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Authors: Holly Chamberlin

BOOK: Babyland
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10
Orange Blossoms, Sugared Almonds, and Thou
W
hy do we choose to marry the ones we choose to marry? Why are we so often wrong in our choices?
Sometimes good choices go bad, and there's no way to know that up front. Some choices are wrong from the start, and everyone seems to know that but the one who made the choice in the first place.
I chose to marry Ross because he made me feel safe. Our life together was ordered and unchallenging. It was as calm as life can be for two urban-dwelling businesspeople. We were buffeted by the accoutrements of financial success, unencumbered by sick or poor parents, and blessed with good looks and health.
I've said that I'm not an impetuous person. I've never had a one-night stand. I never wrote a college paper at the last minute. I've never made a major purchase without running the numbers, twice, through my budget. I'm not comfortable with spur-of-the-moment social events; I've never, until recently, committed the crime of a drop-in; I don't call people after ten o' clock at night.
I suppose it was no surprise to anyone that the man I chose to marry was consistently mild-mannered and nonconfrontational.
I'd hear women on talk shows chatting on about how their husbands were so inspirational and challenging, always pushing them to be all they could be, and I'd think, Why would you want to marry someone like that? It seemed to me that always being challenged by the one you loved meant always being on the defensive. I didn't want to be always fighting. I didn't want to be always changing.
I just wanted to be me. And I wanted a husband who would accept that. Ross seemed to be that husband. Supportive without crowding me; soothing without treating me like a helpless child.
And right then, I needed some soothing. It had been days since I'd taken the home pregnancy test, and we still hadn't broken the news to our parents. I'd made Ross promise not to tell them until I'd seen the doctor.
“Why? Do you think maybe you're wrong?” Ross asked, confusion clearly stamped across his handsome face. “Do you think you're not really pregnant?”
“No, no,” I assured him. I knew I was pregnant. The sudden onset of morning sickness was indisputable evidence. “I just ... I'm just a little bit afraid, you know. That everything's not all right and—”
Ross interrupted. “Everything's going to be fine, Anna. You're healthy and I'm healthy and we have the money for the best doctors, the best hospitals. Nothing can go wrong.”
“Anything can go wrong, Ross,” I said. I reached for one of the books Kristen had sent me. They were never far away. “Listen,” I said. “This says that most miscarriages that occur within the first three months—that's the first trimester—are the result of a ‘genetic malformation of the embryo.' And that's not something I can control, Ross.”
Ross put his hands lightly on my shoulders. “You shouldn't spend so much time with those books, Anna. They're making you too upset. Listen to me, okay? Nothing will go wrong. I promise.”
Why, I wondered, do people promise what they know they can't deliver? And then I realized, looking up into Ross's earnest, matinee idol face, that he really did believe he could deliver on his promise of perfection.
Was it hubris? An overdeveloped ego? Or a sort of innocence? Ross had lived a life in which he'd never really known hardship, a life in which his parents or their money could solve most problems handily.
In the end, did it matter why Ross felt so sure? No. Because I wanted to believe his promise of a perfect life.
“Thanks,” I whispered and went into his arms.
11
Family Ties
“H
i,” said Ross. “It's me. Ross.”
After almost a year together, Ross still felt the need to identify himself by name every time he called my cell phone. Even though he knew his name came up on the screen and that, of course, I would recognize his voice.
“Yes,” I said, “I know. What's going on?”
“Nothing much.” I pictured Ross at his desk, legs crossed elegantly, phone between his ear and shoulder.
“Okay,” I said, glancing at my watch, thinking of the work piling up on my desk as I did.
“I just wanted you to know that I told Rob about the baby. Now, before you get upset, he promised not to tell Mom and Dad.”
Well, we hadn't promised not to tell our siblings, had we? Still, I felt a twinge of annoyance. Ross worshipped his older brother although he'd deny it heartily. Really, it was a sort of self-worship. Rob was simply a forty-two-year-old version of Ross, as well groomed, well dressed, and uninspired. No wonder Rob's relationship with the brilliant chemical engineer hadn't lasted.
Anna, I scolded silently. Don't be mean. Not for the first time it occurred to me that I might be a wee bit jealous of the close relationship Rob and Ross shared. My own brother and I weren't exactly the best of buddies, although there was no hostility between us. There wasn't much of anything, really. The Traulsen family could never be described as closely knit.
I took a deep breath and said, “How did he take the news?”
Ross laughed lightly. “He was happy for me, of course. He gave me some advice on getting into the best private preschools and—”
I didn't hear much else of what Ross had to say. I was glad Rob was happy for Ross. Really.
Maybe, I thought later, as I got ready for bed, maybe I should tell my own brother the big news. But why? The truth was it didn't matter to me whether Paul learned about the pregnancy now or later.
I slipped beneath the covers and reached for one of the several books on my nightstand. A favorite Agatha Christie mystery? Or maybe the Robert Hughes book on Goya? Finally, I opened the Goya tome, but after reading the same paragraph three times without comprehension—please note that my inability to focus had nothing to do with the quality and clarity of the writing—I closed the book. My mind was not on the eighteenth-century painter. It was on the Traulsen family dynamic.
