Life and Other Inconveniences(47)

All those years together, and he still felt his heart rate kick up when he pulled into the driveway every night. Sex, which had always been great, only got better the more years they spent together. They loved to travel, strolling hand in hand through strange towns, whether it was an hour away or on the other side of the planet. Every time he cooked her pad thai, she lit up like a little kid on Christmas morning.

That was what made marriage great. The ease of it, the connection, the appreciation. The companionship. She was his best friend bar none, and she told him everything, every bit of gossip about her friends, her job—she was a civil engineer who specialized in water runoff, and the way she talked about it made Miller wish he’d gone into it himself. She would laughingly torture him with the details from her grandmother’s phone calls—how many times the old lady had pooped, what she ate, how gassy the dog was.

He loved their life. He loved it. Every frickin’ day, he was grateful.

Their only sorrow was not being able to get pregnant. They’d put off trying a few years; they’d gotten married young—twenty-three, both of them—and wanted to travel, have sex in the living room, drink a bottle of wine on a Saturday night without having to get up at dawn with a baby. They were young and healthy. Infertility? It never crossed their minds.

Until they learned they were infertile. They’d expected Ash to get pregnant in the first few months. After eight months without so much as a late period, they went for workups. Nothing was wrong, the doctors said. Nothing that they could find. Try not to stress over it. It would happen when it happened.

The months of trying turned into a year, then a second year, then a third. Ashley went on Clomid; Miller had his sperm count checked three times. And even then, with that sense of failure starting to loom, even then they felt lucky. They loved each other more, because in not getting everything handed to them . . . well, Miller thought it brought a depth to their love. After all, the stars were most brilliant against the darkest sky. Their infertility was the darkness, making every happy moment all the more brilliant for it.

And there were so many happy moments. Simple, unfettered, easy moments. The way he’d put Luigi the cat in their bedroom, since he got up first, and she’d smile without opening her eyes and say, “Thank you,” and the cat would curl against her stomach and purr. The way she’d bake just before he came home sometimes, so the house would smell like bread or cookies. How they held hands without thinking, how she always invited him to feel her freshly shaved legs, which always led to sex. How she was so grateful that he set the timer on the coffeepot so she’d have her cup seconds after stumbling out of bed.

The failed adoption was the darkest time. Well, Miller thought it was the worst. He was still naive back then. They’d come within an hour of being parents. An hour. Sitting in the hospital waiting room, clutching hands, trying not to bolt into the room to see the baby who’d been promised to them. He could still hear Ashley’s wail when the social worker came out and told them that the teenage mother had changed her mind.

Their hearts broke, but they broke together, and when one of them lost it, the other would comfort, and they’d take turns in their grief, putting on a brave front for the world, fielding the stupid, well-meaning comments about what was meant to be and next time and all that shit.

And then God smiled on them. In a month that was no different from any other, long after they’d stopped doing temperature charts and checking cervical mucus, Ashley’s period was late. It was six days before she even wondered, and he failed to notice she wasn’t power-eating Ben & Jerry’s, as she always did on the twenty-ninth day of her cycle.

Without telling him, she just went into the bathroom, peed on one of the old pregnancy tests, and came out, eyes wide, cheeks flushed, and showed him.

After years of telling himself that it was just fine if they never got to be parents, Miller’s knees almost gave out at the wonder, the miracle, the perfection of what that stick showed him.

They would be a family. Not just a couple, though that was everything—but a family.

Though it had taken years to get pregnant, Ashley was clearly great at gestating. She really did glow. Her cheeks were pink, her hair was shinier, her stomach was beautiful, her breasts even more gorgeous than usual. She felt great, had more energy, and when he tried to take care of her and pamper her, she’d laugh and swat him away. Still, he insisted on nightly foot rubs with peppermint lotion. He cooked for her—kale and salmon, roast chicken and new potatoes. He assembled sundaes piled with real whipped cream and hot fudge he made himself, sent her to the spa for prenatal massages, rubbed coconut oil into her beautiful round belly and worshipped her amazing, miraculous body that could grow an entire human. Their daughter. Their little girl.

The childbirth classes were like an exclusive club they’d been longing to join for years, and unlike most clubs that make you wait to join, this one wasn’t a disappointment. They sat on the floor in a yoga studio with the other blessed couples, Ash between his legs, leaning back against him, Miller’s hand on her stomach. He could feel the baby rolling and pushing, and if that wasn’t proof of God, he didn’t know what was.

The class covered things like physiology and pain management—“Manage this, pal,” Ashley had whispered, shaking her fist at him with a grin. Positions and transitions, massage and relaxation, breathing and Kegels. After class, they’d go out with the other three couples—Sasha and Joe, Victoria and Maggie, Dominic and Hannah. They’d drink nonalcoholic beers or seltzer water and laugh and talk, and it was the happiest time in his happy life.