The Tempted Soul (14 page)

“Is that what the
Englisch
women are doing? The ones who all have babies to love?” Carrie demanded.

“The
Englisch
women and their babies have not made vows before God to submit to the
Ordnung
and His will.”

There was a point you couldn’t argue with.

“I heard him,” Amelia said. “I was there on Sunday, too, remember? When he said there was too much worldly thinking going on and he looked right at you.”

“But he hasn’t taken me aside and told me the
Ordnung
won’t allow it. And no letter has come from Mary, either.” Carrie stabbed her green square with the needle instead of working it gently up and down. “So I’m going to make an appointment with the doctor this week.”

“And what will you find out there,” Amelia said, “that she hasn’t already told you many times over the last ten years?”

“A different doctor. I’ll get a reference to a fertility doctor to talk about my options.”

Another silent glance. Really, why didn’t they just come out and say what they thought?

“What does Melvin say?” Amelia asked, her eyes on her stitching.

“After the first time, we haven’t spoken about it again. But I have hope that his mind will change if the bishop says a little word about it at Council Meeting.”

“It didn’t sound to me as though he will,” Amelia said. “I’d prepare myself for the opposite if I were you.”

“Even so, I’m still going to the fertility doctor. I wish I’d found out about this years ago. I could have had a baby by now.”

“Is that why you’re so set and determined?” Emma wanted to know. “Because you’re going to be thirty soon? There’s still time to wait on God.”

“Are you planning to have children with Grant?” Carrie fired back as though she were spiking a volleyball made of words.

“If that is God’s will—and I hope it is—then yes. I’m a little old to start, but look at Old Joe’s Sarah. She had her last when she was forty-two, and he was perfectly healthy.”

“Then you should understand, Emma,” Carrie said. “I’ve spent so many years waiting that I feel I’m running out of them.”

“I do understand. At least you had a husband while you were waiting. And trying.”

“But if it’s not God’s will for you, you still have Katie and Sarah and Zachary. I don’t have anything.”

“Except a husband who adores you,” Amelia reminded her. “And a home. These are blessings many women don’t have.”

“Like Esther Grohl.” Emma’s needle dipped and rose like a narrow boat on waves of green. “I feel very blessed, children of my own or not.”

They said they understood, but they didn’t. Not really. Much as she loved her friends, neither of them had this burning urgency under the breastbone, this wild hope that saw the light shining in the darkness and was running toward it at breakneck speed, despite the trees standing in the way.

She would go to that fertility doctor. She would find a way.

Even if her friends and her husband and her church were not willing to help her.

D
r. Neuhaus was a woman in her fifties who struck Carrie as being as comfortable in her own skin as she was in her white coat. Her own doctor had been happy to refer her to New Hope Fertility Center, which was not in New Hope, but a mile on the far side of Intercourse.

New Hope on the far side of Intercourse. Carrie resisted the urge to giggle.

The doctor who might just have the power to change her life settled into a chair in the consulting room and leafed through a folder. “Well, Mrs. Miller, your personal physician seems pretty convinced that you’re healthy, and the fact that you’re here tells me you’re committed.”

“Please,” Carrie said, “call me Carrie. We don’t use honorifics.”

“Carrie, then.” The doctor gazed at her. “I can’t say I’ve ever treated a member of the Amish church. I have two Amish neighbors, and I always got the impression that fertility treatment wasn’t…” She searched for the word, and Carrie supplied it.

“Approved?”

“Yes. Can you educate me a little on that?”

“Our folk believe that having children is a blessing from God.” She hesitated. This nice doctor was not going to judge her. She was here to get help, and Dr. Neuhaus was the one who could provide it. “And not having children is also the will of God.”

“But you don’t believe this?”

“I wouldn’t say that…I mean, I have believed it. But I think that if the
gut Gott
reveals something to you, it’s your duty to act on it. And I believe this is what has happened to me. I heard these ladies in a shop talking about IVF and it was like a whole new world opened up to me.”

“‘World’ being the operative word,” Dr. Neuhaus said. “I can guess that, along with electricity and cars, scientific technology of this nature is probably frowned upon.”

“Our
Ordnung
says nothing about it,” Carrie said cautiously. Surely this woman wouldn’t turn her away because she thought Carrie ought to be obedient?

