... and Baby Makes Two (2 page)

Richard overflowed with apologies, with seltzer, with salt. He betrayed no trace of enjoying himself as he pulled her out of line and attempted to rub the stain out of her skirt. He was all business, but Jane was still not taking him seriously.

She wished she had stayed in line. Just then, a pregnant woman entered the deli. Very pregnant, carrying her pregnancy so casually with an arched-out baby belly. This would have been unremarkable, but she was followed by a similarly pregnant woman. And then another. And another. In the end, there was a string of six pregnant women, waddling up to the counter for chicken salads, bagels with vegetable cream cheese, and soup. Jane had lost her place in line.

Dick-Richard was still babbling. He had a flier for a play—was he in it? Hah! He was an actor after all. She had been right. She was puffed with pride, and now it was time to move on. Again. Really.

“Would you look at that?” Dick asked as he pointed to the school of pregnant women. “What's in the water around here? I hope
you're
not drinking it!”

He was no George Clooney remember? There was no call for stammering here. She just needed to tell him she was busy and she had to go now.

“Look. I'm really busy and I have to go now. It's Monday—it's a crusher day. You seem really nice, but I'm too busy to talk to you. I'm due. At work. I'm past due. I mean, I have to go now. Thanks for this.”

She left the flier on the table and left the actor and the pregnant women in the deli, late for another meeting. Kendra, her manager, didn't speak English. She spoke only Corporate Speak, and though it took twice as long to say anything, she seemed to love it.

Kendra gave a five-minute speech about “levels of granularity as we ramp up the London integration” and suggested that Jane could “add value to this critical process.” Jane translated it in her head and smiled: “We have programs, they have programs. Make them work together.”

“I'm on it,” Jane said, and it was true.

Kendra seemed confused by the brief reply. Didn't Jane know that she was at work? Why wasn't she using Corporate Speak?

Kendra talked about “server maintenance” and “time-sensitive issues.” Jane sifted through the words and realized that Kendra was saying: server maintenance. Why the delays? It was a big issue, and they were going to have to schedule a power outage over the weekend. Saturday night? Jane, can you supervise? Of course she can. Jane's a team player. Go, Jane, go.

As the group shuffled out of the conference room, Kendra pulled Jane aside.

“You know, London offers lots of growth opportunities. If you're interested, I can escalate.”

“Of course,” Jane said before she finished translating. All it meant was “Wanna work in London?”

…

Jane phoned
The New York Times
where her best friend, Ray, would be stumbling into work right about now.

Ray was a theater critic, but people loved him anyway. He recently became a second-stringer for the
Times,
but still published in lots of tourist publications. Tourists loved his ability to identify which audience was right for which show, and publishers loved his ability to beat a deadline. His career expanded to include hosting seminars at the New School, where he interviewed the very people he had skewered in print. Lots of people attended just to see if there would be an ugly scene. Once in a while, they got their wish. Philip Seymour Hoffman spat at him, but Madonna hugged him. Go figure.

Jane loved Ray's broad appetite for the arts. Seated next to him, Jane saw gems and rip-offs. She shared his dislike of all those microphones, and she wondered aloud why there were always naked people on stage at The Public Theater. Ray explained that everyone calls it The Pubic.

“Hey Ray. I have to work Saturday night. How did I let that happen?”

Silence. Why wasn't he clucking in sympathy, or trying to outdo her?

“Are you listening? Are you multitasking? No e-mail when you're on the phone with me. That was the deal, remember?”

“Janie. I'm not multitasking. I'm barely tasking. Auntie Mame's hung.”

No one likes to say “Again?” when they hear that a friend is hung-over, and no one likes to hear it. But Ray's latest boyfriend lived in a Ketel One world, and Ray wasn't up to the challenge.

“He's young. He likes to party. I try to keep up.”

“He has more brain matter to spare.”

“He had a gig at Arlene's Grocery, and it didn't go well. The audience wanted something more …” Ray couldn't finish that sentence. He didn't understand his boyfriend's music, so he really didn't understand his boyfriend's music's audience. So he said, “… else. They wanted something else. And then, there were all those sorrows to drown. Tell me about your wonderful, normal life, Principessa.”

“They want me to go to London.”

She could hear Ray sit up straighter.

“When? For how long?”

“Soon, I think. For forever, maybe. I don't have any details.”

“Who needs details? Go. The London theater scene is
so
much more interesting than New York's. Go, and take me with you.”

Ray described the last seven plays he had seen in London, while Jane multitasked and read e-mail. Ray could tell, and he interrupted her.

“Let's continue this conversation next week at that
Alice in Wonderland
we're going to see. Saturday night. No e-mail. You'll have to pay attention.”

“Ray. I told you. I'm working Saturday night.”

“Next Saturday. Pay attention, you dope.”

…

Jane saved up all her fun, nice, friendly personal e-mails for a mini-break in the day. Here was one from her sister, Sheila. It was huge.
5
MB. Wow. What had she attached?

It was called birthdaympeg. A video clip. The file opened and presented a brace of frosted five-year-old boys dancing off a sugar rush in a green backyard. They belted out an off-key version of “Happy Birthday to me! I am so happy! Happy birthday, happy birthday, happy birthday to meeeeee!”

To finish the song, one of the boys ran loose-limbed to the camera. He became a blur of frosting and teeth and the clip ended.

She saw no babies on her way home. She walked, but at a much slower pace this time, stopping in Chinatown for dinner to take home. She was not sad, not lonely, not like you're thinking. She was definitely tired and would have preferred to be facing her twenty-second birthday, or even her thirty-first. She anticipated hating forty, but being all calm and wise at fifty. What was so bad about thirty-seven? Her life was fine, good, even wonderful, and only a real bitch would complain about this good life.

