Dating Big Bird (19 page)

But I did. And because Amy was out on yet another date and I needed a reality check of major proportions now—I was considering asking someone to father my child—I decided suddenly to change the rules.

“You’re sure,” I said.

“Of course I’m sure.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s the logical person to ask. And at the moment, he’s the only person to ask. Last time I checked, he was the only impoholic in the picture. Am I wrong?”

“No. You’re not wrong. You’re never wrong, Renee.”

“Well, anyway, he
is
the man you’re involved with. The man you’re closest to.”

“The man I’m in love with.”

She went still, completely still, for a moment, then continued on. “The man you’re in love with. Think of it this way: He’d probably be insulted if you
didn’t
ask him. Talk about an affront to a man’s manhood.”

Now there was a thought. But I couldn’t see Malcolm’s answer hinging on something as banal as a bruised or a stroked ego.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just can’t imagine actually asking him. I literally cannot imagine where and when and how I could ever have that conversation with him. Could you? Could you imagine ever having that conversation with someone?”

“No. But then, I don’t want kids.”

“I know,” I said, watching pedestrians dodge traffic as they crossed the street. “But let’s say you did. What would you say, and where would you say it?”

“You could do it in a restaurant. ‘Listen, I’m glad you ordered the steak because you’re going to need your strength now that I’m going to make you start fucking me.’ ”

“Oh, God.”

“Or you could always do it in bed. ‘No, we don’t actually have to have
inter
course for me to get pregnant. There are experts and fertility clinics that help impoholics who can’t—’ ”

“Stop it.”

“Well, you asked me.”

“And I can see now I shouldn’t have.”

“So what’s the alternative?”

“I could have asked Amy.” And I would. Tomorrow.

“No, I mean what’s the alternative to your question? Not asking? Not asking and never knowing if he’d do it or not because asking is too awkward?”

I thought about it and closed my eyes. Awkwardness seemed a small price to pay for something this important.

“So … how … what—where—when?” I stammered.

“Well, I think you just have to come out and say it as directly as possible. That this is something you really want to do. That it’s something that’s incredibly important to you, and that because it’s so impotent—I mean im
por
tant—you can’t imagine doing it accidentally, or with just anyone, or with someone completely unknown and anonymous. And
then you have to do the big disclaimer thing: you know, that you’re not looking for any involvement from him—emotionally or financially. That you’re completely prepared to do this alone, except for the fertilization part. And that basically that’s all you’re asking him for.”

“Jesus, that’s cold,” I said. “I mean, that’s a pretty unbelievable thing to say to someone. To ask someone, especially someone you’re involved with, ‘Just give me a baby, and then we don’t ever have to have anything to do with each other again.’ ”

“But that’s kind of the point. It’s a bargain—a bargain in which he finally has the chance to give you what you want—to give you what you want most in the world—and to feel generous and magnanimous and selfless in the process. Your end of the bargain is to make it as easy as possible for him to do that.”

Renee—ever the pragmatist, the cynic. A deal was a deal was a deal: nothing more, nothing less. Here was cynicism in its purest form—striking a deal to create a life. But who’s to say she was completely wrong?

“You’d be letting him off the hook,” she continued. “You’d be exempting him from obligation. And from what you’ve told me about how he doesn’t want any more kids, that might be the only way he’d ever say yes.”

“You’re
letting me
off the hook? You’re
exempting me from obligation?
Do you know what it means to say what you’ve just said? Do you have any idea of the implications of those statements? Of what it says about who you think I am to even think I’d agree to something like that?”

Malcolm threw a twenty-dollar bill on the bar at the Cedar Tavern and stormed off through the door outside. The previous night’s conversation with Renee had made me brave enough to bring it up, and what had started out as my backing into the subject too quickly when I thought I saw an opening—Malcolm had mentioned an article about fertility doctors he’d just read in
New York
magazine by a writer he knew—had turned into my actually asking the whole question. His rage was far beyond anything I could have imagined.

I picked up my bag and stood up, feeling my legs weaken as I followed him outside. I had never seen him
this furious, and I had no idea what to do or say to calm him down.

He was standing on the sidewalk as I came out; his eyes fierce, his face flushed, his hands in fists at his sides.

We weren’t through yet.

“I’m sorry,” I started. “I’m sorry I asked you. I had no idea you’d react this way.” I felt the panic rising in my voice, and I realized I had not prepared myself for a scene like this. “I never meant to insult you, or to imply that—I just assumed that what you’d always said about not wanting to have any more kids was absolute. I thought the only way you might consider doing this was if you didn’t have to be a part of it.”

“Well, you thought wrong. You don’t even know what you asked me, do you? What the exact meaning of your question was.” I felt like he hated me suddenly. “Come on, you’re the marketing expert who has a facility with words. What exactly did you ask me to do?”

“I asked you—I asked you to help me.”

“To help you what?”

“To help me have a child.”

“And what else? What else did you ask me for?”

I was so upset, I could hardly think straight.

“Nothing. I didn’t ask you for anything else.”

“Exactly.” He glared at me. “Think about that. And ask yourself what connection that might have to my reaction.” He turned, then, and started to walk away.

I stood there trying to take in what he had just said.

