The Longest Date: Life as a Wife Read online

  We ran away to a dog-friendly hotel in Santa Barbara. We were both so drained we talked about pulling a Sophie’s choice and taking too much Advil or whatever people take that isn’t too awful, and just ending it, lying in each other’s arms.

  But Tink was in her usual place between us on the bed, and we knew we couldn’t leave her behind. And we couldn’t take her with us into that good night because then we would no longer be remembered as the tragic victims of infertility heartache; we would be the monsters who killed their dog.

  We actually had that conversation, and because of Tink (and our families, and each other, but mostly because of Tink) we had to soldier on. Our rescue rescued us.

  Although in the hospital we both agreed we were done trying to have our own baby, it took me three months to feel like pursuing anything else. You were very patient, and I know that was hard. I just wanted to wait until I could feel something other than sadness to kick off a new process. You said you wanted me to be excited. I wasn’t sure I would ever feel excitement again.

  I went to some film festivals with the short film I directed (including the Feel Good Film Festival, where I didn’t feel so good). We tried to see friends and movies, but nothing made us feel better. You were eager to move on. I was still gun-shy.

  We traveled every month, as if we could leave the grief behind.

  In August we stayed at a famous hotel on the bluffs of Big Sur, and I had a panic attack in our hobbit hole of a room. It was built into a hillside. There was moss on the roof. It was the room I picked after years of looking longingly at their Web site, it was the room on their postcard, and I couldn’t breathe.

  In September you went on a surf trip to Mexico and tried to stay by losing your passport. Who could blame you? (Actually, it was stolen, and you worked very hard to get back over the border and home to me.) In October I went to New York and worked on a theater project with Liz and Elisa and Julie, and I’m not sure if it was New York, or the friends, or the theater, but I begin to feel like I had a pulse again.

  As the holidays approached, we started researching adoption in earnest. I finally felt ready. I actually felt excited. We met with friends who had adopted and who were adopted. We started working with a domestic adoption lawyer and made a scrapbook for potential birth mothers, and got in all of our forms in record time, and the sight of you cradling the Resusci Baby during our infant CPR course reminded me how much you needed a real one.

  You got me a snow machine. Again, you really need a child.

  A television pilot I had written two years earlier came back to life. Love Bites. I turned our hotel room in Whistler into a production office while you were snowboarding and heliboarding, and you were fantastic, and we were both golden.

  And that pilot process for me was so good, such a good experience; I felt so confident and happy and it seemed like the silver lining of not having a child yet—that I got to film that show, and that I was proud of it, and that I felt like I ran it so well.

  And then when it made the NBC fall schedule in the plum time slot of 10 P.M. Thursday nights, I had a nervous breakdown.

  Among other things, my virgin was pregnant.

  The wonderfully talented, highly in demand actress we got for the role of my main character, “The Last Virgin in Virginia,” was pregnant.

  I was one of the first people she told. She felt horrible about it, said she would understand if I wanted to do the show without her.

  But I didn’t want to do the show without her, and I didn’t want a pregnancy (even if it wasn’t mine) to be anything but joyful if I could help it.

  I was in denial that it would change the show. I thought I could handle it. I thought wardrobe would handle it. There were so many moving pieces, and I was in charge of all of them.

  Meanwhile, there was a birth mother (the third we had talked to), but this time, it seemed real. There would be a baby in a month, she said.

  Again, I couldn’t breathe. I was already having panic attacks at work. But a baby. Was this our baby?

  You thought it was. You got attached. I liked the birth mother on the phone but had reservations about meeting her in L.A. Then she showed up unannounced, and you met her and liked her and I was dragging my feet, which was so frustrating to you, and then our lawyer said her story didn’t check out; she was not for us.

  And then you shut down. It was one more disappointment than you could take. This was all around our anniversary. You threw a beautiful dinner party with our very closest friends, and I felt naked. I still feel naked. I feel like all of the wounds of all of this pain and frustration and bad timing had come together such that I could not enjoy or even hold on to the idea of the birth of a baby or the birth of a show.

