Avalanche (3 page)

I nurtured this belief that I would fall pregnant naturally. Why be nervous? If it really were true that only 10 percent of women aged 38 fell pregnant naturally (and I had my doubts) then I would be among the
millions
of women in the world who had once upon a time fitted that description. Pollyanna Juggernaut could do amazing things with the figures. I would be one of the lucky ones, an exception. After all, didn't I have a track record for beating the odds? When I was 27 I was diagnosed with a tumor in my left lung. It wasn't possible to do a biopsy at the time of the bronchoscopy, there was too high a risk of bleeding. Because of the central location of the tumor, the whole lung (and lymph nodes) had to be immediately removed. Lung carcinoma is the leading cause of cancer death. I had the operation and waited days for the result. When the registrar told me the amazing news—it was a carcinoid, not carcinoma—I just nodded like I'd been told it was three o'clock in the afternoon. He said I was a hard lady to please. This was because usually less than 1 percent of all tumors in the lung are carcinoids, a relatively slow-growing neuroendocrine tumor. I was on morphine but really I was so blasé because I had never taken on board the known likelihood of carcinoma. Before surgery I had willfully
disconnected from the probabilities. In my critical state they weren't helpful.

In the public imagination—as I perceive it—there's a qualified sympathy for IVF patients, not unlike that shown to smokers who get lung cancer. Unspoken: “You signed up for it, so what did you expect . . . ?”

Nearing the end of my treatment it became harder and harder to kid myself that I was lucky, exceptional, or altogether outside the realm of statistics. The real reason I didn't want to know about the IVF numbers was that I was desperate.

Our probationary year disappeared. During that time I decided to put up my hand to direct my screenplay. It was a long shot the film would get made since I'd never directed any sort of film before. My novel was published: I was happy with the reception. For Paul's birthday I gave him a word. “To smund: when a woman, a wife, lays her length upon a man, her husband, and with slow loving sinuous movements caresses, presses her soft warm breasts against his chest.” One day we were walking home from the grocery store, and I said something
very homey, something like, “When we get home I'll put the potatoes on.” “Will you, Mrs. McGillicuddy?” he replied. It was a sublime moment: the birth of Mr. and Mrs. McGillicuddy, there on the footpath, fully grown, the long-married homey couple, the cardigan wearers, the ones who put the potatoes on. After that we often used to call each other Mr. or Mrs. McGillicuddy, it became one of our fondest endearments. In November 2008 Paul underwent his vasectomy reversal. And on the December solstice, as agreed, Mr. and Mrs. McGillicuddy were married.

Scene from a marriage:
Night in the highlands, we had a fight and he ordered me out of the house. I had nowhere to go. Because I'd never learned to drive I wasn't able to get in the car and drive back to Sydney. I walked into town and found a pub, closed, where the staff were having last drinks. Knocked loudly on the door. I tried not to cry as I apologized for disturbing them, asked to pay for a room. Upstairs, lying in the narrow bed, fully dressed, I took out my phone. Paul had left many messages. I thought about switching it off before letting him know I was safe but I also had an urgent desire to hear his voice. Heartbroken, remorseful, he begged to come and pick me up and I agreed.

That is how in my 39th year I came to make love, for the first time in my life, with a deep desire to physically conceive, to procreate, to make a baby. It was so beautiful. Crossing over into one another, imagining the pleasure of orgasm as a kind of nurturing magic field for the moment of conception. A molecular union. Lovefucking for
our child
. And today I remain thankful for those experiences. But it was impossible to sustain, that keenly pitched sacred pleasure. As month after month passed and I did not fall pregnant the obligation to make love on the days around my time of ovulation became wearisome. One month Paul had a conference in a country town at “that time” and I traveled up there to be with him so that we could try. We stayed in a chintzy bed'n'breakfast. I can't remember exactly how it happened but we were meant to make love in the morning before our early departure, at around 6 a.m. That was the opportune window. I had no genuine bodily desire whatsoever but was amenable to a pragmatic quickie. Paul tried—with no luck. Too much pressure. A situation that for the two of us was equal parts frustrating, humiliating, chintzy, and bathetic. It cast a pall over the day. He didn't like—and nor did I—how our lovefucking had become so colored by the desire for a child, as if that were now its sole
purpose. We agreed we'd try to take the pressure off and not be so focused on my menstrual cycle. All that meant was we didn't talk about it while I remained acutely aware of exactly how near or far I was to ovulation.

