Impasse

Impossible. They should be able to work this out. After all they have been through, this, this is the thing that they can't get past.

They stare past each other from across the room. He stands, shoulders stiff, staring out the window. She sits, hands on her lap, lips between her teeth. Her eyes are too full of tears to focus on anything. She seems to be looking at the books on the coffee table.

They are arranged perfectly. Everything is. The beige couch she is sitting on is free of stains. The white rug under it is as pristine as it was when they bought it.

The furniture was to be temporary. Things to enjoy during their honeymoon stage. The house was bought as an investment in their future, their family. Two rooms are still decorated as guest rooms. The china in the cabinet is still where they placed it when they moved in. The upper cabinet where it would have been moved remains empty. She dusts it out once a month.

It isn't a home as much as they try. Well decorated. Worth more than it was when they moved in due to the improvements he made.

That is what he did to deal with it. He put himself into the house. Windows replaced. The garage is now full of shelves. The hooks are still there, hidden behind them. The master bath has been redone twice. The tile is beautiful. It is a nice place to cry once a month.

For herself she sits in the attic. That is where they moved all the stuff after the last failed cycle. It was too painful to leave it.

For a moment, there was hope. An actual positive test. Even the first ultrasound with the tiny little life. They held their breaths as each week passed.

The picture from that first and only ultrasound is in a frame in a box in the attic. She visits her child there.

The bleeding came at week six. She was too numb to even cry. Not then. Now she weeps among the new clothes still in their packaging.

Ten years. Three IFV cycles. One empty womb.

And now one failing marriage.

Adoption. It is a word they have circled around for a few years now. He had first brought it up after the first failed cycle. Just in case. She still wants her own child to feel life moving in her womb.

Then there was still hope.

It was brought up again after the loss of the pregnancy. That is how he referred to it. The pregnancy. To admit that they had a child, a child who was taken away, is hard for him. It made her feel like she was alone in her grief. A marriage already on the rocks, slipped a little farther down the cliff.

Still they try once more with the last of the embryos they have. After finding out they have failed again, he brought it up for the final time. It started the argument that led them here.

“It is all that is left.” He had started out saying, “if we want to be parents…”

“If?” She had turned on him in fury, “if you say! Why else would I have gone through all this?”

“We went through all this.”

Her head is shaking. Her whole body is. “It was my body that went through a futile pregnancy, one after the other. My body failed again and again. I want to hold my own child, not someone else's..”

“You know that can't happen.” It was the cold way he said it. Her whole body suddenly feels as icy as his comment.

“You blame me? It's my fault.”

He shrugs. “You know we don't know that.”

Despite many different tests on them both, no medical reason for their infertility has been found.

“No, but you still blame me. Not just for not being able to carry a baby but for being against the adoption.”

He doesn't deny it. “It is selfish. I have the right to be a parent. We do. No matter who it comes about.”

“Selfish! For wanting my own baby. For wanting to feel my own baby growing within me. How is that selfish?”

He shakes his head. “That isn't. But not accepting the reality that this can't happen, moving on from this disappointment and discussing adoption.”

“If we do that, if we talk about taking in a child that isn't ours, that isn't us, we would be giving up. Can't you see that?”

“Can't you see that we are here? We will never have a child of our own.” At this, he had placed his hands on her arms and almost screamed in her face. It was the beginning of the end.

She jerked away from him, her eyes full of tears of grief and frustration.

“Shut up! Please, shut up!”

But he hadn't. His own frustration has boiled over. “Never ever going to happen. You are barren, infertile. Accept it.”

She sank into a chair, her hands over her ears, her eyes tightly shut as tears leaked out.

“Why are you being so cruel?”

“Me? I am not the one who is shutting down our one and only chance to have a child. That is cruel,” he had blown out a frustrated breath, “I am finished with it, with all this. I want a child before I am too old to raise him or her. If you won't even discuss adoption, then I want a divorce.”

The word that has been hiding in every conversation over the last few years, ever since the miscarriage. It was in the times of silence, in the times she hid in the attic, and he in extra hours at work. It was in the times they turned away from each other and not towards each other in their marital bed. Always unspoken. They both knew that once they voiced it, there would be no going back.

“You’re,” she swallows,” you're serious.”

“I am. Come, you knew this was coming.”

“A child of a stranger is more important than our marriage?”

“It wouldn't be if we had a marriage anymore. You know that isn't the case and hasn't been for awhile.

Now, she sits. Now he stands. They are at an impasse that neither can see around.