One Good Egg: An Illustrated Memoir (18 page)

She dropped herself at the shop; I drove home. The house looked beautiful. Lorene had already hung the Christmas greens. The tree (Lorene’s pick) was smaller and fatter than in years past, and fuller than ever with decorations. We wouldn’t have had room for the stork ornament I bought back in November. I’d given it to Meredith;
I could always buy another one for us.

I had less holiday stuff left to do than usual, but I still could’ve used another week, just to get in the spirit. I was dealing with the cumulative effects of four months without exercise, without getting pregnant, and I was no better at retail widowhood the second time around.

Next Christmas, the brain book would be in the bag. The baby question would be answered. It would be Meredith’s baby’s first Christmas. Next Christmas, I promised myself, we’d have a Christmas.

I recorded these things as if by identifying them, I might, at some future date, be able to retrieve them. Lorene and Vita were sleeping crown to crown, sharing a pillow on the couch in the Christmas-tree firelight. I squished myself in next to the two of them.
This is enough. We are enough.

W
ith the holidays behind us, I went into work overdrive. The brain book was due mid-February, and I needed to do a chapter’s worth of finished art (twenty spot illustrations) daily to stay on schedule. The work endorphins gave my psyche a lift. At chapter three, I got my period; I didn’t bother to tell Lorene until she got home.

Hi Honey, What’s happening? I realize this has to be ten times harder for you. The trick is to see the humour, though it’s not always easy. Sometimes I worry we won’t be friends if there is no baby. (No pressure!) If you want to debrief or if you feel like a chat, I could ring on Thursday or Friday. Big cuddles to you, Lorene and even those funny dogs, Steve

We had to cut our Martin Luther King getaway weekend short to do our insemination. Meredith and Jonathan, and Lucy and Jim, the proprietors of the Burlington B&B, gave us a seven o’clock send-off in the snowy circular driveway that Sunday morning. We intended to be back by late afternoon: Lorene would drive and I’d do my reverse shotgun—but we lost steam.

We had requested three vials for our fifth try. Before our inseminator let them fly, she observed that their rate of progression was neither, to borrow Jackie’s terms, “Olympic” nor “in training.” At a rate of two, they probably cut gym. “Next time,” she advised us, “you should request a minimum rate of three.” Lorene and I looked at each other. Still, it
was
twenty-seven million sperm, and we only needed one . . .

This time I called Dr. Penzias’s nurse and asked her, “What else don’t we know?” She suggested we come in and pose the question to Dr. Penzias. He found it “interesting” that we’d been told we could increase our chances by using more sperm, and certainly a higher rate of progression was desirable, but common sense—a layperson’s intuition—didn’t really apply here. There is little evidence to support the claim that either piece of unauthorized advice significantly improved our chances of getting pregnant.

He reviewed our plan. “If you aren’t pregnant, which you may well be,” he smiled, “we have one more IUI. And if that’s not successful, which it may well be, then we can begin the hormones.”

T
hat night, Lorene and I watched
ER.
I’d started watching in 1995, during my days teaching in a charter school, when it was relaxing to watch people doing a job that was more stressful than mine. Lorene and I had watched Kerry, the lesbian head of the
ER
, inject herself with hormones before undergoing IVF (off camera). Last week, she’d miscarried. This week, her partner was giving her a consolation gift. Kerry snapped, “This is to be expected! Thirty percent of IVFs end in miscarriage.” I blanked out the next couple of scenes.

“Wait, what was it, only fifteen percent of IVFs work, and then thirty percent of those end in miscarriage?”

“We’re not going to do IVF,” Lorene said, and kissed my knee.

When our January attempt failed, our February IUI morphed into one last thing we had to do before we could get started with hormones in March.

A week after the insemination, Lorene had made a fire in our bedroom fireplace. She’d kept it going for two full days; the room had never been so warm. It was hard to think about taking the dogs out in the morning. We lay in bed talking over their barking. “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “We can’t go to California in April. What if you’re pregnant?”
Or, what if the dogs quit barking and brought us breakfast in bed?

“What if I’m
not
pregnant? We’ll just miss a month of trying.” We were supposed to meet my friends in Joshua Tree; it was their wedding present to us.

“I’m just worried about taking the time off now; after we have the baby, I’m going to need lots of time off and—”

“I’ll take maternity leave, you won’t have to—”

“But I’ll want to.”
She seriously thinks I’m going to get pregnant.

“I think I really need the trip,” I said. “Don’t worry.”
It’ll never happen.
“It’ll work out.”

Instant Convert

Dr. Penzias
made the doctor issue of
Boston
magazine. “Look, he’s cute as a bug’s ear,” Lorene said. I looked again, more for a point of self-comparison.

We congratulated him at our March appointment. My pregnancy test was negative, although I hadn’t gotten my period yet. We re-re-reviewed what he liked to call our options, which were indistinguishable from our plan, since there was really only one—the follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) injections. I was supposed to drink lots of water and call in on the first day of my new cycle. The injections would start on Day 3. We could stop downstairs for a patient-information session on our way out, or we could come back at our convenience. We went for the latter, just in case I never got my period. Besides,
ER
had given us a pretty good introduction.

Day 1, I called the nurse to schedule the info session and I spoke with the pharmacy. We needed a Saturday-with-nobody-at-home delivery. The nobody-home part wasn’t a problem, but the below-freezing temperatures complicated things. I had to hang up to think about which of my neighbors I wanted to bring into the loop, then I remembered, we had Lorene’s shop.