She's Having Her Baby

by Lauren Sams

  Meg shrugged. ‘They’re going to have to make time, George. It’s not just about print anymore. You know that.’ Meg gave me a look like I knew that. I did not know that. Or, at the very least, I did not want to know that. She went on. ‘Look, put it another way: we have this amazing resource right in front of us. A chance to get new readers, a way to engage our existing readers even more. We’ve got to work together and get this digital strategy right. It’s the future.’

  I furrowed my brow and stayed silent.

  ‘Don’t do that, George. I know that look. We’ve discussed this before. We need to take advantage of what the company is offering in terms of digital, and that’s final. It’s going to mean more work but I know you’re capable of it.’

  More work? How could I possibly ask my already overworked, too-thinly-stretched team to do more work?

  ‘Excuse me, Katie, I know it takes you a week to design our print cover, but could you squeeze two more options in there for our iPad issue? Shouldn’t take you long.’

  ‘Hey Lucy, while you’re doing that interview that took weeks to secure and is only meant to run seven minutes because the publicist is being a bitch, could you ask ten more questions for the extra content on the iPad mag? Cheers.’

  ‘Fran, you’re going to have to add “videographer” to your job description, because I need you to start making videos of … actually, I don’t know what … for the iPad, which is suddenly far more important than the actual print mag for some stupid reason. Thanks.’

  ‘Meg, I can’t ask my team to take on more work. It’s crazy enough as it is. But I don’t really see the problem: we’re making ad budgets, we’ve got the sponsorship for Woman of the Year. We even have some new advertisers. We’re actually doing better than fine.’ Woman of the Year was our trademark event where we honoured the country’s most influential women. It was also a big money-making and PR exercise, for which we generally asked a tampon company to give us hundreds of thousands of dollars to have a party that would land us in the Sunday papers.

  ‘It’s all beside the point, George. Every other mag in the company has a proper digital strategy – except us. You should see the things Duke are doing – incredible. Their Instagram numbers are through the roof. This is all just smart business.’

  Suddenly I saw myself, a year from now, penniless (and possibly pregnant) because I couldn’t work out what a hashtag was and therefore, wasn’t able to save Jolie, my beloved, smart, savvy magazine, from morphing into an Instagram-only publication. I decided to go with Meg’s line for the moment.

  ‘OK. I guess that makes sense. I just don’t want to cannibalise the magazine for the sake of the iPad stuff, you know? I mean, people still want magazines, Meg. They don’t just want Twitter and blogs.’

  Meg smiled wryly. ‘Pet, that’s exactly what they want. We just have to figure out how to cash in on it.’

  ‘Meg!’ I felt my shoulders slump and my face drop in shock. How could she have said that? She loved magazines. She was part of the reason I loved mags so much. They were in her blood, in her DNA.

  ‘George, honey, I wish it wasn’t so,’ she said, shaking her head slowly. ‘You know my heart belongs to Jolie. But things are changing. You’re smart enough to see that, George. Let’s beat them at their own game.’

  ‘We are beating them at their own game. Jolie is the best women’s magazine on the market. The others – they’re not in our league at all. What about that award Lucy won last year for the story on botched plastic surgery? What about that cover that got nominated for a Maggie? And if this is about getting good PR, I mean, we already do that. The cover with the plus-size model? The media loved it. The domestic violence campaign we did?’ How could Meg so conveniently excise all of this from her brain? Jolie still had legs. She had supermodel-sculpted legs.

  She smiled gently and nodded in understanding. ‘I know all that. You’re doing a great job, George. I’m proud of you. So is everybody upstairs. Just think of this as the next step. Another chance to blow them away, yeah?’

  I nodded, but in my mind I remained defensive.

  ‘It’s going to be OK,’ she continued. ‘It’s just a matter of tweaking things, you know? Adapting, just like we always have. The suits have already started working on some ideas.’

  Great, I thought. That was the last thing I needed: corporate-types who knew nothing about the magazine or our readers telling me what to do. Last time something like this had happened, an accountant was put in charge of revamping the mag and he’d wanted to use the word ‘funky’ on the cover.

