writing extensively—for whom I could not say—about every aspect of their pregnancies, from how they felt (Big as a whale! Icky!) to what they bought (baby food makers, German breast pumps, organic strollers). I read these exhaustive accounts all morning, looking at all the mothers. Spending the start of my thirty-ninth birthday in the beautiful coastal town of Terracina, Italy, running away from my mother-in-law and her farm eggs and her just-off-the-boat squids and fishes, her rising blood pressure, and my husband who tended to her.
Ramon found me seated at one of the small wicker tables, trying not to finish my second coffee in three gulps. I watched him amble up to my table in an easy manner he wore only here.
“Hey,” he said.
“As much as I love the screaming, I thought I’d get a break from it today,” I said.
“You’re hardly a stranger to screaming.”
“Too true.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving?” Ramon pulled up a chair and in one swift movement had the barista’s attention and a coffee already hissing.
“I just can’t deal, Ramon.” I opened the paper. There had been an E. coli outbreak in Germany due to Spanish cucumbers and Paola had been screeching about it all the previous night. As a result, tomatoes were, for some reason, banned from our diet, a tragedy, as there was little I enjoyed more in life than a delicious Italian tomato, with fresh mozzarella, and basil from Paola’s garden.
“Look.” I turned my computer toward him. “Jackie sent me another dog in need of a home.”
“Oh! So sweet.”
“Should we take her?” I asked. “She’s part spaniel.”
“Don’t you think we’ve got enough on our plate?”
“No!” I said. We didn’t have enough, remember?”
“We could get a baby at any time, just as soon as the profile goes up. We have a good shot. Compared to a lot of those couples, we’re young.”
“Not the ones at the training session,” I said.
“Yes, but the ones online. And I have the Spanish. We translated every goddamn line of that letter into Spanish. We could have a birthmother in just a few weeks. I don’t think we want a puppy and an infant at the same time, do we?”
The dog, Jackie said in the e-mail, was named Daisy. She was adorable. “I suppose you’re right.” I turned the computer back toward me.
Ramon’s macchiato arrived, and the waitress smiled at him, her long nose dipping down into her flowering mouth, as she set the teensy cup surely on the table. His legs were crossed, and the top leg kicked slightly, a navy cloth espadrille dangling from his toes. He sipped at the coffee and he looked nothing like he did at home, where he seemed caged, stalking our apartment, unsure, his movements jerky and new, skin sallow.
“It’s your birthday, Jess, let’s do something fun today.”
“Ecch. Birthdays.” I thought of myself this time next year, in this very café I’d been sitting in for the past ten years, still without a child. Only on that day I’d be forty.
“Want to take the boat to Ponza? Or go to the beach? Take a nice walk in the hills?”
My husband does not hike. He walks. And this walking never involves any kind of gear. In fact it involves little in the way of preparation—looking up trails, say, places of interest that might be passed along the way—just leather sandals and perhaps a bottle of water if I fight hard enough about the perils of dehydration.
“Whichever,” I said. “It’s not going to be much fun anyway.”
I knew I was in a sort of paradise and I knew that I could not appreciate my good fortune.
“You know, you are really something.” Ramon lifted the coffee to his lips and then placed it back down on its chipped saucer. “Do you know how many girls would love to take a trip to a coastal Italian town with their husbands?”
“To come stay with their mother-in-law? Not so many.”
“You wanted to be away for your birthday,” he said.
“I know. I know. And it is so beautiful here. But I wish we’d done something different.”
“Like what, Jess? We have so many expenses right now and this is free for us.”
“I know this.” I imagined us on a lounge chair by an infinity pool, a drink with a pink paper umbrella popped into a tall glass dripping with condensation, on a holiday we would never take even if we had the money. “I wish you’d just plan something for the day.”
“Okay.” Ramon stretched with catlike grace.