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high school one day and informed her I’d won the cross-country race. “I asked you how you did it and do you remember what you said? ‘I pass them on the hills when I’m crying.’ ”
    Whatever was left of my dignity I threw in the bin. I wrote to Paul and apologized for losing my temper. I said I completely accepted our marriage was over. I asked if he could look past his immediate pain and imagine himself in six months’ time, in a year’s time,happy and vital. Probably with a new love. The choice was his—unquestionably—but could he reconsider with an open heart? I said it was rare that we ever faced such a stark complex decision, so rare for the Fates to reveal themselves. Out of our relationship could come a beautiful childbeing. His life would only be enriched, not ruined. To no avail: he remained unmoved. Still, I was convinced that—after the worst of the bitter pain of divorce had eased—the blood would drain from his eyes and he’d see clearly. Just as before, on so many occasions, I’d seen him burn with fury and then make amends.
    I’m an expert at make-believe. Our child was not unreal to me. It was not a real child but also it was not unreal. Maybe a better way to say it is that the unknown unconceived had been an inner presence. A desired and nurtured inner presence. Not real but a singular presence in which I had radical faith. A presence that could not be substituted or replaced.
    My sleep was infected. I had dreams of searching in frustration for clothes that mysteriously vanished; a golden necklace, opera length, which at 10 cm intervals wasbroken up with small old-fashioned watch faces; a foul image of biting into a hamburger with a giant blood clot at its center. A nightmare in which Paul came to the door and I saw that he was cradling a dead toddler in his arms. He wasn’t smug or victorious, instead he looked at me as if he had only just realized he’d made a terrible, terrible mistake. In that dream my main concern was not to lose my composure, not to unnerve him, because I was holding the hand of another child by my side whom I had to protect.
    I could have walked away there and then and used unknown donor sperm from the clinic’s sperm bank. That sperm would have already cleared the three-month quarantine period required for any donated sperm. Quarantine is an industry standard in order to guard against HIV and other transmissible diseases. But in the IVF world we all have our parameters, our personal lines in the sand. At least we do when we start out, before the harsh desert winds cut across the dunes. (And some resile from starting out altogether: I heard of a German writer who told her audience that children created through IVF were Halbwesen , “twilight creatures,” “half-human, half-artificial I-don’t-know-whats.”) My own parameterwas that I couldn’t face using a stranger’s sperm. I wanted to have a special personal bond with the father of my child. Also, I harbored doubts about anonymous sperm because I figured the donors self-declared their medical history, filled out forms, and that there was very little if any fact-checking, double-checking, very little investigation of that medical history. I was especially concerned about things undetectable in the blood. At heart, I wasn’t ready to abandon our child . Couldn’t face the grief, I suppose. Doubled grief: lost marriage, lost childling. I envied the widows—innocent—whereas I was complicit in my loss. I know a friend who would shrug her shoulders: when she was in her early forties and single she went straight to the sperm bank, did one egg collection, and on her second transfer with a frozen embryo fell pregnant, gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Her life was transformed, filled with love.
    I asked again for Paul’s frozen sperm. And again. He told me it was too late, I’d had my chance, I’d blown it: