There’s no other justification for my life.
I watched them as they walked by, as they closed in on the dance studio. And then, after the women had passed and I assumed the parade was through, I noticed one little girl straggling behind, nearly stagnant on the sidewalk. Struggling to keep up. Too busy examining the buds on the trees. Smaller than the rest, which made me think of the piglet in Charlotte’s Web. Wilbur, saved from slaughter by little Fern. I was captivated by her, holding my breath as she passed by, joining the others in the studio. Only when she was gone did I allow myself to breathe.
And now twice, sometimes three times a week I find myself sitting there on that bench, watching the dancers come and go, wishing one of them, any single one of them—but especially the littlest one, a head shorter than the rest, straw-colored hair and a collection of freckles, whose tiny feet always lag behind so that one day I worry she’ll be forgotten—was mine.
I’ve become an addict really, and the only thing that eases the symptoms of withdrawal is seeing children, is being in the company of children. They are my fix, an antidote for the restlessness, the irritability, the tremor of my hands that is only exacerbated with each passing month that I don’t get pregnant.
The little girl can’t be more than three years old, pudgy arms, legs and cheeks still padded with baby fat that will one day wear away, no doubt, so that she’ll look like any one of the ladies she tags along after, with their long limbs and their long hair and their coffee.
I don’t like the way I feel sitting there on that park bench, eyeing children who are not mine. But I have nothing better to do with my time, and I don’t think I could stop if I tried.
I suggested to Aaron that I look for a job, for some diversion from the long, lonely afternoons while he is away. Aaron isn’t game. He’d rather I not work, which makes no sense to me. The financial burden of fertility treatments is steep; we could use the additional income. We’ve begun to argue about things like the cost of ground beef, the cost of electricity.
Aaron and I are monitoring the Clomid cycles, which means for each failed attempt we are quite literally throwing away hundreds of dollars for the medication, blood work and ultrasounds to see whether my body is releasing eggs, and when. Insurance won’t cover these costs because, of course, some high-and-mighty insurance company doesn’t give a darn whether Aaron and I ever have a baby, and so the procedure is considered elective. We are electing to waste thousands of dollars to try and conceive a baby, while other parents, far less capable or worthy parents, are given one for free.
“You’re under so much stress already,” Aaron said when I suggested applying for a job, and “Why not just focus on this?” meaning making a baby, as if somehow I’d been unfocused, and as if that lack of focus was the reason we were still without a child. I’d been too cavalier about it, too casual, too devil-may-care. He didn’t use those words, not a single one of them, and yet that’s exactly what I heard when he came home from work after midnight that night and, though I lamented about being bored all day, about being alone, he suggested I not apply for a job, but rather focus on this, with a sweeping gesture toward my vacuous womb.
I screamed at him then. I slammed a door. I locked him out of the bedroom so he slept on the sofa for the night.
Never before have I screamed at him. Never before have I raised my voice.
He didn’t object to sleeping on the sofa. It was one in the morning. He was tired, he told me. “Eden, that’s enough,” he said with a sigh while gathering his pillow from the head of our bed. “I need to sleep.”
I sat there in the bedroom that night, in the dark, propped up against pillows and not lying down. My hands still shook even hours after my fit was through. A headache slunk up the base of my neck and consumed my skull so that every part of my head hurt. My eyes burned from crying and though I tried to blame the medication for this—after all, mood swings and a propensity for crying were both common side effects of the Clomid—I didn’t know whether or not they were to blame this time.
Maybe it was just me.
I felt sorry come morning.
But I didn’t apologize and neither did Aaron. Instead he left for work earlier than ever before and I returned to the dance studio, an addict in need of a fix.
March 19, 1997 Egg Harbor
When Clomid alone failed to work, Dr. Landry suggested IUI. Intrauterine insemination. Placing Aaron’s sluggish sperm directly into my uterus so that they don’t have to paddle through those four inches of mucousy space all on their own, so that they will have an easier time finding and fertilizing my egg without getting lost, swimming in circles in my vaginal canal as they are apt to do. Each month, Aaron and I have quite literally thrown away money, frittered away follicles and eggs, doled out hundreds of dollars on medication and ultrasounds for nothing. My trips to see Dr. Landry have been a waste. It’s time to try something new. Intrauterine insemination will add a couple hundred dollars to our monthly expenditure, but will also increase the likelihood of conception, especially in cases like ours where low sperm motility is to blame.
There it was again, that word: blame.
There is also the added benefit that with IUI Aaron and I won’t have to have sex, which is a blessing in and of itself. Aaron is capable of collecting his sample all on his own in the comfort of a private room at the clinic, complete with pornographic videos and magazines, where sexy, buxom women far more appealing to the eye than me will help us create a child. It mortified him to have to do this, and yet after months of invasive ultrasounds and repeated blood draws, after digesting medication that made me moody, that made me cry, after poking myself in the gut with shots of hormones for months on end, this seemed only fair. This seemed right. The nurse tendered my assistance, saying I could keep Aaron company if I’d like, but with a sideways glance, he went in without me and closed the door, and there was a spasm of jealousy, a shooting pain searing through my head as though someone had momentarily lodged an ice pick into my skull.
I envisioned Aaron on the other side of that door, aroused by some strumpet on the television screen and not me.
And then hours later, after the sperm had been collected and cleaned, it was my turn to be put to work, to lie on the exam table, completely undressed from the waist down with only a drape sheet to provide that false sense of privacy, while Dr. Landry placed first a catheter and then Aaron’s sperm inside me.
And then sent us home to wait.
Aaron, as always, went to work, leaving me alone and bored, and so I drove into town and sought out that small dance studio on Church Street and sat on the park bench, watching the little ballerinas come and go, searching for the smallest one with the straw-like hair and freckles, a head shorter than the rest, who always struggled to keep up with her mother and friends.
I had to wait awhile, but eventually she came and my heart skipped a beat. My hands went numb. I held my breath.
I saw her ambling first through the double blue doors of the studio, already lagging behind before she’d ever stepped foot outside, grappling with the weight of the door because there was no one around to hold it for her. Her tiny head barely surpassed the door’s crash bar. The others were already a good five or ten paces ahead, moving down the concrete sidewalk in the direction of town, little girls gabbing merrily about an afternoon playdate while their mothers followed behind, paper cups of coffee in hand. Only once did a mother turn around to see where she was, calling out, “Snap to it, Olivia, or you’ll get left behind,” and then she turned again, facing forward, never again checking on Olivia, who brought up the rear, the caboose on some sort of high-speed train that had somehow gotten off track.