Can I Get An Amen? (2 page)

Gary left that night with a bag he had taken the time to pack that morning. A bag that had been sitting in the trunk of his car all day, a bag that knew before I did that my husband was leaving me. I wondered who else knew.

I stayed up until three a.m., sitting in a dark room in front of my laptop, poring over the same familiar Web sites and confessional posts in which sad, childless women talked about their feelings of failure, both as women and as wives. But rather than camaraderie, I felt nothing but animosity and resentment that I shared their emotions.
Fuck you,
I thought.
I am nothing like you.
I pictured a group of middle-aged women with faces like balls of rising dough sitting on folding chairs in some dank church basement, wads of tissues stuffed into the pockets of their terry-cloth sweat suits.
I
had done everything right. We had started trying three years ago, when I was twenty-eight. I was healthy and educated and I was
supposed
to have children. I fell asleep that night just knowing Gary would come back. That we would somehow conceive. Or that he would change his mind about adoption.

The next day, when I heard the clatter of dishes echo through the vacant house as I emptied the dishwasher, I began to understand what had really transpired the night before. I drove to work with no recollection of how I got there; I simply found myself at my desk, clicking through e-mails and drinking a cup of cold coffee. Throughout the day, I waited and prayed and pleaded that my cell phone would ring, that I would hear Gary’s voice. And when I had to leave my office and face our home again, I held my breath as I turned onto our street, waiting to see him weeping on the porch with flowers in his hand. He would fall onto his knees and beg me to forgive him. It was only when I slipped my key into the lock and shoved open the front door, swollen from the
summer humidity, that it all began to seem real. It was then that I decided to call my mother.

Her heart broke for me in a way that only a mother’s can. It was a brief conversation. I told her that Gary was leaving, or rather that he had left, and I told her why. She wept and moaned and offered to drive up from New Jersey to stay with me. “No,” I said. “Please don’t, Mom.” I know that when I hung up, she got down on her hands and knees and begged God for his mercy. During those first few nights, when I felt the gash of loss most acutely, I crawled down from my bed, clasped my shaking hands together, and did the same.

“Did you feel at peace last night?” she asked, desperate to think that her prayers were answered, silently saying another that my response would be yes.

I took a deep, relief-less breath. “Yeah, Mom. I did.” It was a lie, but at least I was capable of showing mercy even if God was not.

“Oh, thank you, Jesus! I know how hard this is, Ellen. But this is just an opportunity to trust him. The Lord wants you to
trust
him.”

While my mother turned to God, my sister, Katherine, turned to her wellspring of anger and hostility, formed when she was young and wild and believed what boys told her. By the time I was ready to talk to her, I welcomed it.

“That motherfucker,” spat Kat. “That Gary-named, visor-wearing motherfucker.”

“I hated that visor.”

“I hope he marries some fat sow named Linda, and they spew out dozens of ADHD little freaks. I hope her vagina rips open during childbirth and for the rest of his life it feels like he is fucking a bowl of soup.”

I hoped for worse. I hoped for unspeakable things. But it was all directed at my faceless replacement, a woman with a farm-fresh reproductive system that churned out healthy, fertile eggs by the dozens. Because Gary would move on and move on quickly;
that
I knew. He was single-minded when he wanted something, a trait I used to find admirable but now saw as borderline ruthless. And he wanted to be a father, more than anything. More than me.

Fatherhood was part of the idealized future he had concocted for himself as he spent his adolescence behind his brother’s wheelchair, taking care of the two of them while his mother tried desperately to eke out a living. Gary had grown up in a working-class neighborhood outside of Boston, and his father had died suddenly of a heart attack when he was eleven, leaving the family, including his brother, whose body was captive to cerebral palsy, without life insurance or any real savings. Gary wheeled that chair through slushy streets during New England winters. He patched its tires and thwarted holes in the seat with duct tape.

