Hot Little Hands (26 page)

“I do, but I don't have time for anything else. And how do I know I want to do this forever? I'm twenty-seven. I feel like I'm putting all my eggs in one basket.”

“You can change later, though, right?” Amelia said. “It's not like you're tied down.”

“I don't know,” Jane said. “Maybe I should go to grad school? But I don't know what I'd even want to study. I'd probably be applying for my same job afterward, in an even worse economy.”

“So don't go to grad school.”

“I guess.”

When they got to Amelia's building, Jane turned to face her, reached out, and rubbed her belly. “You look lovely,” she said. “Glowing and all that.”

Amelia narrowed her eyes. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing! I really mean it.”

Jane followed Amelia up the stairs and they stopped outside her door. “So, I have a yes-or-no question for you.”

“Is this from Mom?”

“No. Between me and you.”

“Shoot.”

“Okay.” Jane took a breath. “Should I have a baby?”

“No!”

Amelia was surprised to see Jane looking surprised.

“Why not?”

“Because you don't want one.”

“But what if I did?”

“You don't. You want to keep working your job. And going on dates. And maybe go back to school, like you said.”

“I could have a baby instead of all that.”

“Don't be dumb.”

“Why are you being so mean about it?”

“I'm not. I just think it's a bad idea.”

“Whatever.” Jane cocked her head and put her hands on her hips in an argument stance Amelia recognized from childhood. “You're just scared I'd take the attention away from you.”

“Well.” Amelia couldn't help herself. “It is kind of my thing right now.”

“I knew it.”

“Why don't you get your own thing?”

“I can't believe this,” Jane said. “Suddenly you own pregnancy? Maybe we should put out a press release to alert the other billions of women on the planet.”

“You're just jealous,” Amelia said.

“You're just an attention seeker.”

“Am not.” Amelia reached out and grabbed Jane's ponytail. She yanked. “Take that back.”

“Ow!” Jane grabbed a bunch of Amelia's hair. “Get off me!”

“You get off me.”

“Take it back.”

“You first.”

They stayed like that, with their necks craned to the side, grabbing each other's hair with their right hand and using the left hand to try to fend the other girl off.

“Ow.”

“Ouch!”

“Get off me.”

“I'm going into labor!”

Jane let go. She looked panicked. “What should I do? Are you serious?”

“No,” Amelia said. “I just had to get you off me. You psycho.”

“You're the psycho.” Both girls stood there, catching their breath and rubbing their heads.

“Do you want to come in for a second?” Amelia said. “I have to sit down.”

Jane followed her inside and made some ginger tea. They sat at the kitchen table, blowing into their cups without drinking.

“Why don't you wait till I have mine and see if it seems like something you want?” Amelia said.

“Yeah, it was just a momentary idea,” said Jane. “Like I said, I'm thinking about grad school.” Her tone was still defensive, but when she stood up and put her cup in the sink, she said, “I'm sorry.”

“Don't be,” Amelia said. “This all just made me really happy that I'm not having a girl.”

“Seriously,” Jane said. “If I have a child, I'm definitely having an only child.”

“Siblings suck,” Amelia agreed.

“Sisters especially,” Jane said. Then she left to go back to work, and Amelia lay down for a nap.

The editor who had acquired Amelia's book was a woman in her mid-thirties called Camille. She was tall and southern, sarcastic and whip-smart. Amelia had felt intimidated every time they had met or talked on the phone, but never so much as the day they met for a cup of hot cider on a bench in Union Square, a couple of blocks away from Camille's office, during Amelia's thirty-fourth week of pregnancy.

“Congratulations,” Camille said, her legs wound around each other like pipe cleaners and her neck decorated with a nautical-themed scarf. “A lot of my friends from high school had babies at your age. You know what the best part is, right? You could be an empty nester by the time you're forty.”

“Are any of your friends empty nesters already?” Amelia asked.

