Chapter 6

I always thought the whole thing was too fast, but I figured at least MAKING a baby would be fun. I was incorrect. Megan had a strict schedule of when she was ovulating, how we should be positioned, what I wore and ate to support healthy sperm count… It took all the fun parts about sex and made it into a project in which I had no agency. I just had to follow all these rules. It was difficult to be excited for sex when your partner was working off a spreadsheet and talking in numbers and percentages. I like math but that was just too much, ya know?

Megan had reached a new level of intenseness. I thought I had seen her controlling behaviour at its worst during the wedding. This ramped that up tenfold. "If this doesn't get me pregnant, I'll just jump off the roof"- that was just one of many such sentences that peppered our lives for the next 4 months. Nothing was working for us. Mom, who was creepily involved in this process in a way that was a huge boner-killer, suggested a fertility specialist that she knew. Well, really the specialist was a former colleague of my dad's, the one who actually tipped my mom off to dad's affair. Apparently, she and mom became good friends after the divorce. Megan latched on to the idea that this doctor would fix everything and I soon found myself agreeing to an appointment, since the idea made her so happy.

The specialist was based in New York, so one slightly chilly spring day saw us catching a train into the city and waiting in a doctor's office in lower Manhattan for hours on end. At one point I couldn't take the anxiety any longer and excused myself to go talk a walk and burn off the overwhelming nervous energy. Megan said she would text me if the doctor called for us. Since we had been there at least 3 hours already with no word from the clinic staff other than "soon," I didn't have much hope but walking around would be better than just sitting. The office was only a couple blocks away from the charging bull in the financial district so I decided to go take a look. I had told a few friends that Megan and I were going into the city for the day and my buddy Kent wanted me to take a picture of the shiny scrotum. So, for a laugh, I got right up in there and took a selfie with the bright brass testicles of the bull statue. As as I was walking away, laughing to myself and texting the photo into the group chat, which was by the way, about the only real connection I had to my friends since the wedding, I turned to get one last look at the whole picturesque scene- tall buildings, busy streets, and statue- there was a girl standing with her head down and pressed up against the bull's. She was drawing onlookers, people taking pictures, and a group of Tribeca Chads with wall-street-coke-addict suits checking her out. I stopped for a little bit so that I could step in if needed. When the girl stood up I realised both that she was older than she looked, because while she was short and slim, she was most certainly not a child, and that she noticed the leering group of guys and flipped them off with both hands. She seemed quite capable of defending herself.

It was when she turned around and stood next to the little girl that was facing down the bull that I got a good look at her face for the first time. I was astonished to find that I knew her. It was Louise Belcher. She wasn't a high school student anymore I realised as I took in her whole person. Then I immediately felt like an ass for not only openly staring at a young woman, but doing so while my WIFE was waiting for me just a couple streets over. I tucked my head down, hoping she wouldn't see me, and trudged my way back to the doctor's office.

The appointment finally started about 45 minutes after I returned to the clinic but we were both mentally and emotionally exhausted after the questionnaires and physical exams and insurance paperwork they had us dealing with, so we decided to stay the night with a friend of mine who lived in the city. James was one friend with whom Megan actually seemed to play nicely. I don't know if it was because she liked having a friend in the city or if she just spoke more carefully around him but James had yet to come to me with a complaint about Megan. At the time, I didn't look too hard into that, just grateful that he hadn't gone low contact with me like so many other friends.

The next day we did brunch at some fancy place Megan said she wanted to try and then headed towards the train station to go home. We said our goodbyes to James and hopped in a cab. The whole way to the train station, Megan cuddled me and did her now-standard stream of consciousness rambling about baby-related things; she rattled off baby names, nursery decor ideas, what schools she liked… Since she seemed to require no verbal input from me, I would nod occasionally and just let her chatter. She seemed so happy and optimistic.

Honestly, I was doing all I could to focus on her and not think about Louise Belcher and how she just so happened to pop up in New York City the same time I was there. 'Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world,' I thought to myself. My dad used to say that all the time when crazy coincidences would happen. I wish I knew where he got it but it certainly applied here.

