Mixed Blessings (22 page)

There was a bed, a television with erotic videotapes, a stack of magazines to arouse their "guests," and assorted erotic implements and vibrators designed to make the task easier than it might otherwise have been. And on the table there was a small vial for the purpose of collection.

Nothing was said about when to come out, or how much time they had, and before leaving them, the nurse asked them if they would like coffee, tea, or soft drinks. And then suddenly Pilar started to laugh as she looked at him. He looked so serious and well dressed, but she couldn't help herself, suddenly the whole thing seemed ridiculously funny.

"It's like checking into an adult motel, isn't it?" She giggled and he started to laugh too.

"How would you wiow?"

"I've read about them in magazthes." She laughed again, and he pulled her down next to him on the bed with a rueful smile.

"How did I ever let you get me into this?" he said as he looked at her.

"I'm not sure. I was wondering the same thing on the way here. And you know what?" She looked at him seriously. "If you don't want to do this, it's okay with me. You've been wonderful about all of it, and maybe I am going too far . . . I didn't mean to . . . I don't ever want to make you uncomfortable She was feeling guilty about putting him through it.

It wasn't his fault she was so old. His sperm was fine, it was her body that was giving out. And if she had let him think of children earlier, they would never have had to go through this.

"Do you still want a baby, Pilar?" he asked her gently as they lay on the bed talking, and she nodded sadly. "Okay, then stop worrying, and let's have a good time." He got up and put an outrageous film on the TV, and it embarrassed her, but she thought it was funny, too, and then she helped him take his clothes off. She took her clothes off, too, and began teasing him while he watched the screen, and he was very quicKly aroused, and so was she, and she was almost sorry to have to waste it. He was throbbing with desire to enter her, and she held the cup as close to her as she could, as she rubbed and teased and titillated and kissed, until they achieved the desired results, and he lay spent in her arms. It had been different for both of them, but it hadn't been entirely unpleasant.

They took a quick shower, and dressed, and rang for the nurse, holding out the cup to her when she arrived. And she asked Pilar to come with her.

"May I come too?" Brad asked hesitantly. There seemed to be nothing about this process that they hadn't shared so far, and he wanted to be there for her, too, if there was going to be any unpleasant part of the treatment.

The nurse told him he could join them, and Pilar took off her clothes again and put on the gown, and lay down on the insemination table nervously. And a moment later, Dr. Ward came in and transferred the freshly washed sperm into a hypodermic.

A small tube was then fed into Pilar's uterus, and the sperm from the hypodermic was carefully injected, and within minutes it was over, the tube was removed, and Dr. Ward asked her to lie there for half an hour before leaving. The doctor left them alone, and she and Brad chatted quietly, and he teased her that he had thought they were going to use a turkey baster.

"I feel like the turkey lying here," she said. The whole process had been surprisingly simple, but it seemed so exhausting.

It was emotionally draining to try so hard, and strive so hard for what you wanted.

"I bet this will work," he said hopefully, and then he laughed thinking of the movie they'd watched in the other room. "We'll have to get some of those," he teased, and she laughed. She was a good sport about all this, but so was he. And it wasn't easy for either of them. But sometimes good things weren't.

"We're all set." The doctor stopped in to see them again before they left, and reminded her that all her hormone tests had been normal, and her progesterone levels had been very high ever since she'd started taking the chlomiphene. But she also warned them that it could take from six to ten times before it "took."

"You're going to be seeing a lot of me, more than your friends or your family," she had warned, but the Colemans said they wouldn't mind it.

She wished them a happy Thanksgiving when they left, and told Pilar to keep her posted. She wanted a call from her in two weeks to tell her if she got her period or not.

"Don't worry." Pilar smiled. "You'll hear from me either way!"

Especially if she got pregnant. And if she didn't, they'd have to come back for artificial insemination again . . . and again . . . and again . . . until it took, or they gave up. Whichever came first, and she hoped it would be the former. She had wanted to talk to the doctor about GIG too. It was a procedure she'd read about-gamete intra-Fallopian transfer -a process much like in vitro, but which had better results in women over forty. But Dr. Ward wouldn't even discuss it.

