This Fragile Life

ALEX

This is how it happened; this is how it always happens. I got drunk. I finished work, I was meeting my friend Liza at a bar on Fourth Street and Avenue A. We had a glass of wine each, and then I saw Matt across the bar and he gave me the kind of goofy grin that convinced me I was half in love with him six years ago.

He came over, we talked, and at some point Liza must have made herself scarce because I don’t remember her going or even saying goodbye.

We went outside, still talking, giggling over nothing. It was early July and the air was warm and drowsy and I had a little buzz from several glasses of wine. We’d fallen into that kind of playful didn’t-we-have-a-fun-time-together routine that is the default for relationships that ended without really going wrong. We dated for a couple of months and drifted apart without any real reason why, at least not that I remember.

And it didn’t seem as if Matt remembered it either, because he was definitely working the flirt, and I didn’t mind. We were walking uptown, and then we were a block from my apartment, and suddenly we were right outside. We just somehow wandered right over there, and upstairs, and onto the futon in the corner of my studio.

Afterwards I lay on the futon nurturing the last of my buzz while Matt rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. Something about the way he just lay there made me feel faintly uneasy, but I let it slide.

“Shit,” Matt said. “Shit, shit, shit.”

Not exactly the kind of pillow talk you want to hear. I rolled onto my side.

“What is it?” I asked, because I thought maybe he’d left his wallet or his phone at the bar, something like that.

“This was a mistake.”

Oh. That kind of shit. “Probably,” I said, because it seemed better to agree with him, and I wasn’t imagining that we were going to launch into a full-fledged relationship or anything.

But then I saw that Matt was scrambling off the futon, searching for his jeans, muttering and cursing all the while. So this was a really big mistake, apparently.

I lay there, watching him, kind of bemused by how seriously he was taking everything. He finished dressing, stared at me.

“Sorry,” he said, and I almost asked what for, but he was already gone.

Now it’s three weeks later and I’m going over that whole evening, wondering how and why it happened, but of course I have no more answers now than I did then. I let it happen, as I’ve let most things happen in my life, because it’s so much easier. No expectations, and so no one is hurt. Not even me.

Except now I’m pregnant.

Termination, of course, is the most sensible option. It’s certainly the first one that comes to mind, because after I stare at those double pink lines for a second I’m reaching for my phone, scrolling through my contacts for the Margaret Sanger Center on Bleecker Street. I’ve had an abortion before. Two, actually. I had them early, when the embryo was no more than a couple of cells. I equated the procedures to Pap smears, and didn’t waste a moment regretting what was or wasn’t. It seemed like the right choice for someone in my position: feckless, fancy-free, without health insurance or in a committed relationship.

And I’m still all that, yet this time my thumb pauses on the button and I stare at the number and something in me thinks, Wait.

I’m thirty-five years old and I’ve read enough magazine articles and women’s health brochures to know that your fertility starts to decline at thirty-five. Also it’s more likely you’ll have a baby with genetic problems or disorders or whatever. Basically, at thirty-five, you start to get old.

I switch my phone off and stare again at the pregnancy test. I don’t know what to think. I’m not sure what I feel. I’ve never thought about motherhood, babies, that whole deal. I never saw myself as maternal, not really. My own mother wasn’t, even though she was your typical milk-and-cookies stay-at-home-mom, so maybe it’s genetic.

I throw the pregnancy test in the trash and I go to work at the little café where I’m a barista four mornings a week. For my other job—my real job, I like to think, even though it pays less—I teach art at an after-school program for disadvantaged kids. I scrape by, living in a sixth-floor walk-up on Avenue C, which is at least two avenues too far east for either comfort or convenience, and I have no savings and no health insurance. Not exactly the kind of life most thirty-five-year-olds aspire to, but it hasn’t bothered me until now.

Until a baby.

No, I can’t think that way. Won’t, because everyone knows it’s not a baby yet. It’s maybe a couple of cells. Barely visible to the naked eye. Anyway, I might not even be pregnant. False positives and all that, and even if I am pregnant, I could still lose it.

And so I don’t think about it, and I still don’t think about it, and then I wake up one morning and roll over on my futon and retch onto the floor. Morning sickness. And I know I need to start thinking about it, and I reach for my phone, and I still don’t call that number.

I go on for another week, not thinking about it, except now it takes more concentration. Not thinking about something becomes an activity requiring determination, effort. And that’s how I’m not thinking about it when I take the 6 train uptown to have dinner with my friend Martha and her husband, Rob.