Her mind was too buzzy to sit still and listen while the editor answered. Camille had suggested this meeting, and Amelia was certain she was going to be asked about a time line for publication and, if she didn't have one, a time line for paying back her advance. She had spent the morning formulating a financial plan, emailing all the copywriting clients she'd ever had, and scouring baby forums to work out how much it cost to have one, wondering if she could breast-feed till the kid was of paper-route age.

“I'm sorry I let you down,” she said. “I know you went out on a limb to buy the book in the first place. I want you to know I'll get the money back to you. I'm happy to commit to a payment schedule, or whatever you think is best.”

“Psshhh.” Camille shook her head. “You know I'd rather see you finish your book than see that money again. You're so funny, Amelia. You have a great voice. Are you sure you don't want to try to finish it? You could write about the pregnancy and the baby, or pretend neither of those things happened and just continue as you were. Whatever you want.”

“I can't,” Amelia said. “I just don't think it's gonna happen.”

“In that case…” Camille leaned over her satchel and pulled out her iPad. “I wanted to ask you something.” She went into Firefox and opened up the blog of a pretty young girl, who was pictured in her bedroom, kneeling on the floor in faux worship, in front of a shrine dedicated solely to—

“Stephanie Zinone,” Amelia whispered, “from
Grease 2.
”

The girl had low bangs and a purple headband in her hair, and she was wearing a Pink Ladies jacket inside out, just like Michelle Pfeiffer in the movie. She was staring wide-eyed at the shrine with a solemn, reverent expression on her face. It was an awesome picture.

“Do you know Sabina?” Camille asked her. “She's been writing a blog called
Rainbow Cake
since she was eight years old. She's a sophomore in high school now.”

“No, I don't know it,” Amelia said. “Her name's Sabina?”

“Yeah, she's Russian but she was born in Dubai. Her parents are engineers and they were working there. They moved to the States when she was about five. She actually taught herself English by reading Sweet Valley High books.”

“Wow, I'll have to look her up.”

“I think you'd like her blog. She does fashion shoots, little reviews. That kind of thing. She's got a good following. Anyway.” Camille slid the iPad back into her bag. “I'm in talks with her about a book. I just wanted to run something by you. She has a piece about how when she was in grade school, she used to decide what to wear the next day by whatever color Katie Couric was wearing on the evening news. She had a system. I remembered your candy heart piece, which I love, and I wanted to see if you still plan to use it, in your book or your blog, or anywhere else. If you do, it's totally fine. Like I said, I love that piece—”

“It's fine,” Amelia said. “She can have it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course.” Amelia rested her hands on her belly and forced a smile.

“So are you excited about the baby?” Camille asked. “Or scared? How does it feel?”

“It feels great,” Amelia said, and for the first time, it came out as a lie. “I feel the happiest I've ever felt.”

All the way down Broadway, Amelia didn't take in a thing she passed: didn't see a person she brushed by or even glance at the shoes in the window of David Z. Tears prickled on her cheeks and she pulled her hat down over her ears and tried to hide herself. Katie Couric, she kept thinking. Katie Couric on the evening news. She was in grade school. When Katie Couric was on the evening news.

A sob escaped her mouth at the corner of 9th Street. The other people waiting for the light looked over. A guy with a bike. A woman with a Strand tote. A few others. With her puffy coat and her makeup-less face and the big bulge at her midsection, she knew what she looked like to them: a young pregnant girl not even interesting enough to have her own reality show. A bookless writer. A blogless unicorn lover. A big stupid nobody.

The doors of (Le) Poisson Rouge were locked when she got there, and she banged until someone answered: an older man in a turtleneck who took one look at her and didn't try to stop her when she said she was there to see Seth.

She found him downstairs in the quiet nightclub. He was sitting at the bar, on the patron side, talking to a muscly bald guy, and he looked half pleased, half horrified to see Amelia approaching, her belly leading the way across the empty dance floor.

“Mimi,” he said, standing up. “This is—what's wrong?”

