Beachcombers Read Free Page A

calm, contented center, moving slowly, in no rush to finish any project and be somewhere else. She was right where she wanted to be. Marina admired the pace, the depth, the comfort of Christie's life. Marina felt like she was always straining, rushing, pushing, to get somewhere else.
    And as the years passed and Marina grew older, she discovered that she was beginning to envy Christie, too.
    One sultry July afternoon, she confessed a deep and powerful secret to Christie. She told Christie before she told Dara. She told Christie even before she told Gerry. The words felt so odd in her mouth.
    "Christie, I want a baby. Actually, I've gotten kind of obsessed with it. I don't want five kids like you have, I couldn't do that. But I do want a child of my own."
    "Well, honey," Christie replied, laughing, "that's one thing you can get without wearing those killer tight suits."
    Christie gave her the courage to confide in Gerry. He seemed amused, but he liked the idea. So in the middle of the hurricane that was their life, Marina and Gerry tried to make a baby.
    But the baby wouldn't come.
    They were both shocked. Their history together was one of achievement and success, not failure.
    They tried everything. Tests. Charts. Positions. Herbal and hormonal supplements. Nothing worked. They saw several doctors, who all pronounced Marina and Gerry healthy and perfectly capable of reproduction. Yet still nothing happened.
    She confided in Dara, and Dara said, "Oh, honey, consider it a blessing. A baby would ruin your figure."
    Marina couldn't understand it. She tried to be relaxed about it all, but when she saw another woman with a baby, she burned with envy. She dreamed of babies at night and longed for one every waking hour. As each month passed in failure and sorrow, she began to hate herself.
    One afternoon she sat in her slick chrome-and-glass office, staring at her computer screen, thinking over and over again in a relentless circle of pain: Why couldn't she get pregnant, what was wrong with her? She felt something wet on her hand. It wouldn't be tears. She didn't allow herself to cry in the office. She glanced down to discover that she had been stabbing the palm of her hand with the tip of her silver letter opener. She gasped and tossed the letter opener onto the desk. She pressed tissues against her hand, grabbed up her purse, and raced from her office. She didn't even stop to tell her assistant where she was going. She didn't even know where she was going--she just needed to be away from the pain.
    Once in her car, she understood exactly where she wanted to be, and she drove out to Christie's house. It was January and a new snow had blanketed the roadsides and rooftops with the pure sparkling white of confectioners' sugar. The sun was out in a high blue sky and the air was sharp and tangy.
    Christie had a fire going in the rec room. Her children were all in school. She was knitting a sweater and listening to music--in the middle of the day! Marina couldn't imagine living such a life.
    Christie told Marina to kick off her shoes and curl up on the sofa. She brought her hot chocolate and cookies, as if Marina were one of her children. She listened to Marina, and she cried with her--how grateful Marina was for that, to have her friend genuinely share her loss.
    "I'm so angry, Christie," Marina cried. "I'm so hurt. Why me? What's wrong with me? I know Gerry thinks I'm at fault, even though the doctors say we're both physically fine. But it's turning our marriage inside out. And I'm getting obsessed and bitter and angry; I'm turning into a person I don't like being. I don't know what to do!"
    Christie was quiet, knitting a row as she thought. "You could stop trying," she suggested. "You could stop hoping. You could give up. You could adopt."
    "Gerry doesn't want to adopt."
    "Then let it go." Christie reached over and put her hand on Marina's. "Just let it go. You have so much, Marina. You have work you enjoy, you have a husband you love.