The Good Sister - Sally Hepworth Page 0,9
struck me as one of the great mysteries of life, who you are fond of. As I wander back toward the kitchen, I nearly stumble on the open suitcase on the floor, partially filled with shoes and a folded garment bag. At the sight of it, my stomach clenches slightly.
Rose is going to London on Friday for four weeks to visit Owen. One full lunar cycle. I know Rose is excited about it, so I’m trying to be excited too, but Rose and I haven’t been apart for four weeks before—not even when Rose and Owen got married, because they had a destination wedding in Thailand followed by a “group honeymoon” that all the guests (including me) attended. I try not to think about what could go wrong while she’s away, and that, of course, makes me think about what happened that night and then, suddenly, I can’t think of anything else. I don’t want her to go.
“Dinner’s ready!”
I tuck the edge of the garment bag back inside the case. That’s when I notice the bottle. A white pill bottle with a pink label, showing the midsection of a woman, with full breasts and a curved abdomen. I pick up the bottle and read the label: ELEVIT. TO SUPPORT YOU THROUGH THE DIFFERENT STAGES OF PREGNANCY.
“Fern? Dinner!”
I stand. “Are you pregnant, Rose?”
It wouldn’t be ridiculous, I suppose. Rose is twenty-eight, which is an appropriate age, more or less. I have watched television programs about the way fertility dwindles after the age of thirty. Apparently, doctors were recommending that partnered women who wanted children should start as early as possible. Once the surprise of it fades, I feel something akin to excitement hit my system. A child. I’ve always been partial to children. Their lack of complexity, their proclivity for speaking directly, without subtext or agenda. Of course, I’d long accepted that I couldn’t have a child of my own, but Rose having a child would be the next best thing.
I return to the kitchen and give Rose a once-over. She doesn’t appear to have gained any weight. Then again, if common wisdom is to be believed, morning sickness could ward off weight gain in the early months. Perhaps she’d been feeling off-color these past few weeks, having aversions to food she’d previously enjoyed, but keeping it secret, waiting for a special moment to announce it? But Owen had been gone for months. What would it mean as far as he was concerned?
“I guess you found the Elevit,” Rose says after a beat. “My doctor advised that if I was going to try to get pregnant, I should start taking them. Unfortunately,” she says, “it hasn’t happened yet.”
“So … you’re trying to have a baby?” I ask.
Rose picks up the plates and carries them to the table. “I didn’t want to tell you until, well … I hoped I’d be able to tell you when we had something to announce. Turns out, getting pregnant isn’t as easy as I’d hoped.”
“Oh.” I sit at the table. “Because of your diabetes?”
“Actually, no. It turns out I have a condition called POA. Premature ovarian aging.”
She offers me some dressing. I shake my head.
“Premature ovarian aging,” I repeat. In my mind’s eye, I see a row of eggs with gray hair and wrinkles and tiny walking sticks. “What is premature ovarian aging?”
“Basically it means I have the eggs of a fifty-year-old woman,” Rose says. “The quality isn’t great and there aren’t many of them. We could try IVF, but that relies on me having a good egg to harvest. At the moment, they’re not sure that the eggs will survive the process.”
Now I picture the eggs in a row of hospital beds, their deathbeds. A row of my potential little nieces and nephews. “That’s sad.”
Rose puts her fork down. “Yes,” she says. “Yes, it is, isn’t it?”
“So … if you have this … condition, does that mean I have it too? Because we’re twins?”
“No,” Rose says. “I mean, it’s possible, but not likely. You could get tested if you were worried.”
But of course I’m not worried. I am in excellent health, something I take very seriously. My personal maintenance routine encompasses an annual checkup with my GP, twice-yearly checkups with the dentist, biennial Pap tests and breast checks. My exercise routine entails walking to work and back each day, a five-kilometer round trip. I also do karate twice weekly. In addition to karate, I do vinyasa yoga for thirty minutes each morning—for its many benefits,