There came a day when I reached a sunken crossroad. My film—miraculously—got its coveted green light, the full financing was committed. What to do: how could I direct a feature film and become pregnant at the same time? The stress of making the film would be bad for the baby; potential health complications would be bad for the film. Which-way, which-way, which-way. Where were the omens? After a week of sleepless nights I told Paul I wanted us to stop trying to get pregnant, I said I would take precautions for six months until the film was shot and I was in the edit. He was disappointed and though he didn't say as much I worried he saw my choice as a betrayal. It made him wary, and wariness, in retrospect, is poison in a union. Even if he'd tried to persuade me to drop the film I don't think I would have done so. Sometimes I wish I had been less fearful.

I completely immersed myself in making the film and I neglected my husband. There were repercussions.
“You're so busy I might as well not be here.” One night during the shoot he repeated his trick of ordering me out of the house (at the time we were living in a new apartment we'd bought together). A few days later he left to spend time with his son who was now 14 and living in Ireland with his mother. The film wrapped: he didn't call. On the day of his return we had a fight. His anger was frightening and intolerable. I took half of my stuff and moved back to my old place which was just around the corner.
I can't stand it!
There followed a complicated tangle of emotions—hurts, desires, everything else. Bamboozling at the time. Two people in love and at odds. A Gordian knot would have been child's play. I'm not sure I could ever explain it. He said he didn't sign up for me putting my career ahead of everything else, he said I was blind to how my work bled into our lives and obscured all the good things. He wanted more balance. A few weeks later he issued me with legal papers for a full property settlement through the family law courts, to be effective immediately. He wanted the title deed to our new home transferred into solely his name: he'd pay out my share. He wanted to undo all our joint bank accounts and other assets, a complete financial separation. In other words, a divorce. But he refused to call it a divorce. He
wanted us to live together “under two roofs.” He wanted a moratorium on talking about a family. A moratorium! For how long? Indefinite. He'd pilfered the word “moratorium” from one of the couples counselors, the one who gave us a book that said there was a finite number of possible types of relationship, something like 1,392 or maybe 3,921. Then Paul modified his position and said we could “shuttle between the houses till the baby comes.” Topsy-turvy. I thought the property settlement was such a sniveling low demand that ipso facto it warranted divorce. We signed the legal papers in my lawyer's office. I was in tears. That night he came over to my place and we slept together.

Why are you writing this, Rat-wife? Rat-patient. Hey, Queen of the Rats, why?

I guess it's common sense but I sincerely believe in the truth of what I'm writing and at the very same time I know Paul would shape a different story. What's more, I know my own next sentence could turn this way or that.

We reconciled. Beloved singular man, wondrous sea creature, hand-holder—I forgave him everything and
vowed to do better in his eyes. Mr. and Mrs. McGillicuddy went back to the clinic. A sperm test showed the vasectomy reversal had failed. The initial sperm flow post-op had been “respectable”—said the doctor—but the test now confirmed a zero sperm count. No sperm. If we wanted to proceed we would have no choice but to begin IVF using the sperm frozen during Paul's operation. Neither of us asked for how long Paul had been without sperm, it seemed discourteous, impossible to know. (A good question: why didn't we test it earlier?) Part of me was pleased—if the reason I hadn't already fallen pregnant was because of low or no sperm flow then that problem could be rectified. What was scary was my own ovarian reserve. My FSH level was retested and it had held steady. Another marker for ovarian reserve was an AMH test. Anti-Müllerian hormone is a hormone secreted by very early ovarian follicles. The clinic ran the test and analyzed the results in their own lab. Like the FSH test, this test could not tell me anything about the quality of my eggs. Nor was the test conclusive: on the upside, I was informed there had been several reported cases of women with undetectable levels of AMH who had fallen pregnant. My level came back as 6.1—which was fractionally better than average for a
woman my age. Ovarian reserve diminishes over time: that was the golden rule. When I was tested again in 2012 my level had gone up to 8.3. Alice in Wonderland. I asked Dr. Rogers how that was possible. He shrugged it off. He said a woman of 25 had a level of 50; it was all relative; my reserve was low. I should be glad, he said, the clinic would treat me. It seemed that only a veil of science shrouded the vast mystery.

