March 4, 2010 - Breakfast

My wife paces back behind me room to room for an hour in the morning as I try to do some work before riding my bike to my job; her shoes bang against the drumlike flooring; she mentions the the cats several times, Facebook, chow-chow, flat shoes, her ankle, work, her schedule, and cauliflower. The new apartment will not be a railroad; it will have a space for me to work with an office door that closes. These abstract discussions will not end (I wouldn't want them to) but there might be slightly more compromise as to when and how often they occur. For right now I go gently out of my mind, a little further with each burble. Back and forth and back and forth the shoes. Photoshop freezes up; the picture of the mannikin won't export. I clench the mouse; the plastic makes a cracking noise. She notices, of course. "I'm allowed to chat," she says, offended. "Especially this morning." She is. Last night was more bad news, after a steady eighteen months of regularly paced bad news; with every month the stakes are raised, the hopes go up further; and more hope is lost; after receiving the call I went to a meeting at a coffeeshop and pretended that nothing had happened. Then went home. She cried on the train all the way home, she said. You are supposed to cry too, she said to me, which means I'm allowed to cry, as she really doesn't like me emotional, which is good because for the most part over the last five years I rarely am, nor do I particularly want to be, after all those childhood years where I was commanded by the overweening softness of motherlove, cramming itself into every available cranny, to feel, feel, feel. I am not about to cry; instead I just sort of sit there, then flop on the bed, and stare at the ugly light above the bed, and want, more than anything else, to quit my job. I drink beer and order Chinese food. There are too many tea leaves to read: Is this impossible? Should we give up? Can we take one month off? Have the PCBs from the recently-superfunded Gowanus Canal, a block away, done this to us? Do we need to have purifying cleanses of our bodies? It's nowhere near over, and in fact will only get worse. And now we are trying to figure out how to handle the fact that I'll be out of town during this next cycle. It's been planned for five months, the trip; I have to go; but it falls exactly within the time that I'd normally be accompanying her to the clinic. Do I fly back for a night? Does she fly to Austin at terrible cost and try to find a hotel in the middle of SXSW (as I'm staying with friends and we'd both be uncomfortable [and stressed] to have the sex at a friend's place; I mean, then you need to wash the sheets and it's all just sort of awkward)? Will the stress of such travel make conception impossible? Do I preserve my essence in a refrigerated or frozen container the week prior? The doctors of course are used to these questions, and don't always pick up their phones, so we keep listing more and more of them; she writes the questions into her phone. Why has my stomach hurt for two months (cancer, of course; cancer; it can only be cancer)? Quit your job if you want, she says. You have my blessing. And she's right. If I quit my job I can make enough money that we won't have to decide between in vitro and someday owning an apartment. There could be joy out there, all kinds of joy, if I let myself get to it.

Weight: 292.5 lbs