Page 2 of Counting Backwards

But this was not a perfect world. In this world I’d gotten pregnant accidentally the year before. It had been too soon, before I was ready to focus on anything other than meeting my career goals. When I miscarried at nine weeks, my primary emotion had been relief. But now, after the fourth month in a row of actively trying to make a baby, I still wasn’t pregnant. Four months wasn’t so long. I knew that, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was karma, payback from the universe for my dark thoughts the last time.

With each passing month that we tried and failed to conceive, my anxiety escalated. For so long, I had told myself that once I had a baby, once there was another person in the world who shared a portion of my parents’ combined DNA, the massive hole inside my heart would begin to repair itself. But when I peed on test stick after test stick, each stupid strip of paper producing only a control line, it occurred to me that I might never have the baby I so desperately wanted. I knew how badly Vance wanted the baby too, a child we would raise in the Jewish faith. He didn’t mind that I chose not to convert, so long as we converted the baby and carried on his family’s religious traditions. My own parents were basically lapsed Catholics. The only holiday we even recognized was Christmas, and I knew by the time I was eight or nine that they just did it for me. Every year, I was given the choice of blowing off the holiday in favor of a trip to Orlando, but I always picked painting new ornaments withMom and trying to wait up for Santa with Dad. If raising our future children Jewish meant more opportunities to celebrate holidays with family, I was all in.

Vance made his way across the room to the wide dresser beneath the wall of windows. Against the backdrop of the morning light, he stood suddenly motionless, regarding me. Maybe something about the pointed way I was still staring into the mirror gave me away, or maybe the despair was coming off me in waves so thick it was just impossible to overlook.

“This isn’t about the depositions,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“What do you mean?” I reached for a tortoiseshell hair barrette on the vanity table and placed it between my teeth, using both hands to twist pieces of my hair into place. I risked a glance at him. The sun shining through the window behind him was already so bright it felt glaring. I blinked and turned back to my own reflection. I didn’t want to engage in another shouting battle. Vance was so convinced that the only thing holding us back from conceiving was my own neurosis—my anxiety and my hyperfocus on the situation. After our last argument, he’d made me promise to stop taking pregnancy tests all the time, to at least wait until my period was late before peeing on another stick. He said the constant checking was too much pressure, that it felt excessive. I had acquiesced, even though the checking didn’t feel over-the-top to me. It felt comforting, like at least I knew where things stood inside my body. The wondering just made everything feel worse, as far as I was concerned. But I didn’t want to fight, so I’d agreed. Then yesterday, he’d walked in on me, stick in hand. My period wasn’t due for two more days, and we both knew it.

“You just don’t seem like yourself,” he said as he opened a drawer and pulled out a pair of running shorts.

I clipped my hair into place and didn’t respond.

“I’m trying to help you relax here,” he continued, “not stress you out even more. I can see the way everything is getting to you, evenif you can’t. It’s like you’ve got blinders on. That’s why I’ve been saying you should cut back at work.”

As he uttered those words, I bit my lip so hard that my mouth filled with the taste of metal. If I were a man, no one would suggest taking it easy at work as a solution to fertility issues. Maybe it was Vance’s body that was failing us, not mine. And anyway, whether my ovaries were underachievers had nothing to do with how many hours I was billing at work, and I knew it. Why didn’t Vance know it too?

I whipped away from the mirror to face him, my anger getting the better of me.

“We’re doing this again?” My voice rose. “At the same time that you’re taking on more responsibility, raising your hand for every new client the firm brings in? And don’t get me started on the podcast, which was supposed to be a little hobby, a little something you were doing on the side, right? You’re treating it like a second full-time job. Meanwhile, I should just curl up in a ball and give up everything I’ve worked for? All these years you’ve been supporting my career only to take it all back as soon as my baby-making skills aren’t up to snuff?”

“Now it’s my fault that the podcast took off? That people are interested in hearing what I have to say? You know full well that getting my name out there is going to open doors for me in the future. We’ve talked about this.”

Tapping into his due diligence skills, Vance had started a podcast to help descendants of Holocaust victims track down lost or stolen heirlooms. As the show began to get more traction, he started getting invitations from financial institutions seeking advice about authenticating various financial assets. The networking opportunities had been piling up. Not to mention the synagogues and Jewish organizations that had taken an interest in him for leadership roles.

“Apparently, hundreds of listeners think I know my shit,” he continued. “It’d be nice if you could show a little support here instead of thinking all the time about what a victim you are, poor little Jessa. When I say that you should take a step back, it’s not because we, as a couple, have too much to do. It’s because you cannot handle the stress you’re putting yourself under.”

“Support?” I growled back at him. “I’m not the one failing to show support!”

