Finding Bliss (17 page)

“Thank you,” I said and grabbed the phone. “Hi, honey.”

“Hey, I can’t make the appointment this morning,” he said.

“Why not?”

“The Kraft team was supposed to come in at two o’clock, but they just rescheduled for this morning. One of them has to be on a flight this afternoon, I guess.”

I sighed loud enough for him to hear. I hated feeling like I was putting added pressure on him, but it was our first IVF appointment, and I wanted him there. At the beginning of our relationship, I’d been the primary breadwinner. Responsible for most of the bills when Tyler was in film school, and footing the down payment for the house. He had always been supportive in other ways, though, like putting up with my long hours, sometimes watching me flash in and out of the apartment at midnight, only to shower, sleep, and return to the office by six o’clock in the morning. Or picking up the dry cleaning and doing the grocery shopping each week because I never had enough time for either task. But over time, as Tyler and Mitch’s business became more successful, and he had more money in his pocket to pad his confidence, he had grown less inclined to appease me. It reminded me of how I used to feel when I didn’t have my mother’s attention anymore. When she’d stopped drinking and started focusing on random tasks like cleaning her closet and organizing her eye shadows, rather than cooking dinner for us or driving me to swim practice.

“Sorry, babe, can’t make it today,” he said.

I shook my head. I knew why Tyler was putting his job before this appointment; he was losing hope and despised having his virility under suspicion. Maybe I didn’t need him there to hold my hand, but I wanted it. “Okay,” I answered solemnly, hung up the phone, and shrugged it off. What had once seemed like the most romantic notion in the world—having a baby with the man of my dreams—had become a complex labyrinth of emotions, appointments,
and self-doubt. It was a depressing, necessary evil, but what choice did I have?

“Chloe,” Rachel said as she poked her head into my office. “Your mom is on line one.”

“Thanks, Rach, I’ll take it.” She was instructed to alert me of all my calls. But my mother always required a lengthy excuse as to why I couldn’t come to the phone, so Rachel routinely looked to me for said excuse. My mother had no understanding of working or what it took to hold down a job and answer to someone else. She never had. So if I were to take her call, I would need to be prepared to talk to her for as long as she wished, which was sometimes more than half an hour. Her highly detailed stories about people breaking into her home and rearranging her closet, only to arrange it back to exactly how she had it, were never brief.

Rachel regarded me with surprise and went back to her desk to put the call through.

“Hi, Mom, how are you,” I answered, leaning back into my desk chair.

“I’m not well. Vivian noticed that some of my blouses had been moved from the back of the closet to the front, and I’m beside myself.”

My mother was defined by the contents of her closet. All her material possessions were in there. Clothes: some brand-new, some hideously old. Jewelry: the nice stuff that had been handed down to her from her mother, right alongside the crap she bought at Chico’s. Shoes, purses, Precious Moments figurines, and an entire vintage set of Fiestaware that she refused to keep in the kitchen.

“Did Vivian notice, or did you insist that the blouses were moved?”

“I pointed it out to her, but she agreed with me.”

“You’re paying her, Mom, of course she’s going to agree with you.”

Mom ignored my comment and instead went on for about twenty minutes, describing which items had been touched and which hadn’t. I listened and did what Vivian did, agreed with her, because I wanted to hear her voice and do what little I could to ease her stress. When I told her we were starting the IVF process, she sounded excited about meeting her grandchild. Her granddaughter to be exact.

“I’ll buy her a layette,” Mom said.

“Well, you have some time.”

“Yes, but I see them on sale all the time, and it doesn’t hurt to plan ahead.”

“You’re right.”

“Such wonderful news.”

My mom was never skeptical or discouraging when it came to my getting pregnant. She always expressed the same pure excitement about the baby. She never acted as though I wouldn’t have a child, which was exactly what I needed to hear just then.

