Caeli Widger - Mother of Invention

Irene rowed coxswain. Perched at the tip of the boat, she faced her team, guiding them, a conductor of eight. She loved the distinction of her position, the pressure, the challenge. She wasn’t a typical cox—at five foot six, she was taller than most so she had to keep her weight down to stay competitive with the shrimps who coxed other boats. Maximum weight requirement was 110, and staying as far below that number as possible was crucial to winning. This required constant self-denial that both maddened and inspired her. She conditioned herself to pass up the sundae bar in the dining hall, the late-night orders of chicken parm delivered in a red-handled insulated bag from a pizza place in town. In doing so, she relinquished a tradition of college life: indulging with friends. But the repercussions of indulgence were never worth it to Irene. The consequences always brought far more regret than the original pleasure. She’d done what it took to stay light, stay fit, stay strong. She studied, lifted weights, did cardio, rowed. She took her supplements (multivitamin, folic acid, fish oil) and drank plenty of water. She went to her annual physicals, to her gynecologist. She was not a virgin, though her boyfriends had been few, rare enough that she’d never taken regular birth control. Marriage and family seemed far away. They didn’t interest her at all. Rowing crew interested her, pushing her body past its natural limit, winning. She loved her friends. She would have liked a boyfriend, but what she had fulfilled her enough.

At her annual gynecological exam, during her junior year, she’d turned down her doctor’s push for her to take birth control. “It just makes sense,” the doctor had said. “Even if you don’t have a partner now. Better safe than surprised.”

Irene declined. Artificially manipulating her body as insurance against some stupid hookup seemed lazy. Unnecessary. If Irene were ever in that situation—which, in those days, felt unlikely—she’d just use a condom. Easy enough.

“Thanks, but no,” she’d said to the gynecologist. “I’m probably the least likely person on campus to get pregnant.”

Famous last words.

“No problem,” the doctor said. “But while we’re talking about these sorts of choices, I wanted to mention a fantastic new option for women that’s just been approved by the FDA. It’s a mild hormone stimulant, designed to optimize your fertility for longer. It works cumulatively, over time, so if you begin taking it now, your fertility will remain robust for longer than it might otherwise.”

Now Irene was confused. “And why would I need that?”

The doctor looked mildly irritated, as if Irene were missing the obvious. “A woman’s natural fertility window—nineteen to twenty-six—is out of sync with modern career paths. Education and work are so consuming that we’re not able to find time to have children until well into our thirties, sometimes forties. Which can be a very tough time to get pregnant. Egg count is low, stress is high.”

“What about freezing our eggs?” Irene asked. “I just read an article about it for my women’s studies class. Why not just do that?”

The doctor laughed. “‘Just do that’? Oh, if only it were that easy. Egg freezing is cumbersome and expensive. It involves hormone injections and multiple doctor visits. It’s physically demanding and unpleasant. That’s why I’m so pleased about this new option. Just a daily pill. No side effects or interactions with other drugs. Just a simple way to keep your future options open without compromise.”

“I don’t know,” said Irene.

“There are other benefits. It promotes a general sense of vitality and well-being. If used in conjunction with a healthy lifestyle, which I know you have, it can make low body fat and physical fitness easier to maintain.”

Now Irene scanned the office wall for the doctor’s credentials. Yale medical school, with a PhD in biology to boot. She turned over the words in her mind: low body fat and physical fitness . A nurse had weighed Irene before her exam: 112. Two pounds over the coxswain’s maximum. The Essex Regatta—one of the biggest crew races of the year—was coming up in two weeks. So was her macroeconomics midterm. This semester was very tough. She could use all the help she could get.

Irene left the gynecologist’s office with a prescription for Juva, a daily pill to be taken “to support vitality and long-term reproductive function.”

Two weeks later, Irene’s crew beat Harvard and Princeton at the Essex Regatta, and she’d gotten a ninety-seven on her econ midterm. Ahead of her were a few precious days free from studying and training.

So she let her roommate, Violet, drag her to a party.

It was the sort of night with an identifiable tipping point. Irene went from dancing to OutKast with her roommate in a group of girls, all of them tipsy on spiked punch, to doing shots of some amber, fiery liquid, to making out in the corner of the room with a guy she’d just met. A handsome senior with curly brown hair and glasses, named either Ryan or Bryan. The music was intensely loud—she’d had to yell into Violet’s ear to let her know not to wait for her. That Irene would find her later. And then she’d let Ryan/Bryan guide her across a quad to another dorm and up to his room, a single on the top floor where the moonlight beamed in through the trees. He’d put on the Shins, the album everyone played all the time that year, and laid Irene on his bed, where he’d lifted her shirt and kissed her stomach, one hand on each of her breasts, and continued undressing her, asking, “Is this okay?” several times, to which Irene murmured, “Yes, yes,” because, at the time, it was. Sex was neither sacred nor fearsome. She’d had a great night, a rare few hours of cutting loose, and sleeping with a handsome senior didn’t seem like a bad way to end it.

Except that she hadn’t realized quite how drunk she’d gotten. She’d done an additional shot—in the company of Ryan/Bryan—just before leaving the party, and its impact didn’t fully hit her until she was in his bed, naked, underneath him. It was at the most inopportune moment when a tide of nausea rose within her, and she had to summon every ounce of her focus toward not throwing up. The moment Ryan/Bryan was up on his knees, fumbling with a condom, muttering, “shit, shit, shit,” when he tore into its plastic sleeve too zealously and ripped the latex along with it, then leaning to her ear and whispering, “I don’t have another, is it still okay?” Irene was too queasy to emit anything more than an indecipherable groan, which Ryan/Bryan interpreted as an affirmative, heaving into her as the room began to wheel, and he took her “Oh Gods” as declarations of pleasure.

Until he came and went limp, still inside her, he kept murmuring, “Was that okay? Are you okay?”

He wasn’t a bad person. Whether his name began with an R or a B , Irene never ascertained. Other guys surely wouldn’t have reacted so kindly when Irene turned her head to the side and vomited all over the mattress.

He’d wanted to help her, in fact. He threw a towel over the mess and brought her a can of cold club soda from a mini fridge. Her mouth cottony, head beginning to throb, Irene swigged the water, gagged on the bubbles, handed the can back to him.

“I have to go,” she’d said, bending to the floor for her underwear, her jeans, her tight knit top. She was far too wobbly to attempt her high-heeled boots.

“Don’t go,” he said. “I feel bad. I didn’t know you were so drunk. Why don’t you sleep here?” He was sitting on his bed with a pillow in his lap, covering himself. Irene’s vomit pooled underneath the towel beside him.

“I have to leave,” she said, swaying a little and stepping toward the door, boots dangling from her clammy hand.