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Next it’s “I’m Too Sexy,” then “Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls.” From the get-go, he’s totally got it, nailing every single low-voiced guy part. Halfway through “Crazy,” he pushes a hand through his light brown wavy hair as he uses the other to do some sort of complex Steven Tyler move. He’s got on those light-wash Gap jeans all the soccer players used to wear in college. He’s so into it and so making fun of himself at the same time, I can’t stop laughing. By the time Chumbawamba’s “I Get Knocked Down” comes on, the entire crowd is cheering him on as he attempts the grand finale—the running man to “Poison.”
“He’s got balls.” Addison nods approvingly.
“He’s cute,” says Brie.
“I think I know him,” I say. “How do I know him?”
Brie surfaces a sticky sweet lemon drop shot. I down it, thinking to myself, Why not? Clearing my throat, I turn toward the teleprompter, cursing as I see my name. Addison and Brie, those little cheeks, can’t hide their giggles when the traumatically familiar chorus begins to play. As always, every last face in the bar is cringing as I screech out the first few verses. Pretty soon, I’m belting it out, battling my way through the lyrics as if my life depended on it. It feels good. I’m a woman without a box, and I don’t care anymore, damn it.
“You...you...you oughtta know,” I sing out at full volume, just as the song stops sooner than I expect. My voice fills the void with a shriek, followed by silence. Finally I look up. Addison and Brie fight to contain their giggles. A slow, perfunctory applause emerges from the crowd. I notice Gap Jeans Guy is clapping jokily, too. God. Head down in shame, I beeline off the stage. Needing another drink, I walk over to the bar, red-faced.
“One vodka soda, splash of cran,” I say to the bartender.
“That will be sixteen dollars,” he responds. Ouch.
“I’ll get you a drink,” a weird guy with fluttery eyes says as he reaches for his man purse. “Malibu?”
“Uh, no thanks,” I say, trying to be polite, searching around in my oversize bag for my wallet. I balance my huge hobo carryall on the edge of the counter to get a better look. Then something heavy inside shifts the center of balance, and all of the contents spill out on the floor.
“Um, can I help you with that?” It’s Gap Jeans Guy. He’s coming over to the bar. I feel myself growing flustered as we both reach down toward the floor and he hands over my copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting.
“That’s not, er, mine, well it is, but I’m not...you know... I work at a baby magazine.” He looks as if he’s biting his lip, trying not to laugh.
“Wait, are you Liz Buckley? Deputy editor at Paddy Cakes? I thought you looked familiar up there. It’s Ryan—from the Discovery Channel.”
That’s right, I remember now. He recently turned thirty-seven, which I’d noted when he’d friended me on Facebook. I’d helped handle some details on a Paddy Cakes story they’d brought to air on mega multiples.
Before I can correct him on my title, the music comes on. “Oh shoot, my next song’s up.” And with that, he gets up on stage, as Pearl Jam’s “Better Man” starts up. I can’t believe how good Ryan is. Well, not exactly perfect, but strong, confident. As I stare at him, I notice his ability to let go. It’s sweet. So different from the zombified Patrick Batemen psychos I’m used to dealing with on Tinder. He’s actually got a beating heart. Once he’s through, he comes back to the bar to join me.
“My buddies made me get up there on a losing bet. My team, Liverpool, lost today.”
“Seems like you’ve been practicing,” I tease. It’s his turn to grow red.
“Hey, I’m thinking of hitting the ramen spot for some takeout on my way home now. Wanna join me? You look like a girl who could use some soup.”
“Why not,” I say as I laugh to myself. Brie is in the middle of an overemotive power ballad, making me feel like the night will soon be over anyway, and this is only a preamble to a Baxter hookup.
I signal to Addison that I’m leaving and she waves me off, indicating that she’s got Brie-watch covered. I notice her venture capitalist du jour Brady has also shown up.
Ryan and I work our way through the crowded street to a spot down the block called Soju Ramen. There’s a line out the door. In front of us, five twentysomething guys in flannels debate the merits of a few ramen shops in Flushing. I secretly love this talk, I think, feeling better. We finally arrive at the head of the line and the server asks us what we want.
“I’ll take the pork belly, please.”
“Nice. Make that two, please,” pipes up Ryan. “Five sriracha in mine.”
“Woah, you like it hot, huh?”
