The Believers by Zoë Heller Page A

Joel: his refusal to participate in the battle for paternal approbation!
    "Karla," Joel said suddenly. "What're you doing?" Karla jumped. Joel pointed at her hand, which was reaching out to take the last piece of French toast on the serving platter. He smiled, trying to lighten the admonition. "Don't you think you've had enough, sweetie?" Karla put her fork down and stared at her lap in remorse.

    Mike appeared to be in the final furlong. His teeth were gritted, his nostrils flared. Even as Karla opened her mouth to utter some encouraging groans, he froze and with an angry little "Yuh!" slumped, done. She lay still, registering the familiar aftermath--the sense of warm things growing cold, of tumescence shriveling; the tiny, wet sound as Mike slipped out of her.
    In the days before the fertility drugs, this would have been Karla's cue to get up and fetch a warm washcloth. (Mike liked to be wiped down and made fresh before he slept.) But for a while now, she had been excused from this duty. Mike went to get his own washcloth, so that Karla might remain recumbent, her legs straight up in the air, for twenty minutes, with the aim of abetting the conception process with gravity. Mike had suggested that they adopt this method, after reading about it in one of the fertility books. Karla was not particularly hopeful of its efficacy, but as the deficient partner in the reproductive process, she did not feel in a position to contest any of her husband's increasingly desperate ideas.
    In the darkness, she arranged a pillow beneath her haunches and raised her legs. Another technique recommended by Selena and Kenneth Daniels was positive visualization:
    Here's one for the ladies: try sending out positive thoughts to your mate's sperm as they set out on the journey to your egg. We have no scientific evidence that this kind of cheerleading works, but hey--it can't hurt!
    Karla had tried this once or twice--scrunching her eyes shut and picturing the silent struggle for life that was beginning somewhere within: the clamorous tadpole horde racing through the darkness of the cervical canal; the egg in its pink fallopian boudoir, languorously awaiting its courtiers. But at some point, the positive images always got hijacked by negative ones. The sperm who had set out so boisterously would grow languid and start to dawdle. Or vast mushroomlike fibroids would billow out from her womb, barring their way. Or the egg would turn out to be ensnared, like a fairy-tale princess, within an impassable thicket of endometrial scar tissue.
    She didn't really believe in the possibility of making good things happen with the sheer strength of your desire for them. If anything, it seemed to her, the opposite was true. The moment you wanted anything too fervently, the moment you yearned, the universe gazed with disgust upon your mewling and withheld. To get things, you had to be careless about them, the way that Rosa was. Rosa, who tied her blond hair back in an untidy ponytail and wore cheap sneakers until they fell apart on her feet, and washed her face with soap and water, but still looked like a French film actress....
    Mike was hissing something in her ear. "Up! Up!" he seemed to be saying.
    "What?" Karla said sleepily. She opened her eyes to see Mike's face scowling at her in the darkness.
    "Put your legs up!" he said. She felt the angry jab of his foot against her thigh. "The twenty minutes aren't done yet."

CHAPTER
5
    "Mrs. Audre-ey!"
    Audrey woke from a doze on her living room sofa to find Sylvia, her cleaning lady, standing over her. "I gotta vacuum in here," Sylvia said in a teasing singsong. "Don't you got a bed upstairs?"
    Audrey groaned. When she had sat down to read the paper, the living room had been chilly and dark. Now sunlight was filtering in through the dirty windows, striping her shirt and gently broiling the fusty sofa. It was upsetting to have Sylvia discover her recumbent and snoring in the middle of the day. To offset some of the