Page 63 of Summer Longing
Elise tried not to feel resentful. She told herself that if she’d been straight and married to a man, it wouldn’t even be an option to ask her partner to become pregnant.
Another road would have been surrogacy. But by the time Elise floated the idea, Fern had had enough. She framed it as an issue of the health of their relationship, and Elise had backed down.
Sometimes, Elise lay awake at night thinking of their two remaining frozen embryos sitting in a tank somewhere in Boston.
Elise shook all of these thoughts away now, not wanting to cloud the moment with negativity. She pulled the stuffed dolphins out of their plastic wrap and set them in a row on the floating shelf above the dresser. The mobile would take a bit more work. When she opened the package, she saw that the sea creatures needed to be attached to the round circular top from which they’d hang. And then, of course, the entire thing had to be attached to the ceiling.
“Elise, you home?” Fern called from downstairs.
Surprised, Elise set down the mini-octopus in her hand. She hadn’t been expecting Fern for another hour or two.
“I’m in the office,” she called back, suddenly tense.
She heard Fern’s footsteps on the stairs. “Hey,” Fern said, appearing in the doorway. “I see Marco has the kelp rigged up out back. It looks half dry already. Maybe tomorrow we can find time to start experimenting with blends?”
“Sure,” Elise said.
Fern noticed the mobile pieces in Elise’s hands. “What are you doing?”
“I ordered some things for Mira,” she said.
“Why?” Fern said.
“What do you mean, why? Because she needs some things.”
Fern looked around the room, took in the shelf of stuffed dolphins. She shook her head. “See,” she said. “This is exactly what I was afraid of.”
“What?” Elise said, irritated.
“You’re acting like this is a done deal. You’re too emotionally invested in this babythat is not yours.”
“She’s not ours.Ours. Have you forgotten that a family is something we have been trying to create together? I might be too emotionally invested, but I wish you were a little more invested. I wish you had been all along.” Her eyes filled with tears.
“Elise,” Fern said, her expression softening. “I wanted a baby too.”
Elise shook her head. “As soon as it got hard, something in you just shut down. You didn’t want it like I wanted it.”
“I didn’t want it if it was going to destroy our relationship in the process, no. You’re right. I wanted a baby, but I wanted you more. Iaminvested—in you. In us.”
Last year, Elise had chosen being a wife over being a mother. A week ago, if anyone had asked, she would have sworn that she’d made the right choice. Now, left to decide between eating dinner with Fern and putting the mobile together, she wasn’t so sure.
“I’m invested in us too,” Elise said. “But I shouldn’t have to choose.”
“You need to send some of this stuff back. It’s not helping anything to have all of this here.”
Elise felt she could choke on her frustration. “I don’t understand how you can be soremoved!”
Fern stepped closer, reaching for her hand. “I’m not being removed. I’m being practical. Frankly, one of us has to be. Come on—don’t be angry. Let me take you out to dinner.”
“I’m not hungry,” Elise said quietly.
The perfume and toiletry shop Good Scents on Commercial was one of the cutest stores on the block, with its red-barn facade, white window frames, and black-and-white awning. The shelves of the small space were filled with lotions, perfumes, candles, and soaps. It was a toy store for people who loved small luxuries. Ruth walked in looking for inspiration, some ideas for what to create next. Now that she’d started with the soap, she had the bug. There was no turning back.
And yet, even as she sampled a citrus-scented lotion, she could not stop thinking about her offer to let her ex-husband stay at the house.
In the moment, it had seemed logical. Now, she wasn’t so sure. Although what was the big deal? They had long been on amicable terms. The initial sting of the divorce had mellowed into something much more manageable over the decades, even though at first, it had felt like a tectonic shift that she would never recover from.
One of the benefits of being older was that you could look back and see that every moment that had felt intractable and awful was just temporary. It was impossible to get a young person to believe that “this too shall pass.” It was something that had to be experienced. Yes, some of the pain lingered. Yes, regret was an inevitable part of life. Every choice had repercussions. Did she ever think twice about her decision to end her marriage? Of course. Had it been the right thing to do at the time? Absolutely.
