Would Have Been

You will be the world’s best mother, a college friend said when I was only nineteen. 
       Spring break. A motel room. Though I do not remember the surrounding details, those words—will be … best mother—I recall vividly. 

I was so young then. I still envisioned pinning a sonogram to a fridge. Making a temporary home of my body. Cocooning a baby in blankets against my bare chest.  

I imagined so many things that will likely never be.

~~~

Now, I am with my father in his Cambridge house. A small house with wooden floors that creak under your feet and that is full of animals—two whippets, one Bengal cat, and we might as well also count the flurry of birds that come to his porch each day. And plants, so many plants. He is showing me the seedlings he has been trying to grow. With top lights bowing down and plastic protectors covering each cup that sits on his tray of hope. He has been tending to these cups. There are twenty or so, and there is only one that has sprouted. But one is something. 

~~~

In a waiting room, I sit across from a young couple. She rests her hand on her ballooned belly; he fills out the paperwork. You are going to be the best mother, I imagine him whispering to her in their private moments. I smile at them, but the scene sharpens my grief. I fill out my own paperwork. On the clipboard, I am checking the box single, checking yes next to do you get your period every month, checking no next to are you currently trying to get pregnant? 

Each year, in my blue paper gown, closed in by beige walls, sterile instruments resting on steel trays, my heels captured in stirrups and a tiny, concentrated light bulb casting shadows, I’d let the question slip: Do you think … could I … is there … a test I can take to find out?  
       Until this year. This year, at my annual appointment, I did not ask. I no longer ask about my fertility because I think it would be too painful to know. 

~~~

You would be such a great mom, a friend says when I am forty. We are standing outside a baby’s clothing store. It is early evening; stars are beginning to peek out above us. The doors to the shop are closed but the onesies and wooden, animal-shaped toys in the window are dimly lit.  

          Would be,
                    Would be,
                              Would be ...

I am standing on the edge of would be and would have been.   

~~~

No hay nostalgia peor que añorar lo que nunca, jamás sucedió, wrote the musician Joaquín Sabina. There is no nostalgia worse than longing for what never, ever happened.

Happen and Happiness. The two words have grown apart in the centuries, but the origins are linked; they share the same root. Hap: luck, fortune.

~~~

You would be the best grandfather, I think, as my father shows me the seedlings. Remembering when he’d take me to the Parque Güell to ride my tricycle. Recalling how he taught me to make homemade ice cream with buckets of ice in the bathtub. The pancakes he stained with food coloring on weekends, and how he helped me sketch maps for school projects. Thinking of him playing peekaboo, crafting funny voices and silly faces. Oh yes. He would be the best grandfather, ​​​​I say to myself, as he sprinkles plant food on the cups. 

A happiness that never happened. 

Montserrat Andrée Carty is a Spanish-American writer, photographer, and the interviews editor for Hunger Mountain. She holds an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is working on her first book. Find her online at montseandree.com and on Instagram at @montseandree.  

This essay is a Short Reads original.