Leaving Haven (13 page)

“I want to focus on what we have,” Georgia had said, “and this feels like obsessing over what we don't have.”

And John had leaned forward and lifted one of her hands to his lips and said, “I love you, Georgia.” And she had thought,
Maybe this
is
enough, the three of us
.

But the truth was, it wasn't enough. Not for her. Not yet.
Why?
Her eyes welled with tears, and she brushed them away with a floury hand. She poured a ladleful of batter onto the waffle iron and tried not to think about it.

She had eaten two waffles by the time John wandered in at nine thirty in jeans and a T-shirt, barefoot, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“I made waffles,” Georgia said.

“I can see that,” John said, looking around at the carton of eggs with the broken shells inside, the mixing bowls, the pool of spilled batter on the counter that had started to get crusty around the edges.
Here we go,
she thought.

When she baked, Georgia got so immersed in the process— the delight of mixing things, the rhythm of technique (so critical for things like biscuits and puddings and, yes, waffles)—that she was oblivious to her surroundings. Sometimes after sliding something into the oven she would straighten up and be stunned at the mess that surrounded her, the pools of melted butter on the counter, the dusting of flour on the floor, the spatters of batter on the white tile backsplash. It drove John crazy. John preferred to clean as he cooked, putting spices back into their alphabetical spots on the rack, sliding the extra chopped onion into a ziplock bag, wiping down the counters with a clean dishcloth. In every other area of his life John tolerated a high level of disarray and chaos, but his kitchen was always neat and orderly.

“How can you cook in the middle of this kind of mess?” he had said to her more than once.

“I don't see it,” she said. “I'm just thinking about what I'm doing at that moment. Cooking is very meditative for me.”

“Cooking in this kind of mess is like having a splinter in my skull for me,” he said.

When they'd first gotten involved all those years ago in Albany, John had found her messiness charming. “I figured that any woman who could let go in the kitchen the way you did probably could let go in bed,” John had told her once. “And I was right.” And he had grinned that sexy grin at her and she had been delighted. But now—it was one of those things that happened after you'd been married for a long time—the traits that once seemed cute and endearing became annoying, like a soft, silky cloth rubbed against your skin over and over and over until it began to chafe and burn and drive you mad.

Georgia sighed. “I'll clean up the mess,” she said. She paused. “Chessy's pregnant.” She hadn't had time to tell him last night.

John looked suddenly wide awake. “
Chessy?
Who's the father?”

“This guy Ezra she's been seeing. He sounds like a good guy, but I haven't even
met
him.”

“Wow,” John said. “She's going to be a trip as a mother.”

A mother
. With those words, something about the finality of it all (and, truth be told, the unfairness of it all) hit her. Chessy was going to have a baby and Georgia wasn't and that was that. Her longing overwhelmed her.

“I want another baby,” Georgia said. “I know we said we'd stop trying, but I'm not ready to give it up. I'm sorry. And my doctor said donor eggs were our best bet now that I'm over forty and I was going to ask Chessy—”

John's eyebrows shot up.

“—because Polly can't and I know you have a thing about using a ‘stranger's' eggs, and now Chessy is pregnant and I'm happy for her,
I am,
but I'm also jealous. I was
meant
to have another child.”

Georgia had vivid memories of her own mother, Evy, sitting at the kitchen table with her and Polly, ages six and four, constructing fairy houses out of twigs and bark and moss and pebbles and Popsicle sticks, telling them stories about how quick the fairies could fly, how sometimes you could catch them sleeping and see them curled up on leaves in the garden, or see the shimmery fairy dust they left behind. She could see Evy in her favorite pink skirt and knee-high white boots, dancing with Polly in the kitchen to that song from
The Jungle Book,
shaking her butt like Baloo the big bear. She remembered waking up one morning from a restless sleep, with a headache and sore throat, to find Evy asleep on the floor next to her bed, where she had been all night until Georgia's fever had broken.

No, one child wasn't enough. Georgia owed it to Evy to mother some more.