  What I really wanted to ask – but couldn’t bring myself to – was whether the ship was sinking. Meg wasn’t saying so but I’d seen enough mags fold in the past ten years to know that change often signified the end. I mean, why mess with a winner, right? I was the captain and of course I’d have to go down with it – but it would be nice if the captain knew before the ship hit the proverbial iceberg. It might help the captain figure out how to divert the course.

  Meg could see the panic in my eyes.

  ‘George, don’t worry too much. We’ll be OK. It’s just change, no big deal. I know you can do this.’

  After Meg left, I turned to look at the wall behind me, covered in old Jolie covers. The very first ones, from the US, were illustrated – by hand! – and instead of sitting chronologically, took pride of place in the centre of the wall. These covers were history – just by looking at them, you could see the last forty years of women’s rights, of fashion, of … of everything. There were the supermodels, the waifs, the glam-azon Brazilians, the alien-looking Eastern European Lolitas. The headlines about HIV and the pill and equal pay, and one particularly strange one about inviting your boss to a ‘pants party’ that I chose to ignore. Beautiful locations filled the backgrounds; some of these images had been shot by the world’s best photographers, the ones who were so famous they only needed one name. And up in the top right-hand corner was the very first issue of Jolie that bore my name on the masthead – way, way down on the masthead, after literally everybody else on staff. This is where everything had begun for me, really. It was where I felt most at home, where I knew exactly what I was doing. Well, I thought I had, anyway. I thought of all the articles and headlines and cover lines I’d written, or helped craft, all the covers I’d chosen and the thrill of seeing my team’s work on the newsstands, that familiar pride that felt like a hug and a high five all at once.

  Surely everybody knew a website couldn’t do that.

  5

  Week 4,

  DAY 2

  It seemed like my brain had already sent signals to my body to start screwing itself over, because that morning, the pimple that GreyBeard had enjoyed pointing out so unceremoniously had now instituted some sort of breeding program. Now there were pimples, plural, and they were not only the colour of a Coke can, but also hellbent on taking over my face.

  When Nina saw me later at lunch, the first thing she asked was, ‘Did you stop using Proactiv?’ Jesus. How were GreyBeard and Nina on the same page? Then she followed up with, ‘Why haven’t you told him yet?’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know,’ I said, spearing a piece of kale from my salad and wondering why I was eating kale and not a hot dog drowned in mustard, which is what I really, really wanted. Because you are a civilised adult who is eating in public, George. Not a stoned seventeen-year-old boy.

  It was a lie.

  Not the hot dog thing; the Jase thing. I knew exactly why I hadn’t told Jason. If I told him, it would force us to have the baby conversation, and I didn’t want to do that.

  Or, at least, I wanted to put it off as long as possible. I knew what my answer to the baby question was – but the truth was I didn’t really know Jase’s. And I didn’t want to be the bad guy who denied him the baby he might want.

  ‘George, are you having second thoughts about this? Are you not telling Jason because secretly you want to back out of it?’

  I shook my head again, more veheme
ntly this time. ‘No, Neen, of course not! My mind is completely made up and I’m not changing it. We are doing this together, you don’t need to worry.’

  ‘OK,’ she said, through bites of her salad. ‘So I guess in that case we need to start the official process. We’ll each need to see lawyers and we’ll have to go through the counselling, of course – just to make sure everyone’s on the same page, you know?’

  I nodded. ‘Oh right, of course.’

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s just a formality. I know you’re going to hand the baby over.’

  I laughed. ‘Yeah, you don’t need to worry about that. Definitely not keeping it.’ I dug into my salad. ‘You know, for a superfood, this is actually pretty good.’ Not as good as a hot dog, but what is?

  Nina screwed her nose up. ‘It’s not seasoned all that well. I should say something.’

  ‘Please don’t,’ I said, pushing the salt and pepper over to her side of the table. Nina’s gastronomical pickiness was legendary and to be controlled at all costs. She’d once tried to send a packet of chips back to the manufacturer because she’d found them ‘a little salty’.

  She shrugged, picking up the salt bowl and sprinkling the little pink flakes over her salad. ‘You have to tell him, George.’

