July #6
She nodded while her mouth was full, then after swallowing said it was well worth it.
‘I know what I want, and I still found it helpful.’ In descending order, she listed on three fingers three hopes : ‘To meet someone now and conceive naturally, to meet someone later and use my frozen eggs, or, if I have to, to get them fertilised with donor sperm.’
If I have to. I wished I was as sure of myself.
‘Anyway, I’d recommend it.’
‘Well, maybe I will take them up on it then.’ I pincered some noodles between my chopsticks and struggled to keep hold of them. ‘And you?’ I asked. ‘How are you feeling about it?’
She poked at a prawn, still half in its shell. ‘To be honest, I’m scared it’s not going to work.’
The noodles slipped out of my grip and back into the bowl. ‘But you don’t have any reason to think that, do you?’ I asked, taken aback by the chink in her resolve.
She picked up the prawn with her fingers and peeled the shell away from the flesh. ‘Not really, other than a gut feeling. It’s silly, really.’
A gut feeling. In my mind, I could see my mother earnestly nodding. I opened my mouth to tell her I was sure it would be fine, but how could I be? Instead, I tried again to pincer some noodles as I said, ‘In my experience, gut feelings can be misleading.’
Doctor Day was right – the side effects did subside, but not before the late arrival of the tender breasts.
The combination of the July heat and the drugs was pushing me over the edge, physically, emotionally.
Soon I was so bloated that when I turned side-on in front of the floor-length mirror in our bedroom, I could fool myself into thinking I was pregnant.
Every three days during my lunch break I dragged myself from the museum to the clinic for a scan, during which Doctor Day would comment on my oestrogen levels and follicle growth.
I didn’t bump into Robyn again, but we messaged – as she said, comparing notes.
Some symptoms we shared, others one of us experienced and the other didn’t.
Take bruising. She could barely see where she’d been injecting, whereas my stomach was pockmarked with dots of grey, which I would rub with Arnica cream before bed.
I was reminded of my father, who always said I bruised like a banana.
Each time I would sigh and say, I think you mean a peach.
One night, as I lowered myself onto the mattress beside Noah and opened the small tub of cream, he offered to do it for me.
His hands worked around my stomach, up over my breasts, which were still sore, then lower.
In an instant, my discomfort was dispelled.
I felt drunk with desire, my mind a blur.
He kissed my neck and chest and pressed himself against me, then I climbed on top of him.
After, we lay on our backs, staring up at the ceiling.
Slowly, in the same way that grief creeps up on you when you first wake in the morning after a misleadingly good night’s sleep, the aches and pains returned.
In a panic, I reached for my phone and found myself googling if it was a good idea to have sex during treatment.
I think the words I used were, ‘Is it allowed?’.
When I read on more than one site that it was fine, I tried to relax again.
Noah was quiet beside me. He didn’t ask what I was doing – perhaps he knew – and when I leant over to plug in my phone, he reached to turn off his bedside light.
I put my hand on his chest and asked, ‘How are you feeling?’
He let out a sigh.
‘Noah?’
‘I feel like you’re leaving me behind.’
I rolled over to face him. ‘I’m not.’ When he didn’t respond, I held on tight around his waist and said, ‘I’m not going anywhere.’
He smiled, a sad smile heavy with doubt.
Aside from Noah, the folk at the clinic, and the odd person I bumped into at work, I didn’t see anyone during those two weeks.
I’m sure even Tom could sense that something was up, so my solitude was probably a good thing.
During the final few days, I would sit on the sofa clutching a hot-water bottle to my pulsing womb, and he would come and sit as close as possible without sitting on top of me, licking the back of my hand with his sandpaper tongue.
When at last I would get up and walk away, he would follow, his snowy paws kissing my heels.
When he asked for extra food, I gave it to him without question.
And so, I was surprised when Noah decided to invite Daniel and Griz over for dinner on Saturday, the night of my penultimate injection. He sprung it on me when I was getting out of the shower the day before.
‘You don’t mind, do you?’ he asked, waiting as I wrapped my body in a towel and passing me an extra, smaller towel for my sopping hair.
I padded into the bedroom with wet feet, my body feeling its most vehicle-like, carrying around precious cargo. I’d started to think that ‘MOT’ might have been the right term for the fertility test after all.
