Morning (14 page)

“Oh, well, I don’t have my calendar right here next to me. Perhaps I could have your number and call you back,” Fanny Anderson said.

“I’d be glad to come tomorrow,” Sara offered.

“Yes, but I believe I’m busy tomorrow,” Fanny said. “It really would be better if I could call you back.”

Sara gave the woman her number, refraining from pointing out that she had given it to her before both on the telephone and in letters. She kept her voice courteous. She tried not to be pushy. But she was afraid, when she hung up, that she wouldn’t hear from Fanny for a long long time, if ever.

That night Sara had to admit to herself that her breasts were sore.

The next day Fanny Anderson did not call. And when Sara looked at herself sideways in the mirror, she could see the old familiar pouching of her stomach. Her breasts were very sore, and she awoke and went through the day in a state of barely controllable madness. Mad in both meanings of the word—insane and angry, so angry at fate that she wanted to hit out, to hurt back, to destroy. She drank wine with lunch, but that didn’t help. She took a long walk, even though the weather had turned very cold, but that didn’t help—except to make her so exhausted that her fury died down into a low-burning self-hatred.

When Steve came home that night, she could scarcely speak. She was not angry at him, it was not his fault that she wasn’t pregnant—he had
b
illions and
b
illions of healthy sperm—no; it was her fault. She kept away from him with the wisdom of a wounded animal, knowing that because she was wounded, she would strike out at any kind hand that tried to touch her.

After dinner, she said, “Steve? I’m going to start my period tomorrow. I can tell.”

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry,” he said. He rose from the table, came around, bent down, and hugged her. “I know how disappointed you are. I am, too. But listen, we’re both young and healthy. There’s no hurry. If it doesn’t happen this month, it’ll happen next month, or the month after that. And I love you, however you are, whatever happens. You know that, don’t you?”

He turned her face to him, so he could look into her eyes.

“You know I love you, don’t you, Sara?” he asked again, smiling.

Sara could scarcely trust herself to speak. She could see that he loved her. She knew that he loved her, that he understood as well as any man could what she was going through. That he was doing the best he could to help her.

Sara went into the bathroom and ran a tub of steaming water. She sat there, weeping in a fury. Oh, wasn’t Steve a nice husband! Oh, what an understanding husband. Oh, he said he loved her. Oh, he was such an optimist. Didn’t this touch him at all? Didn’t this touch him
at all
? Why wasn’t he weeping and sick with misery because once again they had missed, they were not going to have a baby? Why was he so cheerful, so calm? Didn’t he have any
feelings
?

There he was, the perfect husband, and here she sat in the tub, not pregnant, the imperfect wife. The flawed wife. The inferior wife. The rapidly mentally deteriorating wife.

She wanted to go break all the dishes over his perfect, understanding, optimistic, loving, helpful head.

Instead, she sat in the tub for an hour, until she had really exhausted herself and had no more tears. Then she put on her warmest nightgown and robe, and drank warm milk with two aspirin, and watched television until it was time to go to bed.

Then, as soon, it was morning. And she could tell instantly, the way her gown stuck to her legs, that her period had started again.

Chapter Five

Morning.

Winter sun hit the yellow stone of the old Boston building and filled the foyer with such bright warmth that Sara felt she was entering a cube of light. The carpet was blue. On the wall in the entrance hall was a large glass-cased blocked board listing, alphabetically, the various offices in this building.

She looked at the sheet of paper Dr. Crochett’s office had sent along to her: she wanted Foster, Larch, Wang and Sikes.

FLWS Radiology Associates.

Sara smiled. She could see herself reflected dimly in the glass of the office listing: a young woman, the collar of her red cape turned up against the January cold, her cheeks flushed. That was not the cold; it was excitement, optimism, hope.

She was going to have her “tubes blown out.” Horrid phrase. Yet Dr. Crochett had told her that this procedure was both diagnostic and therapeutic. Wisely scheduled after she had finished her period yet before she ovulated, this procedure could clear out any tissue that might be blocking the way of her egg getting down from the ovary through the Fallopian tube and into her uterus. This procedure might clear the path. Twenty percent of all women who had this done got pregnant that very month.

So!