"Let's give intrauterine insemination a chance first, shall we?" she said firmly. She said they were way premature in discussing such exhaustive measures. And she was optimistic about artificial insemination. With the chlomiphene, Pilar's progesterone levels were very high, and that would certainly help her get pregnant.

It was a long, peaceful drive home, and they felt even closer to each other after the past few days. And it was a quiet week for them before Thanksgiving. Pilar was trying not to overdo it at the office.

Nancy and Tommy and Adam spent Thanksgiving with them that year, and Todd had gone skiing in Denver with his girlfriend. But he had promised to come home for Christmas this year, so they didn't complain about his not being home for Thanksgiving.

Little Adam was five months old by then, and he was gurgling and cooing, and he had two teeth right in the middle of his lower gum, and it was obvious that Brad was crazy about him. Pilar held him for a long time, too, and as usual, Nancy commented on how good with him she was, which always surprised her, since Pilar had never had children.

"Instinct, I guess," she teased, but neither she nor Brad talked about their plans, or their efforts to have a baby. It was too important to them, too secret, to share with anyone. And Pilar was on pins and needles waiting to see if she was pregnant. She could barely keep her mind on Thanksgiving.

And when the young couple went home that night, Pilar was relieved to be alone again, and talked immediately about how much she hoped the insemination had taken.

"We'll see," Brad said, but he had noticed a funny look in her eyes that rang a chord of memory. It was a sleepy look, but she had no symptoms, no inkling that anything had changed, and he decided that, like Pilar, he was just hoping she had gotten pregnant.

Diana and Andy's Thanksgiving had a nightmarish quality that year.

Their life had been a living hell for three months, and sometimes Andy thought he wouldn't get through it. He couldn't talk to her anymore, couldn't stand the bitterness and self-pity and hatred. She hated everyone and everything, and she was angry all the time now. She was angry at life, at the fates which had dealt her such a cruel hand. But there was nothing he could do. They had dealt him the same hand, too, as long as he chose to be with her. But there were days when he wondered if either of them could go on for much longer.

And things had gotten even worse in October, when Bill and Denise had announced that she was pregnant. It had happened literally the night of their wedding. Diana was horrified by the irony of it, and she flatly refused to see them anymore, which made life even lonelier for Andy.

She refused to talk to Eloise most of the time, too, about anything but work at least. And she had stopped mentioning Dr. Johnston to her completely. Eloise no longer mentioned him or her father to her at all; she had long since realized that something devastating must have happened.

Diana wouldn't see any of their friends. And eventually most of them stopped calling. By Thanksgiving, Diana had succeeded in completely isolating them, and Andy thought life had never been more grim than it was at the moment.

And Diana had compounded their miseries by agreeing to spend Thanksgiving with the Goodes in Pasadena. He wanted to force her to cancel it, but much to his chagrin, she wouldn't.

They were the only people they'd seen in months, and they were the wrong ones.

"For chrissake," Andy complained, "why did you do that?"

"They're my family! What did you expect me to do, tell them we don't want to see them anymore just because I'm sterile?"

"That has nothing to do with it. It's just so difficult for you there. Your sisters ask you questions about getting pregnant all the time, and Sam is six months pregnant, for heaven's sake. Do you really need to do that to yourself?" Or to either of them, for that matter, but he didn't say that.

"She's still my sister."

He didn't understand her anymore, and he wasn't sure he ever would again. She seemed to have a need to punish herself further for what had happened to her. But the terrible thing was that she hadn't done anything. She'd chosen the wrong form of birth control years ago and paid a hell of a price for it, and there was nothing anyone could do.

It was just rotten luck. But it didn't mean she had to become a rotten person.

"I don't think we should go." He argued with her right up until they went, and tried to get her to cancel, but she absolutely wouldn't. And the moment they got there, she realized her mistake. Gayle was in a lousy mood, she had a bad cold, and the kids had driven her nuts all day. She'd had a fight with their mother when she suggested Gayle discipline them more, and she seemed to be annoyed at Jack for not standing up for her.

