by Kate Rorick
Brrrrrfffftttt.
Or asking them anything about . . . that.
At some point in time, she knew that all pretense would fall away, and she would gladly discuss her boobs and body fluids at the top of her lungs in public places with complete strangers.
But damn it, today was not that day.
However, she would happily do it anonymously. There had to be something on the internet to help her deal with this particular grievance, she thought.
She pulled up the mommy forums on her phone, and typed her query into the question box.
Which yielded immediate results.
Don’t worry! Magnesium will get things moving down there! Just don’t take too much . . .
Oh, the gas I had with my first . . . doing yoga helped realign my gut. My best friend teaches prenatal yoga at the Silver Lake Center . . .
OMG if it’s really bad go to the hospital immediately! My sister’s sister-in-law’s cousin had gas and it turned out to be a ballooning intestine! It almost perforated and they had to do lapa roscopic surgery! Luckily she wasn’t pregnant at the time, but that would just make me doubly cautious!
Overwhelmed, she quickly shut the web browser on her phone. All of that was conflicting and absolutely none of it was helpful. Every single time she went on the mommy forums, she felt more confused than when she entered them.
Really, as a teacher, she knew the vagaries of the internet and how it could warp any argument or question. What on earth was she doing on a forum that didn’t even cite sources beyond some random person’s sister’s sister-in-law’s cousin?
She was about to shut her phone entirely, when an email notification popped up. By rote, she clicked over.
Weird. It was a Twitter notification.
Nathalie had Twitter. As far as she could figure, everyone had Twitter—at least, that was what Lyndi told her when she signed Nathalie up. She just didn’t really use Twitter. She didn’t tweet. She had students, and a responsibility to model correct behavior online, so basically that meant not being on social media ever (ironically, the only 100 percent foolproof method of avoiding accidental overexposure was social media abstinence). But she did maintain a Twitter handle to follow one of her favorite TV shows, Fargone. Every week the cast and crew would tweet out behind-the-scenes info while the episode aired, and it was a delightful additional experience. Like those old VH1 pop-up videos, but with fewer random factoids and more photos of the stars being goofy on set. The actress who played Billie was particularly delightful.
The email was one of those “People You May Know” notifications. Twitter prompting you to follow more accounts, engage with more people (and presumably, be online longer and exposed to more ads). But this time, the people she may have known were not official Fargone accounts, or devoted fans. This time, it was for an account called @WTFPreg.
First of all, Nathalie was vaguely weirded out that Twitter had figured out that she would be interested in something to do with pregnancy. Her posts on the mommy forums were sporadic, and unassociated with Twitter. Unless Fargone had a pregnancy story line she was unaware of (ooohhh!! Please let Fargone have a pregnancy story line!) they should have no reason to place a pregnancy Twitter feed in her path.
But, the vague weirdness subsided when curiosity got the better of her and she clicked on the link.
Then complete freak-out weirdness set in.
@WTFPreg—I could set my house on fire from all the methane in the atmosphere. #pregnancygas
The most recent post had gone up only a few hours ago.
Trepidatiously, she scrolled down the feed.
@WTFPreg—Horizontal stripes—verboten except for the extremely vertical or extremely pregnant.
A strange tingling sensation darted through her body. Like recognizing like.
@WTFPreg—The Peanut isn’t a peanut anymore! It’s more of an awkward legume. #anotherdayanotherultrasound
The peanut . . . she’d called their daughter a peanut when she saw the first ultrasound. And she’d noticed the uncanny amount of horizontal stripes in maternity fashion. And she could no doubt explode her house with the methane content it currently held!
And the very first tweet posted within a week of them finding out they were expecting . . .
@WTFPreg—We did not expect this baby, even though we were trying for it. So obviously, we are alarmingly stupid people who should not procreate.
Holy shit. It was as if she could have posted every single one of these tweets herself.
But she didn’t.
But that could only mean . . .
