Elisabeth was three weeks into it, bloated and hormonal, at the annual holiday party at her agent’s office. She had been feeling Scrooge-like all day, but this event usually cheered her. Afterward, a bunch of them went to a bar. They sat around a table, drinking whiskey. A former Times colleague of hers commented that a mystery writer in her fifties had just been chastising a young hipster novelist for riding a bicycle without a helmet, and now the mystery writer was outside smoking.
“We are all allowed one deadly vice,” the hipster said.
A while later, an intern from the agency pulled a chair up beside Elisabeth and said she loved her books. In the next breath, the girl was telling her that she rescued French bulldogs, a breed so sickly that they can only mate via artificial insemination.
“If you can’t get pregnant on your own, that’s the universe telling you you weren’t meant to procreate,” the girl said. She sipped her beer.
It was so piercing, the feeling.
She wasn’t talking about you, Elisabeth told herself. She smiled back.
Her friends had gone off the pill, charted their basal body temperature. They wanted it. But still, a lot of them wept when they got a positive test. They weren’t ready. They didn’t think it would happen so fast. This was one more thing the whole IVF experience had robbed her of—the right to be ambivalent. Why would you subject yourself to all that if you were not sure? But she wasn’t. She wondered how many others in that fluorescent-lit waiting room felt the same way.
Andrew took it in stride, as he did most things. He appeared to, anyway. They laughed through the shots and the sad early mornings waiting for blood draws, even though she had read that couples who went through IVF without success almost always divorced. At first, Elisabeth felt a bit smug about how well they were bearing up. But then came the losses. They didn’t seem to hit him like they did her, and it was infuriating. The more they happened, the more hormones they pumped into her, the more she saw how this could pull two people apart.
She almost gave up several times, but doing IVF was like having a gambling addiction. The suspicion that the next time might be the time kept her coming back.
It was like gambling in another way too. The money they poured into it was twice what they’d agreed to spend. There was a dollar amount, a line they would not cross, but then they crossed it, and crossed the second line they drew, and the third. She knew people who had taken out bank loans to pay for IVF. The clinic handed out a pamphlet for an IVF-specific credit card.
After a year, the process felt so separate from parenthood that Elisabeth questioned whether she even wanted a baby, or if she just wanted to win. But then, riding home on a not-very-crowded F train one afternoon, she sat across from an exceptionally cute infant in a bear hat.
“How old?” the man sitting beside the baby asked.
“Six months,” the mother said.
They both grinned. Elisabeth did too, as did the woman two seats down, and a young guy looking up from his newspaper. They were all hopelessly in love with the baby. It even made them like one another.
As much as they collectively knew about how hard it is to be human, she thought then that they must also know something deeper about how special it is, how beautiful. Why else would they react with such joy to the existence of one of their own, starting out?
* * *
—
Elisabeth was four months pregnant with Gil before she believed it. She kept saying, If I’m pregnant, and Andrew and Nomi would say, You are.
Nomi was pregnant again too by then, due any day.
Now Elisabeth could finally be on the good message boards, the ones where stupid women fretted about baby names. They sent lists to one another, perfect strangers, for opinions. She took a screenshot once, and texted it to Andrew. The post said Help!!! I can’t decide. I’m thinking Max or Lucas or Sebastian or Harry or Thor.
“What are the names of the boys in Alex’s class?” she asked Nomi.
Nomi listed them off on her fingers. “Jax. Zev. Kip. Cruz. Dune. Bo. Blue.”
Elisabeth frowned. “Those aren’t even names, they’re just sounds.”
When she was eight months along, Nomi added her to the BK Mamas group, a Brooklyn rite of passage. Nomi said it was great for getting cheap secondhand baby gear, much of it barely, if ever, used. But the real appeal was the conversation, the drama, the lunacy.
“What is there to get dramatic about?” Elisabeth asked.
“You’ll see,” Nomi said.
* * *
—
Gil was born on a perfect day, the sky pure blue.
Elisabeth could usually count on herself to have the wrong reaction to major life events, so she was grateful for the bliss she felt and the knowledge that, for once, she had gotten what she wanted, and it was better than she dreamed.
The love was an astonishment. Every time she looked at him, she felt a shock of wonder at how close she had come to never knowing it.
* * *
—
Andrew knocked on the closed door of the den.
Elisabeth got up from the couch and let him in. He held a plate in each hand. He had made cheeseburgers, with caramelized onions and avocado and sweet potato fries, her favorite.
They sat down.
He put the plates on the table and took hold of the remote.
“That smells amazing,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I had a shitty day at work. I forget sometimes, what it must be like for you, on your own all day.”
“It’s okay. I’m sorry about the wine.”
“What are you watching?”
The show had just switched over from one she liked, about bargain hunting for beach homes, to one she despised so much it made her angry whenever it came on.
Luxury Tiny Houses.
“You can change the channel,” she said.
“Why? I know you secretly love this show,” he said. “Be proud. Do you.”
An off-screen voice said, This one-hundred-fifty-square-foot jewel outside Indianapolis is a steal at only eighty-five thousand dollars.
“Can’t you get an actual house outside Indianapolis for that amount?” she said.
