it’s just a car. But it’s all the life that was lived in that car, too. And that strangely hurts almost as much as thinking about his wedding band all over her skin.
CHAPTER TWO
WAITING
MARRIED LIFE
Married life is good. We spend a year in a basement apartment to save money to buy our own place. It’s small and crammed with all of our stuff. Well, all of my stuff. He has nothing. I remember the first time I was ever in his room, in the house he shared with a bunch of guys. I asked, “Where’s all your stuff?” And he shrugged and said he just left it all when he moved to this city. “I like to travel light,” he said, but I didn’t understand. I mean, he wasn’t travelling at all, he was living, wasn’t he?
I love my stuff. I’m nostalgic for an old bowl that belonged to my friend’s late mother, and my grandmother’s kitchen utensils, and the first piece of art I ever bought on my own. I would never leave any of my things behind. But he could. He did. I wondered what that said about him, what it meant that he was the kind of person that had no sentimental attachment to things, the kind of person that could just up and go whenever he wanted to. Could it mean he was unsentimental about people, too?
It was a distant early warning sign I chose to ignore. Obviously, because here we are, married and living in a tiny basement apartment with all of these things of mine I would never leave. He’s brought into our marriage only his clothes, a box of university textbooks, a fishing tackle box filled with odds and ends, and thirty-five thousand dollars’ worth of student loans. We also have all the things you get when you have a big wedding like we did. My side, the Italian side, fulfilled all the traditional gift requirements. Twelve place-settings of china, cutlery, and crystal stemware. Coffee makers, blenders, tablecloths, bedsheets, towels, and luggage sets. There are so many trays and platters, I don’t even know what I would ever use them all for. But for now they’re in boxes while we save money to buy a real home.
We’re in the basement of an old house, so everything slopes. The ceilings are only six feet, three inches high, and The Husband is six foot two. He bends his head down to walk around. It’s freezing cold in there all winter long, and sometimes it gets so bad that we turn the oven on and open the door so I can sit directly in front of it. At night he fills plastic bottles with hot water and puts them in our bed so that by the time I’m ready to sleep it is toasty between the sheets. He’s gold in this way, The Husband. These little things.
There are all kinds of crazy little insects and spiders in all kinds of nooks and crannies, and when the people who live upstairs walk around it sounds like thunder. We are so happy. We hang out all the time. He watches TV and I read, both of us on the couch with our legs wound together. We play cards and talk and talk and talk. During hockey season, we walk down the street to our local bar to watch the game and eat plates of macaroni and cheese. They know our drinks, so we never have to order. We go to movies, we go dancing, we eat in restaurants all the time because our rent is so cheap and we both hate to cook.
Being married is awesome.
After a year in the basement, we’ve saved enough money for a down payment and we buy a condo right downtown. At eight hundred square feet, it feels palatial compared to the basement apartment and my little bachelor before it. And it’s warm. We spend three years there, happy, comfortable, carefree. That is, until the ultimatum.
THE FEELINGS I DON’T FEEL
The ultimatum comes after a huge fight. We’ve had this argument before, but tonight he’s even angrier with me. Tonight he has had enough, enough, of waiting for me to have “the feeling.” You know, the feeling. The way women talk about how much they want to have a baby, how much they can’t wait to be pregnant, to be a mom. The feeling I don’t feel.
He says, “You said you wanted to have a baby!” And I say, “I do! I’m sure I do … but I just don’t have the feeling yet. I’m only thirty-one, we still have time —”
He cuts me off: “We’ve been married for four years!”
“I know, and it’s been awesome! What’s the rush to have a baby? I’m just not ready yet!”
I’m not ready yet. Or actually sure I will ever be ready. I’ve never had the feeling or anything close to the feeling. Not even a twinge. I haven’t felt the magical desire to be pregnant, to give birth, to care for a baby who will turn into a child and then into an adult, and for the rest of my life be tethered to me. And I worry. I worry that a baby will change everything between us; that once we have a baby, our carefree, comfortable, love-drunk feeling will be gone. We won’t be able to go to the movies on a whim anymore, or eat in restaurants four nights a week. Or be able to sleep in, or sleep at all! We’ll no longer be a nation of two.
But he wants to be a dad so badly. I remember when we first met, he said, “You are the mother of my children.” The funny thing is, I had that same feeling about him, this strange biological imperative, that he was the father of my children. Even before we were a couple. But the idea was more romantic than real for me.
His jaw is so tight, and he grits his teeth at me in the way he does when he’s angry. His face is so close to mine, his finger pointing right at my chest but not actually poking me, just close, so close, and he says through clenched teeth, “I never would have married you if I knew you weren’t going to have a baby.”
“WHAT?” I say. It comes out like a croak. And then tears, so many tears. He never would have married me? Does he mean he only did it so I’d make him a dad?
He asks me to get off the birth control. He says he’s done waiting for me to have “the feeling.” I cry and cry and say, “Okay, okay …” because I think I will lose him if I don’t do this. I reason with myself: I may never have the feeling, so what the hell, why not just get pregnant?
After the tears, the long awful night, he’s back to his kind, funny self. I feel better, too. I’ve resigned myself to the idea that my body, mind, and life are all about to change forever. I’m committed to doing it. I mean, babies are cute, aren’t they? Sure. And they become funny little children eventually, and I definitely like those. Maybe “the feeling” is bullshit; maybe all those other women are just making it up! Maybe this is just another thing I’m afraid of. But I never let fear stop me, so why would I now?
I go off the birth control. My doctor warns me that since I’ve been on it for so long, it may take up to a year to conceive. So, I approach getting pregnant like I approach most things in life — I produce the shit out of conception. I go online and learn how it all works — how long the egg lasts once it’s released and how long sperm lasts once it’s inside of me. I figure out when I’m ovulating next, plus or minus three days. Then, based on how long the egg and sperm are supposed to last, I come up with a plan: We need to have sex eleven days in a row, with my approximate ovulation date somewhere in the middle.
“As long as we do that, we’ve got to hit it!” I say, and The Husband is pleased with my calculations. He kisses my forehead, and I feel amazing because if he’s happy, I’m happy. And I love when he’s so admiring of my ability to estimate numbers quickly and accurately — how long it takes to get somewhere, the gratuity on a restaurant bill, the price of an item that’s 65 percent off, and now, what the formula is to make a baby on our first try. Which is exactly what happens.
On