  I just stepped down as show runner, the day after our anniversary.

  And you are not used to seeing me this weak and scared, and I know it is scaring you.

  Believe me, I hope to feel like myself again soon. Nobody misses me more than me.

  So how to look forward to next year?

  Because I do wish to sign up for another year, but I would like things to be different.

  I would like to give myself and ourselves a fucking break.

  I would like to get a break from the universe on this baby thing before we’re collecting social security.

  I would like to remember what my show was about. What was so funny about love? Sometimes love bites.

  I wanted my show to be optimistic. I want to be optimistic again.

  I didn’t want it to be dark. I didn’t want these vows to be dark, but I feel dark.

  But you didn’t mind that I stayed home today, on Independence Day, and watched a Top Chef marathon, and then we went up to the roof deck to watch the fireworks, and Tink jumped into the hammock with us, and we didn’t tip over.

  This was a hard year that began and ended with loss.

  And I gave up something that doesn’t come around often for a writer. I gave up my baby, in a sense, by giving up the reins of my show. I don’t know how that was related to everything else we’ve been through, but I’m sure it was.

  Maybe I’m clearing space, not just for a baby, but for our relationship. I think we need some TLC.

  So, here I am, broken and dented, and I wish to sign up for another year, if you’ll have me.

  Love, your wife

  Ian’s Page

  Let me just say (before anyone else does) that I know I am fortunate to have any partner, let alone a partner like Ian, in this baby quest. I have female friends who have gone through it alone, and I am in awe of their strength and resiliency.

  But trying to produce a person with another person has its challenges. Not all couples survive. Every step and misstep along the way, you have to hope you’re still on the same page.

  Ian and I somehow remained on the same page until Year Five, and then things got so bad, he needed his own page.

  Literally.

  He decided to write about what we’d been through trying to have a baby.

  I encouraged this at first, because I find journaling to be therapeutic and clarifying (even though I hate the word “journaling”—I don’t know why it’s not just called “writing”), but Ian’s journaling seemed to be bringing him stress rather than comfort. For months he would mutter that he had to finish his “essay,” which, I kept reminding him, did not need to be finished, did not need to be an essay; it was just for him.

  But at some point, it wasn’t just for him. It was for all men who had experienced similar losses, and when Ian finally shared it with me, I saw why he had needed to write it, and why he needed to finish it, and why men (and women) needed to read it.

  So here it is—Ian’s page—because this baby odyssey is our story, not mine. And because he was able to be more honest than I was about what we lost along the way.

  A Father’s Story: The Baby We Didn’t Hav
e

  BY IAN WALLACH

  It started perfectly. A rocking romance, magical wedding, decadent honeymoon, came home pregnant. My wife stomps out of the bathroom, half smiling, half accusatory, holding a plastic stick with a plus sign and yelling, “Ian, you got me pregnant!” Thirteen weeks later, we see the color flee from the face of our OB/GYN, and he tells us that this being was not meant to be.

  “Specialist” was a title with which we would become too familiar. Specialist number one told us that we needed a D&C (dilation and curettage—in this case, a fancy term for ending a pregnancy). Over the next few years, more specialists explained more acronyms, like IUI (intrauterine insemination) and IVF (in vitro fertilization). We tried to understand the science behind each procedure, made ourselves believe we did, and gave each one a shot. Money rolled out while bad news washed in. And then several specialists (and one acupuncturist) suggested we try donor eggs.

  A donor gave us eleven eggs and two chances. One procedure required many injections and five eggs but brought only frustration and sadness. After the second attempt, which used the remaining six eggs, we waited for the phone call. I promised I would take it, because my wife had answered all the others. It came late, which we decided wasn’t good. But then something so unexpected happened: we did not get bad news.

