Giving Up (8 page)

painfully obvious
to me. I was sick of the whole thing and wanted it to be over with as soon as possible, so after I'd knocked his hand away I deposited the money order and withdrew four hundred and handed it over . . . or did he snatch it out of my hands? . . . My memory is fuzzy on that point. . . . When he started to thank me I cut him off and told him that he'd already thanked me and he didn't need to keep on thanking me. Once was enough. ‘Besides,' I said, ‘I just made a hundred bucks.'

MARY

They don't tell you about this when you're young, or, if they did, I wasn't paying attention.
For some reason we treat it like it's a big secret. I mean, I'd heard about it, I knew it was a
thing
, but nobody talked about it. And nobody talks about it now either, including me. I talk about it with James, of course, but that doesn't count. We talk about everything, or at least as much as a married couple can manage. Obviously there's stuff you shouldn't say, but sometimes I end up saying it anyway. It's weird. It's like I forget who I'm talking to. No, it's more like I think I'm talking to a different James instead of the one that I'm actually talking to and I end up saying things to the imaginary ‘James' that the actual James probably shouldn't hear. I think he can take it, but then I realize that it doesn't matter whether he can take it or not, there are some things, big surprise, that you just shouldn't say out loud. But this isn't one of those things. What's worse is that not only does nobody talk about it, but what little they do say is misleading, so you end up feeling like a freak if your experience doesn't match up with that of these good-intentioned people. Growing up, they lead you to believe that getting pregnant is as easy as catching a fucking cold. In grade nine, a girl in my class got pregnant, and the way everyone talked about her made it seem like if you had sex there was a ninety-nine percent chance you were going to have a baby. It didn't matter if you used condoms because there were all sorts of stories about people who went to drugstores and poked holes in them, or they broke, or they came off while you were doing it, or you put it on wrong in the first place. The pill was supposed to work, but then somebody would tell you about how their cousin was on the pill, and used a condom, and only had sex once, and she got pregnant. For obvious reasons they kept us in the dark. They didn't tell us that you could be perfectly healthy, have sex with a perfectly healthy guy, that he could come inside of you while you were in the fertile period of your cycle, and that despite all of this (despite doing exactly what you were supposed to do in order to get pregnant) nothing would happen. Obviously none of this bothered me when I wasn't trying to get pregnant – I just assumed that I didn't get pregnant because I was doing everything right. By that I mean that I was doing everything I needed to be doing in order
not
to get pregnant. But maybe it had nothing to do with what I was doing. Maybe I didn't get pregnant back then because I couldn't. It's possible I didn't even have to use birth control – that if I stopped using the pill, condoms, sponges, diaphragms, and all that other crap, that nothing would've happened anyway. I had been brainwashed into thinking that having sex and not getting pregnant was so rare you had a better chance of getting hit by lightning, twice, while simultaneously winning the lottery. They didn't tell us the truth – that it was possible to have unprotected sex again and again without getting pregnant. They never prepared me for this and so when it happened to me it took a few months before I could recognize what was going on. When we decided to
pull the goalie
and started actually trying to get pregnant we expected that it would happen right away. So when it didn't happen we automatically assumed that we were doing something wrong. ‘Are you sure that you came inside me?' I would ask after getting my period, and James always answered back with the same irritated tone that yes, he was
very sure
. Even though I knew he was telling me the truth – after all I had felt him come, and I could feel it running out of me – I still thought that maybe he was mistaken, that he'd thought he'd come inside when he'd actually pulled out at the last second. Or maybe, I thought, he did come inside but it hadn't been deep enough. Maybe, even though it felt like he was coming in me, his dick was barely inside me, and this was why it didn't work. But after we'd been trying for a couple months I started to think that something else was wrong. I'd read a ton of stuff online about the ovulation cycle and was pretty sure that we were having sex during my fertile period. I used those strips that tell you when you're ovulating, and I also learned how to check my cervical mucus for signs that the egg had dropped. I got a basal thermometer and started tracking my temperature. After months of doing all this crap and still not getting pregnant I started to worry that I was doing it all wrong. ‘Maybe the strips are defective,' I thought. ‘Maybe I'm not reading the thermometer correctly, or maybe it's broken.' The whole cervical mucus thing was particularly frustrating because the description of what I should be looking for (‘clear and stretchy – similar to the consistency of egg whites') seemed to leave so much open to interpretation that I could never be sure of what I had going on. I couldn't trust anything. So the only way to be sure that we were having sex during my fertile period was to start having sex every day. And so here was another thing they don't tell you about when you're young. The way that everyone talks about sex, the way it's represented on TV and in movies and books and music, leads you to believe that there's nothing better than sex, and that getting to have sex every day would be like a dream come true. But anybody who
actually
has sex knows that this is complete horseshit. Don't get me wrong, I like having sex as much as the next gal, though I'm definitely more into quality than quantity. Even if James and I were five years younger, even if we'd just met and everything was new and exciting, I would still consider having sex every day to be more of a curse than a blessing. But after five years together I'm sure I don't have to explain why this is causing us a shitload of problems. Based on what has turned out to be a false assumption (that having sex during my fertile period would lead to pregnancy) I had reached two equally false conclusions (that we weren't doing it right,
and
that we weren't doing it at the right times) and as a result of these two false conclusions we started having sex every day. This was the only way we could be one hundred percent sure that we weren't leaving anything to chance. James referred to this strategy as
blitzkrieging the womb
, and it was obvious by the way he said it that he didn't think it was going to work. But since he didn't have any other ideas, and since what we'd been doing wasn't working, he conceded that I was right, it was
the only way to be sure
