I Heart Christmas

by Lindsey Kelk

  ‘Oh.’ Cici looked desperately sympathetic and handed back the flyer as though she might catch something from it. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No, it’s really OK. You should come,’ Jesse said quickly, looking to Megan for support. Megan’s eyebrows were so high up her forehead I was amazed we hadn’t had a call from air traffic control asking her to bring them back down. He had no help coming there.

  Cici laughed, slapping Jesse on the back and then waving her hand at him.

  ‘Oh, you’re funny,’ she said, holding a finger horizontally underneath each eye to avoid mascara smudges. As if fembots could cry, even if it was from laughing at people. ‘I should come. Hilarious.’

  Jesse sat in his chair, confused and embarrassed and not sure why, as Cici sashayed away and Megan began to laugh.

  ‘Dude.’ She shook her head slowly, never looking away from her computer screen. ‘Dude.’

  ‘What just happened?’ Jesse asked me, utterly perplexed.

  ‘Nothing good,’ I replied, tossing him a gingerbread Christmas tree for his troubles. ‘Nothing good at all.’

  Deciding against a snack-slash-puke pitstop, I turned back to my office and swished my mouse to bring my computer back to life. Ignoring the IM full of smiley faces from my seemingly lobotomised assistant, the email from Dr Laura’s office asking me to schedule an appointment and the picture message from Jenny that showed a can of sugar-free Red Bull and a slice of pizza, I opened a new Word document and began to write.

  My husband wants to have a baby and I don’t.

  There it was, all written down in black and white.

  My husband wants to have a baby and I don’t. Not as in, I don’t ever want to have a baby, but more I really like my life right now and I’m somewhere in the middle of the scale of mildly scared through to thoroughly petrified at the thought of heaving a living person out of me and then being expected to keep it alive for the next eighteen or so years before I send it off to college, full of hopes and dreams and resentment, and finally get my life back.

  I looked at the first paragraph and frowned. Did it sound selfish? Maybe a little. But then maybe I was being a little bit selfish.

  I realise that doesn’t sound terribly motherly but then that could be why I don’t think I’m ready to become a mother. Every time my husband raises the issue, I want to throw a box of cereal on the floor and shout But I’m the baby! – hardly the best qualification for parenthood. But regardless of whether or not I’m emotionally stable (or mature) enough to have a baby, a recent trip to the doctor’s office suggests I might not have a lot of time to make my decision. It might be a baby now or a baby never, and I have no idea what to do.

  As well as a husband, I have wonderful friends, I’m about to move into a beautiful new home and I have a job that I love, a career that I have worked hard for and am thrilled to see develop. But I can’t ignore that nagging voice deep inside that says none of it matters until I have a kid. I should clarify – I don’t mean I’m hearing a soothing, earth mother coo that’s compelling me to fill my womb with offspring. Rather, it’s a scratchy cackling that sounds a bit like my mother crossed with anyone who ever played a witch crossed with dial-up internet. It’s not a nice voice, it’s a voice that tells me women shouldn’t feel fulfilled or inspired by their careers. It’s the same voice that tells single women they’re not good enough until they’ve got a boyfriend or that they really ought to lose ten more pounds. It’s the judgemental chorus that we all hear and we all know we should ignore but can’t. It’s too loud.

  As women, we’re constantly trying to keep all our balls in the air – friends, family, careers, relationships. And it’s not that guys don’t have the same concerns, it’s just that maybe they’re able to prioritise a little easier. When they decide they’re ready to start a family, they choose a mate, they settle down and maybe they hit the bar a little less often (gasp). Perhaps they even move out of Manhattan. But as women, we have to be ready to give up so much more. Imagine telling the Wall Street banker he had to take a year out of his job and hope it was there when he wanted to go back to it. Consider sitting down with the marketing director and saying ‘well, you’re going to gain about forty pounds which will be a bitch to get off, and you’ll be exhausted all the time and maybe you’ll throw up for three months but it’ll be OK after that. Until you actually have the baby and you’re completely incapable of maintaining a simple train of thought for more than fifteen seconds.’

  But what happens if you’re not ready to give up anything?

  What if you bought into the idea that you could have it all?

