When You Least Expect It (2 page)

“I don’t like hot dogs,” he said.

Otis perked up at this. He sat down at the edge of the blanket and stared meaningfully at Luke’s hot dog.

“Yes you do,” Rose, Miles, and I said in unison.

Luke was going through a stage where he claimed not to like anything served to him, including foods he’d happily eaten since he was a baby.

“I don’t,” he insisted.

“Just try a bite,” Jeremy suggested.

Luke looked doubtful. Otis licked his chops.

“Hot dogs are really unhealthy,” I said.

“They are?” Luke asked.

I nodded solemnly. “In fact, your mom probably wouldn’t approve that I made them for you. I bet she’ll be really mad at me when she finds out.”

“That’s okay, we won’t tell,” Miles assured me. I winked at him, and he grinned.

Luke was intrigued. He picked up the hot dog and took a microscopic bite. Deciding that it was acceptable, he took another, larger bite. Otis drooped with disappointment.

“Do you know what hot dogs are made of?” Rose said conversationally. “They make them out of—”

I cut her off before she could complete her thought. “It’s probably better not to talk about it while we’re eating.”

Rose giggled. “But it’s really gross,” she said temptingly.

Luke looked up, his mouth full of hot dog. “What’s gross?”

“I can touch my eyeball,” Jeremy said quickly.

“Ewww!” Rose said, safely distracted.

“Let me see!” Luke said.

Jeremy—who’d worn contacts for twenty years—obliged, touching his right index finger to his eyeball.

“Don’t you think you should wash your hands before you do that?” I asked.

“I want to try!” Luke said, stuffing the last of his hot dog into his mouth.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” I said, with a sudden vision of calling Mimi with the news that we were in the emergency room having Luke’s scratched cornea tended to.

“Don’t worry,” Jeremy said, lowering his voice so Luke wouldn’t hear. “When I first started wearing contacts, it took me forever before I could put the lens in without blinking.”

Jeremy was right; there was nothing to worry about. As soon as Luke’s finger was an inch away from his eye, his eyelid snapped shut.

“I bet you a billion dollars you can’t do it,” Rose said.

“You don’t have a billion dollars, half-head,” Luke retorted, trying—and failing again—to touch his eyeball.

Half-head?
Jeremy mouthed at me. We both swallowed back laughter.

“I won’t need it,” Rose said smugly. “But you will.”

Miles, the pacifist in the family, was rarely drawn into arguments with his bickering siblings. Ignoring Rose’s taunts and Luke’s attempts to touch his eyeball, he stood, pulled a Hacky Sack out of his pocket, and began kicking it.

“Are Hacky Sacks back in? I haven’t seen one since high school,” Jeremy said.

“My soccer coach says it’s a good way to improve your ball
control,” Miles said, shaking back his long hair. He’d talked his mother into letting him grow it out and was immensely proud of its shagginess.

“I used to be pretty good with a Hacky Sack,” Jeremy said. He stood, and Miles passed him the ball. Jeremy kicked it once off his heel and sent the small beanbag flying. Miles chased after it.

“Used to
being the operative words,” Jeremy said sheepishly.

“Let me try,” Rose said, springing to her feet, always eager to join in a game.

Miles kicked the Hacky Sack to her, and Rose juggled it expertly before kicking it back to her brother.

“Good job, Rose,” I said.

“She’s better than me,” Jeremy said.

“Rose is the star of her soccer team,” I reminded him. “She gets more practice than you.”

“Girls rule and boys drool,” Rose crowed.

Miles passed the ball to Jeremy again, but Jeremy wasn’t able to catch it and it fell to the sand.

“Whoops,” Jeremy said.

“You just need some practice,” Miles said supportively.

“Why don’t you have kids, India?” Luke asked.

The question caught me off guard. It wasn’t that I hadn’t heard it before. Jeremy and I were in our mid-thirties and had been married for seven years, so I’d gotten used to being asked about our baby plans. Acquaintances at cocktail parties, clients of my photography studio, even cashiers at the grocery store. I suppose asking someone if they have kids is pretty harmless. Unless, of course, you happen to be infertile.

Normally, I give an abbreviated version of the truth: that we very much wanted a baby, and were hoping to get pregnant, but it hadn’t happened for us yet. I never mention the grittier details—the extensive medical exams, the hormone injections, the
failed IVF cycles. Repetition had made this little routine nearly painless.

