Logic, of course, says a second conception should prove no harder than a first. Hah. Mother Nature can be a sneaky old bitch, something we’ve learned from our twenty-odd years of farming down here in central Pennsylvania. Maybe you’ve driven past our place, Garber Farm, two miles outside of Boalsburg on Route 322. Raspberries in the summer, apples in the fall, Christmas trees in the winter, asparagus in the spring—that’s us. The basset hound puppies appear all year round. We’ll sell you one for three hundred dollars, guaranteed to love the children, chase rabbits out of the vegetable patch, and always appear burdened by troubles greater than yours. We started feeling better after Dr. Borealis claimed he could make Polly’s uterus “more hospitable to reproduction,” as he put it. He prescribed vaginal suppositories, little nuggets of progesterone packed in cocoa butter. You store them in the refrigerator till you’re ready to use one, and they melt in your wife the way M & Ms melt in your mouth.
