by Meghann Foye
“Of course not,” says Alix with a look of protectiveness I’ve never seen before. Then, she looks as if she’s trying to decide whether to tell me something else, then bites her lip. “So what are we going to substitute for nude moms?”
“Well,” I say, trying to think of something off the top of my head. As I look around the room at my fellow magazine editors and PR managers, all totally overworked, I see them all sipping away on the daytime Chardonnays. Thinking about my cousin in the suburbs who constantly hosts bunco games where plenty of wine is poured during the afternoon, I have an idea.
“How about secret alcoholic moms! It’s totally the top trend of the decade. We do something hard-hitting about a link between the stress of motherhood and alcoholism. It could work.” I gulp, thinking it’s certainly been true for me.
Alix looks circumspect. “It is a good idea, actually. Realistic.”
I smile with relief.
She pauses momentarily, then gives me her answer. “Fine. I’ll get Cynthia’s approval. Let the art department know we’re going in a different direction when we’re back at the office.”
Phew, I think. But now what am I going to do about my “negligent daddy” lie? It’s getting way too complicated for me...
* * *
When I get back to work, Jules is smiling ear to ear.
“What’s up?” I ask her suspiciously.
Even though she’s sitting right beside me, she texts me and tells me to look at my phone. Right there waiting is a bottle emoji and a baby’s head.
“A baby?”
She nods yes. “Can you believe it?”
“That Dr. Lakshmi’s good!” I smile. The news sends shivers down my spine, I can barely contain my happiness for Jules. “When are you due?”
“February first—you’ll be back from your ‘maternity leave.’ Incredible, right?” We both give one another a sad smile. Things are changing, but happily for the better.
“I’m so planning your shower. What do you want? A ballet pink theme or teddy bears and ducks?” I joke to break the silence.
“If you so much as have one pink tutu I will never speak to you again. You know that.”
“Ha. Promise. But you know there will be cupcakes.”
“Oh, that I’m counting on.”
Looking at my October calendar staring right in front of me, it hits me that I’m acting as though I’m pregnant, too, and, in a way, I’ve fooled myself into thinking I’m really going on maternity leave. But the truth is, I’m no longer craving the fast-paced life of adventure I so longed for. I start to feel a crazy mix of guilt and secret longing for this life of baby making. I’m happy at Paddy Cakes and wish my baby were the real thing.
Jules isn’t the only one moving forward. Everyone’s moving forward, and even though I am in denial about it, I am, too, whether I like it or not.
Just then, I see a call from Addison.
Liz, you’re never going to believe what just happened!
Did you find out the sex? Is it a girl? My heart begins to swell.
Not yet, but call me.
I immediately dial her number and she answers on the first ring.
“Liz. Halpren-Davies just bought me out. Thirty FUCKING million.”
* * *
Addison recounts all the amazing details. This news was a total shock. This now meant she could live anywhere in the world she wanted—and that probably meant spending a great deal of time abroad closer to Jacques’s family in Paris.
“Want to meet up to celebrate?” I ask, completely giddy.
“Hon, I want to sign on the dotted line before the champagne—or in my case—the mocktails—are poured. Okay if we plan for Friday night?”
As I’m walking home in the crisp September night air, I contemplate the possibilities of all of my friends’ developments and try woefully to push away my own. But in light of everyone’s good fortune, I can’t help but wonder what I will do now as my “constellation of support” is all but moving on. Paddy Cakes is all I really have. Without it, I won’t be able to afford my apartment on a freelance salary, and studios are going for more than that, even in Bushwick.
Alix had seemed to believe the baby daddy lie. Could I really tell people that? Could I actually pull it off? Actually go away for “labor” and come back sans baby, but with a bellyful of deceit? Could I keep this lie going forever and get to keep the job I’ve grown to love? Staring at all the families with babies in strollers, all the thoughts come flooding down like a deluge.
Suddenly my phone starts ringing.