Sara had flown to Boston (and again the plane did not crash!) and taken a taxi to this clinic, situated near one of Boston’s major hospitals. Her appointment was for ten-thirty. It was only ten-fifteen; but she had not wanted to be late.

She found the correct door and entered the FLWS waiting room. A young woman smiled at her from behind a desk. Sara crossed the room, spoke to her, took the forms offered, hung her coat up on the coatrack.

She sat down in one of the blue plaid chairs that were scattered around the room in little groups, took a deep breath, and looked around her. There were five other women in the room, women of different ages. They did not look up at her.

Sara looked down at the sheet of paper the woman had given her, telling her to give it to the nurse when her turn came. The sheet said, simply:

Uterotubalgram

Ultrasound

Mammogram

On her sheet, “Uterotubalgram” was circled with blue ink.

Shit
, Sara thought, her heart jumping. She looked up again, studying the women around her. She had forgotten that there were worse things in the world than not getting pregnant, that there were dangers lurking in one’s own body, cruel treacheries, cancers and cysts and tumors, an entire range of problems that no one ever asked for, that everyone feared. Suddenly she felt so frivolous being here, so foolish. Why should she have anyone mess around with her perfectly good body? Why should she take up the time and place when some other woman, seriously ill, was waiting to know the results of a much more important test?

She almost left. But she didn’t, she stayed sitting, her mind racing, and now all the frightening negative words came flooding back around her, the little scary bombs other women she had spoken with had unwittingly dropped all around the field of her consciousness.

When she told her mother she was going to have a uterotubalgram, her mother had said, “Oh, dear. Did they tell you how much it’s going to hurt? I had a friend …” and began to relay such a gruesome tale of pain and incompetence that Sara had had to ask her mother to be quiet. “Oh, that was foolish of me,” her mother had said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m sure things have changed for the better by now.”

When she told her sister, Ellie had said, “Great. I’m glad you’re doing it. And it won’t hurt as much as everyone says.”

“What do you mean?” Sara had sputtered. “Dr. Crochett said there should be some discomfort, but no real pain. Or at least nothing that lasts very long, only for a few seconds.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Ellie said, lying so sincerely that only a sister could hear. “I must have been thinking of another procedure.”

When she told Julia, Julia had said only, “I’ll meet you at the doctor’s office. What time do you have to be there?”

“What have you heard about this?” Sara demanded, suspicious.

“Not a thing,” Julia said silkily. “I just love the pleasure of your company.”

Now here Julia was, hurrying into the doctor’s office, giving Sara a quick kiss, sitting down next to her. “You look great!” she said. “We’ll have lunch when it’s over and I’ll take you to the airport. Now listen, I’ve got a new joke. A super-rich woman donates a lot of money to a hospital for a maternity wing. So one day she comes to see the wing and the doctors and nurses fall all over themselves because she’s Mrs. Moneybags. They show her all the new babies and they hand her one baby and she looks at it and coos and goos and they hand her another newborn baby and she coos and goos, and they hand her another one. She looks at this one, turns it this way and that, and finally says, ‘Doctors, there’s something wrong with this baby. This baby just doesn’t look quite right.’ The doctors say, ‘Oh, no, we’re really proud of that baby. That baby is a test-tube baby!’ And she hands the baby back and says, ‘That proves it. I’ve always said spare the rod and spoil the child.’ ”

“Oooh.” Sara laughed, aware of the eyes of the other patients. “That’s truly horrible, Julia.”

“Mrs. Kendall?” A nurse with a light blue cardigan over her white uniform stood in a doorway, a piece of paper in her hand. “Would you come with me?”

Sara dutifully followed. The nurse was young, with blond hair that had been overbleached and overblown and stuck out stiffly from her head like seagrass. But she was pleasant enough; she smiled when she showed Sara a curtained cubicle, and said, “Take everything off from the waist down. Put the paper gown on. You can leave your blouse and sweater on. I’ll come back for you in a minute.”

In a changing room much like one in any department store, except that the mirror on the wall was small, reflecting only Sara’s face, Sara stepped out of the lower half of her clothes. She looked at herself in the strange mirror, studying her face. The stark haircut was growing out and looked softer now. In this light she looked quite young and pretty—and healthy. Absolutely capable of having a baby.

