CANDIDA LAWRENCE

Writing “a child” makes me feel frantic. We began trying three years ago. We were happy enough. He, good to his word, was with a design-engineering firm and loving it. I was in school again, able for the first time to attend fulltime without working. We built a house in the hills behind the 60-inch cyclotron. We built a bedroom for the baby. Now I begin to sound soppy, but it wasn’t that way at all. I wanted a baby neutrally, as the next event in life’s program, one I hadn’t designed but did not oppose. My mother-in-law waited. Everyone began waiting, out there, calling to inquire, then not calling.

A year went by and I found myself more interested in my studies, even developing a passion for, of all subjects, political theory, how governments are formed and why, what the nature of the social contract is. In all this theory there was not a word about babies, and women were never mentioned.

The next year, since we were a serious couple, we followed Dr. G.’s advice and studied ovulation times, took my temperature in the morning, went at it conscientiously when it was up a degree. I asked Dr. G. for a physical exam and he sent air through my tubes and told me I had a tipped uterus. He advised standing on my head after intercourse. He asked if my husband would submit to an analysis of his sperm. Of course, why not?

My husband said to me at the dinner table: “Dr. G. says my sperm have low motility. He says they probably can’t make the journey. I should rest more, take vitamins. This may change.” I asked about mumps when he was a child because that seemed simpler, kinder, than mentioning Oak Ridge, cyclotrons, plutonium, “hot” environments, but I knew, almost as though I were inside his brain throwing switches to left or right, the thoughts he was derailing.

I told Molly in her garden while she was plucking dead leaves off a fuchsia. It felt good to be there in the sunshine, just the two of us, my father at work, my younger brother at school. We agreed this was not news to spread around, poor man, perhaps he shouldn’t even have been told. I said “Yes, it was no doubt better when a woman could be called barren.” She said, “Oh dear, that sounds bitter,” and I said no, I didn’t feel bitter, just odd, a bit goofy, as though I weren’t at all sure what I’d do next. Maybe I’d decide to walk from Berkeley to New York by way of Canada with a dog by my side, something like that.