We heard stories about families like this in church, and we prayed for them. We prayed that God would change their lives and that money and good health and comfort would flow to them in torrents. And then we went home and sat surrounded by our blessings. But Gary wanted to be the one to change their lives. He wasn’t waiting for prayers to be answered, and he wasn’t going to rely on the generosity of strangers. Gary was unfailingly devoted to his small, sad family, and
he
was going to be the one to pull them out of their shitty, gray little existence, with its chain-linked fences and one-bedroom apartments. His vision for the Reilly clan was straight out of Camelot. They were going to live like the Kennedys. His mother and brother would sit in comfortable, shaded chairs as he and his sons played touch football
on the lawn of their well-appointed home. His wife would bring out a tray of iced teas for everyone after the game, and he would regale them with stories from the courtroom, where he was a living legend. I had been cast in the role of the lovely wife. And I am sure he appraised me like a Thoroughbred horse breeder. He noted my thick, shiny brown hair, my good bones, and the blue eyes that I had inherited from my mother. My tall, slender frame would marry nicely with his thicker, mesomorphic body. It was a good match, despite one quiet little detail that was lying in wait.

To his credit, Gary was well on his way to achieving his idealized future. He had gone to a well-respected Boston-area college, thanks to a combination of financial aid and scholarships. And after taking a few years off to save and work and save, he entered law school. He took out student loans and lived like a pauper, and because he didn’t have a gray-haired father in a leather chair writing checks on his behalf, he had a ferocious ambition to succeed. But though he graduated near the top of his class and won a position with a well-known Boston firm, law school had left him with a hefty pile of debt, making more than two rounds of in vitro impossible, at least at present.

But he would soon find someone who would render that unnecessary. They would conceive without the aid of hospitals and drugs and procedures. Gary was a handsome, charming lawyer who wanted to find a woman to marry and have his children. He was a devoted son and brother and, to the right woman, I’m sure, husband. He wouldn’t be single for long.

When Gary finally did call, three days later, he was all business. He gave me cursory apologies and told me that he did love me, that he always would, but then he changed the subject to the delicate matter of our divorce. I nodded and mumbled and was too dazed and wounded to take an active role in my fate.

Within two weeks, we had put our house on the market, the house that we had purchased when we planned on starting a family. It was a sweet little cape within walking distance of the local elementary school in an affluent Boston suburb. We had planted blueberry bushes, picturing barefoot children running out in the summer to fill their fists and mouths. There was an oak tree in the front yard that had the sort of low, horizontal branches that little arms and legs could scramble right up. And it had four beautifully dormered bedrooms that we planned to fill. It became my secret, masochistic indulgence to give myself unfettered access to those memories. To close my office door or drive aimlessly, draining tanks of gas, and let myself live entirely in a future that never had a chance of existing. To imagine the life of a mother.

“You need to get yourself to church,” my mother urged, her faded southern accent always becoming more pronounced when imbued with emotion.

“I’m not going to church, Mom.” I was tired of this conversation, of her easy answer to everything.

“Church is where you go when facing these things, Ellen. That’s what churches are for.” I could imagine her emphatic gestures as she spoke, her gray bob bouncing with every exaggerated shake of the head. “They are there to help you get your eyes on the Lord when you’re broken.”

“So I sing songs and shake hands and tell my neighbor that God loves them; that’s going to help me in some way?”

My mother paused. “Don’t let this make you bitter, Ellen. Your creator has a plan for you. He knows your future.”

I rolled my eyes. “Church isn’t where I need to be right now, Mom.” Work was. Work was where I should be. It suddenly seemed so clear.

During those first few weeks, I threw myself into my job more ferociously than I had in years. There had been too many late arrivals due to doctors’ appointments, too many hours spent perusing fertility Web sites that all offered the same advice and encouragement. I was newly rededicated to my job and the timing was perfect. The small advertising agency where I worked was facing tough times as clients’ wallets tightened and the unemployment rate continued to climb. The recession had been the media’s singular focus for months, but it had been almost background noise to me, as I was on a relentless quest to conceive. Month after month I thought that this was the time it was going to take; this time I would get pregnant. Then I would ride out my three trimesters and have the baby, and my career would go on an extended hiatus.