  Pausing to take a sip of Berocca-spiked VitaminWater and read over what I had written so far, I couldn’t help but frown. I couldn’t even have a week off work, let alone have it all.

  Of course, this is a much bigger issue than whether or not I have a baby. When men get what they want, they feel powerful. When women get what they want, they feel selfish. For centuries, female artists have complained of feeling marginalised, pushed out of history and significance because their primary focus in life was supposed to be childrearing and taking care of their family. It was all right for men to sequester themselves, hole up in isolation for months on end working on a masterpiece, but I imagine that could have been a bit difficult if you were breastfeeding your youngest and needed to get tea on the table for half past four. If a woman put her career in front of her family, whatever career that might be, she was seen as a monster. What I want to know is, do we still look at women that way? Is it still taboo to say, I’d love to pop out a couple of babies, darling, but could we possibly wait until the end of the third quarter so I can see what the profit line looks like going into budget season?

  I live in New York City, a town dominated by successful, wonderful women, but I can’t tell you whether or not they’re all happy women. We’re judged by men, we’re judged by ourselves and, worst of all, we’re judged by each other. If I decide I’m not ready to have a baby right now, the thing I’m most scared of is what people will think. Maybe they’ll think I don’t really love my husband and that I care more about my job than I do about him. Maybe they’ll think I’m a horrible, unloving human who is utterly selfish. Or maybe they’ll think, well, she really struggled with the decision because it took her a while to find her passion and she wasn’t ready to give it up. And the reason I worry that people will think these things is because I think them.

  They said we could have it all. They never said it would be easy.

  I pressed apple-S to save the draft and emailed it to Mary before I could think better of it. And then I remembered Mary wasn’t the editor anymore, I was. Eek. Staring at the screen, I couldn’t help but wonder. Was I afraid or was I being selfish? Was I scared of having a baby or was I scared of what it would mean to not have a baby? I sat back in my chair and exhaled, rubbing my forehead with the palm of my hand. I was definitely right about one thing – it definitely wasn’t going to be easy.

  CHAPTER TEN

  By the time I got home that evening, I was weirdly buzzed and excited about the night out. It was strange what a day of deadlines could do for a girl. And so instead of crawling into my pyjamas and my bed, I pulled on my skinniest jeans, added Alex’s most washed-out, wrecked band T-shirt and filled my hair with so much dry shampoo I looked like a troll doll. Once I had applied my blunted Bad Gal eyeliner pencil, sharpened it up and applied it again, I considered myself ready to go out in Williamsburg.

  ‘That’s some big hair you’ve got going on.’ Alex walked through the front door, dropping a brand new stack of packing boxes on the sofa and his door keys on the coffee table. ‘What’s up with that?’

  ‘Go big or go dirty,’ I explained. ‘Are you sure I can’t lure you out tonight? It’ll be fun? Probably?’

  ‘As much as you’re selling it …’ He stood up, his black T-shirt and blue jeans covered in dust. I was a bad housewife. ‘Last night was enough excitement for me.’

  ‘Me too,’ I admitted,
clambering over the boxes to get a hug. He smelled sweaty and disgusting and amazing. ‘But I promised Jenny and Louisa we’d go for dinner.’

  ‘Can’t argue with ladies’ night,’ he said. ‘And besides, I get to play babysitter.’

  ‘You’re getting very good at it,’ I replied, rubbing on lip balm and checking the time. ‘Louisa is just putting Grace down. We won’t be late, I swear.’

  ‘No worries,’ he said, slipping his hand inside my back pocket and giving my bum a squeeze. Aah, romance. ‘I have so much to do. I might have been a little overoptimistic on our packing schedule.’