John sighed. “I need coffee,” he said. He walked over and poured himself a full mug. Georgia waited while he rooted through the refrigerator for cream and looked for a spoon and searched for the sugar, which was out on the counter where she'd put it while mixing up the waffles and not in its proper place on the third shelf of the pantry.

“You would have had a hard time convincing me to raise a kid with Chessy's DNA,” he said at last.

“That's not really the point.” Georgia sat down in one of the cane-backed chairs at the kitchen table and looked up at him. “Would you try once more with a donor egg?”

John leaned back against the counter and cradled his mug in both hands. He let out his breath in a long, slow exhalation and looked at the floor. “I don't know.” He raised his eyes to her face. “Eggs from a stranger feel like too much of a crapshoot.”

“Our odds would be really—”

“Georgia.” His voice was gentle. “I don't think so. We've done this whole fertility thing. I thought a bigger family would be fun, and I didn't want Liza to be an only child. And yeah, sure, I wanted a son. But not a son that's not really
ours
.”

The baby of her dreams and daydreams vanished, poof! Gone. Georgia's arms felt empty, as though she had dropped something she had been carrying for so long it had become a part of her, another limb.

“Well,” she said, her voice dry. “That's it then.”

“We've got a good life.”

“I know.”

He came over and squeezed her shoulder, bent to kiss the top of her head.

“You'll be busy enough being a mother to Chessy's baby. She's the least maternal person I've ever met.”

This was not comforting in any way, but Georgia decided not to point that out.

A knock on the front door interrupted them, followed by the sound of the door being pushed open, and Alice's voice. “Georgia?”

“In the kitchen,” Georgia called out. She looked up at John. “I guess there's nothing more to say about it.”

“Say about what?” Alice said. She walked in in her workout gear—black yoga pants, a V-neck green T-shirt, a pink hoodie—and yet managed to look as fresh and polished as if she'd just come from giving a presentation on the economic crisis facing the European Union or something.

“Nothing,” John said. “You want a waffle?”

Georgia could see Alice's eyes take in John's tousled hair, the day-old stubble of dark beard on his chin, the red crease on his cheek where his face had been pressed against the pillow. Georgia had never seen Duncan look even remotely disheveled, and was pretty sure Alice had never seen Duncan look disheveled, either.

“Thanks,” Alice said. “I already ate.”

“That doesn't mean you can't indulge in a waffle,” John said. He knew Alice rarely ate anything involving white flour or sugar and loved to tease her about it. In private he told Georgia that he pitied Duncan because any woman who wouldn't let herself enjoy what was bad for her probably wasn't much fun in bed. Georgia had taken this as a compliment, since she herself had made a career out of preparing and eating food involving white flour and white sugar.

“Thanks anyway,” Alice said. “But I'm not hungry. I had a big bowl of oatmeal.”

“Of course you did,” John said. “With heart-healthy walnuts? And antioxidant-laden blueberries? And hemp milk?”

“Yes,” Alice said. “And then I did fifty push-ups. Want to arm wrestle?” Her voice was light but her biceps were rock hard. Georgia thought it was possible, maybe not likely but at least
possible,
that Alice could beat John arm wrestling.

Georgia wished John wouldn't be so prickly. He didn't get along with Chessy, he had a kind of armed neutrality with Polly, and he loved to needle Alice. Alice, though, didn't seem to care. Her mind was as quick and agile as her body, and more than once she had zinged him into silence. One time he had teased Alice, then president of the PTA, about referring to the school year as a “roller-coaster ride” in the PTA newsletter. “As an esteemed college professor I thought you'd have evolved beyond the use of clichés in your writing,” John had said.

“Not me,” Alice had said, arching one eyebrow at him. “You'll have to pry my clichés out of my cold, dead hands.”

Now Alice turned to Georgia. “Are we still going to walk?”

“Oh, God. I forgot.” Georgia sat for a minute and contemplated whether or not she really had it in her to go for a walk with Alice, who strode so fast on those long legs of hers that Georgia always felt like a dachshund scurrying along after a greyhound.

