Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [25]
“Has your doctor given you the okay?” I attempt to offer enough support in my voice to conceal my alarm at her announcement.
She nods, her mouth full of raisin scone.
“And you feel ready to do this?” I pause. “Not physically. Emotionally.”
“You sound like my doctor,” she laughs, though there’s no joy behind it. “She told me that since I’ve stopped bleeding, we can try again as soon as I get my period. But that maybe I should take some time to cope with the loss of the first baby.”
“And you disagree?” I raise my mug to my lips, careful not to spill the steaming coffee on my fingers. My eyes watch her steadily over the rim.
“I don’t know.” She shrugs. “But why put it off? What’s the point in delaying it? The longer we wait, the longer it is until I get pregnant again.” Her face falls, and I don’t know what to say, so I say nothing.
“You know what’s funny,” she continues, not really asking a question.
“No,” I say. “What?”
“You spend your whole life frantically trying not to get pregnant. I mean, I’ve been on the pill since I was sixteen! Eleven fucking years of being on the pill until I went off it last year. So you spend your whole life trying to prevent this thing—condoms, pills, gels, creams, whatever—and then, it turns out that guess what? It’s not so easy to do, to get pregnant in the first place!”
“I was certain that I was pregnant back in high school once,” I say. “With Daniel. God, remember him? Did I ever tell you this story, how our condom broke, and I was two days late, and I was freaking out?” I stop, unsure why I’m telling the story. I think of Daniel, his black curls and his cherry cheeks, and how we split soon after I got my period, in that awkward, stilted way when you still see each other in the hallways and still wonder whether or not you broke up because the other person thought you didn’t know how to kiss or because your boobs were too small.
“Oh, God, yeah, I know.” Megan’s words are accelerating. “I can’t tell you how many times I thought I was pregnant. Crying on the toilet because my period hadn’t come or because I’d forgotten to take a pill exactly on the dot—because you know, that’s what the stupid package warns you about—or because of whatever.” She stops to gather her breath. “And Jesus, I remember being so filled with goddamn fear because, well, what the hell do you do if you’re eighteen and pregnant or twenty and pregnant, and now, I’m twenty-eight, and I can’t get fucking pregnant, and then when I do, I lose the baby!”
I think she’s going to start crying, so I reach over to touch her hand, but instead, she peers up with a wistful smile.
“Jesus,” she says. “If I knew that it would be so hard to get pregnant, I’d have had a lot more sex.”
I snort out some coffee and nod.
I raise my mug. “To more sex,” I say, and startlingly, Mrs. Kwon, my dry cleaner, echoes in my ear.
“To more sex,” Meg replies, matching her mug to mine and clinking them together.
“And to a baby,” I say, fervently, feverishly hoping that this time, Meg is more blessed.
“To a baby,” she answers. “To babies for both of us. And to whatever those babies might bring.” She catches the panic in my eye. “Not now.” She smiles and waves a free hand. “But, you know, in the future. To the babies of our future.”
“I’ll drink to that,” I say. “To the babies of our future.”
I feel my chest tighten like a clamp’s been placed around my heart. Katie, I think. Katie. The baby of my future. What happens to Katie now that the future is nothing more than a foggy memory, one that might fade when the sun rises and the morning mist lifts?
Chapter Eight
There is a perpetual and bewildering sense of déjà vu when you desert the future and reinsert yourself into the past. Like a rat, spinning on its wheel, who keeps running by the same scenery over and over again, only each time, the scientist changes just enough of the backdrop so the rodent wonders if he’s merely imagining the sameness or if, indeed, everything is exactly as it’s always been.