“You know it.” Ryan readjusts his worn-in baseball cap. “So deputy editor Liz Buckley... Are you going to watch the mega-multiples special next week?”
“Yes, but I’m not deputy. Alix is.”
“Aren’t you the one doing all the work on the tie-in?”
It took tons of my time—but Alix got the credit as always. “Yes, well, you know how it is...”.
The woman at the counter eyes us, making us realize others are trying to order. Ryan guides me toward the side, gently touching my arm. “Do you live around here?”
“Uh, no, Upper West Side.”
“Oh, cool. Uptown, fancy. Only the best for Deputy Editor Liz,” he teases.
“Ha. Not quite.” I think of the same small, rent-stabilized studio apartment I’ve been living in for the past four years handed down to me from my former editor at Paddy Cakes.
“Me neither. I’m on First and A.”
“Party central,” I tease back. It comes easily, like I don’t even have to try.
“No—I live with my brother—he got a great deal a few years back and it’s close to the bar where I watch the Premier League games.” He looks down at his feet. “Let’s figure out a plan to meet up and discuss some new ideas soon.”
“Sure,” I say, trying to play it cool. “That would be great.”
“I, uh, should get your number, just in case,” he says, strangely serious all of a sudden.
I’m not expecting this at all. I give him the same 917 number I’ve had since college.
“To stay or to go?” calls out the woman at the counter. Ryan looks at me, expectantly. I would like to stay and hear more about his job, his love of British soccer and the exact origins of his Gap jeans, but the weight of today’s events added to the lemon drop and the vodka-cran have sent me crashing and I don’t feel confident about what might come out of my mouth next.
“Ugh, to go, I guess,” I tell the woman.
“Make mine to go, too,” Ryan says.
“That will be twenty-four dollars,” says the woman.
“Oh, they must have combined our orders—” I start fumbling for cash.
“That’s okay, I’ve got this,” says Ryan, waving away my attempt.
“No, I don’t mean to make you feel sorry for me.”
“I’ve got it,” he pushes. “Anyway, I don’t feel sorry for you, Liz. I know you’re going places. Soup’s on you next time.”
He grins and takes off down the street.
I notice my stomach has grown warm feeling and it’s not just the soup.
Four (#ulink_33cb97fa-a3fa-5853-9500-e29710446bf1)
PUSH! :) Notification! Week 17: Think of every pound gained as a sign of a healthy, happy baby. Of course you don’t want to gain too much. So stop and give us 40. Lolz. J.K. Baby Smiles: 15!
“Aren’t you in desperate need of a makeover?” says Hudson, Ford’s just-a-touch-judgmental friend, as he’s sizing me up through his Mr. Rogers black-rimmed glasses in an empty makeup room at the Naomi Marx Show. At 9 a.m. on Monday morning the dressing room is quiet. None of the other production assistants are in yet, but all around me are racks of jewel-toned dresses, five-inch stilettos, scary-looking hair pieces, and big blown-up posters of Naomi staring back at me, with her signature Cleopatra-like closed-mouth smile.
“I haven’t had time,” I say in a daze. I need coffee.
“I was thinking we could do one size for each month, since your clothes will cover it. I already have months four through six from the time when Naomi was doing that series on ‘Teen-Mom Boot Camp.’ I’ll have to take your measurements now and then get you the rest of the months later,” he says, wrapping the tape around my waist, hips and bust.
I’m thinking I’ll just need the one, but then again no harm being measured.
“Now, if you’re really going to do this right, you have to wear the bump, cover it with Spanx, then a thin slip. Leave no lines. Think you can do that?” says Hudson, snapping the measuring tape off my waist.
“Yes, of course.” I sneer and grab the largest of the bumps out of his hands, walk behind a changing screen and slip it over my head. After wriggling it down so it sits right over my pooch, I fit my empire-waist dress over it and come back out to look in the mirror.
“Looks real,” says Ford with an eye raise. “Totally real.”
“I know,” says Hudson. “I’m really good at this.”
“Weird,” I say, almost in a trance. Staring back at me in the mirror is a six-months pregnant Liz. The bump makes my roundish cheeks look thinner than usual (or is the bump creating an optical illusion?) and my ice-blue eyes have a watery gleam to them. Even in my old peacock-blue jersey dress, my five-foot-five frame looks, well, not bad. My thinnish medium-length “brond” hair seems to fall differently—fuller and wavier.
