One

Because it was almost 100 degrees outside, the sky a thin, pale blue, the grass on the hills almost waist high, dry, and blowing wild in the hot breeze, Dr. Browne’s office was freezing, the nurses cranking up the air conditioner enough that Avery Tacconi’s toes were a deep red, almost purple. Under her cotton gown, she shivered, rubbing her thighs together for warmth, wishing Dr. Browne would come in and get this over with. She already knew the answer, anyway. It didn’t take an MD to tell her she wasn’t pregnant, again. Anyone with an 8th-grade education or an IQ over 100 could do that. So why, she wondered, was her heart thrumming?

Earlier in the waiting room with the other women, she’d smiled as she listened to their pregnant conversation, nodded when one woman said, "I won’t shop anywhere but I Bambini. I just love their furniture. And the clothes! All from Europe. I’ve gone crazy there in the last weeks." The woman rubbed her nine-month stomach with satisfaction. Avery could see the beak of the woman’s distended belly button through her expensive Pea-in-the-Pod outfit. She wondered about the wisdom of having an infertility specialist sharing office space with traditional Ob/Gyn’s, but she knew that very rounded, full, awkward body was exactly what she wanted. In fact, that’s precisely what she had written out for herself way back in high school, the schedule like this: Finish college at age twenty-two (at the same time deciding upon the man she would marry), find great job by twenty-two and a half, get married by twenty-five, establish her reputation at her job, get pregnant at twenty-seven, quit said fabulous career, have baby. A perfect, healthy baby, preferably a boy first, a girl for the second baby at the end of her twenty-eighth year. The only things missing from her careful line were the pregnancy and the baby, the time order all messed up because even though she was twenty-eight and Dan’s count was high, his sperm mobile and perfectly shaped—those tiny tadpoles swinging their tails and scurrying around just as they should—she hadn’t conceived, not once in two years, not even with the new treatment, the intrauterine insemination, IUI, something she’d never believed she’d have to do.

Everything was off, ruined, because here she was at twenty-eight, no career anymore, no baby one nor baby two, her whole future jumbled into a mess she couldn’t even begin to forecast.

Now, sitting on the table, shivering, she wished Dr. Browne would come in and tell her the home pregnancy kit had been wrong! It was a miracle! Here was the real, true result right now. He would wave a paper in front of her, and then find the heartbeat for her, the crackly echo loud in the small room. Avery knew this is what would happen because she’d watched all every episode of Labor and Delivery, Maternity Ward, and Baby Story on The Learning Channel. Her eyes widened and watered when she heard other women’s babies’ heartbeats and saw with them the first sonograms, the babies all black fish eyes and veins swimming in the dark uterine sack. Sometimes at night when she lay awake next to her husband Dan, listening to him sleep, she imagined she felt a flash, the flip of life in her womb. But it always turned out to be gas or bloating or the flu. But Avery could imagine it; she knew what it would be like.

"Avery," Dr. Browne said, knocking on the slightly open door and then pushing in. "Here you are."

"Back again." She felt her smile spread fake across her face. Where else would she be? Running down the street in her gown? Breathing in quickly, she resisted the urge to jump down onto the freezing floor and grab him by the shoulders, ask him, "When? When is it my turn? I did everything I was supposed to do. I’ve waited. I’ve done everything right. I’ve taken the Clomid. I’ve come in for all the blood tests. I’ve made sure Dan gave a great sperm specimen, four full days of sperm every single time. Just like you said."

Dr. Browne smiled back at her, putting her thick file on the counter, looking at the last page. "Okay. Let’s just take a quick look. Mary?" he called out to the hall. Mary, Dr. Browne’s nurse, walked in, nodded, put on a pair of rubber gloves.

Avery assumed the position she’d taken for over two years, the familiar leg spread, putting her feet on stirrups that were covered in cute, hand knit maroon socks. Her cold toes almost matched the socks, and she found it hard to relax against Dr. Browne’s gloved fingers and then the warmed speculum. Crank, crank, crank, and she closed her eyes, wishing he could feel that she’d changed, that her uterus was somehow full with a baby. But he found nothing because crank, crank, crank, and he pulled the speculum out, dumped it in the sink, slipped off his gloves.