“Lizzie, it’s Mom. There’s been an accident with your father. You need to come home.”
Twenty-Eight
I rush back to my apartment and stuff some clothes in my bag, then hop in a cab down to the Port Authority. Unexpectedly, when I email Alix my story, she tells me not to worry, she’ll handle all the details on the story as well as the Discovery event. Luckily there’s a 9 p.m. bus leaving in the next five minutes, and I’m able to get on. When I’m on the bus, my mom recounts the details over the phone.
My dad was in Atlantic City again today and had finally run up too much debt. Trying to pawn his watch on one of the seedier streets, he’d been beaten up and was now in the emergency room. He’d been hurt pretty badly, but the doctors say he is going to be fine. Still, insists my mom, I need to come home to see him.
As I get off the bus, her demeanor is noticeably different from all the other times I’ve seen her. I kiss her on the cheek, and then get into the car to silence.
After five minutes of driving, my mom speaks. “They had me still listed as his emergency contact on his insurance card. Lizzie, I know you and your dad haven’t had the best relationship, but it’s important that you see him.”
“But...”
“No buts, Lizzie. There is nothing more important than family.”
“And what about—” I look down at my bebumped stomach.
She doesn’t even acknowledge it as we drive in silence the rest of the way to the hospital. I hadn’t seen my dad in almost a year...since last Christmas. I’m not sure how I am going to react. A guilty pang surfaces: maybe hitting rock bottom like this will finally make him see how low he’s sunk.
“He looks pretty bad, sweetie. Be prepared,” my mom says, squeezing my arm.
As I walk into the brightly lit room, the TV blaring at the back for the other patient, I spot my dad. In his hospital gown with a bandaged face, he’s not the imposing, angry man I remember. He seems old, sad and pitiful.
I have no idea what to say. I walk up to the bed, the cold hospital lights illuminate him, us, our life and our problems. I can’t run away this time.
For a few seconds, we say nothing. We just look at one another, an odd role reversal—me standing there above his bed, parental, him lying there like a child. I feel nothing but resentment.
“I never wanted you to see me like this, Lizzie,” says my dad, looking at me, with his fat lip throbbing.
Just then, a doctor who seems to be only a little bit older than me walks in and gives me a sympathetic look. “Other than a black eye and cracked ribs, there was nothing else too serious. It looks like he’ll be just fine.”
“Thank you. That’s good to hear,” I say, pressing my lips together into a weak smile.
The doctor leaves. I turn toward my dad and from out of nowhere I feel a surge of anger. “What were you thinking?” I say, unable to hold back.
“Lizzie, I couldn’t help it. I’m sorry. I was just trying to get back on my feet...it’s been hard for me...since your mother left.”
“Don’t you understand, Dad, how this isn’t going to help you? How leaving us was the wrong thing for you to do?”
“Leaving you? I don’t understand, Lizzie.” His eyes register an expr
ession of true hurt.
“You always taught me to fight, but when it came time to fight for us, you bailed,” I try to explain, the words getting stuck in a ball of glue in my throat.
He stares up at me, his eyes full of sorrow.
“Lizzie, I was doing it all for you. Don’t you understand? I wanted a better life for you. It was the only way. I had to. I thought maybe if I could regain my footing a bit, your mom might, well, consider...” He trails off.
“So you had an affair and went to Atlantic City?”
He moves his gaze down toward his hands. My mom looks at us both, stoically. It’s almost as if she were hoping for this to happen.
Then I see a look of fear in his eyes—like he’s worried that he might lose me forever.
“I’m sorry I let you down, Lizzie. I really am,” he says.
It’s all a bit much for me to take, as I feel a flood of tears welling up. “Well, I’m glad that you’re going to be okay,” I say, not ready to fully accept what he’s saying. Then, I think of Ryan. This is the best he can do. I see that now. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll get through this. I’ll call to see how you’re doing.”
