That was the bitch of it, really, the part he had wrestled with for the better part of nearly half a year now, and Noah did not hesitate to say as much.
"That's the bitch of it, really... I just... I dunno. I mean... we never even fought, y'know?" He paused to see if she did. "And when we did... it was over the stupid shit, like who left the grounds in the coffeemaker without dumping it, or... " He did not finish this thought; he could cite examples all day, but coffee grounds were not grounds for divorce and therefore irrelevant.
"The big stuff... ?" he continued-- and there had been big stuff, Jesus Christ, there had been big stuff, but -- "the big stuff... we kinda ignored."
"Um, before... all that, we were trying... uh, for a baby," he clarified, sounding more than a little awkward at this juncture. "For... probably a year, give or take, and... well, every month that... passed, I guess... "
His storytelling had gone to shit, thoughts were barely fragments, and beer might alleviate this, this and the memories of Kathlynn, locked in the bathroom, sobbing, becoming more difficult to subdue with each tick of her biological clock, the one that ran on Kathlynn-time and no one else's.
"Every month, I guess... it was like she hated me a little more, for not, y'know... " Awkward was no longer even the word; even if a man's worth was not measured by his ability to procreate, in the world that ran on Kathlynn-time and adhered to Kathlynn-law, it was a cardinal offense.
And, not for the first time, Noah once again found himself wishing more and more that they had not allowed themselves to talk themselves out of the first baby -- the baby they had aborted when Kathlynn was fifteen, the baby she now so desperately wanted to atone for.