Page 1 of Counting Backwards

1

Jessa

January 2022

If he caught me in the act, he’d be furious. I grabbed the white cardboard box off the bathroom counter and started tearing it into penny-sized pieces. I made sure to render each piece small enough that the picture of the baby on the packaging would be impossible to make out. After I’d created a small pile of fragments on the marble countertop, I wiped the whole mess into the shopping bag from the pharmacy, tied the handles into a tight knot, and tossed the bag into the trash. The test stick was resting between the double sinks. Behind it, a glass bottle holding a bouquet of skinny reeds emitted a pungent citrus scent. The air freshener had been a holiday gift from my friend Tate, but now the cloying notes of grapefruit were nearly turning my stomach. Maybe it was a sign.

Less than two minutes had elapsed so far. I stared at the strip of paper inside the little testing window, bending closer as it gradually became saturated. The control line had already begun to appear, faintly at first, but then stronger, a pink promise that this test was functional.

I stared so intently at the test that my vision began to blur, the one pink line morphing into a wavy haze of nothingness. IfI focused hard enough, could I see just what I wanted to see? At the sounds of movement on the other side of the closed door, I flinched—Vance was waking up and beginning his day.

The timer on my phone showed another two minutes and fifteen seconds before the test would be finished.

“Jess?” Vance called from outside the door, his deep voice still thick with sleep. His footsteps came closer, and he jiggled the locked doorknob. “Can I come in?”

My eyes shot back to the test.

“Um... yeah! One sec!” I grabbed the stick and stashed it in the cabinet below my sink. Tossing a few tissues into the trash to bury the pharmacy bag, I gave the toilet a quick flush for good measure and then opened the door.

Vance waited at the threshold with bleary eyes and a dark shadow of stubble blanketing his wide jaw. The old Tufts University t-shirt he’d slept in stretched against the muscles of his chest, and his olive-toned legs, thick like logs, were on display beneath his black boxer briefs. The chain necklace he wore was askew, with its silver Star of David pendant dangling off to the side near his left shoulder. The necklace had belonged to his grandfather, and Vance almost never removed it.

“Babe,” he said as he pressed his warm lips to my forehead and then made his way past me toward the toilet. “Why’d you get up so early?” He didn’t wait for me to answer before adding, “I think I drank three liters of seltzer before I fell asleep. All that ponzu sauce at dinner. Salty.”

Vance and his business partner, Arjun, had taken a client out the night before. They’d gone to some fancy new Japanese restaurant on the Upper West Side that everyone was raving about. It was hard to keep track of the many trendy eateries that Vance and his partners visited in their ongoing efforts to impress their high-maintenance clients.

Turning his back, he began to relieve himself. I wanted to keep guarding the hidden test, to make sure he didn’t go digging for shaving cream or extra deodorant in that undersink cabinet. But he would know something was off if I just stood there watching him urinate, wouldn’t he?

“I’d better get dressed,” I said. Even so, I made no move to leave. Instead, I studied myself in the wide mirror that was mounted on the wall behind the sinks, buying time by taking in my appearance. Unlike many of my friends, I thought I looked my best first thing in the morning. Right after waking up, there was a slight puffiness to my face that rendered my sharp cheekbones a little less severe and made the angles beneath my hazel eyes more mellow. I smoothed my brown curls half-heartedly, not minding that they were wild as usual. My mother, whose own bouncy curls had once rivaled my own, used to describe their constant tangles as “chaos incarnate.” All these years later, I could still hear the jingle of her laughter as she joked that trying to brush my hair in the bath was like participating in a sporting event. But I loved my hair. Not just because of the way the long flouncy curls seemed to be bursting with life, but also because of how each coiled tress allowed me to see a piece of my mother every time I glanced at my own reflection.

I leaned closer to the mirror, noticing a hint of purple beneath each eye. At thirty-one, I was often mistaken for a younger woman, which was fine, except at work. My physical appearance was just one more obstacle standing between me and the respect I wanted at my firm. The respect I deserved. I should have earned it by now. Instead, I was still scrambling to prove myself.

