Pretty in Ink (26 page)

Isabella laughs. “We live in SoHo. I’m here with my husband, Jim. He’s the one talking square footage in the other room with the guy I presume is your husband.”

“Fascinating.” I roll my eyes.

“Can I let you in on a secret?” Isabella reaches over me for a bagel, then tears into it. “I’m absolutely petrified of the suburbs. Jim dragged me out here kicking and screaming.”

“God, I know what you mean. I grew up in Manhattan, and Rob and I were in Williamsburg before we transplanted out here.”

“So are you guys moving back to the city?”

“With triplets, are you crazy? No way. I wish, though. I miss all the restaurants and the 24-hour delis. All the people. All that energy.”

“The truth is,” Isabella whispers, leaning in to speak, “I’m pregnant, ten weeks along. Jim thinks we’ll need more space once we have the baby.”

“People in the city manage OK with one kid, right? Are you in a studio or something?”

“No, we have an extra bedroom.”

“Oh, then you’ll be fine. Are you planning on staying home?”

“Lord, no. I’m an attorney. I do litigation, mostly mergers and acquisitions, some bankruptcy cases. I’d rather shoot myself than become one of those moms who quits her job and is so bored she becomes president of the PTA and starts running it like a Fortune 500 company.” I’m cracking up and nodding; I pass those women in the supermarket all the time. “So what do you do?” she asks.

“I’m an executive editor at
Hers
magazine.” I’m about to say,
for now,
but Isabella gasps.

“That is incredible! A job where you get to be creative, and where you probably don’t have to wear a suit, wow. I’m seething with envy, honestly. I always wanted to be a writer, but I never had the guts. Hence the boring, sensible lawyer track. You must absolutely adore it.” I smile, which seems like the simplest response. “But wait, you’re moving away.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a long story.”

“Ah. So tell me, how brutal is the commute? My office is in midtown.”

“It’s pretty bad. You get used to it, but it’s kind of like
Planes, Trains and Automobiles,
only with you it’ll be Car, Train, and Subway.” Just saying the words is enough to overwhelm me, to set into motion a tidal wave of exhaustion—the back-and-forth from suburb to city and city to suburb, day in and day out, the attempt to be everything and everywhere at once, the spreading of myself so thin that sometimes it seems as if I’ve disappeared entirely, the impossibility of it all. I feel like I’m drowning, and I grab Isabella’s arm to steady myself.

On a whim, I start spewing my thoughts: “Isabella, don’t do it. I’m telling you, stay where you are. Live in SoHo, take a ten-minute train ride to work, go out to dinner at the cool new spot on the corner, and bring your baby to the hip bar where they allow kids. Live that illustrious Manhattan working mom life. Whatever you do, do not buy this house and move to the suburbs.”

“Um.” Isabella is looking at me like perhaps I need to be institutionalized.

“Hey, ladies.” Rob sidles up to me, eyeing me warily, and Isabella’s husband is at her side now, too. It’s clear they’ve overheard my tirade. “I take it you met Jim’s wife,” my husband says. “I was just telling Jim here about the Westfield neighborhood association, and how responsive they are to complaints.”

“Yes,” I say. “Very responsive.”

Rob goes on: “They were saints helping us with that rabid raccoon we had up in our oak this spring.” I smile and nod, but I’m zoning out, imagining a different sort of neighborhood association, one that could respond to other kinds of complaints:
I want to work and be with my family and also get seven hours of sleep each night. Why is that too much to ask? How can you work so hard to build a big, ambitious career, only to have it all come to pieces at the whim of a single person? How will I figure out a new life?

 

After all the strangers retreat from the house, my mother walks around with a garbage bag and collects the half-filled cups and paper plates with scraps of food. Maria pulls into the driveway and carries our sleeping babies, one by one, upstairs and into their cribs. I stand at the sink, washing dishes, and Rob stands beside me, drying them. He doesn’t scold me for begging that woman not to buy our house. He doesn’t insist that he had the husband sold. He doesn’t say a word. When the dishes are all clean and dry and tucked away in the cupboards, the two of us go upstairs, lie down in our joint bed, and each think our own separate sets of thoughts until weariness overtakes us, and we both sink into sleep.

