What do you want to do then? We should make a decision, figure something out, I suggest.
His turn for silence. Our Audi, an all road wagon, the best part of our relationship, I tell friends jokingly, cruises along. The engine hums. The car feels like a tank, solid uphill and down.
I can't take your side jokes any more, I add. First it was about fucking the surrogate, now it's about being a sperm donor so your seed doesn't go to waste. Every time you joke like that I feel stabbed in the back, front and head. I can't take it any more.
So every time you freak out, hit me, scream, yell, go psycho, I'm just supposed to take it. I can't say a thing.
You can't say anything unanalyzed. Analyze your feelings. Do the work. Do you talk to Murphy about it?
No. I just want it to stop.
The road dips down a long hill. I don't speak until we start climbing again. It's spring 2006. We've been having this conversation on and off for three years, but we haven't had it in awhile, so I guess I'm grateful.
We have to make a decision. I understand how hard it must be for you. I feel awful about it. I feel like an abject loser. If you want to split up so you can have your own kids with someone else, I'd understand really I would. Although it's not my preferred option, we could look into a surrogate but you'd have to pay for it. We could adopt. I'd have to figure out my cultural issues though. I don't know if I could raise a white kid. Also after seeing all those nightmare kids in Nevis, not having kids seems like a pretty attractive option right now. I mean, what would we do with a kid right now anyway? We're a complete mess, we can't even take care of ourselves. What would we do with a kid?
You don't want to do egg donor?
No, I don't want to do all those drugs. I have no idea what they'll do to my body. Plus we can't afford it. There are plenty of kids who need adopting. But will you be OK with that? I ask.
I'll survive, he replies evenly.
Do you think once you have that kid, that kid is any less yours simply because she's not biological?
That's Murphy's point, he says. Biological's only one way to have a baby.
Right. Do you think that Cambodian or Laotian girl on the beach…her parents regret for a second they didn't have a biological kid instead?
No. I wonder how many kids were orphaned after the tsunami? How many need to be adopted?
I bet plenty. Problem is the rigmarole in getting them here. There's so much bureaucratic red tape. It shouldn't be so expensive. Adoption's a racket, in vitro's a racket. Basically the infertile get fucked once again.
More silence. The conversation passes like so much river scenery. We drive through Hawks Nest where the road zigs and zags along a cliff like sideways sine waves. It's the most awe-inspiring stretch of the Delaware, the most photographed, the perspective you see on all the brochures. Minutes later, we drive past the gothic lettering of the Welcome to Port Jervis sign, lit by two old-fashioned gas lanterns. Suddenly we're in a town, the natural beauty and isolation of Route 97 a dissipating feeling, a ghost.
Amazing we came all the way here just for the day, yesterday, Paul says.
Yeah, the drive doesn't seem to take as long during daytime.
We're back on banal territory. Praise be. The banal, the mundane, the quotidian are the gasoline of relationships. They drive couples to an uncontested no man's land, uninhabited by the hysterical, inhospitable to the histrionic. They are the dough around the chocolate chips, the chain through the stones in the necklace. The histrionic gives us drama, flair, might even keep us coming back, but the mundane is what makes us stay and sigh with relief.