She had just sat down on the little wooden bench in the changing room when the nurse returned.

“Would you follow me, please?” she asked, and briskly led the way out of the changing area and down a hallway into a small laboratory room.

“Now,” she said, efficiently, “you just lie down here. Put your feet here. Your legs need to be up. Good. Now scoot down. Way down. Your bottom should be way down here. That’s fine. You’re getting a uterotubalgram, right?”

“Right,” Sara said. “Does it hurt?”

“Oh, it depends,” the nurse said, bustling around, arranging the paper sheet over Sara’s naked lower body. “Sometimes it does. But not for long. And usually not worse than a really severe menstrual cramp. It depends on the person.”

A flare of fear shot up inside Sara then, surprising her. She had experienced so little pain in her life, really, she had never even had a broken bone, and the only time she had been in the hospital was when she was very young, having her tonsils out. What a lucky life she had led until now!

The doctor came in then, whisking through the door as quickly as someone on his way to catch a plane. He walked past Sara without even glancing at her, pulled up a stool, and seated himself at the foot of the table, between her spread knees. Sara caught a glimpse of black-rimmed glasses. The man’s expression was grim.

Isn’t he even going to say hello?
Sara wondered. There had to be some kind of protocol for this procedure. Even if he never saw her again—and he probably never would—still he was going to be doing some of the most intimate things she had ever had done to her body. Not even Steve had seen her so gracelessly, helplessly exposed.

The nurse said something to the doctor that Sara didn’t catch. Her heart was pounding suddenly, so loudly that it seemed to be blocking out other sounds.

“I’m a little nervous,” she said quietly.

“I’m just going to put a speculum inside you now,” the doctor said suddenly. “It won’t hurt.”

He bent forward. Sara felt vaguely the intrusion of metal into her vagina. She shifted uncomfortably. She could see the top of the doctor’s head; his hair was white, and he was wearing a short-sleeved blue smock. He must do this all day, Sara thought with amazement. That man must spend all day looking up women’s vaginas. What an odd way to live.

She had almost relaxed when, suddenly, with a grunt of disgust, the doctor pulled his instruments out of Sara’s body and pushed himself away from her. His face was grim, contemptuous, even repelled.

Oh, my God
, Sara thought. What was wrong? What was wrong with her? Did she smell? Had he seen something unexpectedly repulsive inside her? Was there something terribly wrong with her body?

The doctor said a few brief brusque words to the nurse and left the room.

Sara raised herself up on the table. “My God,” she said, “what’s wrong?”

The nurse patted her shoulder and smiled. “It’s all right,” she said. “You just haven’t completely finished menstruating yet. We can’t do the procedure today. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

“But—I don’t understand,” Sara said.

“Here,” the nurse said, helping Sara off the table. “Let me show you back to the changing room and then we can make an appointment for you tomorrow.”

“But, please,” Sara said. “Wait a minute. I still don’t understand.”

Now the nurse turned to Sara, slightly impatient. “He was going to blow dye up inside you,” she said. “But you still have some slight show of blood. That means there might be some capillaries open inside your uterus, and the blood could get in and … cause a problem.”

Sara was horrified. “A problem?” she said. “But … I was told this procedure wasn’t dangerous.”

“It’s not,” the nurse said. “Not if it’s done on the right day. This is the wrong day. But you can come back tomorrow and it will be fine. You wrote down that you’re on the ninth day of your cycle. That’s correct, isn’t it?”

Sara, who had spent more time counting the days in her menstrual cycle than an accountant would spend preparing for an IRS audit, suddenly went blank. “I—I think so,” she said. Seeing the look of impatience on the nurse’s face, she said, more firmly, “I’m sure of it, yes. Absolutely sure.”

“Well, then, come back tomorrow. We’ll do it tomorrow.”

“Is there something wrong with me that I still have some blood inside? That I still have capillaries open?” Sara asked. All sorts of fears and worries were popping up in her mind. She saw now that she had not properly considered the intricacies of her body, had not thought of all the tiny parts inside her, which could be harmed if a mistake was made. For some reason, she began to shake.