I suppose it was nice growing up with an older brother. Paul did all the expected, big brotherly things like threaten the bully who taunted me in second grade, and warn me against certain boys when I began to date, and even, on occasion, give me little treats like barrettes for my hair. But then Paul went to college and then on to business school in Virginia, and then he got married to a woman I have very little in common with, and the inevitable happened. We began to see each other only a few times a year, mostly on holidays, and to talk on the phone only when there was important information to relate, like the death of our sole aunt, or my engagement, or Paul and Bess's divorce.
Today Paul lives out in Lincoln, a few miles from the Weston house he gave up in the divorce. Paul and Bess have two children, an eight-year-old boy named Matthew and a six-year-old girl named Emma. Paul is a devoted father; no matter the circumstances he would never have moved far away from his family. But in this case his presence is even more of a necessity. Matthew has a fairly severe form of autism, one that seems to be worsening as he ages. Emma is, as far as anyone can tell, as unencumbered as her brother is burdened.
I often wonder, If Paul and Bess had known then what they know now, that their marriage wasn't going to stand the strain of Matthew's caretaking and all the attendant stresses, would they have had another baby?
As far as I can tell neither Paul nor Bess has much of a personal life. Things seem to have gotten even more hectic and financially strained since the divorce, and how could they not have? Sometimes—like when my brother got bronchitis twice last winter and still had to go to work and fulfill his duties as dad, and there was no one to take care of him when he collapsed into bed each night—I think that maybe it would have made more sense for Paul and Bess not to get divorced.
But what do I know of my brother's life, really?
I called Paul at his downtown office the very next afternoon. He works on State Street as a financial analyst.
You can see again why Paul doesn't have much time for himself. Virtually all the hours not spent commuting—about two hours daily—and working—ten-hour days are common—are spent with the kids.
“Hi,” I said, when his assistant had put me through. “It's me.”
“I know. Peg told me. What's up?”
He sounded distracted, busy, remote.
“Can I come out for a bit this Saturday? Maybe for lunch. I'll bring something.”
“The kids will be there you know,” he said.
“I figured. That's fine.”
“Then sure. Come around noon. Emma's got swimming lessons at two-thirty and Matthew has physical therapy at three o'clock, so that gives us about two hours before I have to get on the road.”
I thanked Paul and hung up. I'm sure he was already deep into the next task or demand or crisis before I did. It exhausted me even to think about his life.
Sometimes, too, I wondered how much my decision not to have children of my own had been informed by the example of Paul and his family. Maybe my choosing not to have children was like dodging a bullet pretty sure to shatter at least some aspects of my life.
Dodging a bullet. How grim. And how ridiculous to think I'd protected myself from harm by deciding not to have children. Because now I was pregnant in spite of that decision, and if my life hadn't exactly been harmed it certainly had been disrupted.
Face it, Anna, I told myself. There are no guarantees in this world. You'd have to be dumb not to know that.
But you didn't have to like it.
12
Sympathy for the Devil
I
called Michaela and suggested we meet for a drink one evening.
“This week is hell for me,” she said briskly, “but I can give you half an hour on Wednesday. Meet me at six at the bar at Leopard.”
Michaela Newman seems to have everything. Sometime in her early thirties, she left the financial services firm where she'd been a bond analyst since graduating from business school and started her own financial consultant business. If her designer clothes, spectacular apartment at the Marina Bay condo development, 7 Series BMW, and twice yearly trips to Canyon Ranch are any indication of financial success, Michaela is a winner.
To boot, she's also stunning, tall, and voluptuous, with dark, glossy hair that falls just below her shoulders. Michaela is the woman every other woman hates on sight. And there's some reason for women continuing to hate her after that first impression. The truth is that Michaela can be brash and self-serving and even, on occasion, cruel.
I met Michaela about the time I met Ross, at a small women-in-business seminar I hadn't wanted to go to in the first place. Neither, it turned out, had Michaela, but she'd been offered a nice honorarium to speak. Michaela, I was to learn, didn't do much of anything without a self-serving motive.
I was never really close to Michaela, not in the way I'm close to Alexandra, Kristen, and Tracy. We had no common history and no shared interests other than owning our own businesses. I'm not quite sure why we called each other friends; maybe we never actually used that term.
So, if we weren't friends, what were we? Circumstantial urban acquaintances? Or maybe Michaela was something like an unexplained rash. There seems to be no cause for it; it's just suddenly there, and it itches, but after a while you learn to live with it, and one day you notice with surprise that it's gone, and you realize there's only a faint memory of irritation and you miss it, sort of, for about a minute.
Whatever the case, Michaela was in my life at the time I met and got engaged to Ross. And at the time I found out I was pregnant. And the reason this is significant is because, for reasons I still can't fathom, Michaela wanted a child.
All right. I admit to being judgmental. Just because Michaela doesn't seem the motherly type doesn't mean she isn't potentially the motherly type. The fact is she's responsible and intelligent, and responsibility and intelligence are two good qualities for a parent to possess. Right?
