People LIke Her(33)
Dr. Fairs expresses her sympathy, although it is clear from her tone she feels I have deliberately sidestepped her question.
“We should talk more about that,” she says. “And we will have time to do so later in this session. Just for the moment, though, if you don’t mind, I’d like to stick with the topic we were discussing.”
“Okay,” I tell her.
“So let me reframe my original question. How do you think your upbringing affected your feelings about family?”
“Oh, well, that’s easy. I didn’t want one,” I say flatly.
Never, never, never. I had a pony phase. I had a phase where I wanted to be a ballerina. I even had a short-lived goth phase. I never had a baby phase.
“What about your husband?” she asks.
“Well, Dan spent the first five years of our relationship auditioning to be a dad.” I laugh at the memory.
And they do, don’t they? It was endearing at first. From early on, every time we were around children Dan would make a tremendous show of how good he was with them. If we went to a wedding and there were kids there, he’d be down at their level offering piggyback rides before I’d even managed to grab a glass of prosecco. He was continually insisting on holding people’s babies for them while they went to the bathroom and talking to people with pushchairs in the supermarket and asking how old the babies were. On several occasions I caught him telling someone we didn’t have any children yet.
He’d had no idea what parenthood would entail, of course. That oppressive sense that nothing can be the same as before. That even once they start sleeping through the night, you won’t be able to, kept awake by the gnawing realization that never again will you be responsible only for yourself.
I remember when Coco was tiny, Dan used to sit at the kitchen counter after she’d gone down—after he’d spent all day writing and I’d been marching the pram around the park to keep her asleep or been bored to tears at baby massage—and scroll endlessly through photos of her while I cooked us dinner. Here’s one of her burping. Here’s another that might be a smile. Look at that outfit I put her in! She’s a tiny penguin! He couldn’t believe we’d made a little person who was half him, half me. Then, of course, we’d go up to bed and I’d be the one doing the night feeds and the two-in-the-morning nappy changes.
Is it any wonder I put motherhood off? As a teenage girl, my mother impressed upon me how easy it was to get pregnant, that I would always need to be very careful if I didn’t want to ruin my life. How she certainly wasn’t going to be doing the childcare if I was stupid enough to accidentally make a baby with whichever hopeless heartthrob I was dating at the time. The first time I had sex was at uni. We used a condom and a diaphragm and a generous dollop of spermicidal gel. Dan was fully aware of, and highly amused by and often joked about, this procreation-related paranoia of mine (as he saw it). When we started dating, in those first few passionate months, one of his signature bedroom moves was to ask, just before the moment of penetration, whether I had remembered to take my pill. The answer was always yes.
It was only when I came off birth control—I’d decided it was responsible for the few extra pounds I couldn’t shift before the wedding—that he started suggesting we “take a chance” when I reached for the condoms. Very occasionally, I was drunk enough to agree. Every time we went away for the weekend, he would spend the whole time making comments like, “Wouldn’t it be fun to have a kid to take to the seaside?” and going on about the family trips he could remember from his childhood. Then when we got back to the hotel room he would have forgotten to buy any condoms.
And then one day it happened.
I knew the second I saw the blue line that there was no way I was keeping it. We’d been together long enough to have a baby, two years I think, and I probably wouldn’t even have been showing at the wedding. But as much as Dan was desperate to be a dad, I was pretty sure I didn’t want to be a mother. I wanted a career. I wanted to travel. I wanted to wear beautiful clothes, carry expensive handbags, eat nice meals and drink good wine in cool places and have interesting things to talk about while doing it. What exactly would Dan be giving up to have a family? Polly came with me to the clinic.
Afterward, there was an overwhelming sense of relief. Perhaps that’s the only feeling I would allow in. I’m not sure.
The second time, I went alone.
I paused for slightly longer, perhaps, but I’m sure I didn’t agonize. I’m still meant to be mourning, forever conflicted about my difficult decision. I know that. But I’d made a conscious choice that there would be no guilt, no grief, for those two tiny bundles of cells. Sometimes I feel an involuntary twinge when I read an Instagram post from a woman describing the pain she still bears from making the choice, but otherwise I don’t let it enter my head. It is simply not something in my psyche that I choose to prod.
Perhaps Dan would feel differently, if he knew.
Dr. Fairs’s expression is entirely impassive. As is the giant poster of her face on the wall behind her, advertising her self-care supplements. (Have I mentioned that my attendance at these sessions is a contractual obligation?)
She’s not exactly a fraud, I don’t think—even if she is always trying to sell me a bottle of her omega-three-enhanced mindfulness pills, and even if she does mention her TEDx talks and Sunday Times bestselling book more frequently than is seemly. She seems to have the relevant certificates framed on the wall. This isn’t to say that I don’t fucking resent and slightly dread having to drag myself over to Marylebone on a regular basis to spend an hour in her basement clinic, talking about the feelings she wants me to have.