There Will Still Be Champagne
By Rachel Nevergall
@rachelnevergall
It was an unusually warm New Year’s Eve. The evening beckoned our small party outside without coats and the stars popped like confetti over our heads. My husband and Meredith’s boyfriend shared a cigar while I joined my two best friends, Laura and Meredith, on the stone steps, kicking off our uncomfortable heels and sipping bubbles straight from the bottle. Laura was without a date that night, but in our story, the guys were always the ones who felt left out.
The New Year celebrations of our twenties are the most dazzling in my memory. I remember the year we ran out of champagne and stumbled arm and arm through the snowy Chicago night looking for the nearest bar to ring in the new year. Or the year we crashed Laura’s parents' party and taught their friends how to play beer pong. There were years with sparkly outfits and crowded apartments and White Castle burgers and cheap tiaras. Other years blend together, but in my mind, they all shimmer with the same tiddly memory—best friends and a New Year full of possibilities.
Maybe it was the sizzle of fireworks in the distance, or the half bottle of champagne consumed, but on this particular night, I was buzzing with adrenaline. I started dreaming up the next chapter of our lives.
"2011. This will be a good year, girls. I feel it," I said, unable to hide my bliss.
Their eyebrows raised; they’ve always guarded their optimism more than I. Then again, it’s easy for me to stay positive. While they navigated the highs and lows of the dating scene, I was the one happily married to my college sweetheart. My twenties knew little disappointment.
"Write this down." I stood up and gestured wildly. "By the end of this year, Laura, you will meet your dream man. Meredith, you’re getting married. Ok fine, not married but engaged. And I’m getting pregnant. Good things are happening. You’ll see." I took a swig from the bottle and passed it on; a period at the end of the fairy tale I had just written. They eye-rolled my predictions, but didn't argue. We finished the bottle and went looking for more, not wanting the night to be over just yet. We were drunk on the hope of a shared happy ending.
***
The minivan and those within it sigh as we pull into the driveway of Laura’s house. The remains of a long road trip tumble out of the sliding door—empty snack wrappers, a dropped stuffed animal, multiple shoes, and then my two children, husband, and I quickly after. Everyone is relieved to have reached that day’s destination in time to celebrate New Year’s Eve, everyone, that is, but me.
This year, now 2017, holds a little less sparkle than previous holidays. Tonight we will replace the mini skirts and cocktail parties with pajamas and Mario Kart in the basement while our children sleep upstairs. At least there will still be champagne.
Not for me, though; I’m twelve weeks pregnant with my third baby. In another story, we would celebrate. But not tonight. Instead, I hide my already bulging maternity leggings behind an oversized sweater. If I don’t look pregnant, maybe we can all pretend it’s not true.
I’m still hungover from last week’s text conversation.
***
If you are pregnant, I need you to tell me. I will be happy for you. I just need time to process it away from you first.
The text from Laura hit me like a shot to the heart. I tossed my phone across the couch, as if she could see my answer through the screen.
Laura and Meredith were always the first to hear my big news. They stood with me as I opened letters for graduate school. They squealed when I showed them the ring he placed on my finger. They were the first calls I made when I joined that multi-level marketing company, and they were the first to tell me that was a very bad decision.
But I hadn’t yet told them about this pregnancy.
Laura is struggling to conceive her second baby. Meredith is, too. I know how many miscarriages they count, what medicines they take, which doctors they see. They share their painful experiences with me, and I listen, tucking away their stories like they are my own.
But their grief is not my story. In my story, babies come easily. My doctor appointments are uneventful. My house is full. They don’t know about my numbing first trimester exhaustion, my fears of parenting multiple children, the prenatal depression that haunts me. Naming these truths would only bring attention to what I have that they don’t.
Besides, there was still a naive part of me–the one that believes in sparkles and confetti and happy endings–that hoped for the story where all of us were pregnant when we gathered again. And then this whole dark saga would be in the past and we could ring in the New Year just like we always did–with joy and hope and (fake) champagne.
But in one text, I learned that wasn’t going to be our story this year.
I remember how I fumbled my phone through stinging tears, typing furiously, hitting backspace a hundred times, desperate for the right words, settling finally with the simple truth.
I am. I’m so sorry.
