Jodi Picoult - Sing You Home

It’s not even really morning yet. It was Max’s idea to come out here when the ocean was quiet-no fishing trawlers, no weekend sailors. I sit on the center of the bench of the boat with the box on my lap. When I close my eyes, the churn of the engine and the slap of the waves rearrange themselves into a rap beat. I drum my fingers against the metal seat, playing in time.

After about ten minutes Max cuts the engine. We bob along, tossed by our own wake.

He sits across from me, his hands tucked between his knees. “What do you think we should do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want to…”

“No,” I say, thrusting the box at him. “You do it.”

He nods and takes the small blue ceramic shoe out of the box. A few packing peanuts flutter away on the wind. It makes me panic-what if a big gust of wind comes along at just the wrong moment? What if the ashes wind up in my hair, on my jacket?

“I feel like we ought to say something,” Max murmurs.

My eyes fill with tears. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

For not knowing anything better to say.

For having to do this in the first place.

For not being able to keep you safe inside me a few more weeks.

Max reaches across the space between us and squeezes my hand. “I am, too.”

The reality of my baby, it turns out, is no more than a breath in the cold, a puff of smoke. The ashes are gone almost the very moment they hit the air. If I’d blinked, I could easily have pretended that it never happened.

But I imagine them settling on the frantic surface of the ocean. I imagine the Sirens on the sea floor, singing him home.

Max is late to the appointment with Dr. Gelman. He comes skidding into her paneled office, smelling of mulch. “Sorry,” he apologizes. “Job ran late.”

There was a time when he was ten minutes early for our appointments. When, once, his truck broke down and he jogged with a semen sample to the clinic so that it would arrive in the window of time necessary to fertilize the harvested eggs. But in the two weeks since I’ve been discharged from the hospital, our conversation has been limited to the weather, the grocery list, and what I’d like to watch on TV at night. He slides into the chair beside me and looks at the obstetrician expectantly. “Is she okay?”

“There’s no reason to think that Zoe’s not going to be fine,” Dr. Gelman says. “Now that we know about the thrombophilia, it’s manageable with medication. And the fibroids that we saw beneath the placenta-we’ll hope that, without the hormonal fluctuations of pregnancy, they shrink again.”

“But what about next time?” I ask.

“I honestly don’t anticipate another clot, as long as we keep you on Coumadin-”

“No,” I interrupt. “I mean, the next time I get pregnant. You said I could try again.”

“What?” Max says. “What the hell?”

I face him. “We have three embryos left. Three frozen embryos, Max. We didn’t give up before when I miscarried. We can’t just give up now-”

Max turns to Dr. Gelman. “Tell her. Tell her this is a bad idea.”

The obstetrician runs her thumb along the edge of her blotter. “The chance of you having a placental abruption again is between twenty and fifty percent. In addition, there are other risks, Zoe. Pre-eclampsia, for example: high blood pressure and swelling that would require you to take magnesium to prevent seizures. You could have a stroke-”

“Jesus Christ,” Max mutters.

“But I can try,” I say again, looking her directly in the eye.

“Yes,” she says. “Knowing the risks, you can.”

“No.” The word is barely audible, as Max stands up. “No,” he repeats, and he walks out of the office.

I follow him, hurrying down the hall to grab his arm. He shakes me off. “Max!” I yell after him, but he is headed toward the elevator. He steps inside, and I reach the doors just as they are closing. I slip in and stand beside him.

There’s a mother in the elevator, too, pushing a stroller. Max stares straight ahead.

The elevator bell dings, and the doors open; the woman pushes her child out. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted,” I say, as soon as we are alone again. “To have a baby.”

“What if it’s not what I want?”

“It’s what you used to want.”

“Well, you used to want a relationship with me,” Max says, “so I guess we’ve both changed a little.”

“What are you talking about? I still want a relationship with you.”

“You want a relationship with my sperm. This… this baby thing… it’s gotten so much bigger than the two of us. It’s not even us, in it together anymore. It’s you, and it’s the baby we can’t seem to have, and the harder it gets the more air it sucks out of the room, Zoe. There’s no space left for me.”

“You’re jealous? You’re jealous of a baby that doesn’t even exist?”

“I’m not jealous. I’m lonely. I want my wife back. I want the girl who used to want to spend time with me, reading the obituaries out loud and driving for forty miles just to see what town we’d wind up in. I want you to call my cell to talk to me, instead of to remind me that I have to be at the clinic at four. And now-now you want to get pregnant again, even if it kills you? When do you stop, Zoe?”

“It’s not going to kill me,” I insist.

“Then it just might kill me .” He looks up. “It’s been nine years. I can’t do this anymore.”

There is something in his gaze, some bitter pill of truth, that sends a shiver down my spine. “Then we’ll find a surrogate. Or we’ll adopt-”

“Zoe,” Max says, “I mean, I can’t do this. I can’t do us.”

The elevator doors open. We are on the ground floor, and the afternoon sun streams through the glass doors at the front of the clinic. Max walks out of the elevator, but I don’t.

I tell myself the light is playing tricks on me. That this is an optical illusion. One minute I can see him, and the next, it’s like he was never here at all.

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The House on Hope Street (3:56)

Ialways figured I’d have kids. I mean, it’s a story most guys can identify with: you’re born, you grow up, you start a family, you die. I just wish that, if there had to be a delay somewhere in the process, it would have been the last bit.

I’m not the villain, here. I wanted a baby, too. Not because I’ve spent my whole life dreaming of fatherhood, but for a reason much more simple than that.

Because it’s what Zoe wanted.

I did everything she asked me to. I stopped drinking caffeine, I wore boxers instead of briefs, I started jogging instead of biking. I followed a diet she’d found online that increased fertility. I no longer put the laptop on my lap. I even went to some crazy acupuncturist, who set needles dangerously close to my testicles and lit them on fire.

When none of that worked, I went to a urologist, and filled out a ten-page form that asked me questions like Do you have erections? and How many sexual partners have you had? and Does your wife reach orgasm during intercourse?

I grew up in a household where we didn’t really talk about our feelings, and where the only reason you went to a doctor was because you’d accidentally cut off a limb with a chain saw. So I don’t mean to be defensive, but you have to understand, the touchy-feely part of IVF and the poking and the prodding isn’t something that comes naturally to me.