So she took it out on Diana the moment she arrived, and Andy wished more than ever that they hadn't come. It was going to be a miserable evening.

"Thanks for coming early to help," Gayle spat at her, as she took off her coat. "Were you doing your nails this afternoon, or just napping?"

"Oh, for chrissake, what are you so worked up about?" Diana gave it right back to her, and as Sam came into the room, Andy almost groaned when he saw her. He hadn't seen her since the Fourth of July and she looked like a cartoon of a pregnant woman. And he could see from the frozen look on Diana's face that seeing Sam really shook her.

"Gayle's just pissed off because Mom told her the kids were too wild.

And she's right. So are mine. So how are you?" she asked Diana, resting her hands on her enormous stomach.

"I'm fine," Diana said icily. "And I can see how you are."

"Yeah. Fat. Seamus said I look like a Buddha." Diana attempted a smile, and then went off to see their mother in the kitchen. She looked better than ever that year, and she was happy to see her daughter. She was organizing everything and everyone, and loving every moment of it. And she had been so busy in the past couple of months that she hadn't felt her daughter slipping away from her. She just assumed Diana was busy at the magazine, but noticed something she didn't like about her eyes, and she suddenly looked much thinner.

"I'm glad you could come," she said, pleased that all her children and grandchildren were around her. She always enjoyed having them there, even if she had asked Gayle to control them. "Are you all right?" she asked Diana.

"I'm fine," Diana brushed her off. She loved her mother, but she didn't have the heart to tell her about the laparoscopy, or the hell she'd been through. She wondered if she might someday. But for the moment she just wasn't ready. She couldn't bring herself to tell anyone she was sterile. She felt like such a failure.

"You work too hard," her mother chided, hoping it was stress at work she was seeing in her daughter's face as she checked on the turkey. It was a huge golden-brown bird and it smelled delicious.

"Unlike her sisters," her father added, as he walked into the kitchen.

"They work hard with their children." Her mother defended them. She loved all three of her girls, and she knew that their father did too. 

He just liked making comments like that, and he had always been particularly fond of Diana, and he had also noticed how tired and unhappy she looked, and he was worried.

"How's your magazine?" he asked, as though she owned it, and she smiled at his question.

"Fine. Our circulation is really growing."

"It's a fine-looking publication. I saw a copy of it last month."

He had always given her credit for what she did, which made her wonder why she felt so bad sometimes. But now she had good reason to. She had failed at the thing that counted most to all of them. Having babies.

"Thanks, Dad."

And with that her brothers-in-law walked in and asked when dinner would be ready.

"Patience, boys." Their mother-in-law smiled, and shooed Ieveryone into the next room, except Diana. "Are you really all right, dear?"

She looked at her seriously. She seemed so tired and pale, and there was something so deeply unhappy in her eyes, almost ravaged, which made her wonder if everything was all right with Andy.

She walked slowly toward her middle child, and remembered what a bright child she had always been, and how conscientious. "Is anything wrong?"

"No, Mom," she lied, turning away so her mother wouldn't see the tears in her eyes. "I'm fine." And then mercifully, the children burst into the room, and Diana ushered them back outside to their mothers, as Andy watched her. He didn't like the look he'd seen in her eyes since late that afternoon. She was dying inside, and she wanted someone to blame for it. She looked as though she were about to explode with grief, but he knew now only too well that there was no way to help her.

Her father said grace when they sat down, and Diana sat between both her brothers-in-law, while Andy sat across the table from her, between her two sisters. Gayle kept up a constant stream of conversation with him, as she always did, about nothing in particular; the PTA, complaining about how little money doctors made today, and making veiled references to why they never had children. Andy just agreed with her pleasantly, and made an occasional effort to talk to Sam, who talked constantly about her children, and their new baby. Then there was the neighborhood report of who was getting married, who had died, and who was having a baby. And halWay through dinner Diana looked at them in total irritation.