Page 53 of On Fire Island

We sat at our usual table and toasted Ben’s success. On one side of us, the men ate seafood couscous and drank wine out of water glasses, happily arguing. The women sat at another table, holding babies and holding court—the words from their lively conversations bounced off the limestone gates. There was so much love all around—palpable love.

As a father lifted his cherubic toddler up from the ground and doused his face in kisses, Ben proclaimed, “Maybe, one little baby wouldn’t be all that bad.” He doused me in kisses as well, and I burst into tears, surprising even myself. I was so happy.

We started trying while still in Sicily, and Ben even attempted to get me to try on the airplane home, but I chickened out. We tried in Manhattan, we tried on Fire Island, and by the end of that summer when we had passed the “nothing to worry about until you’ve been trying for six months” mark, I started to worry. I made an appointment with my gynecologist for the first week in September to discuss it, but by the time it came I knew I was pregnant. I was bloated, exhausted, had to pee every two minutes, and was constipated as hell. When the plus sign appeared on the pregnancy test I was very relieved. Ben, on the other hand, looked panicked.

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New York City

I was excited for Dr.Finkelstein to deliver our baby, just as he had delivered me. He was a kind man whose warm heart could only be topped by his warm hands—an important attribute in a gynecologist. I had been seeing him since my mother first took me for birth control before college. I was a virgin at the time, but she insisted that my condition, as she called it, wouldn’t last long, and she didn’t want me showing up back home “preggers,” adding in her off-brand humor that there are better ways to gain the freshman fifteen. As per usual, there was no arguing with her, and I left with a three-month supply of birth control pills, which I didn’t touch until my sophomore year.

Dr.Finkelstein was nearing retirement, and if we were to have a second child, I would probably have to go to his associate, but at least this time it would be him. He was old-school, and when I called him with a UTI or yeast infection over the years, he would always say, “Don’t worry, honey,” and he was right, as I would feel better the minute he said it. It was funny because if anyone else called me honey, I would shoot them the feminist death stare, but from him it soothed me. I think it’s a gynecologist thing.

It was a beautiful day. “Not a cloud in the sky,” I said, as we walked through Central Park toward the doctor’s Fifth Avenue office.

Ben looked up. “Just like on September eleventh,” he pointed out. An unoriginal comment, as everyone always said that, and a huge downer of an observation on such a special day.

He had pissed me off for the third time since breakfast. In all fairness, the first time was because I thought he was chewing too loudly. Along with the baby, I was carrying a short fuse, though it now felt warranted. Another sign of his parental apathy: Ben claimed to be downplaying his excitement until the official appointment, unlike my mother, who had been sending me pictures of cribs and baby bedding and beautiful outfits from the windows of French baby boutiques like Bonpoint and Jacadi daily. For the first time maybe ever, I liked my mom’s attitude better. The baby would always be on the best dressed list with my mother as its grandma, that was certain. It was just the kind of controlling thing that would have driven me crazy in the past, but this time, I was eating it up. I couldn’t wait to wrap him or her in a baby blanket from NakedCashmere, no matter how absurd the cost.

As in many ob-gyn offices of their generation, Dr.Finkelstein’s smiling wife stood guard at the reception desk. Her toy poodles, Salt and Pepper, sat at her feet, yet she was still happy to show me the latest pictures of them—and the grandkids—in that order. After dispensing with the niceties and introducing Ben, whose books she and the nurse were both big fans of, they instructed me to leave a urine sample in the back bathroom. I did so and then joined Ben, whose heavy frame was sunk deep into the down-filled cushions of the beige waiting room couch. He was staring straight ahead at the exceedingly pregnant woman sitting across from us.

I sat down next to him and got lost in the latest issue ofPeoplemagazine. His left leg bounced anxiously on the floor until I placed my hand on his knee and left it there. The motion had already made me nauseous, and I had to push blaming him for it from my mind. I wanted this first appointment to be perfect. I picked up the copy ofWhat to Expect When You’re Expectingfrom the side table, opened it to the page marked vaginal tearing, and handed it to him as payback for the nausea. He read it and swallowed hard. I felt vindicated.