  ‘Mmm. I know.’

  ‘Or you have to end it,’ she finished, one eyebrow arched.

  ‘What?’

  ‘George, I know what you’re doing. You have done it to every relationship you’ve ever had. You’re avoiding the big, confrontational stuff because you don’t want to commit to someone until he ticks every single weird criteria you have for the “perfect man”.’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘That is not true.’ Actually, it was pretty much exactly true.

  ‘George, how long have we been best friends? Twenty years now, or twenty-one? I know you better than anyone, except maybe Ellie.’

  I sniggered. ‘Uh, you definitely know me better than Mother Superior.’

  ‘Whatever. Look, my point is, this is what you do. It’s your thing. And it is not healthy. I’m not saying this in some kind of passive-aggressive ‘you need to find a man and settle down’ way. I’m saying it because it is actually true. There is no such thing as ‘the perfect man’. You have to learn to live with 90 per cent, or 95 or even 85 per cent of what you want, because that is real life.’

  I said nothing, concentrating on picking out tiny spheres of quinoa one at a time.

  Nina was unperturbed. ‘Jason is a good guy. And now, he is a good, hot guy after all that bloody cycling. He’s smart. He’s kind. He recycles and composts. He has never, to your knowledge, been to jail or through a divorce or bankrupt. These are all great things. You would be surprised at how many men don’t meet those criteria. Especially at our age.’

  I snorted. ‘At our age? We’re in our early thirties. I don’t think we need to say things like that quite yet.’

  ‘You’re thirty-five.’

  ‘I’m thirty-four!’

  Nina smirked. ‘Almost thirty-five.’

  ‘Well, even so, that’s hardly over the hill. I have plenty of time to find someone I love.’

  Nina did a half roll of her eyes. ‘I know you do. I’m not saying that. What I am saying is that you have a good guy – scratch that – a great guy right in front of you. Do you really want to lose him? So what if he listens to Mumford and Sons and Vampire Weekend? You’re not perfect, either.’

  Of course I knew I wasn’t perfect, but I also wasn’t sure I could live with the maudlin sounds of hipsters whining about the hardships of being middle-class white men for the rest of my life.

  And yeah, Jase was a good guy. Of course I knew that. But was he The Guy? I felt like the very fact that I needed to ask the question pointed to a big fat no.

  ‘This is actually the perfect time to bring this up with Jason. He has to know you don’t want kids, George. It’s not enough to just roll your eyes at them or bitch about Ellie and Lucas. You have to tell him, for real, to his face. It’s not fair to just keep going, pretending that you know what his answer is. You have to give him that.’

  Reluctantly, I nodded. Nina was right. God, she was going to make such a good mum.

  In fact, I had been given the perfect opportunity a few mornings back but I had ignored it, like an empty bank balance, hoping it would just go away. There had been a segment on surrogacy on the fluffy breakfast TV show playing in the background as Jase and I got ready for work. In between rolling on deodorant and spritzing perfume, I heard, ‘Surrogacy is becoming more popular in Australia.’

  ‘Hey, babe, come listen to this. They’re talking about surrogacy.’

  For a second I panicked, wondering how Jase could possibly know about Nina and I, before I realised he was probably suggesting an idea for Jolie. Jase was great like that, actually – he was always emailing me links to stories he thought might work for the mag.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ I called from the bathroom, keeping my voice as breezy and uninterested as possible. Heading into the living room would mean having a conversation about surrogacy and when I did eventually tell Jason about this (soon, it would be soon) he’d accuse me of lying to him. Which, of course, is precisely what I was doing.

  ‘Yeah. Apparently there’s been a 16 per cent increase in it since …’ he paused, waiting for more information. ‘Since 2000.’

  ‘Oh, well, that doesn’t mean much,’ I said, pretending to know far more than I really did about statistics and hoping Jase didn’t call BS on me, while trying to decide which lipstick to wear. My internal monologue was screaming at me. Put the lipstick down. Face your problem. You are an adult. There is a real and distinct possibility that you might give birth to a human in the not-so-distant future. You should not be concerned about the miniscule differences between Champagne Showers and Everything but the Kitchen Pink right now. But I continued to study the lipsticks like they were my biggest dilemma, not whether or not I should tell my boyfriend about the most important decision I’d ever made.