18

I
’m emptying another pack of ballpoint pens onto the tidy but growing pile in my apartment’s storage nook, when Jenny appears in the doorway. She’s invited herself over to help me, in her words, “buckle down and make a goddamn decision.” I, meanwhile, would rather revel in my brand-new stash of office supplies—so much shiny, functional stuff. I’ve never been much of a hobbyist, and I’m amazed how satisfying it can be to grow a collection, to set my sights on certain specific things and then acquire them.

“Ready yet to take out Staples?” Jenny asks. I don’t respond. “Well, it’s up to you. You can fill this space with a pile of pens and paper, or you can have a nursery. I found you a great crib, half off, in case you’re interested.”

“Thanks. I’ve got loads of time, you know.”

“Not as much as you think. Time flies, as they say.”

“Oh, is that what they say?” Jenny’s strategy has been to push, push, push me. She’s started bringing me Babies “R” Us catalogs with pages dog-eared on what she considers mommy essentials, as if such inspirational fodder will magically shift my desire for office supplies into a desire for onesies and bibs. Or maybe her theory is, learning about all the gear and gizmos required for motherhood will be enough to repel me from the whole idea and get myself to the clinic. Jenny believes, if I can actually visualize what it will be like to have a baby, I’ll be able to make the best-informed decision about my situation. Her whole earnest campaign, as if my pregnancy were one of her P.R. accounts to manage, makes me want to curl up into a ball and take a nap.

The next morning I get to work early and plot my path to nab three new staplers. I do a mental calculation of my winnings from the past two weeks: twenty-one ballpoint pens, two reams of paper, a calculator, a clipboard, four pairs of scissors, a dozen Post-it pads, and six one-inch binders. I’ve built up my stash carefully but quickly, placing small orders through the company’s Web site, ducking into the supply closet to swipe extras and, only when I’m feeling desperate, snatching items from other people’s desks. I don’t have near enough, and though I’m not quite sure what “enough” is, I’ll know it when I see it. The important thing is to be prepared.

I duck down to the cafeteria for a wedge of frittata, and when I return to my desk, Zoe eyes my purchase. “Didn’t you have a bagel an hour ago?” she says. “Is this some kind of strategy: fatten yourself up so Mimi will look skinny in comparison and bring you into the inner circle again?”

“Lay off, Zoe,” I say, digging into the eggs. “I’m just stressed.”

“OK, whatever.” Of course it’s this creature growing inside of me that’s driving me to eat and eat and eat, sapping my energy, and reducing me to tearful fits of anxiety at the slightest provocation. Morning sickness is not supposed to start for several more weeks, according to a book Jenny’s forcing me to read, so it must be my nerves twisting me with nausea. I pray I can keep the whole debacle a secret for as long as possible. At least until I decide it’s what I want. I fear an impending baby will give Mimi yet another reason to cut me loose, so she won’t have to pay out my (admittedly paltry) salary during a maternity leave.

Stay sane, Jane,
I say in my head. It’s my new mantra, one I’ve been repeating ever since worry has become my main emotion, permeating everything in my life: It’s crept into the pixels on my computer screen, it’s appeared as stubborn itches between my toes, and it’s spread itself onto my peanut butter sandwiches—
ooh, peanut butter sounds really good.
I worry about all kinds of things big and small, but the real doozy is, I worry a goblin is growing in my womb. It’s ridiculous, I know, especially since I read my embryo is currently only the size of a pen’s tip. But what started as a silly, outlandish hunch has recently crystallized into pure white fear.

I get to work editing a Q&A about women’s health concerns—Does sunburn really cause skin cancer? Is it risky to sit in a wet bathing suit?—but I’m easily distracted. These run-of-the-mill worries seem so benign compared to the fear that I’m incubating some kind of a monster in my womb. I’m rational enough to realize that voicing this concern aloud, even to Jenny, would make me seem certifiable. Plus, who
wouldn’t
fire a person who believes she’s harvesting an alien? Perhaps more important, who would choose to issue a biweekly paycheck to the future mother of a creature capable of serious destruction?