They soon called us into the doctor’s personal office, and we sat in the two velvet-covered armchairs opposite his desk to wait for him. The shades were tilted open with a beautiful view of Central Park peeking through. We watched silently as the slats in the blinds sliced through the images of the people passing by, causing them to look like abstract art.

The doctor arrived and announced, “You’re indeed pregnant!” with a big smile on his face. We both stood up to greet him. He shook Ben’s hand first and then gave me a somewhat awkward hug.

“Full circle!” he added, beaming. I guessed it wasn’t often that he delivered the baby of a baby he’d delivered.

We talked for a bit about how far along he thought I was and how often I was to see him. He calculated the due date and answered a few of our rookie questions. The first being, “When can we hear the heartbeat?”

The answer to that was usually at around eight weeks, and Ben, who was much more in it by then, accompanied me to that appointment as well, eager to hear our baby. We again walked through Central Park, this time debating the baby name of the day—his pick, Venus or Serena if it was a girl and Rafael or Roger if it was a boy—he was suddenly on a tennis kick. I was still stuck on Henry or Haddie—both for Nana Hannah, but didn’t evenbother. There was plenty of time and, in the end, after all the pushing and the possible tearing, which he still couldn’t discuss without turning green, I knew I would win.

We both agreed on not finding out the sex and had even spent the prior weekend playing around with paint colors for the nursery with names like Soothing Sage and Earthy Orange.

We arrived at the office, and it was hard to tell who was more excited—me, Ben, or the doctor.

“I hope we can hear it,” Dr.Finkelstein warned. “It’s still early, so no promises.”

Ben stood by my side as the doctor turned on the ultrasound machine and spread the warm jelly on my belly. He placed the doppler on my stomach, and before long we heard the most magnificent sound, our baby’s heartbeat. It was fast, like a train. The doctor reached for the monitor, to turn it toward us like you see in the movies and stopped dead in his tracks. His expression completely changed.

“Is there something wrong with the baby?” I asked, immediately panicked.

“No. The baby looks fine,” he said. He smiled at me with the kindest smile and added, “Get dressed and I’ll meet you both back in my office.”

He explained that the sonogram showed a shadow on one of my ovaries, but he needed more information. He suggested another, more detailed sonogram be performed at the hospital by a radiologist. It was a Monday, and we were set to leave for Florida that Wednesday to visit Ben’s mom. I told him so and waited for him to say some version of his “Don’t worry, honey,” like he had when I had a yeast infection or UTI, but he didn’t.

“That’s not a problem,” he said instead. “Let’s see if we can get you in this afternoon.”

Even with the alarms going off in my head, I matched his kind smile. I could pretend everything was OK too—at least for a few more hours.

Ben, though, hadn’t even sat down in the velvet armchair across from the doctor. He was standing with his back against the door, frozen in fear.

You already know the ending, so I will explain it as simply as possible. The second sonogram showed a large mass around my ovary, consistent with a malignancy. Surgery confirmed that I had ovarian cancer and that it had metastasized to my intestine and my liver. The surgeon removed everything she could, and there was no choice but to terminate the pregnancy. Everyone in my family insisted that I could beat it, and while I agreed to aggressive treatment, I knew in my heart that it was too far gone.

Ovarian cancer is not really silent like people say; it whispers subtle clues like my bloated belly, how frequently I had to pee, the constipation, the exhaustion, the back pain. The signs were all there, muted betrayals that I couldn’t hear over the pregnancy, or hadn’t even noticed before.

As soon as I vocalized my lack of hope to Ben, he unfroze. He refused to give up and spent the entire time I had left searching for ways to save me. He was so scared by the idea of losing me that we never discussed what would happen when he did. I believe it’s one of the reasons I am still hanging around here now.

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