Bob and Alice bought this antique trunk at an estate sale. It now functions as a stylish litter box for their four cats, and a seating area when guests come over.
“Please,” she said. “I’m begging you. Make it stop.”
She reached to grab the remote from his hand, and Andrew pulled her in close for a kiss. Elisabeth fell into him.
They lay together as he flipped through the channels.
“I love you a lot, you know,” he said.
“I love you too.”
* * *
—
At two-forty in the morning, Elisabeth woke up. A moment later, Gil began to wail.
She shot up in bed, but then she slowly lay back down and closed her eyes. She started counting in her head. She got to ninety-eight before Andrew stirred.
She listened to his footsteps as he padded over to the baby.
“What’s up, buddy? You need a bottle?” he said.
He wasn’t keeping his voice down. She didn’t open her eyes.
She could feel him standing there, looking at her.
Then she heard the hall light switch on, and the sound of Andrew’s whispers as he carried Gil downstairs.
Elisabeth rolled over and sank into the pillows, a smile blooming on her face.
10
Sam
ELISABETH WAS CLEARLY PISSED when Andrew accepted a wedding invitation from a guy at work he barely knew without asking her first.
The groom had met his bride three months ago, on a website called GeekLove.
“It’s a potluck,” Elisabeth said, revolted. “A potluck wedding.”
Sam thought that sounded kind of nice, but she kept the thought to herself.
Even more annoying to Elisabeth was Andrew having asked his parents to babysit.
“Would you do me the biggest favor and watch Gil at their house?” Elisabeth asked. “I don’t trust them alone with him. I’ll tell them I’d already asked you and you need the money, so I didn’t want to cancel on you, but that, really, they’re in charge.”
“Okay.”
“But, Sam,” Elisabeth said. “Really, you’re in charge.”
This was how Sam came to find herself at Andrew’s parents’ house at one o’clock on a Saturday afternoon.
Andrew and Elisabeth dropped Sam and Gil off on their way to the wedding.
“My mother will want to do everything,” Andrew said in the car. “So this should be an easy day for you.”
Elisabeth met Sam’s eye in the rearview mirror and shook her head.
For an hour after Andrew and Elisabeth left, she sat with the grandparents, watching Gil roll around on a blanket on the living room floor. A large black dog with white patches beneath his eyes kept sniffing the baby and licking his face. When Sam made a noise to indicate that she wasn’t sure about this, Andrew’s mother, Faye, said, “He’s harmless.”
Sam knew Elisabeth wouldn’t like it, but who was she to argue with the grandmother?
There were Thanksgiving decorations everywhere. Stalks of dried yellow and red corn hung on the front door. On the coffee table, on top of a giant lace doily, a wicker cornucopia spilled forth with Hershey’s Kisses. It was the dead opposite of the way Elisabeth decorated. Her house did not change with the seasons. She would never be the sort of woman who wore earrings in the shape of Christmas ornaments, or a sweater with a pumpkin on it.
Faye was that sort of woman. She taught elementary school and seemed to delight in Gil’s every gurgle. At first, watching her with him, Sam thought Elisabeth had underestimated Faye. But when it came time for a diaper change and a bottle, Faye said, “I’ve got a million chores to do, so we’ll leave you to it.”
They’d set up the Pack ’n Play in the spare bedroom. Sam brought the baby in and closed the door.
She heard Faye complaining about her presence a few minutes later.
“We raised her husband, but she doesn’t trust us to watch his son for four hours. Tell me how that makes sense,” she hissed.
George, Andrew’s dad, shushed her.
Sam wasn’t sure what to do. If Faye had made a move to take care of Gil, she wouldn’t have stopped her. As it was, Sam changed him, gave him a bottle, sang to him for five minutes, and he was out. Exhausted, she supposed, from the attention and the change of scenery. Sam placed him in the playpen and went to leave the room, but then she thought better of it. What was she going to do out there? She sat on the edge of the bed, a bed that probably never got used. It sagged and squeaked when she put her weight on it.
Sam scrolled through her phone, but that soon became boring. Her father and brother had exchanged fourteen texts about the Patriots. They’d included the whole family, even though no one else replied, or cared about football.
She had the novel Clive had given her in her purse. Angel. Clive kept asking if she had started it yet, which she hadn’t. Once, Elisabeth spotted the book peeking out of Sam’s bag and exclaimed over how much she loved it. Sam heard herself telling a lie, the words stolen from Clive: “Me too. It’s one of my favorites. It’s so unfair that, because of her name, Elizabeth Taylor never really got the recognition she deserved.”
“Totally,” Elisabeth said. “I’ve always thought that!”
Sam had brought along some reading for class, but she had left her book bag out in George and Faye’s front hall with her coat. She wasn’t in the mood anyway. Two days ago, Shannon had come running into Sam’s room to show her the letter she’d received, alerting her that she’d been selected for Phi Beta Kappa. Shannon assumed Sam had gotten one too. Sam tried to hide her disappointment. She went to her adviser’s office and asked why she hadn’t been picked. Her GPA was as high as Shannon’s and she had taken all the classes she thought were needed. He told her it probably had to do with fulfilling more requirements and said he’d look into it.