Vance looked over his shoulder at me as he continued to empty his bladder.

“You’re going in today?” he asked.

“Just for a couple of hours. LDP depositions start on Tuesday, remember?” I heard the snippiness in my tone. It was harsher thanI’d intended, but I didn’t have it in me to apologize. Instead, I left him there and made my way to the closet in hopes that my exit from the bathroom would hasten his own.

When we’d found our apartment last summer, it had been a definite upgrade from the prewar walk-up we’d shared since our wedding five years earlier. The amenity that finally convinced me I could handle leaving the West Village to relocate to the stodgier, uninspired streets of the Upper East Side like Vance wanted was not one but two walk-in closets in the bedroom. The eat-in kitchen and spare bedroom weren’t so bad either. During our first visit to the apartment, we’d smiled tentatively at each other and talked about one day turning that second room into a nursery. My chest constricted as I recalled how hopeful we’d been then, even when we were still raw from our recent loss.

Choosing a semi-sheer floral blouse and a pair of navy slacks, I could already hear Tate in my mind, ribbing me for refusing to wear jeans to the office, even on a Saturday.

Vance was still clanging around in the bathroom, and it was all I could do not to shout at him to hurry it up. How much longer until I could get back to those results?

He called out to me then. “You remember I made us lunch plans with Mandy and Lou, right?”

Yeah. I remembered. But it wasn’t just Mandy and Lou. It was Mandy, Lou, and AnneElise, their adorable, pink-cheeked, eight-month-old baby girl.

“Yup.” My voice was still more brittle than I intended, my frustration about the interrupted pregnancy test getting the better of me.

He came out of the bathroom then, wiping a smudge of toothpaste from the corner of his mouth. I was buttoning my slacks and didn’t turn away from the mirror, but he must have noticed something in the twist of my lips.

“You’re seriously mad about the depositions?” he asked. “I didn’t forget. I never forget.”

It was true. Vance always listened attentively when I talked about work, especially cases that were giving me trouble. He’d advise me about the right course of action, steering me through complicated corporate situations or tricky client relationships, his focus always on making sure I’d come out smelling like a rose. Vance was a finance guy, so the substance of his work differed from mine, but the attendant aspects of his banking job sounded very similar to my experiences in the corporate litigation world. We were both subjected regularly to dauntingly high expectations, rigid procedural rules, complex office politics, and clients whose demands were often well beyond the realm of possibility. On more nights than I could count, unloading work-related predicaments onto Vance had been the only way I managed to unwind. When he threaded his fingers through mine, telling me just what I should do about whatever I’d described, it was a balm to the frustrations I’d brought home from the office.

It had been almost seven years since I graduated from law school. Seven years. I’d given myself exactly that long to make partner at a law firm. Several of my peers had already reached that milestone at other firms, and even at my own office, a few had jumped the line ahead of me. I’d been working my tail off since the day I took the job at Dillney, Forsythe & Lowe, LLP, putting in brutally long hours and so many late nights. After one Big Mistake in my fourth year, I’d doubled down, out-billing every associate in the firm ever since. And now, finally, I was the lead attorney on one of the firm’s big cases. Other attorneys in the office had begun seeking me out for advice on their own matters, and things were looking up. Now that New Year’s had passed, new partners would be announced in a matter of days.

In a perfect world, I would have been four months pregnant by now. I could see it all in my mind’s eye: I’d be wearing loose, flowytops, hiding a belly that was just beginning to bulge. Then, after being named partner, I’d start wearing all the cute, fitted maternity clothing that showed off my adorable bump. The other lawyers might be disappointed to discover that one of their new partners was pregnant. They’d worry, perhaps, about my continued dedication to the job, but by then it’d be too late for anyone to take back my promotion. Then I’d continue to wow them with my stellar work anyway, and soon they’d wonder why they’d ever been concerned in the first place.