puke was clotted with chunks of olive from her martini. He stepped right in, a hero with a bar napkin. Afterward, when I thanked him, he said, Of course, Bird, shrugging it off like it was nothing. But it was the kindest thing I’d ever seen.
“Do you want to try one more time before you go?” he asks now.
I stiffen, and he pulls me closer, reading the tension in my body as desire. “I’m not even ovulating anymore,” I tell him.
When those circled days passed on my calendar this month, I let out a breath that took a long time to exhale.
“We can only have sex when you’re ovulating?” He’s kissing me as he says it, slowly and teasingly, his words fluttering against my mouth. “It can’t be because I’m going to miss you?”
I arch my neck as he slides his lips toward my collarbone. “Of course not,” I breathe. “You just said ‘try,’ so.”
I’ve been off the pill for three months now. I want to make my husband happy. He spends his days caring for other people’s children—same as me, I guess—and when his patients’ parents ask if he has kids of his own, I know it hurts when he has to say no. That’s where we’re not the same. When I do home visits, and the parents get defensive, ask me if I know from personal experience how hard it is to raise a child, I feel momentarily weightless as I get to shake my head no.
I like kids. I do. Sometimes, I even get that primal, womb-stirring feeling when I see a baby. But I’ve witnessed so many ways that a parent can fail a child, and it seems so easy to do. Easier than being good. And then there’s everything else, every little threat that hisses in the air or coils into genetic code, waiting to strike. I can’t imagine how much I’ll have to add to my list if I ever become pregnant. SIDS, heart defects, car seats improperly installed. Girls who disappear. Kidnappers who catch and release, then catch again. My hands grow slick on Eric’s skin just thinking about it.
I keep hoping I’ll get infected by his enthusiasm, come down with baby fever. But so far, I still react to my period each month as if it’s a miracle.
“Hey,” Eric says. “Bird.” He moves back a little to meet my eyes. “If you’re not into this, we don’t have to do it.”
For a moment, I think he’s talking about having a baby. Then he takes his hand off my breast.
“No, I am,” I say. “I’m just a little distracted.”
“Yeah? What’s going on?”
I want to make my husband happy. I don’t like to burden him with the lists that scroll through my mind. I know he’d be sweet, talk me through each anxiety until he’s sure his logic has tamed it. But I’d still feel it clawing inside me, still hear its nails skittering across my skull, and even Eric has a limit to his patience.
I could throw him off the scent, say that I’m dreading my trip to New Hampshire. He’d appreciate that. But the truth is, I’m looking forward to going home. Ted is retired now, and sometimes, I find myself mouthing that word—retired—because it feels as good as it does impossible. I had to stalk the Psychology Department’s Facebook page, scour the pictures labeled “Professor Brierley’s Farewell Reception,” to believe it was true. He finished up his final semester last month, and without the pressure to publish or perish—“jump through hoops or jump into the grave,” he always says—things might actually be different. That’s why I agreed to help him, even though Eric keeps saying he doesn’t deserve it. When Ted called last week to tell me he’s moving to Florida, he said, “Now that I’m free from the tyranny of academia, I want to be equally free from the tyranny of snow.” Then he said, “I need you, Fern.”
I had to ask him to repeat it. And when he did, I tried to savor it. Ted has never needed me, not outside the context of his Experiments, anyway, so it seems his retirement has already changed him, made him think twice about his daughter, see that she can offer him something his work cannot. Without Ted’s compulsive need to compete with the superstars of his field, this time won’t be like all the others. This time, he won’t keep typing his ideas as I clutch my stomach, suffering from what