Part 2 (1/2)

I'd say we picked a great day for a ride to the Hamptons, but that would be like saying my husband picked a great day for a divorce, and I don't want to go that far. But the sun was s.h.i.+ning, traffic was light and the A/C was kickin' (we put the top up about ten minutes into the ride). Hope put on her beach playlist and ”Summer Girls” by LFO helped me find a brighter disposition.

”Now tell me what happened,” Hope said. ”Start from the beginning.”

I sighed, reluctant to be ripped out of my LFO-induced reverie to relive the c.r.a.pfest that took place in the bathroom this morning (no pun intended). ”Caleb was in the bathroom shaving, and I woke up and had to pee,” I started. ”So I went into the bathroom and, as I was peeing, he says-”

She held up her right hand and interrupted me. ”Wait! You mean you were peeing right in front of him?”

”Um ...” I paused as I questioned the behavior. ”Yes?”

”Oh h.e.l.l no!” she said, looking disgusted. ”Do you always pee in front of him?”

I shrugged my shoulders. ”No, not always. But he was in the closest bathroom.”

”So!” she yelled. ”We only have one bathroom, but we don't use it at the same time!”

She shared her apartment with a roommate, J.D. J.D. was an aspiring actress who was working for a chauffeur company until she got her big Broadway role. She'd been an aspiring actress since Hope met her about ten years ago. We sometimes joked with her about how long she would continue to call herself an ”aspiring actress” before she started saying she was a chauffeur. But we were just teasing. I respected people who refused to give up on their dreams.

”You guys aren't married,” I said in my defense.

”We do hook up sometimes when we're both single,” she said with a smirk. This did not surprise me. Hope is not a lesbian, but she is very open about her s.e.xual adventures, of which there are many. It's not that she's sleazy, but she is perpetually single and that's just what single people do. They have a lot of s.e.x. With a lot of different people. If this was 2002, I'd describe Hope as the Samantha to my Charlotte.

”Hooking up sometimes is totally different,” I told her. ”Hooking up sometimes means you still shave first.”

She looked at me in horror. The car swerved a little. ”You don't?”

I crossed my arms in front of my chest, suddenly feeling very defensive. ”I do. Sometimes. When I remember.”

”Do you wax?”

”On special occasions.”

”Do special occasions happen at least once a month?”

”No. More like once a year. Maybe.”

She shook her head slowly. ”I'm a little disappointed in you. Do you think Holly Golightly went around sporting a cooch afro like she was doing seventies p.o.r.n?”

I did my best to stifle a giggle but it snuck out as a squeak. ”I do not have a cooch afro!” I squeaked again. ”n.o.body has a seventies p.o.r.n cooch afro anymore. Didn't you hear? Cooch afros were done away with through evolution, just like the human tail.” I was no longer able to contain my laughter, so I let it all out.

She didn't look amused. ”Is that so?” she asked, rhetorically. ”But on a more serious note, I do hope in your future relations.h.i.+ps you will try to maintain some of your dignity. No man needs to see you pee, and no man or woman should have to light a flare to find their way around your hoo-hah. Now go on. You were peeing ...”

”Right. And without even turning off the razor or looking at me, he says he started the process for a divorce and I would be served papers this afternoon. Just like that!”

”Hmm ...” she rubbed her chin in thought. ”Have you guys been fighting lately?”

”No! This is totally out of the blue.”

”Has he been doing anything suspicious? Working later than normal or anything?”

”No. I mean, he always works late. I don't think he has time for an affair because he barely has time for a wife.”

”Has your s.e.x life changed any?”

”No. We had s.e.x during ovulation week, just like every month.”

”Oh. I guess it didn't work.”

I looked down at my hands and started pus.h.i.+ng my cuticles back. This was a sensitive subject. ”No.” It didn't work. Again.

At first, we had taken the casual approach to baby-making. I stopped taking my birth control pills about two years ago thinking if it happens, cool. When it didn't happen, I started a more serious approach. And then it still didn't happen.

Most couples would have seen a reproductive specialist after a year but Caleb was against any help in that department. He said it was unnatural and creepy, and he kept giving me that ever-popular line of bulls.h.i.+t called, ”If it's meant to be, it will be.”

That was when I started researching Old Wives Tales (OWTs). Some were based on mystical beliefs, like when I bought a Native American Kachina doll on the internet. Some were based on new studies, like the one that prompted me to track down an authentic African yam at a Ghanaian market. And some were minor things, like standing on my head for an hour after s.e.x, which isn't that bad if you lean against a wall. I did poses much harder than that in yoga cla.s.s.

Every month during ovulation week, we had s.e.x dates. In the TTC world (TTC means Trying to Conceive) this kind of baby-making s.e.x is called FWP (f.u.c.king with Purpose). I know scheduled s.e.x doesn't sound very s.e.xy, but unfertilized eggs only live for a few hours. There wasn't time for spontaneity.

For a few weeks after the FWP, I stayed hopeful. I would daydream about sippy cups and chubby thighs and work on my baby registry while wondering if a boy named Anakin would be taken seriously.

Every month, exactly four weeks from the last, I would get my period. I would spend the whole day crying, moping around and commiserating with all of my fellow TTCers on internet forums. And the cycle would start over again - literally.

TTC was a bit like a full time job. I guess you could say I was now being laid-off. I actually smiled at the irony of the term. But then I realized what that really meant. It had been hours since the D-word had first been mentioned, but it wasn't until then I realized I wasn't only losing my husband. I was also losing my future children.

That was when I felt it the pain in my heart. Some people say heartbreak is a myth, but it was real as ever to me. I touched my chest and reminded myself to breathe. I wished then that I hadn't left for the beach. Whose idiotic idea was this? All I wanted was to be home in my bed under our down comforter so I could cry in privacy. Instead I was blinking back tears while on my way to the Hamptons, wearing a bikini that was one size too small and creeping up my b.u.t.t crack.

The Hamptons were pretty quiet since it was only Thursday, which was fine with me. I preferred to visit in the off-season because the beaches were more beautiful without all of the pompous a.s.sholes ruining the views. I know, I was supposed to learn to mingle amongst them but I was never going to fit in with that crowd and I knew it. They were old-money, I was new-money. I could learn to walk the walk in my red-soled 120s, but I would always end up being a sheep in a bear's costume or a wolf dressed as a sheep or however the saying goes.

They grew up eating caviar with silver spoons. I grew up eating neon orange macaroni and cheese with a flatware set my mom bought on clearance at Kmart. Maybe one good thing about a divorce was that I could stop pretending to be someone I wasn't. And I could eat all the Kraft mac and cheese I wanted without any shame.

Hope leaned her head back on the headrest and turned to me while we were stopped at a light in Southampton. ”What sounds better?” she asked. ”A gla.s.s of wine or Cooper's Beach?”

”A whole bottle of wine,” I said dryly.

”Even better.”

”At Cooper's Beach.”

She thought for a moment. ”I don't believe alcohol is allowed on the beach.”

I shrugged. ”Then we'll have to do it guerrilla-style.”

”I love gorillas,” she said with a wicked smile.

When I was in high school, my friends and I thought it was cool to sneak in drugs and alcohol. We would come up with different methods, more for the thrill than anything else, because it's not like anyone really wants to multiply fractions with a buzz. At the time, we thought we were pretty clever. A few years later, when a decent amount of my friends were watching our commencements from the bleachers, they probably didn't feel quite as good about it.

Now, here I was, a grown adult, pouring wine into a plastic cup I got from a gas station's soda fountain. I had to admit, the thrill was still there.