“At least you’re well-proportioned—nice legs, square shoulders—so as long as you don’t mess up the application, the bumps should sit perfectly.”
I feel the taut orb. It seems to be made of a foam rubber that is slightly firmer than usual, not unlike a half a Nerf football, sitting perfectly over my lower abdomen.
Hudson eyes me. “Memory foam.”
“Tempur-Pedic?” I respond.
“Yep—but slightly different—not as squishy. I have a supplier in Sweden.”
“Wow,” I say, grateful for this little bit of luck on a Monday morning. I thank Hudson, pack up the first little eighteen-week belly and make plans to get the rest later—if I should even need them. Despite the extreme terror I feel as I walk out of the midtown sound studio, I’m buoyed. Could this actually work? But my reverie fades as soon as I walk into the office around ten fifteen.
“Liz, come here,” says Jeffry, signaling me over to the spot outside his own corner office. “Alix says she’s been emailing you questions all morning about the cover story research and you haven’t gotten back to her. You know we’re on a tight schedule.” He proceeds to tap away at his computer calendar, looking down at my stomach conspicuously. I reach to wrap my arms around myself instinctively.
“I emailed Alix that I had a doctor’s appointment this morning.”
“Well, you can’t take time off just because of your situation,” he says, which makes me feel both mad and seriously guilty. “By the way I’ve forwarded you our Family and Medical Leave Act paperwork. Make sure to have it back to me by end of the week. Otherwise, you might jeapordize your maternity leave benefits. And you also need to figure out how you plan to use vacation in addition to the six weeks paid.”
Jules and I had taken issue in theory with the fact that the medical leave act FMLA essentially likened pregnancy to a disability, but now I was finding it downright disturbing. Just six weeks paid leave? Maybe the moms in the office don’t have it as easy as I thought they did.
Just then, the UPS guy brings over an enormous package. It’s from Giggle, the high-end baby store we’re forever mentioning in our pages. “Alix emailed us the great news! Congrats, mama-to-be!” says the card inside from Carly, the PR contact I’ve worked with for years. Shit! Hoping no one sees the display, I paw through the box, instantly feeling a wave of complex emotions—guilt, and glee—that Carly now thinks I’m pregnant.
Inside the tissue, there’s everything I could ever want or need—maternity sports bras, softer-than-soft pajama tops. There’s even a pillow to put between my knees while I’m sleeping. Beneath it are gift certificates for the Nuna swing, the Keekaroo changing pad and even the Silver Cross pram, the mythical stroller of the gods that all the royals use—it’s like three thousand dollars. I stuff the package under my desk into a corner to get to work lining up French moms, almost thankful I can take my mind off things.
By midday, group emails about the tiger/French moms story sits stalled on the screen while I make up my profile on BabyCenter.com. As a joke, I send the link to Jules. I’ve been terrified to tell her what I decided, but I figure now is about as good a time as any.
“Are you on crack?” She practically leaps over the desk partition.
“No, why?” I say innocently.
“I said keep pounding the rock, not jump off the ledge!” Her whispers have a hard edge as she eyes around the office floor. Jules motions for us to go into the only semiprivate conference room. “Aren’t you worried about how you’re going to pull this whole thing off? I mean, you’re not hooking up with anyone right now. Don’t you think everyone’s going to wonder who the father is?” she asks.
“I have some time to figure it out.”
Jules still looks at me like I’ve got two heads. “But what about your paycheck, future career prospects, your dignity? You can’t pretend to be pregnant for five months. People are going to know you’re lying. You work in an office full of people who are fully aware of every nuance of pregnancy.”
“True,” I say, trying to hold my ground. “But so do I.”
“You mean to tell me the first time someone starts quizzing you about the tests, the names, the schools, the doctors, whatever, you’re not going to ‘pull a Liz’ and go completely blank. The jig will be up before you can even start to show.”
“I’ll work it out somehow.” I’m not sure why I feel such a great urge to push back at her on this. Then I see Alix wending her way over to my cube, armed with a bunch of file folders. Wait—what is she doing here! The least she could do was TAKE HER VACATION!
