Free Devil's Mountain by Bernadette Walsh Page A

together and convinced the doctors and Orla it was safe to leave her out, and for her to return to her Mountain.
    So Bobby and I were, in a way, orphans ourselves as we expected our child. We clung to each other, comforted each other and as soon as my belly swelled with our precious package, we were both so happy that even our mothers’ respective exiles to Florida’s Gulf Coast and the dreary halls of the county madhouse couldn’t dampen our joy.
    At times I would rub my baby bump and stare out the window and wonder what my little boy would look like. I would try and imagine him with Bobby’s black hair and green eyes, but whenever I did I didn’t see the green eyes I woke up to every morning. Instead he had the glowing green eyes that had nearly devoured me in the old Collins cottage. When I first held Aidan and saw my own watery blue eyes stare back at me, I was more than a little relieved.
    Aidan swallowed the last of his carrots. I lifted him out of his highchair. “Come on, little man,” I said, shaking myself from my thoughts. “Time to go.”
    Marcie, one of the Wanna-Be Manhattan Moms who had also experienced success, lived a few blocks away on East 85th Street. A group of successful Wanna-Be Manhattan Moms had formed a little Upper East Side sorority. We would go to Mommy-and-Me classes, play dates and at times babysat for each other. I’m not sure exactly what happened to the not-so-successful Wanna-Be Manhattan Moms. None of us mentioned them.
    Marcie agreed to babysit Aidan while I went to my acupuncture appointment at the Yorktown Natural Fertility Clinic. Bobby refused to go back to the New York Infertility Institute. In fact, it was all I could do to convince him not to use condoms. “I’ve got my beautiful wife and my beautiful son,” he said in a sing-song voice whenever I raised the topic of another child. “That’s all I want. That’s all I need.”
    Why wasn’t that all I needed?
    The first few months of Aidan’s life, I was completely satisfied. I’d never been so happy or imagined I could be so happy.
    But then, the old familiar niggling started. I’d take Aidan in his stroller through Central Park and see a woman pushing twins in a stroller. Or a mother holding the hands of a small boy and a girl. And I would get that sour taste in my mouth, the same one I had tasted for years whenever I saw a pregnant woman.
    And so it began.
    I couldn’t very well steal a vial of Bobby’s sperm and take it with me back to Dr.
    Feinberg’s office. But we had, somehow, managed to conceive Aidan on our own. Perhaps with some Chinese herbs and acupuncture we could conceive again. Marcie swore by acupuncture, and after she had been thrown out of two Manhattan IVF clinics she tried traditional Chinese medicine and conceived her own miracle baby. Why couldn’t I too, conceive a little miracle baby with the help of magic teas and shiny needles?
    Just one more , I thought to myself as I opened the heavy glass doors of the Yorktown Natural Fertility Clinic. “Just one more miracle. And then. Then I’ll be happy and content.”
    I promise , I silently swore to God, the universe or whoever else might be listening to my thoughts.

    * * * *
    A row of needles lined my bare stomach. They were in my ears, on my wrists and even between my toes. The acupuncturist, a hippy-looking woman in her mid-fifties with frizzy red hair, twisted the needles between my toes once more before she lowered the lights and left the room.
    The first five minutes were always the hardest. Inevitably at least one of the needles would burn. Dr. Hippy-Dippy said that meant it was working. It was all I could do not to rip the offending thing out.
    I breathed in and out slowly, and tried to focus on my breathing, on anything rather than the needles. As I lay in the darkened room, with only the sound of a small fan to block out the traffic from Second Avenue, my shoulders, which had felt like they were jacked up below my ears, relaxed. I