by Sarina Bowen
Ah. I think back to the day when Jordanna and I found our house in the Dallas suburbs. She’d been so excited. “Four upstairs bedrooms!” she’d gushed. “And that yard!”
She’d been mentally filling the place with children. I had, too. We’d had no idea what we were in for. Years of disappointment, followed by a bitter divorce.
I’m lost in thought as I step into the other bedroom. The walls are pink, and a fluffy rug dampens the sound of my footsteps. They have a little girl, my brain says.
It takes me a moment to register the other apartment-hunter in the room.
It’s Bess. She’s standing very still, looking at a framed painting of a mother polar bear cuddling her fuzzy little infant.
My heart stops beating for a long second, before thumping wildly back to life. She hasn’t spotted me yet, so I drink her in. Bess isn’t a big person, but there’s something so vivid about the way she carries herself. Neck straight. Shoulders back. Ready to take on anything.
She’s so beautiful, it hurts to look at her.
“Tank?” Eric calls from the hall. “Did you—” Bess’s chin whips toward us just as Eric appears in the doorway. “Oh,” Eric says quietly. “Hell. Hi, Bess.”
Her eyes widen, and for a moment, nobody speaks.
“Um. I’ll just…” Eric backs out of the bedroom and leaves the two of us.
“What are you doing here?” she whispers.
“The same thing you are, I guess.” It’s so quiet, I can hear the pink clock ticking on the nightstand. “I’m sure Eric had no idea you were looking at this place.”
“I didn’t tell him.”
There’s another awkward silence, and I want to ask her how she is. I want to tell her how much I miss her. I want to close the distance between us in three quick strides and kiss that perfect mouth.
“I’ll go,” I say instead. “This place is perfect for you. And I only need one bedroom.”
“So you mentioned,” she says with a sigh.
And that’s my opening. My cue to blurt out the whole fucking story—right here in front of the crib and the fluffy stuffed bear on the rocking chair. I could tell her how much effort and trouble I’d gone through to try to have a family.
But then I’d have to tell her how bad it hurts to fail. Most people don’t have any idea what that’s like. Does Bess want to know how every one of Jordanna’s monthly periods became times of mourning? Or how I didn’t even care if I ever had sex again, so long as I could stop letting Jordanna down?
Whoever owns this apartment probably has no clue how lucky they are. Another baby on the way. Do they know that you can try for five years and come away with nothing?
“I probably can’t afford this place,” Bess says quietly. “It’s a stretch. This building is so bid up.”
“You can too afford it,” I argue. She probably makes more than a half million a year.
Slowly, she shakes her head. “I’m a coward. My five-year plan looks great on paper. But those leaps of faith look different when the sticker price is almost two million bucks. And that’s before the cost of IVF, and a procedure called egg retrieval, and private preschool.” She shivers.
The drugs aren’t that bad, but egg retrieval is just as tricky as it sounds. I don’t say this aloud. If I start spilling my guts, I’ll never stop.
We can’t have this conversation in front of a crib that some stranger put together on his day off. The apartment owner probably has no idea how it feels to fail at the basic manly art of impregnating your wife. To spend fifty thousand dollars on specialists who give you a sterile cup and a pitying look as they point you toward the privacy of a room where you’re supposed to flip through some porn and unload some of your low sperm count jizz into a sterile cup.
My slap shot is fifty miles an hour. I can bench 350 and squat 475. But near the end of my marriage, there had been a night when I’d felt like the weakest man on the planet. My wife had wanted to try it again the natural way, and I physically couldn’t do it.
“What are you thinking about right now?” Bess asks, and I realize we’ve been standing in an uncomfortable silence.
“I was thinking…” So many ugly things. “You should buy this place. Pink isn’t really my color.”
“Really? That’s what you were thinking?” Disappointment crosses her face. “I think we’re done here. I’m outie.”
She scoots past me, a fiery angel. I can’t hear what she says to the startled brokers in the living room, but the door opens and closes a moment later.
