Emily Giffin: Baby proof

Still, I wanted to dispel the lingering images of Ben pressed against a sweaty bohemian lover, so I sat on the bed, kicked off my flip-flops, and said, "Ben. Talk to me. What's on your mind?"

He swallowed hard and sat next to me. The bed bounced slightly under his weight and the motion made me feel even more nervous.

"I don't know how to say this," Ben said, his voice cracking. "So I'll just come out with it."

I nodded, feeling queasy. "Go ahead."

"I think I might want kids after all."

I felt a rush of relief and even laughed out loud. "You scared me." I laughed again, louder, and then opened a Red Stripe from the minibar.

"I'm serious, Claudia."

"Where is all of this coming from? Annie and Ray?"

"Maybe. I don't know. It's just… it's just this feeling I have," Ben said, making a fist over his heart.

At least he hasn't cheated on me , I thought. A betrayal of that magnitude could never be erased or forgotten. His fleeting wish for a child would surely go away. But as Ben continued to spout off his list of reasons why a baby might be a good thing-stuff about showing children the world, doing things better than our parents had done-my relief gave way to something else. It was a sense of losing control. A sense that something was slipping away.

I tried to stay calm as I delivered a rather eloquent speech. I told him that all of that parenthood stuff wasn't who we were. I said that our relationship was built upon our unique twoness, the concept that three or more is a crowd. I pointed out that we couldn't have taken this last-minute trip. We'd be anchored to home all the time.

"But we'd have other things," Ben said. "And what if we really are missing out on something great? I've never heard a single person say they regret having a child."

"Would they admit it if they did?" I said.

"Maybe not," Ben said. "But the point is, I don't think they ever would."

"I totally disagree… I mean, why are there boarding schools? The mere existence of boarding schools proves something, right?" I asked. I was partly kidding about the boarding schools, but Ben didn't laugh.

I sighed and then decided to change the subject altogether, focus on having fun. Show Ben what we'd be missing with children.

"Let's get changed and go to dinner," I said, turning up "One Love" on our portable CD player and thinking that there's nothing like a little Bob Marley to put you in a childfree, unencumbered state of mind.

But despite my best efforts to have a good time, the rest of our weekend passed with an increasing tension. Things felt forced between us, and Ben's mood went from quiet to lugubrious. On our third and final night on the island, we took a cab to Asolare, a restaurant with incredible views of Cruz Bay. We ate in virtual silence, commenting only on the sunset and our perfectly prepared lobster tail. Just as our waitress brought us our coffee and sorbet, I looked at Ben and said, "You know what? We had a deal ."

As soon as the words came out, I knew how utterly ridiculous I sounded. Marriage is never a done deal. Not even when you have children together, although that certainly helps your case. And the irony of that seemed overwhelmingly sad.

Ben tugged on his earlobe and said, "I want to be a father."

"Fine. Fine," I said. "But do you want a baby more than you want to be my husband?"

He reached out and put one hand over mine. "I want both ," he said as he squeezed my fingers.

"Well. You can't have both," I said, trying to keep the angry edge out of my voice.

I waited for him to say that of course he'd always pick me. That it was the only thing in the world he was really sure of. "So? Which is it?" I said.

It wasn't supposed to be a test, but it suddenly felt like one. Ben stared down at his cappuccino for a long time. Then he moved his hand from mine and slowly stirred three cubes of sugar into his mug.

When he finally looked up at me, there was guilt and grief in his gray-green eyes, and I knew I had my answer.

When we return home from St. John, Ben and I decide to take some time and think things over. Actually, Ben decides that's what we should do-those are his exact words. I have to bite my tongue to keep from telling him that I have absolutely nothing to think over. He is the one who has radically changed his mind about something so fundamental in our relationship. So he's the one who needs to do the thinking. I fall into my normal routine, going to work and returning home to Ben at night, where I read and he sketches until we go to bed. Meanwhile, I try to convince myself that my husband is only going through a phase, a kind of reverse midlife crisis. Some men regret settling down and having kids early; Ben is simply questioning our decision not to have them at all. I tell myself that it is normal-maybe even healthy-to reevaluate your life. Ben will take some time and do all of that, and then surely he will come to his senses and reaffirm our choices.

I resist the urge to discuss the situation with my family or friends because I somehow believe that talking about it will solidify our rift. Instead I ignore it, hoping it will all go away.

It doesn't.

One Saturday afternoon Ben points to a fair-skinned, blue-eyed girl with strawberry-blond hair on the street and says, "She looks like you." Then, in case I missed his point, he says, "If we had a daughter, she'd look like that."

I just give him a look.

A few days later, as he watches a Knicks game on television, he says he wants a son because otherwise what is the point of all the useless sports trivia he's memorized since he was a little boy. "Not that I wouldn't teach our daughter about sports, too," Ben adds.

Again, I say nothing.

The following week he announces that having an only child could be a compromise of sorts.

"How do you figure?" I say.

"Because I'd like to have two and you think you don't want any," he says, as if we are six years old and deciding how many doughnuts to buy.

"I know I don't want any," I say, and then open my birth control packet at the bathroom sink.

Ben furrows his brow and says, "How about you stop taking those things? Can't we just see what happens? See if it's meant to be?"

I tell him that this plan of his sounds akin to the Christian Scientist approach to modern medicine.

He gives me a blank stare.

"I have a better idea," I say. "Let's hold hands and jump out the window and see if we're meant to die."

Then I take my pill.

The most egregious of Ben's remarks comes one Sunday when we are having brunch in Rye with Ben's mother, Lucinda, his two sisters, Rebecca and Megan, and their husbands and children. As we finish eating and move into the family room of the home Ben grew up in, I am thinking what I always think when we get together with his family: could our families-and specifically our mothers-be more different? My family is volatile; Ben's family is placid. My mother is unmaternal and quirky; Ben's mother is nurturing and vanilla. I watch Lucinda now, sipping her tea from a china cup, and think to myself that she is a complete throwback to the fifties, the kind of mother who had homemade cookies waiting when the kids came home from school. She lived for her children-so much so that Ben once pointed to that as a possible cause for his parents' divorce. It was a classic case of empty nesters realizing that they had nothing holding them together but the kids.

So, as it often happens, Ben's father found a new life with a much younger woman while Lucinda continues to live for her children-and now grandchildren (Ben's sisters each have two daughters). Ben is her clear favorite, though, perhaps because he's the only boy. As such, she is desperate for us to change our minds about having a baby, but way too polite to come right out and criticize our choices. Instead, she is full of seemingly breezy comments on the matter. Like the time when we bought our car, and she slid into the backseat, remarking, "Plenty of room for a car seat back here!"