again, willing to do anything and everything, sacrifice all, for a baby.
Carol rubbed her eyes and stood to put on water for a cup of tea—decaffeinated, of course. She’d begun to avoid so many foods for fear they would hinder conception. Her grocery list read like an inventory list for a health food store. Some experts felt diet was critical; other medical professionals disagreed. Carol wasn’t taking any chances. She was going to try anything that might help her stay pregnant.
In so many ways it felt as if her entire life was on hold. She’d left a promising career, went to the best doctors, ate all the right foods, listened to all the motivational tapes and repeated the mantras she’d learned. She had to believe her mind could control her body and that the sheer force of her determination would eventually give her what she wanted most.
Filling the teakettle with water, she set it on the burner and sat down again while she waited for the water to boil. A short handwritten note from Christine caught her eye. Carol hadn’t noticed it at the bottom of the birth announcement. Christine’s lovely cursive said: “I haven’t heard from you in so long!”
There was a very good reason for that. Carol’s friendship with Christine wasn’t the only one she’d allowed to lapse. She’d ignored many of her close friends, mainly because the struggle to get pregnant demanded so much energy. Most of the women she knew were already mothers, and her friends with children socialized primarily with other friends who had children.
Carol and Doug had less and less in common with these friends, whose lives seemed to revolve around babies and playgrounds and birthday parties. If that wasn’t bad enough, there were often lengthy discussions that excluded them. Conversations about schools or day care, about tantrums and teething problems.
Then there were the so-called friends who dismissed their difficulties, who trivialized her desire for a child. One heartless woman in the office had laughingly suggested Carol was welcome to raise one of her four. Other people wanted to comfort her by saying it wouldn’t be long now and modern medicine was so wonderful that within a year’s time she was sure to be pregnant. Well, she wasn’t, and the most horrible fear of all had taken root. There might never be a baby for her and Doug. She could hardly bear it, but she’d rather face the truth than continue like this.
The kettle whistled and she slowly stood and poured the boiling water into the pot. She couldn’t allow such negative thoughts to invade her mind. That only made things worse. She had to believe. She couldn’t let a birth announcement do this to her. God had given her a sign. She had to believe, push aside all negative thinking. She had faith….
The door opened and Carol whirled around, surprised to realize it was so late. “Doug! Is it that time already?” She tried to sound cheerful but knew she’d failed.
“You okay?” he asked, studying her.
“Of course.”
He didn’t look convinced.
“Did you have a good day?” she asked, returning her attention to the teapot.
“Sure. It was fine.”
Doug immediately zeroed in on the mail. He walked over to the table and discovered Christine and Bill’s birth announcement. She watched his face as he read it, and wanted to cry out in pain at the longing she saw in his eyes. After a moment he set it aside as if it were a matter of only the slightest interest. She knew otherwise.
“They had a boy,” she said, fighting to keep the emotion out of her voice.
“So I see.”
It should’ve been them, she wanted to scream. They should be the couple mailing out birth announcements. They were good people. They had a strong marriage and they’d be wonderful parents….
The infertility was a constant stress on their marriage. Doug had dealt with as much of the indignity as she had. The semen collection in a bathroom off Dr. Ford’s waiting room, the post-coital examinations—all of this was dreadful for him.
People assured her that one day they’d laugh about it. Carol didn’t think that was possible.
“I’m almost half done with the second baby blanket. I have another class tomorrow afternoon.”
Her husband nodded and grabbed the newspaper, heading for his favorite chair in the living room.
Carol wanted to shout at him to talk to her. Instead she bit her tongue and began preparing dinner, a meal she had no appetite for.
16
CHAPTER
ALIX TOWNSEND
Sitting at a window table in Starbucks, Alix concentrated on moving the stitches from one needle to the other and completing the row. No one else in class seemed to have a problem with this basic knitting concept. Carol was already working on her second blanket. Jacqueline was having a few difficulties, but not nearly as many as Alix. No matter how hard she concentrated, Alix would start out with a hundred and seventy-one stitches and by the time she finished the row, there’d be a hundred and eighty or more. Or less, depending on what she’d done wrong.
Lydia reassured her on a regular basis that this was a common problem and explained with limitless patience that Alix wasn’t completing the stitch properly. Well, duh! Then she’d show her again. And Alix would make the same stupid mistake. She didn’t care; she wasn’t giving up until she learned to knit, even if it killed her. She already had thirty bucks invested in this project!
At the end of the row Alix paused, sipped her frappuccino, a rare treat, and counted the stitches. Damn! A hundred and eighty-three! She’d done it again and added stitches where she shouldn’t. “Damn, damn, damn,” she muttered, which was a tame version of what she was thinking. Apparently being around Jacqueline was rubbing off on her. She barely used the F-word anymore.
Shoving the knitting onto her lap, Alix closed her eyes, trying to ignore the frustration. This class was supposed to help her with anger management? That was a joke if she’d ever heard one.
Even more irritating, Laurel was at the apartment with John and had asked Alix to stay away for a couple of hours. She didn’t know what was going on with those two, but Alix didn’t think it could possibly be good. Things had gotten pretty intense between them recently. John had been making regular appearances at the video store, and Alix hated the way Laurel gushed all over the sleaze. As far as she was concerned, John was bad news.
Once her nerves were calm, Alix carefully unraveled the row, taking out one stitch at a time, which took more effort than it did to complete the frigging row in the first place. Two stitches from the end of the row, she lost her grip on the needle and dropped a stitch. A muttered curse escaped before she could stop herself.
Good thing Jacqueline wasn’t there to hear it. She was offended each and every time the knitting got the better of Alix, which unfortunately was often. Still, she was improving.
Thus far, Alix had avoided a confrontation with the other woman, but she could feel one brewing. At best Jacqueline tolerated Alix, and Alix felt the same way about her.
Jacqueline had a twisted view of the world, in Alix’s opinion. The only things that seemed important to her were pretense and prestige. At each class, she sat and chatted away, putting on airs as if anyone really cared who she saw at social events and
