The Job Proposal

by Wendy Chen

  “The thing with successful men, though, is that there are always other women waiting in the wings for them.”

  “Don’t worry, Linda, I’m still going to have my own career. I’m not going to give up my life to be with him.”

  “It’ll be hard, you know. It’ll start off as little things; you won’t even see it coming—”

  “I’m up for a promotion,” Kate blurted. She hadn’t intended to tip her hand, but she couldn’t, just couldn’t, endure a lecture about a marriage that wasn’t even going to happen. As she anticipated, her mother was thrilled.

  “It’ll be great to get that in the bag before you get married. I’m proud of you,” Linda said seriously. “You were always smart, but you grew up and got practical.”

  Not like your father, Kate added silently.

  “Sheryl Sandberg is right about all this Lean In business, you know. I didn’t want to say anything before. But now that you’re up for a promotion, you have real leadership potential.”

  If I can avoid getting mommy-tracked. “Thanks,” Kate gulped. It felt odd to receive such high compliments from Linda, and Kate hoped she’d be able to avoid disappointing her mother. Single motherhood certainly wasn’t what Linda envisioned for her.

  Kate ended the call before she could blurt out more life details that would have to be revised later on.

  Who’s your doctor? read the text from Adam.

  Kate replied with the name and phone number. If he was going to insist on helping her, she may as well let him. And it was nice to have someone in this with her. The girls had been great, but no one really had the time to read What to Expect When You’re Expecting just out of moral support. Heck, Kate hadn’t even read it, though she did download it to her Kindle at least.

  About ten minutes later, Adam texted again.

  Appointment TODAY at 12:30. DO NOT MISS IT. I will meet you there.

  Kate chuckled at first at the directive. She hadn’t made any plans at lunch outside of working at her desk, but it wouldn’t be the first time she missed an appointment. And then her throat began to dry, not from nerves about seeing a doctor, but about Adam coming with her. He was really in this with her. What, was he going to just approve a press release that would change his entire career and then hop on over to sit with her in a waiting room?

  That is exactly what Adam did.

  “You don’t have to be here, you know,” Kate said over her shoulder to Adam next to her.

  “Well, I thought one parent should want to be here,” he responded sarcastically.

  She looked up from her phone then. “I just meant that I could do this on my own. I mean, I don’t think much happens at this first appointment. It’s not like the baby is going to wave at you or anything.”

  “Well, no, it—I mean, he or she—doesn’t have hands yet. But her heart will beat for me.” He said it with such an adorable smile, how could any girl’s heart not beat for him? Kate swallowed and changed the subject.

  “I don’t know how you can stand it, not looking at your phone for news, to see what people are saying about you,” Kate said to him as he flipped through a month-old magazine in her doctor’s waiting room.

  “This is important.”

  “You could still multitask.”

  Adam nodded toward Kate’s smartphone that she held in her lap. “So I can curse Autocorrect as I compulsively respond to messages, all of which can wait an hour?”

  “If I reply now, then I won’t forget to do it later.”

  He chuckled at her and reached for another magazine. “Are you going to take conference calls in between contractions? Because people will probably hear your breathing a little too much.”

  Kate swatted him on the arm and couldn’t help but laugh herself. “The Marissa Mayers of the world have raised the bar for us mere mortals.” She checked her messages again, she couldn’t help it. The mundane details of her day job were topics she could deal with easily. “Anyway, I have a lot of time to figure out how to balance it all, and I should put in the hours whenever I can keep myself from vomiting or falling asleep.”

  “Nine months is not that much time if you think about it. Especially not when you have to move. You don’t want to be packing up all those shoes when you’re out to there.”

  Kate would have laughed again at his gesture of a large, third trimester stomach if she hadn’t heard the rest of what he said. “Move?”

  “Your apartment’s hardly big enough.” Adam put the magazine down and turned to her. “Maybe you won’t even want to be in the city. It’s tough to raise a kid here.” As if he could sense the sudden chill she felt, he put his hand on her arm and squeezed gently. “We don’t have to decide now,” he said in a low voice. “Just something … we should … talk about.”

  It was so tempting to fall into a “we,” to have a partner who could figure this out with her. It was such a false sense, though, Kate reminded herself. Their engagement was one of convenience. Their dating may have led somewhere, a real relationship maybe, if she could have learned to have one. “I can figure it out,” Kate said steadily. “My job is in Manhattan, and I can’t factor in a commute with my kind of hours.” She lowered her voice and strained a smile, not wanting to garner pity from eavesdroppers who might think her baby had parents who disagreed on their basic life arrangements. “Plenty of people have babies in one-bedroom apartments. It’s the New York way.”

  “You’re not in this alone—you don’t have to shut me out.”

  Kate shut her eyes, as if to close herself from the temptation of falling into him. She looked at him and whispered, “I won’t hold you back.”

  “What? What you are talking about?” His eyes searched hers, in honest confusion, Kate knew. She might hurt him a bit now, but she refused to hurt him more later on.

  Her name was called by the nurse just then, and Kate gave a nod of thanks to the universe for sparing her from having a difficult conversation in absolutely the wrong place.