"Well, you aren’t pregnant. And Mary, we don’t need to do the ultrasound today."

You are a real rocket scientist, she thought, taking it back right away. She liked him. She wanted to become the kind of woman who wouldn’t want to snap back, a woman who could relax into his open smile without sarcasm and impatience. Avery wanted his good humor, his pleasant smile to infect her, make her body ripe for a baby. Before she and Dan had even begun trying to get pregnant, she’d listened carefully to the women at the Oakmont Fitness Club locker room, one saying, "One visit to Dr. Browne, and I was pregnant. He’s amazing. Got that magic touch. He says the exact, right thing every time."

Avery scooted up, as if the magic words would fall from his lips and slip up inside her. The paper below her crackled, and she pulled the gown down to her knees. "I know. I thought maybe. I was a couple days late."

"Thanks, Mary," he said, and Mary walked out of the office, closing the door behind her.

He wrote something on her file and then looked at her, his eyes brown and understanding, as only someone with four children can be. Brandon, Austin, Haley, and Madison Browne decorated every exam room, photos of birthdays, soccer matches, first days of school in the hand-decorated frames (shells, buttons, cracked marbles, dried pasta) Mrs. Browne made for the office.

When Avery told her best friend and neighbor Valerie about the kids and the photos, Valerie shook her head, saying, "One of the reasons people have children in the first place is just to name them." Avery had laughed, but didn’t bring it up later when Valerie read every baby book on the bookstore shelf before picking out the name Tomas Victor, her husband Luis’ father’s and uncle’s names.

"We’ve talked about this before, Avery," Dr. Browne said. "You are so young. I know it seems like a long time, but two years isn’t out of the ballpark. We’ve done seven rounds of the IUI because you’ve been very persistent. If it were totally up to me, I’d have had you do it the old fashioned way for a bit longer. Recent research has shown that those who don’t conceive in the first year of trying will conceive in the second. That’s still your ballpark. I’m not saying we should stop. In fact, we’ll do one more month of the IUI, and if we don’t have the result we want, I’ll suggest moving forward."

Avery nodded. That’s what she wanted, In-Vitro. The real thing, not IUI. Dan called IUI "spin and shoot." The day after Avery injected herself with HcG to induce ovulation, she and Dan would drive down to the clinic in the afternoon, Dan taking a magazine into the small "collection" room. After handing over his sample to the nurse, his sperm was spun in a centrifuge to wash and concentrate it, and then it was injected directly into Avery’s uterus through a catheter, her pumped-up eggs enhanced and activated and sailing down the fallopian tube. At three thousand a round, it wasn’t even half as expensive as in vitro fertilization, but she didn’t know how many more rounds she could handle, her PMS so intense, she found herself weeping on the couch while watching Desires because Pedro left Alma due to the affair he thought she’d had but hadn’t. And Avery didn’t even watch soap operas.

"I want to keep trying. I think it will work," she said. "I want it to work. It has to."

"Avery. You’re a young woman. My wife had Madison when she was 42. Anyway, talk to Mary on your way out and we will get you scheduled for the next round. Take care. And think about that accupuncture clinic I told you about. Some of my patients swear by it."

He smiled and left the exam room. Avery stood up and took off her gown, folding it into a neat square and laying it on the table. So what his wife had a baby at forty-two. She wasn’t forty-two when she’d begun popping out those four kids. Mrs. Browne’s gears were greased and ready to roll.

As she slipped on her blouse, she looked in the mirror next to Dr. Browne’s desk. He was absolutely right. She was a young woman, only twenty-eight, her breasts still firm, her stomach flat, her thighs cold in this freezing room because they didn’t touch, hadn’t since she was 13 and gone on her first and only diet. Compared to the women in the waiting room, with their huge breasts strapped in nursing bras, their hair straight and dark from coursing hormones, their feet widened by the same, she was perfect. A six 6, sometimes 4. She could walk into Nordstrom and put on anything and it would look good, the saleswomen sometimes actually waiting for Avery to come out and show Valerie how a dress or skirt looked. She had her hair cut every five weeks to the day by Richard at Anthony’s, her feet and nails done every two weeks by Nanette, her skin massaged and buffed by Laura once a month at Oakmont.

