The Object of Your Affections

by Falguni Kothari

  Naira’s uterus was being examined, and depending on the thickness of her endometrium, Dr. Stanley would schedule the insemination sometime over the next five days. Neal was with her because I was in no shape to be. He also meant to check on the status of the embryos and whether or not they were chromosomally perfect. He hadn’t texted me yet.

  I finished the soup and felt so much better, but I still took the painkillers. I needed to sleep tonight, all night.

  “No one said motherhood would be pain free. But it can be rewarding.”

  Seriously? That’s what she thought I needed to hear right now?

  I took a bigger sip of water than I’d meant to and my throat hurt when I swallowed the last big pill.

  “You can go now. I feel fine.”

  “Neal asked me to stay until he gets back. He doesn’t want you to be alone. That man takes such good care of you. But if you want to sleep, I can go back into the living room and watch my show.”

  I should’ve let her go, but something hot and nasty bubbled up inside me and spilled over. I was sick of her and Minnie’s dire warnings and threats and condescension that they’d been filling my ears with since Scotland.

  A woman’s function is to generate life.

  A wife’s duty is to build a family.

  What do you think that child will feel?

  A man has a special bond with the woman who bears his child.

  That one had poked a hole in my armor and cut me, even though it was hogwash. Fathers hurt the mothers of their children all the time. Husbands hurt their wives. I wasn’t claiming women were saints. But there was no such thing as a special bond.

  Why wasn’t Neal home yet? He and Naira should be home by now. Why hadn’t he texted me? What was wrong? Or should I take no news as good news?

  I hadn’t had the energy to remove my phone from my jacket pocket before crawling into bed, so I took it out now.

  Be nice!

  It was the only text Neal had sent, over half an hour ago, approximately when I’d entered the house. My mouth soured as I shrugged out of the jacket, my movements clumsy though not painful. I winced, more in reflex, when my back twanged. I waved off Lily’s concern and switched on the TV.

  “What were you watching? We can watch it together.” There! That was nice enough, wasn’t it? Bonus, we didn’t have to talk if we were watching... The Gilmore Girls. Holy God, kill me now. We watched for about five minutes when Lily fiddled with her pearls again.

  “Neal said something about checking the blastocysts? What does that mean?” she asked anxiously.

  Ah, now we were getting to the heart of her visit. I explained the IVF process as best I could.

  “Fertilization happens after the sperm is injected into the egg and forms a single-celled zygote. Within hours the zygote splits and multiplies into multicelled blastocysts. At this stage, generally at days three and five, the blastocysts are tested for abnormalities and the healthiest ones are set aside. Then comes the preimplantation genetic screening and diagnosis, which will pretty much tell us if the embryos are carrying any number of a thousand genetic diseases, so we can determine if we want to go ahead with the implantation or not.”

  Lily’s biggest issue with me had been the mystery of my birth and genetics.

  We don’t know anything about her medical history. We don’t know what we might be dealing with. I can’t do this, Samuel. You can’t expect me to. I’d eavesdropped on them arguing when the Judge had decided to adopt me. I’d already been fostering with them.

  I didn’t blame her for imagining the worst about me. I did it too.

  “Don’t worry, Lily. We won’t be saddled with a diseased child,” I said.

  “They can do that?”

  I’d been expecting to hear the usual displeasure in her question, not wonder. It made me sit up straighter. What the hell was that expression on her face?

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t know.” She gave me a tremulous smile. “We never told you,” she whispered, and for a minute my heart pounded so loudly that I wouldn’t have heard her anyway. What hadn’t they told me?

  “We had a daughter called Jessica. My little Jessie was beautiful, an angel. She had Samuel’s smile and eyes and my delicate bone structure.”

  I wanted her to stop talking. I wanted her to leave.

  They’d had a daughter.

  I hadn’t been the only claimant of the Judge’s affections.

