Everybody Has Everything - By Katrina Onstad Page 0,6
her eyes blurred.
James saw Ana cringe a little and knew what was happening. He put his arm around her, and she leaned into it. She tried to stem his worry.
They were equal now. All that work to clear the tubes of their nests of cysts, and it didn’t matter: according to the celebrity doctor, Ana had an “inhospitable” uterus – no visitors allowed. Its walls were thin as onionskin; they couldn’t support anything. And James’s sperm had low motility. They were too lethargic to broach those walls anyway.
Now they had the information, the perfectly balanced failure. A year ago, they had agreed upon the circumstances under which the long, gruesome trail of appointments and injections would end, and today they had kept their covenant. No more stirrups and pills. No more bloody syringes and bruised thighs. No more electronic wands.
James had a new plan now. Even as he was explaining to the table why vegetarianism was an untenable ethical position, the other corner of his brain had him sweeping into Rwanda. He had been there once, during the rebuilding. He opened the door to a church and children came tumbling out like jelly beans from a machine. He imagined himself on an airplane back from Africa. Finally he’d be one of those dads he always got seated behind. But he would be bouncing and expertly soothing the new baby, a baby with no one but them. Ana was in the seat next to him, holding a baby bottle. They could do that. It would be good for everyone.
But then, there were risks: trauma; fetal alcohol syndrome; inter-racial outsider status … He glanced at Sarah’s swollen stomach. Maybe they could borrow a healthy uterus for a while and grow their own.
Ana did not know what thoughts were racing through James, or why his eyes on her smiled sadly. She wanted to show him that she was all right, to let him know that it was possible to be happy for someone else. She gave him a small kiss on the neck. She was trying to remind him of something that she herself was working hard to remember.
THE NEXT MARCH
A year later, Ana watched James through the kitchen window, open for the first time in months. He looked medium. His brown hair had thinned at the top of his head to reveal a little gleaming planet that hoped not to be discovered. When he turned sideways, the silhouette of a small belly emerged from his untucked shirt, surprising her.
Ana rapped on the window. James waved. She pointed to her wristwatch. He nodded.
Months before, in winter, old clay pipes had cracked in the depths beneath the back lawn. In the basement, Ana had discovered shreds of toilet paper and purple-black sludge coating the drain next to the washing machine. James had handled it, which meant that when Ana came home from work the next afternoon, there were three men in her frozen, broken yard, and James, too, each of them drinking beers out of the bottle. James had gloves on; the men did not. One was Romanian and two Italian, though they considered themselves Sicilian, really, James informed her later, in the bathroom, his mouth filled with toothpaste. The tinier the country, the more divided, James noted. (Ana thought: What about Andorra? But she didn’t say it out loud.) He prided himself on always knowing something significant about everyone within eleven minutes of introductions.
The pipes had been replaced, but the yard remained ripped apart. James and Ana had decided to leave it until spring, and now it was spring and James stood in the very centre of the frozen lawn like a spoon in a bowl of hardened pudding, with two rolls of sod at his feet. James knew a little about gardening – he had interviewed some organic farmers in California who discovered ammonium sulphate in their fertilizer – but not enough to save the lawn.
Ana surveyed the kitchen. The risotto ingredients were lined up in small ceramic bowls as if waiting for a cooking show close-up. Ana wore an apron James had sewn years ago in his high school home economics class: Wok With James, it said in black iron-on letters across the chest, a reference to a TV show Ana had never seen.
James slammed the back door, letting in a gust of cool air.
“How can you not be wearing a coat?” asked Ana.
He leaned over her three-ring binder, reading the recipe in its plastic sleeve.