I notice Lucille’s eyes linger on my Valentino tote. Richard brought it home for me one night just before he left for a business trip to San Francisco. The leather is slightly worn around the clasp; the bag is four years old. Lucille is the type of woman to observe such details. I see her take it in, then look at my old Nikes and my bare ring finger. Her eyes sharpen. It’s as if she is really seeing me for the first time.
I’d called her after my breakdown on the subway. I can’t remember our entire conversation, but I do remember crying.
“Let me know if you need to leave a bit early,” she says now.
“Thank you.” I drop my head, feeling ashamed.
It is busy today, especially for a Sunday, but not busy enough. I thought coming in to work might distract me, but visions of her crowd my mind. I imagine her hands on her swollen belly. Richard’s hands on her swollen belly. Him reminding her to take vitamins, urging her to get enough sleep, holding her close at night. If she gets pregnant, he’ll probably assemble a crib and perch a teddy bear inside.
Even when I was struggling to become pregnant, a soft, smiling teddy bear waited in the room we’d designated for a baby. Early on, Richard had called it our good-luck charm.
“It’ll happen,” Richard had said, shrugging off my worry.
But after those six months of failed tests, he went to a doctor to have his sperm analyzed. His semen count was normal. “The doctor said I’ve got Michael Phelps swimmers,” he joked, while I tried to smile.
So I set up an appointment with a fertility specialist, and Richard said he’d try to reschedule a meeting to attend.
“You don’t have to.” I’d attempted to keep my voice light. “I can fill you in after.”
“You sure, sweetheart? Maybe if my client leaves early, I can meet you for lunch, as long as you’ll be in the city. I’ll have Diane book a table at Amaranth.”
“Lunch sounds perfect.”
But an hour before the appointment, just as I was stepping onto the train, he called to say he’d come to the doctor’s office. “I put off my client. This is more important.”
I was grateful he couldn’t see my expression.
The fertility specialist would ask me questions. Questions I didn’t want to answer in front of my husband.
As my train sped toward Grand Central Terminal, I stared out the window at the bare trees and graffiti-littered buildings with boarded-up windows. I could lie. Or I could try to get the doctor alone and explain. The truth was not an option.
A sharp pain made me look down. I’d been picking at my cuticles and had torn one below the quick. I put my finger in my mouth, sucking away the blood.
The train screeched into the terminal before I’d come up with a plan, and far too soon a taxi delivered me to an elegant Park Avenue building.
When Richard met me in the lobby, he didn’t seem to notice my agitation. Or maybe he thought I was just anxious about the appointment. I felt as if I were sleepwalking as he pressed the button for the fourteenth floor in the elevator, then stepped back so I could exit first.
Richard’s urologist had referred us to Dr. Hoffman. A graceful slender woman in her mid-fifties, she greeted us with a smile shortly after we’d signed in and led us to her consult room. Under her lab coat I saw a flash of fuchsia. We followed her down the hall, and even though she was wearing three-inch heels, I struggled to match her pace.
Richard and I sat side by side on an upholstered couch facing her uncluttered desk. I twisted my hands in my lap, fidgeting with the slender gold bands on my finger. At first, Dr. Hoffman was hesitant to even indulge our insecurities as she explained that it took many couples more than six months to conceive. “Eighty-five percent of couples are pregnant within a year,” she assured us.
I mustered a smile. “Well, then . . .”
But Richard interjected. “We don’t care about statistics.” He reached for my hand. “We want to get pregnant now.”
I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.
Dr. Hoffman nodded. “There’s nothing to prevent you from exploring fertility treatments, but they can be time-consuming and expensive. There are also side effects.”
“Again, with all due respect, these are not issues that concern us,” Richard said. I caught a glimpse of what he must be like at work—commanding, persuasive. Impossible to resist.
Why had I ever thought I could hide something so significant from him?
“Baby, your hands are icy.” Richard rubbed mine between his.
Dr. Hoffman turned her head to look directly at me. Her hair was swept into a fashionably loose twist, and her skin was smooth and unlined. I wished I had worn something more elegant than simple black pants and a cream turtleneck sweater, which I’d just noticed had a small bloodstain by the cuff. I tucked the material under the finger I’d injured and tried to curve my lips upward.
“Okay, then. Let me start by asking Vanessa some questions. Richard, perhaps you’d like to take a seat in the waiting room?”
Richard looked at me. “Sweetheart, would you like me to go?”
I hesitated. I knew what he wanted me to say. He’d taken off work to accompany me. Would it be a bigger betrayal if I asked him to leave and he found out anyway? Maybe Dr. Hoffman would be ethically bound to tell him, or a nurse might glance at my chart and slip up someday.
It was so hard to think.
“Honey?” Richard prompted.
“I’m sorry. Of course, it’s fine if you stay.”
The questions began. Dr. Hoffman’s voice was low and modulated, but each query felt like a bullet: How frequent are your periods? How long do they last? What methods of birth control have you used? My stomach clenched like a fist. I knew where this was heading.
Then Dr. Hoffman asked, “Have you ever been pregnant?”
I stared down at the thick carpet—gray with small pink squares. I started counting the shapes.
I could feel the heat of Richard’s stare. “You’ve never been pregnant,” he said. It was a statement.
I still thought about that time in my life, but the memories had remained locked inside me.
This was so important.
I couldn’t lie, after all.
I looked up at Dr. Hoffman. “I have been pregnant.” My voice sounded squeaky and I cleared my throat. “I was only twenty-one.”
I recognized the “only” as a plea directed at Richard.
“You had an abortion?” I couldn’t read the expression in Richard’s voice.
I looked up at my husband again.
And I knew I couldn’t tell the full truth, either.
“I, ah, I had a miscarriage.” I cleared my throat again and avoided his stare. “I was only a few weeks along.” That part, at least, was true. Six weeks.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Richard leaned back, away from me. Shock flitted across his face, then something else. Anger? Betrayal?
“I wanted to. . . . I just—I guess I couldn’t figure out how.” It was such an inadequate response. I’d been so stupid to hope he’d never find out.
“Were you ever going to tell me?”
“Listen,” Dr. Hoffman interrupted. “These conversations can get emotional. Do you two need a moment?”
Her tone was calm, the thick silver pen she’d been jotting notes with poised in midair, as if this were a normal interlude. But I couldn’t imagine that many other wives had kept the same kind of secrets from their husbands as I had. I knew I’d have to privately tell Dr. Hoffman the full truth at some point.
“No. No. We’re fine. Let’s keep going?” Richard said. He smiled at me, but a few seconds later he crossed his legs and released my hand.
When the questions were finally over, Dr. Hoffman conducted my physical and blood work while Richard sat in the waiting area, thumbing through emails on his BlackBerry. Before she left the room, Dr. Hoffman put a hand on my shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. It felt like a motherly gesture, and my throat convulsed as I tried to hold back tears. I’d hoped Richard and I would still go to lunch, but he said he had postponed the client meeting to one o’clock and he needed to get back to the office. We rode the elevator downstairs in silence along with a few strangers, all of us staring straight ahead.
When we stepped outside, I looked up at Richard. “I’m sorry. I should have . . .”