Baby

“I’m very sorry Mrs Levitt…” I know the speal the doctor will recite, I have heard many times before.

I look away from the doctor and at my wife. She too has heard the speech, more times than I image she’d want to, but she still cries. Every time.

Both her hands go up to cradle her face, and she rocks forward in the chair. I know her mouth is open behind her hand, and she’s silently yelling.

I put my arm around her back and say, “It’s going to be okay.”

God I’m useless. And I’m vain too. I know all the meaningful cards and films and books, will tell you that love transcends looks, and its true. I wouldn’t have married Jane if she hadn’t been amazing. If she hadn’t understood the rules of rugby, or because she didn’t care what I bought her for Valentine’s day, just as long as I remembered. Because she impressed my family. Because she could stand my family. Because she liked the sea and picnics and thought politics was stupid. Because she requires a nurse’s uniform for her actual job. Because when we argue, I know will shout but afterwards when everything is back to normal, the argument won’t matter.

She had, or has still the dirtiest sense of humour, and can turn the most innocent of statements into a come on. I married because I love her, but I won’t lie and say the physical isn’t included in at least some of the equation. I mean you have to look at this person for the rest of your life; you don’t go out of your way to date Jabba the hut.

Not that I’m saying Jane looks like Jabba – but she is bigger than she ever use to be. Her face is swollen past her delicate cheekbones. Puffy around her eyes. I think sometimes her lips have got smaller. Her tummy is swollen and her breasts loll to either side of her chest even when she wears a bra. She doesn’t even have a baby yet and already she looks like she has had six. It’s the hormones she pumping into herself night and day, that have changed her beyond recognition. But it’s the lack of success that has really ruined her.

She lifts her hands. I’m watching her not from where I sit on one the chairs next to her; instead perhaps I am a fly on the wall, or something that stares at both of us. I revolt myself. I use to be fit, a pilot for the RAF, I worked out. Now I teach at the nearby comp, I’ve not seen a gym in months, and Jane is not the only one whose been injecting themselves to try and conceive.

I sound shallow. I have a job, a wife, a house, my health, I am lucky. I was happy. Now my days and nights revolve around unsuccessfully trying to knock my wife up. Sounds fun, right? The constant sex? Well it use to be; now its scheduled, regulated… and I have to close my eyes to make love to her.

It’s not just the physical, Jane use to be happy. She’s a nurse; she’s got dozens of friends and a great family. You could see she was happy. Now she ignores our dog, won’t speak to any of her friends and argues… with everyone. All the time.

I suggested adoption a few months back and you should have seen her face, it was as if I had offered to kill. I can’t understand, I think adoption would be good. I mean the UK has the highest rate in Europe of teen pregnancies, not all of those hussies are going to be keeping their offspring. I had a daydream that I could walk along a street in one of those council estates with a wheelbarrow and a shovel, scooping up little fat babies who’d been dumped outside. I could push the wheelbarrow all the way back to our little terraced cottage, and present Jane with my findings. “Here,” I could announce, “I can’t make you babies, but look what I can give you.”

It’s a stupid fantasy but I did go and collect some adoption papers when Jane and I had a fight about how little I cared. I wanted to prove I did.

I kept them hidden for a suitable time to present them to her. But I’d overheard a conservation with her sister, Megan. “You see, I actually want something of my blood to continue,” this was a few months back when Meg and Jane were still talking, “you understand what I mean. For the actual thing to grow inside you, to feel it. To know its yours’.”

Meg had agreed, after all she knew it ways far safer to go along with Jane. But I thought it was crap. There are kids at my school, who I care about, there are my nieces and nephew who I love… you raise a child and it’s yours’. I binned the adoption papers.

We can’t walk past a baby shop with her crying. A buggy goes past and my hand that she is holding will tighten until it hurts. She won’t visit her friends because seven months ago, Tracey, a woman she’s known for nearly twenty years announced she was pregnant with her second baby. Jane told me she wanted to slap her…. “It’s not fair. Why does she get another one? What the hell have I done wrong?” We left Tracey’s.

I feel like a failure. I don’t even know what for. We are sat in a doctor’s office, like so many others we have sat in before, and discussed treatment. White walls, a desk, chairs, and decorative awards upon the bland paint. This doctor is female, and young and I notice a photograph of a baby on the desk, I hope Jane doesn’t see it. The baby is white and pink and fat. I use to joke that all babies looked a bit like Winston Churchill; sometimes I still think they do. The idea of the treatment working seems beyond possible and I now cannot imagine one of the doctors saying we are successful. I think I would cry.

I want to make her happy. Even now. I or the fat guy I am staring at from across the room is pale, pasty looking – he’s getting a double chin. He wears unfortunate sweaters. And I know that he doesn’t really want a baby anymore.