Fuck. I leave the baby’s room, my neck hot with shame. I fucked that up, and pretty much everything that happened before it.
I can do better. I will do better. Right now.
Eric is waiting with a worried look in the living room. “Nice place,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck.
“What do you think?” Wilson asks, ever hopeful.
I think I owe Bess a giant apology. “One of us will make an offer tonight. Let me have your card.”
The other broker frowns at me from across the room. “I’m going to have photos up on the website tomorrow. This place will go fast.”
“I don’t doubt it. That’s why you’ll hear from either Bess or myself tonight.” There’s a testy edge to my voice, and I just don’t care. “Thank you all for your time.”
And at that, I’m gone.
Twenty-Seven
Normal is a Stretch
Bess
How was the apartment? Zara’s text asks me.
Expensive, I reply, just so she won’t ask a follow-up question. I need time alone here on my couch, preferably curled up into a ball. Preferably with a cocktail. Too bad I didn’t stock up ahead of this little crisis.
Of all the people in the world it had to be Mark Tankiewicz who’d walked into that bedroom-turned-nursery. Like I haven’t spent the last three weeks trying to erase him from my brain. Damn it.
If I bought that place, I’d always remember the soft expression that took over his face as I turned to look at him. And then I’d remember the hardened one that replaced it a moment later.
Even if my expensive new reproductive endocrinologist gets me pregnant on the first try, I’d stand in that room rocking my baby girl or boy and wonder why Tank didn’t want to be there, too.
Who could lead a normal life under those conditions? Although “normal” is a stretch for me already. “He can have that apartment,” I grumble aloud. He can turn the second bedroom into a man cave with a wet bar and a TV the size of a highway billboard.
I’ll live someplace else. Like Finland. I hear Finland is a nice country to raise a child. I could learn Finnish and scout goalie talent all over Copenhagen.
No. Not Copenhagen. That’s in Denmark. Oslo? No. Helsinki!
There’s a knock on my door, sudden and loud. Who the Helsinki could that be?
“Eric,” I call from my ball on the sofa. Today I could have done with a stupider employee. Goddamn him for sniffing out that listing just as quickly as I did. “Eric, I’m fine. I don’t need company. And you don’t have to apologize for doing your job.”
He knocks again. Men are so freaking stubborn.
I heave myself off the couch and open the damn door so he can see that I’m not drowning in tears and ice cream and tequila. Not yet, anyway.
But it’s Tank standing there. “Shit. Eric let you in the front door?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll fire him tomorrow.”
“Then you’ll have to be my agent, because Kassman made me fire him today.”
“Never,” I hiss.
“Can I come in? I need to say my piece.”
“No, you really don’t. Every time we’re alone together, the same thing happens. And I can’t ride that train anymore. I went off birth control, too. So my apartment is officially a danger zone for you.”
“Honey, it isn’t,” he says, his voice full of gravel. “There are things I have to tell you. And if you don’t let me in, I’m gonna have to
shout them through your door, which is probably going to embarrass both of us. So for the sake of the neighborhood, it’s best if you invite me in.”
Help. I’m weakening. “Will it change anything?”
“Doubt it.”
My heart sinks all over again, and I make a move to close the door.
“Bess.” He catches the door before I can close it. “I love you.”
“What?” My eyes fill immediately with tears. “That’s just cruel.”
“I know, baby. But sometimes life is a little cruel, and I need you to know why I walked away from you.”
All the fight goes out of me. I step back and let Tank into the room. After closing the door, he walks over to the sofa, sitting down.
But I don’t follow. I stand here, arms crossed, because it hurts to look at him. I didn’t know I’d be seeing Tank tonight. If I had, I would have put on some emotional armor. Or at least a nicer T-shirt.
And slammed a shot of tequila.
“You asked me if I could ever get married again and have a family,” he says, his green eyes studying me.
“I recall.”