But as she zipped her jeans and slipped on her loafers, she thought, so what? What did all that matter when her body wouldn’t do what she wanted it to do the most? So what if she could make every limb lean and tan and firm? So what if she could workout on the Stairmaster for fifty minutes and then do her weight reps? What did any of that matter when it took Clomid or gonadotropin injections to push perfect eggs down her fallopian tubes at the exact minute? When her egg wouldn’t take in the one thing that would make her life just right?

Avery’s body felt like an engine that had never been jump started, no gears lubed, nothing moving there, not even when the hormones were pumping in her system. And after Dan’s sperm passed the semen analysis with flying colors, she had no one to blame put herself. Her body just didn’t work right.

Out by the nurses’ station, Mary patted her hand. "Honey, you don’t know what I’ve seen in this office"

Avery leaned on the counter, her breath in her throat. "Yeah?"

"Oh, yeah. People try for years and years. We’re talking cycles and cycles of IVF. We’re talking they finally give up and go to China and adopt a baby girl. You, honey, have so much time."

Avery pushed back and pressed her lips together, not wanting to say what she knew about time. Whatever she’d wanted before—a degree, a husband, a house, a job—had been hers to get. If she needed to pass a class, she studied all night; if she wanted Dan, she smiled and then ignored him until he came over and sat by her at Peet’s, buying her a double latte, walking her home to her dorm room. She’d worked on her resume until PeopleWorks hired her to help oversee their sales division, a group of almost fifty people. And for the three years, they sold computer systems to businesses all over the country, Avery traveling to St. Louis and Dallas and Chicago almost every month. Coming home to Dan was almost like a vacation. And then when she realized the baby thing wasn’t going to happen if she missed sex nights because she was at the Hilton in Newark or the Ritz Carlton in Manhattan, she quit. The moment of her realization, she called her boss Brody and said, "I want to give you two weeks, but I want to quite now. Tomorrow. I’m going to have this baby or else." She didn’t go further, telling him she wanted to stay at home focus on ovulation and mucous, taking her temperature and checking her discharge for egg-white consistency. Whatever it was, Avery did what she needed to do get things to happen, to be right. To be perfect. And this wasn’t. Not in the least.

"I know," she said, wanting Mary to like her, too. "I do have a lot of time."

"I’ll let you know when it’s time to start worrying. I promise." Mary nodded. "I never lie."

Avery smiled and nodded. "Thanks."

"So here’s your next appointment. You know the drill. Remind your husband of the rules. No hanky panky for at least a couple of days before. The more the merrier!"

Taking the sheet and thanking Mary, she left the office, trying not to notice the women in the waiting room, ripe and round and ready to pop. Babies. Everywhere she looked. At the Oakmont café, at Safeway and Andronico’s in the produce aisles, in her neighborhood in strollers. And three months ago, Valerie had had Tomas. One month of trying, and boom, Valerie was pregnant. Just like that. Nine months to the date, Tomas was born at home with a midwife, Avery holding Valerie’s hand. Tomas was her godchild—both she and Dan held him as the priest dotted his head with water—and she knew she should be happier, but sometimes, all the time really, she swallowed down her jealousy, a lumpy, green lozenge.

In the parking lot, Avery put on her sunglasses and kept her eyes on her black Land Rover, wanting nothing but the blast of cold air, her radio, the ride home to help her forget she wasn’t pregnant. In a world of pregnant women, she wasn’t one of them.

Because the city was working on the sewer system that never seemed to be in the right state of repair, ever—each summer in Monte Veda a series of stops and starts, orange cones, and hot, bored flag people—Avery idled behind a cement truck. Tiny pellets of cement hit her windshield, and every so often she turned on the windshield wipers and flicked them off, a fan of white dust floating heavy past the driver’s side window.