There was at all times this pressure to be the best, to have everything figured out. Sam admired Elisabeth’s laid-back attitude about such things. She aspired to be more like her. Elisabeth spoke of waitressing to support her writing career in the early days and made it sound fun. The things that weighed on Sam—her loans, her job prospects—were all hurdles Elisabeth had cleared, and now she assured Sam that she could do the same.
When the pressure got to be too much, Sam took solace in Clive’s plan for the two of them. She pictured the country house he described. She pictured herself baking bread from scratch. She never admitted either of these things to anyone but him.
Sam looked around the room now. A clear plastic dry-cleaning bag full of dark suits hung on the back of the door. The floral wallpaper was peeling in the corners.
One of her professors had said he feared for the future of art because this generation didn’t know how to look. They didn’t take notice of their surroundings—of light, shape, space. Ever since, Sam was determined to prove him wrong.
Today she had been surprised on arrival, pleasantly so, that this was the sort of house Andrew grew up in. Seeing a person’s childhood home gave you more insight into him than days of conversation ever could.
Sam was raised in a house like this—perfectly nice, but not fancy or done up. It didn’t get great light. The beige carpets were old and stained in places. The furniture didn’t match. Faye and George had a leather La-Z-Boy recliner and an overstuffed paisley sofa in the living room, and the biggest TV she had ever seen.
This guest room doubled as an office. A heavy wooden desk too big for the space had been jammed in by the window, with a spare kitchen chair pulled up to it. On top were several dozen overstuffed folders, stacked in haphazard piles. There were Post-it notes all over the wall behind.
Sam got a familiar, tingling feeling in her stomach. The sensation that always preceded snooping. She felt herself pulled toward the desk, listening as she walked, to determine if anyone was outside the door.
She had been trying to cut back, though she still sometimes checked out what Isabella was looking at on her laptop in the minutes after she left the room to shower. Isabella treated Google like a Magic 8 Ball. A couple weeks ago, after her conversation with Elisabeth about it, Sam saw that she had googled Will I regret selling my eggs?
Whatever Isabella found must have convinced her that Elisabeth was right, because after she came out of the shower, she asked Sam to go for a walk. Isabella poured them each a mug of tequila, the only booze they had on hand. She gathered up her needles and hormones in a shopping bag and flung the whole thing into the pond when they passed, without so much as slowing down.
(The fertility clinic sent a bill for two thousand dollars, stating that, since Isabella had canceled the deal, she was now responsible for her medical expenses. Isabella called her father. “Daddy, I need two grand. No, you don’t want to know what for.”)
Babysitting had always presented the best snooping opportunities. People tidied their houses the first few times a new sitter came, but once they were used to her, they’d leave everything out in the open. Pills. Bills. Angry letters. Lingerie.
Sam vowed not to snoop at Elisabeth’s house. She had twice walked into the master bedroom, only to turn right back around. But she hadn’t been able to stop herself from looking inside the plain brown paper bag she found under the bathroom sink when she opened the cabinet to get more toilet paper. The bag contained ten maxipads, each as thick as her thumb; a can of antiseptic numbing spray; and four pairs of giant disposable underwear, all of which she recognized as the accessories a woman required after giving birth. It seemed impossible
that someone as elegant as Elisabeth could be subjected to such degradation. But Sam reasoned that, much like death, bringing a baby into the world was a great equalizer.
She had seen it all in London. Not hidden in a brown paper bag, but spread out on the dining room table. Here, she arrived months after everything was cleaned up and in order. There, she was right in the midst of it as it happened.
The day Allison’s baby was born, Sam showed up for work and found the twins, eighteen months old, sitting on the stoop in their pajamas. She led them inside. Allison’s husband, Joe, was in the kitchen, looking confused, gazing down at the box of Weetabix in his hands like he half expected it to explode.
The husband was a moron in that case. But even in the best of these situations, she had gleaned, men were useless. As soon as Allison was back from the hospital, the doula and the night nurse rolled in. Sam had never seen her in less than a turtleneck and chinos, but thirty seconds after meeting the doula, Allison was unbuttoning her shirt in the kitchen and placing her nipples into shot glasses of warm salt water, which the woman held in each hand.
Sam nearly said something when she saw the doula follow Allison into the bathroom. She wanted to warn her that Allison was not the type, that if she went in there, she’d be fired on the spot. But it happened too fast. The bathroom door swung open, then shut, giving Sam just long enough to see Allison’s bare knees.
She was on the toilet.
Dear God.
Sam pressed her ear to the door.
“This is a frozen maxipad soaked in witch hazel,” the doula said. “Stick it in your knickers. It will help with the pain.”
“You’re a miracle,” Allison purred. “I bled a lot just now. Here, have a look. Is this normal? Did I pop a stitch?”
The doula fed her watermelon and parsley to reduce the swelling on her ankles. Allison swallowed each bite like an obedient child.
The doula provided tips for what to do with the baby too, and these Sam tried to memorize. Stick a pinkie finger facing upward in a newborn’s mouth, and he’d stop crying. Swaddle him tight and he’d sleep three times as long.
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