Always the Last to Know(30)

Suddenly, marriage seemed wonderful again, new lifeblood injected into our lives. We needed this, John and I. The change. The freshness. We moved, John commuting half an hour or so to Providence. I decided to quit my job and devote myself to the house, which hadn’t been lived in for nearly a decade. This was where I was meant to be. This would be where my child would be born. We would belong here in a way I’d never belonged anywhere. I’d been the girl who lived on that cow farm outside of town, one of the many Johnson kids. I’d been Barb from Minnesota in Providence, and since I worked the whole time we lived in Cranston, we still hadn’t met some of our neighbors.

But in Stoningham, I could be someone. I wanted to be someone here, to fit into Stoningham’s effortless grace, to be known by name, to have our house on the tour of homes at Christmas, to be recognized by the society ladies, because this was a town that had society ladies. Being a Frost was suddenly relevant; while we may or may not have been related to the poet, the name Frost was carved in granite on three war memorials here—Silas, Obadiah and Nathaniel.

I wasn’t a paralegal anymore; I was the wife of an attorney. He’d gone to Boston College and Northeastern, and suddenly, that mattered more. He had a pedigree (maybe), and I would reflect that in everything I did, starting with our home. And once that was done, maybe God would grace me with a pregnancy, because this was where my child should be raised.

I threw myself into the town and was received graciously. Welcomed, even. I met Caro from around the corner. She was married, had one infant son and was desperate for an adult to talk to. I joined the Friends of the Library and asked for advice about the restoration of our columns from the head of the historical society, who was pleased that I took the house’s history so seriously. John bought a little sailboat and we joined the yacht club.

I still didn’t get pregnant, though. Years passed. Years of trying, that one brief pregnancy. Four different ob-gyns. No diagnosis.

It was devastating. Everywhere I went, I felt judged. I wasn’t childless by choice. I was broken somehow. Everywhere I looked, there were pregnant women, children, babies. In the summertime, when the population doubled, there were so many beautiful children everywhere that I would cry. “Don’t worry, honey,” John said one night. “It’ll happen, and if it doesn’t, well, we’re happy just the way we are.”

I wanted to punch him. Hard. I was not happy, not on the inside! Couldn’t he see that? I almost hated him, living the same life as always, staid and unruffled, driving back and forth to Providence, reasonably successful but ever complacent. How dare he be happy when I wanted to drop to my knees and sob?

When a woman can’t get pregnant, the world judges her. The husband, gosh, he’s just a great guy, releasing millions of sperm for his wife’s selfish, snobby egg to reject. He’s so patient, so understanding, so good-natured, so supportive (of her problem). That John, I imagined people thinking. He sure is a saint.

I was barren. That hateful word. I wanted to be lush, fertile, inviting, warm, nurturing . . . and instead, my uterus was an empty white room with sharp angles and immaculate floors.

One of my former coworkers was Japanese, and she told me once that women who couldn’t have children were called stone women. I felt like stone, all right. I went through the motions, sex becoming only about procreation. I snapped at John. My smile felt hard as I volunteered on committees and worked in the garden. When Genevieve London, the most influential and beloved of all Stoningham’s residents, told me I’d done a “truly stellar” job on the fund-raiser for a new wing in the library, I almost broke down. I don’t care about that! I imagined sobbing on her shoulder. I just want to be a mother.

I spoke with adoption agencies, longing for the Victorian days when you could just go to an orphanage and pick out a child. “This one’s adorable! We’ll take her!”

Caro was the only one I told. She’d just had her second boy, and I’d gone over with a hot dish. She let me hold him, and I must’ve looked sad, because she said, “Are you okay, honey?”

“Oh, sure,” I said. “It’s just . . . we’ve been having some trouble on the baby front.” A few tears dropped onto her son’s tiny, perfect head. “He’s awfully precious, Caro.”

She got me a tissue and gave me a hug. “If you ever want to talk about it, or borrow the boys, I’m here.” And she let me hold that baby a long, long time.

And then, finally, when John had stopped asking if I was late, when I was speaking to adoption agencies in nine states and three countries, it happened. John and I had gone through the motions the night before, and when I woke up in the morning, I knew. I just knew.

Those first three months, I was so careful, holding myself together with all I had. I told God I was grateful and waited, waited for every day to pass, to bring me closer to my child. When I went to the doctor at fifteen weeks and she pronounced everything normal and healthy, I burst into tears. Only when I started to show did I confirm that yes, I was pregnant.

That beautiful, rich, sacred word. Pregnant. I called my family, and they answered in typical Minnesotan fashion. “Oh, that’s nice, Barbara. Didja hear Tina’s pregnant again, too?” I hadn’t shared my difficulties with them, but their nonchalance infuriated me.

Caro was wonderful. She threw her arms around me and cried with happiness. Took me shopping for maternity clothes and understood that I was too superstitious to want a baby shower.