Little Fires Everywhere(67)
In the end, she told herself it was the math that decided her. The Ryans’ offer was enough to pay for three more terms of school. It would buy her time to earn enough money to pay for the rest. If she did this, she could continue. If she did not, she could not. Put that way, the choice seemed obvious. And she would be doing them a good turn. They were kind, sincere people; she could see that. How badly, she thought, they must want to have a child. She could help them. She would help them. She repeated this to herself, over and over, then lifted the receiver to dial their number.
Three weeks later, she was leaving an obstetrician with a letter certifying her good health, her freedom from contagious diseases, and her properly configured anatomy. “Perfect baby-birthing hips,” he had joked as she’d pulled her feet from the stirrups. “Everything in there looks fine. If you want to get pregnant, you shouldn’t have any trouble.” A week after that, she was applying for a one-year leave of absence from school. And then, just as April began and classes were winding down, she found herself in the guest room at the Ryans’ elegant apartment. Madeline had purchased a beautiful pink terry robe for her. “Turkish cotton,” she’d said, setting it on the bed with a pair of slippers. “We want to make sure you’re comfortable.” The bed had been made up with crisp white sheets, as if she were a cherished houseguest. Outside she could see the sun glint on the Hudson. Down the hall, she knew, Joseph would be busy in the Ryans’ own bedroom, preparing.
There was a soft knock at the door, and Mia pulled the robe more tightly around herself. Her clothes sat folded neatly on the armchair in the corner. Madeline knocked again, then opened the door.
“Are you ready?” she asked. In her hands was a wooden breakfast tray with a covered teacup and a turkey baster with a bright yellow bulb. She set it down on the bedside table, then—awkwardly—knelt and put her arms around Mia. “Thank you,” she whispered.
When Madeline had gone, Mia took a deep breath. Was she sure? She lifted the turkey baster from the tray: it was warm. Madeline must have rinsed it in hot water to take away the chill, she realized, and this small generous gesture made her eyes fill. She lifted the lid from the cup, loosened the belt on the bathrobe, and lay back on the bed.
A half an hour later—“You must keep your legs elevated for at least twenty minutes,” Madeline had explained to her, “to increase the chances of conception”—Mia emerged from the guest room to find Madeline and Joseph in the living room, holding hands. She had put her own clothes back on, but as they looked up at her in unison—eyes wide, like nervous children—she had the sudden feeling of being naked.
“It’s done,” she said, and patted the waist of her jeans.
Madeline rose from the sofa in one fluid motion and clasped Mia’s hand in hers. “We can’t thank you enough,” she said. “Here’s hoping it takes.” She set both of her palms on Mia’s belly, as if offering a benediction, and Mia’s muscles tensed and hardened.
“I’ll call for the car—Joey can take you home,” Madeline said, and then, “Of course we know it will take a few tries. This is going to take persistence, for all of us. We’ll see you again day after tomorrow?”
Mia thought of the tray still sitting in the guest room, of Madeline rinsing the baster and the cup in the kitchen sink, readying them for their next use. “Of course,” she said. “Of course.” She was quiet all through the ride back to the Village, as Joseph Ryan chattered to her about how he and Madeline had met, where he’d grown up, the things they had planned for their child.
All summer this became the routine. The obstetrician had given her a chart to map out her most fertile periods, and during that week, she would visit the Ryans every other day. Then, the following week, she would wait, scanning her body for a sign. Each time she had backaches, headaches, cramps, and then—of course—no baby.
“It’ll take a while,” Madeline said as July came to a close. For four months now, no luck. “We always knew this. It doesn’t happen right away.” But Mia was worried. According to the contract they’d signed, the Ryans were free to call off the agreement after six months if no pregnancy resulted. She had kept her jobs at the diner and the bar and the art store—and had dodged questions from her fellow students, back from their summers off, buying supplies for the new term, wondering why she wasn’t coming back. “I’m taking a year off to earn money,” she’d said, which was true, and what she had told Pauline and Mal when, tactfully, they’d hinted at offering her a loan she was too proud to accept. But she knew, too, that if no baby arrived, she would get nothing, and she would have dropped the entire year for nothing, and her leave of absence would likely become permanent.
And then, in September, she waited and waited and nothing happened. No blood. No cramps. Just an intense feeling of fatigue, an overwhelming desire to crawl into bed and burrow beneath the comforter like a cat. Madeline nearly danced with delight when, two days later, Mia arrived at her apartment feeling the same way. She bundled Mia into her coat, as if Mia herself were a child, and herded her into the elevator, then into a taxi to a pharmacy on Broadway. From a bewildering array of boxes with confident names—Predictor, Fact, Accu-Test—she selected one and pressed it into Mia’s hands.
The test, it turned out, was complicated. It involved a glass test tube in a special holder, suspended over an angled mirror. Mia was to add several drops of her urine and wait for an hour. If a dark ring formed, she was pregnant. She and Madeline sat in silence for forty-five minutes, side by side on the edge of the bathtub, and then Madeline suddenly took Mia’s hand. “Look,” she whispered, leaning toward the vanity, and Mia saw, in the little mirror, an iron-colored bull’s-eye slowly appearing.