“The answer is no, but not for lack of trying. I spent five years trying to give Jordanna a baby. After lots of old-fashioned sex, we did six rounds of IVF. She got pregnant twice and miscarried.”
“Oh,” I gasp. Oh hell.
“Those injections you were talking about? I’m a pro at those. I’m also a pro at making eye contact with the fertility specialist who’s delivering bad news. And I’m a pro at going to practice the next day and pretending like everything is fine when my teammate announces that he and his wife are having twins, while my wife is at home crying.”
“Oh,” I say again. I feel like a giant idiot right now. Because it never once occurred to me that Tank wanted kids and couldn’t have them. On the other hand, there was a simple reason for why I hadn’t known. “Why didn’t you say so?” I squeak. “I just spent a whole month thinking I wasn’t…enough for you.”
“No, baby,” he says, dropping his head. “You’re everything to me. But I couldn’t man up and tell you.”
“You didn’t trust me,” I say in a low voice. “I was ready to trust you completely.”
“Were you?” He gets up and crosses to me. Then he gently grasps my hand, rotating my arm until the scar on the inside of my elbow shows. “Then how’d you get this scar?”
I look down at the evil mark, and feel my chest flush with embarrassment. I remember lying about it to him. I hadn’t even thought twice about it. “Okay.” I sigh. “Maybe you have a couple of good points.”
“Sit with me, honey.” He gives my hand a little squeeze. “Let’s talk.”
Chastened, I follow him to the sofa and sit down. I feel all torn up inside. And it doesn’t help that he’s close enough to touch, or that I can smell the lovely scent of him. Like clean towels and spicy aftershave.
“Bess, you deserve everything. You really do. But I can’t try again. It was…” He sighs. “I don’t mean to be melodramatic. But it was torture every month when we failed. We’d both get depressed. And that was just the start of it. Depression gives way to blame and mistrust. And so much dread. I cannot get back on that tilt-a-whirl.”
“Shit.” I’m still trying to wrap my head around five years of brutal disappointment. That’s a lot of praying not to get your period. That’s a lot of trying to reassure each other that it will all turn out okay.
“And then when she got pregnant—twice…” He swallows roughly. “That was even worse. We got so hopeful. It seemed like we’d finally make it. And then…” He slowly shakes his head. “Brutal. And nobody understands. They say, ‘You’re young, you can try again.’”
“Oh, God.” I think I’d murder anyone who said that to me.
“Yeah. There’s no way for me to leave that experience behind. I cannot go joyfully into the future with you, knowing that history will just repeat itself.”
“But…” I’m still catching up. And there’s a lot to this story that I don’t understand. “What about sperm donors? What about adoption?”
“She wanted our baby. And since neither of us had any significant health problems, that seemed reasonable. Even after a few failures, we thought we’d succeed. But we never did. And I was stubborn, too. I thought there’s no reason why I can’t have what everybody else has.”
“Did they know…” I stop myself before asking who had the trouble. “Did the doctors determine why you had so much trouble?”
“Not exactly. I have, uh, not the highest sperm count.” He looks away. “But IVF still should have worked for us. And most miscarriages are mysterious. After all those years, doctors were still saying that we had a lot of bad luck. But at a certain point you start blaming each other.”
“Oh.” My eyes are leaking. I hadn’t noticed until water started dripping off my face.
He reaches over and brushes a tear off my cheekbone. “Eventually you get burnt out. All the love and optimism gets used up, and you can’t remember why you wanted this thing together in the first place. Everything stops making sense.”
I can’t stand the distance between us anymore. So I lean over and put my head against his chest, and he wraps an arm around me. I can feel his steady heartbeat against my face, and it calms me.
We stop talking for a little while, and I try to take it all in. I never gave infertility very much thought. I don’t know anyone who’s struggled with it.
Or—wait—I guess I probably do. It wouldn’t be an easy topic to bring up in casual conversation. Tank just led me to the edge of his own personal abyss, showed me how deep his fault-lines run. And I had never seen them before. I never even knew they were there.
