Athens, and then to London for the last few days, where they went to Annabel's, and all of Sam's favorite restaurants and nightspots. They looked at antiques, and jewelry at Garrard's, and he bought her all kinds of fun clothes in Chelsea, though she said she had no idea where she'd wear them, surely not to the office. It was the perfect honeymoon, and they had never been happier than when they got back to New York, and she moved into his apartment. She'd been staying there anyway, but she had kept her own apartment until after the wedding.
She learned to cook for him, and he bought her expensive clothes, and a beautiful simple diamond necklace for her thirtieth birthday. He could have afforded to buy her a lot of things, but there was very little she wanted. She loved her life with him, their love and romance and friendship, their mutual respect, and passion for their work. He had asked her once about giving up her career, or at least putting it on hold to stay home and have kids, and she had looked at him as though he were crazy.
“What about not retiring, and having kids?” he had modified his previous offer. They had been married for six years by then, and he was thirty-nine years old, and once in a while he thought about having children. Most of the time, it would have cramped their style, but still, he thought it would be too bad if they never had them. But Alex had said she wasn't ready.
“I just can't imagine having anyone be that dependent on me, I mean all the time. I'd feel guilty working as hard as I do now, I'd never see the kids, and that's no way to bring up children.”
“Can you see yourself slowing down eventually, working less?” he asked. But he couldn't see her doing that, and neither could Alex.
“Honestly? No. I don't think you can be a part-time lawyer.” She'd seen other women try it, and they always drove themselves crazy. Eventually, they either came back to work full time, and felt guilty as hell toward their kids, or retired completely. And she didn't want to do that either.
“Are you saying you don't want children at all, ever?” It was the first time she had ever really thought about it, that seriously, and she wasn't ready to say that either. Their conclusion was “not now, maybe later.”
The subject came up again when she was thirty-five, and by then it seemed like everyone they knew had had children. They'd been married for nine years by then, and they were very comfortable with their life as it was. She was already at Bartlett and Paskin, she had made partner, and Sam was something of a legend. They flew to France every chance they got for holidays, and California at the drop of a hat for a weekend. Sam still had a lot of business in Tokyo, and quite a lot in the Arab states, and Alex found his life fascinating, but her career wasn't unimpressive either. And there just didn't seem to be room in either of their lives for a baby.
“I don't know, I feel so guilty about it sometimes …like it's unnatural of me … I don't know how to explain it to anyone, but it's just not for me, at least not now,” she concluded with him, and they put the subject away for another three years, until she was thirty-eight and he forty-five. An alarm had gone off on her biological clock, albeit briefly, and this time she brought the subject up to him, after another partner at the office had a baby, and this time she conceded it was just adorable, and her friend seemed to be handling both career and child well. It had made Alex think seriously, for the first time, about having children.
But this time, Sam could no longer imagine it. Their life was too set, too well regulated, and too easy without kids. After twelve years of marriage to her, he thought it was too late, and it would no longer enhance anything. He wanted her to himself now. He liked things just as they were, and she surprised herself at how easily she gave the idea up again. Obviously, it was just not meant to be. She had an enormous trial to handle right after that, and the subject of children in their lives went out of her head completely until four