A small step for me, a giant leap for sisters.

I called my sister last night and we spoke for half an hour. 

Although that wouldn’t have been noteworthy in another epoch of our lives, our relationship has been under a strain lately. As if it wasn’t bad enough (for me, that is) that she was pregnant when I was not, even when I couldn’t have been, last year, it got worse after the miscarriage. For the last two months, I’ve isolated myself not only from her but also from the rest of my family, their excitement over all things pink (yep, it’s a girl) a bit too much for me to bear. 

(It’s not that they’re cruel or inconsiderate. It’s that they don’t know. I managed to keep our ordeal private even though my dad arrived here for a quick visit two days after our first “Are you certain of your dates?” doctor’s visit, even though Gilles had to call him from the hospital the next day to tell him that I wouldn’t be on our flight to England together for a long-planned family reunion because I’d been sent to the hospital. Of course they cared, of course they asked, but I stonewalled and rebuffed every concerned request to know what was happening.)

***

The news that my sister and my husband were going to have a baby was broken last August. I was in the US preparing for Gilles’ and my wedding in September, and I was actually on my way to spend the week at her house when I answered the news-breaking call. To say it was a shock was an understatement. They’d been married almost two years at that point, and even though she’s still my little sister, at 31, she’s certainly old enough, as is he. But it was still a shock, for all our family, I think. For one reason or another, we weren’t expecting it. 

It was the middle of the night for Gilles. I called him anyway. I wanted to shout at him, to take it out on him, push onto him all my anger that it wasn’t me who was pregnant. Completely irrational, given that I hadn’t yet taken out my IUD – a somewhat necessary step on the journey to baby – and, regardless, nothing was his fault. He’d done nothing wrong. I did shout at him. He was bewildered but kind and gentle as always. Minutes of silence then passed, me sitting in my car in a parking lot, angry, angry, angry, sweating from the greenhouse effects of the sun on the closed windows, sniveling into my sleeve, him alone in our little Swiss flat, in the dark early hours of the day, calm and quiet in his support, so far away from where I was. 

Eventually there was nothing left to say about the fact that that there was nothing to say, and we said goodbye. It was already an hour past the time I should have arrived, and there was still another hour of road ahead. Driving along, I remembered the decent bottle of champagne I’d picked up for my sister and me to share. I’ll drink it myself, I thought vengefully. Later that night, I did. (Yes, it helped.) 

“So are you excited?” my brother-in-law’s mom asked me at a family dinner a few days later. “Yes, it’s coming up quickly!” I responded, thinking of my own upcoming big event. “Well, not so soon,” she laughed, “it’s not due until March.” Oh, right. It’s that I should be excited about.

My nieces, my brother-in-law’s tween-age kids from his first marriage, kept foisting ultrasound photos on me. “Aren’t you excited that we’re going to have a new baby! Look, it’s so cute! Here’s the head … here’s the legs!” Et cetera ad nauseum!

Hey, little girls! sweet old Aunt Bitch wanted to shout. One day you’ll grow up and realize it’s not so fucking simple to untangle your feelings of happiness for another from the complexities of your own for yourself!

But I managed to bite my tongue and say, instead, “Yes, it’s cute. Yes, I’m excited.”

And yes, I could use another glass of champagne. 

***

It was her birthday a few weeks ago. I didn’t call. She called me. I sent it to voicemail. She left me a message of thanks for my present. I didn’t call back. I couldn’t. 

But yesterday I felt differently. I’d been feeling the time trickling away, the last few days I could speak to my sister before she welcomes her daughter into the world held hostage to my pain. Yesterday felt like a good time to escape the captor. This helped. So did this. I am – we are – life is – moving forward. 

We chatted for a while and then paused. The elephant in the room coughed discreetly. I glared at it, and then:

“So,” I asked brightly, “all ready for baby?”