Once we arrived at the train station I held Megan close to me inside all the hustle and bustle. Times like this reminded me just how tiny and frail she was. I dropped a kiss on the top of her head and waited for the train to come down the tracks. Sounds reverberated around the whole room- screeching metal-on-metal of the rails, people shouting, the announcer crackling on the staticy intercom, the whooshes of automatic doors- but through the cacophony of noise I heard someone shout very clearly "Louise, down here!"

I don't know if it was my Louise, but I didn't look up to check. "You don't have Louise, Logan. You have Megan. Don't you dare look." Iron will, the kind that let me withstand my mother at her most bulldozer-iest, kept my eyes on the train. When we boarded with our overnight bags, I didn't look around the car to see if she was there. When I got up to use the bathroom, I looked down as if I was watching where I put my feet and then I looked only at Megan on my way back to our seats. I did NOT let myself look for Louise once.

Iron will did not stop me from thinking about her, though. Thinking about her butting heads with the bull, about her flipping off the jeering wall street traders, about how nice her jeans looked on her legs…

Iron will only went so far, I suppose.

"No Dad, the drugs she has us both taking haven't worked yet, but they have succeeded in making Megan's mood shift all damn day," I said to my father one summer evening. We had been taking the stupid fertility drugs for at least two months now and all I could see was that my once calm wife had become a frenzy of emotion and irrationality every single day. After the first couple of weeks, my dad suggested couples therapy to help us communicate during such an emotionally fraught time. Megan wouldn't hear of it, since she was "perfectly fine." She had tears streaming down her face while saying that, naturally. She was also out of breath from sobbing. I didn't push it again. At least until both the fertility specialist and then my mom stepped in and suggested it again, this time implying that I was the one who needed it and Megan would be attending as my emotional support. I didn't care at that point. I just wanted to have a safe space to say what I was feeling without getting jumped on.

At first our weekly meeting went well. Megan would participate, at least a little. The therapist didn't coddle her though. Janice, the therapist, would speak to Megan as an adult and not back her like Megan expected her to. Megan would argue with Janice every week, first about her fluctuating emotional state due to hormones in the fertility drugs, then her dogmatic running of the kitchen, then how she spoke to other people in general. Janice didn't pull her punches or baby her. She was just as blunt with me, but I didn't argue with her. I liked her attitude. She looked at the problems and layed out ways to address them, set up a system for us to look for and implement solutions. Growing up, I was not taught healthy ways to address conflicts. I thought it was incredibly helpful. Megan did not.

We had about five sessions before Megan started her "I can't make it this week" song and dance. She basically quit without saying she quit. Janice didn't outright say she wasn't surprised, but from my point of view, she seemed like she expected this from Megan. Like she had seen it all before, dozens of times. The first couple of weeks, I left the session without talking, outside of making apologies. The third time, I sat on Janice's blue couch with her squishy pillows and stared at my shoes, both frustrated and sad. Janice sat nearby, quietly, saying nothing. Her silence wasn't awkward or impatient, only reassuring.

"What am I supposed to do?" I asked. I wasn't sure if I was asking Janice, myself, my absentee wife, or even just the universe. Janice was the only one with an answer for me.

"That all depends on what you want to happen next." She looked me in the eye, unemotional but somehow comforting. "What do YOU want, Logan?"

She had done this before. She didn't offer answers but the tools for me, for us, to find the answers for ourselves. "I don't want to be fighting all the time. I want to be able to walk into a room and not have my wife stare daggers at me. I want to go ONE day without her mentioning that we are failing as parents before we even have a kid. I want some peace for fuck's sake." I blurted out everything in my head, all at once. Janice wrote something down, took a deep breath and then asked me a very important question.

"Logan, do you want to have children?" The fact was, I was screaming in my head NO, but was too afraid to say so out loud. I spent several long minutes in silence, trying to figure out how to say it. Janice sat by in companionable silence once more.

"I don't know. I don't…. think I do." Saying it outloud was a shock even to me. I hadn't said as much out loud ever before. But the moment the words left my lips, I knew it was true. I didn't want kids, now or maybe ever. I'm not a kid person. I didn't like kids when I was still a kid. Why would I consent to having a screaming poop monster in my quiet home?

"And Megan does. How do you think she would react to your thoughts on this?"

I was too afraid to say anything out loud but the silence said enough.