  ‘There’s probably, like, two or three surrogacies a year in Australia,’ I said, creating fiction out of thin air. ‘If that goes up 16 per cent in fifteen years … well, that’s not really newsworthy.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Jase, appearing at the door. ‘They had a chick on who had a baby for her sister. You’d think Jill would do it for Nina, right? Anyway, thought it might make a good story for the mag.’

  I paused, mid-swipe of Champagne Showers. My mouth agape, I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror, while Jase continued his morning ablutions, totally unaware of the irony of his words.

  Is your bum warm, George? Because your pants are on fire, you dirty rotten liar.

  ‘Umhuhyeah,’ was all I could manage to say.

  And then Jase kissed me goodbye and pushed his bike out of the apartment (he couldn’t bring himself to leave it in the basement) and it was over. I breathed a sigh of relief, but I knew I couldn’t hide from this forever.

  ‘Well, so what if he does want kids? What then?’ I asked Nina, trying to push away the memory of lying to Jase.

  Nina shrugged. ‘You deal with that as it happens. I mean, if he does want kids, he’s not the right guy for you, is he?’

  ‘Nina! You just listed all the reasons Jason is the right guy for me.’

  ‘Yes, but the kids thing trumps all of that. If he wants kids and you don’t, well, that’s it. Game over.’

  And that’s exactly what I was afraid of. Thanks, Neen.

  ‘OK, we’re done talking about me. How are you?’

  ‘I’m great,’ she said, smiling in a way I hadn’t seen her smile in a long time. It was the kind of smile you see on an Oscar winner’s face right after their name has been called. ‘The clinic says I’m not meant to say things like this to you – because it could be too much pressure and obviously you can still change your mind at any point, because nothing has even really started yet, but … I am so happy to know that you’re willing to do this. I feel like I’ve been treading
water for such a long time and now finally I can start swimming again. Ugh, that’s so cheesy, I know, but … god, I actually do really mean it, you know? It’s so hard to explain what this feels like, but … I guess it just feels like everything is going to be OK now. Honestly, George, you have no idea how happy you’ve made me and Matt. Thank you.’

  It was true. Matt had called me the night after I’d agreed to lease out my ladyparts and cried as he thanked me. ‘Truly, George, you don’t know what this means. It’s the ultimate gift.’ Then I’d cried. Then he’d cried again. Then Jase walked in and I’d had to make up a lie about Jolie underselling by ten thousand copies.

  ‘Um, that’s OK.’ I still didn’t know how to respond to Nina’s frequent proclamations of gratitude. It seemed pretentious and arrogant to say ‘you’re welcome’ – like I was rubbing it in that Nina couldn’t get pregnant herself.

  ‘We haven’t told anyone yet – we don’t want to get people’s hopes up, you know? We want to wait until we know for sure that you’re pregnant before we say anything. Is that OK with you?’

  I nodded. ‘Yeah, sure. I haven’t told anyone either,’ I said, with a barbed laugh.

  ‘Not even your mum?’

  I shook my head. It hadn’t occurred to me to tell Mum, because so far it had only been a conversation between Nina, Matt and I. Suddenly I realised that I’d have to tell people. Not just people: everyone. It was no longer just a ladies’ agreement over too many sav blancs or even a series of conversations with Nina and Matt. It was going to be real. Like, written-all-over-my-body real. After a certain point (eight months?), there’d be no way to disguise it. I had visions of awkward conversations with strangers, which seemed terrifying until I realised that I’d have to tell Meg – and suddenly chats with strangers about my uterus seemed like picnics in the park.

  ‘How do you think work will take it?’ asked Nina, reading my mind like always.

  Well, let’s see. I was meant to be producing more work from my team, not having mid-afternoon naps and rushing off to doctor’s appointments and injecting myself with fertility drugs. Yeah, Nina, Meg will be over the fucking moon for me. She’ll be knitting booties before I know it.