Another part of me fears I’ve cooked up this delusion so it won’t feel so awful to just end the whole ordeal. I mean, what kind of normal person
wouldn’t
do everything she could to prevent a monster from entering the world? And yet, somehow I sense that if I visited Planned Parenthood, I’d leave my appointment with something even more terrible in my gut: a dark pit of regret and guilt. Ugh. I’m suddenly itching to get my hands on a pad of graph paper.

“Jane, will you join me in my office?” It’s Mimi, interrupting my spiral down into the depths of anguish. I comply, and she hands me a printout. “Take a look at my notes.”

It’s the final draft of my allergies story, and I see she’s slashed up every line with her notorious red pen, branding sentence after sentence so that the page looks like it’s bleeding. “As you can see, I’m not a fan of this expert’s advice.” Of course she didn’t think to mention this on the first or second draft. “All that business about the endless rounds of shots required and all those medications, it’s so depressing!” She’s crossed out whole quotes and scribbled down new ones; she has one of the nation’s top allergists saying, “You wouldn’t believe how effective the power of positive thinking can be!”

“So you’d prefer me to include this advice instead?” I ask. Mimi tilts her head in a way that indicates my question is absurd. With our fact-checking department reduced to one clueless freelancer, there’s practically no barrier to these out-of-thin-air inventions making it to print. This story is supposed to ship to the printer tomorrow.

“Listen,” Mimi says. “My puggle, Pookie, used to be allergic to his kibble. He’d break out in these horrible hives after meals. It was wretched. But I was reluctant to switch brands since the one I fed him was organic and locally sourced. So at the suggestion of his doctor, I posted a ton of positive images and affirmations around his food bowl, and that was all it took! No more allergy! I’m happy to put you in touch with the doctor.”

“Your dog’s veterinarian recommended affirmations?”

“Sure.” Mimi hands me a card with the name “Dr. John ‘Doolittle’ Crawson, DVM” printed on it.
Is it my sanity that’s slipping away,
I wonder,
or everyone else’s?

“My point is,” she continues, “see to it that we get stronger experts next time, ones who are more on message with the
Hers
mission.”

“Right on.” I truly have no idea what she’s talking about.

“Also, I was talking to my niece Dahlia, who’s a total card, the most popular girl in her fourth-grade class. She thought it would be really fun to have an advice column from Mr. Mom in
Hers
. A genius idea, right?”

“What exactly do you mean by ‘Mr. Mom’?”

“We’ll find a man with the last name ‘Mom’ and get him to answer readers’ parenting conundrums, obviously. So please get on that.”

“OK, will do.”

I stick around until late that night, scouring WhitePages.com for Mom last names and fantasizing about looking up Mimi’s snotty little niece and wringing her “genius” neck. One of my new initiatives to look like a diligent, competent employee, and not the half-crazed, monster-bearing maniac I know myself to be, is to never be one of the first people out the door at night. My rule is to count fifteen exits—half of the staff—until I dare shut down my computer. It’s already nine-thirty p.m. and I’m still held hostage in my cubicle, waiting for one more person to take off before I’ll budge. In the meantime, I imagine calling my ex, Jacob. Perhaps he’ll take pity on my situation and want to be my boyfriend again. Better yet, maybe I can convince him to meet up with me and be seduced into my bedroom where we’ll—oops!—forget to use a condom, and then I can drop the pregnancy bombshell on him; we’ll get back together and raise the kid as ours. Happily ever after.

I must be staring off into space because I don’t notice Mimi’s approach. “Jane,” she says, startling me. “I wanted to check in to make sure you have enough to do.”

I blink up at her, flabbergasted. It’s almost ten p.m. “Yes, I believe I have enough to do,” I say, as calmly as I can manage. “But if there’s more you need from me, just say the word.”

When I finally make it home and climb into bed, I dream a twisted, reverse version of Sleeping Beauty: Jacob is under a spell, asleep in a glass case and awaiting a princess’s kiss, but when I find him and lean in for the crucial smooch, he keeps right on snoozing. I suppose he’s been waiting on a different princess. When I bolt awake I’m alone in the thin morning light, the creature in my belly sending shivery shock waves of worry through my body.