But I hadn’t been expecting to hear the question from Luke, in these idyllic surroundings, while relaxing with the kids. Instead of my usual, measured response, I found myself stuttering, “W-why do you ask?”

“It’s just that if you had a kid, Jeremy would have someone to practice Hacky Sack with,” Luke explained, as though it were the most logical thing in the world. Which, to a six-year-old, it probably was. “And I’d have someone to play with when we visit you,” he added.

Jeremy looked sharply at me, his face etched with concern. I smiled at him, and shook my head slightly to let him know it was okay.

“If we did have a baby, it would be a long time before he was old enough to play with you. And by then, you probably wouldn’t want to play with him, because you’d be so much older,” I explained to Luke.

Luke considered the wisdom of this argument. “But I wouldn’t be the youngest anymore. And I’d have someone to boss around.”

“That’s true,” I said.

“If you had a girl, it would almost be like I had a sister,” Rose said.

“Yeah, and if it was a boy, it would be like I had a brother,” Luke continued.

“You already have a brother,” Rose informed him, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Yeah, thanks, Luke,” Miles said mildly, still juggling his Hacky Sack.

“Besides,” Rose continued, “India and Jeremy are
my
godparents, not yours. So if they had a baby, it would be my sister or brother, but it wouldn’t be yours.”

Rose liked to lord her superior claim to Jeremy and me over her two brothers whenever possible. It had the desired effect now. Luke swelled with outrage.

“That’s not true! Take it back!” he demanded.

“It is too true. Right, India?” Rose said.

Both kids looked at me, as though I were the referee. I tried to remember what Mimi did at moments like this, and had a vague recollection of her saying that if there wasn’t actual bloodshed, she stayed out of sibling warfare.

“Okay, everyone simmer down. I promise that if Jeremy and I ever do have a baby, you can all be official big brothers and sisters. Yes, Rose, that includes Luke,” I said. “Now, who wants to toast a marshmallow?”

“Me, me, me,” Miles, Leo, and Rose chorused.

“Me, me, me!” Jeremy chimed in.

Otis had drifted away to sniff at a dried patch of seaweed. But at the word
marshmallow
, he scampered back over. I handed bamboo skewers around, and after warning the kids to be careful around the hot coals—and then nervously repeating the warning over and over, until even laid-back Miles was rolling his eyes—the toasting of the marshmallows commenced. Once everyone’s marshmallow was properly browned and gooey—or in Rose’s case, charred black, which she insisted was how she preferred them—Jeremy passed around graham crackers and chocolate bars.

“The s’more,” he announced, holding one up for us to admire. “The world’s most perfect food.”

“I don’t like s’mores,” Luke said, looking at his suspiciously.

“Good! More for me,” Jeremy said, making a pretend grab for it. Luke backed away, screeching with laughter.

“No! I changed my mind!” Luke said, giggling. “I do like s’mores!”

“So why don’t you have kids, India? Don’t you want them?” Rose asked as she munched on her s’more.

I should have known that Rose wouldn’t be so easily thrown off topic. When in pursuit of a goal, Rose displayed terrifying single-mindedness. Someday she would make an excellent CIA interrogator.

“Who wants another marshmallow?” Jeremy asked quickly.

“Because I think you’d be a good mom,” Rose continued.

“Thanks, sweetie,” I said. I put an arm around Rose, and she snuggled in toward me. Her hair smelled of baby shampoo and smoke. Suddenly, without warning, tears burned at my eyes.

“What about me?” Jeremy asked, threading another marshmallow onto his skewer.

“What about you?” Rose asked. She grinned impishly. “You’d be an okay dad, I guess.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Jeremy said.

“Maybe India doesn’t want kids,” Miles suggested.

“Why wouldn’t she want kids? She likes us,” Rose said.

I laughed at her indignation. “Jeremy and I would love to have a baby. But sometimes adults who want to have children aren’t able to,” I explained, wiping away my tears before the kids noticed them.

“Why not?” Luke asked.

How do you explain premature ovarian failure to kids?
I wondered, before quickly realizing that you don’t. It was much better to stick to generalities. Still, I couldn’t talk down to them. All three of them hated that.

“You know what it means when a woman is pregnant, right? That she’s going to have a baby?” I asked, suddenly having an unpleasant vision of the kids demanding that I go into a detailed explanation of reproductive biology. But luckily, Rose and Luke both nodded. Miles had gone back to his Hacky Sack and didn’t seem to be paying attention. “My body doesn’t work the right way. No one knows why, really. But I can’t get pregnant.”