  I looked around at all the full and half-full boxes in the living room. It was weird watching him pack up our little apartment. Even though I hadn’t lived there that long, I had managed to amass enough stuff to qualify for an intervention on Hoarders. My collection of vintage glasses, bought in bulk on eBay once a year when Mad Men came back on, were already wrapped in newspaper and carefully stacked in the kitchen. The assorted prints I’d bought at every craft fair I went to were in a pile next to our books, unframed and unhung, despite what I had said when I bought them and, most terrifyingly, there was my wardrobe. I’d told Alex to leave it to me since ‘it wouldn’t take long’ and swore that I would be able to ‘whack everything in a couple of suitcases on Saturday morning’. When I’d said it, I’d believed it but having just spent an hour poking around in there for an outfit, I wasn’t quite so sure anymore. He was going to have a fit when he saw the number of ballet flats I owned. I was almost certain they were multiplying in there … If only I could stop losing the left shoe, I wouldn’t need to keep buying new ones. Packing for a boy was so much easier – Alex had nothing but guitars and records and clever boy books. No make-up to organise, no bras to fold or shoes to box, and that was before I even got to the handbags. How did you move handbags? I couldn’t let him chuck them all in a bin bag in the back of Craig’s van, that would be sacrilege. Maybe I could take them with me in a taxi, one at a time. It would only take a month or so.

  In the corner of the room, the tree stood tall, twinkling on and off like a mad man, daring Alex to try to pack it. I loved that bloody tree. If only because it hadn’t tried to launch itself on me. Yet.

  ‘Shall I stay and help?’ I asked, clutching the leather strap of my satchel and turning back to my hard-at-work hubby.

  The thought of a night in alone with Alex was suddenly very tempting. It might have only been three nights but it felt as though Louisa and Grace had been with us forever.

  ‘No, you go. I’m a pain in the ass when I’m trying to organise stuff,’ he said as the buzzer went. ‘Lopez?’

  ‘Lopez,’ I nodded, pressing the button to let her in the front door. ‘Play nice.’

  ‘I always play nice,’ he said, tucking his hair behind his ear and getting back to work. Sticking the Sharpie in his jeans pocket, Alex dropped back onto the floor in front of the sofa and began building up a huge pile of flattened boxes I hadn’t seen. He was so good. ‘I guess we’re lucky that we both have flexible jobs so our kids won’t need a nanny. I hate the idea of sticking them with some stranger for hours on end.’

  ‘So what else needs doing, move-wise?’ I asked, changing the subject completely. ‘There’s really nothing I can do?’

  ‘There’s really nothing you can do,’ he confirmed. ‘The furniture guys are coming Saturday morning, Graham and Craig are helping me move some boxes and the more delicate stuff tomorrow and the new furniture is being delivered Monday. By the time your folks get here Tuesday, it’ll be like a goddamn show home, I swear. And I’ll even have time for a haircut.’

  ‘And by the time they leave on Saturday, it’ll be like the seventh circle of Hell,’ I replied, momentarily having forgotten they were coming at all. ‘I just hope the tree survives the move.’

  ‘If I have to go into Prospect Park and chop a tree down, I promise you will have your perfect Christmas tree,’ he said, eyes trained on forcing the flaps of the half-built box in his hands. ‘That or we’ll cover Craig in tiny little lights and have him sing “O Tannenbaum” until New Year’s.’

  Floppy hair or no floppy hair, Alex Reid really was the best.

  ‘Ange.’ Louisa tilted her head to one side, a tumble of blonde waves dropping into my eyeline as she spoke. ‘Angela? You with us?’

  ‘Hey.’ Jenny gave me a poke. ‘Earth to Angela?’

  Even though they were right – my mind was somewhere else entirely – I gave them a grin and raised my Diet Coke in a toast. I was excited to be with my girls but I was also ready for my bed. We’d eaten a mound of seasonal tacos at La Superior, all the while trying to sing along to Mexican versions of classic Christmas songs, and then skidded through the fresh snow, all the way back up to north 6th Street ready to see Jesse storm the stage.

  ‘Don’t make me pinch you,’ Jenny threatened. ‘You know I need the same amount of attention as a five-year-old child at all times. What’s up, doll? All that hairspray freeze up your brain?’

  Somehow she had coiled her massive amount of hair into a normal-sized topknot and pared her make-up back to a slash of bright red lipstick, to match her bright red skinny jeans. Even though it was minus five outside, she was wearing a cropped black T-shirt that revealed just a hint of toned torso and slipped off one shoulder. She was a fashion magazine’s interpretation of ‘hipster’ and she looked fantastic.

  ‘Nothing is up,’ I lied perfectly. I was surprised how smooth I was – it had been a while. ‘I’m just tired. Busy day at work. I’m excited to be out now, though, honest.’