“I imagine it probably doesn’t come up very much. Ah well. That’s none of my business. My business is babies, so let me stick to that. It says here that you’re married. What does your husband do?”

“He works at the pallet shop in Whinburg.”

“So he’s not farming, then. We’d want to ensure the best possible environment for you, Carrie, which includes following the protocols precisely, being available to come in at a moment’s notice, and having both of you engaged and committed to the process. Your husband must be as involved as you are—his support and willingness for the testing and labs is just as important as your ability to carry the child.”

She must choose her words carefully. “My husband is a faithful man. At the moment we are waiting for word from the bishop about whether we can do this.”

“And if you don’t get that word? Will your husband—”

“Melvin.”

“—will Melvin be coming in? He’ll need to be tested for sperm production and motility, and after that, we’ll need multiple samples from him for the actual IVF process.”

Oh dear. This was going to get awkward.

Dr. Neuhaus was silent, watching Carrie’s face. She turned a page in the folder and Carrie jumped at the snap of the paper.

“Carrie, does your husband even know that you’re here?”

She wanted to say yes, but she had never been able to lie. Her skin flushed hot, a flag of guilt that anyone could see from across the room. “N-no.”

“You realize that we must have his complete cooperation, don’t you? That it’s impossible to conceive using these methods unless your husband is willing and able to supply viable samples, preferably here under controlled conditions?”

“Yes.”

Dr. Neuhaus closed the folder. “Then I suggest that you go home and have a long talk with him. Then make another appointment, and I’ll go through the process with you.” She stood as though their appointment was at an end.

But it couldn’t be. She’d only just got here. “Please—wait.”

“Certainly.” The doctor settled back into the chair.

“What is the process after that? Please tell me.”

So the doctor told her. About the drugs she’d start on, and the ones that would need to be injected by needles in the stomach, and about egg maturation and ultrasounds and “extraction,” which was nothing more than sucking eggs out of tubes with more needles; and fertilizing them with yet more needles; and “implantation,” which was putting them back in.…

She showed pictures, too. Carrie felt a little sick. The books in the library must have been out of date. Or incomplete. Or something. How had she missed so many steps that had to do with needles? She couldn’t even watch when the vet had to give the horses a shot. She stayed in the house.

Don’t be a coward. You can do this. You want this. You’ve come this far. You can’t stop now.

“So you see, your husband is a vital part of this process. He’s your coach, your cheerleader, the person who drops everything to get you into the clinic every day when we’re monitoring the oocyte growth. Or in your case, the person who makes sure the car and driver are ready at a moment’s notice.”

“I can do that myself. There’s a phone shanty only a quarter mile away.”

The doctor took a breath, obviously changing her mind about her next words. “That’s not the point. The point is, this is something you do together. And there’s another thing,” the doctor said gently. “The church would have to approve the funding, wouldn’t they?”

She should never have come. This was what you got when you didn’t listen to your friends. You got to sit here and have facts flung at you—facts you hadn’t considered or wanted to consider. Facts that hurt just as badly as running face-first into an apple tree.

“We’re talking anywhere between fifteen and thirty thousand dollars, Carrie. Is the church prepared to give you that? And if not, do you have that amount or can you get it through a loan with a bank?”

“I didn’t know it would be that expensive,” she said faintly. It was all they could do to pay the mortgage and eat. With Melvin’s job at the pallet shop, she had just begun to feel safe in handing over money for a beef brisket or a pork shoulder once in a while. Even if the church did give them money, it would be a loan. One that would send them under.

“It’s certainly cheaper to do it the old-fashioned way,” the doctor said with the hint of a smile. “But for some, the old-fashioned way doesn’t work so well.” She gazed at her for a moment. “Go home and think about it. Talk to Melvin. And then we’ll talk some more.”

Carrie nodded and collected her purse, shawl, and away bonnet. She made sure she took everything she had come in with.

Because she would not be coming back again.

On the off Sunday before Emma’s wedding, Carrie wondered how Emma was dealing with the temptation to do just one tiny little wedding-related task on her day of rest. She hoped her friend could spend this quiet time with Lena—it would be her last before her new life began.

