All Your Perfects

I roll my eyes and pick up my menu. My mother has always had a knack for direct insults. It never bothers me much because she jabs both Ava and me an even amount. Probably because we look so much alike. Ava is only two years older than me. We both have the same straight brown hair that reaches just past our shoulders. We have the same eyes that are identical in color to our hair. And according to our mother, we both look tired a lot.

We order our food and make small talk until it arrives. Lunch is almost in the bag when someone approaches our table. “Avril?”

Ava and I both look up as Eleanor Watts adjusts her baby blue Hermès bag from one shoulder to the other. She tries to make it appear subtle, but she might as well hit us over the head with it while screaming, “Look at me! I can afford a fifteen-thousand-dollar purse!”

“Eleanor!” my mother exclaims. She stands and they air kiss and I force a smile when Eleanor looks at us.

“Quinn and Ava! Ladies, you are as beautiful as ever!” I have half a mind to ask her if I look tired. She takes an empty seat and cradles her arms around her bag. “How are you, Avril? I haven’t seen you since . . .” She pauses.

“Quinn’s engagement party to Ethan Van Kemp,” my mother finishes.

Eleanor shakes her head. “I can’t believe it’s been that long. Look at us, we’re grandparents now! How did that even happen?”

My mother picks up her martini glass and sips from it. “I’m not a grandmother yet,” she says, almost as if she’s bragging about it. “Ava is moving to Europe with her husband. Children interfere with their wanderlust,” she says, waving her hand flippantly toward Ava.

Eleanor turns to me, her eyes scanning my wedding ring before they move back to my face. “And what about you, Quinn? You’ve been married a while now.” She says this with ignorant laughter.

My cheeks burn, even though I should be used to this conversation by now. I know people don’t mean to be insensitive but the intention doesn’t make the comments hurt any less.

“When are you and Graham going to have a baby?”

“Do you not want children?”

“Keep trying, it’ll happen!”

I clear my throat and pick up my glass of water. “We’re working on it,” I say, right before taking a sip. I want that to be the end of it, but my mother ensures it isn’t. She leans in toward Eleanor like I’m not even here.

“Quinn is struggling with infertility,” my mother says, as if it’s anyone’s business other than mine and Graham’s.

Eleanor tilts her head and looks at me with pity. “Oh, honey,” she says, placing her hand over mine. “I’m so sorry to hear that. Have the two of you considered IVF? My niece and her husband couldn’t conceive naturally, but they’re expecting twins any day now.”

Have we considered IVF? Is she serious right now? I should probably just smile and tell her that’s a great idea, but I’m suddenly aware that I have a limit and it was just reached. “Yes, Eleanor,” I say, pulling my hand from hers. “We’ve been through three unsuccessful rounds, actually. It drained our savings account and we had to take out a second mortgage on our home.”

Eleanor’s face reddens and I’m immediately embarrassed by my reply, which means my mother is probably mortified. I don’t look at her to validate my assumption, though. I can see Ava taking a swig of her water, trying to hide her laughter.

“Oh,” Eleanor says. “That’s . . . I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” my mother interjects. “There’s a reason for everything we go through, right? Even the struggles.”

Eleanor nods. “Oh, I believe that wholeheartedly,” she says. “God works in mysterious ways.”

I laugh quietly. Her comment is reminiscent of the many comments my mother has said to me in the past. I know she doesn’t mean to be, but Avril Donnelly is the most insensitive of anyone.

Graham and I decided to start trying for a baby after only one year into our marriage. I was so na?ve, thinking it would happen right away. After the first few unsuccessful months, I started to worry. I brought it up to Ava . . . and my mother, of all people. I told them my concerns before I even brought them up to Graham. My mother actually had the nerve to say that maybe God didn’t think I was ready for a child yet.

If God doesn’t give babies to people who aren’t ready for them, He’s got a lot of explaining to do. Because some of the mothers He chose to be fertile are very questionable. My own mother being one of them.

Graham has been supportive throughout the entire ordeal, but sometimes I wonder if he gets as frustrated as I do with all the questions. They get harder to answer over and over. Sometimes when we’re together and people ask why we haven’t had children yet, Graham blames it on himself. “I’m sterile,” he’ll say.

He’s far from sterile, though. He had his sperm count tested in the beginning and it was fine. Actually, it was more than fine. The doctor used the word lavish. “You have a lavish amount of sperm, Mr. Wells.”

Graham and I joked about that forever. But even though we tried to turn it into a joke, it meant the issue was all me. No matter how lavish his sperm count was, they weren’t any good to my uterus. We had sex on a strict ovulation schedule. I took my temperature regularly. I ate and drank all the right foods. Still nothing. We pinched every penny we had and tried IUI and then IVF and were met with unsuccessful results.

We’ve discussed surrogacy, but it’s just as expensive as IVF, and according to our doctor, due to the endometriosis I was diagnosed with at twenty-five, my eggs just aren’t very reliable.

Nothing has been successful and we can’t afford to keep repeating things we’ve already attempted, or even trying new techniques. I’m starting to realize it might never happen.

This past year has been the absolute hardest of all the years. I’m losing faith. Losing interest. Losing hope.

Losing, losing, losing.

“Are you interested in adoption?” Eleanor asks.

My eyes swing to hers and I do my best to hide my exasperation. I open my mouth to answer her, but my mother leans in. “Her husband isn’t interested in adoption,” she says.

“Mother,” Ava hisses.

She dismisses Ava with a flip of her hand. “It’s not like I’m telling the whole world. Eleanor and I are practically best friends.”

“You haven’t seen each other in almost a decade,” I say.

My mother squeezes Eleanor’s hand. “Well, it certainly doesn’t feel like that long. How is Peter?”

Eleanor laughs, welcoming the change of subject as much as I do. She starts telling my mother about his new car and his midlife crisis, which technically can’t be a midlife crisis because he’s well into his sixties, but I don’t correct them. I excuse myself and head to the restroom in an attempt to run away from the constant reminder of my infertility.

I should have corrected her when my mother said Graham isn’t interested in adoption. It’s not that he’s not interested, we just haven’t had any luck in getting approved with an agency due to Graham’s past. I don’t understand how an adoption agency won’t take into consideration that outside of that devastating conviction when he was a teenager, he’s never so much as had a parking ticket. But, when you’re only one of thousands of couples applying to adopt, even one strike against you can rule you out.

My mother is wrong. Neither of us is opposed to the idea, but we just can’t get approved and we can no longer afford to keep trying. The treatments drained our bank account and now that we have a second mortgage on our home, we wouldn’t even know how to afford the process if we were approved.

There are so many factors, and even though people think we haven’t considered all of our options, we’ve considered them many times.

Hell, Ava even bought us a fertility doll when she went to Mexico three years ago. But nothing—not even superstition—has worked in our favor. Graham and I decided early last year to leave it up to chance, hoping it will happen naturally. It hasn’t. And to be honest, I’m tired of swimming upstream.