  ‘I’m knackered,’ Lou admitted. She had turned her silky blonde hair into a head full of sexy waves, perfectly set off by precise cat’s eye make-up and pretty pink lips. I felt bad dragging her into a dirty, sticky club. She looked as though she should be sipping tea and eating very tiny, expensive cakes somewhere not here. Well, until you looked down at her outfit. I couldn’t imagine anyone other than Grace had seen that much of her boobs in a very long time. ‘We could always just go back and hang out at yours? Or call it a night? I’m not fussed.’

  I knew I liked that girl.

  ‘No way.’ Jenny stamped a tiny snowbooted foot. ‘I dragged my ass out to Brooklyn, we’re staying out. Plus, it’s ten thirty already, your friend is on at eleven, we can’t go until we’ve seen him, right?’

  ‘You’re right,’ I agreed, shouting as the DJ started a super-loud song I didn’t recognise. ‘I do want to see them. I’ve heard they’re good.’

  I chose not to mention that I had heard that from Jesse.

  ‘Is this the place we came to see Alex’s band that time?’ Jenny asked, glancing around at all the glasses-wearing gig-goers. ‘You know, when you first moved here?’

  ‘Um, yes.’ I pretended to have to think for a moment but obviously I had every moment of our entire relationship stored safely away. ‘It is.’

  ‘It’s almost reassuring to know that these places are the same all over the world,’ Lou said, shifting from foot to sticky foot. ‘The floors are covered in God knows what and everyone’s high as kites. Everyone even looks the same. I’m positive I saw her over there on the 98 bus last week.’

  I wanted to be positive that she hadn’t but who knew? Hipsters got around these days. Just because they looked like they’d found their outfit on the floor of a chazza shop and then slopped it around the toilets of a second-rate shopping centre didn’t mean that they weren’t actually the artistic director of some international ad agency. Or Cara Delevingne. I could never tell.

  ‘So what’s up, Angie?’ Jenny was never one to let sleeping dogs lie. Or napping dogs. Or dogs that were just trying to change the subject until they were allowed to go home and pass out. ‘You might as well tell me before I force it out of you.’

  I didn’t fancy force.

  ‘Really, it is just that I’ve had a shitty day.’ It was a straight-out lie – once the hangover had faded, I’d actually had quite a nice day. ‘I had to write this articl
e and, you know, I was really looking forward to having some time off this week, spending it with Alex. Feels like I got all excited about Christmas and now the whole thing is going to pass me by.’

  ‘We’ll make up for it tomorrow,’ Louisa said, looking a little sheepish. ‘I’m sorry we’re in the way.’

  ‘You’re not in the way at all,’ I promised. ‘Not even a little bit.’

  Another lie. As much as I loved waking up to see Louisa every day, hearing her laugh whenever Alex pronounced ‘oregano’ or ‘aluminium’ and telling me how pretty I looked, having Grace in the apartment was exhausting and I was constantly on edge as to whether or not Lou had spoken to Tim. So far, she’d admitted to texting him to say she’d be away for another day or so because she was ill. So she’d admitted to lying. Which was a great development.

  ‘Well, something’s up with you and it’s not just being a bit grumpy about missing out on Christmas shopping,’ Lou frowned. ‘Out with it, Ange.’

  ‘Fine.’ I did some quick thinking and let out a huge sigh. ‘I’m really not loving having Cici in the office. But I promised Delia I would try it and I feel like I’ve got to give it a go.’

  In searching for a lie, I’d actually managed to find the truth. I did not love having Cici around and not because she was being a bitch but because she was being so nice. Being on my guard all the time was even more tiring than trying not to drop an F bomb in front of my goddaughter.

  ‘You know I don’t condone violence,’ Louisa said, reaching out to stroke my hair and pulling her hand away quickly. However good it looked, it did not feel nice. ‘But yeah, I think in this instance, you’re going to want to get ready for some fisticuffs.’

  ‘I’ll kick her freaking ass.’ Jenny waved away our concerns with the flick of a wrist. ‘Dude, seriously. She’s crossed you for the last time. Crossed all of us. Do you think she wants me to beat the shit out of her again? No, she does not.’