Looker

by Laura Sims

  It feels good. Clean. Empty—like my womb. Ha.

  The first appointment at the fertility clinic was the best. Nathan and I had found our solution—hooray! We sat, hands clasped in front of Dr. J, nodding our heads in unison at the test results, as if saying, She understands us, she understands our needs! And she did. Or so we thought. I spent hours of my life in that waiting room, and in the countless exam rooms the nurses would usher me into—to be weighed, measured, probed, and sometimes inseminated. I kept up a positive attitude for as long as I possibly could—making jokes with the doctor and nurses, offering up my veins to them and willingly splaying my legs. Eventually, all of our savings went down the drain. My marriage, too, though that drained away at a more leisurely pace. And I can’t blame it all on the cost and complexity of fertility treatments, can I? Or even on my—no, our, the doctor emphasized, but come on, it was my—infertility. Nathan was tested and his sperm was “perfect.” It wasn’t him, it was me. Dr. J herself grew increasingly cold with me as the weeks and months passed. Like I must be one of those bad patients, like I must be failing repeatedly on purpose. It wasn’t fair—and yet I understood her disgust. I felt it, too.

  I went to yoga religiously back in those days. I remember feeling cleansed and purified after the intense hour and a half. Hopeful and hearty. Willowy and strong. Full of Buddhist platitudes and a sense of peace. I tried to keep going in the days after Nathan left, I tried to “clear my mind” and “open my heart” as the instructor suggested, but I was revolted by the stifling room and the stink of other people’s sweat—and, most of all, by my yoga instructor’s wish for “peace everywhere.” What about peace here? What about me? I raged inside.

  Just the other day, Mrs. H said, “Where’s your husband?” I stared at her. Where’s yours? I wanted to say back. Dead and buried, she would have had to answer. I envy her that clear resolution. Better to be left for death than for . . . nothing at all, not even another woman! Better to have Nathan snug under the ground than out walking the world without me.

  *

  I wake with a heavy sludge in my stomach. I dreamed of Nathan last night. He was lost in a crowd of strangers, and I was pushing through the throng to reach him, screaming his name, seeing what I thought was the top of his head just a few feet in front of me. Always out of reach. I woke to nothingness. Dumb cat purring beside me in what used to be Nathan’s spot. My eyes itch just looking at her. I smack my hand down on the comforter and watch the cat rear back. But then she calms, and resettles, as if nothing has happened. As if I’m no one, nothing at all.

  *

  Nathan and I moved here to be near the park, for our imaginary future brood. Five years later, here I sit, still strategically, uselessly close to the park. I haven’t been there in weeks. Months, maybe. What’s there for me? You should exercise more, Nathan would say, sweat beading his brow after his early morning run around the park’s central loop. I’d glare at him over my second cup of coffee. I’m movie-star thin, I’d say. That isn’t the point, he’d counter. And so it went.

  Kale shakes. Blueberry-and-banana smoothies, with ginger tossed in. Wheatgrass shots. Hold the bun, please. Gluten-free chips or pretzels. Gluten-free bread. Gluten-free . . . whateverthefuck. Our pantry could have stocked a natural foods shop. I think he thought surely it would rub off on me one day. Especially when the rounds of IVF continued to be unsuccessful. We should try everything, right? he’d say, meaning you should try everything, waving one of his damn smoothies in my face. Fuck off, I’d reply. Did he really think kale would get “us” pregnant? I was constantly moving his organic crap to the back of the fridge so I could make room for my Diet Cokes and cream cheese.

  I thought up ways to murder him, when we fought. I thought I could smother him in his sleep, or lace his kale smoothie with something untraceable, blame his early death on a (nonexistent) congenital heart condition. I was always afraid this would happen, I’d say to the police, wringing my hands. There was one bad blowup we had, when I wanted to take a break, let a few months pass between IVF cycles. This was after several failed cycles in a row, and I felt exhausted by the unending clinic visits followed by the vicious little needle pricks at home, all leading to: zero. Nathan was supposed to be helping—he’d been all too eager to do the injections in the beginning—but as we both gradually lost heart, he left it all to me. There I sat, stabbing my belly and thigh. Alternating between the left and right sides every day. Feeling the medicine burn as it spread, gritting my teeth against the pain. And yet he despised the idea of my taking a break! Said we couldn’t afford to let any time pass, given “the state of your eggs.” Accused me of being selfish, negligent, indifferent. I screamed at him that I wanted to rip his head off. And I did want to: I imagined doing it, in graphic detail, after he’d stormed out of the apartment. When he came back we made up, as usual, though each blowup brought us one baby step (ha!) closer to the end.

