impasse between us was making me physically ill. So did I back down? Just give up?
People had been giving up on Bailey all her life. What if this was the critical time? The moment she needed me most? Did I have what it took to scale her walls and haul her over them? Was I even supposed to try?
Danny was in bed asleep, which was right where I should’ve been, except that I couldn’t stop thinking about Bailey. So I’d kissed my husband and left our bed to call my friend.
“I can’t stand this anymore, Bail. I feel that you need me to stay strong and help you see what I can see from the outside, looking in. But you could be right. Maybe I’m too focused on what I think you should do because I don’t understand you anymore.”
It hurt to say the words. But it didn’t change how I felt about her. “We’re no longer kids,” I said. “Life isn’t as easy as it used to be.”
And maybe, in spite of everything, we had grown apart.
“I need to have this baby, Kor, and I can’t do it without you. Without your support.”
She could. Technically. If something happened to me, Bailey’s life would go on. But I knew what she meant. I couldn’t fathom my own life without her, either. Did that make me selfish? Was I giving up on her because I wasn’t strong enough to fight her demons when she wasn’t capable of fighting them herself? Or maybe even capable of seeing them?
Sitting curled up in a wingback chair in my living room, I laid my head against the fabric and shivered, wishing I’d pulled my robe on over my nightgown. The night had been so warm earlier, Danny had thrown off the sheets.
I was tired. And headachy. And having my period again. All things Bailey would have known in the past. Things I’d have told her.
“Okay. Tell me I should trust you to know what’s best for you,” I said. Let me off the hook here, Bailey, was what my words felt like to me.
But I was willing to live with them if that was what it took to have my friend back. To be the friend she needed. Maybe all friendships faced this. A growing up. I swallowed back tears. Like I’d said, I wasn’t a kid anymore. I was a wife. Soon to be an expectant mother.
And I had more than most.
“I want you to be honest with me, Kor.”
“I’m always honest with you.”
“No, I mean, I want you to do exactly what you’re doing.”
“Giving up?”
“No.” I straightened as silence fell between us.
“You want me to continue showing you the way I see you...” I said tentatively.
“Yes.”
Oh, my God. So I wasn’t losing it. My mind. Or our deep connection.
“You don’t agree with me,” I said.
“I know.”
“You believe I’m thinking of myself and what I want.”
“Yeah.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“Right where we’ve always been, I guess,” she said, sounding tired, too, but better somehow. “We keep yakking until one or the other of us sees the light.”
“So you’ll wait to do anything until we’ve...reached a consensus?”
“Yeah. As long as we keep trying to figure out which of us is screwed up on this one.”
I swallowed again, so relieved to have my friend back.
“I love you, Bail.”
“Love you, too.”
I went to bed. And slept.
Chapter Eight
Over the next six weeks, Bailey and Koralynn had several calm conversations regarding artificial insemination for a single woman. Kora agreed that there were times when the process was a good choice, although she still liked the idea of both a male and a female influence in the formation of the child’s emotional and mental life.
Her objections were specific to Bailey. She remained certain that Bailey’s choice to be artificially inseminated was, in essence, a way of hurting herself, robbing herself of the ultimate joy and happiness that could be hers.
“You know, if you didn’t want to get married because you hated the idea of being tied to one guy for the rest of your life—or because you just didn’t like guys, I’d get it. But the problem is, you want exactly what marriage is supposed to provide—a life partner who will be with you every step of the way, no matter what.”
She couldn’t deny that. In theory. Trouble was, it was a pipedream. And she knew it. Even if Kora didn’t.
“It’s not marriage you don’t want, it’s failure. And so, because you’re afraid the marriage will fail, you’re robbing yourself of a chance to have it all.”
Kora was right.
But so was Bailey. For her, marriage would fail. For her, marriage would be a bad choice. Because she didn’t have what it took to make it work. Whatever you called it—a lack of faith, lack of belief, or plain crankiness, she was at least honest enough to spare some more guy a broken life.
And spare her children the same.
The more they talked, the more Kora objected to her proposed plan, for Bailey’s sake and the sake of the child, the more certain Bailey grew that artificial insemination was the only course for her.
“It’s because you know I’m trying to get pregnant,” Kora said as they were doing the dishes at Kora’s house one Friday night in July. Danny was out with the guys, and Bailey guessed that meant out with Jake, so she and Kora had plans to spend the evening hanging out in front of the TV. Bailey was already in the sweats she’d brought to change into after work.
“No, it’s not,” Bailey said now, rinsing plates for Kora to load. Her job had always been rinsing. Kora’s was loading and unloading. In the beginning, because Kora knew how her mother liked things done and where everything went. And later, just because they had their system established and it worked well. She had to trust that, somehow, this whole baby thing would work for them, too. “It’s because I’m positive I don’t want to get married, and because you’re right about part of this. What I want more than anything is a family of my own. You just don’t see that the only way I’m going to have one is to provide it for myself.”
Kora, still dressed in the jeans she’d worn grocery shopping and doing whatever else she’d done that day, paused, plate suspended over the bottom dishwasher rack. “You’re certain about that.”
Bailey met her gaze. “Yeah, Kor, I am.”
“Certain enough that you’re ready for me to back off? To support your decision regardless of how I feel about it? Because I will, Bailey.
