Lies She Told(6)

I put David’s briefcase on the floor by his jacket and ask if he’d like wine, mostly to draw his attention to the table. He mumbles, “No thanks,” and pulls back the chair. As soon as he sits, he begins shoveling pasta into his mouth, the first stage of ignoring me. I interrupt his eating before his eyes glaze over. “I have an appointment tomorrow.”

David’s chewing slows. I decide to interpret his deliberate mastication as a flicker of interest.

“Dr. Frankel will check on the cysts and the scarring. Last week she told me that the synthetic hormones seem to be helping other women in the trial . . .”

David shoves another forkful in his mouth.

“I want to ask her about the migraines too. I know I’ve had them before, and it’s common for them to get worse with the hormones, but they’ve been really increasing in frequency . . .”

Though I’m not hungry, I take a bite of penne for fellowship and wait for David to speak. Maybe I shouldn’t expect it, but I’d like a little empathy, perhaps an apologetic sorry that the drugs have me in a state of constant hangover. David meets my gaze and stabs at his pasta.

I put down my utensil and rub my temples for emphasis. “Aspirin always worked for me. Now it doesn’t even help most of the time.”

“Then stop with the drugs.” He points at my left forearm with his fork, indicating the implant.

Though most people wouldn’t notice, a trained eye would see six raised lines, each about an inch long, spaced equally apart like a flesh-colored bar code or scarred brand. Beneath each track mark is a needle filled with one month of fertility hormones. Two are already spent.

“No one is making you take them,” David continues.

Tears, on a hair trigger since the new hormones, flood my vision. I flutter my lashes at the ceiling. David considers crying a female form of manipulation.

He shrugs. “I was ready to call it after the Clomid failed. But then you wanted this experimental thing . . .”

My pulse throbs in my temples and my teeth. The doctor’s visit should have been a safe discussion, even a welcome one. David, after all, had encouraged me to take the fertility hormones after a year of single-line pregnancy tests and the endometriosis diagnosis. He’d known how desperately I wanted to have our baby, to raise a little person derived from our union, endowed, perhaps, with my creativity and his dark hair or blessed with his studiousness and my bone structure. And he’d wanted our baby too. He’d often mused about watching our genes flourish under a progressive parenting style, so unlike the authoritarian structure with which he’d been raised. How could he give up on our child? Over pasta?

My legs are trembling. Adrenaline urges me to run, to escape to the bathroom, where I can turn on the shower and dissolve into a sobbing mess. I place my palms flat on the glass table and breathe. I will not flee. I will not lose control. David doesn’t mean it. This is Nick’s fault. Stress from his partner’s disappearance has overwhelmed him to the point of—temporary—surrender.

“Honey, I know your friend is gone and—”

“Missing.”

“And I know it’s not the best time to do this. But each day that I age decreases our chances of conception. I’m doing what I can, and I need you to do your part too. We need to make time for—”

He pushes back from the table and reaches for the briefcase.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m not having this conversation.”

“It’s not even a conversation! I was telling you about my appointment. It’s been a month, Dave. Our life can’t remain on hold indefinitely while we—”

“On hold?” He slaps the table and stands. Ceramic rattles against the glass surface. I wince as a knife clatters to the floor. “You think life has been on hold? In addition to my own caseload, I have all of Nick’s work falling on top of me. It’s impossible to get a continuance for everything. And the police are doing nothing to find him! I don’t know whether he had a mental breakdown and is hiding out somewhere or if he was the victim of a hate crime—”

I pat the air, trying to calm him and myself. Yelling will push him out the door. “Why would Nick be the victim of a hate crime?”

David throws up his hands. “Why? How can you ask that?”

“Well, he’s a white male. I don’t see—”

He gestures to the side of the room, appealing to an invisible jury. “We won a ten-million-dollar suit on behalf of a transgender teen that held public institutions accountable for allowing toxic environments for LGBT people. Our names were in the paper. The firm has been inundated with hate mail ever since. At least two people have threatened to kill us if their daughters ever have to use a bathroom with a transitioning girl. It’s a two-second web search to find our pictures. For all we know, someone stalked Nick to his apartment and is holding him hostage. But the police are doing nothing!”

I misjudged his mood. Grief stage three is not the time to bring up infertility issues. “Please sit. Let’s just have dinner.” I reach out toward him. “I’m not your enemy here.”

His look casts doubt on my statement. Still, he collects the knife from the floor and settles back into the seat. He palms his fork and stabs his pasta until each prong is overloaded with noodles.

“I know you’re under a lot of pressure. Maybe we should get away for the weekend. The house is free.”