. The moment my period stopped we started having sex, and we didn't stop having sex until my period started again. It's a cliché that married couples rarely have sex, and that when they do it's a joyless exercise, and there's a related cliché that when a married couple is trying to get pregnant the sex they are having is the most pragmatic and joyless of all. And the cliché about clichés – that they are clichés for a reason, because they are actually true – could probably be applied to our situation. I'm not saying that the sex was awful. Quite the opposite, actually. Since we were having so much sex we definitely improved over time, to the point where we could pull the whole thing off in under five minutes. And even though we were having sex all the time we didn't fall back on routine. We made a huge effort to keep things fresh so that the whole thing wouldn't turn into something unpleasant that we didn't look forward to, or that we might try to avoid. In the end though, all that came from this was that it made us feel more alone, more lost. James was very aware of how anxious I was that there might be something wrong with me and that this was the reason I couldn't get pregnant (and not because we weren't doing it right) and he did everything he could to be considerate while we were having sex. He kept things light and tried to distract me by focusing my attention on the nuts and bolts of what we were doing, and it was actually very sweet, but even though he was so attentive and caring he ended up coming off as needy, and instead of creating an intimate mood it could get pretty tense. For my part I tried to keep the sex low-impact, because I was self-conscious of how our sex schedule conflicted with his nightly routine of spending hours and hours doing God knows what down in the basement. I picked times when he took one of his breaks from his work, so he wouldn't see it as an interruption or a distraction, and might even look forward to it as a way of unwinding. And while we were having sex I also did my best to keep it light, and tried to turn him on by doing things that weren't really how I got off but that I knew he liked. If he couldn't get it up I always did my best to reassure him and told him that we could try later, and sometimes we would. In a way, our sex life had never been as good as it was when we were trying to get pregnant. We'd never been so considerate and kind and attentive and dear to each other, but none of that ultimately mattered because our daily regimen of sex was putting incredible pressure on our relationship. It didn't matter what we did, we couldn't ignore the fact that if we weren't trying to get pregnant we wouldn't be having sex on a daily basis. Even though it was really nice in a lot of ways and brought us closer together and all that, there was no denying that we were both in despair over having to fake it like this. It wasn't because of anything that happened while we were having sex, just that we didn't have a choice in the matter. We
had
to have sex every day to ensure that we were doing everything possible to get pregnant. To be blunt, if we didn't cover every base then we couldn't forgive ourselves once my cycle was over and it was apparent that, yet again, I didn't get pregnant. What made everything worse – what made the whole routine so demoralizing and even depressing – was that even though both of us tried to keep a positive outlook and hope that all this sex would result in me getting pregnant, we both suspected there was something permanently wrong that no amount of sex would be able to cure. I don't remember exactly when I noticed this was the case, but I think it would be fair to say that after six months of this daily sex routine both us
knew
nothing would come of it. Every month we would have sex every day but nothing ever happened. I would eventually start feeling all the symptoms that signalled I was going to get my period soon, and then it would come, and we would start all over again. This drained the whole thing of the pleasure we should've been experiencing. We knew we were going to have to keep trying, and that it didn't matter what we did to make sure our daily routine didn't become a chore that eroded the bonds of our love and affection – this erosion was inevitable. So even if the sex was good – which it often was – mutual resentment started to creep in, and every night we looked forward to our sex routine with dread. Since we both knew that this was possibly going to destroy our relationship we started to talk about going to the doctor. If we could confirm that there was nothing wrong with us (biologically that is) then we'd be able to maintain our optimism because we could be sure that even though we were having a hard time, our routine would eventually pay off. ‘If I just knew that at the end of all this I was going to get pregnant,' I'd say to James, ‘then I'd be able to handle anything.' If the sex wasn't good, if James couldn't get it up, or got it up but couldn't keep it up, or if he could only keep it up by getting all distant and just pounding away, obviously fantasizing about someone else, then I would try to reassure myself by dreaming about when I would finally get
pregnant
, but at some point our mutual despair just became too strong, it was impossible to fake it like we'd been doing for the first six months, and I stopped trying to reassure myself because I had pretty much lost all hope that it was ever going to work. ‘At the end of it all,' I thought, ‘we will be exactly where we were at the start.' ‘We just need to confirm whether or not something is wrong,' James would say, once it became obvious after more than a year that we were starting to despair. ‘Even if it turns out that something is wrong, at least we'll know what we're dealing with.' Once we finished having sex, once we had tenderly and considerately seen to each other's sexual needs, we would lie next to each other and I would immediately sink into despairing thoughts about how, even though we were doing everything right, the chance that this most recent sexual encounter would result in pregnancy was highly unlikely. (And yet, this time had as much of a chance of being
the time
as any other time we had sex. So it was hard not to get my hopes up.) I'm sure he was having the same thoughts, and if we had admitted to each other that we were sinking into despair then we might have been able to comfort one another, but instead we kept it all hidden from each other and pretended that we were feeling optimistic. Never admitting what we were really feeling eventually led to resentment, because even though we both pretended that we were optimistic, it was obvious we knew that we were pretending. If we'd just been honest about how we were really feeling then we might have been able to avoid these feelings of resentment. So we agreed to go to a doctor, basically to reassure each other, since we're apparently incapable of reassuring each other on our own. ‘At least this way we can be sure,' James said, ‘that there's nothing wrong with us.' Our daily routine, our monthly routine (and now
yearly
routine) had become so depressing that the only way we could keep from
sinking into total despair
was to get medical confirmation of some
biological
explanation for why we were having trouble getting pregnant. ‘This way,' James said, ‘we'll be able to relax, because at least we'll have a better idea of what the problem is.' James always talks as though we are in this together, that this is just as difficult for him as it is for me, which, no matter how hard I try not to let it, deeply offends me. He claims to want a child just as much as I do, but we both know that this is total garbage. There's no way that he wants a child even a fraction as much as I do. There's no way he
could