  *

  Nathan and I moved into our apartment at the same time another couple moved into the duplex downstairs. Dillon, the husband, was a software engineer, and Farrah, the wife, worked in pharmaceutical advertising. They were one of the new breed infesting our neighborhood: generic rich folk. I despised them in general but liked them in particular—or tolerated them, anyway. We made a few empty gestures toward getting together, having a drink at one of our places, going out for brunch, but it never materialized. We had our lives; they had theirs. They were always friendly, smiling, and helpful when something went wrong in the building. Then Farrah got pregnant, right in the middle of our baby-making hell.

  It was bad enough that I had to watch her huffing up and down the stairs, holding—no, clutching!—the rail like the sanctified vessel she was, carrying what must feel like the world’s most precious cargo as her belly grew and grew. But her personality changed, too. She started to send me frosty texts about things in the building that bothered her, especially as she feathered her nest. Could you or Nathan sweep the stoop once in a while? I’ve had to do it twice this week. Or: Would you move those air-conditioning units out of the downstairs hallway? We’ll need to store our stroller there, she’d write, without preamble of any kind, not even a Hi! At first I was accommodating, writing back a cheery Sure! And sending Nathan down to do her bidding. But then I’d go upstairs and jab myself with a needle full of some hormone that would give me insomnia and no babies. No babies no babies no babies. She’d done it effortlessly, she and her husband, at least as far as I knew: he’d stuck his dick in her, the sperm had met the right egg, and presto! The way God intended it. Not this artificial way we were going about things. I thought, too, that Farrah had begun to look at me askance for my blatant unpregnantness. Nathan told me I was imagining it—of course he did! And of course he was right, I agreed, although inside I knew differently. So when her texts grew more and more passive-aggressive, I decided to strike back with passive aggression of my own. I used silence: whenever she sent one of her obnoxious requests, I simply didn’t respond. Nathan would sigh, shake his head, and tell me to “be reasonable.” Did Farrah’s husband, the mild-mannered engineer, tell her the same? Be reasonable, Farrah, they probably can’t have kids. Have pity on her. But I didn’t want her damn pity. And as far as I could tell, she wasn’t offering it. The looks she gave me weren’t sympathetic; they were disapproving. Why can’t she have kids? they seemed to ask. What’s wrong with her?

  One day, late in her pregnancy, I ran into Farrah in our shared front garden. Rather than her usual scowl, she beamed a brilliant, toothy smile my way and I saw the old her, the charming brunette with the deep brown eyes who got whatever she wanted, including that massive belly. I couldn’t help responding in kind. I smiled back. “Have you heard of Virtual Doorman?” she asked, almost gleefully. “No,” I said, instantly on guard. Our doorbell had never worked reliably—sometimes it buzzed, sometimes it didn’t—so Farrah and Dillon had to sign for our packages now and then. As her due date drew nearer, she seemed to find this arrangement increasing
ly intolerable. Had to sign for a package while you were out, she’d text. I was in the shower when they rang. I’d grit my teeth and write nothing in return. “It’s a service you can install that answers the door when you’re out,” she said now, in an excited rush. “It can even let deliverymen in to drop packages in the downstairs hall. I think it might be just the thing!” Of course. That explained her sudden upward mood swing. “Oh!” I said, matching her tone. “That’s great, we’ll definitely look into it!” Then I gave her a friendly wave. I promptly forgot about the stupid Virtual Doorman, even after she’d texted me the link to the site.

