“There’s still a chance that an egg might implant naturally.” She stresses the word “chance.” There’s a chance of winning a casino jackpot, too, but few people stake their future on it.
The casters roll to my right. I look up to see Dr. Frankel with her gloves off and an open laptop resting on her thighs. Since starting this experimental trial, our visits always end with her taking notes for the study. “So tell me, how are you doing emotionally?”
“Okay.” I force another smile. “I try to save all my tears for this office.”
She gives me a knowing look. “How are the mood swings?”
“Swing” isn’t the right word in my case. My emotions don’t vacillate between happy and sad like a pianist alternating between major and minor scales. They’re stuck in a discordant chord. For the past six weeks at least, my days have started with a vague sense of foreboding. Throughout the day, my anxiety tends to intensify. Mild confrontations and disagreements have morphed from being uncomfortable to utterly panic inducing, leaving me unable to calm myself down.
Admitting all this, however, could prompt Dr. Frankel to remove me from the trial. People with histories of depression or anxiety were barred from participating because psychiatric medications would complicate results. As I didn’t have a pill-treated mental problem, I’d signed up. But I’d also conveniently failed to mention that Dr. Sally had been pushing antianxiety meds for over a year, which I’d refused to take due to the increased risk of preterm birth.
“I’m fine. If this works, I’m sure I’ll be the happiest person on earth.”
She smiles at me, teeth pearly as a promise. “So how about physical side effects? Any nausea, cramping, headaches, migraines, or hot flashes?”
This, I know, is safe to confess. Everyone feels premenopausal on fertility drugs. “All of the above.”
“How often?”
“The low-grade nausea is pretty constant, though it’s slightly worse in the mornings. The headaches tend to hit me more at night. I’ve always had occasional migraines, but they’ve definitely gotten worse with meds.”
She nods while typing as though what I’ve said confirms some research thesis. “Some people have reported haziness or forgetfulness since taking the drugs. Have you experienced any such symptoms?”
I wrack my brain for recent instances of absentmindedness: leaving the oven on, maybe, or misplacing a dry cleaning ticket. Have I parked the car in the past couple months and failed to remember the cross streets? Nothing comes to mind. Being a writer requires a certain attention to detail. I take many mental photographs.
Dr. Frankel looks up from her computer. “So any memory loss?”
The joke is a lay-up, and I want to show her that I am not always this weeping mess, that I’ve kept a sense of humor. “Memory loss? Nope. Not that I can recall.”
She smirks at me. Apparently, she’s heard this one too often to fake a giggle. “Okay, then.” She rolls her eyes, showing that she’s not amused by my corny sense of humor. “See you next week. Same joke. Same time.”
I force a chortle at her awkward attempt at a competing one-liner. She takes her computer and tells me that I can get dressed. Her secretary out front will make the appointment for next week.
It’s not until the door shuts that it occurs to me: I might have delivered that punch line before.
Chapter 3
I roll the stroller back and forth outside the office of Dr. T. Williams, never moving it farther than ten feet from the door. A small speaker sits at the base of his locked entrance, pumping a baby-soothing static into the narrow hallway. Vicky sleeps, motionless, in her bassinet.
Now that she’s down, I wish his door would open. It’s uncomfortable hovering outside a plaque bearing the abbreviations “MD PsyD.” I could run into another mom, some woman who will recognize me later at the park and wonder aloud, “Is she crazy?” And I’m not. Damn it. I’m not. Though every moment that passes with me standing outside a shrink’s office drives me increasingly insane. Why am I even here? This doctor can’t help me. He can’t patch my marriage. He doesn’t even know there’s anything wrong with my marriage. I’m sure when Jake booked the appointment, he said it was because I needed antidepressants.
I won’t take drugs. Something horrible has happened, and I feel appropriately awful. I don’t want to medicate away my legitimate feelings or deal with any side effects. Yet here I am, still, because I have no one else to talk to. I can’t share this with my friends. They’d spout girl-power mantras. Kick him to the curb, Beth! They’d rebuke me for staying, thinking only of the indignity of being cheated on. I know, though, that the real humiliations would start after the divorce finalized. Jake, doted on in his girlfriend’s sex den. Me, crammed in a small condo, working long hours to pay Vicky’s sitter, spending every second outside the office playing mom and dad in a desperate attempt to give our baby a “normal” childhood.
No. I’ve made up my mind. I don’t want to leave him. I want this other woman to go away, stop messing with my hard-earned life. And I want my husband to feel very, very sorry.
The door opens. A girl exits wearing an NYU sweatshirt and sunglasses. She passes me, staring at her shoes, as though she were schlepping back to her apartment Sunday morning in Saturday night’s cocktail dress. I direct my attention into Vicky’s carriage, fussing with the blanket at the base of her tiny feet.
A deep voice calls me inside. I push the stroller in first, chasing it with apologies. “I’m sorry. We don’t have a nanny, and my husband is at work. She’s asleep. I hope you don’t—”
The sight of the doctor stops my speech. He stands in the middle of the room, a hand outstretched, back hunched to lessen the impact of his imposing height. He’s easily over six feet tall, with a muscular body that his thin summer sweater can’t hide. Handsome isn’t an accurate description for the man. He has a face that could sell cologne: skin the color of roasted coffee beans, full lips, high cheekbones, and large brown eyes. As if things weren’t bad enough. I’ll be confessing my humiliation to a Ralph Lauren model.
“It’s a little unorthodox,” he says, dropping the doubled consonant in “little” so that the word sounds gentler than I’m used to. I guess that his faint accent hails from the West Indies. There’s a slight Caribbean ring in the way he stresses his syllables.
“But that’s all right.” His mouth stretches into a wide smile. “I can’t imagine it’s easy finding a sitter for only an hour.”
“Thank you.” I feel my face flush. I’m hot, though the air is going, and I’m wearing a cap-sleeve dress, one of my few former work outfits that still appears business appropriate on my swollen chest.
He extends a hand. I shake, starstruck for a moment. He gestures to the love seat behind me.
There’s a sweet, comforting scent in the air, like the smell of old books, though I don’t see any. The couch is a gray leather, worn lighter in the center. That’s where I’m supposed to sit in this medical office that’s been camouflaged as a living room so that I’ll delve into dark secrets.
The doctor sits, back to the window. A blackout shade has been pulled low for privacy, though sunlight breaks in from the sides. Most of the light rains down from bulbs embedded in the ceiling. One beam reflects off a tasteful black-and-white print of a tree. In the photograph, the sun breaks through clouds, creating an angelic glow above the branches.
“It stood out at an art fair. You like it?”
“‘Only God can make a tree,’” I say, quoting the famous Joyce Kilmer poem.
He nods. “I see you made this beautiful child recently . . .”
Cue segue to discussion of postpartum depression. I perch on the edge of the couch. “Um, I think I should clear something up. I’m not here because of Victoria.”
The doctor’s face remains relaxed. “Well, what brings you here today?”
“My husband is having an affair.”