“I didn't sleep very well,” Georgia said.

“A walk will make you feel better,” Alice said.

Georgia thought of the second waffle she had just eaten. “Okay.”

Half an hour later they were on the path that ran on top of the rocky cliffs above the Great Falls of the Potomac. After the first five minutes Georgia felt breathless and wished they could walk just a little bit slower, but she was happy to be out, with the warm May sun slicing through the trees overhead, the fringe trees in bloom sprouting up from crevices in the rocks, the endless rushing of the falls murmuring in the background.

“So what's up?” Alice said, turning her head to look at Georgia as they walked. “It's not like you to spend a twenty-minute car ride gazing out the window in silence.”

“Chessy is pregnant,” Georgia said.

Alice came to a dead halt. “Seriously?”

Georgia nodded, happy for the rest, however brief.

“Oh, Georgia.”

Alice's face was so full of sympathy that Georgia started walking again, because she didn't want to cry.

“And she's going to keep the baby?”

Georgia nodded. “Ez—the father is this guy Ezra she's been seeing—wants to marry her. Chessy says she's not ready to get married, but they're going to move in together next month and start saving as much money as they can. Chessy thinks she'll still be able to do her Pickup Chicks business once the baby arrives.”

Alice smiled a knowing smile. “Right. Because it's so easy to haul furniture and drive all over town with a newborn.”

“I'll help her as much as I can.”

“Won't it break your heart?”

“Yes.”

“You could still use a donor egg.”

“Except my husband doesn't want to.”

“Did you ask him?”

Georgia ducked to avoid a branch and stopped and turned to hold the branch back so it wouldn't slap Alice. “I asked him,” she said. “And the answer was no.”

Alice stood still on the path. All at once Georgia knew she was going to cry and turned and headed off down the path at a pace that would have matched Alice's stride for stride.

“Georgia, wait!”

Tears rose in her throat and Georgia kept walking. She heard footsteps behind her, felt Alice's arm grasp her elbow.

“Hey.” Alice pulled her to a halt, looked into her eyes. “You are the best friend I've ever had, and the best mother I've ever known. But even you have to be aware that wanting this baby is starting to seem”—Alice looked around her, at the sun-dappled forest, the dun-colored rocks—“like kind of an obsession. Are you really not ready to give this up?”

Georgia wished she could help Alice—or Polly or John or Chessy—understand. But it wasn't an explaining kind of thing. She shook her head. Georgia could feel the longing emanate from her skin. Sometimes she felt her sorrow and desire on her face as visible as if the words
I want a baby
were tattooed across her forehead.

“I'll give you my eggs,” Alice said. It came out of her all at once, like a breath she had been holding in and holding in and had to release.

“What?”

“I'll give you my eggs.”

Alice never ever said anything unless she meant it, as Georgia well knew. Alice also never said anything—anything important—without thinking it through first. For Alice to offer this meant Alice had been thinking about it and had talked it over with Duncan and had researched it online and with her own doctor and had likely even discussed it with Wren's pediatrician, to assess how such a thing might affect Wren. The words “I'll give you my eggs” from Alice's lips were as real and true as the bright blue sky above them, the granite beneath their feet.

“I don't know what to say,” Georgia said. She sat down on one of the boulders at the side of the path.

Alice stood opposite her. “I mean it.”

“I know you do.”

“We look enough alike.”

This was true. She and Alice both had brown hair (although Alice's was lighter than Georgia's) and faces that were similar in shape (oval, not too round, and not square like John's), and light eyes, although Alice's were a definite blue and Georgia's were green. And Georgia would have killed for Alice's long, thick eyelashes. More than once, people had assumed she and Alice were sisters because of their dark hair and blue-green eyes, even though Alice was a good six or seven inches taller.

“I know you need to think about it, and to talk to John.” Alice's voice was calm. “I've already talked to Duncan, and my doctor. And I—we—want to do this for you.”