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were ready to begin treatment, but more than once—at the very last minute—Paul changed his mind. I got the blame for falling asleep at 2 a.m. on a day we were due to begin. We had been up all night talking about our future as parents, he was worried he would be stuck holding the baby, he was worried he was too old. I did my best to assure him all would be fine, better than fine, a joy, a gift . . . but I was bone-tired and soon begged off to sleep. When I woke up Paul told me he was canceling the cycle. He said that if we’d been talking about my work in the early hours of the morning I would have managed to stay awake. He was unsure, he wanted to wait. Wait! I felt like I had been stabbed—and wanted to stab him in turn—but I needed his permission and did my best to persuadehim to please reconsider. Nothing worked. I was a hopeless supplicant.
    Things fell apart. Fall down, get back up, fall down. Stay down, duck for cover. It was a long, sad, immensely difficult time for both of us. He said I was relegating “Us” to my insistent desire for a child. I couldn’t bear his deliberate procrastinating, his brooding, his rages. The weight of his reproach. My friends and family despaired for me; his friends and family despaired for him. But we were not entirely sad—that was our problem. Our relationship didn’t fade out . . . it was syncopated, tender—terrible. So many small things were quietly wonderful. We both sincerely claimed to love one another more than we’d ever loved anyone before, we told ourselves ours were only the best intentions.
    My film was selected to be “In Competition” at the Festival de Cannes. The experience was intense and marvelous and I couldn’t have survived it without Paul by my side. The night of the screening was also his birthday. At the after-party, held on a beach, he stripped off his tuxedo and went for a swim. Emerging from the water hewas radiant. That was in May 2011—but we slid downhill through June and by July we had drafted divorce papers. Over a year had passed since our separation around the time of the property settlement and a formal divorce could now be granted. The paperwork wasn’t signed and sent to the family court until October. I sent it in: Paul told me he had started sleeping with other people. Our body seal was broken.
    And still, and yet, and don’t let go, even after we were officially divorced we continued to see one another. In February 2012 we planned a weekend away at his friend’s beach house down the coast, he said we would go there to “create something new together.” My hope, as always, was that it would only take a tiny breakthrough and our relationship would crystallize, a slow process culminating in a sudden and unpredictable transformation. We ate fish’n’chips, drank wine, watched DVDs. It poured with rain. When I said “I love you” he flinched. “Why say that now!” “Because we’re sitting on the couch, nothing special.” Nothing special: nothing worked. Nothing worked. Nothing within me worked. We failed to understand one another deeply. I’ve revisited that weekend a thousand times. Reenacted—rewrittenevery conversation, every stillborn attempt at openhearted conversation. An endless restoration. That was the weekend when we did truly divorce, when even the McGillicuddys had to call it a day. I was grateful to Paul for one thing: we agreed that if we were to irrevocably part he would allow me to use his frozen sperm and go ahead with being a single mother. He knew I didn’t want to use a stranger’s sperm; he knew how old I was; he knew how I’d found myself in my predicament. I would take full financial responsibility and he could be involved in co-parenting as little or as much as he liked. Since we had been friends for so long—twenty-three years—we felt we could maintain harmony in the future. Our