An au pair—Swedish probably, tall, blonde, blue eyes, a tattoo around her ankle and one on her shoulder—pushed a stroller down an intersecting street, and Avery sighed. She knew what it would be like to have a baby, maybe two, Clomid giving her everything she wanted at once. She could almost feel herself fuller and softer, her breasts full of milk, her thighs and stomach fleshy from pregnancy. The babies would curl in her arms as they all lay on the bed, Dan in the kitchen cleaning up or making something for dinner. The bedroom would be awash with light, and so would Avery’s heart. The nursery would be filled with plush toys and blankets and presents from all the grandparents, everyone finally brought together because of the children. Avery wouldn’t care if the house was dirty or if she might never lose the twenty pounds around her middle. She wouldn’t care that she’d drifted away from technology and business and her now too- small St. Johns suits. And in the days and months that would follow, her hours would be filled with walks with Valerie and Tomas, play-dates at Monte Veda Park, Mommy-and-Me classes at the community center. Each night, she would sit around a table with her husband and children, everything conspiring to keep them together, keep them happy, exactly as she had planned on a piece of binder paper when she was thirteen, positive she could live a life better than her parents.

This was the family she was meant to have, the real family she would remember. Not her own. Not the way it had been after her father had died, and Isabel sank into depression, reading all day, stumbling out in the afternoon to defrost a frozen Stouffer’s meat lasagna and to toss an iceberg lettuce salad. Avery’s babies would never have to worry that the bills weren’t paid; they would never have to wonder if someone called about the broken furnace or the leaky roof. They would never have to empty buckets collected from the living room during a winter storm because someone forgot to call the roofer. Her babies, her children, would never sit around a dining room table as she, Loren, and Mara had, wondering if their mother had bought any Christmas presents.

Yes, her mother had snapped out of it, slowly, but totally, two years later humming back into life as if their father hadn’t even been alive much less died from stomach cancer. Grief had sunk the house, dragging them through dark waters, but once her mother emerged from her room, no one was allowed to mention that time, as if one word would capsize them all again.

As the truck lurched, backed up a bit, and then pulled forward, Avery started the car and followed the cement truck slowly down the street, passing the sweating flag woman, who stared at her watch, a staticky walkie-talkie blaring from her work belt. From habit, Avery began to think, that’s what happens when you don’t go to college, but she cut herself off. She’d read the books on mindfulness and forgiveness and karma. Even if she didn’t really believe any of the theories, she needed to practice being the person who could actually become pregnant. A person who deserved it.

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"Mom. Mom! I told you I’d call you."

Avery took off her sunglasses and put her Prada purse on the granite kitchen counter. She’d barely stepped into the house to hear the phone ringing.

"I had to know. I figured that your appointment was over at 2.30, so I timed it just right, didn’t I?"

"Yes, Mom." Avery opened the fridge and took out Calistoga water, cradling the phone between her cheek and shoulder as she opened it. It was so hot. She wanted nothing more than to hang up the phone, and go outside to the pool, sitting in the shallow end until she needed to get dinner ready.

"So?"

"I told you it wouldn’t be good news. I already knew."

"But I thought maybe . . ." Even though Avery herself had hoped for the same thing, she was irritated, grinding her teeth as she listened to her mother go on. "You’ve just been through so much, sweetie. All those shots and blood tests and ultrasounds. I just want you to get the news you need."

"Listen, I would have called you from the Dr. Browne’s if I had something worth telling. You know that. I’m sorry."

Isabel gasped. "Don’t be sorry. I’m not sorry. I know you’ll get pregnant. Look how long it took your sister to get pregnant!"

"Oh, Jesus, Mom! Do you have to bring up Loren every time?"

Her mother was silent, and Avery could almost hear Isabel biting on her lower lip to keep more words from spilling out. "I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean that. It’s just that Loren has three kids. I don’t really want to hear about her all the time."

Isabel sighed. "I know. But we’re related. We’re women in the same family. You have to remember how hard it was for her."

