This Fragile Life. Кейт Хьюит

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      Chapter 11

      MARTHA

      When I finally call Alex, I make sure to sound upbeat and casual. She sounds alarmingly subdued.

      “So, how are you feeling?”

      “Tired. Nauseous.” She sighs and I resist the urge to offer more advice.

      “Have you been to the OB?” I ask and she hesitates, so I know she hasn’t.

      “I will,” she says. “There’s not much point yet, really.”

      “Isn’t there?” Immediately I know I sound too sharp. I take a breath, release it slowly. “How far along are you, anyway? I forgot to ask.”

      “About eight weeks.” She still sounds subdued, and it irritates me.

      “Well, let me know when you make an appointment and I’ll go with you,” I say, as lightly as I can, and it’s only after the words are out of my mouth that I realize maybe she doesn’t want me to go with her.

      “Okay,” she says after a moment, but she doesn’t sound enthused and I force some more small talk before we finally both call it quits.

      Afterwards I sit at my desk, alternating between anger and fear. Are all our conversations going to be this awkward? I hate feeling as if I have to tiptoe around her and yet I’m too afraid not to. But this is going to be my child, and I want some say in her pregnancy decisions. That’s reasonable, isn’t it? It certainly feels reasonable to me.

      That evening I wait for my friend Maggie in Bryant Park. She’s running late so I surf the Internet on my smartphone, and end up, as usual, on one of the many pregnancy websites that chart fetal development.

       At nine weeks, your baby measures 2.3 cm in length and weighs less than 2 grams. Earlobes are visible, as are fingers and toes.

      2.3 centimeters. That’s what, an inch? An inch of infant, of life, waiting for me. My fingers clench around the phone. I feel a throb of longing, a surge of fear. A single inch and I am desperate.

      “Hey, Martha.” Maggie comes up behind me, and her sharp glance takes in my phone’s screen before I can shut it off. “Baby Bump dot com? Are you serious?”

      I click my phone off. “Hey to you too.” I smile, tightly. Maggie raises her eyebrows.

      “I know you can’t be pregnant.”

      And bizarrely, this hurts. The absolute certainty she has, because I know it too. I can’’t be pregnant. It’s been five years since Rob and I started trying, four years since they found the scarring on my Fallopian tubes caused by undiagnosed PCOS. Three years since the first IVF attempt, when I still felt keyed up with hope and determination, both leaching away with each further attempt.

      And now? Now I feel hope again, and it terrifies me.

      “I’m not,” I say lightly. “But a friend is.” Maggie just looks at me, her eyes slightly narrowed, and I know she’s wondering why I’d be scrolling through fetal development for a friend. It’s definitely not my style, but I don’t feel like getting into the uncertain complexities of what’s going on with Alex.

      “This baby thing has hit you pretty hard, hasn’t it?” she finally says and I tense. Great, now she feels sorry for me.

      “Let’s go,” I say, and we head towards the gym on Eighth Avenue where we work out together three times a week.

      This baby thing. I know Maggie doesn’t understand it, doesn’t feel it as I do. We’re the same age, but she’s defiantly single, still enjoying the club scene, the carousel of boyfriends. I’m secretly sneaking glances at pregnancy magazines at the newsstand.

      I’m not sure I totally understand the baby thing either. I had a plan; I’ve always had a plan. Rob and I started dating in college, were engaged at twenty-six, married at twenty-seven. When the ring was on my finger I mapped out our lives: pregnant at thirty-two, another at thirty-four, family complete and back to work full-time at thirty-five. Perfect. Except of course it didn’t happen that way, and the more life veered from the plan the more I wanted it, needed it, and having a baby became a way to prove myself, almost an obsession.

      As it is now.

      Maggie doesn’t mention babies while we work out, side by side on treadmills and then fifteen minutes with free weights. We shower and head up to the café on the second floor, take two stools at the bar and order our usual protein shakes.

      Maggie talks for a while, and I try to listen. I usually like hearing about her cases, her colleagues, the cut-throat atmosphere that energizes me. And I like to reciprocate, talking about multimillion-dollar ad campaigns, my pitches and longed-for clients, the whole thing. Yet today I can barely summon the will to listen and Maggie notices.

      “What is up with you, Martha?” she asks, and she sounds faintly annoyed.

      “Sorry. I have a lot on my mind.”

      She frowns. “Is it still the baby thing?”

      I can tell from her tone that she feels I should have been so over ‘the baby thing’ ages ago. Years ago.

      “Actually, it is,” I say, and then because I need to tell someone, I need to relieve this awful, aching pressure that is building and building inside me, I say, “My friend who’s pregnant? She’s going to let us adopt the baby.”

      Maggie stares at me for a moment, her eyes widening, and then she blinks. “What friend is this?” she asks, and there is something so skeptical in her tone I almost wince.

      “You don’t know her. She’s a friend from high school.”

      “And she’s willing to give you her baby?”

      “She’s not in a position to keep it.”

      “So she has an abortion.”

      “Maggie.” My throat is tight. “We want this baby. And she wants to give it to us. People do this all the time, you know. Private adoptions.” I speak firmly, as if I believe it. Maybe if I say it enough I will.

      “Well, all I can say is, you’ve got a really good friend there.” She drains her shake, and I am left silent, spinning, because the question ricocheting through my brain is: do I?

      Do I have a really good friend? That good?

      I don’t know the answer.