Someone, somewhere, was having the exact same pregnancy she was.
But who?
Chapter 11
“IT’S REALLY COMING DOWN OUT THERE, isn’t it?” Vanessa said, her eyes shifting to the window.
“Look at me, Vanessa?” Sophia said gently. Vanessa’s eyes automatically moved forward, then up, allowing Sophia to finely apply the smoky gray shadow along her lower lids.
“Sorry,” Vanessa said, her voice a little breathy—no doubt from nerves. After all, one didn’t go to the Golden Globes every day. “Today is just too important for rain! It’s like I’m being punished!”
It was 3:30 in the afternoon. The Golden Globes show began at 5 PM West Coast time. The red carpet procession began around four, with massive stars, newcomers, Hollywood power players, and the occasional briefcased accountant all posing for the hundreds of cameras, trying not to be disconcerted by the explosion of flashbulbs and Ryan Seacrest’s probing questions.
The car would be coming for Vanessa any minute, along with her hand-holding publicist from the movie. Her sprawling bungalow in West Hollywood was only a few minutes from the Beverly Hills Hilton, where the Globes were held, but she didn’t want to miss her chance to walk the red carpet.
Although, the weather might have other ideas.
Vanessa stood in the middle of her living room in her couture gown, a bronze-peach shade of satin that would no doubt wrinkle the second she sat down, but at the moment looked flawless against her white skin and chocolate hair. She had a few hundred thousand dollars in jewelry dangling from her ears and her wrist, borrowed from a Beverly Hills jeweler who had sent a security team when they delivered the box. Her hair was set in loose 1940s finger waves that Kip had worked diligently on. Now, it was Sophia’s turn. Paper tucked into the dress’s high collar and a T-shirt smock protected the gown as Sophia applied the last of the shadow and mascara to Vanessa’s eyes, bringing out their bright green irises, and set off perfectly by the meticulous arch of her brows, and the tiny mole at the corner of her eye.
Vanessa was an exceptionally beautiful woman. She knew it. It was part of her job. But today . . . today her beauty had to be unparalleled. She knew that, too.
And it was Sophia’s job to make that happen.
Unfortunately, at the moment Vanessa wasn’t really cooperating. And neither was the weather. The former was a complete bundle of nerves, the latter, merely a huge annoyance to a town used to temperate winter sunshine.
“It is totally punishment! I should have listened to my spiritualist,” Vanessa was saying, “and done a complete cleanse of my body’s aura weeks ago. An offer to the weather-gods.”
If Vanessa was being punished, so was George Clooney, Steven Spielberg, and a couple hundred other people with a lot more sway in Hollywood, and presumably, with the weather-gods.
But Sophia didn’t say that. Instead, she traded her shadow brush for a mascara wand, and began to apply the final layer to Vanessa’s eye look. “Don’t worry, the rain has been in the forecast for ages, I’m sure the Golden Globes people are prepared for this,” Sophia said soothingly. She glanced over at Kip, who, with a nod, fetched a bottle of purified volcanic spring water from Vanessa’s assistant, and brought it over. (Volcanic spring water being much like mountain spring water, only much more expensive.)
“And this mascara is waterproof, so at least we don’t have to worry about that.”
Vanessa retracted her hand, as if she’d touched flame. In reality, all she had done was screw up Sophia’s concentration, and knock her brush hand, centimeters from Vanessa’s eye, into Vanessa’s cheek.
“Sophia!” Vanessa cried, flinching back. “Oh God, my eye—is my eye okay?”
Kip and Vanessa’s personal assistant—a recently acquired employee, an early twenties phone addict who dressed more fashionably than her salary surely allowed and who Sophia was pretty sure was named Marjorie—rushed over to attend to the drama.
“Everything’s fine,” Sophia said soothingly. “Just a smudge on the cheek. Entirely fixable.”
“You didn’t get my eye?” Vanessa asked weakly, reaching for a hand mirror.