I hadn’t told anyone at work that Gary and I had split up, so you really can’t blame them for the timing. When they laid me off, I took the news with absolutely no fluctuation of expression. I didn’t cry; I didn’t frown or smile. I sat stone-faced as my humorless boss ran through her boilerplate speech, about the economy and budgets and how it was all business, nothing personal. I nodded along, as if to hurry her up. Then I told her that I understood, got up, and left. I had simply run out of devastation.
Good decision,
she surely thought.
Less deadweight around here.

My relative composure was quickly replaced with monumental fits of self-pity. Oh, it was biblical, my plight! It was something straight out of the Old Testament. Left by my husband and relieved of my duties at work in the matter of a month. Surely no one had faced such tragedy! To ensure my cocoon of misery was impenetrable, I studiously avoided stories sadder than my own. I didn’t want to hear about the six-year-old boy who was about to
begin treatment, yet again, to rid his body of cancer. Or the single father of three who recently became a paraplegic. Perspective, whether delivered by my mother or by
People
magazine, was entirely unwelcome.

But our tragedies, no matter on which end of the spectrum they fall, often have a will of their own. And while I was myopically focused on my own recent blows to the gut, I had no idea that what I really needed to do was brace for the aftermath. Because it’s after you think the dust has settled that life really gets to have its way with you.

“J
ust look at it this way.” Luke grinned as he slammed shut the tailgate of my car. “At least you don’t ever have to worry about your thirty-one-year-old daughter moving back in with you.” I punched him in the stomach, which had a comforting layer of pudge despite his status as “single gay male.” Only my brother, Luke, could get away with making a joke about both my infertility and my imminent move to my parents’ house. Because only Luke would take three days off from work to help me pack up my things and make the drive back to New Jersey.

Of course it felt like another failure; I was joining the ranks of adult children living at home. Maybe if I had had more fight in me, I would have stayed. I would have found a new job, carved out a new life, joined a support group or two. But I have always favored flight. Even as a child, when mean-girl politics or shifting allegiances left me in the rotating role of outcast, I would run. I would fake sick or avoid recess or skip the party, because exile
that was at least quasi-self-imposed allowed me the illusion of being in control.

I had my excuses, too. Thanks to the sluggish real estate market, the house hadn’t sold, and the prospect of continuing to live there through the showings and open houses, with no job to escape to, seemed unbearable. Besides, “Vacated houses tend to move much faster,” said our real estate agent through her cloud of suffocating perfume. I didn’t know whether this was true or she just didn’t want the stench of divorce hanging in the air, with our walls of missing photos and half-empty closets. And with every visit from Gary, always made during the day when I was at work, our house had begun to look more and more like the carcass of a marriage.

I wasn’t bringing much with me just yet, mostly clothes, toiletries, those kinds of things. I had taken the time to pack some boxes with other personal effects but had stowed those away in the basement for now. So everything fit, though snugly, in my Volvo wagon. Luke, who had arrived by train, took on the role of driver and was kind enough not to delve too deeply into questions regarding my meeting with Gary the night before. In truth, there wasn’t much to tell. An encounter that had taken on momentous importance in my mind had turned out to be a depressingly quiet and uneventful affair, like a funeral with a poor turnout.

We met at a Starbucks, where he sat reading the
Boston
Globe
and sipping a coffee with Splenda and milk. I paused at the door, smoothed my sleeveless black wrap dress, and tucked my hair behind my ear. He stood when he saw me approach and gave me a long, tight hug. I hoped he could feel my pounding heart, my shaking body. I hoped that he understood what he was doing to me. I never thought I would feel so uncomfortable in the presence
of my husband. I told him that I was going to stay with my parents for a while, that I had been laid off.

“God,” he said, shaking his head, as if losing my job was what had just sent my life into a tailspin and his leaving me was nothing more than a bit of turbulence. Then he moved on to the business at hand, delicately reaching for the forms that needed my signature. “Formalities, as we discussed,” he mumbled. I signed blindly, reading nothing. When it was finished, he told me again that he loved me and that he would be in touch soon.