My mom understands immediately that it’s time to leave. She tells my father that she’s called my uncle and that he’ll be there shortly with my cousins.
My dad may or may not get better. He may stop gambling or he may not. In a moment of clarity, I realize he’s made his choices, and now I have to make mine.
On the way back in the car, my mom looks really concerned.
“Sweetie, you’ve always taken on this family’s burdens, but you have to go live your life.”
“Mom, you don’t—”
“I’m alive. I have boobs of a thirty-year-old. What more do I need—other than a granddaughter—”
“Mom, pull over.”
“What?”
“Just pull over.” There, by the side of the highway I come clean. Everything pours out of me. The first day. Missing Paris. The bumps. The compounding lies. By the end, I’m terrified to look up and see the look in my mom’s eyes. But instead of anger, there’s a sadness. As if she’s let me down.
“Lizzie, we talk a lot about the victim/martyr trope in the support group. Sometimes family members can keep us stuck in the past by maintaining hypervigilance and enabling our ‘sick’ identities forever. Yes, cancer was the biggest fight of our lives. But we made it. I’m okay now. I’m not a victim, and neither are you. I made every single choice with open eyes and I wouldn’t take back one bit of it. Your generation is always overthinking everything. Life happens, you make the best decisions you can and then make the best of it. I love my new life—and my new boobs—and so does Harold...”
Who’s Harold, now? I think.
“Maybe you should consider a lift...you’re going to need it after you breastfeed Lucie Rose—” She laughs.
“Mom!”
“If your job is making you so unhappy, quit. Go get on the first plane to Paris. We only have one life. And remember, you always have a place to come home to.”
* * *
That night, I’m roused by a very, very strange dream. I’m in an all-white room, and at the far end, there’s a woman sitting at a white CEO-style desk, her chair turned back to me. When I reach her, I see the placard says, “Founder/CEO FitBaby.” It’s the creator of the millennial app I’ve been checking all these months.
Sensing I’ve arrived, she turns back around to face me. She’s wearing a white catsuit, and her hair is cut into a sleek bob. I ask the one question I’ve been wondering since this all began. “What is the secret Baby Smiles algorithm? What do the numbers mean?”
She chuckles. And then louder and louder until her cackles fill the entire room. She looks me dead in the eye.
“There is no algorithm. It’s all random. We’re just fucking with you. You pregnant women have gotten waaaay too neurotic.”
I wake up in a pool of sweat.
October
Twenty-Nine
PUSH! :) Notification! Week 38: Get ready to get it, girl: Braxton Hicks contractions; water breaking and the loss of the mucus plug (“the cork” that seals the opening of your uterus). And finally, for the grand finale of gross—the “bloody show,” or red or pink discharge from the broken capillaries that occur during dilation...enjoy! If any of these happen, labor could be very close. Baby Smiles: 20! [Babies emojis! Bottles emojis!]
The day of the event, I reach for my phone. There’s an email from Cynthia: Subject: Mothers of Discovery Event. E—Hope you’re prepared to say a few remarks—C.
The event starts at 6 p.m., at our office building’s event space on the fortieth floor. Because of the “Mega-Multiples” story, “Fair-Trade Families” and our partnership with Discovery Channel, the spotlight will be on me. I would have killed for this opportunity a year ago, but now, I would kill to have Alix take my place. I spend the night before lying awake in bed, paralyzed by a bitter feeling of dread.
“Might as well go out with a bang,” I say to myself early the next morning as I tug on a black V-neck dress I found in the Naomi Marx fashion closet earlier this summer in preparation for month nine (all the while hoping I wouldn’t have to use it). It looks like something Elizabeth Taylor would have worn in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof—its sexy plunging neckline, three-quarter-inch sleeves and pencil skirt hug my curves.
