More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
All mothers have one thing in common: pain.
I think we all believe, somewhere deep in our bones, that darkness is fickle and easily placated with small gifts.
I heard her voice in my ear, that one whispered word: “Baby.” That’s when I became aware, suddenly and with complete certainty, that my husband wasn’t the one in bed with me. I’d screamed and scrambled to my feet, but it was dark, and she ran out the door and down the stairs before I could get a good look at her.
there’s no such thing as an uncomplicated pregnancy. We all give something up in exchange for our babies. Nearly everyone on this planet was welcomed by the sounds of a woman screaming.
I was an actor. Until recently, I was best known for a role I did in my teens on a beloved culty television show called Spellbound that was canceled after only two seasons. Since then, I’ve mostly worked as a character actor,
I’d stood up to a studio exec who’d asked me to consider a face lift because “no one would believe your costar is going to have sex with a woman your age.” My male costar, by the way, was ten years older than I was.
Normally, I’d have been delighted to take a picture with a fan, but I was outside my IVF clinic—she might’ve even gotten part of the sign in the shot. And it was somehow worse that she’d taken it when I hadn’t realized I was being photographed, like she’d captured something intimate, vulnerable. I didn’t like knowing that a stranger might have a picture of that moment.
When Spellbound was canceled before our second season aired, it was impossible not to feel as though I was the one who’d failed, not the show.
none of us were prepared for what happened two months ago at the Toronto Film Festival, when The Auteur surprised absolutely everyone by winning the People’s Choice Award. Since then, it’s been an all-out effort as the studio has tried to make up for months of Academy Award campaigning.
Emily had never made a secret of how hungry she was. Ambition radiated off of her like a pheromone. I knew this was just as big of a deal for her as it was for me.
It was one of the things I’d first loved about him, how he always seemed to know when I was just saying I was okay to make other people feel better. Lately, though, I’ve felt an undercurrent of frustration whenever he’s pushed me like this. Isn’t it enough for me to say I’m okay? Do I really have to go the extra mile to make sure he believes me too?
Now, though, something about the knowing tone of his voice when he’d said, “In my experience,” made me wonder if there was something else, something he hadn’t told me.
I’d noticed that every time I’ve tried to ask him about his previous marriage, we’d always somehow get off subject. And now, hearing him call her Addy, just made me more aware that there was this whole phase of his life that I didn’t understand,
that’s the thing about not being able to remember something, isn’t it? You don’t know that you’re not remembering. The picture in your head feels like the truth, even if it’s a lie.
This is so accurate
How much more was I going to be expected to sacrifice to make this happen? I’d already given my body, my hormones, my time. And now, it seemed, my mind. And I wasn’t even pregnant yet.
She’d thought the hardest part of the whole thing was going to be the pain of labor and, after, giving the baby up. It turned out that part wasn’t bad at all. No, the really hard part came before, during the pregnancy.
The things that made you lucky could also be the things that made you suffer. Io wished people would stop telling women they should be grateful for their suffering instead of trying to help them with it.
The code phrase was a remnant from early in our relationship. We’d decided that, whenever one of us wanted to leave someplace early, all we had to do was say, “I crapped my pants.” We’d reasoned it was perfect because code words were always so obvious, but this was embarrassing enough that no one would think it was a lie.
LMAO love this!
“I don’t want to be the one to crap my pants,” I said. “Well, I can crap my pants, but we’re going to have to come up with, like, a signal, so I know to do it.” “You want a code word for our code phrase?”
LOLOL This whole exchange had me laughing
It seemed like a particular slap in the face that I was getting texts about medication to help men have erections while waiting for news from my doctor.
“What if there’s something wrong with my eggs?” I asked as soon as she answered. Siobhan and I had stopped doing pleasant small talk about two days after we’d met. “Like, what if they all hatch and they’re really spiders?”
Siobhan was older now, hardened from her years-long battle with breast cancer. She was going to be okay, the cancer had been in remission for a while, but treatment had been hell.
Some people couldn’t face the more intense parts of life.
“Wouldn’t that, technically, mean the IVF stuff has worked? You wanted to be a mother, and you would, in fact, be a mother.” “A mother to spiders.” “Hey, a baby’s a baby.” I cracked a smile. “You’re such a bitch.”
Is that why there's a spider on the book cover? I thought maybe it was significant .