Without saying a word, she drops something on my desk, allowing the contents to scatter over my already-disheveled pile system. Jules and I head back, and I sit down. Rather than the tiger moms/French moms revise, she’s given me the “Stages of Newborn Spit-up” story I’d helped her with over two weeks ago. It must be back from Cynthia with edits.
“Thanks for that,” she says, nodding at the story covered in Cynthia’s red pen. “Tyler developed a fever and Marisol couldn’t get him to sleep, so I had to cancel my trip, after all. I’ll need you to be on call just in case he gets worse and I have to go to the doctor with him.”
“Sure,” I say flatly, thinking how easy it is for mothers to employ the verb have, like I have to leave work early to pick up Tyler’s nut allergy results; I have to go get Tyler’s organic baby puree before Whole Foods closes. I wonder what would ever happen if I said, “I have to meet Brie at happy hour or she’s going to hook up with her ex-boyfriend who’s just using her for sex.”
“Better get that revise to me ASAP. You should be boning up on the latest in prenatal digestion anyway. The mother’s microbiome has a significant effect.” She eyes my stomach with a hint of suspicion.
“You know what all our moms say—I can eat whatever I want for the next five months.”
“Watch out. I’ve seen people gain weight that never seems to come off with that attitude. It’s just plain lazy.”
Kicking away the piles of baby toys I’ve gathered over the years under my own desk, I start in on one of my August stories. This time it’s on the benefits of unbleached cotton swaddling blankets costing upward of two hundred dollars, ethically sourced and “designed” in the USA by a cute couple in St. Louis who used to work in digital marketing in the city—perfectly punny adjectives about the benefits of organic cotton are coming easily (“Walk like an Egyptian”). Before I know it, it’s 10 p.m. and the day, and night, are gone.
Wearily, I make my way to Alix’s office to hand off the files for her top edit. An artful arrangement of lilies crowds the corner of her desk, an ever-present feature thanks to all the glowing coverage of advertisers. As I place the files on her desk, a few slide into her mouse and knock the screen alive. On it there’s an email from Jeffry.
Locanda Verde. 8 p.m. reads the subject. Don’t worry, it’s all going to be okay. Wait a second. That’s odd. Why would they be going there? It seems awfully intimate if it were for business purposes. Wait. Could they be having an affair? And she’s using her “sick kid” as an excuse to cover for the fact that she didn’t want to go on her own family vacation because her marriage is on the rocks? I snort to myself, that would be the kicker, now, wouldn’t it.
Somehow I manage to make it to Friday—a few pints of vegan cashew may have helped—and just as I’ve shored myself up to face the day with the help of pure, delicious caffeine, I see Alix has made her way to my desk. She hands back a bunch of copy so covered in red it looks like someone’s been wiping up a crime scene with it.
“Cynthia emailed me to tell you that the piece on new secondary C-section alternatives went in the completely wrong direction,” Alix says. “You’re going to have to research it more. The trends you found were lame,” says Alix, dropping the story on my desk.
“But I also noted in the original proposal that there was nothing new out there. I did the research. That’s what happens when the top editors come up with the headlines before the stories are actually written.” It’s another trait, along with all the made-up quotes, Alix seems to have brought with her from her old magazine.
“Well, do you want me to tell Cynthia that?” Alix looks peeved.
“Just tell her the truth—there aren’t any real ways to make a C-section scar any smaller or minimize the pain. I found those acupuncture treatments in Chinatown and I thought they sounded promising.”
“You know the issue.” Alix’s not conceding an inch. “Not mainstream enough. What soccer mom in Darien or Evanston is going to creep into some sketchy alterna-practice for strange herbs and needles? Back to the drawing board.”
“But they do for fertility treatments. What’s the difference?” I’m mad now so I don’t care that Alix is giving me the death stare. “You know that’s a different story.”
Alix sniffs. “You do seem to find all the problems and never the solutions.”
“Okay, I’ll keep researching,” I mutter, and take the copy out of her hands. Jules is nowhere to be seen for a postmortem bitch session. Now I’m going to be spending the weekend making up fake C-section alternatives, instead of meeting up with Addison and Brie tonight as I’d hoped.
My phone chimes loudly on the desk. I see that it’s my mom. I have to answer this time.
“Just checking in to make sure you’re still alive. I got your email last weekend about Paris. I’m sorry, Lizzie. I know how much that trip meant to you.”
