Lift - Kelly Corrigan [15]
But I was holding something back. Partly because we are, all of us, always holding things back. And partly because I was nervous, afraid that as soon as I said what I wanted to say, she’d think I’d given up on her chances for marriage or, worse, that I’d never believed they were particularly good to begin with. “I have something I want to say.” My voice cracked. “I want to say that as much as I love Edward and love being married—which I really do—there is no relationship that has been more—”
“I know where you’re going,” she said.
“Should I go there anyway?”
“Yes.”
“So I know this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be and know I can’t say what it’d be like to be a single mom…” We were both facing forward, looking at the road. “But given everything I do know, no matter how hard it is, how lonely or stressful, still, I would not want to leave this earth without being a mother.”
She nodded.
“And you—I think you, in particular, were born to be somebody’s mother.”
She hit her blinker and switched lanes. I rode out the silence. I had said enough.
“I think,” she said through tears, “I could be a really good mom.” We sat with that for a minute, and then she added, “I went to a sperm bank Web site.”
“You did?”
“I did.”
A few months later, Dad took over the morning routine so I could go with Meg to the fertility clinic for her procedure. It took fifteen minutes. When the nurse opened the door and Meg appeared, I wanted to scoop her up like a new bride so all that sperm from donor 11874 didn’t fall out. On the ride home, we talked about what would happen if it worked.
“How will I tell my mom? My dad?” Meg asked. “My grandmother?”
“I don’t know. I mean, you’ll tell them that you really wanted to have children.”
“They’re not gonna like this.”
“They love you,” I said, meaning something entirely different than I’d ever meant before. I felt so sure, having become a parent myself, I could speak for them now. “They want you to be happy.”
A week later, Meg got her period.
“Maybe this is the way it’s supposed to be,” she said on the phone, sounding like a mother already, prepared to sacrifice her own happiness for the sake of her child.
The choices we have are staggering. You girls will have even more.
In time, Meg tried again.
“It worked,” she said when I picked up the phone.
Every hair on my arms lifted. “Really?”
“Really.”
I screamed and you both came running into my office and we turned to October 2 in my calendar. I colored in the entire day, line by line, with my orange highlighter. When you saw the tears coming down my cheeks, you said, “What’s so wrong about October second?” and I said, “Not wrong. October second is the day Meg becomes a mom.”
I studied you girls that afternoon, like art. Your collarbones, your coloring, your shoulder blades—fine and slender as a bird’s. Claire, you were sitting by the French doors to the deck that needs replacing, wearing only your underwear and the ruby red slippers Meg gave you that were years away from fitting. As you leaned forward to run your finger over the sequins, the light hit the trail of hair that swirls down from your hairline in the back and it lit up like phosphorescence. Georgia, you were up in the bath with your eyes closed and your ears just under the water, your hair spread out around your face, humming that song from Les Miserables that you saw Susan Boyle sing on YouTube.
Who will look at you like I do?
I think about your futures a lot. I often want to whisper to you, when we’re tangled up together or I’m pinning your poetry to the bulletin board or repositioning the pillow under your head so you don’t get a crick, Remember this. This is what love feels like. Don’t take less. But what I end up saying is, “This was my dream. You were my dream.” I’ve said it too many times though; now when I look at you all soft and gushy and say, “Guess what?” you say, “This was your dream. I was your dream.”
A month later, Meg was still pregnant.
“I’m going to go see my grandmother. She’s not gonna live for nine more months. I gotta tell