Ding, ding, ding. Her hand roamed the mattress for her phone, which she had shoved under the abandoned pillows on his side of the bed after he had kissed her forehead and left for work. She had thought the mountain of down and cotton would smother the dings. It hadn’t.
She forced her swollen eyelids apart just enough to see a blur of her inbox. The group chat was already active, so early in the morning.
Years ago, she had been honored when she was first added to one of his family group chats. There were multiple, in a variety of arrangements. Just his brothers; his brothers and his nephews; his brothers and his mother; the whole family—and she had proudly made her way into all of them. Accepted. She was even in some that he wasn’t a part of. In time, she would come to realize it wasn’t because they loved her, but because she responded faster than he did.
Each ding from the family chats used to land with a welcoming sense of belonging. Eventually the dings became proof of how different she actually was from all of them, how outside the jokes she was meant to be—and the butt of many of them. Like just weeks before, when she had offered to host Christmas Day and the conversation turned to who would bring the blow—not because they actually planned on snorting cocaine on Christmas, but because they all knew she had recently called out one of his brothers for his ugly habit. That day, instead of offers to bring desserts or bottles of wine, she received emojis with their lips pouted, blowing clouds of—air?
Her head still lay on the pillow as her eyes strained to bring the text into focus. Not text—she saw it first—a screenshot of him, a selfie. Followed by, “Where are you?”
She stared at the selfie, not remembering him posting it. She navigated to his Instagram, then his Facebook, searching for the mystery image, but failed to find its origin.
Back in the group chat, she zoomed in on the picture. TikTok? Something inside her snapped, just as it had the day before when her sadness collided with an anger she could not name. She had ripped the toaster off the kitchen counter and, with all her strength, thrown it onto the hardwood floor. It crashed, splitting into pieces, tiny burnt crumbs scattered around it. She stood over the mess she had made for a moment, then retreated up the stairs and climbed into bed, leaving him to emerge from the basement where he had been hiding, and clean up the destruction.
That same rage rose in her again. “TikTok? You have a TikTok now? I thought TikTok was for kids?” she typed maniacally, and hit send.
Names of his family members popped into the box with a typing indicator. One of his brothers responded with some ridiculous emoji, followed by, “Now kids, keep it out of the group chat.”
Ding, ding—more emojis, laughing ones—in response to his brother’s comment.
Heat manifested inside her, just another way her body had been betraying her lately. Her eyes released a flood that should no longer have existed—after a week of a constant stream, it should have already run dry.
“I’m pregnant and losing it. And he’s posting selfies!” The phone shook in her hands as she hit send.
Ding, ding, ding.
“Congratulations!” His stepfather.
“Congratulations, Daddy!” One of his brothers, for him.
“Add me on TikTok!” His brother’s wife. The one who went to church every Sunday but didn’t have a shred of human decency in her. The wife who threatened to pull out of a family vacation when told they would be bringing along their new rescue puppy that had replaced their sixteen-year-old dog that had recently passed away. “But I’m allergic to dogs,” the wife had said. “I don’t like dogs,” the wife had argued. Two years later, the wife got a dog of her own.
“Fuck off!” Her voice echoed off the walls of the silent home as she hit send.
“Guys. Did you read her message?” His other sister-in-law, the one with an actual heart.
“Stop.” Him. He finally entered the chat.
“All of you can fuck off!” She hit send again.
“Don’t be disrespectful in this chat. If you don’t want to be here, you can leave.” His mother.
Her chest tightened with a sharp, stabbing pain. His mother’s betrayal was almost worse than the one her own body was delivering. His mother, who she had taken a day off for just that summer—walked the beach with, swam with in the Long Island Sound with her clothes on, to distract her from the reality that her own mother was going to die. His mother, who had begged them to have a baby when they first moved in together, pointing out the perfect spot for a crib in their new apartment. His mother, who for six years had asked when the baby was coming. “We’re trying,” she had responded, every time.
“You can fuck off too!” She hit send one final time, turned off her phone, buried her face in her pillow, and screamed, “I want to die.”