“I didn’t ask you for anything else because I didn’t think you’d want to give me anything else,” I yelled at his back.

He stopped and turned.

“I knew that you didn’t want the emotional responsibility of children again—of a family again. It’s something you’ve told me over and over, and it’s something I’d finally accepted.” I lowered my voice and tried to choose my words
carefully. “So I thought, this way you wouldn’t have to have any responsibility. You wouldn’t have to have anything to do with the child or with me if you didn’t want to, and I would understand that.”

“You don’t know me at all, then. And you certainly don’t know anything about what it means to have a child.”

“What are you talking about?” I could feel how tense his body was, how full of anger it was. The more I said, the worse it was getting, and yet there was no going back now. This was the final demarcation line for him and me, I knew, and though we’d reached this line sooner than I’d expected, we were finally up against it.

“If you knew anything about what having a child really means, you would never have asked me that question,” he said. “You couldn’t have asked me that question. Because to ask it implies that you think I could have a child and then walk away from it—a scenario that is completely inconceivable to me. Not to mention morally reprehensible. I could never do that. Never in a million years.”

He shoved his fists into his pockets and shook his head in disbelief. “Having a child is
sacred
. It’s the most
sacred
fucking thing you can do in this world. And for you not to know that—for you not to know what it means—what it means to
me
—it’s, well …” His voice trailed off in disgust. “I don’t know. I don’t know what we’ve been doing the past year.”

He ran his hands through his hair, and when he collected himself, he looked at me without disdain for the first time since we’d started arguing.

My eyes welled up, and the tears that rolled down my cheeks stung, as if I’d been slapped across the face.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I’m sorry I got so angry.”

“I’m sorry, too.” I wiped the tears unceremoniously from my face and ran the back of my hand across my nose. “I’m
sorry I asked you. This was a mistake. A huge mistake, and I’m sorry. I really am.”

I was completely devastated by his reaction, and underneath I was beginning to feel the force of my own anger. His unwillingness to even discuss something I wanted suddenly made me interpret his long-standing behavior in a different way: He wasn’t frozen. He was withholding. And that insight—whether right or wrong, I didn’t care at that moment—made me shake with rage.

“No matter what I would have asked you for, you would have said no. You’ve always said no.”

I could feel more tears coming, and I looked up at the night sky, clear and black and relentlessly deep, so they would go back behind my eyes.

“So don’t tell me that you won’t do this because I didn’t ask you for more than just your sperm.” I took a step toward him and pointed my finger as I spoke. “Don’t tell me that if I’d asked you to do this with me—to do this together—you’d have said yes. Because if that’s the case, then I’ll ask you for that.” I looked straight at him, daring myself to go on. “I’ll ask you right here, right now, to please do this for me—to please do this with me.”

Our eyes locked, and for a second or two neither of us flinched. But then he looked away.

“I can’t,” he finally whispered. “I’m sorry. But I just can’t.”

So. It was over finally. Completely over. And I felt empty now, and hollow, and implausibly calm.

“We can talk about it more, if you want to,” he said. “Tomorrow, or—whenever. I just don’t think we should keep at it tonight.”

“There’s nothing more to talk about,” I said.

He looked down and clenched his jaw. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that there’s nowhere left for this to go. We
want different things, you and me. Completely different things. Torturing each other like this seems pointless, don’t you think?”

He looked spent. “What do you want from me, Ellen?”

“I want you to
feel
something. To
want
something. To
fight
for something. To fight for
me
. But you don’t want this. You don’t want me. Every time you see me, every time we’re together, I remind you of everything you can’t do anymore. Of everything you don’t have anymore. Of everything you lost and think you’ll never ever recover. I don’t bring you any joy. Any pleasure. Any happiness. I haven’t brought you any closer to life. And maybe I’ve even made things worse.”

“You didn’t make things worse. You made them better. You helped me.”

“Did I?” I was incredulous. I felt like he was talking about a different relationship, two different people who weren’t us. “I didn’t help you. I disappointed you, and you disappointed me. We failed each other. How does that help anyone?”

“We tried, at least.”

“You didn’t try. Maybe you couldn’t, or you weren’t ready to, or you just didn’t feel enough for me to want to get better. Maybe next time, with someone else, you will. Maybe when you meet someone who means enough to you, you’ll fight for her,” I said. “You’ll fight to keep her from giving up on you.”

And then I walked away.

I don’t remember anything about the rest of that night, or much about the week afterward, except a profound sadness and sense of loss—loss of hope, loss of possibility, for what our relationship might have been but did not become. I saw that I had expected too much from Malcolm. I’d wanted something from him that I’d known all along he
couldn’t give, and as Amy had done with Jonathan and then with Will, I had refused to see it and refused to accept it.

I’d wanted to change him, to fix him, to heal him—to crack him open like a badly healed bone that needed to be reset—and when I couldn’t, and when I realized I had not been important enough to him to make him turn away from his grief and start a new life with me, a thickening sense of failure and melancholy set in. We had loved each other, but maybe not enough. Not enough to have given each other what we wanted most.

Once I accepted the fact that Malcolm wouldn’t be a part of my life now or in the future, I became more focused. Having a child—or not—would be solely my decision.