Martha and I are about as different as two people can be and always have been. I think that’s what makes our friendship work; we have never been jealous of each other, never in competition, never wanted what the other one has. We tease each other, in a good-natured way, because I think we’re both not-so-secretly appalled by the other’s lifestyle choices. But we can laugh about it too, and I think we both like the break from our lives that our friendship gives us.

Except now I’m wondering what Martha would feel if I told her I was pregnant. I never told her about those two abortions, because they’ve been trying for a baby for what feels like for ever. They gave up after the fifth round of IVF last month, and even though she doesn’t talk about it I know it bothers her. Martha can get very chilly and tight-lipped when she’s upset. That’s about as emo as she goes.

As I enter their building and the doorman waves me up—that didn’t happen the first time I visited—I decide not to talk to Martha about this baby. No, not a baby, never a baby. This pregnancy. This…issue. And it makes me a little sad, that I can’t, because, honestly, I think I’d like someone to talk to. And Martha usually has very sensible, no-nonsense kind of advice, not like my other friends, who tend to be a bit easy-going and even flaky like me.

I’m distracted as I greet them, giving Martha an air kiss because she doesn’t do hugs and making cheek-to-cheek contact with Rob because he’s a lot more in touch with his feelings, at least for a guy.

Martha is smiling, seeming relaxed as she tosses this fancy salad with home-made dressing. I don’t think she actually likes to cook, but she certainly likes to do things properly.

“How’s life in the ‘hood?” Rob asks as he hands me a beer without asking, and I take a sip before I think, Maybe I shouldn’’t.

What is going on with me?

“Fine,” I say. “You should come slumming downtown some time, Rob. Get a taste of the real New York.”

Rob pretends to shudder and Martha just smiles and shakes her head. It’s a long-running joke between us, how different our lives are. Martha and Rob have never even been to my apartment, and I think they’d be horrified if they went. It’s one step up from the ghetto in their world, but I don’t mind. I like my life. I do.

And it has no room for a baby in it.

I put my barely touched beer bottle down on the counter with a loud-sounding clink.

“Let’s eat,” Martha says cheerfully. “You haven’t gone vegan or anything, have you, Alex?”

“Actually, I’m on a fruitarian diet.”

“Fruit-what?” Rob says, and I roll my eyes.

“Joke. When have you ever known me to turn down a greasy burger?”

“I don’t think Martha’s ever made a greasy burger in her life,” Rob says as she brings the salad to the table in their little dining nook. He puts his arm around her and for a second she stills, as if she’s taking strength from that little caress. I see Rob’s face soften and I know he must feel protective of her since the last failed attempt at IVF. Watching them like this gives me a funny little ache, because I’m happy for them and yet somehow sad for myself.

They’re the ones who should be celebrating an unexpected pregnancy, a miracle. Not me.

I’m still thinking like that as we eat our salad, and I don’t pay too much attention to the conversation about a film festival Rob is judging, one of his hobbies.

“What’s up with you, Alex?” Martha asks as we finish the salad. She nods towards my plate, and I realize I’ve put all the bits of blue cheese to one side. I had the most ridiculous thought that blue cheese would be bad for the baby. I don’t know why I’m thinking this way, why part of me is acting like I’m actually going to keep it.

“Sorry,” I say. “Tired.”

“Hard week at work?” Martha asks with that teasing smile that lets me know she doesn’t really take my job seriously. She’s never said as much, but part-time barista work at thirty-five is pretty sad in her eyes. I know Martha feels I could have made more of myself; I went to a good college, I’m from an upper-middle-class home in Connecticut, I’m fairly smart. In Martha’s world I’m a failure.

“Yeah, work, I guess,” I say, trying to smile, because Martha has brought out the main course and it’s fish. It’s a fancy kind of fish, tilapia or something, in a lemon and herb sauce, but the smell of it is crazy intense. It smells like week-old mackerel to me and before I can help myself, before I can say anything more, I’m lurching upright and running to the bathroom off the front hall.

As I’m puking into the toilet I realize I haven’t even managed to close the door behind me, and Martha and Rob can hear everything.

I flush the toilet and rinse my mouth out, wash my face. After a few seconds I walk back into the dining room. Rob is looking bemused but Martha has gone very still, very alert. “Stomach bug?” Rob suggests, sympathetically, and I nod. Martha says nothing.

I don’t eat any of the fish. In fact, my little puking episode pretty much puts a damper on the whole evening, which is to be expected. I do manage a few forkfuls of rice, and I pass on the dessert and coffee.