The doctor didn't try to sugarcoat things, he said he was happy to proceed, all my retested bloods and ultrasound were fine but my age—40—was a problem. He gave me an approximate 20 percent chance of success. Thank you, thank you. I was so grateful, so willing. I didn't hesitate for a moment to abandon Mother Nature. He filled out a consent form for Paul and me to sign that specified our treatment. Ran us through the costs. I played my inner trick of pretending it was all Monopoly money. He checked his watch, smiled kindly, inclined his head toward the door.

If I were devout I would paint exquisite ex-votos on small tin sheets in a Mexican style, illustrating the miracle of IVF conception. A woman with her legs in stirrups.
And floating in the surgery theater a little cloud, and in that cloud a sperm nosing into an egg, or perhaps an eight-celled embryo implanting into a red-lined womb. I'd go into churches and pin wax effigies of sprouting ovaries to the wall, in the same way the faithful pin up effigies of their ailing arms and legs.

We never made it back to the clinic together. We scheduled appointments, we were ready to begin treatment, but more than once—at the very last minute—Paul changed his mind. I got the blame for falling asleep at 2 a.m. on a day we were due to begin. We had been up all night talking about our future as parents, he was worried he would be stuck holding the baby, he was worried he was too old. I did my best to assure him all would be fine, better than fine, a joy, a gift . . . but I was bone-tired and soon begged off to sleep. When I woke up Paul told me he was canceling the cycle. He said that if we'd been talking about my work in the early hours of the morning I would have managed to stay awake. He was unsure, he wanted to wait.
Wait!
I felt like I had been stabbed—and wanted to stab him in turn—but I needed his permission and did my best to persuade
him to
please
reconsider. Nothing worked. I was a hopeless supplicant.

Things fell apart. Fall down, get back up, fall down. Stay down, duck for cover. It was a long, sad, immensely difficult time for both of us. He said I was relegating “Us” to my insistent desire for a child. I couldn't bear his deliberate procrastinating, his brooding, his rages. The weight of his reproach. My friends and family despaired for me; his friends and family despaired for him. But we were not entirely sad—that was our problem. Our relationship didn't fade out . . . it was syncopated, tender—terrible. So many small things were quietly wonderful. We both sincerely claimed to love one another more than we'd ever loved anyone before, we told ourselves ours were only the best intentions.

My film was selected to be “In Competition” at the Festival de Cannes. The experience was intense and marvelous and I couldn't have survived it without Paul by my side. The night of the screening was also his birthday. At the after-party, held on a beach, he stripped off his tuxedo and went for a swim. Emerging from the water he
was radiant. That was in May 2011—but we slid downhill through June and by July we had drafted divorce papers. Over a year had passed since our separation around the time of the property settlement and a formal divorce could now be granted. The paperwork wasn't signed and sent to the family court until October. I sent it in: Paul told me he had started sleeping with other people. Our body seal was broken.

And still, and yet, and don't let go, even after we were officially divorced we continued to see one another. In February 2012 we planned a weekend away at his friend's beach house down the coast, he said we would go there to “create something new together.” My hope, as always, was that it would only take a tiny breakthrough and our relationship would crystallize, a slow process culminating in a sudden and unpredictable transformation. We ate fish'n'chips, drank wine, watched DVDs. It poured with rain. When I said “I love you” he flinched. “Why say that now!” “Because we're sitting on the couch, nothing special.” Nothing special: nothing worked. Nothing worked. Nothing within me worked. We failed to understand one another deeply. I've revisited that weekend a thousand times. Reenacted—rewritten
every conversation, every stillborn attempt at openhearted conversation. An endless restoration. That was the weekend when we did truly divorce, when even the McGillicuddys had to call it a day. I was grateful to Paul for one thing: we agreed that if we were to irrevocably part he would allow me to use his frozen sperm and go ahead with being a single mother. He knew I didn't want to use a stranger's sperm; he knew how old I was; he knew how I'd found myself in my predicament. I would take full financial responsibility and he could be involved in co-parenting as little or as much as he liked. Since we had been friends for so long—twenty-three years—we felt we could maintain harmony in the future.
Our child
had taken root. I believed I would forever be fond of Paul. He was tattooed under my skin.