This surprised me. It seemed so simple to say.
“I wanted a baby,” I said. “But I wanted to be with you more.” The rain still came, the traffic still moved, the wipers still beat. “I feel like you owe me for that.”
Bill turned his head toward me. He was listening. This wasn’t about him. It was about me.
I looked straight ahead, through all the gray.
“I don’t regret it,” I said. “I’m even glad.” The desire for a child had gone. But the resentment had held. “But I struggled for a long time. I hurt from it. That you didn’t want a baby with me. That you wouldn’t do it for me.” My throat felt tight and open all at the same time. “And I didn’t want to make you wrong for it because I was the one who wanted to change the plans.”
He turned completely toward me. “Wow,” he said. “I didn’t know.” His voice had a bright and genuine lift of surprise. “I didn’t know how hard it was for you.”
I wanted to slam the brakes, to jerk the wheel. To yell at him, How could you not know? He’d seen me holding all those babies, my love for them plain as could be.
I couldn’t stop myself from saying it out loud. “How could you not know?” My sharp knife of accusation, You should have known.
He pulled back. The tremble in his cheek, I knew it from all the years. Him vulnerable. Me too. I didn’t want to push him away. I didn’t want to stop what I had started.
“Wait,” I said. “Don’t go away.” The rain and the traffic forced me to calm my breath. I wanted to understand. I needed to understand.
I softened my voice. “I’m just—I’m surprised. That you didn’t know.”
“I knew right after we got married,” he said. “That conversation with your mom. But after that, I thought you were mostly okay with it. You said you were okay with it.”
It was true. I’d tamped the wanting down. Held it constricted and bound inside me. Hidden from him. Hidden from the world. Only sometimes letting it out in hints and wishes and wonderings.
I had told him I would be fine. I’d said, “Don’t worry.”
That was my way. Learned when I was a child, and these were the rules of family: Hope someone reads your mind, guesses right at what you never say you want. Don’t demand. Don’t take. Don’t ask. If you do, it will hurt worse when you don’t get it.
And Bill, who had no hiding filters, had believed me. Believed my silences and trusted I would not hide.
“I would have done it,” Bill said. “Remember, I told you that if you really wanted to, you could have a baby.”
Yes, he had said that. More a surrender to my wanting than something he wanted.
“You did say that,” I said. “I remember.”
I remembered the you. You could have a baby. Not us.
Prisms of white headlights moved in one direction and red taillights in another. What I had wanted and he had wanted. It was complicated. One of us giving up was the only way.
If I had taken Bill’s yes and run with it, the scales would have tipped in the other direction. He would have had the power of having sacrificed his own wants. It was easier to be the one who gave up what she wanted than to risk being the source of his resentment.
Bill put his hand on my arm, moved it up to my shoulder. He seemed so open, so trusting.
He had bent and shifted too. I was the one who had changed the rules. His side of the scale could be weighted by the number of times he’d said yes, willingly and enthusiastically, when I said, “I want this (A new house! A degree! A class!).” But he was never measuring.
Now he didn’t bring up his own giving, or the burden he had to have felt in my wanting a child.
He simply said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know how hard it was for you. That you did it for me.”
I put my hand on his leg and he reached for it. The air in the car felt lighter. Just the two of us here.
Maybe it wasn’t him I’d given up a child for. Maybe it was for me. Leading to this moment, held in the power of love and other possibilities. It was me I owed. To stand up and declare my plans. To not wait for someone else’s approval.
“I’m going to quit my job,” Not an ultimatum. Not a question. Only my open heart, my sure voice. “I’m going to write full-time.”
What I had missed all those years ago was that when I was certain and acted on it, Bill became sure too, and he fell in love with my enthusiasm and what grew from it.
“Good,” he said, “Do it.” His voice held same clarity as mine.
And, because I was a woman who had worked all those years, a woman who didn’t have children, and he was a man who plans carefully, a man who didn’t have children, we had enough saved. I could take this time to write, to shed what was and discover what was next.
He would have loved our child. He already loved my writing.
This was the balance of things.
The balancing was easy. Of course it was easy. It took years for this one moment to be easy.
“All right,” I said. And I drove us the rest of the way home.