Always the Last to Know(29)

So it was settled. We had enough in the bank, we had this marriage thing down, and it was time. I repainted the empty bedroom pale yellow and started shopping at antiques stores on the weekends, buying a nice old mantel clock and some porcelain Winnie-the-Pooh figurines that would look so sweet on a bookcase. Threw myself into baking, dreamily imagined my little one running in from the school bus to eat a chocolate chip cookie warm from the oven, chattering about his or her day.

I got pregnant right away. Oh, gosh, we were so happy. We wanted to wait to tell folks, just in case something went wrong, but we celebrated, just the two of us. I think that’s when I loved John the most, and he loved me the most, too. He worshipped my body, in awe, even if I wasn’t showing. My tender breasts, the veins that were suddenly so visible through my pale skin. He’d bring me an Awful Awful from Newport Creamery—a milkshake that got its name from being awful big, awful good.

A miscarriage never crossed my mind, not until I felt the warm rush of blood, and helpless terror flooded through me.

By the time we got to the hospital, it was over. Ten weeks. Not uncommon, especially with first pregnancies. Nature’s way of sensing a problem with the fetus.

I’d never thought of it as a fetus. That had been our baby. Our son. Though the doctor didn’t say, I knew it was a boy.

I was so glad we hadn’t told anyone, because I felt an awful sense of shame. I couldn’t put it into words. On the one hand, I believed the doctor when he said it wasn’t my fault. On the other, I hated my stupid, stupid body. My mother had seven children! My sister Nancy was on her sixth! Elaine had three!

John was kind. And sad. But you know, it felt like it was my fault, no matter what anyone said. I missed that baby. Gosh, I missed him.

All I wanted was to get pregnant again, and fast. As soon as I recovered, we started trying again. Figured since I got pregnant right away the first time, it’d be no problem the second.

We were wrong.

The weeks turned into months. That was fine, I told myself. I loved John, loved working as a paralegal, loved keeping our house perfectly tidy and appealing. If I lay awake in bed at night, tears slipping into my hair, well, of course I was taking it hard. Now that I’d had a taste of that kind of love, I needed another baby to heal my heart. I wanted to be a mother so much, I ached with it.

The second year I didn’t get pregnant, we saw a doctor. Nothing was wrong with either of us, and I was still young. “You’re not infertile,” the doctor said, “because you did get pregnant. Keep trying.” I cried in the parking lot, and John tried to console me.

I found myself growing brittle. It was harder to keep smiling, to stay perky. My mind drifted at work, and I made mistakes, too busy wondering if this month would be when nature deigned to let me have—and keep—what everyone else seemed to get so easily. John was sympathetic enough, but it was hard to put into words just how empty I felt. Like all the work and time I’d put into getting to this point in life meant nothing, not without a baby. What good was I if I couldn’t be a mother? Oh, I knew it was harder for some women, of course I did. But when Tina called with the news that she was having twins, I hung up, then called back later, saying a storm had knocked out our phone lines.

Babies were everywhere but in my womb.

I went on Clomid, but had to go off it because of the blinding headaches it caused. “There’s nothing medically wrong with either of you,” the doctor said, and I quit his practice and found someone else.

The second year of trying turned into a third year.

It wasn’t fair. Going out with other couples was harder now; once we’d all been in the same boat; now Ellen was having her second and was tired, and the Parsons couldn’t get a babysitter, and Abby and Paul had exciting news, and I didn’t want to see them anymore. Friday night dinners, which had been such fun and felt so grown-up, were now morose. Why us? When would it happen? What if something was really wrong? Should we be trying to adopt now? Could we afford a trip to Korea? Colombia? Russia? We were on three agencies’ lists, and not once did we make it to the interview stage.

Then John’s grandfather died, and much to his surprise, John inherited the old man’s home in Stoningham, Connecticut. When we pulled up to the house, I sat there, stunned silent. Grandpa Theo had been living with his sister in Maine for years and years. I’d never even been to Stoningham. Didn’t know this house existed.

It was absolutely beautiful. A Greek Revival that needed some work, but was elegant and large and so . . . so classy. As I wandered through, taking in the huge windows, the columns, the pilasters, friezes and cornices and other words whose meaning I didn’t even know, I fell in love. A front hall with a curving, graceful staircase. Fireplaces. A front parlor, a study, a family room, a dining room, a sunny if dated kitchen. Five bedrooms upstairs. Five!

A far cry from our run-down farmhouse in Nowhere, Minnesota. Our house in Cranston was cute but humble, not a place where we could have more than two couples over because the rooms were so small. But this house . . . this was heaven! The town, the house, the small enclosed yard, the nearby library, the smell of salt in the air, the cheerfully painted businesses on Water Street . . . honest to Pete, I was in heaven.

Stoningham was what a person thought of when they heard the word Connecticut—a little village of Colonials and Victorians, old cemeteries, posh boutiques, several restaurants, the historical society, the garden society, Long Island Sound sparkling, dotted with the white sails of boats.