 

The next morning, I start a countdown: one more week until Labor Day weekend, and one more day after that until the end of the November ship. Ascending the Schmidt & Delancey elevator, I scan the ten-day weather bulletin on the digital screen: It’ll be eighty-three and sunny for Labor Day. Jenny and I are heading out to Montauk for the long weekend, a trip she idiotically keeps referring to as my “maybe-baby-moon.” I imagine my friend and myself settling in to our beachy digs and mixing up Bloody Marys (mine possibly a virgin),
Hers
magazine the furthest thing from my mind.

Before I even boot up my computer, Abby approaches my desk, looking apprehensive. “I’m sorry to say, but it looks like you’re taking over the prize pages.” I guess this is the result of Mimi questioning whether my plate was sufficiently full.

“You’re kidding. What about Laura?”

“Mimi decided Laura wasn’t sophisticated enough to handle the responsibility.” Abby knows enough to deliver this news without an entirely straight face. “She thought you’d have just the right expertise to take over the section.”

I’ve worked on prize pages before, so I know there is zero sophistication required to beg public relations people to give away the products they represent, then to run a computer program that randomly selects winners from the entrant pool, and finally to send e-mails informing the winners they’ve won. I had this duty a decade ago, back when I interned at a teen magazine as a college freshman, and even then I could listen to the radio and maintain a conversation all while I worked.

“I’m not going to lie, your first order of business is a toughie,” Abby says. “Splendid Soaps promised to gift a dozen decorative bath baskets worth a hundred dollars each, but the company went belly-up after when we featured them in the magazine.”

“And I’m guessing we can’t just eat the cost and cut checks for all the winners from the deep coffers of
Hers
?”

Abby shakes her head. “Not quite.”

“So what you’re saying is, now I have the pleasant task of rounding up $1,200’ worth of stuff to make up for the prizes?” Abby nods, arching her eyebrows into a pitying kindness. “Oh, goody.”

I spend the rest of the morning scrounging around the beauty closet in search of expensive lipsticks and scouring the giveaway table for hardcover books (I briefly consider including in the prize packages copies of
How to Finally Leave an Angry, Abusive Man
before ultimately deciding against it.). I feel my brain softening to mush. It makes sense, since my body will soon be moving along the same trajectory. I suppose I could send the winners my office supply collection, though I doubt they’d feel the proper amount of appreciation. Only I seem to grasp the wonderful comfort of a tall stack of crisp, clean paper.

It takes me several hours, but eventually I manage to assemble what liberal calculations would add up to $1,200 worth of stuff: a mishmash of makeup samples, gag gifts from P.R. firms, and fashion shoot rejects. I distribute the items among twelve boxes and deliver them to Ed, thankful to have the task off of my hands.

“Everyone into the conference room,” Laura calls out, announcing a story pitch meeting. I situate myself on the room’s perimeter and begin rapping my fingers against the glass. I don’t say much lately at these brainstorms. Ever since Mimi and Victoria did a one-eighty on their opinions of me, I’ve been second- and triple-guessing my every thought. Plus, I suspect my alien embryo is not only suckling on me for food and energy, but also feeding on my brain for smarts. I’ve been feeling dumber every day.

After ten minutes, I force myself to speak up: “How about we run a story on women who have higher sex drives than their partners?” I’m more confident than usual about this idea, since I’m speaking from experience; toward the end of my relationship with Jacob, I was always raring to go and he was never in the mood. I add, “Several recent studies have found that this kind of mismatch of libido in relationships is very common, much more so than you’d think.” My hormones have been raging these past few weeks, which I suspect is one of the monster’s evil schemes. This horrifies Jenny. Last night when I saw a hot guy on the street and whispered to her all the things I wanted to do to him, she looked at me as if I were insane, as if she believes impending maternity should snuff out sexuality.

Victoria cackles. “Every woman I know practically has to fend her partner off with knives.”

“Tell me about it,” Leah adds, in a rare moment of solidarity with Victoria. “I’ve become an expert at pretending I’m already asleep. I’d be thrilled to never have sex again.”
Yeah, but you have triplets under the age of two,
I want to scream.
And can one of you please lend me your husband for the night?

“Exactly,” says Victoria. “Return from la-la-land, Jane.”