“Okay,” Siobhan said, playing along. “So, the Devil appears right now and says, ‘Hey girl—’” “The Devil talks like a bad pickup artist?”
Lol no what he says is "Hello love, what is it you truly desire?" ;-)
Siobhan had never had biological children, but she’d adopted two kids, both grown now, with her ex-husband.
She was also one of Dex’s ex-wife’s closest friends, a detail that had left me completely terrified to meet her.
Talia never brought her up. It was as though we’d all made a silent agreement to pretend she wasn’t still part of Talia’s life.
And then the boots moved, and I startled, realizing someone was in here with me, that she’d been in here this whole time. But…I’d looked under the stalls, hadn’t I? Had she lifted her boots up? Why would someone do that?
It was infuriating, knowing there was something wrong and not being able to get anyone to listen.
I’d been staring at the little square on my calendar for a long time, memorizing it, and so I saw the exact moment the appointment changed, 11 a.m. smoothly transforming into 12 p.m. Unexpected shock moved through me. I was suddenly wide awake, frowning. The hell…?
If I was sure I’d inputted the time correctly—which I was—then I honestly couldn’t explain how this happened. Unless someone else logged into my calendar and changed it.
someone needs to stop her that baby is in so much danger
I went downstairs to look for Dex and found him sitting in the dark, an empty tumbler on the table beside him. He was holding his phone, and he jumped when I said his name. “Anna…” He rubbed his eyes. “Jesus…I thought you were asleep.” Something about him seemed off. I couldn’t tell if it was the rigid set of his shoulders, or just the fact that he’d been drinking alone in the dark.
Cheater cheater pumpkin eater. I had called it from this very moment lol.
The daycare place was only a twenty-minute walk away, but it always took Dex at least an hour to get back. He claimed this was because he felt guilty for leaving them, and that he stopped by a dog park on his way home.
He's gotta be up to no good.
A figure hovered in the dark, nothing visible except for the outline of her slight body. I couldn’t see her face, couldn’t see her clearly at all, but there was something familiar in the shape of her, the way she tilted her head to the side when she looked at me, like a bird.
“You get him?” she asked me. It took me a second to understand what she meant. “What? Oh, no, I didn’t hit anyone. And I told you outside, it was a her, a woman.” “Too bad.” She dropped the broken stone and wiped her hands on her pants, standing again. “I’m not supposed to say that since assault’s technically a crime, but I wouldn’t have been mad if you had.”
Sometimes it felt like the continuation of our species was an ongoing experiment being performed on the backs of women. Or on our wombs.
When Rayna caught her eye, the woman said, her voice a quiet rumble, “It isn’t enough.” “You said it,” Rayna murmured, with a rush of affection. The woman reminded her a bit of her mother, something about her heavy gaze, the quiet strength of her voice. Of course, it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.
So what do they want the world to do about some man who has been dead and gone?
Dr. Hill once told me that no medication could ever be considered 100 percent safe for use during pregnancy—they all existed in a weird limbo where they could be anywhere from mostly safe to mostly disastrous depending on where you were getting your information.
After two years of trying to get pregnant, my body was more of a mystery to me than ever.
Southampton would be a welcome break from the city, where it seemed like everyone was watching me, judging me, even if their eyes never left their phones.
nurses pushing screaming machines down the hall,
At least not screaming patients
“Why don’t we drive back to the city? We could call Dr. Hill.” I shook my head. Dr. Hill was all the way in Manhattan, and it would take us at least two hours to get there. Longer, with how icy the roads had been.
Why would he even suggest delaying her medical care?
But Meg didn’t look at me. She didn’t say anything. The only sound in the room was the beeping of the machine. An eternity later, Meg removed the wand and started packing up her things. “I’ll see if I can find your doctor,” she promised, giving us a sympathetic head tilt as she wheeled the machine out of the room. I knew then, but I still didn’t want to believe it. Tears slid down my cheeks as I turned to Dex and saw that his face was wet too. My ultra-logical, man’s man husband never cried.
Just before I left the room, I noticed that the bed was bright red where I’d been sitting. There was so much blood.
I looked at Dex, half-expecting him to comment on how retro it was for the doctor to talk about me like I wasn’t there, but he didn’t seem to notice. “She’s doing a little better, I think.” Dex didn’t even look at me. Clearly he didn’t feel like he needed my input to answer a question about my own body. I felt a moment of fury, followed by numbness.