Tank strokes my hair as the light fades from my apartment. It feels so good to lean against this man that I love. I don’t want to let him go. I don’t know if I even can.
“How did it end?” I ask suddenly. “How did you know it was time to give up?”
He lets out a sigh, and I feel a little guilty for asking. “After Jordanna’s last failed IVF, we agreed that we weren’t going to try that again. I should have felt better, but I just didn’t. And then right after my season ended, Coach had a lavish party for his fortieth wedding anniversary. Right in the middle of it, he and his wife held a recommitment ceremony. We all stood around with our glasses of champagne, and they read these vows to each other…”
Tank swallows, and I can feel myself holding my breath.
“And Coach says to his wife—‘Honey, we’ve been through some really big fights, and some really bad times, but I always knew that you were the one for me. I always knew we were bigger than our troubles.’ Afterward, I realized there was no way I could give that kind of speech to my wife. I wasn’t the only one who thought so. On the way home from that party, Jordanna asked me to move out.”
“Oh, ouch,” I gasp. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m all right,” he says gently. “I know I should have told you all of this before and saved you the grief. But things were so good. And I just didn’t want to relive the whole thing, and let you know how badly I’d failed. It’s embarrassing to me.”
“It’s okay,” I say quickly. He’s right—things had been good between us. “We had so much fun.”
“We did. I felt like a new man. I was a new man. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I was enough for somebody.”
“You are enough. Jesus.” I take a deep, shuddery breath, because I realize it’s really true. “Tank, I need you more than I need to have kids. What if it was just the two of us?”
“Whoa, now.” He lets out a whoosh of air. “That’s not an easy decision. You’re not allowed to make that decision right after I tell you my horror story. Because your luck is not my luck. And what about your five-year plan?”
I make a grumpy noise. “I’ve spent my whole career telling athletes they need to have a five-year plan. And I spent the last year telling myself that I needed one. And it’s all bullshit.”
“Nah,” he says. “You don’t really believe that. How can you get what you want if you can’t articulate it?”
“But there’s such a thing as too much planning. I didn’t count on falling in love with you. I’m ready to tear the whole thing in half right now, and make a new one. With you. Because I do not want you to walk out my door and say, ‘Let’s be just friends.’”
His hand freezes on my head. “Bess. Careful. I will not let you change your whole vision for the future just because I can’t have kids.”
“Maybe I won’t be able to conceive a child, either. We have no idea. And I care about you too much to let that be an obstacle.”
“You say that now. But let’s just say that a year goes by and you’re holding your brother’s new little red-headed baby. What’s going to be going through your mind?”
Well, hell. That exact scenario is headed my way, and the truth is that I’ll be insanely jealous. I know I will. And Tank knows it, too, because he’s probably been in exactly that same situation more times than I can count.
“There’s lots of ways of having a baby,” I say softly.
He pinches the bridge of his nose. “But I can’t say for sure that I’ll ever be ready to try any of them. I need to stay off that carnival ride. You don’t want that man, Bess—the one who gets depressed every time you get your period.”
My stomach hurts as I realize he’s right. My gaze falls on the book that’s sitting on my coffee table. It’s called Safeguarding Your Fertility. I stand up and pluck it off the table.
“Don’t move that on my account,” he says. “I’ve read that thing cover to cover.”
But I am moving it on his account. I cross the room and chuck it into the recycling bin.
“Bess,” he warns. “You might decide you want that after all.”
“Then I’ll buy another copy,” I insist. Tank is more important to me than that book. My gut made the decision the moment I opened my door and saw him standing there. He’s not ready to hear it, but it’s true.
Tank’s not the only one with a shitty story. I have a lifetime’s practice at overcoming bad situations and appreciating the good things in life. Cinderella doesn’t get her prince and then immediately set her sights on a nursery full of princelings. That bitch knows to be grateful.