Luke began feeding Otis marshmallows straight from the bag. Rose, however, was keen to hear more.

“How do you get pregnant?” she asked.

Jeremy and I exchanged a panicked look. But before either of us could speak, Miles chimed in.

“You don’t know?” he said. “I thought everyone knew that. The woman makes an egg. And then the man—”

“Miles, not a good idea,” I said quickly.

“Yeah, buddy, I think that information might be above their pay grade,” Jeremy said.

Miles blinked at us, clearly confused as to why we were interrupting his biology lecture.

“Your brother and sister are a little young to hear the details,” I explained.

“I am not too young!” Rose said indignantly.

“Eggs? Like, bird eggs? In nests?” Luke asked.

“Mimi is going to kill us,” Jeremy murmured to me.

“Maybe we should talk about something else,” I suggested. “And give me those marshmallows, Luke. Otis will get sick if he eats any more.”

“Really?” Luke said, perking up. “Do you mean he’ll puke?”

But Rose wasn’t ready to change subjects. “Why don’t you adopt a baby?” she asked. “One of the girls in my class, Jenny Mathers, was adopted from China when she was a year old.”

Another look passed between Jeremy and me. We’d reached the point in our marriage—and our infertility struggles—where we could have whole conversations without saying a word.

“That’s something we might consider,” I said cautiously.

Jeremy and I had talked about adoption, although only in the most abstract, general terms. Early on, we’d made a decision to pursue in vitro fertilization first. On three separate occasions, Jeremy’s sperm was used to fertilize donor eggs in a glass dish, and then, three days later, the embryos were placed in my uterus via catheter. Each time, the IVF had failed.

“You should,” Rose said confidently. “Jenny Mathers can do a handstand and a full split.”

I nodded. “Very impressive.”

“I can do a cartwheel. Do you want to see?” Rose asked, jumping to her feet.

“Absolutely,” I said.

Rose attempted a cartwheel, but wasn’t able to get her legs all the way around. She tumbled onto the sand with a shriek.

“The sand is too soft here,” Miles said. “Watch me.”

He ran down to the firmer sand by the water’s edge and demonstrated a cartwheel, timed perfectly so that he landed on his feet just as the water lapped back in. Rose ran after him, followed by Luke and a joyful, barking Otis. Jeremy sat down next to me on the blanket.

“S’more?” he asked, offering me his plate.

I shook my head, and wiped away the lingering tears. “No, thanks. I’m all s’mored out.”

Jeremy looked worriedly at me. “You know it’s all going to work out, right?”

“I know,” I said, although I knew no such thing.

Jeremy put his arm around me, and I leaned toward him, resting my head on his shoulder.

“We’ll figure it out,” he said.

I nodded and tried to swallow back the emotions welling hotly in my throat. I’d tried to stay upbeat through the first IVF cycles. But with each additional failure, it became harder to stay optimistic.

Not now
, I thought.
I’m not going to worry about it now. Not on such a beautiful night
.

The soft early-evening light was dancing on the waves, shimmering as the tide rolled in. A pelican flew by, his wings just barely skimming the water. Rose was attempting a handstand, assisted by Miles holding her ankles. Luke tore off large hunks from a hot dog roll and was throwing them at an excitable flock of seagulls.

“Come on, let’s go join them,” I said, standing and brushing the sand off my bare legs.

Jeremy got to his feet a bit more slowly. “Okay, but I’m not doing a cartwheel,” he said. “I’d probably throw out my back.”

I laughed and brushed my wind-blown hair out of my face.

“Come on, old man,” I said, and held my hand out to him. “I’ll show you how it’s done.”

But later that evening, as I cleaned up the kitchen, putting away the picnic supplies, I found it harder to escape the whirlwind of my thoughts.

It had been two weeks since we’d learned that the last round of in vitro fertilization had failed. Jeremy and I had discussed whether we should try again, but hadn’t yet come to a final decision. No small part of our indecision was the cost. At twenty thousand dollars per cycle, IVF wasn’t cheap.

When Jeremy and I first married, we’d bought a cozy bungalow that we’d fallen in love with at first sight. It needed a ton of work, but had the benefit of being located in West Palm Beach’s historic Flamingo Park neighborhood. It also came with a tiny guesthouse in the back that Jeremy, a science fiction writer, immediately claimed as his office. Between our sweat equity and an unexpected upswing in the housing market, our little house had doubled in value in the seven years since we bought it, which had allowed us to take out a home equity loan to finance three rounds of IVF.