Avery nodded. Loren had tried for almost three years before conceiving Sammy. And then in three years had two more, Jaden, and Dakota. But now Avery was as old as Loren had been with Jaden. It was time. It was her time.

"I don’t think Mara will ever have children, so you are next." Mara lived in Philadelphia in a nine thousand square foot house with her architect husband. She was a pathologist, cutting up who-knew-what for a living. Once when Mara was in medical school, she brought home a book about sliced up body parts, even a brain and a penis. Avery couldn’t sleep the night after she’d flipped through the entire book, unable to tear her eyes away from the glossy, cross-sectioned flesh. For days, the pictures popped up in her mind, the red and tan pieces of a human body. Mara had just laughed, saying, "God. Just don’t think about it. Let it go." Even now, Avery shivered.

"I know, Mom. But you’re not . . . it doesn’t help when you call me all the time. I’m worried enough. This whole thing is driving me crazy. It’s like—it’s like this is all I am. All I’ve become. An egg. A broken egg."

"You’re not broken. You’re the most put-together girl I’ve ever known. Look how you put yourself through school! This is just a minor setback for you, sweetie. I know about those."

For a moment, the quiet dark years pressed against Avery’s throat, and she wanted to ask, "Do you miss him?" But she didn’t, the rules still in place.

"Listen, Mom, Valerie, Luis, and Tomas are coming over for dinner, so I’ve got to get things ready. I’ll see you on the Fourth."

"Should I bring anything?"

Every Fourth of July, the entire neighborhood closed off the cul-de-sac, hauled out their gas grills, and then lit illegal fireworks in the center of the court, while they waited for the sanctioned Monte Veda Fire Department’s yearly fireworks display. The women made pesto and grilled eggplant and lentil and walnut salads. The men stood over the BBQs and grilled salmon and chicken breasts and sometimes abalone or oysters. One grill continuously spun out hot dogs and hamburgers for the kids, who in the gathering of adults, felt safe to eat everything and run over everyone’s perennials and feed the pets Fritos and water melon. Each year they’ve lived there, Avery always warded off her mother’s gross green Jell-O salad with cottage cheese, saying, as she did now, "Oh, Mom. We’ve got so much. Just come and we’ll have a good time."

"That’s what you say every year. One year, I’m just going to bring my salad. You know, the one your father loved so much?"

Avery smiled, knowing that her father had hated the salad, but he’d loved Isabel, so with each bite, he’d said, "Delicious. This is my favorite."

"You are our guest, Mom. Just come."

Isabel sighed. Avery imagined her curling the cord of her old rotary dial phone around her finger. "All right. But you call me before if anything happens. You know."

"Yes, Mom. I’ll call. Got to go." Avery hung up, knowing that nothing was going to happen. Not this month. Not for awhile.

Tomas was asleep in Avery’s arms, Valerie eating as if it were her last meal. In fact, her best friend’s face looked too thin, Tomas sucking every last bit of fat out of her. "I had my cholesterol checked," Valerie had told her last week. "And it was 118. 118! My doctor wondered how I was still alive."

Avery looked down at Tomas, the milk-drinker, her godchild, his beautiful brown face so sweet in sleep, his eyelashes long and black, his hair a fuzz of darkness.

"I am so hungry," Valerie said, scooping up the last of the lasagna on her plate and then serving herself another square.

"I can see that, amor," Luis said. "Hey, why don’t I just slide the dish in front of you?"

"Watch it, Luis," Dan said, winking at Avery. "You’re on dangerous ground." Dan smiled, his eyes dark with laughter. When they were first going out back at Cal, she warned him, "Don’t ever say the word ‘fine.’ Don’t say, ‘It’s all right.’ Don’t talk about thighs or weight or hair."