On off Sundays, she and Melvin usually spent the morning quietly, singing a hymn or two as they did the dishes, and then spending a little time with Scripture. Some people took their day of rest so seriously that a woman wouldn’t even turn her stove on, which meant she’d have to work twice as hard on Saturday to have three cold meals ready for the next day. However, the elders in Whinburg were sensible—and appreciated a good meal as much as anyone. If a person’s own convictions led them to keep the stove off, then that was their business, but such a thing had not been added to the
Ordnung
.

Neither had anything about having babies, from what she could tell. Next week, during the
Abstellung
, she would know for sure, but no letter from Mary Lapp was going to appear now. That meant either that the bishop was going to make a point of it as he went over the standards the people were to keep, or that what he’d said to her in front of Emma and the Esches was his final word on the subject.

Melvin sat at the kitchen table and opened the Bible. “Come and read to me,
Liebschdi
. Your voice turns these old words into poetry.”

She might be in the depths of despair, but who could help but smile at something like that? She settled opposite him and turned the book so she could read it. “I think the Psalms were written that way. Old Joe Yoder could read it and it would still sound the same.”

“Old Joe doesn’t read English. At least, not if it doesn’t have to do with crop prices and the weights of bags of grain.”

She looked down. “Oh, is this the English one?” They had two—one in
hoch Deutsch
and one in English.

He pointed to Psalm 113. “Here.”

Her voice only broke once, on the last line. She looked up. Was he trying to punish her? Had he found out somehow about her journey in the market wagon on Friday and this was his way of telling her?

“Carrie, don’t look at me like that.”

She closed the book. “How did you find out?”

His callused hands, which were reaching across the table, hitched. Then he took hers in both of his. “Find out what?”

“That I went to the fertility clinic on Friday.”

For a moment, the kitchen was so quiet she could hear the clock ticking over the door. “You did? And what did you learn there?”

So she told him. It was pointless, but she did it anyway, more to punish herself for having such hopes and being so foolish, than to give him information. The samples, the drugs, the needles, the cost—she told him everything.

“Thirty thousand dollars to have a baby?” He sat back, and her hands slid out of his. She folded them on top of the Bible.

“That’s just to conceive it. I think it might cost nine or ten to go to the hospital and have it.”

“I think our way is easier,” he said with a feeble attempt at humor. “As you say, the old-fashioned way.”

“I want you to know,” she said steadily, “that I’ve given up. Even if the bishop were to say the treatment is the next best thing to a Honda generator and everyone should have one, I wouldn’t do it. We have no way of coming up with that money short of selling the farm.”

“Which would not be wise. I suppose we could bring up our family in a buggy, but it would be cramped.”

His face was so gentle, his eyes so kind, that her own filled with tears. “I’m sorry I’ve put you through this. I know I’ve made you think that I think less of you somehow—that because we can’t have children that you’re less of a man and I’m a defective woman. But it’s not so. You’re far too good for me.”

“God does not create defective people,” he told her. “Every one can serve Him in their own way. Ours will just have to be as friends and neighbors, not as parents. Until God decides otherwise.”

“He won’t.”

“Don’t be so sure.” He reached under her hands and opened the Bible again, where a slip of ribbon lay between the pages to mark Psalm 113. “He has kept all these promises to us so far, Carrie. Look. We were poor and needy, and he raised us up with better work that I can do with joy and confidence. We live among princes—His chosen people. You are certainly keeping a home of our own instead of living in that buggy or in someone’s empty
Daadi Haus
. The only promise that He has left in this Psalm is to make you the joyful mother of children. Not a child, my dear one. Children. An abundance of them.”

She could point out that the Psalmist was probably not writing directly to her. But maybe that was not so. Maybe these words had been preserved in this book so that this morning, the last Sunday in October, she would read them to her husband and be reminded of how good God had been to them.

“I’ve been so selfish,” she whispered. “All these gifts. Emma is always telling me about the little gifts she sees everywhere, and I’ve taken even that for granted.” Her throat swelled. “I’m sorry, Melvin. I will put this away in God’s hands, where it belongs, and leave it there.”

“I will not stop praying,” he said, covering her hands on the fragile onionskin pages with his warm ones. “And neither will you.”

“But I will stop plaguing everyone with my wild ideas.”

“Don’t give up hope. God will provide. You’ll see.”

She nodded. This morning, in her kitchen, sitting across from the man she really would live in a buggy with, if it came down to that, it was almost possible to believe.

Almost.