Eventually she got up and moved around the house carefully, to slow the bleeding. By the time he got home, she was back in bed.
The next morning when she woke, the bleeding was heavier, and she knew it was truly over. She made an appointment with her doctor. “Do you want me to come? I can take the day off?” he asked.
The fact that he asked, rather than telling her he was coming, told her he didn’t want to be there. She thought of the excitement on his face, when she had presented him with four positive pregnancy tests. They had finally done it. They had finally made a baby. The excitement was gone now, replaced with a sadness that has no words. She decided to shield him from it.
“I can go alone,” she told him. “No sense in both of us going through this.”
He nodded, accepting her brave offer.
Weeks before, he had accompanied her to the doctor, where they confirmed the pregnancy. She walked in under the comfort of his arm wrapped around her waist. He held her hand as she lay on the examination table, after she’d given a urine sample. A nurse entered with a congratulatory smile, announcing, “You’re pregnant!”
Then the doctor entered with an ultrasound machine and asked, “When was your last period?”
She had asked herself the same question. “I don’t remember. I have tampons on Amazon Subscribe & Save, and now two unopened boxes under my sink. Maybe two, three months. I’ve had morning sickness for the last week, and fatigue.” She felt foolish as she spoke. How had she not noticed she was pregnant? She was forty-two. She had given up on the idea of another baby years ago, and life had been so busy.
“Okay, let’s take a look.” The doctor poured cold gel onto her stomach, glided the ultrasound wand over her belly, then studied the screen. The doctor’s smile, which had been soft, stiffened into a straight line. “Let’s move to an internal ultrasound,” the doctor said, applying more gel to a different wand and searching inside for a sign of life.
“There.” The doctor pointed to the screen. “There’s the sac.” The doctor took pictures and measurements, then turned the machine away from them.
“I don’t see a heartbeat yet. But that’s not cause for alarm. You’re likely just not as far along as you thought. I’ll have you come back for more blood work in three days, and again in a week, to see if your hormones are increasing. Then we’ll do another ultrasound in two weeks.”
Three days later, then a week after that, serial blood tests showed rising hormones, indicating a healthy, first-trimester pregnancy. That proof—paid for with her increasing vomiting, scent aversion, and exhaustion—felt promising. They had begun picking out baby names. She had begun designing a nursery in her head. They had been planning. Happy.
Then the bleeding started. Then she went to the doctor’s office alone, because she was brave. But as she sat in the waiting room, she twisted her face toward the window so the other patients—the joyful ones, the ones with big bellies—wouldn’t see the tears falling from her eyes.
She was called in at once, when her silent tears turned to heavier sobs. Another examination. “The sac is gone,” the doctor told her quietly.
“I know,” she cried.
She went home and got back into bed. Six years they had tried, waiting patiently. “If it’s in God’s plan, it will happen,” they had always told each other.
The doctor’s explanation was that they had likely conceived months before; the embryo hadn’t developed, and her body had absorbed it. But the sac remained, and her body still thought she was pregnant. The morning sickness, the exhaustion—all symptoms of her insides holding on to a pregnancy that was never viable. It was gone before she even knew it was there. She hated herself. If she had paid attention to her body, if she had known, maybe it would have been different. It was all the result of her body turning against her—for not being aware of the life that had, for a moment, been inside her.
She cried for weeks. She blamed herself. She didn’t want to move from bed. She let herself wither away. He pulled her out of it, in the most unconventional way. He forced her to go to the gun range with him and stood behind her, passing her magazine after magazine to unload. “Again,” he kept saying. It was only the second time she had ever been to the range with him; she hated it. But not that day. She released something there that day.
Then ordinary life carried her the rest of the way out of it. Months later, she still hasn’t spoken to his mother. His mother never called to check in on her. His mother is waiting for an apology for the curse words.
She still can’t talk about it without breaking down, but life continues on. She mourns the lost future she thought belonged to them, that slipped silently from their grasp—a baby that would be theirs, the baby she would finally give him. But it wasn’t meant to be, she supposes. So she keeps throwing herself into loving him, and the daughters she has. With hope that maybe, someday…