  Suddenly we were able to spend days, and then weeks, sharing a secret that seemed to cure an invisible injury. Weeks became months. We saw a moving head on a monitor. Later, tiny hands. We heard racing heartbeats (that I’d record on my iPhone). Three months in, we braced for the same fear-inducing test—the “nuchal fold,” or neck measurement, scan—that had led to heartbreak once before. Somehow, still, there was no bad news.

  A doctor—a specialist, even—said words like “healthy” and “female.” On the short drive home, we quickly agreed on a name. We began designing the baby’s room and thinking how our lives would change. We sent a global e-mail with the subject line “Congratulations to Us.” I wrote, “Yesterday we passed the three-month-now-it’s-okay-to-speak-about-it deadline, so we can announce that we are expecting a healthy baby girl to arrive in early January.”

  Two weeks later my wife woke me to say she was nervous and felt cramps. An ultrasound confirmed all was fine (and another, three days later, did as well). But three days after that, there was a lot of blood and a trip to the ER. Once again we were told that all was fine, shown images of the baby moving, and sent home.

  My wife’s cramps worsened. The doctor on call suggested Tylenol. When the pain sharpened, the doctor asked me to locate an open pharmacy to get Vicodin. My wife went to the bathroom, came back to bed, returned to the bathroom, and screamed. I knew.

  I told her not to look down. (She had.) Still connected to her, facing west and not moving, was the physical embodiment of what we had only ever seen on-screen. Autopilot clicked on. I looked for a container, knowing I had to save everything. A colored pint glass was by the sink, and I washed it out. My wife moved to the rim of the bathtub. I collected what had fallen and ran to call 911.

  I told the dispatcher that my wife had miscarried. He asked me to describe what happened and told me that she would probably be going into shock and I needed to cover her with blankets. I didn’t want to go where I couldn’t see her, and the blankets were more than thirty feet away, down the hall. I was stuck. The dispatcher told me to give the phone to my wife and go get the blankets. When I returned, she was crying less. The pain, which she hadn’t known was labor, was subsiding.

  In under five minutes the doorbell rang, and I ran downstairs. Four paramedics rushed in, asking questions that somehow I was able to answer: “Where’s your wife?” “Where is the fetus?” “Is it intact?” “How far along?” One of them scooped up our panicked dog and plopped her in another bathroom. These kind, brilliant men then flirted with my wife while simultaneously telling her that she was going into shock (explaining her jitterbug legs). They placed her on a chair and carried her down three flights of stairs. Leave it to my wife—at this moment—to joke about, and apologize for, her weight. Her beautiful, stunning, sexy, pregnancy weight.

  Fire trucks and ambulances do little for discretion. The whole neighborhood was outside and knew what had happened. I reached the doctor on call and asked which hospital to go to. She seemed surprised and asked, “You called the paramedics?” I remember thinking, but not saying, Yes, considering that my bloody wife is convulsing and our child’s in a pint glass. The kind man in the ambulance told us we were right to call for help, that 911 is there for situations that people can’t handle on their own.

  Our regular, more empathetic doctor drove from her home to meet us at the hospital and perform the surgery. Another D&C, necessary to make sure that what we knew was gone was completely so. Two hours later, my wife and I took a cab home.

  In the morning, I retrieved the two-week-old celebratory e-mail, cut and pasted the names of the recipients, and informed everyone that the pregnancy had ended and we needed some private time. And then we witnessed different forms of the art of consolation.

  The first wave was simply brilliant. Friends tiptoed up to our door, set down plates of macaroni and cheese, lasagna, sandwiches, or fruit, rang the bell—and left. How did I not know of this amazing practice? It was exactly what we needed: a combination of nourishment, respect, privacy, and love (unfortunately, a mere month later, we’d realize we had gained a combined weight of almost forty pounds).

  The second wave was floral—very traditional. My wife loved that our house looked and smelled beautiful, but I thought it looked and smelled like a funeral home. I will never forget one arrangement, from a dear friend. The florist had the inspired idea of putting it in a “treasure chest.” I was a bit taken aback when I opened my door to see a delivery man holding a dark wood box, fourteen by eight inches, with a rounded top flipped open to display orchids and lilies. Really? I wondered. A baby casket? I thought I was being paranoid. But out of caution, I hid it in the kitchen, barely visible behind other arrangements. My wife walked downstairs, passed the kitchen, and stopped suddenly to ask, “Is that a baby casket?” For the first time in ten days, we laughed.