Luis nodded. "I know it, man." But Valerie didn’t blink, cutting at the lasagna, flipping her long red hair behind her shoulder when it got in the way of her fork. Avery knew Luis wouldn’t care what size Valerie was, large, huge, tiny; he loved her in a way she’d never seen, his eyes always on her, appreciative, glowing. After Tomas was born, he sobbed as he cut the umbilical cord, saying, "Dios mio," and other Catholic Spanish sayings Avery and Dan couldn’t catch. To Luis, Valerie was a queen, La Reyna, as he called her. In a different way, Avery knew how he felt, but towards Dan. While she picked on him and teased him and felt he was her equal, she knew that he would protect her, take care of her, love her. Sometimes at night, she wondered what she gave him, what he truly loved. Was it that she was beautiful? That she could earn a living? That she could cook? But then he would through a heavy, sleepy arm across her and pull her close, and she would forget to figure out what their marriage was all about, safe in the warmth of her husband’s flesh.

Tomas made a small cry and stretched out an arm, turning a bit in Avery’s arms. She bent her head down and breathed him in. She knew her own baby would be as sweet, and wonderful as him. Sometimes, when she watched Tomas, while Valerie took a long, soaking bath or went to the grocery store, she imagined that he was hers. When Valerie walked in the house, she almost had to shake herself into the real world. Her nursery was empty. For now.

"So what did the doctor say? Did you ask him about the herbs?" Valerie asked, finally pushing her plate away. "Luis’s cousin Rosalinda swears by them."

"I didn’t ask. I forgot. But he wants me to do acupuncture."

"That’s crazy stuff, man," Luis said. "The Chinese say our body is all connected by electrical currents, which is true. But to stick needles in them to activate . . . what is it? The chi? And a teacher at my school, she told me about cupping. They light a match in a cup and extinguish all the air and stick them on your back. To pull out the ‘bad humors’ or something. It’s superstition." Luis taught high school science at Las Palomas High School, and whether it was a cow’s eye or a frog or a twenty-five pound feral cat that his students had to dissect, it was straight-forward and clear, muscles and nerves and flesh in understandable, clear systems.

"Don’t get me started on superstition. Every time we leave on a trip, you are genuflecting all over the place. Kissing your Saint Christopher and whatnot. How can that be scientific?" Valerie smiled and patted Luis’ shoulder. "There are things we just don’t know about, and getting pregnant is sometimes one of them."

Dan nodded. "I know. One of the administrative assistants at work adopted a baby, not knowing that she was actually four months pregnant. She’d been trying for years, and then she and her husband decided to adopt. The night they brought the baby home, she realized what was going on. She thought she wasn’t having a period because of all the hormone treatments."

Avery leaned in closer, hovering over the happy story that floated in the middle of the table. She loved these tales, the ones where the miracles happened. Sometimes, with the right crowd in Dr. Browne’s office, the women would begin to recount the unbelievable—the twins after five years of hormones, IUI, and then in vitero. The adopted baby who was now in the same grade with the baby the couple conceived after the adoption went through. The triplets, identical, no fertility drugs at all. The quads who weighed four pounds each. The sister of a friend of a women’s husband who didn’t even know she was pregnant and went in to the hospital for indigestion. All of these stories had to be true, and one of them just might end up being Avery’s. She didn’t care which because all of them ended happily with a child.

"Unbelievable, man," Luis said, standing up and clearing dishes from the table. "God was sure good to us."

"Superstition," Valerie whispered as he and then Dan left the room loaded down with plates.

"No, maybe he’s right," Avery said, pressing Tomas just a bit closer. "You guys are so lucky. Tomas is beautiful. Look at him!"

Valerie reached a hand over and rubbed Avery’s arm. "Hon, you’ll have a baby. I know it. Some people just take longer."

"Yeah. So I’ve been told." These were the stories that were harder to listen to—the couple who tried homopathetic treatments, psychotherapy, weeklong infertility retreats, acupuncture, IUI, and IVF for twelve years before giving up, spending almost all of their retirement money . The co-worker’s daughter who had fibroids removed, tubes blown clean, a dye study, and a uterus scraped for nothing. The woman who went to England for a new procedure that cost 20,000 dollars and failed. Even afterward, she kept trying and was still at it ten years later.

"Look, it’s summer. We’re going to hang out by your pool and relax. Your body is going to be so rested; you’ll be pregnant by the fall. You’re ripe, girl. Don’t get down."

