The pharmacist scrunches her eyebrows. She weaves her fingers together, places her hands on the faux-wood counter that separates us. “Ma’am. You wouldn’t be able to get positive confirmation with the over-the-counter tests we carry. Even a doctor wouldn’t be able to tell you yet with any accuracy. Why do you think you might be pregnant?”
“I just sense it,” I say, remembering the great sex James and I had last night. Within my womb, cells are dividing, triggering hormonal changes, preparing my body for the changes to come. Maybe that’s why I feel so jittery now. I’ve never wanted anything so bad in my life. In nine months, James will pack Debauve et Gallais chocolates into a suitcase and rush me to the hospital. By that time, he’ll have left Laurel and recommitted himself to me. I almost feel sorry for Laurel—she’s about to lose James. Our babies, Laurel’s and mine, will cancel each other out. The other positives I bring to our relationship—the home, the money, the comfort, the stability, and the respectability—will weigh in my favor. There’d be no reason for James to stay with Laurel. “Look at my skin! It glows. Everything feels different within me. I threw up this morning.”
The pharmacist separates her hands from each other, reweaves her fingers.
“Morning sickness! Don’t you understand? I’ve already got morning sickness!”
“Are you sure it’s not something you ate?”
The store is brighter than I’ve seen it before, the vinyl counter on which I tap my fingers more solid, more trustworthy. “It’s like the air smells different. Not its aroma but its whole texture. Does that make sense?”
She lifts her hands off the counter, places them on mine. Her touch is solicitous, calming, a pat on the back of my hand delivered for no other purpose than to bring comfort and joy. She regards me with sad, judgmental eyes. “I’m speaking from what I know, which is that it’s clinically impossible to test for pregnancies so soon after the potential moment of conception.”
“Point me the way to the prenatal vitamins,” I say.
My cell phone vibrates. I pick it up, expecting it to be my private investigator, but I’m greeted by the welcoming voice of my father. He says he is well, but he sounds haggard, as if he’s been under some stress on his Caribbean beachside paradise. Cayman phone lines are notoriously dodgy, and in the background I hear the faint, ghostlike sounds of other conversations, echoes, and a strange pinging sound that tick-tocks the seconds of our conversation. I ask why he didn’t return my calls and emails, to which he confesses he hasn’t been able to check his messages lately.
“Dad! Guess what? I’m pregnant!”
As I say this, I sense the shock both in my father’s voice and in the way the pharmacist’s eyes widen. You’d think she’d feel privileged, sharing in this enthusiastic moment, but she takes a breath, stares at me, and shakes her head. My father, at least, is happy for me. He asks what we plan to name the child, if it’s a boy or a girl, but before I can say it’s too early to tell, the pinging tick-tock that had been in the background becomes louder. My father starts to apologize.
“Dad. Is everything okay? You can come and visit me again. I’ll be able to present you with a grandchild!”
My father’s voice becomes fainter, the pinging louder. “Ah-umm . . . I’m running out of time.”
“Dad!”
He starts to say something more, but the line goes dead. I stare at the phone, expecting him to call right back. The pharmacist looks at me with concern, as if something unfortunate or maybe tragic has just happened to my father. I try to return the call, but a message appears on the screen alerting me that the number he called on does not accept incoming calls. I send him a text: Im OK U? A moment later, my phone pings. There’s an alert on its screen telling me the text was undeliverable.
“Is he all right?” the pharmacist asks.
“Probably a bad cell,” I say, shaking my head. Rich or poor, telecommunications are the great leveler: as wealthy as anyone might be, reliable cell phone service remains out of all our reaches. Of course I’m concerned, never having a chance to ask about his house, but my father will call me back soon; he always does.
“That’s good,” the pharmacist says. “But listen to me: it’s impossible to tell, mere hours after engaging in a sexual encounter, whether you’re pregnant. There’s no physical, psychological, or emotional sign this early that will reliably indicate conception.”
“But I can tell.”
I start to reexplain myself, tell the pharmacist she’s wrong—has she never been pregnant herself?—but the possibility she might be right suddenly rocks me. There were times in the past when I imagined myself pregnant—but I was sure this time was different. My heart plummets. Is it possible I’m imagining this pregnancy? Can the symptoms of pregnancy be induced by stress or by the overeager desire to be pregnant? Or maybe the Valium is messing with my perceptions. I feel dazed, unsure of myself. I grab the pharmacy counter railing to steady myself.
“Ma’am. Ma’am? Are you all right?” the pharmacist asks.
Tears come over me. My inability to bear a child has cost me dearly. If only I were pregnant. The pharmacist pats my shoulder, but I’m still blubbering about my infertility. “Ask your doctor about fertility treatments, in vitro, things like that,” she says, but she doesn’t know about the procedures we’ve already tried. She doesn’t know about the diminishing chances that I’ll ever conceive or the doctors who’ve instructed me to embrace a childless future. Pretty soon, it’ll be a husbandless future as well. Doctors have been unable to pinpoint the cause of our problems—was it James? Was it me? Fifteen years of sleeping together yielded no children. Laurel’s pregnancy puts to bed the notion that James might’ve been the sterile one. Anne Elise’s birth is proof that his sperm is fine. It’s my ovaries, my eggs, my fallopian tubes, my womb, or some other facet of my reproductive organs that’s at fault.
The pharmacist hands me a tissue. People have lined up behind me, waiting to have their prescriptions filled. I wish they’d all disappear.
Chapter Seventeen
TRISH
Laurel’s hospital room is fragrant with the scent of the pink roses I bought. Pink roses. Is that not the flower Emily Post would send to an adversary? With every breath, Laurel will smell their scent and be reminded of me. The scent will get under her skin. That is what I hope. The wild emotions I felt at the pharmacy have subsided, but I’m still devastated not to be pregnant. It’s the ache of barrenness that I feel, a longing that at this point in my life I doubt will ever be fulfilled. God chose Laurel to be pregnant instead of me, and it hurts like hell.