The Baby Wait. Cynthia Reese

my hopes—crumbled.

      Joe told me I was lucky. I was lucky. I was alive. I was a cancer survivor. But I was still damaged goods. Barren. The word is empty and meaningless to anybody who hasn’t ached for a baby.

      Being barren made me cry at Mother’s Day services at church.

      Being barren made Easter and Christmas and Thanksgiving and even Halloween torture.

      Being barren made graduations unbearable, knowing I might never see my baby toss a cap in the air.

      Being barren made baby showers unending agony. Picking out the tiny layettes or rattles was only half the battle. No, actually standing in the glow of an expectant, hopeful mom-to-be was far worse, because then I had to endure everyone’s pity. I’d smile and smile and smile at the women who would bend down and whisper, “Are you all right? This must be so tough on you.”

      Back home from my surgery, I’d looked in the mirror and seen a thirty-year-old woman. I gathered up my fertility drugs, tossed out the so-called experts’ business cards and gave the dusty baby clothes to Goodwill.

      The day after that, Joe brought home Cocoa. We’d decided by silent assent we’d remain childless.

      And we’d stuck to that decision—until Joe had seen an ad in the paper about becoming foster parents. Which led us to Matthew.

      Now the blue walls of the nursery, with the airplane I’d painted for Matthew, mocked me. No furniture graced the carpet here, and only a set of dusty mini-blinds shut out the night sky. Superstition had kept me from breaking out the pink paint and the cutesy alphabet-block border I’d found. My preparations focused on the trip to China. I didn’t dare let myself picture life with a little one of my own.

      The image of a round face with blue eyes, freckles across the nose and a cowlick of wheat-straw hair swam before my tear-filled eyes. I would not think of Matthew. I would not.

      Now Joe thumped up the creaky old stairs, and I hastily scrubbed my tears away with the baby blanket.

      “I figured I’d find you in here.” Joe’s voice echoed in the bare room. “You okay?”

      “Yeah. I’m getting there.” With the heel of my hand, I caught a stray tear. “How about you?”

      He slid down along the doorjamb until he collapsed onto the carpet, his long legs stretched out in front of him. “Hell if I know. Just numb, I guess.”

      “Oh, Joe…” His vulnerability, his pain, shone through loud and clear for the first time. I got up and crossed to his side, touching his face. “We’ll get through this. It’s just a setback. It’s hard, but it’s happened before. We’ll get our baby.”

      An expression I couldn’t translate—didn’t want to translate—flickered over Joe’s face.

      “What?” I asked. “Go ahead. Say it.”

      “You. The eternal optimist. Haven’t seen a whisper of a referral in weeks, even the agency can’t tell you when they might start coming again, and yet you keep holding out hope the phone’s gonna ring and they’re going to say, ‘Come to China, we’ve got your baby.’”

      I snatched my hand back as if his cheek had suddenly turned scalding. Folding my arms across my chest, I lifted my chin. “And who’s to say it’s still not going to happen?”

      Joe shook his head. “Incredible. You are just the most incredible woman I know. Don’t you see the writing on the wall, Sara? What’s it gonna take? Our agency finally calling you up and saying, ‘Oops, guess we made a mistake?’ Don’t you know they’re not going to do that for as long as they can get away with it? They don’t want to let loose the money everybody’s been sending them.”

      “You’re incredible. Incredibly cynical! These agencies are not in it for the money, Joe. They want to see these babies have homes.”

      “They’re not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, either. They’re making money. I’m a businessman. I know how business operates. I just don’t want to see you get hurt. It’s happened before. You just pour so much faith that this next idea, this next trick, will get you a baby. All that fertility hogwash, doctor after doctor…and even after you had cancer you still couldn’t be satisfied with just making it out alive.”

      I held my breath, prayed he wouldn’t say what I thought he was going to say. “Joe—”

      But he plowed on, like a crazed bull in the narrow streets of Spain chasing a legion of white-shirted men. “I thought after they took Matthew you’d finally get it.”

      I closed my eyes to ward off the pain, wrapped my arms around my knees and rocked back and forth.

      “Sara, isn’t it obvious? Don’t you think we ought to be listening? It’s like God is shouting at us, ‘You idiots! I don’t want you to have a baby!’”

      Shaking my head, I forced myself to look at Joe. “No, no. You just have to have faith. You just have to hang on.”

      “Hell, maybe God’s right. It’s not like I’ve done a stellar job with Cherie. Remember how you told the social worker that I’d raised my little sister? That I’d make a brilliant father? Right. Brilliant. I did such a brilliant job of it that my little sister is a high school dropout who can’t even keep a minimum-wage job.”

      “Joe, Cherie’s failures are not your fault—”

      “And you. Your mother wasn’t exactly a great role model. She always cared more about where her next drink was coming from than you. Still does. It’s a miracle you weren’t molested or abused or God knows what else. We’re crazy to think we can raise a child to be something besides a juvenile delinquent.”

      I sucked in my breath. How dare he? How dare he throw my own miserable childhood in my face?

      “You’ve never had any faith in this, have you? So why’d you go along with it if you thought it was a boondoggle?”

      “Because. You. Want. A. Baby. The one damn thing I can’t build for you with my own two hands. If I could, I’d go turn one out on the lathe for you right this very minute. I can’t buy a baby, I can’t borrow it, I can’t make it. Do you know how that makes me feel? To see you crying and to know that I can’t fix it? Me? The guy who goes in behind crappy contractors and cleans up their messes for half the price?”

      “We’re fixing it, dammit!” Hearing him say the things I’d suspected he’d been thinking ripped into me like a chain saw. “If you’ll just believe—”

      “Right. That’s what you said about Matthew. Believe and the judge will never give him back to that crackhead of a mother. Believe and Matthew will be ours forever. Believe.” Joe’s mouth twisted, and he gave me a curt shake of his head. “Well, I’m all out of faith, Sara. And I can’t find any place to order a fresh supply. I’m through. Done. Finito. I’m just not able to pick up the pieces when the next disappointment shatters you.”

      “What do you mean, you’re through?” I put my fingers to my mouth as I whispered the words.

      “Admit it, Sara. It’s over. Pull the dossier. Call the agency and tell them we’re quitting. Let’s end this.”

      Every cell in my body screamed a visceral no! at his words, but I couldn’t force the words from my throat. All I could do was get away from him. Rubbery legs barely held me up as I stood. My hand steadied me against the door frame as I made for the stairs.

      “Where are you going? We haven’t finished!”

      Joe had twisted around the door frame so that he faced me. I looked at him, not recognizing anything at all familiar or dear or lovable in his grim, rock-stubborn countenance. “I have. This conversation is done, Joe. I mean it. I’m not stopping the adoption. My baby, my Meredith, is in China. So I’m going to China. With you or without you.”

      Nothing more to say, I stumbled down the stairs, my sobs