10. Lola

It was late. Lola could hear the click of the clock inside. George had gone to bed, and the house had settled under the heaviness of the dark. She sat in a rocker on the porch, a quilt wrapped around her and hot tea in her hand. She didn’t really need it since it was such a hot summer night, but it was more for comforting her mind than anything else. She laid her head back and looked at the stars, wondering when things had gotten so hard.
George hadn’t been home much lately. It seemed like his work was keeping him in the office later and business trips took him away more often. But the distance between them was bigger than that; more difficult to close. He couldn’t understand her. Not that he didn’t try, but he just didn’t know what to do with her, what to say to her, how to comfort her.
She still loved him, but didn’t know how to save their ailing marriage. Their arguments were growing more frequent and more vehement. Arguments were starting to eclipse the understanding and empathy they felt for one another. And now there was the horse. George would never understand. Lola would never change her mind. She wanted the horse. She needed him.
Lola and George had been married for eight years. Eight years turned over and over in her mind. They had gotten married a year after George had finished his MBA. Lola had started out as a librarian, then opened a bookstore of her own two years later with George’s help. It had been successful enough to allow her the freedom to work whenever she wanted, and add significant income to George’s already healthy salary. Things seemed to be going perfectly. They bought their dream house just outside the city, complete with a wraparound porch, hundred-year-old trees lining the yard, and a small horse barn connected to a five-acre pasture. They had laid the groundwork for the life they had planned together, but it abruptly veered off course two years ago.
They wanted children filling the extra bedrooms of the house, and so far they’d had no luck. After a year without success, they turned to doctors. Lola had subjected herself to a myriad of tests and procedures and drugs. Each new treatment was more invasive and less reliable than the last. Still, she and George were willing to try anything. Her last attempt had been the last ditch effort. She had undergone treatment for in vitro fertilization just before George had gone on his last business trip. It had failed. She had picked up her results on the way to see Vic. She eyes began to water as she remembered to look on the doctor’s face; how he had struggled to look at her. It wasn’t fair. There were so many people having so many kids, and all she wanted was one. One. She hated herself; hated her body for spiting her like this. It made her feel like less of a woman. It had forced a wedge between she and George, and it was almost unbearable. George wanted to understand her, what she was going through, but he was grasping at straws. He was fighting a monster that didn’t fight fair. Lola knew that. And she couldn’t help him. She was fighting monsters of her own.