Avery smiled. "I am like a melon, a tomato, a plum."

"Damn right," Valerie said. "A real garden. You’ve just got to get seeded."

"What?" Dan said, walking into the dining room, Luis behind him.

"Don’t ask," Avery said, laughing. "I’ll explain it all to you later. I promise."

Avery lay behind Dan, his body a strong silhouette in the bed. She pressed closer, wrapping an arm around him, pulling him closer.

"What?" he asked, turning his head toward her. "Are you a little anxious?"

That was their term—anxious. They would be at a party dancing to music in the middle of a room, and Dan would lean over, whisper, "I’m feeling a little anxious," rubbing the silk covering her back.

But now, while she would welcome the forgetfulness of sex, the familiar and comforting ways their bodies moved together, the skin she knew so well, she was actually anxious. Worried. Frightened. Even though Dr. Browne, Valerie, her mother, her sister, and all the women in the waiting room had determined anxiety and stress of any kind ruined her chances. That’s why she’d quit work, after all. She couldn’t help it though, still feeling Tomas’ warm weight against her body, the empty space after Valerie had taken him from her.

"I’m . . . I’m scared it’s not going to happen. Another cycle, Dan. And nothing."

He didn’t say anything but turned to her, pulling her across his chest. He was always so warm, she often thought of buttered toast or anything brown and hot when she was near him. He was so alive, she’d always known that it was her fault they couldn’t get pregnant—her body still and slim and silent.

"Don’t do this to yourself, Aves. You’ve been so good about just going forward. You know it’s going to happen. It’s just a matter of when." He held her tight, spoke in his confident sales voice, the one he used every day at VentureOut, a telecommunications company. While most salespeople’s over eager tones would convince her the worst was around the corner, Dan’s voice was a sure as her father’s had been. He sold promise and hope, as he always had, everything since his first, "Hello," the truth.

"I know. I want it so bad. I look at Tomas, and I know I’d be a good mom."

"Of course you’ll be a good mom. That’s not the point. The point is you need to do what Dr. Browne says, go to this acupuncture place, and rest. We have to follow the program, and it will happen."

Avery nodded against her husband’s skin. Dan had always followed the program, and look how well things had turned out. Maybe he’d spent a couple of vague years working after high school instead of going right to college, but in short order he’d been admitted to Cal, earned his degrees, and been hired right out of business school. They were married, bought the house, and eventually, they would have children. Two or three. A boy and a girl for sure, like Avery had always planned. The boy old enough to protect the girl. That’s the way she saw it, and she wanted to believe Dan. She had to. There was no reason not to.

"All right. I’m sorry. I can’t stop thinking about it. You know me. It’s the way I was in school and at work. I think because it’s possible, I can do it. If I can’t for some strange reason, I just cut bait and move on. But I just don’t have much of a say here. I can’t go in and pluck the egg myself and slap a sperm in it and watch it grow in a Petri dish on the kitchen window sill. I can’t do anything but lay back and let people do things to me. I hate it."

"That’s why you’ll be a good mother. Our kids won’t have anything to worry about, not with you around."

Avery pressed into him closer, wondering how she found this man, who knew her and still wanted her close. This close, rubbing her body, kissing her hair.

"I’m actually feeling a little anxious myself right now," Dan said, rubbing her breasts, kissing her neck. "And I happen to know the perfect cure."

Avery closed her eyes, let herself forget about the day, her visit to Dr. Browne’s office and the waiting room full of ripe, heavy, fertile women, their cervixes already dilated 2 or even 4 centimeters. She stopped thinking about her insides as if they were charts in the exam room—the red curve of uterus and fallopian tubes, the small, potent egg falling down to swimming sperm. She blinked away the vision of her own body through the laparoscope lens, the slick, shiny organs that didn’t work right. She even let go of the sweet smell of Tomas, his baby hands, his tiny rosebud mouth, his caramel skin. Her husband’s warm palms, his mouth, his dark hair against her cheek, neck, breasts brought her to a place where it had all started, this solid thing between them. Avery pressed Dan close, let go of all her anxiety, the real and the imagined.