  Fast-forward to two weeks later: Nathan and I were out in the city one Saturday, exploring the waterfront area, holding hands and sipping coffee and feeling positive that this time, this round of IVF had worked. I felt pregnant-ish, I thought. For sure. My boobs were sore, and my very punctual period was at least a day late. Nathan was so inspired that he’d begun doing the injections for me again. All was well. Then my phone dinged with a text from Farrah. Just had to sign for another package of yours. Have you ordered the Virtual Doorman yet?? it said. I felt remarkably calm. She couldn’t rattle me, not then. I showed the text to Nathan, who raised his eyebrows as if he could finally see what I’d been saying about her. “You should just say NO, in all caps,” he suggested, and we laughed. So I wrote, NO. And a moment later my phone dinged again, like she’d been staring at her screen just waiting for a snarky reply. Why not? her text said. It felt like we were circling each other, fists raised, flinging insults, even though neither of us had said anything remotely insulting. Because I’m busy, I wrote, knowing that Farrah had just quit her job to stay home with the baby. Some of us have work to do, I added. When Nathan read my text, he looked playfully shocked. We high-fived—blissful, triumphant team members that we were. We won! I kept thinking all day. Until late at night, when my period came.

  Nathan went behind my back and ordered the damn Virtual Doorman, as if we needed a remote service answering our door—as if we could afford it! When I confronted him about it, he shrugged his shoulders to say, It was fun being on your team while it lasted. I could sense Farrah’s smug satisfaction from two floors up. Is that when things between Nathan and me really began to fray? Or had it already begun, and this just accelerated our undoing?

  I watched Farrah’s belly grow bigger and bigger, watched her move more and more slowly up the stoop. Meanwhile, I’d gone through two consecutive egg harvestings, a promising embryo transfer, and two weeks later: zip. I’d crammed a whole pineapple down my throat, like all the blogs said to do after IVF, and rested, and taken my folic acid, and still the squirming little life, the tiny light they’d shown me on the ultrasound screen during the procedure, had winked out and died. Why hadn’t those slimy progesterone suppositories I’d stuck up me three times a day made my womb hospitable? Why did nothing ever work? Dr. J was reserved in offering her condolences this time; she pursed her lips. “Have you thought about trying acupuncture, too?” she asked. I had no intention of submitting to even more needles—I’d had enough of them, and so had my bruised belly—but I didn’t say that, I just said I’d think about it. I always said I’d think about it. Telling Nathan the news was difficult, but he swallowed his disappointment and comforted me, told me we’d try again and it would work next time, blah blah blah. I didn’t believe it as he said it, and I certainly don’t believe it now, knowing he was probably beginning to plan his escape by then.

  When the baby came—Farrah’s baby—she started making a habit of leaving trash bags filled with dirty diapers outside her door, presumably for Dillon to take out when he got home from work. I couldn’t believe it! Ms. Perfect, Ms. Persnickety! It wasn’t too bad at first, but as the baby grew, his shits started to reek. Jesus. I’d come home midday and it would hit me like a hot, wet, horrible wall: that sickly-sweet, unmistakable odor. Do you smell that? I’d ask Nathan. He’d look up distractedly. What? As if he lived in a different building, on a different plane. As if it were me who stunk, not the precious baby’s poop. I started carrying the bags out to the trash. Day after day I did this, and day after day I waited for the text from her that would say, Thank you, I’m sorry for the smell. Or Forgive my laziness and rudeness—you’re a lifesaver. Or How would I get by without you, neighbor? I would show it to Nathan and he’d see what a necessary angel I was. Needless to say, the text never came. Eventually Farrah just stopped putting trash bags in the hall, and that was the end of that.

  Farrah and Dillon moved out just after Nathan left. She was hugely pregnant with their second child; I was dragging myself around like the newly risen dead. “We’ve outgrown the place,” Dillon said cheerfully, when I ran into him one day on the stoop and plastered a smile on my face to distract him from my red-rimmed, puffy eyes. They’d be moving to a condo in the city, he said. A spacious, three-bedroom, two-bath overlooking the river. They’d go on to have a whole brood, I was sure—like everyone else in this place. The more kids you had, the more prosperous it meant you were. Meanwhile there I sat on the stoop: zero kids, zero husband, a woman-shaped shade. Haunting an apartment that was empty except for my ex-husband’s cat.