  It was as if Adam was determined to play the role of excited first-time expectant father, despite how much Kate tried to spare him the responsibility. Once they were shown in to the examination room, he acted like their conversation had never happened, like they were any other couple, nervous with anticipation and endearingly awkward as she sat primly on the exam table in a paper gown.

  “Where should I sit?” he asked, clearly never having accompanied anyone to a doctor’s appointment before.

  “Right in the chair next to me,” Kate responded. “You’re not ready for the stirrup view.”

  His eyes widened and he swallowed as he lowered himself into the chair Kate pointed at. “Probably not.” He looked around at the artwork in the room and the posters illustrating the female anatomy, cracking his knuckles—a nervous tick Kate hadn’t seen him do since they were in high school.

  “Somehow your being nervous actually calms me down.”

  “I’m not nervous.”

  Kate leveled a look at him.

  “OK, I am. Excited nervous, not scared nervous.” He smiled at her and Kate could see that things would be OK. They could remain friends through all of this. An unconventional little family for this baby, but a loving one all the same. And without the expectations of a traditional family, she wouldn’t need to worry about letting anyone down, not loving someone enough.

  The doctor came in and greeted them then and proceeded to have Kate lie back for an ultrasound. One of the reasons Kate liked this doctor was because he was no-nonsense, cut through the chitchat, and she could be in and out of her appointments quickly. Kate swallowed any remaining nerves she might have had as Adam scooted closer to her and held her hand. It was nice to have someone to cling to, she had to admit, and while she couldn’t expect him to accompany her on the myriad of appointments she’d have during this pregnancy, it was nice to have him here during the first one.

  “It’s supposed to look like a jelly bean,” Adam whispered to her, as if s
ensing she was probably feeling a little unprepared for this appointment.

  Kate smiled at him just as the doctor swung the monitor around for her to see the screen. “I’m afraid there is no fetus, Kate,” he said. “I’m sorry.” There was sympathy in his eyes, and his mouth curved into a small frown. Through the sudden haze she felt she wondered how many times he’d had to give news like this. She appreciated the sincerity in his tone, that he assumed this pregnancy had been planned, knew this baby was wanted.

  He proceeded to deliver a string of sentences, with words that included, “chemical pregnancy … no gestational sac.” But Kate barely registered the weight of what he was saying. It couldn’t be. There had to be a mistake. This wasn’t happening. She lay back against the cool pillow and stared at the ceiling.

  They should really put artwork up there.

  As the doctor removed his gloves and turned off the machines, she knew this moment was really happening.

  “You mean, there was never a baby?” Adam asked. “Even though her bloodwork said she was pregnant?”

  “It was technically a very early miscarriage—the body’s way of ending an unhealthy pregnancy.”

  “So what now?” Kate asked, still staring at the blank white ceiling tiles. She should be relieved, shouldn’t she? An unplanned baby that she no longer needed to plan for? Her friends would expect her to hardly miss a beat, to go back to the dirty-martini-drinking workaholic she’d always been. Isn’t that what she herself expected? Yet all she felt was a palpable sadness, the likes of which she’d never felt before. For a baby she no longer had.

  The doctor turned to speak to her. “You’ll probably have some bleeding, then your body will go back to normal. You can even start trying again if you want to.” He paused, as if to study her reaction. Kate schooled herself to have the best poker face of her life. “Take some time to grieve, Kate. If you need anything, my office can refer you to grief counseling—”

  “That won’t be necessary.” Kate found her voice then. She would grieve just fine on her own. She moved to sit up and felt Adam’s hand on her back. She wouldn’t need his help anymore.

  She couldn’t really remember how she and Adam got back to her apartment, only that she’d somehow gotten dressed, that they gotten into a cab, and had barely spoken, barely even looked at each other.

  “Are you … are you going back in to work today?” Adam finally asked, as he stood in her bedroom doorway.

  Kate kicked her shoes off and sat on the edge of her bed. “Hardly any point now, I don’t need that promotion so badly.”

  “Do you need to let anyone know you’re out?”

  Kate shrugged. In the cocoon of her own bedroom, she closed her eyes and placed a hand over her belly. The belly that would now stay perfectly toned and trim and stretchmark-free. Wasn’t that what she’d strived for during all her workouts? She choked out a sob then, a noise completely unbidden, which took her by surprise. She opened her eyes to see Adam watching her and noticed now that his eyes were red-rimmed. The grief she saw in them undid her, and the sound that came from her own throat was almost unrecognizable even to her, a sound so awful in its sadness.

  She cried into his chest, for how long, she didn’t know. They said nothing, the only sounds coming from her sobs and his sniffles. She was grateful for his restraint, that he didn’t break down in tears with her. It was selfish of her, she knew. He ought to be allowed to grieve for the baby that would have been both of theirs. But she needed him to be strong for the both of them at that moment, and he knew it. She held on to him a little longer, until finally she felt like she could breathe on her own, and pulled away to wipe her own tears.

  She still couldn’t bring herself to look at Adam again, though, knowing she’d lose whatever composure she’d gained back once she saw the emotions in his face. “I was going to call him James,” she whispered. “Ava if it was a girl.” She didn’t expect a response, but for some reason she felt the need to tell someone. She would have had a plan for this child by the time he or she was born.

