Ms. Conception

I turned up what I called male-masturbating background music on the stereo and left Tom alone in the dining room with a glass cup and the syringe in dim light with the door closed. The dog tried to get in, sniffing at the door.

“Shadow, come here.”

I undid the bed, propped some pillows for my back, some for my behind. My baby making book said to recline on my back for twenty minutes with knees up, once I’ve inserted the sperm.

Tom came in, looking anxious.

“It’s not working. You’re going to have to help me.”

“We said no touching. You can do it. Don’t be afraid. Go back in there,” I said, sounding like a boxing coach. Tom obeyed. No magazine, no videos. Just Tom and his imagination and probably years of experience, in my dining room on a hard, straight-backed chair.

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Beside her was a woman, it seemed certain, beyond the possibility of having a child.

“I was abandoned by my father after the death of my mother,” she said. “I was raised by my grandmother. I do not recommend raising a child at 40 and on one’s own. I’ve lived it as a child.” That was all she said.

Beside her sat a round woman, in exotic, drappy clothes. “I’m a psychologist,” she said softly. “If I were to diagnose myself, I’d saying I am trying to free myself from the chains of vague hopes. I have a younger boyfriend. He knows my dreams, but I don’t know if he will ever surrender to them. Given the time line I’m facing at my age, the only alternative is insemination. I can afford it. I just have to do it.”

The tyranny of vague hopes, I liked that phrase. She seemed as if she knew what she needed to do. I didn’t know why she was here. Maybe she just wanted a forum, or the support. The group psychology.

“I’m like you,” I said, “but minus the younger boyfriend. I realize if I want to have a kid I have to begin to try now.”

Finally, there was a very petite, attractive and well dressed woman, a real estate agent, she said, with an immovable hairdo and lots of fashion accessories, including some plastic surgery around the eyes.
“At 45, I am still trying to figure out if I want to have a kid,” she said. She shocked me, which is silly, considering she was not that much older than I. Where have you been I wondered? It’s a bit late.

“Have you confirmed that you are physically able to?” Celia asked, channeling my thoughts but with a bit more tact.

“I haven’t talked to a doctor if that’s what you mean. I came to this class because I have had many dissatisfying relationships. And now I’m starting to feel my age. I was horrified to realize that my boyfriend’s daughter, for instance, was the young attractive woman at a recent dinner party. I’m used to that honor going to me.”

She was completely confounded by the evidence that time had probably passed her by. I looked at her blue double-breasted blazer and her matching short skirt, the gold chain link belt, the carefully arranged red, white and blue scarf slung off center from her shoulder to her neck, and her perfect flip. There were a few crow’s feet pulled tight, a wide open eyed look and red lipstick, outlined in a slightly darker shade of red pencil, on her mouth. She was beyond 45. There was something terrifying about this well preserved cheerleader. The cost seemed so high.

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Like alcoholics and chronic gamblers, we went around the room beginning with a brown haired, clear eyed, and slightly chubby woman.

“I’m thirty-seven,” she said.

Smarter than I am, I thought. At least she’s younger.

“I broke off my engagement to a man I love because I know he does not want to have children. I am certain I do, and I will do it, on my own or not. I’m here because I want to find other women in the same situation, women who have had to let someone go over this issue and who have moved on,” she said.

Beside her sat another woman, taller and thinner and older and curly haired. She cried immediately.

“I have also met the man I love, but he is in his sixties, the father of several grown children and a teenage son. He finds it barely tolerable, raising his son at this age. He does not want any more kids. For me, I am dealing with an impossible choice. I either abandon the man I love or the possibility of a child. I also worry about the prospect of losing him some time in the future, since he’s older than me, and then being left with nothing.”

“I know I cannot get pregnant,” said a woman dressed in modified country western, complete with stitched red cowboy boots. “I’m struggling to accept it, investigating adoption. But I can’t quite embrace the adoption thing. I think it’s because I’m still holding out hope.” “What are you hoping for?” the group leader asked. “A miraculous birth and the man of my dreams.”

Next came that very striking woman who filled the last chair. She was fidgeting, looking down. She quivered. Her voice wavered.

“I’m a lawyer,” she said. That explained the suit and the briefcase. “I’m full of internal conflicts. I’m not prepared to speak.” She looked up. I don’t know if it was her beauty, but something made her seem so full of potential, despite being so distraught, as though she was here against her will. She kept her discomfort in check by looking down. I wanted to shake her and tell her she could do it, whatever it was. Then I got it. I realized she was already pregnant. But she didn’t love the father. She was trying to decide what to do.

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On the following Tuesday night I went to Parent’s Place, located in a little Victorian house with a meeting room and offices, on a busy thoroughfare. I had driven by this location hundreds of times, but I had never once before seen the words Parent’s Place over the front door. It was all a matter of attention. Now I felt reassured by its mere existence, by its residential facade. If I needed it, this place is here for me, I thought. I was impressed that the community was way ahead of me on this, that such resources even existed.

Inside, the house retained the feeling of a home. There was a narrow hallway with rooms on either side and a staircase at the far end of the hall. The bulletin board just inside the entrance was full of flyers and announcements for parents of young children, in exactly the place where a coat rack or family bulletin board might be. I wasn’t a mother, but I already felt I had pulled back the curtain and crossed into this world. I was peering through a window at motherly obsessions — day care, schools, play dates.

Up on the second floor, a group of women were seated on couches grouped in a horseshoe around three sides of a narrow room, probably a kid’s bedroom at one time. A rather striking woman in a suit with a brief case, eyes downcast, arrived right after me, and took the last chair. There were pockets of discussion and areas of silence in the already filled room. I was one of the quiet ones. The women were short, tall, thin, chunky, perfectly groomed or flowingly natural. The only thing that unified this group was that they were women and presumably they wanted to have a kid.

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