London, Two Months Earlier
It was late July. Jones and Aspen had weathered a wet, argumentative spring together, full of serious life matters—the funeral of an old friend of Jones’s, the falling-out between Aspen and her mother, a problem with Jones’s hot-water tank.
Grown-up things, as though they were aging faster than they should be.
Their relationship felt right just enough of the time.
When Jones’s commitment wavered, Aspen’s eyes would suddenly sparkle again, and she’d tug him to bed, and he’d forget everything but the fun of her.
There was something so sexy about seeing Aspen rumpled and laughing—she was generally put together and efficient, but in Jones’s bed, she was deliciously disheveled.
As the months slipped by, he thought often of the day when Gloria had given birth in the back of that Uber. The baby’s tiny, alien feet, its unearthly cry. The feeling that had grown in his chest, strange and suffocating, too complex for him to understand.
He eventually figured it out in the queue for the tills at the Co-op one day.
The woman in front of him had a toddler dragging at her hand and a baby perched on her other hip; she looked off-balance, and he wondered if he should offer to hold something for her, before realizing the only thing he could take from her was a child.
He stared at the baby, then the toddler. These small, needy people, these little agents of chaos. He thought of Gloria’s newborn with its tiny bloodstained hands, and he realized—I do not want a child.
It was something to which he had never given a great deal of thought.
He was still young, midthirties; he had been in a marriage where kids weren’t in the cards, so the question had been irrelevant, and Jones never dwelled on things that weren’t relevant.
As a single man, before he had met Aspen, the thought had crossed his mind—Perhaps I will end up having kids one day.
But he did not want a child. That was what that feeling was.
He had looked at the tiny baby and felt sure of it, and the nasty, uneasy sensation that had followed was a sort of shame.
It wasn’t that he didn’t find the baby cute.
He just knew he didn’t want to be a father, in the way one knows these things—that you love someone, that you need a glass of wine, that you’ve forgotten something important. It was simply not for him.
Which was fine. No need to feel shame about it, he told himself. But still the shame persisted, and he could not say why.
—
The reason became clear a week later in a sun-bleached St. James’s Park.
He and Aspen were picnicking, as she called it—overpaying for small pots of things that did not go together, ideally from Marks she said she needed him, and he didn’t want to hurt her. But was it still the kind thing? He watched Aspen tickle baby Mabel’s tummy and closed his eyes for a moment.
“Aspen,” he said.
Jones knew he had his faults, but he liked to believe he could tell right from wrong. And this was not right.
“Do you want to have a baby?”
She looked up at him, crouched over the baby, her necklace dangling in front of Mabel’s nose. The expression on Aspen’s face was heartbreaking. It was as if he had made some sort of beautiful announcement, had told her the best news in the world. She looked overjoyed.
“I mean, yeah. Yes. Do you?” she asked, sitting back on her haunches.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
He was wrong: this expression was heartbreaking.
“What?” she said.
“I’m really sorry. I don’t want to have a baby.”
“Oh,” she said, putting a hand on his thigh. “God! We’re not talking about right now, are we? I know you don’t want a kid right now. We’ve talked about this.”
He frowned. Had they talked about this?
“Early on, before we made it official?” she said, returning her attention to baby Mabel, who was kicking her fat heels on the picnic blanket.
“That night we had ramen at yours. We talked about Conor fainting when his wife was giving birth, and you said you can’t imagine yourself being a dad right now. ”
“What?” He vaguely remembered the takeaway, but couldn’t recall this conversation at all.
“Yeah! And I’m not putting any pressure on.” She smiled—a little tightly, he thought. “Not right now is fine.”
“But, Aspen…I’m not saying not right now. I’m saying I don’t want kids.”
He had kept his voice gentle, but her eyes instantly filled with tears.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. The shame swirled in his stomach.
“You don’t have to decide now!” she said, blinking fast. “I was a no, too, in my twenties.”
“But I’m not in my twenties, Aspen. I’m thirty-seven. And I really feel sure about this.”
“How can you be?” she said, her voice rising. “You were a not-right-now like, six months ago. What happened?”
“I don’t even remember saying that. It was just a throwaway remark, I guess—like, wow, imagine being a dad at this point in my life. I don’t know. I honestly don’t remember it.”
Aspen picked up Mabel, holding her in her lap like a shield. Her tears spilled over; she swiped them away with frustration.
“A throwaway remark,” she said bitterly.
“I mean, I assume so? I don’t remember. I’m sorry.”
“Do you remember what I said to you when we first met?”
“What?”
“I told you not to waste my time.”
Aspen struggled to her feet with Mabel in her arms. She began thrashing around with the sling, trying to get Mabel in; Mabel frowned, then squawked in protest, then began to cry.
“Can I help you?” Jones said, getting up clumsily.
“No,” Aspen said, and her voice was like steel. “No, you really can’t.”
“Aspen, please, don’t be like this. I love you,” he said, a little helplessly. He felt awful.
“Do you really?” she snapped, fixing the last strap around Mabel’s shoulders. “Or are you just fucking incapable of being alone?”