One Good Egg: An Illustrated Memoir (4 page)

I had the Day 12 follicle test. I went in, slightly nervous, not knowing what to expect—most likely an internal exam, possibly a blood test—and the nurse practitioner (not Mary) examined my head. I passed the test. She showed me the special hairs above my right ear, hairs I’d never noticed before, but once she pointed them out, they were very obvious. Each one had a tiny cup holding a very tiny egg. In my dream, I felt like Horton carrying around these precious eggs.

T
he appointment with my new gynecologist was a quickie. In and out in under ten minutes. “Suzanne, when was the last time you were seen?”
Last time I was seen
. . . “Never mind. When was your last period?”
Last period, last period
—“I’ll have Ellen schedule your Day 3 labs and HSG.”

“HSG?”

“A hysterosalpingogram. A test to make sure your tubes are clear.” Oh, the expensive one Mary had mentioned.

“How much will that—?”

“This will all be covered under infertility. Any questions?” Wait,
are you saying I’m infertile?!
She rose, I rose, we shook hands, and Ellen escorted me to an examining room where, with the aid of a calendar, I was able to reconstruct my last period.

In the end, it didn’t make a drop of difference; I needed to call on the first day of my next period and then come in for a blood test two days later. Meantime, Ellen advised me to purchase an ovulation predictor kit (OPK) and use it, following the directions on the box. I planned to save my $16 until I had my Day 3 lab results.

I called my friend Lorene with a progress report. In the weeks since I’d been single, she and I had settled into a pattern of daily breakfast calls and weekly dinners. This was a midmorning update. “Well, I wasn’t going to say this while you were with Karen,” she said. “But having a baby was the best thing I ever did.”

Lorene and her twenty-one-year-old son, David, lived in the house where she had grown up (and her mother before her) in Hudson, the next town over.

“I’ll come to the birth. Babysit. Do daycare. You can drop him off; you can give me Mister, too!”

She already took care of Mister, my flat-coat retriever, when I went away. “I’m serious. I love babies. He’s all yours when he’s thirteen . . . ”

The whole time, I had been thinking I was going to have this baby
alone
. Plenty of people had offered to help, but they were well-meaning, overly busy people who weren’t their own bosses, and they didn’t live three miles away.

“So when are you going to tell Steve? Is that next?” Lorene asked.

“You mean
ask
Steve.” I’d met Steve and Gary twelve years earlier, back when Amy and I were vacationing in Skyros, Greece. The four of us got along so well we’d joked about partnering up, marrying (this was way before same-sex marriage was legal), and having babies together. Steve and I were writers and we’d kept in touch. He’d renewed the baby offer several times; however, he could always renege, now that it was real. “I’m going to ask Bruce first.”

Bruce is my best friend. We’d been spending Saturdays together for more than ten years by that time. He would make a great father, but he wasn’t ready back then. Asking was a foregone rejection.

When our Saturday rolled around, we met at Café Algiers in Harvard Square. The tables were tight . . .

. . . so tight I couldn’t bring myself to ask him the question.

We were in my car, more than halfway home, and I was desperately seeking a segue. Bruce was describing a friend of his: “He always asks, ‘Why would you want to spend time with me?’ The question makes me feel completely cornered.”

“Uh, speaking of questions that make you feel cornered, would you be the father of my baby? I mean, I’m set to go ahead with Steve—it’s just that when Steve and I made the plan, you were twenty-two and we were just becoming friends. I know if you were going to do this, I’d wonder, ‘Why didn’t he ask me, or at least have a conversation?’ So that’s what this is, the conversation.”
Or monologue
. It was starting to rain. I went on, “I really don’t want the question to torment you. I know you’ll be in the baby’s life either way.” The wipers smeared the windshield. “I—well, you would’ve said yes by now,” I stopped.

“It’s the timing. I feel like I haven’t had enough experiences or relationships.”

I let him finish. I didn’t say, “I know,” or, “It’s not the end of experiences.”

“If there was anyone I wanted to do this with, it would be you. Even this afternoon, while we were sitting there, I was wondering if I could ever have this kind of love with a partner. There have been these times when, I swear, I wish I could just ask you to marry me, that it could be that uncomplicated, that there wouldn’t be these missing pieces . . . ”

We happened to be passing by the turnoff to Bruce’s parents’ road. I put my blinker on. “Let’s go tell your parents we’re getting married and we’re going to have a baby!”

He flipped it off, laughing.

“Can I just say one thing about the timing?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s taken me years to recognize there isn’t going to be a perfect time—a time when everything’s lined up, pointing in the direction of a baby. And a lot of time can go by while you’re waiting. It’s kind of like peak foliage . . . and now I’ve got to worry about my biological clock.”

“That’s why I don’t want to say no without taking some time to think about it.”

He took until the next Saturday, and then he said no, just as I expected, but it was still hard to hear. “I wish I could say yes,” he said, and I hugged him. I hadn’t been ready at thirty-two either.

That night, I e-mailed Steve. I waited fifteen minutes for an instant reply, then shut my computer off and went downstairs. An hour later, I went back up and turned it on again, just to check.

If you think you can do it, I think we can work out the logistics.

Call me Thursday or Friday!