Not What We Expected by Tiffany B. Quinn I first truly fell in love at this very place twenty years ago today. Only then, I was the tall, handsome young man. I married that girl the next summer. The Maitre d' showed us to the very same table that I had shared with Sandra that night long ago. A strong sense of déjà vu washed over me. Can history be repeating itself, after a fashion? If so, can it turn out differently this time around?

Chapter 2

Sandra and I became husband and wife in a beautiful wedding ceremony on top of a hill in a park overlooking Lake Michigan in June of 2000. It was the best day of my life. All of our family and friends were there. We were very much in love and the future looked bright.

We had both just graduated from college with our baccalaureate degrees. My degree was in Information Technology and hers in Finance. Over the next two years, Sandra earned her MBA while I was our sole support, having taken a full time job in the IT department at the university. One of the benefits that the university provided was a tuition break for immediate family members, so we were able to afford Sandra’s advanced degree. We lived lean but were happy. Once she graduated (at the top of her class) she was offered a job at the local office of a major investment firm. The plan was for me to go to grad school after she completed her MBA, but that never materialized for a variety of lame reasons. We were both happily busy establishing ourselves in our new careers. When we were at home, we were a great team and loved every minute we spent together. Eventually, more due to her rising salary than my steady one, we bought a three bedroom condominium in an upscale development.

The only fly in the ointment, so to speak, was the fact that we wanted to have a family but were unsuccessful in our attempts. It seemed that the failure to have children only fueled the desire to have them. Sandra became obsessed with the need to get pregnant and have her own children. Sex became a daily task, some times more than once daily, which was fine with me.

For a while anyway.

Our families weren't helping matters either. Particularly our mothers and her three older sisters. My little sister was a problem too. The group of them were constantly providing helpful hints and suggestions on how to get pregnant. All of our sisters were moms and somehow Sandra felt like a second class citizen because of our infertility. Our mothers were the worst. Every conversation with the two mothers ended up focused on our infertility and how to overcome it.

We spent a fortune on infertility treatments only to discover that I was probably the one unable to produce children. The doctors always held out hope that we could find a way around the problem.

They were wrong.

It seemed that no matter what we did, there were no results. We started to venture off the beaten medical path and tried all sorts of procedures that were the stuff of folklore and questionable voodoo magic. It was getting all too weird for me but Sandra would pursue anything that held out the least ray of hope. She became almost single focused and it was affecting our relationship, and bank accounts, in a negative way.

One of the side effects of infertility treatments is that they kill intimacy in a relationship as sex becomes a chore. This proved to be true for us. After a few years, our joyful union had become strained to the point that the joy of our relationship had significantly waned. Sex was pretty much required every time we saw each other and it wasn't about intimacy anymore.

Frankly, I was more than tired of it.

We had discussed a number of options. One was adoption, but Sandra was extremely obsessed with having her own child. Another idea floated about was to use sperm from a sperm bank, but I vetoed that idea as I didn't want to play father to my wife's child by another man. Similarly, neither one of us were fond of the idea floated by one friend who suggested that Sandra have one night stands with other men until she got pregnant, a much cheaper alternative to a sperm bank. It should be noted that one of her sisters offered the services of her husband who was a proven baby maker. Neither of us liked that idea either.

So imagine the fireworks when I suggested that we stop trying so hard and accept the fact that we were going to be childless. I felt that if we could resign ourselves to the reality of the situation that we could work at reestablishing the joy that we had lost. Unfortunately, all reason had long since fled and she could not stand to give up on her dream.

For months after my suggestion, things were very frosty in our home. She even, half heartedly, pitched the idea of divorce and seemed to think that she needed to find a man that could give her what she needs. The only problem with finding another man, she said, was that she still loved me and wanted to keep me in her life. She said when she looked deep in her heart she found that she'd rather be childless with me than find another man to father and raise her children. Things were dark indeed!

One evening, I found her looking at me thoughtfully.

"What do you say to one more try at treatment, Andy?" She asked hopefully. When she saw my frown, she quickly continued, "I promise that it will be the last attempt and it won't take long."

"Sandra..." I began to respond.

"Really," She interrupted me with puppy dog eyes that I haven't seen in a while, "only one more attempt. If it doesn't work, then we resign ourselves to being childless."

I sighed. I've heard this before.

"What do you have in mind" I asked in resignation.

"I have a new client,” Sandra went on to explain, “whose grandmother is some kind of priestess of an ancient religion, voodoo probably, and is a bit unorthodox. He claims that his grandmother can help us find a solution to our problem."

Sandra, as a junior financial advisor, has been developing her clientele base over the past few years as she worked to get herself established. Sandra had been unusually successful and was viewed as a rising star in the industry. She had been making a name for herself by focusing on the medical technology industry and seemed to have an uncanny knack for finding up and coming research and development companies for her clients to invest in. She was, by far, the largest income producer in our marriage. My work on the staff of the IT department at the local university provides a good steady income and benefits, but does not hold the promise of wealth that Sandra's job did.

"Where did you meet this guy?" I asked somewhat dubious.

"A few months ago I was assigned to handle his account at work." She replied with an unusual gleam in her eye. "We've been meeting regularly over the past few months as we work out his investment strategy. He is also starting up a new venture and I’ve been connecting him with interested investors."

"And you told this stranger about our problems?" I asked somewhat indignantly. "I thought that you kept your personal life out of business."

"Well," She admitted somewhat sheepishly, "We've been meeting fairly regularly and he noticed that I was down after one of our recent arguments about stopping infertility treatments. So I mentioned our lack of children. In the course of the conversation, he mentioned his grandmother. He gave me her phone number a few days later after he'd called her to see if she could help. She told him that there was a good chance that she could, so I called and talked with her. She sounds like a very nice lady and she is pretty sure that she can help me have a baby."

What I didn't know then, was that her "meeting fairly regularly" turned out to be Tom finding lots of excuses to have frequent lunch "meetings". I also found out later that Tom had fallen for Sandra the first time he met her. It was love at first sight for him. He did know that she was married, but he felt compelled to see her as often as possible anyway. He was conflicted but did his best to not interfere with our marriage. While Sandra also felt attracted to him at first sight, she was committed to our relationship and she made sure that their lunches were never more than friendly conversation. She did, however, feel conflicted over her growing friendship with Tom and made sure to never encouraged his affections. Tom was a wealthy single guy about our same age with a mechanical engineering degree. He recently came into a lot of money as a result of the sale of his manufacturing company to a big defense contractor. He had a number of lucrative patents and his company had been growing quickly. He was working with Sandra to manage his wealth. He was also using her expertise to explore opportunities in the medical technology industry as he is starting up a new company to manufacture new medical technology of his own design.

"What's it going to take?" I asked with resignation.

"Well, we'll have to go to Louisiana to meet with her." She looked at me with a hopeful expression as she continued with her sales pitch. "Apparently she lives on some backwater Bayou and doesn't like to travel. She says that we should plan on spending a morning with her. If she can help, it won't take too long. We could spend a couple of days exploring New Orleans while we are at it. I hear that it is an interesting city and we could use a little vacation."

"Is this going to be like the guy who claimed to be a Native American medicine man that had us dance wearing only war paint in his tepee while he burned questionable substances before having us perform sex in a convoluted position?" I asked. That had been one weird treatment, not to mention embarrassing.

"I don't know," she admitted, "but I promise that this will be the last time that I bother you about getting pregnant. If this doesn't work I will quit trying and we'll find happiness without children. We will continue to be best friends."

"You promise?" I asked to make sure.

"I promise", she sighed with resignation.