No, she wasn't sad. Nor was she stupid. All those babies and pregnant women must have been there all along, she knew that. She was just noticing them now because of some biological alarm that needed to be reset. The hole in her middle was at midabdomen. How annoying was that? The magazines and talk shows told her that
she'd be fine on her own, but none of them told her about this ache. What was she supposed to do, become a single mother? Just do that? Just become a mother who was single?

A single mother.

She stopped walking. It sounded so plausible. She had a big apartment, she made a good living, and had a supportive family nearby. Well. She had family nearby. She was strong and she was loving. She could go out and get pregnant and have a baby and be happy. She could do this. She could have a baby.

Jane's life was a movie. (Isn't everyone's?) So, in her head, Jane tried to fast-forward to her life as a Single Mother, and the picture was fuzzy. There was baby food on her blouse, and she stumbled over Legos that were scattered everywhere. But she was smiling. Obviously, the fast-forward technique didn't work every time. She started walking again. Single Mother. That was crazy talk. Whatever phase she was in, Jane would ride it out until menopause. So there.

She fell asleep late, on the couch, in front of the television. She had a crazy dream that she was at a picnic, playing tug-of-war with a beautiful red velvet cord. She couldn't see her opponents, so she started following the red cord. She woke up before she could find them. The TV was flickering with some medical drama where doctors were urging a sweaty pregnant woman to breathe and push, and they could see the head! And then a six-month-old infant, playing the newborn, artfully smudged with goo, was placed on the mother's chest. She wept with joy.

Jane remained stoic. She brushed her teeth and went to bed without flossing, proving to herself that she was too irresponsible to be a single mother.

…

Dick-Richard was in Starbucks every morning, so Jane opted for the acidic coffee available in the pantry at Argenti, and then quickly converted to tea. After all, she couldn't go get coffee in a place
where some temping actor-guy liked her and was flirting with her. The flirting could lead to dating and the dating could lead to love and the love could lead to marriage and babies. This temp could turn out to be the father of her child. Jane wasn't sure if she was afraid of him or of the theoretical baby. Better to keep this whole scary issue in limbo. Wait it out and drink tea.

The baby haunting continued through the week. Thankfully, some of the little ones were very unattractive. There was the red-faced toddler whose goal in life was to inflict his misery on all of Manhattan. There was the little cherub with the river of green snot oozing from her nose. There was a whole mess of running, screaming children in a playground that must have been there last week, but Jane had never noticed it. Jesus, there were a lot of children in a city that was really designed for adults.

Saturday came, and Jane made a pilgrimage to Bed, Bath & Beyond. It was jammed with Manhattanites who urgently needed more cookware, better towels, and storage solutions. Plus throw pillows and salsa. Jane was there for hooks, chic entranceway hooks to hold fashionable coats and jackets. She had ugly, boring brass hooks, and that would never do. Surely a big store like this would offer something more attractive—and it did. She carried two sets of hooks as she browsed the store: self-adhesive or needs-hardware. Oh, the suspense.

There was a special in-store demonstration on baby-proofing. Jane thought, for a moment, that this was a way to keep babies out of your home. She came to realize that it meant keeping babies from opening drawers.

She paced herself, well aware of the server maintenance that awaited her that evening. She would be required to supervise people who were doing something by rote. These people were already bored before they woke up. She was their overpriced babysitter. Jane browsed, she touched, she sniffed. Everything was bright and clean.

“Hey, Jane!”

Dick-Richard. It was Dick-Richard.

“Are you coming to my show tonight? I think we have, like, three reservations. You have to come and make it like four.”

It's a big, crowded store in a big, crowded city. This sort of thing simply never happens in New York, except when it does.

“Oh. I'm sorry. I can't—”

A woman pushed her stroller between them. The sleeping baby taking the ride stirred, but continued to sleep. Jane lost her bearings for only a moment.

“I have to work.”

“At night? Come on! You're, like, an executive or something, aren't you? What are you doing working on a Saturday night?”

A long explanation followed. Richard seemed to get some of it. He nodded and did lots of active listening, then launched into an animated description of the play the company, the rehearsal process, his role, and what happened when he dropped a line last night and it was so funny and the audience had no idea.

Jane's mind wandered. She had always believed in signs. It was part of her Irish heritage. This guy was not sweeping her off her feet right away, but there was something to be said for the fact that she kept seeing him and seeing him. And babies. She kept seeing him and babies. She should be courageous, she should get out of limbo, and she should buy the hooks that required hardware. Brave girl.

She took his flier and his personal business card, which featured a grinning photo and a list of his union affiliations. She gave him her number. Her real number. Very brave girl.

…

Over the years, Jane had managed a lengthy series of repairs to her apartment. Once, she was a fix-it junkie. But this time, she went home and managed to decimate her wall attempting to insert the necessary hardware for her hooks. She left the new crater, and all the plaster dust, and retreated for the predictable safety of the of-
fice, where teamsters would never have allowed her to attempt this hook fiasco.

Server maintenance is not nearly as thrilling as it sounds. Oh, no, it's actually a tedious process, and Jane's presence there was somewhat ceremonial. If anyone had made a disastrous error, it would have been Jane's responsibility to contact powerful people and apologize. She had hours to kill and a search engine at her disposal. She sat at her computer and Googled.

She Googled Dick-Richard. Richard. She should really think of him as just Richard. She found him mentioned in a handful of reviews for Off-off-Broadway plays:

…

What Now, Chairman Mao?
—a musical that was not well received

The Peanut Butter Plan
—a children's play that was very well received