“No. I’m just . . . I wanted to start.”
“Egg donation is illegal in Canada, by the way. Did you know that?”
“This agency is in Minnesota,” she explains. “They have an arrangement with Gliberman’s clinic. We would fly our donor in for the procedure. He’s the only doctor in Toronto with a donor program—”
“We agreed to not talk about it for a while.”
“I just wanted to check out some profiles,” Kersti said. “Look how beautiful she is.”
“It wouldn’t even be yours. Not by blood.”
“You sound like my father.”
“You’ve officially become that woman.”
“What woman?”
“The desperate, obsessed woman who has to have a baby to feel okay about herself. You swore you’d never become her.”
Kersti takes a step back, reeling.
“Remember the contract?” he flares, opening one of his desk drawers. “Here! I kept it!”
He pulls out a piece of paper and waves it in her face. She wrote it not long after their first IVF cycle failed. She wanted to start another cycle right away, but Jay was reluctant. She decided to persuade him the best way she knew how. One night, when he was reading in bed, she sauntered in wearing fishnet stockings, black Manolo pumps, and a sheer white baby-doll trimmed with black lace. There was a piece of paper between her teeth. She approached the bed and straddled him. He pulled the paper out of her mouth.
“I know when we started this journey I swore I wouldn’t become one of those self-pitying, baby-obsessed freaks,” she said. “And I’m ashamed to admit I’ve had my moments lately.”
“That shrine to your fertility gods was a bit much,” Jay joked.
“It wasn’t a shrine,” she played along. “Just a few talismans to our fertility gods, Metsik and Peko. Anyway, I drew up this contract.”
She read it out loud to him.
I promise not to start wearing frumpy pajamas. I promise to stay up past ten, even the nights before I have to go in for bloods at five in the morning. I promise to pleasure you in the manner to which you’ve become accustomed.
“That’s a good one,” he interrupted, squeezing her nipple under the baby-doll.
I promise never to join an infertility support group. I promise not to spend any more money on Reiki or acupuncture. I promise to let go and accept our fate before we go bankrupt or if our marriage starts to suffer.
Now Jay is waving the contract at her. “Remember this?”
“But we’ve come this far, Jay. It’s crazy to stop now with nothing to show for it.”
“I’m so tired of who we’ve become.”
“What are you saying?” she asks him. “You’re tired of our marriage?”
“What marriage?” he counters. “You don’t seem to feel we have one without a baby.”
Kersti is silent.
“I’m going to the Four Seasons tonight,” he says. “I want to be alone.”
“Jay, I’m sorry I looked at donors—”
“I’m not even sure we can get back what we had,” he interrupts. “We don’t want the same things anymore.”
“So it’s done then?” she says. Even as she disbelieves it, the cold reality of his decision settles in her bones. “Just like that? We’re finished trying?”
Jay glances at the pretty egg donor on her screen, makes a point of sighing, and leaves the room.
Alone in his office, Kersti tries to absorb what’s just happened. He seems to mean it this time. She has no choice but to sit with that.
Now what? she wonders.
The truth is, she knows exactly what she’s going to do. She’s probably known since Jay first mentioned it the other day.
As a plan begins to form in her mind, she realizes she’s actually a little bit relieved that Jay has put her baby crusade on hold. In spite of her inevitable disappointment, there’s also the budding potential for something new in her life.
She wants to know what happened to Cressida. Maybe she’s always wanted to know. She’s never felt quite ready to go there, but now the timing feels fated. Here is her opportunity to start talking to people about what happened in Lausanne, including Cressida’s mother; to explore all the unanswered questions she shut the door on almost twenty years ago. And if what she discovers on her journey turns into a new book, so be it.
Deirdre Strauss lives in Boston. She has a place on Beacon Hill, where she’s been since Armand’s fatal heart attack in 2000. Visiting her now feels like the inevitable next step.
The first time Kersti met Cressida’s mother, she thought she resembled a little girl playing dress-up in her mother’s closet. She was petite and ethereal, with skin like milk and haunting aqua eyes. Her tiny, childlike figure was dwarfed by an enormous blazer and swags of mothball-size pearls knotted around her slender neck. Deirdre, with her pale, veiny hands, like paper-thin insect wings. And then there was the way she gazed at and spoke about Cressida, right in front of her, as though she was a trophy she could take down from the shelf whenever she wanted, like one of her prized Tony Awards.
“She’s going to accomplish great things,” she once stated, with absolute confidence. “I envy the life that lies ahead for her.”
Kersti has always wondered if what happened to Cressida was karmic retribution; comeuppance for her recklessness and her insatiable sense of entitlement. That’s how Kersti first rationalized it anyway, even blaming herself for secretly wishing that Cressida would eventually be held accountable.
Kersti has to wonder now if the same holds true for her. What if her inability to conceive is somehow her fault, the result of her own inadequacy and passivity? Punishment for the things she did not do, the bad thoughts she had about herself and others, or simply for everything she failed to be?
Maybe if she can find out the truth about what really happened to Cressida, she might somehow be relieved of this burden of guilt and self-condemnation.
Chapter 6
LAUSANNE—October 1995
“Good evening, girls,” Mme. Harzenmoser says, stepping inside the cramped bathroom. She towers above all six of them, her legs slightly apart, her hands on her thick hips.
“Bonjour, Madame,” they mutter, not one of them daring to look into her face.
She looks at her watch. No one moves. “Do you know what time it is?” she asks them.
No one answers.
“Does Madame Hamidou allow you to be in here after curfew?”
“No, Madame.”
“Does she allow smoking in here?”
“No, Madame.”
“Has the Helvetia Society been resurrected?” she says, the hint of a smile coming into her eyes.
“No, Madame.”
Helvetia is the national symbol of Switzerland. There’s a sculpture of her down by the tennis courts—a replica of the real one that overlooks the Rhine—with braided hair, a floral wreath and draping toga, and a spear and shield in either hand. The school’s famous mission is written in stone at her feet: Preparing Young Women to Become Citizens of the World.