“I know that,” Ben says again. “But our life will change for the better. I promise you that.”
“You can’t promise something like that,” I say. “It’s a ludicrous, impossible promise to make. You have no idea what having a child will do to us. Besides, there are many, many other reasons I don’t want kids aside from my love of sleep.”
“Okay. Like what?” Ben says.
“We’ve been over them before,” I say, not wanting to rehash my reasons or hold them up to scrutiny. “Many times.”
But he presses me so I start out with an easy, albeit shallow one. I tell him that I don’t want to be pregnant.
“Pregnant women are beautiful,” he says.
I roll my eyes.
“Besides, you’ll only be pregnant for nine months. A blip on the radar of life.”
“Easy for you to say. I don’t want to be invaded like that, no matter how short the time frame And I like working out,” I say. I know this reason is a bit on the lame side, especially considering the fact that I haven’t even been to the gym in weeks.
“You can work out when you’re pregnant, ya know,” he says.
“Yeah, right. I’ve seen those women, laboring at a fast walk on the treadmill. They look miserable And you know I’m thinking of running the New York marathon. Maybe next year. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” I say, which is true in theory. Running a marathon is one of my lifetime goals. But to date, I’ve never made it past four miles. I’m not very naturally athletic, unlike Ben, who runs and swims effortlessly. Still, when I see elderly and disabled people crossing the finish line every year, I figure I can do it, too. Someday.
“Well, we could always adopt a baby,” he says.
“That’s not the point, and you know it. The pregnancy is the least of it.”
“Okay,” he says. “So we don’t have to have a baby immediately. I mean, we can wait a few years to do this. I don’t need to have one now . I just want you to tell me that you’re open to the idea of it.”
I see a loophole and am tempted to buy myself some time. I could “think about it” for years and then just say that I’m off the pill. I could get us to forty and hope for infertility to kick in. Solve the problem naturally. But I refuse to be dishonest. We have no relationship without honesty. So I tell him the truth—that I’m not going to change my mind.
Ben seems to ignore this statement altogether and instead asks me for another reason.
I humor him and say, “Okay. I like living in the city.”
He sits up in bed and says, “We can have a baby in the city.”
I admire the silhouette of his shoulders as I say, “Not very easily. We’d need to get a bigger place, and we can’t really afford to do that.”
“Well, don’t you ever feel like you’re sort of over living in Manhattan? We both grew up in the suburbs, after all. Wouldn’t it be nice to return to our roots? Have a yard again? Trees and squirrels and some peace and quiet?”
“Okay, now you’re talking crazy,” I say. “We love living in the city.”
“I know, but”
“I don’t want to move,” I say, feeling panicked just thinking about it. I have visions of Volvos and PTA meetings and camcorders at soccer games and family dinners at the Olive Garden. Now I am sitting up, too. “I’m not going to move to the suburbs .”
“Fine,” Ben says, nodding. “We could have a baby in Manhattan. People do it all the time. We would just find a bigger apartment and make it work financially. So that’s not a valid reason. Name another.”
I exhale loudly and say, “Okay. My career.”
I have saved the big guns for last. I have worked way, way too hard to jeopardize everything for children. I’ve seen it happen many times, even to the editors who are determined to stay on the fast track. They have to leave work early, they can’t sacrifice their weekends, and they inevitably seem to lose their edge, their hunger. It just happens that way. I don’t know why that is—whether they’ve reprioritized or simply don’t have the energy to do better. But I don’t want to find out and I certainly don’t want to join the ranks of seemingly miserable working mothers who strive to have it all and end up frustrated, exhausted, and guilt-ridden.
“What about your career?” he says, all innocence.
“A baby would impact it,” I say.
“I told you I can stay at home for a while. Or we can hire a nanny. You don’t have to quit your job. You don’t even have to go part-time. There are lots of working moms out there. You can have both .”
“But I don’t want both. See? That’s the thing you don’t seem to get. Having both means doing nothing very well.”
“But you’d be an awesome mother, Claude,” he says.
“I don’t want to be a mother,” I say with as much conviction as I can muster. “I’m sorry if that makes me selfish. But what I think is way worse way more selfish is having a child when you’re not fully committed to the idea of it. And I’m just not on board with this plan of yours, Ben.”