Chapter 6: The Letter

I let Patricia into the studio.

She stood in the middle of the room and looked at the folding table, the single bed and the window with no curtain.

"Trevor told me you rented a place like this," she said. "I didn't believe him."

"Trevor didn't know I still had it."

"He knew." She sat on the one chair. "He called it your little hideout."

I did not answer that.

I went to the closet and took down a shoebox.

At the bottom was a white envelope from a urology clinic on East Seventy-Fourth Street, addressed to my husband and opened by me three years ago.

Until the elevator, I had never mentioned it to anyone.

I handed it to her.

Patricia read the first line, and her hand started to shake.

Post-procedure semen analysis. Result: no sperm detected.

There was a second page with his signature, dated three years ago, and a note from the doctor.

Patient has been counseled that reversal is rare and not guaranteed.

"It's not true," Patricia said.

"It's a medical letter."

"He wanted children. He cried when we lost the first round."

"He cried in the car outside the clinic, too," I said. "I held his hand."

She stared at me.

"He said I'd feel less guilty if I thought it was my body," I said. "He told me to keep going with the IVF so his board would see we were trying."

"Three rounds, Patricia. I took the injections. He took the credit."

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