Fab and the Fates
—from a work-in-progress
by Sophia Russell
Fabienne sensed an opening to broach the subject she was giddy about but also scared of. “This week I just have my classes, mostly,” she said. “And I’m going to meet up with Michelle to celebrate my birthday.”
Aaron turned his entire body toward Fab’s.
“I,” he stumbled. “Oh, Fab.” He brought a hand to her chin and caressed it softly. “You know how crazy it’s been for me lately. We will celebrate you, too. Your choice, I promise. What do you want to do? Dinner? Weekend in the city?”
Fab felt bold. “Let’s schedule implantation.”
Aaron pulled himself away from Fab to look straight ahead at the bar. He took a deep breath, held it for three beats, then exhaled through his mouth. And repeated it.
‘Is this motherfucker doing breathing exercises?’ Fab thought.
“Fab–”
“You agreed that once you made tenure, we would start a family.” Fab tried to control both her tone and her volume on the outside. Why was she so nervous? This is what they agreed to. She told herself to relax, but inside she was screaming.
“Well, my publishing schedule will ramp up considerably now that I’ve made tenure. When will we find the time to do all that, you know, this entails?”
Fab bit her lip. They found the time to go on safari in Kenya, to see the Northern Lights in Iceland, to ride camels in Dubai. But they could never find the time to make a baby.
She paused, wanting to reset, to will this conversation to go the way she wanted it to. She recalled her therapist’s instructions, “Start statements with ‘I feel,’ so that they don’t sound accusatory, so that he won’t shut down.”
‘I feel like you don’t take my dreams as seriously as I do yours, I feel like you don’t listen to me, I feel like I can’t do this anymore,’ she wanted to say. Instead, she settled for, “We had a deal,” feeling moments away from losing her shit.
Aaron said this next bit slowly, like Fab had a hard time comprehending him when he spoke. “Look, Fab, I, we, we have a beautiful life together. I like our life the way it is. You think we can live the life we do with a kid? Think we can enjoy all the fine dining and fancy trips with a baby? I think not.” He scoffed and laughed but stopped once he saw the hurt on Fab’s face.
Fab began to feel sick. She no longer had an appetite and sitting in this awkward position was causing her dress to dig into her stomach. Aaron didn’t really have to change his mind because it was already made up.
“We can still do those things with children,” she said, tears pooling in her eyes, unsure if it was true but she said it anyway because she wanted so badly for it to be true. “You know how much I want to be a mother.”
“The planet is burning, what kind of future will any kid have?”
They’d had this philosophical argument before, about how Earth was dying and humans were going to be extinct in another millennia or so. Her academic brain saw the rationale as well and yet she still wanted a baby so badly. Where did this want come from? Was it from growing up in the girl boss era that preached that women could have it all? That was part of it, but there was something deeper. At last, Fab wanted it to be her turn. She didn’t just want to be fun Aunty Fab to her friend’s kids, even mother hen professor to her students. She wanted children of her own.
She wanted to tell her mother the happy news, that she would finally have a grandchild. She thought of her and Evelyn going into the city together to go shopping on Madison Avenue for cute mini designer clothes and a luxury label diaper bag. She wanted to rub her belly, go to prenatal yoga classes, and buy stylish maternity clothes at high end boutiques. She wanted to tell her college girlfriends, for whom she was godmother to several of their children, that it was finally her turn to experience what quite a few had told her was the greatest love of all.
“There’s no love like the love you will feel for your child,” her college basketball teammate Erika told her after she had her first. And Fab believed her. She wanted to feel relief from the pressure of having finally achieved what everyone made her believe she was put on this earth to do.
And, admittedly, selfishly, she wanted a being to exist in the world whose attention was solely focused on her, albeit for its own survival, but there it would be nonetheless. She wanted a child so that she could finally experience unconditional love. As ill-advised as she knew it was, she truly believed that a child was the missing piece that would complete her life.
She wanted more than her mother’s distracted care and focus, which was fleeting and went away anytime she was all-consumed by a row with her father. And she wanted more than her absent-minded husband’s concern, as he could only concentrate on one thing at a time in his life and his interest in her welfare seemed to disappear when he was under a writing deadline or scheduled to give a keynote.
“This is important to me,” Fab cried. Her lip quivered as she tried to keep the deluge of tears she felt nearing her cheeks at bay.
Aaron sighed and looked pained to say his next words. “I’m sorry, Fab, but the answer is no.”
Sophia Russell developed a love for writing as an undergrad at Cornell University where she wrote music and art reviews as well as a weekly column on the Arts and social justice issues for the Cornell Daily Sun. After graduation, she worked at magazines like BusinessWeek and Entertainment Weekly before attending the University of Houston Law Center. This piece is an excerpt from Sophia’s manuscript, Fab and the Fates, about a 40-something year old Haitian American academic, Fabienne Jenkins, whose lifelong dream of becoming a mother is shattered when her husband confesses he no longer wants to have children. In losing what she thinks she has always wanted, Fabienne finds what she needs. Sophia lives with her family and practices law in Austin, Texas.
Return to Folio Page