  “I know you wanted this baby,” Adam said finally. “I know you loved it.”

  Kate could only nod, having no words to convey the relief she felt at having someone who understood what she felt at this moment. If someone had told her that she would feel this much pain over a baby that never was, she never would have believed them. She would have told them that her reaction would be relief … happiness, even, that she would be able to continue on with the life plan that she had control over. But Adam understood. He knew what a blessing this baby was to Kate, that she would have loved and cared for it in her own best way possible. She had understood that getting pregnant wasn’t just about having a baby; it was about raising a small person, one who would have grown up in the heart of the greatest city on earth, one who she had already silently thanked for giving her the courage to stand up for herself at work, one who had helped her see that her life could be so much more than just about herself.

  Chapter 27

  The next day, Kate called in sick. Well, she emailed in to the boss’s assistant that she was sick. And the next day she did the same, and the next and the next. The email went out at 5 a.m. every morning, just before Kate went out for her run, and she didn’t check her messages at all. When her phone rang insistently with her office number on caller ID, she finally answered it. Her boss’s assistant told her she’d missed a meeting with a major client and the boss wanted to know where she was. “Just tell him it’s women’s issues,” Kate answered. “He’ll stop asking you then.” She hung up before any more questions could be asked.

  It was only during her morning run that Kate felt any part of her former, regular self. And that was how she thought of herself now—pre-baby Kate and post-non-baby Kate. When her feet pounded rhythmically against the pavement and she breathed in the cold air indicating that fall was in full swing, she felt like she would recover from this grief she never thought she would feel. Adam stopped coming with her, thankfully, finally respecting her request to run alone. But when she got back to her apartment, he was almost always there, with his too-observant, too-caring gaze. How tempting it was to let him take care of her the way he promised, to let his cooking nourish her body, to let his love nourish her soul. But Kate didn’t deserve him. It was her own tunnel vision of ambition and selfishness that kept getting in the way of letting him into her life before the baby and had prevented her pregnancy from developing normally. Oh yes, even though all the literature said that chemical pregnancies were unexplained, Kate felt in her heart that hers had everything to do with her age and tunnel vision focus on her career.

  One morning after running ten miles of clarity, Kate returned with her plan. Adam would stay to care for her for as long as he thought she needed him. She had to release him, make him think her life was going back to normal, that she was over her grief, that he could move on to find someone else who was worthy of the love he had to offer, who could love him selflessly the way he deserved—and give him the family he wanted.

  “No time for breakfast today,” Kate said as cheerily as she could, as she practically bounced into her apartment and headed to her shower. “I’m going in to work—have a ton that’s been piling up, I’m sure.” Careful. This was the most she’d said to Adam in days. He might become suspicious.

  After Kate got dressed in one of her best uniforms and did her hair and makeup, she exited her bedroom to find Adam leaning on the kitchen counter. “Listen, you’ve been so great, through this whole thing. I couldn’t have gone through this without you.” She couldn’t bear to look at him and busied herself with shuffling things around in her purse. “I think it’s time we both went back to our regular lives, don’t you?”

  Adam didn’t say anything at first, just came around to face her. “If you need time to yourself, you only have to say so. I stuck around to make sure you were … OK. I mean, as OK as possible.”

  Ever the gentleman, ever the friend. “Well, I�
��m fine now. Thanks. I … ummm … think it’s better if we spend some time apart.”

  Adam took her wrist to stop her movements. “Kate.”

  She looked up at him then and couldn’t help but speak to him with the honesty she had with him in high school. To a point. “I need some time. I need to figure out how to move on without leaning on you. You need to move on. Fix your company, teach your class, meet some … other people.” She felt the tears prick and refused to let them fall. “You can’t be here all the time, taking care of me, waiting for me. It’s like when we were in college—I need to figure this out on my own.”

  He let go of her wrist and sighed. “If that’s really what you want, Kate.”

  “It is.” She was relieved and sad at the same time. How Adam instilled such contradictory feelings within her, she couldn’t imagine. “I’m grateful that we’re friends, that we had some … time … together—”

  “Grateful?” If it had been anyone by Adam, Kate would have felt like a complete idiot. But he just cocked a brow and pulled a half smile. “You’re really bad at this breakup thing, aren’t you?”

  They both chuckled sadly. “You need to go back to California, Adam. Maybe not to Palo Alto, but back to the Bay Area where your friends are.”

  It was an easier goodbye when Kate knew she had to get to the office. She sat upright in a lounge chair outside her boss’s door as his assistant arrived for the day. The older woman just shook her head at Kate and didn’t say a word. Nor did her boss say a word or even look her way as he strode right by her on his way to his desk. Kate waited a few beats, heard him hang his coat and clear this throat, as if just wanting to make her squirm for a little longer. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. She smiled at his assistant, who silently shook her head again.

  “Get in here!” finally came the bellow.

  Kate rose slowly, smoothed her skirt, and strode lightly into his office. Her boss stared at her from behind his desk, a vein bulging prominently from his forehead.