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Yearning: an intense or overpowering longing
Not pregnant.
Were there two more depressing words in the English language?
In the small bathroom of their two-bedroom cottage on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, Jenna dropped the remains of the pregnancy test onto the bathroom floor and resisted the temptation to grind it under her heel.
She wanted to swear, but she tried never to do that even in the privacy of her own bathroom in case one day it slipped out in front of her class of impressionable six-year-olds. Imagine that.
Mrs. Sullivan said fuck, Mommy. FUCK. It was her word of the day. First we had to spell it, and then we had to use it in a sentence.
No, swearing was out of the question and she refused to cry. She already had to contend with freckles. She didn’t want blotches, too.
“Jenna?” Greg’s voice came through the door. “Are you okay, honey?”
“I’m good. I’ll be out in a moment.”
She stared at herself in the mirror, daring her eyes to spill even a single drop of the tears that gathered there.
She was not okay.
Her body wasn’t doing what it was supposed to do. What it was supposed to do was get pregnant on the first attempt, or at least the second, nurture a baby carefully for nine months and then deliver it with no crisis or drama.
All those times she’d peed on the stick in the grip of panic, hoping and praying that it wouldn’t be positive. The first time she’d had sex with Greg, both of them fumbling and inept on the beach, she’d been more terrified than turned on. Please don’t let me get pregnant.
Now she badly wanted it to be positive and it wasn’t happening.
They’d been having sex all winter, although to be fair there wasn’t much else to do on the Vineyard once the temperature dropped. Sex was a reasonable alternative to burning fossil fuels. Maybe she should teach it in class. Hey, kids, there is solar energy, geothermal energy, wind energy and sex. Ask your parents about that one.
She was burning more calories in her bedroom than she ever had on a treadmill.
She was thirty-two.
By thirty-two, her mother already had Lauren.
Jenna’s sister, Lauren, had been pregnant at eighteen. She’d barely said “I do” to Ed before announcing she was expecting. It seemed to Jenna that her sister had gotten pregnant by simply brushing against him.
And yes, that made her envious. She loved her sister, but she’d discovered that love wasn’t enough to keep those uncomfortable feelings at bay.
She’d wanted to be a teacher since her sixth birthday when her mother had bought her a chalkboard, and she’d fo
rced her sister to play school.
Everyone knew it was only a matter of time until she had her own family.
At first she’d been relaxed about it, but as each month passed she was growing more and more desperate.
She’d tried everything to maximize her chances, from taking her temperature every day to making Greg wear loose boxer shorts. They’d had sex in every conceivable position and a few inconceivable positions, which had caused one broken lamp and Greg to mutter that he felt like a circus performer. Nothing had worked.
The injustice made her heart hurt, but worse was the sense of total emptiness. It embarrassed her a little because she knew she was lucky. She had so much. She had Greg, for goodness’ sake. Greg Sullivan, who was loved by every single person on the island including Jenna. Greg, who had graduated top of his year and had excelled at everything he’d ever tried.
She’d loved him since she was five years old and he’d pulled her out of the ditch where she’d fallen in an ungainly heap. He was her hero. They’d sat next to each other in senior year and run the school newspaper together. People talked about them as if they were one person. They were Jenna-and-Greg.
Until recently, being with Greg was all she’d ever wanted.
Suddenly it didn’t seem like enough.
The worst thing was that she couldn’t talk about it with anyone, which had led to some almost awkward moments because she didn’t find keeping things to herself easy. Chatty, her school reports had said, much to her mother’s irritation. You’re there to learn, Jenna.