  “When she turned two, she was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy, a neurodegenerative disorder we’d passed on to her through our flawed genes. While other toddlers ran about and jumped around the playground, Jessie had trouble even standing for long and her legs would cave from under her if she tried to run. They told me not to worry. She was a late bloomer, they said. Then she stopped walking and running altogether. She stopped trying to stand up. She suffered from a particularly aggressive form of the disease, and because she was so young, she couldn’t fight it. We couldn’t fight it. She died, slowly and in pain, two months after her ninth birthday.”

  Every part of my body froze as Lily spoke about her angel. Why hadn’t they ever told me? Had I meant so little to them? Or had she meant so much?

  I flinched when Lily reached for my tightly curled fist and rubbed it.

  “It’s good you can know about such things from before...and decide. It’s good there are so many choices now. A sick child takes a toll on everything. You blame yourself for not foreseeing it, for not doing enough. You accuse your partner of being callous, of putting his work before his family. You wonder and curse and wish for the impossible. Then you lose faith in everything. Even your marriage.”

  * * *

  I woke up gasping in the middle of the night. I’d dreamed of misshapen embryos, of screaming children with blood running out of their eyes and noses, of a whole school full of zombie children coming to attack me.

  I started shaking. I squeezed my eyes shut when I felt them burn with tears.

  “Hey. Hey! What’s the matter?” Neal’s arms came around me and I clung to him. “Hush. What’s this now? What’s happened?”

  It came pouring out—the story Lily had told me, my nightmare, my fears.

  “What if the genetic testing isn’t enough? What if the child gets sick after? What if she falls off a slide and injures her head and becomes a paraplegic? What happens then, Neal?” I pressed a hand to my stomach. I was not equipped for this. I could not be responsible for a sick child. I could not. “What if my eggs are rotten? You should’ve used Naira’s eggs. I cannot do this. Let’s call it off. Please, let’s just stop this now.”

  He held me as I spewed all the vile, ugly things that kept me up at night. He hugged me, rocking me until I calmed down. I didn’t. I simply ran out of breath. The pain in my back shifted into my chest. What had I done?

  My husband promised that nothing bad was going to happen. That I should have faith, if not in God, then in Dr. Stanley who knew what he was about. He asked me to have faith in him—in us. We could deal with anything, the two of us together.

  “I’m terrified of motherhood, Neal. Even with you and Naira around, I’m going to be terrible at it. I’ve had three mothers—what a fucking joke! And between them, all they’ve taught me is how not to be one.”

  “Well, there ye are, then. Ye know what not to do, so ye just don’t do it, aye? You will be a fine mother. I know ye will.”

  Was he being deliberately obtuse? He just didn’t get it, did he? He didn’t understand my terror, my...flaw. How could he?

  “And what if I can’t help but be just like them? What if that’s all I can be?” I kept shaking my head as if I’d lost control of my muscles. “I can’t risk it. I can’t.”

  His tone hardened then. “You set this in motion, hen. We’re invested, emotionally, physically. I’m invested, Paris. I want our family and I will n
o’ allow ye to change yer mind now.”

  But it was too late. I’d already changed my mind. And Neal, it seemed, had made up his. We were deadlocked like a hung jury, exactly as I’d expected us to be. Only, our stances had reversed.

  Naira would be our tiebreaker and I had no doubt which side of the scale her vote would tip. And so, the only recourse left, the only viable option for me, was to step back from it all and let it happen.

  As I’d said before, my work here was done.

  chapter sixteen

  Naira

  I became pregnant on the first try, which was both surprising and not.

  I’d already felt the change even before Dr. Stanley confirmed the news with a quantitative blood test two weeks after the embryo transfer. An awareness had manifested inside me at the time of the insemination itself. Paris thought I was being fanciful, but I wasn’t.

  She’d been there in the room with me for the transfer, and Dr. Stanley and I had explained every step, described every feeling for her in great detail, so she could envision it. I planned to share every aspect of the pregnancy with her whether she liked it or not. I refused to accept she wanted to be completely removed from it.

