Avalanche by Julia Leigh Page A

“The baby boat has sailed.” Bitch : I hadn’t breathed a word to her about my treatment. Wait and see .
    Now I don’t care but for a long time I was circumspect about telling people I was doing IVF. Professionally, while there was still a chance I could become pregnant, it wasn’t wise. With friends I was careful about who I told. I didn’twant to tell my friend with breast cancer because she had enough on her plate; I didn’t want to tell my friends who were new mothers and obsessed with their babies; I didn’t want to tell friends who either were at ease not being mothers or those who found themselves childless in circumstances similar to mine; nor did I want to tell my friend who had remained close to my ex-husband. I didn’t want to tell people because I thought that unless they were involved in that world themselves they wouldn’t want to listen. Or they would only half listen and so diminish my experience. Or they would ask questions that required explanations too complex for conversation. Or they would offer advice based on hearsay and a general theory of positivity. Or I would make them uncomfortable because of my proximity to the abyss. Hush, keep your voice down, don’t mention it by name .
    The following month was a respite. Thank all the gods. I jumped on a plane to Bali and for ten days worked on a commissioned script from a villa overlooking the Sayan Ridge in Ubud. The place was lush, verdant, abundantly fertile. Dense and green. I counted six layered storeys of green from my terrace. Vertical green. Ten thousandinsects. I luxuriated in having someone bring me breakfast each morning. I did yoga and had massages: unashamed, a walking convalescent. Eat, Pray, Love—or “Eat, Pay, Leave,” as the locals say—who cares. It was good. It helped. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
    On resuming treatment I noticed that the white cockatoos who habitually roosted on a nearby roof antenna had fallen silent. It drove me crazy that Paul had turned his back and walked off into the so-called sunset while I was left with my pathetic hormone injections. Callous lotus-eater! Faux Buddhist! Fake feminist! Hey Orpheus, turn around! The rats had a field day. I heard myself referring to “my infertility” when talking to my sister. A slip of the tongue. I’d never applied the term to myself before—I wasn’t infertile, I was “trying to get pregnant.” To be infertile sounded like something already decided, finalized, irreversible. I had to drag myself back to the nurses. Dread intermingled with hope this time round. I wasn’t sure I could withstand another failure. The test of IVF, I came to realize, is to do with both intensity and duration. IVF is durational in the same way a lot of people can sit at a table and stare at a stranger for ten minutes but very few can do it for 700-plus hours. One day after I’d left theclinic I needed to do some shopping and had my carry bag of drugs with me. Those telltale nylon bags, just big enough for a cold pack: all women doing IVF could spot them a mile away. I bought a dozen eggs. Egg kit, eggs in hand: the moment was absurd. I was slipping. Rally! “You are Team Captain,” I told myself. “Keep it together. It isn’t what happens to a person but how they respond that counts. There is hope. It’s not over yet. You are Team Captain. Team Captain.” In the evening, after my needle, I practiced a visualization exercise, partially inspired by an engraved medical illustration I’d bought after my lung operation. It’s a page cut from a nineteenth-century medical book depicting a bust-sized portrait of a woman, alive, well, fully clothed, her head in three-quarter profile, whose chest is completely open, revealing her lungs and other internal workings. Gruesome and elegant. And hopelessly outmoded by today’s medical knowledge. So I pictured my own internal belly