“Do you have any idea how much children cost? Education, clothes, medical. And it wouldn't be fair to bring an unwanted child into our life. No, Adrian, it is not right.” He looked terrified, even more so as he saw that he hadn't convinced her. She knew how extreme he was in his views because of the poverty of his own youth, but their life was entirely different.
“Money isn't everything. We have time and love and a nice home and each other. What more do you need than that?”
“The desire to have them,” he said quietly, “and I don't have that. I never have. I don't want children, Adrian. I never have and I never will. I told you that before we got married, and if you turn on me now, I'm not going to stand still for it. You have to get rid of that …” He hesitated but only for an instant. “…the pregnancy.” He refused to call it a baby.
“And what if I don't want to?”
“You'd be a fool if you didn't, Adrian. You have a shot at a great career yourself, if you set your mind to it, and there's no way you can do what you do and have a baby.”
“I can take a leave-of-absence for six months and then go back. A lot of women do it.”
“Yeah, and eventually they give up their careers, have two more kids and become housewives. And in the end, they hate themselves and their children for it.” He was voicing the worst of her fears, but she still thought it was worth taking a chance and having the baby. She didn't want to give it up just because it was easier not having children. So what if they weren't millionaires? Why did everything have to be so goddam perfect? And why couldn't he understand what she was feeling?
“I think we ought to think about it for a while, before we do anything drastic that we might both regret later.” She had friends who had had abortions and hated themselves for it, and admittedly, others who hadn't. But Steven didn't agree with her.
“Believe me, Adrian,” he gentled his voice a little bit and took a step closer to her, “you won't regret it. When you think about it afterward, you'll be relieved. This thing could be a serious threat to our marriage.” This “thing” was their baby. The baby she had come to love in the four days she had known of its existence.
“We don't have to let it be a threat to our marriage.” Tears started to fill her eyes as she leaned against him. “Steven, please …don't make me do this …please. …”
“I'm not making you do anything.” He sounded annoyed as he walked around their bedroom like a caged animal. He felt threatened to his very core, and deeply frightened. “I'm just telling you that this is a rotten piece of luck, and a bit of insanity to even consider going through with it. Our lives are at stake. For God's sake, do what you have to.”
“Why do you have to see it that way? Why is a baby such a big threat?” She didn't understand why he felt so radical about it, she never had. He had always regarded children as if they were the threat of enemy invasion.
“You have no idea what kids can do to your life, Adrian. I do. I saw it in my own family. My parents never had anything. My mother had one lousy pair of shoes, one pair of shoes for my entire childhood. She made everything she could and then we used it till it fell apart, or the clothes fell off our backs. We didn't have books or dolls or toys. We didn't have anything, except poverty and each other.” She felt sorry, and it must have been terrible, but it had nothing to do with the reality of their lives, and somehow he refused to understand that.
“I'm sorry that happened to you. But our children would never have to live like that. We both make healthy salaries and there's enough for us and a baby to live more than comfortably.”
“That's what you think. What about school? What about college? Do you have any idea what Stanford costs these days?” And then, like a forlorn child, “What about our trip to Europe? We wouldn't be able to do anything like that anymore. We'd have to give up everything. Are you really prepared to do that?”
“I don't understand why you see it in such extremes. And even if we did have to make sacrifices, Steven, wouldn't it be worth it?” He didn't answer her, but his eyes said it all. They said clearly that to him it wouldn't. “And in any case, we're not talking about planning to have kids at some future date. We're talking about a baby that's already here. That's very different.” To her it was, anyway, but not to him. That much was clear.
“We are not talking about a baby. We are talking about a nothing. A spot of sperm that touched an egg the size of a microscopic dot, and that dot is a microscopic possibility of nothing. It's a question mark, a maybe, a possibility and nothing more, and it's a possibility we don't want. That's all you have to think about. All you have to do is go to your doctor and tell him you don't want it.”
“And then what?” She felt anger boiling up inside of her as she listened to him. “Then what, Steven? He just says, Okay Adrian, you don't want the baby, no problem and he checks it off in the 'no' box on a little list? Not exactly. He pulls it out of me with a suction machine and scrapes my uterus with a scalpel, and he kills our baby. That's what he does, Steven. That's what 'tell him you don't want it' means. And the thing is, I do want it, and you need to think of that too. This isn't just your baby, it's mine too, it's our baby, whether you want it or not. And I'm not going to just get rid of it because you say so.” She had started sobbing as she spoke to him, but Steven acted as though he didn't hear her. He was so terrified that all he could do was act like an ice man. He was frozen with terror. And Adrian was overwhelmed with anguish.
“I see,” he said icily as he looked at her with fresh distance. “Are you telling me you won't get rid of it?”
“I'm not telling you anything yet. I'm just asking you to think about it, and I'm telling you that I'd like to keep it.” She had surprised herself by admitting that she wanted it. And asking him to keep it made it sound as though they were talking about a puppy and not their child, and it horrified her.
Steven nodded miserably, and took her hand and pulled her down on the bed next to him, and suddenly she could no longer control herself as he put his arms around her, and she went on sobbing.
All the shock and fear and tension and excitement of it bubbled up inside of her and exploded over the sides until she couldn't stop crying anymore, and she lay in his arms and sobbed as he held her.
“I'm sorry, baby …I'm sorry this happened to us …it'll be all right …you'll see …I'm sorry …” She wasn't even sure what he was saying to her, but she was glad he was holding her, and maybe he would change his mind after he thought about it for a little longer. She thought that he probably would, but it was so emotionally draining dealing with this resistance.
“I'm sorry too,” she said finally, and he wiped the tears from her eyes and kissed her. He began to stroke her hair then, and kissed the tears on her eyelashes and cheeks, and then slowly he undid her blouse, and slid her shorts and her underwear down past her ankles. She lay naked beside him and he lay admiring her. She had a beautiful body, and in his opinion defiling it with a baby would have been a crime. She would never have been the same again and he knew it.
“I love you, Adrian,” he said gently. He loved her too much to let her do something so desperately foolish. And he loved himself, and their life, and everything they had striven for and accomplished and acquired, and no one was ever going to jeopardize that, certainly not a baby.
He kissed her longingly, and she kissed him in return, thinking that he understood how she felt finally, and they made love to each other, quietly and gently. It was a time of feeling close to each other and putting their argument aside, as each one hoped that the other would come to understand their side, and afterward they lay in each other's arms and kissed again, feeling much closer.