My old life ended when I greeted him with a smile just like any other day, puckering my lips only to kiss dry air as he walked right past. I asked what was wrong, and he told me to sit down, so I sat, and in an almost fever dream trance I watched him slide the papers across the table, stark white, colder than snow, and he buried his face in his hands and I heard a muffled sob.
My old life began with an almost-perfect house at the end of a sleepy cul-de-sac. I remembered a living room full of oversized sofas, perfect for parties and messiness. The problem was that the yard was small. He told me that the yard didn’t matter and that we would be happy.
A week later, a doctor wearing a sterile white coat told me that my dream was impossible. But I never believed it for a second. That night I looked him in the eyes, and he gazed back at mine, so close our eyelashes tickled each other. I could feel our breath mixing, warm and milky. And I could see the future, our irises mixed, bodies fused, hearts beating as one. He told me that we would not adopt and that we could do it. That’s what I believed.
That’s what I believed after a second opinion told us we had a chance, and after the third opinion said we were doomed. I was a child tending to a plant, leaning in so close I could almost smell the wet soil and see the crisp buds about to bloom in a ring of baby dew, throwing cherry blossoms and apples and harvests. But the roots wasted away to the gaze of my clouded eyes. Five rounds of IVF, weeks spent sitting in the doctor’s office, countless tests and retests and twentieth opinions and restless nights, unable to hold my gaze because it was my fault that the dream was dying, because my body refused to do its job. And he would put his arms around me and wrap the blankets overhead and whisper, “We have each other, that’s all that matters…” and I believed it and I believed it and I believed it and then, somewhere in the darkest corner of my mind I knew that it was all a wretched lie, slinking away like the presence of a glistening night-shadow.
When it happened the sun was just receding behind innocent pink clouds, leeching the color out of the sky as it dragged its light to a new dawn. In its fading twilight, my lips sucked raw air like a drowning fish, and I looked down at that paper infested with naked inky legalese. That ugly word divorce tore through my mind, and he just sat there and sobbed.
The hot tears blurred my vision just like my memory. I remember screaming and cursing. He told me that he was a horrible monster, but that he would be miserable without a child and that he couldn’t shake his “biological imperative.” At that moment, I hated him. I hated him because he lied, I hated him for his selfishness, I hated him for the way he intended to use me as a human incubator. He showed me that our love is not unconditional; has never been unconditional. He started crying and pouring in all the hollow words like “I love you” and “I’m so sorry” and “it’s not your fault, it’s mine,” and the worst thing about it was that I knew his words held the bitter hint of authenticity. After all these years, I desperately want to believe he only said those things to hurt me. I want security in my hatred, because hating a monster is so much easier than hating someone I once loved.
The morning after, I stumbled through the dark in a drunken stupor. I saw a green text bubble from him, glowing like some strange alien fruit, with too-formal diction listing out financial logistics, making my head spin. I had to get out.
It was a crisp February morning and my breath sparkled in the air. I felt like I was walking through a crystal kaleidoscope. The air was very still, and I could feel the sluggish blood moving from my heart to my limbs all the way to my fingers and back again. I could see pine needles and pebbles with the clarity of a frozen microscope. I could feel the air move as a bird took flight and sense the earth in motion all around me. My boots made a silty sound in the snow, leaving a faint trail in the harsh white, like a baby’s gentle kiss along the ground.
When I looked up, I saw a tiny old lady shuffling across the road. As I passed her, I looked down, avoiding eye contact. To my horror, she turned toward me to start a conversation.
“Beautiful day for a walk, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Yes, yes, it is.”
“Here, would you like an apple?” She opened a purple purse and pulled out a shiny red apple in her palm.
“Why? Why should I eat your apple?” It was the first thing I had said in twenty-four hours, and without my bidding the emotions poured out. “Why should I eat your apple when my husband is gone? Just leave me alone!”
I knew she didn’t deserve this but I didn’t care. “I’m sorry,” the old lady said, munching down on the fruit herself, “trust me, I know how it feels.” There was a long pause, and then she continued on her way, kicking up little puffs of powdery snow in her wake. The snow drifted up and up through the air like ghosts.
That was when I knew what I had to do..
Quickly, my fingers numbed as I shoveled up the snow, forming a ball. I felt my feet move with the rhythm of life, faster and faster and faster, and just like that, my arm launched forward like a spring and the snowball stung my palm. I saw the ball sail high, up, up, up, into the sky, whiter than the sun, making tremulous waves of crisp coldness. It found the old lady’s back and exploded in an enormous cloud of powder, and my feet didn’t stop.
I ran right past her, my legs pumping the ground, lungs burning, eyes watering from the blistering air. When I turned my head back to look at her, she was cackling with the laugh of a child in a new spring, pointing at me with that disgusting half-eaten apple. I ran for a long time, kicking up a hurricane of glitter powder. It danced and swirled, a symphony of biting snow, a chorus churning under the bright midday sun. I ate mouthfuls of it, relishing its odd taste and its cruel vice grip on my teeth.
When I returned to the almost-perfect house the sun was setting, slanting over the trees and through the windows at that annoying angle which glares off computer screens. I boiled chicken stock and drank it, shivering from its warmth. I opened my phone and called up a divorce lawyer. Over the next few days and weeks and months, I cried. I cried and ate ice cream and cried and took hot showers and cried and cooked dinner and curled up in a ball in the closet and cried some more. And I told myself that this life is over. This house. This man. This dream. This happenstance, this cycle of life, and this biological imperative.