By midday, group emails about the tiger/French moms story sits stalled on the screen while I make up my profile on BabyCenter.com. As a joke, I send the link to Jules. I’ve been terrified to tell her what I decided, but I figure now is about as good a time as any.
“Are you on crack?” She practically leaps over the desk partition.
“No, why?” I say innocently.
“I said keep pounding the rock, not jump off the ledge!” Her whispers have a hard edge as she eyes around the office floor. Jules motions for us to go into the only semiprivate conference room. “Aren’t you worried about how you’re going to pull this whole thing off? I mean, you’re not hooking up with anyone right now. Don’t you think everyone’s going to wonder who the father is?” she asks.
“I have some time to figure it out.”
Jules still looks at me like I’ve got two heads. “But what about your paycheck, future career prospects, your dignity? You can’t pretend to be pregnant for five months. People are going to know you’re lying. You work in an office full of people who are fully aware of every nuance of pregnancy.”
“True,” I say, trying to hold my ground. “But so do I.”
“You mean to tell me the first time someone starts quizzing you about the tests, the names, the schools, the doctors, whatever, you’re not going to ‘pull a Liz’ and go completely blank. The jig will be up before you can even start to show.”
“I’ll work it out somehow.” I’m not sure why I feel such a great urge to push back at her on this. Then I see Alix wending her way over to my cube, armed with a bunch of file folders. Wait—what is she doing here! The least she could do was TAKE HER VACATION!
Without saying a word, she drops something on my desk, allowing the contents to scatter over my already-disheveled pile system. Jules and I head back, and I sit down. Rather than the tiger moms/French moms revise, she’s given me the “Stages of Newborn Spit-up” story I’d helped her with over two weeks ago. It must be back from Cynthia with edits.
“Thanks for that,” she says, nodding at the story covered in Cynthia’s red pen. “Tyler developed a fever and Marisol couldn’t get him to sleep, so I had to cancel my trip, after all. I’ll need you to be on call just in case he gets worse and I have to go to the doctor with him.”
“Sure,” I say flatly, thinking how easy it is for mothers to employ the verb have, like I have to leave work early to pick up Tyler’s nut allergy results; I have to go get Tyler’s organic baby puree before Whole Foods closes. I wonder what would ever happen if I said, “I have to meet Brie at happy hour or she’s going to hook up with her ex-boyfriend who’s just using her for sex.”
“Better get that revise to me ASAP. You should be boning up on the latest in prenatal digestion anyway. The mother’s microbiome has a significant effect.” She eyes my stomach with a hint of suspicion.
“You know what all our moms say—I can eat whatever I want for the next five months.”
“Watch out. I’ve seen people gain weight that never seems to come off with that attitude. It’s just plain lazy.”
Kicking away the piles of baby toys I’ve gathered over the years under my own desk, I start in on one of my August stories. This time it’s on the benefits of unbleached cotton swaddling blankets costing upward of two hundred dollars, ethically sourced and “designed” in the USA by a cute couple in St. Louis who used to work in digital marketing in the city—perfectly punny adjectives about the benefits of organic cotton are coming easily (“Walk like an Egyptian”). Before I know it, it’s 10 p.m. and the day, and night, are gone.
Wearily, I make my way to Alix’s office to hand off the files for her top edit. An artful arrangement of lilies crowds the corner of her desk, an ever-present feature thanks to all the glowing coverage of advertisers. As I place the files on her desk, a few slide into her mouse and knock the screen alive. On it there’s an email from Jeffry.
Locanda Verde. 8 p.m. reads the subject. Don’t worry, it’s all going to be okay. Wait a second. That’s odd. Why would they be going there? It seems awfully intimate if it were for business purposes. Wait. Could they be having an affair? And she’s using her “sick kid” as an excuse to cover for the fact that she didn’t want to go on her own family vacation because her marriage is on the rocks? I snort to myself, that would be the kicker, now, wouldn’t it.
Somehow I manage to make it to Friday—a few pints of vegan cashew may have helped—and just as I’ve shored myself up to face the day with the help of pure, delicious caffeine, I see Alix has made her way to my desk. She hands back a bunch of copy so covered in red it looks like someone’s been wiping up a crime scene with it.
“Cynthia emailed me to tell you that the piece on new secondary C-section alternatives went in the completely wrong direction,” Alix says. “You’re going to have to research it more. The trends you found were lame,” says Alix, dropping the story on my desk.
“But I also noted in the original proposal that there was nothing new out there. I did the research. That’s what happens when the top editors come up with the headlines before the stories are actually written.” It’s another trait, along with all the made-up quotes, Alix seems to have brought with her from her old magazine.
“Well, do you want me to tell Cynthia that?” Alix looks peeved.
“Just tell her the truth—there aren’t any real ways to make a C-section scar any smaller or minimize the pain. I found those acupuncture treatments in Chinatown and I thought they sounded promising.”
“You know the issue.” Alix’s not conceding an inch. “Not mainstream enough. What soccer mom in Darien or Evanston is going to creep into some sketchy alterna-practice for strange herbs and needles? Back to the drawing board.”
“But they do for fertility treatments. What’s the difference?” I’m mad now so I don’t care that Alix is giving me the death stare. “You know that’s a different story.”
Alix sniffs. “You do seem to find all the problems and never the solutions.”
“Okay, I’ll keep researching,” I mutter, and take the copy out of her hands. Jules is nowhere to be seen for a postmortem bitch session. Now I’m going to be spending the weekend making up fake C-section alternatives, instead of meeting up with Addison and Brie tonight as I’d hoped.
My phone chimes loudly on the desk. I see that it’s my mom. I have to answer this time.
“Just checking in to make sure you’re still alive. I got your email last weekend about Paris. I’m sorry, Lizzie. I know how much that trip meant to you.”
“Thanks, Mom. Yeah, it was pretty disappointing.” Ever since her cancer’s gone into remission, even though it all turned out fine, an odd thing has happened. I’ve been avoiding her calls. I think it’s because I can’t bear to feel it. That I could have lost her. And that I let her down. Which makes it even worse.
“I know you’ll get there someday. You just have to be patient,” she says, transferring over my pain, as always. “Well, I wanted to check in with you about Margaret’s son’s best friend. Did you see my email about that?”
My mom never interfered in my dating life before, but now grandchild envy has hit. All my friends from home have been moving back to the suburbs to be closer to their parents, and my mom is feeling left out. “Mom. I’m super busy with an article now.”
“Too busy to make a two-minute phone call?”
“Sorry,” I say, biting my lip, immediately feeling guilty—and mad—that my job doesn’t often let me break focus for even a few minutes