Nothing compares with the miracle and magic of pregnancy. It’s your chance to be involved with life’s creative process.
—Your Pregnancy Week by Week
Spoken like a woman without kids.
I turn the article I’m working on over and tuck it under the latest issue of the magazine—I don’t want anyone in the office to see the ocean of red marks my top editor has left all over it—especially this one. Not that anyone is likely to walk by, since we’re all headed to the conference room for Pippa’s shower—one of many baby showers we’ve already had since January. Smoothing my gypsy top over my jeans, I attempt to take a deep cleansing breath in the five-second walk. In my twenties, this kind of copy note was understandable—funny even, since I could roll my eyes and say, “Yep, no kids and thank God.” But now, not so much. Now after ten years, it’s begun to sting. Still, I paste on a smile.
“Everyone! Quick, quick! Come in!” shrieks Caitlyn, our shared editorial assistant slash Instagram editor slash “sassy millennial,” or so proclaim all her social media profiles. She waves the Paddy Cakes staff in for our little Friday afternoon party and urges us to load up on Honey Cup cupcakes while taking it upon herself to raise our collectively dragging energy to #babyshowervibes.
I fight my way through the tangle of white and gold helium balloon ribbons toward the blond-wood table, hoarding a Honey Cup as if it wasn’t an ever-present fixture, and damn it, manage to somehow get some sparkles from the bunting on me yet again. I’m so not in the mood for this—I’ve got way too much to do. But I still take a moment to appreciate the calm as I tuck in. Quiet. A little space to think. Summoning up sincere joy for Pippa. But from the other side of the party, there she is. The bearer of the red-lined comments. Alix.
My nemesis walks toward me in careful, measured steps in her black patent Tod’s with a high-ply camel cashmere cardigan hanging from her pilates-sculpted shoulders. It’s a fashion affectation adopted long before it came back into vogue, her expensively highlighted, long blond hair pulled into a perfect low ponytail. Alix consciously careens past the plate of cupcakes, pressing her bowed lips together in silent protest. A holdover from coming up around heroin chic, eating in plain sight is for other people—as is doing any sort of work deemed at an assistant level, such as expense accounts, making edits on-screen and more worryingly for me these days, any of her actual work. You know, old-school.
As everyone huddles in, the moms on staff transition over to the usual mommy banter. Talia, our fashion director, is complaining about her twins’ inability to detach from various screens. Chloe, our usually impeccable beauty editor, is wearing haphazardly applied fake lashes, the only apparent sign of new-mom sleep deprivation.
Though I try casually to pull the balloons into a showery shield in front of me, the strings form no barrier from Alix’s sharp presence edging toward me.
“Liz,” she says, finding me in the corner. “Where are we with bottle-shaming? I really need to see it by three. I’m leaving early and I need to read it before I go.”
“It’s coming...just waiting for Sandy’s publicist to confirm ‘she’d sooner chew off her own daughter’s earlobe than use formula’ as you suggested on the edit,” I reply.
“And what about ‘5 Ways to Avoid Narcissistic Kids’?” she demands, now reapplying ballet-pink gloss to her lips in the reflection of the glass wall of the conference room.
“On its way.”
“Okaaaay.” She draws her eyes up finally. “And what about August’s ‘Alternative Chinese Dialects for Kindergartners’ story... I really need to see that one. It might be getting bumped up.”
“I was going to get to that one once I’m back from my trip,” I tell Alix. She’s asked for a particularly tricky replacement quote, and I was holding off calling Tracey, our tiger mom in La Jolla.
“Well,” she reprimands, “you should have told me if you couldn’t get to it. I expect you to prioritize yourself.”
I would have if you hadn’t dropped it on my desk at 5 p.m. as you were leaving to take Tyler to the Baby Whisperer, I think. My eye begins to twitch. I rub my temples and down my cold brew iced coffee as if it were the last squeeze of the canteen on a lifeboat. What was I just reading in the tiger mom story? Hard work equals excellence equals reward? The virtuous circle. Yes, okay. Only after ten years at Paddy Cakes, it hasn’t exactly worked out that way for me. Not after Alix was hired along with the changeover and claimed the deputy title that was promised to me, a long overdue bump up from articles editor.
Still, at least I’ve got Paris. Five full days strolling the Seine and the Musée Picasso, five days of café crème, five days of croissants. And five days free of the relentless swarm of Alix’s emails asking for more research on the latest baby controversy du jour, treating me like I’m her secretary, and trapping me at the office well past midnight most nights.
Nope. What I’ve learned the hard way, postrecession “mediapocalypse,” as assistant ranks have been traded for tech solutions, is this: having a child is really the only excuse a woman can use to work regular work hours or leave early. Single women don’t have the same luxury, and therefore must take on the extra work, little cleanup projects and finishing up when the moms on staff have a hard stop. No baby—no excuse not to stay late.
“Everyone, everyone, shh! I’m going to make the call,” says Caitlyn above the growing din. She picks up the phone and fights to hold back a giggle. “Pippa, Cynthia needs to see you in the conference room—NOW.”
We’ve played this trick countless times at Paddy Cakes, or The Baby Magazine for Moms and All Their Little Neuroses as Jules, my work BFF and the only other mid-leveler on staff, and I call it. As we wait, I fiddle with my old cracked iPhone 4—the one corporate refuses to upgrade—and try to switch off the alerts for the FitBaby app our web editor is having me test out for a story. It’s the one that supposedly monitors vital signs for your pregnancy, tracking miles walked, nutrition, sleep and the pièce de résistance: an ominous meter that calculates the