“Oh, nothing.” Amelia looked at the other guy and laughed. “Sorry. I just came to ask you a question.”

“What is it?” Seth asked.

“When did—when did Katie Couric take over the evening news?”

Seth looked at his friend and back at her. “Who?”

Amelia started to cry again. Seth put an arm around her. “What's going on?”

Amelia said the first thing that came to her mind: “I just feel. So. Fat.”

Later, after Seth had put her in a cab and given the driver the address, Amelia found herself lying on her parents' couch, her face buried in her mom's lap, sobbing for a good few hours, stopping every now and then to explain to her mom, again, about Sabina and her blog and her book and Stephanie Zinone and the Pink Ladies jacket.

“What does she know about
Grease 2
?” she asked. “What do I?”

“You know a lot about
Grease 2,
” her mom said, rubbing her back, and Amelia started to cry again.

“Why did I do this?” she said finally. “It's like I tried to commit suicide or something. It's like I just couldn't hack it. Who's gonna date me now? Who's gonna marry me?”

“I didn't know you wanted to get married,” her mom said.

“I don't,” Amelia said. “But why did I do this? It's like I'm nothing now.”

“I think—” Her mom went quiet. Amelia stopped crying and tried to slow her breathing. She waited to hear what her mom thought. “I think you just wanted to keep busy and feel involved. And not writing the book made you feel futile.
That
part was the suicide. So you just did this big new thing. That's what I think. And I think you're going to be great at it.”

“You do?” Amelia said, looking up at her mom.

“Sure,” her mom said. “Better than me, anyway. I had no idea what I was doing. Still don't.”

Amelia wasn't a great mother, or a bad one. She was just a mother. She had a hard first few months, worn down by sleeplessness and feeding difficulties and the urgent and constant recognition that it was her sole responsibility to keep another tiny human alive. When her sisters came over, swanning by on their way home from work or brunch or drinks or a date, Amelia was so excited to have them hold Henry for five minutes so she could shower that she didn't even try to register their feelings about her life or the way she looked or the state of her kitchen or the silent and blank computer sitting in the corner, the keyboard covered in a pile of mismatched socks, each about three inches in length.

“Hey, little perfect,” she heard Celine say one day.

“Hi, precious moo,” Jane echoed.

“You're not holding him right,” Georgia said. “He's uncomfortable, give him to me.”

Amelia wondered if her sisters might actually be capable of love and, more specifically, love for the little piece of illegitimate family kicking in their arms.

Her parents came often, her friends now and then, Seth brought his parents over, and Hank would text her on occasion to ask if there was anything she needed.

I'm fine,
she'd text back days later, when Henry was in his sling and she finally had the use of her fingers.
You enjoy your feckless youth.

The publishing industry was, as ever, teetering on the edge of demise. No one had been ready for e-readers, Amazon was soliciting books for publication all by itself, people were still writing op-eds that said things like “Call me a Luddite, but I just love curling up with a good old bound book, and a screen will never feel the same.”

“But it doesn't matter how you feel,” Amelia would mutter out loud to whatever well-meaning pundit it was that week.

Her old editor Camille had left her publishing house not long after Henry was born and gone to get an MFA, and either Sabina hadn't yet finished her manuscript or it had been buried at the bottom of some new editor's pile, giving it a long lead time, and a 2013 publication date. Amelia and Henry were on their way home from the park one afternoon, the boy just having learned to walk, when they saw it in the window of WORD bookstore. Amelia bought it and took it home and it sat on her bedside table, topped by book after book, while she was kept busy by her new schedule: freelance copywriting, nap times, mealtimes, playdates with kids from the park and their parents, kids from the YMCA and their parents, kids from Henry's preschool and their parents.

Occasionally, when her own parents offered to babysit, she would go out with her old friends, never failing to be the one who got the drunkest, stealing drags off people's cigarettes in the street. One time she made out with a Pratt student in the back of a crowded bar, declining his invitation to go home together with that glorious and improbable excuse: I have a kid.