  We’d arrived at the clinic with my bladder full to the level of uncomfortable as required. Paris had filled out all necessary paperwork, then a nurse had taken us into a room that had been prepared for the insemination. There had been soft music playing in the background and the lights in the room had been dimmed so that it wouldn’t hurt my eyes.

  “Great. You get the salon treatment, and I got an operating table,” Paris grumbled, comparing her egg extraction procedure to mine. Her snark actually calmed my nerves.

  “You want to exchange places?” I grinned, though with sympathy. She’d been suffering back pain since her epidural, the poor dear.

  It had been a quick procedure. Dr. Stanley had come in and explained what would happen in his matter-of-fact way, and then he’d shown us a grainy photo of the embryos under a microscope. They’d looked like eight-petaled flowers.

  “These are what we call high-quality embryos. Do you see there is no fragmentation, and the cells are all similar in size and shape? We’ll be inserting a couple of these perfect little guys into you,” he’d said, smiling at both of us.

  Paris had been staring at the embryo picture as if it was a thing under a microscope, which of course it was when the picture was taken, but we’d both exhaled our anxiety when Dr. Stanley said the embryos were high-quality and perfect.

  “I feel a tug...on my heart,” I said a little dreamily when he inserted the catheter into me and released the embryos. Up on the wall in front of me, there were screens showing everything that was going on inside my womb. A thin white line or tube entered me, and I’d swear there was a glowing ball at the end of it. The line inched deeper and deeper and then, suddenly, the glowing balls were floating inside me.

  At that moment, I felt completely and utterly connected to the enormity of life. To the collective consciousness of the universe. I was life itself.

  I told Paris and Neal a story my grandmother had told me a million times while growing up. A story about Mahaveer, the twenty-fourth, and last, Jina. A Jina was an enlightened soul who by example and through preaching guided other souls to liberation. A Jina was to Jainism sort of like what Buddha was to Buddhism, or Christ to Christianity.

  “The reason I’m telling you this is that Mahaveer was also an embryo transfer,” I said as I stretched out on their living room sofa.

  I had to take it easy for the day, and had been advised not to climb stairs, if possible. So, going back to Liam’s was out of the question, and I’d come back with Paris to her apartment. She was having a quick bite to eat and then would be heading to work—she’d taken the morning off for me—and Neal would keep me company for the rest of the day.

  “In his final human birth before his enlightenment, Mahaveer, whose name means the Bravest One of All, took the form of an embryo in the womb of a Brahmin woman called Devananda. The king of the gods, Indra, didn’t think it fitting for the next Jina to be born in the priestly Brahmin caste as they weren’t the caste of great kings and mighty warriors. So, the Great Embryo was transplanted into the womb of Queen Trisala, who then gave birth to Prince Vardhamana Mahaveer.”

  “Good to know,” said Paris. She didn’t roll her eyes, but she complimented me on my imagination and left for work.

  Ah, what did Paris know about spirituality, I thought, feeling utterly wonderful about life.

  My grandmother had told me that for Prince Vardhamana to become a Mahaveer, he’d needed both the wisdom of a priest and the courage and strength of a warrior. Hence, he’d been an embryo conceived in one caste and birthed in another. I’d asked her if such fantastical stories like divine births could really be true? If the mind can imagine it, the soul can manifest it, she’d been fond of saying.

  I wondered what it meant for our baby. Would she understand how special she was?

  Neal wanted to know more about Jainism, so we chatted about it and Sikhism and Catholicism. I asked him about his beliefs, or if he believed in any religious doctrine at all.

  “Well, I was baptized and I go to the gurudwara when needed. As ye know, my family celebrates both Christmas and Diwali. It’s more about having faith, any faith, in my family. We weren’t raised to put one over the other or discount any of the hundreds of other faiths in the world.”

  I liked what he’d said. A lot. My family wasn’t so open. I’d never had a choice in my faith. It had always been Jainism above every other faith.