“No, your eye is perfect.” She took a wipe and carefully blotted the slash of black off Vanessa’s cheek.
“Good . . .” Vanessa said, taking a deep breath. “I’m so glad you’re going to be with me tonight. Especially if I start crying.”
Sophia smiled. Vanessa was not only nominated, but she was presenting an award—best supporting actor in a TV movie, series, or miniseries—so she got to have a select crew of people to attend to her needs backstage in the greenroom. Touch-ups, dress issues, etc. Especially useful if she won, and started bawling her eyes out.
Sophia was excited. The only time she’d ever been backstage anywhere, was when Alan, her first husband, had gotten them tickets to see *NSYNC at the Coliseum back when they were dating. Of course, he got scalped tickets and it was for the wrong date, so there was no concert to attend, but they did sneak around the backstage of the theater, diving behind boxes and speakers to avoid security guards with no peripheral vision.
“I think the black smudge could work,” Kip joked. “It looks very Clockwork Orange.” He knew that Kubrick was Vanessa’s favorite, and knew this would make her laugh.
“Or it looks like Sebastian after he got that fish to the face,” Sophia added, and Vanessa let go into a full-on fit of the giggles.
“Oh my goodness, when he showed me that picture, I nearly lost it!”
Sophia’s smile faded into surprise. “Sebastian showed you that picture?”
“When he was over here yesterday,” Vanessa said after a moment. “He was dropping off some of my stuff from Deegan’s.”
Sophia nodded. That made sense. Vanessa and Sebastian were friends, but they weren’t stop-over-anytime friends. But Vanessa and Deegan, the band’s lead singer, were still working through their breakup-slash-divorce, and Sebastian sometimes played go-between. To Sophia it sounded like being in eighth grade, passing messages between warring parties.
“It looked like you guys had a blast in Baja,” Vanessa said, as Sophia returned to fixing her cheek and finishing up her eyes.
“We did.” And they had.
Baja had been exactly what Sophia and Sebastian had needed—a dream of a vacation, four days, five nights lazing about the beach and pool, being pampered.
They had gotten a bungalow of their own. And since Sebastian had dropped Vanessa’s name, and the name of the band, they got upgraded to having their own concierge—aka, their own butler. It was a silly amount of indulgence that Sophia was not about to say no to.
“I don’t want you to worry about anything,” he’d told her. Well, he’d told her stomach. “Hear that, little person? There’s nothing here that’s going to stress out mommy at all.”
Yes, Sebastian was stomach-talking intense about the baby. But it wasn’t that surprising to Sophia—he was always intense. When Sebastian turned his bright-eyed focus on you, you felt like the only person in the world. It was beyond seductive.
The problem was when he wasn’t with you. Things tended to slip his mind, and other things—people, gigs—suddenly took priority.
But Sebastian knew this about himself, and he was trying to improve upon it. Hence Baja. Nothing but sun and each other to wrap themselves up in.
Sebastian had even told her to not pack anything—he would take care of it. And she was greeted by their butler, a glass of sparkling apple cider, and an entire wardrobe filled with bikinis and filmy wraps.
In fact, the only things he had insisted Sophia bring were the period costume from the wardrobe department, and the blood pressure machine he had presented her with at Christmas.
It was really too bad she spent most of their time together silently worrying about Maisey.
She’d told Sebastian about the Stanford rejection. She expected him to be appropriately livid. To feel the unjustness of the decision the same way that she did. Because she had been livid. After the initial heartbreak of watching her daughter shut herself away into her bedroom, Sophia spent the entire next day (once Maisey had left with her dad for Christmas having had a minimum number of sympathy pancakes that Sophia had woken up early enough to make) poring over the internet for clues about Stanford’s admissions guidelines and the average test scores, school transcripts, extracurricular activities of those admitted.