I
arrived at my fertility doctor’s office at a quarter to nine. As I opened the door, heads turned in my direction automatically. I located an empty chair, snatched a copy of
Parenting
magazine from a side table, and began to wait. Stone-faced women sat, lined up on wooden chairs around the perimeter of the room. Heads down as though they were outcasts at a high school dance. Although every one of us was there for the same reason, no one dared to speak to one another. And while I couldn’t know their exact circumstances, I shared their pain. A few husbands sat, obedient and impatient, pretending to look busy on their cell phones. The occasional sound of a nurse calling someone’s name was often the only reminder that we were there for a purpose. Since I was alone that morning, I thought I would shake things up. Engage someone in conversation. For God’s sake, weren’t we all suffering the same fate? It would seem that a room filled with women feeling inadequate and insecure would be the ideal venue for idle chatter.

To my left was a couple in their late thirties. Other than scrolling through his iPhone, the husband was nearly comatose, while the wife was slumped over, reading on her Kindle. Every time a nurse called someone else’s name, he’d sigh angrily through his nose, and she’d lean farther away from him. The days of hope and holding hands were over for them. To my right was a beautiful young
woman sitting alone and cleaning out the contents of her purse. She glanced over at me once she realized I was studying her.

I held up my copy of
Parenting
magazine. “Seems kind of cruel, doesn’t it? That they should flaunt their subscription to this and
American Baby
,” I said, alarming most of the room by breaking the code of silence.

She let out a muffled laugh. “My thoughts exactly. It kills me to flip through those things.”

“I’m Chloe,” I said, extending my hand.

“I’m Alexa. Nice to meet you.”

We chatted quietly for about fifteen minutes. It was refreshing to talk to someone there. Though I’d always been eager to hear about other women’s experiences, I hadn’t dared to ask many people about it.

“Would you like to grab coffee sometime?” I asked her.

“I would love that,” Alexa said. “I’m free most afternoons around three o’clock.”

“Lucky you, what do you do?”

“I’m a writer,” she said.

“Wow, that’s fantastic. What do you write?”

“I have a weekly column in the
RedEye
, and I’ve also written two novels. I’m working on my third right now. How about you?”

“I’m a divorce lawyer,” I said. I could’ve sworn a few heads perked up at those words.

“I bet you have some good stories to tell.”

“You have no idea.”

“Well, why don’t you give me your cell number, and I can give you a call tomorrow,” she said. We exchanged numbers just as a nurse called my name.

“I have to be in court until four, so maybe after that?”

“Sounds great.”

I followed the nurse to an examination room, removed the jacket of my black pantsuit, and waited for the doctor.

After twenty minutes of me growing irate with impatience and texting my office like the disgruntled husband in the lobby, the doctor came in.

“I’m Dr. Wilder. Sorry for the wait,” he said.

“It’s okay,” I mumbled.

He looked at the calendar in front of him. “Let’s see here, so today’s your initial consult. Then it’s about two to three months before we do the procedure. We’re going to get your menstrual cycle back on track with the pill, and then you’ll start your series of shots. It looks like July will be your month. We close down the office for ten days each month to do the procedures, so it’s important to stay on schedule.”

“So mine will be in July?”

“Correct. Then during that time you’ll come in every other day to have an ultrasound and get some blood work done. Once your follicles look good, you’ll take your final shot to release the eggs and then come in for the extraction.”

I swallowed. “I hear that’s painful.”

“So is childbirth.” He smiled in a way that annoyed me.

After walking me through the rest of the process, Dr. Wilder concluded with what would be expected of Tyler.

“I hate to ask, but I assume he’s on board with this?”

“Yes, of course,” I said. “He was supposed to be here, but had a last-minute thing at the office.”

“Wonderful. Well, it was great to meet you, Chloe, and we’ll get you started. Be certain to follow the instructions to the letter and let the nurses know if you have any concerns.”

T
he next day after court, I met Alexa for coffee. I was grateful to have a new friend during that rough time. Grace was always amazingly supportive, but there had been an uncomfortable strain between us ever since she got pregnant that was admittedly my fault. I never wanted to make her feel like I was jealous of her baby or not happy for her; I just couldn’t talk to her about every detail of this process while coveting the adorable, rosy-cheeked baby girl in her arms.