  “I used to love listening to my grandmother’s stories—the religious ones. They almost seemed like fairy tales.” Neal was sprawled on the sofa opposite me, and was looking at me encouragingly. “I’m wondering if you—and I hope Paris won’t mind because we didn’t talk about this before—but I’m wondering if it’s okay if I tell the little one stories in the womb? They say that it...helps.” I touched my belly, and Neal’s eyes dropped to my hand. Deep slashes of red appeared on his cheeks, and I felt my own face ignite into flames.

  It was hard not to be embarrassed about it. I was more embarrassed that I was carrying his child than I was about carrying Paris’s—which was just silly because it was one and the same. I didn’t even know why I’d asked him this. We weren’t at that stage yet. It was only a transfer. Dr. Stanley had said there was a possibility that it may not work and we’d have to try again. We had enough high-quality blastocysts frozen for several tries. I was trying hard not to get my hopes up and was obviously failing.

  We’d decided not to congratulate each other yet, not until the blood test. And we were trying not to show our excitement by playing it cool—at least Neal and I were. And maybe I shouldn’t make plans yet, but God, I wanted this so much.

  I’d been right about being pregnant. And from the day of the blood test—no, even from before, the day of the transfer, the rightness only kept multiplying like the cells in my womb.

  When my blood report confirmed my pregnancy, Neal broke into the biggest smile I’d ever seen on anyone. His face showed every vibrant emotion I was too scared to feel. He’d waltzed around the room with Paris until she’d laughed too.

  This pregnancy was so different from my other one. It had all the joy and none of the worry. Sarika, helicopter mother of two adorable boys (whom I prayed for every day when I prayed for this baby, that they didn’t turn into their father or their mother) had told me that every pregnancy was unique, and the child’s temperament usually matched the ordeal. If I believed her theory, then my first pregnancy had been doomed from the beginning. It had taken Kaivan and me six months to get pregnant. Six months during which our hopes had dwindled into worry, and our excitement to desperation. Only I hadn’t known the true reason for Kaivan’s odd behavior, and had chalked it up to pregnancy disappointment. Had our baby known its fate and so had tried ha
rd not to be born? Why hadn’t Kaivan told me what was going on? Why had he hidden his financial worries from me? I wouldn’t have gotten pregnant if I’d known. And I wouldn’t have been hurt by his forced joy and lack of enthusiasm when we finally did.

  Of course, it’s good news, baby. But the timing could’ve been better, he’d said when I broke the news. I’d gone to the doctor with my mother because he’d been in Delhi, meeting with some minister. Too late he’d told me why.

  This time the news of the pregnancy was music to three sets of ears. Neal’s enthusiasm was such a joy to behold. Even the morning sickness was tolerable and not violent like the last time. And while I was stressed about navigating the first trimester without mishap, Fraser Bespoke kept my mind off it. Best of all, I wasn’t facing any of it alone.

  * * *

  I joined a prenatal yoga class as Lamaze classes wouldn’t start until the third trimester. Dr. Kapoor, Paris’s ob-gyn and now mine, had suggested yoga during pregnancy was a great way to stay in shape. It would calm the mind and prepare the body for the rigors of labor.

  “I see no reason for you not to exercise as before,” she said at my first ultrasound two weeks after the blood test. It was only to confirm what the blood test had already implied. My next ultrasound would be between six to eight weeks to check development, heartbeat and due date that we roughly knew would be in mid-November.

  I loved the energy of the class where the master yogi took us through sequences of Vinyasa and Iyengar yoga to Buddha Bar music. Paris came with me on weekends, and sometimes Neal too. We’d just finished a class, and were meeting Lavinia and Juan at Sarabeth’s Tribeca for brunch.

  It wasn’t time to put away our winter coats at all, but the weather was being kind to the Northeast this weekend in March. It was balmy enough for us to walk.

  Sarabeth’s was busy and noisy as usual. It was a forty-minute wait time without reservations. Luckily, we had them. Half the tables in the family-friendly restaurant were bursting with kids either crying or screaming for attention. I didn’t blame Paris for complaining. “There should be a rule against allowing kids under the age of five into a restaurant.”