“Jessa.” His tone was maddeningly calm, a tactic he liked to use to highlight my own volatility. I was hot-blooded, sure, but I didn’t feel like apologizing for my big emotions.

I stared back at him, hands perched on my hips as I waited for him to say something else, hopefully to offer an apology of his own.

“I’m just pointing out what you’re refusing to see. You can’t do everything, and nobody’s asking you to,” he said as he stepped into his shorts.

If this were any other morning, one where we weren’t so thoroughly attacking each other, this would be the moment when I’d point out that it was too cold to go running in shorts. He was going to freeze, running like that in the middle of January, but I was too irritated to start our usual back-and-forth about his exercise gear, where I’d suggest sweatpants and he’d insist he was impervious to the cold. I would chuckle at his pigheadedness, and he’d smile back indulgently. For once, the predictability of it all didn’t feel enchanting.

He moved toward the unmade bed and began pulling up the comforter, putting everything back into its proper place.

Instead of helping, I stayed where I was, sizzling with indignation. This was the third time now that he’d declared I was working too hard, that my job was impacting whatever was or wasn’t happening inside my uterus. Each time he said it, I feltlike he was thinking mostly about the baby we’d lost, implying that if I’d taken it easier the year before, maybe we’d already have the child for which I was now so desperate.

“Look, I know how important this is to you, but you need to calm down about it all,” he said as he tossed a pillow into place. “We don’t want to become that couple friends with kids feel they have to tiptoe around. People will think we’ve become fragile, sad little flowers because you’re not yet ‘with child.’”

As he raised his hands to make air quotes, I curled my own fist at my side, pushing my fingernails into my palm. I stayed silent and he added, “We’re tougher than that. I know we’ll get there eventually. But you need to exhale a little in the meantime.”

Vance was lucky. His parents were alive, and he had three vibrant brothers and an entire army of first and second cousins. His family celebrated not only the Jewish holidays they’d observed since he was a child, but thanks to multiple interfaith marriages, they’d also happily adopted the Christian and Hindu holidays of my sisters-in-law Laura and Jiyana. Vance’s oldest brother, Darren, was the only one who’d married a Jew, my sister-in-law Vicky. But as long as all the children were raised Jewish, including an Orthodox conversion after being born to a non-Jewish mother, everyone was happy. His parents continued in their volunteer positions at the family’s Reform synagogue, happily bringing the rest of us into the fold. I’d joined his family at one joyful occasion after another—festive bris ceremonies for our nephews Jonah and Kian, bar and bat mitzvahs for our teenage nephews and nieces as well as several of their cousins, and a never-ending cycle of other holidays and family celebrations. As much as he tried, Vance could never really understand what it was like for me to be an only child with deceased parents, to have spent eleven consecutive Thanksgivings at a quiet table for two with Gram. It colored everything.

I didn’t want to yell at him though. Continuing to argue wasn’t going to achieve anything.

“I just need to finish out this last week knowing I’ve done everything in my power,” I said. Whether I received that coveted brass ring or not, in eight days I’d be able to shift more energy to figuring out how to get pregnant. It seemed that having sex most nights of the week, like we’d been doing intentionally since October, simply wasn’t enough. There were tips to learn about what to eat, how to time intercourse, what kind of underwear men were supposed to wear. But with the demands at the office, I hadn’t found a second to spare for that kind of reading. Frankly, we were lucky there’d even been time for the sex.

He opened his mouth to respond, and I felt myself bristle in anticipation. But then I reminded myself of how much I loved him and of the certainty he brought to my life. I would be wise to take greater care with our relationship.

“You know what?” I interrupted before he could say something that would only stoke the flames of my temper. “It’s a beautiful Saturday morning. Go enjoy your freezing run along the river. I don’t want to argue with your cute face.” I moved to where he was standing and placed a gentle kiss on his lips. I pasted on a smile so he’d accept my olive branch and continue on his way toward the kitchen, or even out of the apartment. Then I’d be able to get back to that pregnancy test, which was still waiting in the bathroom cabinet. I could feel it calling to me, the invisible pull getting stronger by the second.

If Vance was surprised by my sudden shift in demeanor, he didn’t show it. Instead, he sighed as he looked down at me. I knew it would take time before things felt easy between us again. As much as I hated going behind his back with the pregnancy tests, I was sure that if I didn’t keep checking myself over andover, I’d be too distracted to function. And this was not the week to be off my game at work. If only I were more confident that Vance would be able to understand that kind of uneasiness. We had argued more in the past few months than in all five prior years of our marriage.

“Tell you what,” Vance said. “Give me two seconds, and I’ll walk out with you.”