I was at the Mahadiks’ for most of the day—and thank goodness for that; work made it nearly impossible to feel too awful about my mother. Was she selfish? Yes. Did she know all of the right buttons to push? Of course she did. I didn’t want her to be angry or to hurt her feelings—but I was going to need to learn to deal with other people’s emotions if I was going to live my life on purpose. And she herself said she didn’t need me.
As I drove back to the town house, I could feel fresh optimism blooming inside me. Now that Melinda was letting me concentrate on one room at a time instead of constantly asking me to move to the next thing, the work was effortless—easier than writing, even, and that had always come naturally. Not only was this new career going well, I truly loved it and could easily see it becoming my lone focus sometime soon. Back when I’d first set up the business, Josh had told me that word of mouth would always be my best marketing strategy. Apparently so, because one referral was leading to another. It was a warm day, so I rolled down the windows to my car. Van Morrison was on the radio, and I turned it up high and happily sang along. My mother was doing fine for now. I finally had a doctor’s appointment that would serve as the springboard for my fertility journey. And yes, Ben was back. Life was good.
As I turned the corner onto my street, I spotted Josh sitting on the steps of our town house. I’d been so immersed in work and my thoughts about my mother that I’d forgotten he was coming home that evening. And he hadn’t called me to pick him up from the airport, either, even though that’s what I always did when he was traveling. Though I did feel a little guilty, it occurred to me that it was probably another element of his newfound self-sufficiency, and I couldn’t exactly feel bad about that.
I parked and walked over to him. “Hi,” I said as I approached him. He’d taken his suitcase inside. But instead of scrolling on his phone or working on his computer, he was just . . . sitting there. It was like seeing a horse lying down in the middle of the field; you knew they slept that way from time to time, but you still couldn’t help but wonder if they’d fallen and couldn’t get up.
“Everything okay?” I said, sitting down beside him. “You could’ve called me to pick you up, you know.”
“Yeah,” he said with an indecipherable smile. “But I knew you were working.”
“Well, welcome back. It’s nice being here after being in the city, isn’t it?”
He looked around. We were surrounded by town houses, all white and beige and pale brick like our own, and the young trees on our street didn’t provide the canopy of shade that so many other Ann Arbor neighborhoods were famous for. I supposed it wasn’t the nicest part of town, and yet I felt comforted by its familiarity. I wondered if he did, too.
Apparently not, because he said, “I guess? New York’s growing on me.”
I looked at him with surprise. Having been raised in the kind of suburb where no lawn went unmanicured and parents had to make the heart-wrenching decision whether to send their children to exceptional public schools or outstanding private ones, Josh always walked around New York like he was expecting to get mugged in broad daylight. “Only took fourteen years.”
He smiled sheepishly. “Something like that. There’s just so much happening, though. I can’t help but wonder if I’d have been successful if I’d moved to a big city instead of staying here.”
“You’re not not successful,” I pointed out.
“Which isn’t the same as being successful.”
We looked at each other.
“Maybe that’s true,” I said, “but what good does it do to think about that now?”
“None, I guess.” He shrugged, and I realized that his button-down wasn’t wrinkled the way it normally would’ve been. He’d either ironed it or not left it in the laundry basket for three days after pulling it from the dryer. Either way, it was even more evidence that he really was changing. Growing up, one might even say.
“So . . . I have news,” I told him.
His eyes lit up. “Good news?”
I nodded enthusiastically. “My doctor called this morning.”
Now he frowned. “Wait—is everything okay?”
Um, hello? I just told you I wanted a baby the other day? “Well, yes. It was my ob-gyn.”
“Huh,” he said.
For someone so smart, he could be incredibly dense sometimes. But I would simply have to connect the dots for him. “I have a pre-fertility appointment for Monday.”
“Oh,” he said in an unreadable tone. “What does that entail?”
The helium balloon of my enthusiasm had just sprung a leak and was now zipping through the air as it deflated. And still, I grasped wildly, trying to catch it. “I’m not actually sure,” I said, attempting to smile, “but it’s the first step in finding out what I need to do to get ready to get pregnant.”
“Got it.”
“Why aren’t you excited?” I said. I knew why I wasn’t, but what was wrong with him?
“You are, and that’s enough, isn’t it?” he said, and now he was the one with a tight smile. “After all, I’m not the one getting poked and prodded.”
“I don’t know how much poking and prodding is going to happen at the first appointment, but do you want to come with me?”
“Sure,” he said, but then he looked down.
My throat was getting tight. Don’t be dramatic, Laine, I told myself. He said himself he doesn’t like to count his chickens before they’ve hatched. And aren’t we literally talking about eggs right now?
But that was old Laine lecturing me. Laine 2.0 said what she was thinking, even if it led to a disagreement—or worse. I took a breath to collect myself, then said, “Josh, I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. Years. I know it’s my fault you weren’t aware of that because I wasn’t direct about telling you. But I want this, more than maybe anything, and I’m going to this appointment with or without you.”
He’d been staring at his feet, or maybe the cement, but now he lifted his eyes. Then he touched my arm lightly and said something I never could’ve predicted.
“No, Laine—you did say so. You told me after the twins were born. And like, a bunch of other times over the past year. You weren’t pushy about it, sure, but I knew. I just tried to ignore it so I didn’t have to deal with it.”
There was a terrible honking noise, not unlike a goose that had just been shot out of the sky. It took me a second to realize I’d been the one to make it. I tried to look at him, but my tears had turned him into a watercolor, and now my shoulders were shaking.
“Oh, Laine,” he said, putting his arms around me, and the shaking stopped a little. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said, but I was still crying. “I just feel . . . stupid.”
“Why?”
He was still blurry as I detached from his embrace. Then, before I could second-guess myself, the truth came spilling out. “Because I wasted all that time. If I hadn’t been so busy trying not to confront you, I would’ve known ages ago that you didn’t want to have a kid. Now I’m an ‘advanced maternal age,’” I said, parroting what I’d read on a fertility website. “And for all I know, it’s too late for me.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head fiercely. “That’s not it at all. I do want kids.”
“Just not with me,” I said as the tears continued to stream down my cheeks.
“No, that’s not it, either, Laine,” he said quickly. “I was trying to make some money. Trying to build a future for us before you actually got pregnant.”
“Money? I know we’re not vacationing on yachts these days, but we’re not living under a bridge, either.” I gulped down a sob. “We could’ve made it work, Josh. Actually, I am making it work—I even changed careers, and I’m doing so well.”
“I know you did, and I love you for that. You’re so hyper-capable that it astounds me sometimes.” He wiped away my tears with his thumb, then added quietly, “But I wanted to be successful. I didn’t want our kid to see me as the guy with a million failed businesses. I wanted something to stick before I became a father. I never thought it would take this long, but I wasn’t willing to leap before I knew there was a net.”