“How has this whole thing been on your husband?” I asked her, cutting right to the chase. “I’m always eager to know how other couples are dealing with the stress.”

She shrugged and then tilted her head. “It’s been hard, but mostly because I feel so incompetent. We both do. He’s been really supportive and reassuring, so much so that sometimes it actually makes me feel worse. Weird, right?”

I sipped my coffee and furrowed my brow. “Not weird at all. I completely know where you’re coming from. It’s like, sometimes you want him to be pissed off so that you don’t feel like you’re the only person who’s angry at everyone and everything.”

“I get tired of the guilt. Which is entirely self-imposed, but I can’t help feeling like this is all my fault. He comes from a family of six, and we really want a big family. I feel like I’m the one thing getting in the way,” she admitted.

“Hard as it may be, you need to get over that. The worst thing you can do is dwell on why it’s not happening or whose fault it is or isn’t. You need to think positively…at least that’s what everyone’s always telling me. Easier said than done, I know.” I smiled.

She sighed. “You’re so right. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize to me! I know where you’re coming from, and I know how hard it is to talk to people who don’t get it. I have literally forbidden some of my girlfriends from asking me about it. If you are my friend and you got pregnant by having sex…do not try and make me feel better with your kind, understanding looks and concerned questions. Just keep your trap shut and send a gift when you receive my birth announcement,” I said, laughing.

“How about your husband?” she asked.

I took another sip and thought about Tyler. “He’s been handling it about as well as I’d expected. It’s hard for him…he doesn’t deal well with any sort of controversy. He sort of shuts down and goes into denial when his pride is tested. I think that’s the hardest thing for men; it’s like this whole process is mocking their manhood. It’s a real hit to their egos when they can’t easily procreate all over the place like they thought they could.”

We sat for two hours and shared personal stories and details I hadn’t even shared with some of my closest friends. I told her about my family and my strained relationship with Tyler’s mom. I confided in her about my fears that I would never get pregnant and that Tyler would leave me, causing his mother to rejoice.

“It must be hard having a strained relationship with your mother-in-law,” Alexa said.

I shrugged. “Oh, I’m sure she thinks we get along just fine. Honestly, I’ve gotten used to it, and Tyler’s mother is no threat to my marriage. That’s all I really care about. He and I both share in the task of tolerating her.”

“Good to know,” she said.

I pushed my chair back from the table. “Well, I really enjoyed this, thank you. If nothing else, I’m shameless enough to admit that hearing your problems actually make me feel much less alone with my own,” I said. “Now if you could please put on twenty extra pounds like I have, then I’ll like you even more.”

“I’m sure that won’t be a problem. Please keep me posted on your progress.”

“I will, and you do the same,” I said.

When I got back to the office, Rachel told me there were three messages for Robert to call Kimberly James. I crumpled them up and headed to my desk. Around six o’clock, there was a knock at my office door.

“Come in,” I said.

The door swung open, and Cameron Sparks was standing there with a coconut cake.

C
am!” I squealed, running over to give him a hug. “You’re a sight for sore eyes. Come in and take a load off.”

Cam took a few of his signature, slow cool-guy steps over to the nearest chair, and I sat down in the one beside him.

He handed me the cake box. “It’s not from Fresh Factory.”

“Fresh Market,” I corrected him. “And you’re forgiven, but I need a coconut cake like I need another neurotic pill-popping client.”

“Is she single?”

“Almost!”

“That’s my girl,” he said.

I placed the box on my desk and then sat back and crossed my legs. “What on earth are you doing here?”

Cam had moved to Los Angeles to be closer to his business partner and to get his MBA from UCLA.

“I’m in town visiting a friend.”

“Who?”

“You.”

I shook my head and laughed. “A text would have been nice.”

“I’m kidding. I’m in town with my buddy Rick. He’s our accountant, and we’re here to meet with some investors about a casino project.”

“Sounds fancy.”

“If you like casinos.”

“And I know you do,” I said.