She had given up things for him before. After their first year together, she’d left her job as an RN because it was so exciting to travel with him. And then being on the road got old, or maybe just she did. But by the end of her second year of touring with him, she began to feel the need to be a nurse again. It was like a physical pull. She missed having a community of doctors, nurses, and staff that she saw every day.
She yearned for the feeling that she had a place to be, with a job that was important. It was such a different life from the one Simon had. She hadn’t known what to expect when she first told him she wasn’t touring with him anymore, that she’d call him every day, that she’d miss him like crazy, but she couldn’t go. To her surprise, he nodded thoughtfully and said he got it. He said he understood her loving something the same way he did his music, needing something of her own. And maybe, too, she thought, he was even a little relieved when she went back to nursing, because then he wouldn’t have to worry about her increasing restlessness on the road.
Now she felt him watching her. She knew he wanted to talk about catching the next possible flight out, about what it would be like to be Rick Mason’s opening act, about what could happen, about all the crazy pot-of-gold possibilities. But she wanted to talk about her own dreams.
“What are we doing here?” she said. “Why can’t we make a decision?”
They were both forty-two. She knew how everything changed when you hit your forties. Everyone took stock. She wanted to buy their apartment while they had the chance. It was that rare thing, a rent-stabilized place they had found years ago, just six months into their relationship, just by pure luck and word of mouth, and so cheap and affordable they’d snapped it up the second they saw it. A small one-bedroom with an actual alcove that would fit a daybed. It was on Twenty-Second Street off First Avenue, and it had gleaming wood floors and a high ceiling and all the rooms were filled with light. They could just afford it on her nurse’s salary and his money from the band. And Simon’s parents (or at least his mom) sometimes sent them money when they least expected it, which helped out immeasurably. But Stella knew the landlord was planning to convert the building to co-ops. They could stay renters if they wanted, but they had an opportunity to buy at an insider’s price, which she knew would pay off for them down the road with equity and tax breaks. And if they got married, another thing he didn’t want, they’d have more tax breaks. They could even be solvent enough to start a family before it was too late.
But that was another thing that Simon didn’t want.
“Why this again and again and again?” Simon asked her.
“I need to talk about it.”
“Stella,” he said wearily. “Can’t we argue about this another time? Isn’t it enough that we have the weather to worry about? If this LA thing turns into something, if we get the whole tour, maybe then we can consider it.”
“Why can’t we consider it now?” she said. “What if we take out a loan? This place is only going to zoom up in value.” She paused. “Two other apartments were snapped up already.”
“You want to be saddled with a loan?” Simon said. He poured another glass of wine and then topped off hers.
“We could break through one of the walls. Or we could have that alcove be a baby’s room.” She waited, suddenly a little scared.
“Stella, Jesus,” he said. “Kids were never part of what we wanted. It was always just you and me. You said that was enough.”
It was true. When they had first met, she didn’t want anyone around her but him. A child would complicate things. She remembered her parents’ relationship, how close they were, like a seam in fabric, and though they had loved her, she always felt like she was the hanging thread at their hemline, always terrified that any moment they might snap her free. She wouldn’t want any child of hers to ever feel like that. But then when she’d hit her late twenties, she started noticing pregnant women, babies as glossy as pearls, and her whole body had yearned more and more for them. At her last visit to her gynecologist, the doctor had paused after she was done with the exam. “Just something to chew on,” the doctor said, “but your chances of conceiving are getting slimmer and slimmer. At thirty-four, they’re sixty-three percent. You have a five percent chance once you’re in your forties.”
Stella had felt herself crumple at the doctor’s words. Her mom had had her when she was forty, and Stella was only two years beyond that. And she knew women who had gotten pregnant at forty-four or even forty-six. But would she be that lucky? She felt time whizzing past her. “You could think about adopting,” the doctor said. “But that’s not so easy, either. And it can be very pricey. Or we can talk about donor eggs. Or surrogates.”
That night, when she told Simon her concerns, he was unmoved.
“You know I don’t want a kid. And that doesn’t make me a villain,” he said now.
“And it doesn’t make me a villain for wanting it.” She touched his arm. “I don’t want to look back and think, Oh, my God, I should have done this.”
“I like our lives the way they are now,” he said. “I’m happy with us like this. Aren’t you?”
Stella stared at him. The wine was tart and red, and Stella finished her glass and poured another. “I’ll go back to school, be a nurse practitioner. It’ll pay off for us. A big money jump.”
“You’re going to work, return to school, and have a child? How are you going to do all that?”
“I will. I can. And aren’t you part of this, too? We’ll figure it out.”
She knew that Simon hated when she did this, mapping out the future she wanted and planning on how to get to it. He teased her about not being spontaneous. He kept telling her about the wonder he found in the world, the way he felt when he got lost in playing or singing, standing in front of a crowd. Instead, she was always thinking about equity, about how when they were old, they could sell this place and move someplace less exorbitant than Manhattan, even though she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. She wished she could rush ahead into the future because if Simon could see how it would be, she knew he would change his mind. She could see everything unfurling like a road map and all she wanted was to get to her destination.
“There’s no such thing as true security,” Simon said. “It’s a myth. You just want it because you didn’t have it with your parents.”
“That’s not true,” she said, even though she knew that it was. Her parents had been bohemians, her mom a substitute Spanish teacher at the local school in Park Slope before the neighborhood was cool, never knowing when she’d have work but liking it that way because of the freedom it gave her to sew and design dresses. Her dad taught woodworking at the same school and did a little carpentry on the side. But it was never enough. They rented an apartment instead of owning their place or even living in a house like all of Stella’s friends did, and sometimes they didn’t have the money for the electric bill, something that always terrified Stella as a child, even as her parents joked and set out candles, claiming it was romantic. Stella worried that her life might always be dark. She had never wanted to be that scared again, which was why she went into nursing, where she always would have steady work, she’d always be needed, no matter where she lived.