A December to Remember (24)

This was the voice Evette used with clients on the phone: patient yet unyielding, refusing to be drawn in. Simone’s anger spiked.

“Not doing what?”

“I’m not explaining a concept that you already understand simply because you refuse to accept it,” her wife responded with well-practiced calm.

“But I don’t understand it! That’s just it. The reason we started trying for a baby is because we love each other so much that we wanted to share our love with a family. And now suddenly trying for a baby is a reason for us to be apart?”

“I get that this is hard for you. It’s hard for me too. We need to decide, if having kids isn’t in the cards for us, if we can still make it as a family of two. At the moment, I’m not sure we can come back from this sense of malcontent hanging over us.” Her voice cracked, and Simone couldn’t help the split-second of sick satisfaction she felt at having elicited it. She needed to know that Evette was as devastated as she was.

“You haven’t had to come back from anything! You haven’t been through the injections and the hormones and the indignity and the knowing that something alive is inside you only for it to not . . . be anymore.” Suddenly she was rinsed out. Her anger was like a back draft exploding outward and then sucking back in, leaving her spent and regretful as the heavy awareness that she had doomed yet another conversation draped itself across her.

“You be the one to try next,” she said now, idly watching a squirrel dash up the Christmas tree outside the butcher’s shop. “You’re younger than me, maybe it’ll work better with you.”

“My darling, think about what you’re saying. We’ve discussed this countless times. I don’t feel the same physical need as you do to carry a child. The biology of our family simply isn’t important to me in the way it is for you.”

“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.” She was annoyed by her own petulance.

Evette as always remained calm and irritatingly reasonable. “Let’s say for argument’s sake that I agreed to try, and I fell pregnant. How would you feel? What would that do to us?”

“We’d be a family, I’d love it!” Simone felt hurt by her wife’s assumptions.

“That you would love the baby is not in doubt. You will be a wonderful mother. But what about your feelings toward me? Would you be able to forgive me, knowing that I had been ambivalent about carrying and yet I was the one who managed to get pregnant?”

“It would still be our baby, I wouldn’t care.” She squeezed her eyes tight to stop the tears from escaping. The ugly truth was that she had thought about it, and she did wonder how she would feel if Evette did what she couldn’t. Would her sense of inadequacy eat her alive? She repulsed herself. Her insides burned with shame at her own traitorous thoughts.

“Don’t lie, Simone, not to me.” Evette’s voice was gentle, full of love. Of course, her wife knew her innermost secrets; she knew her better than anyone.

“I don’t want to feel this way.”

“I know.”

“What are we going to do?”

“I am not going to have IVF. Not because of you. Because I don’t want that experience for my body. I’ve made my decision. So, if it’s what you want, we’ll save up for one more try for you. And in the meantime, I think we should start the adoption process.”

Adoption had always figured in their family planning; ideally, they would have one child biologically and one by adoption.

“Okay.” Her voice sounded small to her own ears. “Let’s look at adoption. I need to think about the IVF, whether I want to try again, I mean.”

“Take some time. Did you hear back from your work yet?”

“Yes, I spoke to someone in HR earlier. She was annoyingly understanding. They’ve offered me a year’s sabbatical.”

“That’s great. So use this time. Throw yourself into your dad’s challenges. Let yourself grieve.”

Her gut reaction was that she didn’t have the time to take a break or to grieve. Every moment she wasn’t doing something to make herself a mother was a moment wasted. But she knew Evette was right.

“It feels fraudulent to grieve for something I’ve never had,” she said, and it was the truth; she felt constantly heartbroken while equally feeling she had no right to it.

“You’ve lost promises of babies. You are not a fraud, and you are allowed to grieve for what you’ve lost and what could have been.”

“Trust me to marry a counselor.”

Evette laughed softly. “You should take my advice, I’m fully qualified. I’ve got certificates, I’ll have you know. I don’t just counsel any old wife for free. Talk to your sisters. You need them more than you think.” Simone doubted that very much. “I’ve got to go. I’ve got a client.”

“I love you.” Simone’s desperation was thick black tar. Why hadn’t there been better words invented? That overly used phrase was surely an insult to what she felt for her wife. “I love you so much.”

“I know. I love you too,” Evette replied, the fatigue evident in her voice.

Their arduous journey toward a family had changed their relationship. It overshadowed everything. They’d had to stop socializing because Simone couldn’t bear the inevitable questions about how “things” were going. They didn’t talk like they used to because her mind was consumed with thoughts she couldn’t express. And their once-active sex life had become almost nonexistent.