I make a conscious effort to not think about the fact that Ryan won’t be there tonight, as I ride the herky-jerky train to work. I take a deep breath, thinking, how many more chances with guys who could be potential husbands will I have left? My thirty-second birthday is approaching in a little more than two months, and who will want to date someone who’d faked her own pregnancy and been thrown into jail for fraud? More important, how will I get through these next few weeks, character intact?
In the next few hours, my whole life will change. My two choices are painfully staring at me in the face: the first one is my bag, packed with travel clothes and letter of resignation; the second one the month-nine bump, along with it a complicated story and a lie I’ll be forced to tell for the next how many years.
What if ten years down the road I regret not taking my chances and doing what I’d always dreamed? Are we allowed to keep some dreams and throw away the others that no longer fit? Or will those dreams come back to haunt us later on when time has run out? I make one final list.
Things I’m Grateful For
Mom
Dad
Addison
Brie
Jules
Ford
Cynthia
Alix
My job
My health
Cold Brew
The chance to write stories that matter to women
A chance to know Ryan Murphy
A chance to dream about Lucie Rose
As I trudge down the bus steps and up to the office, March of the Penguins–style due to the heavy medicine-ball-like orb secured firmly to my midsection, I resign myself to just getting through the long day ahead.
Morning passes like lightning, as Cynthia’s out for most of it getting hair and makeup done at her apartment downtown. Even Alix leaves at about 3 p.m. for the same reason, telling me she’ll see me upstairs on the fortieth floor event space at 6 p.m. sharp. “Cynthia’s expecting you to say a few words,” she says as she’s on her way out the door.
Jules, who’s on the wait list, offers to help me come up with something to say, thankfully, and I let her write it out for me. In a mix of sheer exhaustion and panic, I notice it’s five forty-five. As I do, a familiar name pops into my inbox.
Free tonight for dinner? reads the subject line. It’s from Gavin. He must be back in town. The message reads, Hey love, want to grab a bite tonight? And maybe a little vino a
fterward?
I reply back, No, but I have a better idea. Do you have a tux cleaned and pressed? I need your services for a party tonight.
Just as I have a feeling he will, he responds, Why of course. I am always happy to be your escort, Liz Buckley.
I tell him to meet me in the next half hour or so, and give him the download on what he’ll need to say. At least I’ll have nice arm candy. I wonder if everyone will think he’s the father. Ha. I laugh bitterly to myself.
Jules comes out of the bathroom in a green silk empire-waist dress, and her own bump is just now barely detectable. She hasn’t told anyone yet. She gives me a big smile and hands me the cards on which my speech is written. “You should be all set. I just did the typical, ‘thank you, ladies and gentleman, it was a huge pleasure working in partnership with Discovery,’ blah, blah, blah.”
“You’re the best,” I say.
“I know,” she responds, squeezing my arm. “Well, come on. Time to finish what you started.”
We walk through the doors to the elevator banks and press forty. As we hit the company’s top floor where all the executives sit, there’s a faint din of clinking glasses and laughter. Purple and blue lights illuminate various screens around the room, which are now playing images from our story. Discovery’s version of “Fair-Trade Families,” which includes images of Kristy and the other women, is looping over and over on the large screens. Despite the sense of impending doom, another feeling—pride—swells up inside me. I am proud to have made this happen.
A waiter walks by carrying a tray of drinks, and I grab a glass of champagne without thinking. Jules, eyeing my bump, removes it from my hand and sets it on the bar next to us, replacing it with sparkling water. “Watch it,” she says, patting my stomach.
“Oh, yeah. Old habits...” I tell her. My eyes scan the room. I know I should be concentrating on a variety of things, including what I’m going to say, how to react if anyone mentions my impending pregnancy, or even keeping an eye on the door for Gavin, but I am having a hard time focusing. All I can think of is Ryan. Is there some small chance that he’ll come? It’s already six thirty now, and there’s no sign of him. Even though Ryan seeing my bump could set a whole chain of events in motion that I am not ready for, deep down, I am still secretly hoping to see him.