Consequence

“Ted, I’m really trying to make a decision here about the vasectomy. Don’t you have anything to say? Or are you just too busy to reply?” Orville had begged his brother over email. Ted was three years older, but more of a “free spirit” than Orville. Their parents had not been exactly neglectful, but they hadn’t provided many guidelines, nothing to follow OR rebel against. They’d been very interested in their own lives, their own comfort, with the result that Theodore had realized he could do whatever he wanted, and did so; while “Orrie” had waited in vain for approval or disapproval, resulting in chronic hesitancy about things of great import.

A week later, Ted had replied with a diatribe about overpopulation and the relative unimportance of personal preferences in the big picture. However, this fed right into Orville’s personal preferences. The more he thought about it, the more he did NOT want to be responsible for introducing another human life to the planet. His reluctance was not about offending or burdening Mother Earth, however. It was about complicating his own life and adding to the already considerable number of things (when he was honest with himself) on which he and Edwina did not see eye-to-eye. Though he actually enjoyed the ways Edwina expressed herself (she was rarely succinct, and her explanations were quietly entertaining), he did not take her thoughts about “how things should be” very seriously. He knew that this attitude might have its origin in the vast cloud of sexist bias that had spawned the classic pronouncement, “You’re so cute when you’re angry.” Still, differences might accumulate and form a critical mass if there was a child.

Edwina’s view, as far as Orville could discern, was that a married couple should form a unit, moving together like a well-designed machine. And yet she frequently insisted on a degree of independence that surprised him, particularly in regard to her work. He’d decided that she was necessarily of two minds: one for the lab, and one at home. At home there was a lot of deferring to his wishes, which was amusing, because his wishes were rarely very clear. She’d draw him out, get him to state his preferences. This was a good thing when he had some kernel of a wish to pop; it was not good when he suspected her of projecting her own wishes in such a way that, grasping for an answer, he adopted that projection. He might have done so more than once when she asked him how he felt about starting a family.

It was dawning on Orville that he DID have a strong opinion about “starting a family.” He did not want to do so. Running a business was challenging enough; navigating the ever-changing currents that Edwina stirred up at home was interesting enough. He simply didn’t have the stamina for a “family,” let alone the desire. And then-- while having a second piece of cake late at night in front of the shared computer-- he’d received Ed’s well-worded rationale for zero population growth. A very good reason for a vasectomy. He began viewing his own reluctance now as a sort of unarticulated but prescient ecological awareness, the kind of deep “spiritual” knowledge he’d always wanted to possess. There was now nothing in the way of getting his “tubes tied.” Or rather, his “jewels snipped.”

Nothing in the way except Edwina’s possible reaction. Shouldn’t he take a cue from her and exert his independence in this special way? It was his body! Wasn’t he actually trying to PRESERVE their comfortable home life? It might be that she felt the same way, but in her eagerness for their marriage to be that well-designed machine, she was mistakenly conceiving of a "family" machine that, in light of Orville’s new ideas, would be awkward for both of them, out-of-date, and un-hip to the plight of the planet.

It was now two months since his little operation. But because he hadn’t told her yet, Orville felt almost constantly guilty, furtive, disconnected, at home. So he’d been trying too hard to please her. He’d even been lending her his precious car, in an attempt to distract her from what she didn’t know had been taken away. He was beginning to think that maybe Edwina would NOT be relieved by his independent action—if she knew about it.

— Macoff