  I despised Dillon and Farrah, but their absence made the house feel even emptier. There seemed to be no sign of new people coming to fill the vacant duplex, either, which was weird, given the cutthroat rental market around here. There were always new suckers to lure in, people willing or desperate enough to pay an extraordinary amount of money for a small set of rooms they could run through like rats. But nothing. No one. I’d begun to suspect that Charles, our absentee landlord, who had raised his children here and then fled to Miami in retirement, was planning to sell the building. He’d bought the place for peanuts years ago, and now he could sell it for $3 million at least. I imagined he was waiting me out. Last time our lease had come up, Nathan had negotiated a discount in exchange for paying a year’s worth of rent in advance—clever man. Now I worried that Charles would kick me out in March, when the lease expired. I could e-mail and ask him point-blank if he planned to sell, of course, and at least resolve the anxiety of not knowing, but I didn’t want to draw attention to the situation. As if asking him might give him the idea to sell, if he didn’t have it already. I stayed silent and tried not to think about it—about what I would do or where I would go when the building sold or the money ran out. Next March was still months away.

  *

  Coffee mug in hand, I watch the actress from three stories up. She holds her baby loosely on her hip and walks at a leisurely pace. She smiles down at him, says something, goo goo ga ga, for all I know, and laughs at whatever sounds he makes in response. She seems completely relaxed, her smile real. Not the tight one she’s given me when I’ve passed her on the street. Not the diamond-bright one she gives the cameras. She’s wearing that same boho-chic white linen sundress I’ve seen before—it’s deceptively simple but surely expensive. The whiteness shows off her lightly tanned skin, gleaming from whatever weekend beach trip they must have taken recently. The baby waves his arms and squirms against her, so she cuddles him closer, kissing his neck until he laughs. She’s a walking advertisement for blissful motherhood. What on earth is more important or precious than this? I can almost hear her say for the ad campaign. She would look down at the babe with soft eyes, and he would reach up a chubby hand to pat her face. Nothing is the answer. Nothing is more important or precious on this earth.

  “You could adopt,” Shana says bluntly over lunch in the city. I nearly choke on my mouthful of mustard greens. It takes all my control not to backhand her across the face—with my left hand, the one with the wedding ring (still). She goes on pontificating about adoption, why she and Damon feel so lucky they didn’t have to go that route, but what a viable, worthy route it is, one that would mark me as a saint for the rest of my days—especially as the single mother of an adopted child! What a hero I would be! She doesn’t say that outright, of course, but she is so worked up by the end over my imaginary adoption
of a needy child (or children!) that her eyes shine with tears. Meanwhile, I haven’t said a word. She must think I’m overcome—with the idea of my imaginary family and my unending gratitude for the stalwart friend who has buoyed me through this dark time with her brilliant advice. She puts her hand over mine before we pay the bill. For a moment I think she might pay the bill, in her state of near euphoria, which I would be grateful for—but she doesn’t.

  When I get home, I wriggle my finger free of the ring at last. There’s a white band of squeezed skin underneath that hasn’t seen light or air in years. Instead of tossing the ring out the window, as part of me would like to do, I set it in the corner of my top dresser drawer, under my overwashed underpants.

  *

  I walk into class with a frown embedded in my body and soul. As soon as the door shuts behind me, though, I look up and smile. The friendly professor—it’s an act that continues to save me. I set a chilled can of Diet Coke down on the desk, and Bernardo, one of my most outgoing students, points at it. “Those’ll kill you, Professor,” he says. “Before cigarettes?” I ask, lightning-quick. Everyone laughs: Joanne, Simon, Mary, Devon, James, the silent Chloe—and Bernardo, of course. He chuckles and shakes his head. The funny, friendly professor.

  It has crossed my mind to fuck one of them. They’re adult students, after all—some are divorced, or have casual girlfriends. It wouldn’t take much. Pulling someone aside—Bernardo maybe, with his dark eyes and extravagant lashes. We’ve talked after class, bantered and flirted a bit. I could just say, “Want to get a drink?” one night. Go freshen my lipstick in the harsh fluorescent light of the school restroom. Have a few glasses of wine at a nearby bar. Touch his leg. Let him take me home and touch me all over.