The Stillwater Girls(2)

“I don’t need anyone but you, Nic. Never have, never will,” Brant had told me as they wheeled me back that morning. He held my hand in his and pressed his lips against my fingers, his eyes resting on mine until my body was awash in warmth and his reassurance. It’s the only thing I truly remember about that day. The rest is blurred and faded, washed away by years of trying to forget having a piece of my God-given womanhood ripped away without warning, without choice.

Turns out removing the ability to have babies does nothing to quell maternal urges. If anything, it only makes them less deniable, although the dream is that much more out of reach, placed on the top shelf with no stepladder in sight.

And speaking of dreams, I had another one of those baby dreams last night—the ones where I’m pushing a stroller around a park on a beautiful fall day, only when I glance down, I find my stroller empty.

It’s always empty.

And it’s always then that I wake up in a cold sweat, a gaping hollowness in my chest until I realize it wasn’t real.

There’s no baby. There never was.

My subconscious is a cruel, cowardly bitch that shows herself only when I’m unable to fight back, unable to shut her off.

I get it.

I’m empty.

I want something I can’t have.

“You’ve edited those photos a hundred times already,” I say, removing the chicken from our state-of-the-art oven in our state-of-the-art chef’s kitchen, which happened to be a Christmas gift to ourselves two years ago. These are the things you get excited about when you don’t have kids. But what I wouldn’t give to be able to wipe sticky handprints off stainless steel just once.

Brant ignores my remark.

I ignore the sting of being in second place to his life’s work.

It’s always been this way, some years better or worse than others, but it’s never been as bad as it has the past couple of years. At times, I find myself irrationally jealous of his work, as if she’s a mistress who gives him everything he could ever want, which leaves me feeling inadequate and insecure, and I’ve never been that kind of person.

He says he has to chase his muse.

Sometimes that muse is me.

Sometimes it isn’t.

I just miss his time, his present presence. I miss his laugh. His sweetness. His adoration. All the good parts, the parts I’ve loved with abandon, without question.

I miss us.

Plating his food, I carry our dinners to the table and take my seat beside him. With unabashed reluctance, he closes his laptop and pushes it aside.

“I’m so sorry, Nic.” His hand reaches for mine, and our eyes meet as he exhales. “The Bellhaus exhibit is one of the greatest things to happen to me, and it’s turning me into a self-centered ass.”

He brings the top of my hand to his lips, and our gazes meet.

I bask in his unexpected moment of clarity, wrapping my bruised ego in it like a warm blanket. He gets it. For the first time in years, he finally gets it.

“I can’t imagine the amount of pressure you’re under,” I say, ever the sympathetic partner. It’s a part of me I can’t shut off. “Just let me know what I can do to help, all right?”

I suppose I’ve created my own monster over the years, always supporting and understanding without a second thought, but that’s what you do when you love someone, when you’ve promised to dedicate your entire life to them, come what may.

His happiness is mine and vice versa.

Or at least it used to be vice versa.

Brant lets me go and takes a fork from one of the folds of his cloth napkin. “So, this fostering thing . . .”

My stomach flips. Brant has never been the kind of man who yearned for children. Even from the beginning he had this take-it-or-leave-it attitude anytime I’d bring it up—always implying it was up to me.

After the hysterectomy, we looked into adoption, but we were told it could take upward of ten years to get a healthy infant, so we held off, convincing ourselves that we were enough for one another and justifying it every way we could.

“Maybe it’s a sign,” Brant had said at the time. “Not everyone’s meant to be parents.”

Brant dealt with our decision by burying himself in his work, accepting more international assignments and traveling every chance he got with me in tow. Seeing the world and escaping this one took my mind off the physical void that our decision left behind—but that was only temporary.

Eventually that void came back tenfold, and it always seems to worsen the colder the weather gets. Maybe it’s the barren trees in the forest outside our home that trigger me. They look empty and dead this time of year—like my nonexistent womb.

I try not to think about the fact that we might have had a baby by now had we just stuck it out and placed ourselves on a waiting list.

Fear does that to you, though. It makes you question what you want and what you think you want.

“I hate not knowing what to expect, when we’re going to be approved, and all that,” I say, “but it’s kind of exciting, right? It’s like a little adventure.”

“You’re idealizing this,” he says, like he’s said a dozen times before, his tone gentle yet firm. “I just worry you’ll get attached, and something will happen.”

“I worry there’s a child out there who needs us,” I say. “So that worry overrides yours.”