If anything, Maisey was OVERqualified, her mother-brain determined. Sure, it seemed like being on a robotics team and having won a Westinghouse science competition would have been ideal . . . but Maisey wrote beautifully! She had basically done AP English–level work as a sophomore! She gave back to her school via tutoring! Surely, Stanford had just mixed her daughter up with a different, lesser, Maisey Alvarez.
It took everything in her power to not call the school in an angry rage. First, because she didn’t want to be one of those helicopter parents who has controlled everything to the point the kid gets to college without knowing how to do laundry or make a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. And second, because it was the holidays and Stanford’s admissions office was closed, according to their voice mail.
But Sebastian hadn’t reacted with the same vehemence that Sophia had. Instead, he’d just shrugged one lazy, sun-bronzed shoulder and said, “Well, that’s how it goes, you know?”
“How it goes?” Sophia had repeated.
“I mean, she’s swimming in a bigger pool now. Same thing happened to the band when we tried to move from our hometown to the city. No one wanted us. We had to go to Europe to train. You know, like the Beatles.”
“What on earth do the Beatles have to do with my daughter not getting into her dream school?”
“Nothing,” Sebastian answered. “Just . . . I mean, I could have told you Stanford wasn’t for her. She’ll get over it. Figure out what level she’s supposed to be.”
“Level?”
“Not everyone is supposed to hit the Billboard charts, is all,” Sebastian said, and flipped over in his lounge chair. “Next time the butler comes around can you ask him for another Corona?”
But having known her daughter for seventeen years, Sophia wasn’t as able to let go of the problem quite that nonchalantly. And she spent the vast majority of the vacation worrying about it.
So much so, that the Fish-to-the-Face incident occurred mostly because of it.
Sebastian had always wanted to try deep-sea fishing. So, as his Christmas present, Sophia had chartered a boat, complete with an experienced fisherman to take him out. Sebastian’s face had lit up like a little boy getting his first bike.
“When do we leave?” he’d asked.
“We? Hon, this trip is just for you.”
She’d actually been looking forward to not going. Not that she didn’t want to be around Sebastian all the time, but she needed a couple hours on the phone. She wanted to confirm with Vanessa’s publicist the dates she’d be needed for awards shows. She wanted to get the schedule for the first week back on Fargone after break.
And she really, really wanted to call Maisey.
But Sebastian had looked at her with those puppy-dog eyes as if she was his entire world, and leaned into her in that way she couldn’t resist. She knew she was going to give in to him. And he knew it, too. It was just the way
he was. And so, instead of spending the morning on the phone, she spent it on the high seas.
Bent over the railing, trying to not lose her breakfast.
It had nothing to do with morning sickness. The last time she had gotten on a boat, she’d been a chaperone on a whale-watching trip with Maisey’s Girl Scout troop.
Everyone saw whales except for Sophia. She saw her lunch mixed with Dramamine hit the water.
But Sebastian had been so happy, thus she sucked it up, and tried to be happy with him. But her mind kept going back to Maisey. How she must be feeling. What she was doing.
What she was telling her father.
Sophia knew that Maisey had told Alan about Sebastian, long ago. But did he know about the baby? It’s not as if she owed him any explanation—their lives were only intertwined because of Maisey now, and they’d rooted themselves in a solid script of co-parenting for several years. Heck, Alan had remarried and had toddlers running around! He couldn’t judge her on getting pregnant.
But she knew he would.
She knew that in some eyes, because of this baby, she would be seen as a lesser parent.
But surely her pregnancy wasn’t Maisey’s first concern right now. Surely, she’d told her dad about Stanford, and he cajoled her out of her stoic silence on the matter and got her ice cream and talked to her logically about next steps.
There was a silver lining. There had to be.
Because Maisey was a remarkable person, who no doubt would find what she needed to do and . . .
She’d find . . .
“Hey, babe?” she’d called out to Sebastian.
“Hold on, hon, I think I’ve got something on the line!”
“I wanted to ask you . . . we were talking about Maisey, and you said she’d find her level. What did you mean by that?”