***
Even now, as I greet Laura at her door with a hug, vertigo surfaces with the whiplash of emotions—sadness for my friend’s grief, shame for keeping secrets, anger at infertility for placing this monster in the middle of our friendship. The pregnancy nausea is fading, but the dizzying tension between our divergent storylines still lingers.
But then…
"I’m pregnant," she whispers in my ear. I pull back to take in her face, unable to trust this good news. She smiles, but her voice shakes as she follows her announcement with caution. It’s early. She is waiting for test results. She has been here before.
I barely let her finish before I grab her in another hug. “We’re pregnant together! Isn’t this great?! Oh I just knew it would happen, I told you it would happen and it did just like I said it would!” I squeal, my words running together, breathless, trying to disguise my relief as excitement.
Meredith then arrives with her family, and so does the anxiety in my chest, as I realize she will be the one left out this year. But Laura’s news lands with seemingly more joy than I anticipated. Meredith makes a joke about drinking for three, but otherwise the topic of pregnancy stays out of our conversation. Maybe we all have perfected the art of safely avoiding what we would like to remain unsaid.
The evening carries on as if months, and pain, had not passed between us. We put the children to bed and sneak into the basement. We eat junk food and play video games and laugh till it hurts. Everything is just as I’d hoped it would be.
Until it isn’t.
Seconds before midnight we all face the New Year countdown on the big screen TV with champagne flutes in hand. "Three, Two, One, Happy New Year!" we shout in unison, too drunk on the joy of the night to worry about waking the kids.
The ball reaches its landing as the numbers 2-0-1-8 flash on the television. We toast and pull our husbands in for a kiss. Laura holds up her phone to take a selfie, marking another year together.
While the rest of us sing Auld Lang Syne in offkey tones, I notice Laura’s gaze remains at her phone. My stomach clenches. She hands the phone to her husband, then to Meredith, leaving me to read nothing but panic on their faces.
I hear Ryan Seacrest’s voice grating in the background, cacophonous with the increasing beat of my heart. Meredith and Laura quietly pass words like "hCG" and "percentage increase" and "viability" back and forth. They speak a language I don’t know, of a place I don’t belong. The queasiness settling in my stomach translates for me. There is no baby. Not for her. Not tonight.
"I need some water," Laura chokes and runs upstairs. Meredith follows behind her.
My mouth is dry. I glance at Meredith’s champagne glass, the bubbles still dancing around its long neck. It looks so much more appealing than the sparkling grape juice in mine, tasting saccharine and fake. I long to grab her glass, fling it back, to taste the bitterness, in hopes that it numbs my own. If I wasn’t sober, maybe I wouldn’t recognize the self pity rising like bile from my shallow gut.
Desperate for a distraction, I rush to clean up the taunting example of a party that was. With a heedless swipe of my arm, I shove greasy paper plates and sticky red solo cups into the nearest garbage can. I gather the abandoned champagne flutes and empty each one into the sink. The effervescence laughs at me as it circles the drain and disappears. I take another scan of the room and squint, blinded by the glare of the television. On the screen sequin decorated twenty-somethings bounce and bob like bubbles in a champagne glass, carbonated with carefree bliss that only blesses the young and innocent. I press power off and the room goes dark.
Guilt tells me to find my friends, wrap my arms around Laura, ooze the optimism I am so good at accessing in moments like this. But I don’t. I know I am not welcome in that scene, not my fertility or my ugly truths. They can’t know that my throat chokes with anger, not sadness. No one can hear the screams inside my head. This isn’t how it was supposed to be! When do we get to the good part?
The good part will come, but I don’t know that yet. I don’t know about the New Year’s Eve when we talk of burning maternity clothes while a new baby for each of us sleeps upstairs. I don’t know about the year when we will toast champagne to split laptop screens, because even in pandemics, we’ve learned how to reach for joy. I don’t know that sitting in this painful messy middle, together, will be what proves the strength of our friendship. And I don’t know that the guilt swirling in my insides tonight will one day be assuaged by the forgiving hug of my friends when I am finally able to admit what I can’t now.
You can’t rush a happy ending. But I don’t know that yet.
Guest essay written by Rachel Nevergall. Rachel shares her home in Minnesota with her husband and three children. She is the curator of family adventures, lover of all of the library books, mixer of fancy cocktails, and writer in the in-between. She shares about the confluence of her child development background and the realities of parenting in her monthly Raise & Shine Letter, on her blog, and Instagram.
Photo by Jennifer Floyd.