There I was passing judgment on my friend's maternal capabilities when I myself wasn't at all sure I would make a good parent. At least Michaela wanted a child. At least she was actively pursuing adoption, having given up on the possibility of marriage and having declared quite emphatically that she would never be so insane as to go through a pregnancy without a husband, and at the age of forty-something.
It's also true she had stated quite definitely that the very idea of childbirth disgusted her. To be fair, I wasn't exactly looking forward to childbirth, either. Why, I wondered, couldn't it be like it was in the old days? Why couldn't the doctors just knock you out completely? It seemed a civil way to do things. And when you woke, all bathed and stitched and wearing a pale pink, satin bed jacket tied with a bow, a nurse would hand you your baby, all clean and pretty and already preferring a bottle to a breast, and you hoped, once you were home, you'd have no drug-addled memories of the actual birth.
Anyway, there I was, engaged to a wonderful man and pregnant with his child. And there was poor Michaela, wading through the bureaucratic red tape of legal adoption, spending large amounts of money to no avail, and going home every night to an empty, albeit luxurious, apartment.
And I had to tell her that I was going to have a baby.
“She'll find out,” Alexandra told me. “You don't owe her information.”
Alexandra never liked Michaela. In fact, it was mutual loathing at first sight.
“I don't loathe her,” Alexandra once protested after a particularly acid exchange between the two women over cocktails at the Four Seasons. “I just distrust her. And I despise her. I don't know why you're friends with that woman. I don't know why you keep asking her to join us.”
Frankly, I'm not sure why I continued to include Michaela in our social plans. I guess I began to suspect that in spite of—because of?—her beauty and arrogant bearing, Michaela was a lonely person. Maybe I was her only real friend. Maybe she felt it was better to spend an evening sparring with Alexandra than to sit home alone.
“Sit home alone?” Alexandra had laughed. “Michaela? She's out with a different guy every night, you can be sure of it.”
“I'm not so sure you're right,” I'd protested. “A lot of men are intimidated by gorgeous women.”
“That's a myth perpetuated by average-looking women to help them deal with their killing jealousy. Besides, I have my spies. I hear things about Michaela.”
“You're so suspicious!”
“And you're such a bleeding heart. But, it doesn't matter what I think. I tolerate her for your sake, honey.”
“Barely. You barely tolerate her.”
“I'll try to be good. I'll try to be better. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said. I knew that for my sake my friend would try to control her strong feelings of dislike for Michaela, but I had absolutely no hope for her success.
Anyway, Wednesday came around. I got to Leopard a few minutes early and took a small table away from the already crowded bar. I wanted some privacy when I told Michaela my news.
At precisely six o'clock, Michaela arrived. She looked spectacular, as usual. Both men and women stared as she made her way to where I sat. I wondered if it bothered Michaela that people were so blatant about their interest in her. Unlike Alexandra, she didn't seem to enjoy the attention.
“Hi,” I said. “I love that jacket.” I tried to keep the rabid envy out of my voice. “Chanel?”
Michaela dropped gracefully into the seat across from me. “It's horrid. I'm throwing it out when I get home.”
I almost fainted. I almost asked if I could have the Chanel piece. But I did neither.
Michaela ordered a glass of champagne. She made no comment when I asked for a glass of seltzer with lime.
“I've got some news,” I said when our drinks had arrived. My tone was tentative, gentle. “I'm pregnant. Isn't that funny? I wasn't even planning it and—”
The look on Michaela's face stopped me cold. “Well, isn't that just wonderful for you,” she said, with full sarcasm.
I felt as if I'd been slapped in the face, hard. I felt nauseous.
“Sorry, Anna,” Michaela said briskly. “But you really can't expect me to be thrilled for you when I've been going through hell with this adoption process.”
I attempted a smile, which, I suspect, came out a little wobbly. “Could you at least be mildly pleased? Neutral even?”
“I thought Ross didn't want a family,” she replied.
“He didn't.” I was a bit thrown by Michaela's non-answer to my question. “But now he does.”
“Now he says he does.” Michaela's words were murmured but I heard them. And I decided to steer the conversation away from me.
“So,” I began tentatively, “is there any good news about the adoption?”
Michaela's answer came firing back. “Everyone I've been dealing with is an ass. I had to fire my attorney for doctoring his bill and the so-called professionals at the agency are just incredibly stupid. I swear I want to bitch slap them all, and I would if it would shake some sense into them but all it would do is get me arrested. But once I get the kid, those bitches are going to hear from me.”
I attempted a sympathetic smile. “Oh,” I said. “I see.”
Michaela left shortly after that, claiming another appointment. She hadn't left any money for her drink. She was probably too rattled by my news to remember that she'd consumed nine dollars worth of bubbly.
Poor Michaela, I thought, watching her leave the restaurant, Prada bag over her arm, Manolo Blahniks tapping smartly against the Italian marble floor. Life can be so unfair. She has so much but not the one thing she really wants.

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