‘I just thought, we haven’t seen them for a while,’ he said, standing in the threshold, casting a tall shadow on the wall. ‘And the past couple of times we’ve been to theirs, so we owe them.’
I opened my mouth, then I closed it again.
He was still talking, telling me that they were going away the following week.
He’d been so good to me. I could do this for him. Finally, as I started drying myself, I said, ‘Of course not, sounds fun.’
A couple of hours before they were due to arrive, I received an email from my uncle, Duncan, telling me that my mother had missed their weekly Saturday morning Skype call for the second time in a row.
He’d tried phoning her landline and no answer.
Had I heard from her? I felt jittery. She loved those calls and looked forward to them all week.
Duncan had moved to the States in his twenties, got married and had two children – my cousins, who I’d only met in person twice.
He rarely came home, but every year my mother sent emails and cards and looked forward to her annual two-week sojourn with them.
I left his email unanswered and dialled my mother’s number.
She picked up after just a couple of rings. ‘Hello?’
‘Hi Mum, it’s me.’
‘Who?’
‘Me. It’s me, Mum, Cathy.’
‘Oh darling, hello. Sorry, the front door is open, and someone’s got a lawnmower going, I can’t hear a thing. One minute.’
I heard the shuffle of her house slippers on the floor and the click of the latch.
‘Is that better?’ I asked, when I could tell from the sound of her breathing that the receiver was pressed back against her cheek.
‘Much,’ she said. I pictured her sinking down into her chair and thought I might have even heard its springs heave. ‘How are things?’
‘Oh, I’m fine, thanks, almost done with the injections.’ As soon as I said it, I regretted it, and I steeled myself for another comment like the one that had spoiled our weekend away.
‘The injections?’
I must have pulled a face, because Noah walked past me at that moment and asked if everything was OK. I waved my hand and nodded. ‘You, know, for the egg freezing.’
For more than a few seconds, she didn’t say anything. Then : ‘Of course.’
I waited for her to elaborate, and when she didn’t, I decided that was that. ‘So, Mum, Duncan emailed me and mentioned you missed today’s Skype call?’
‘No,’ she said, defensively, as though my question was an accusation. ‘I didn’t.’
‘You spoke to him and Sal this morning?’ Sal, my uncle’s American wife, who worked in luxury real estate.
She went quiet again, and then she asked, ‘Is it Saturday?’
‘It is, Mum.’ My jitteriness must have subsided before because, at this point, I felt it return.
Or not jitteriness so much as low-level tingles creeping across my chest. The kind of feeling that spreads from your fingers across your knuckles and towards your wrist when you touch an electric fence with a single blade of grass.
‘Have you got your diary in front of you?’ I asked.
Quietly, she said, ‘I lost it.’
‘You lost your diary?’ I failed to conceal my surprise. ‘But you always keep it by the phone.’
‘I know I do,’ she said, audibly irritated by my stating the obvious.
I balked and wondered what had put her in such a bad mood. I was about to ask if she was feeling OK, when :
‘I think Peggy took it.’
‘Mum!’ I couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Why would Peggy take your diary?’
‘Well, I don’t know, do I? But she did, I’m sure of it.’
I stopped laughing. The tingles were spreading along the length of my arms and down my back.
‘OK, Mum, I’m sure this is just a misunderstanding.
Perhaps Peggy moved your diary when she was dusting?
’ I tried to sound convincing, even though I knew Peggy would never do that – she was aware of how much my mother relied on that thing.
‘How about I give her a call, get this straightened out? And maybe you can talk to Duncan tomorrow instead?’
‘No, tomorrow I’m busy.’
‘Doing what?’
She paused, and then said in a brittle voice that cut straight through me : ‘I don’t know, it’s in my diary.’
‘OK,’ I tried again, taking a deep breath. ‘Listen, Mum, you wait there. I’m going to call Peggy.’
‘OK.’
‘OK,’ I repeated. I hesitated. I could hear the moisture in her lips as she opened and closed them without saying anything. ‘We’ll figure it out, Mum, don’t worry.’
I put down the phone, took another breath, and found Peggy’s name in my recent contacts. It started ringing.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Noah, from the kitchen.
I was about to reply when Peggy answered.