“What about not retiring, and having kids?” he had modified his previous offer. They had been married for six years by then, and he was thirty-nine years old, and once in a while he thought about having children. Most of the time, it would have cramped their style, but still, he thought it would be too bad if they never had them. But Alex had said she wasn't ready.
“I just can't imagine having anyone be that dependent on me, I mean all the time. I'd feel guilty working as hard as I do now, I'd never see the kids, and that's no way to bring up children.”
“Can you see yourself slowing down eventually, working less?” he asked. But he couldn't see her doing that, and neither could Alex.
“Honestly? No. I don't think you can be a part-time lawyer.” She'd seen other women try it, and they always drove themselves crazy. Eventually, they either came back to work full time, and felt guilty as hell toward their kids, or retired completely. And she didn't want to do that either.
“Are you saying you don't want children at all, ever?” It was the first time she had ever really thought about it, that seriously, and she wasn't ready to say that either. Their conclusion was “not now, maybe later.”
The subject came up again when she was thirty-five, and by then it seemed like everyone they knew had had children. They'd been married for nine years by then, and they were very comfortable with their life as it was. She was already at Bartlett and Paskin, she had made partner, and Sam was something of a legend. They flew to France every chance they got for holidays, and California at the drop of a hat for a weekend. Sam still had a lot of business in Tokyo, and quite a lot in the Arab states, and Alex found his life fascinating, but her career wasn't unimpressive either. And there just didn't seem to be room in either of their lives for a baby.
“I don't know, I feel so guilty about it sometimes …like it's unnatural of me … I don't know how to explain it to anyone, but it's just not for me, at least not now,” she concluded with him, and they put the subject away for another three years, until she was thirty-eight and he forty-five. An alarm had gone off on her biological clock, albeit briefly, and this time she brought the subject up to him, after another partner at the office had a baby, and this time she conceded it was just adorable, and her friend seemed to be handling both career and child well. It had made Alex think seriously, for the first time, about having children.
But this time, Sam could no longer imagine it. Their life was too set, too well regulated, and too easy without kids. After twelve years of marriage to her, he thought it was too late, and it would no longer enhance anything. He wanted her to himself now. He liked things just as they were, and she surprised herself at how easily she gave the idea up again. Obviously, it was just not meant to be. She had an enormous trial to handle right after that, and the subject of children in their lives went out of her head completely until four months later.
They were coming back from a trip to India, where she had never been before, and she was feeling seriously ill, and afraid she had caught some dread disease, when she went to her doctor. It was the first time she had felt really sick in years, and it scared her. But what he told her of her malady scared her even more. And that night, she looked at Sam and told him the news in bleak desperation. She was pregnant. She had really put it out of her head, this time permanently, after the last time the subject had come up, and so had he. And they looked at each other like two victims of the crash of ‘29 when she told him.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely,” she said miserably. It was the first time she'd ever been pregnant. And she now knew what she'd never been completely sure of before. She didn't want children.
“It's not cholera or malaria, or something like that?” A near fatal disease would have been more welcome news to either of them than a baby.
“He says I'm six weeks pregnant.” She had been late on the trip, but she'd thought it was from the extreme heat, or the malaria pills, or just the rigors of travel. And she had never looked as miserable in her life as she did now, staring unhappily at her husband. “I'm too old for this, Sam. I don't want to go through it. I just can't.” Her words surprised him too, but he was relieved to hear them. He didn't want the baby either.
“Do you want to do something about it?” he asked, startled by her adamant dislike of the situation. He had always suspected that she might want kids someday, and lately, he had begun to fear it.
“I don't think we should. It seems like such a spoiled rotten thing to do. It's not like we can't afford to have a baby … I just don't feel I have the time, or …not the energy,” she thought about it carefully, “but the interest. The last time we talked about it, I just figured that was it. The conversation was over. We're happy like this …and then, blam …we're pregnant.”
He grinned ruefully at her. “It's ironic, isn't it? We finally decide not to, and you get pregnant. Life certainly has its little curve balls.” It was one of his favorite expressions, but it was true. And this was a doozy. “So what do we do?”
“I don't know.” She cried when she thought about it. She didn't want an abortion, or a baby. And after two weeks of agonizing about it, they decided to go ahead and have the baby. Alex didn't feel that they had a choice, morally, and Sam agreed, and they tried to be philosophical about it, but they were anything but enthusiastic. Alex was depressed every time she thought about it, and Sam seemed to forget about it completely. And when they did discuss it, which was as seldom as possible, they sounded as though they were discussing a terminal illness. This was certainly not anything they looked forward to. It was something that had to be faced, but they were clearly dreading everything about it.
Exactly four weeks later, Alex came home from the office early one afternoon, throwing up uncontrollably, and with such acute pains in her abdomen that she was literally doubled over. The doorman helped her out of the cab, and carried her briefcase inside for her. He asked if she was all right, and she insisted that she was, although her face was the color of paper. She got upstairs in the elevator, and let herself into the apartment, and fortunately her cleaning lady was there, because half an hour later, Alex was hemorrhaging all over their bathroom and barely conscious. She had taken Alex to the hospital herself, and called Sam at his office, and by the time he got to Lenox Hill, Alex was already in the operating room. They had lost the baby.
They both expected it to be an enormous relief. The source of all their anguish was gone. But from the moment Alex woke up in a private room, crying miserably, they knew that it wasn't that easy. They were both consumed with guilt and grief, and everything she had never allowed herself to feel for their unborn child, she felt now, all the love and fear and shame and regret and longing she had never felt before. It was the worst experience of her life, and taught her something about herself she had never known or suspected. Maybe it had never even been there before, but it was there now. All she wanted, to fill the aching void the miscarriage had left, was to fill the void with another baby. And Sam felt it too. They both cried for their unborn child, and when Alex went back to work the following week, she was still feeling shaken.
They had gone away for a few days over a long weekend, and talked about it, and they both agreed. They weren't sure if it was a reaction, or real, but they knew that something major had changed. Suddenly, more than anything, they wanted a baby.