  The third wave of consolation came from friends who wanted to touch base, see if we needed anything. These offers were well intentioned and tiring. They required a response when neither of us had much strength. But sometimes we’d read a message, something like: “We don’t know what to say. We love you. We’re here.” And that was perfect.

  We eventually started to respond to e-mails and calls and venture outside where we encountered the fourth wave, the most infuriating. It was the unsolicited mention of “God’s plan.” I don’t know if this evoked rage or was the random place where my rage happened to fall, but when I’d hear someone say, “God’s plan,” I would immediately think, Asshole.

  My wife wasn’t bothered by it. She’d explain that the concept of God’s plan—or its less Catholic/Christian version, “Everything happens for a reason”—brings people comfort, which is what they are trying to provide. To me, it suggests there’s an explanation for your pain but you don’t get to know it. It’s brutal. A person can get headaches and lose sleep trying to remember the actor whose voice is in an animated movie or the name of the woman who slept with Gary Hart (don’t Google; it’s Donna Rice). So imagine the suffering affixed to the unanswered question of “Why did this happen?”

  On my worst days, I would remind myself that in the grander scheme, I was quite lucky. I had a beautiful wife, a lovely home, a good job, a great dog, and solid friends. I also had the freedom to take a two-month leave from the office, and though I knew this was a tremendous luxury, it was also necessary. A psychiatrist had written the accurate yet unsettling words that, in her opinion, I was “not prepared to return to work and won’t be for some time.”

  The doctor was right. My thoughts weren’t clear. I had three fender benders in a week. I wasn’t sleeping well. I was having
memories (that, I expected). And visions (not expected). Too many times I recalled the images and textures I saw and felt that night in the bathroom. A few times I dreamed I was rocking a newborn baby swaddled in a red blanket—just that image. Once I woke in the night and walked around the house. I stopped climbing the stairs back to my bedroom to sit and, for about two minutes, speak to a two-year-old girl with black bangs. I was cognizant enough to know she wasn’t a ghost or anything supernatural but rather my mind’s way of burning off steam. I told her I was so sorry that I couldn’t protect her. She said that she forgave me, and I went back to bed.

  Another night, hours after taking a sleeping pill, I woke to use the bathroom, only to walk quickly into a wall and fall backward. On more than one occasion I slept for seventeen hours straight. The doctor said that was normal.

  My wife and I tried to make love, but, in her words, it was the “scene of the crime.”

  A shrink suggested I ask a friend to drag me out of the house on a regular basis. We surfed the chilling waters of Zuma or Venice and I’d talk incessantly (to him, the seals, anything that seemed to listen) about how much it hurt. I was a broken record. Yet he continued to regularly invite me out. Compassion breeds an amazing amount of tolerance.

  My brother flew across the country for a night. I felt several seconds behind in every conversation. I went downstairs pretending to get a bottle of wine but was really trying to collect myself, and my brother found me there. I apologized for being slow, and then began to cry. Hard. Uncontrollably. My baby brother held me up, supporting me completely, squeezing me as hard as he could, telling me it was okay. He meant the crying.

  A month after the loss, I remembered each hushed backstory or confession of every male I knew who had experienced something similar, and I called them. A colleague whose wife had delivered a stillborn child offered to hang out and have a drink. A friend admitted that he felt embarrassed telling a female coworker that he didn’t want to attend a baby shower. Another, who lost his son in the thirty-fifth week, told me that they’d changed apartments to escape the baby’s room they had created. He said he took no time off from work—not a single day—yet still didn’t understand why he’d misplace things or get lost in midsentence. After a pause, he asked me to keep a secret and said they were pregnant again but too frightened to tell anyone.