by Sally Quinn
When the waiter came over Des ordered a martini for himself and a glass of Perrier for her.
Allison was so shocked she couldn’t respond and the waiter took their order and scurried away.
“Excuse me,” she said in a very controlled voice. “But I think there’s been some mistake here.”
“Oh, what’s that?”
“I was under the impression that I had ordered a glass of white wine.”
“You can’t have that!”
“And why not?”
“Because you’re pregnant.”
“I am not!… I mean… how do you know? I mean… I am?”
Des smiled. Des beamed. Des lifted his arm and flexed his muscles.
“I am?” she asked weakly. “You mean I don’t have a brain tumor? I’m not dying?”
Des got up and moved over to her side of the table, put his arm around her and kissed her on the forehead, then gently on the lips. It was a very un-Des-like gesture. He was usually so uncomfortable about what he called P.D. A., or public display of affection.
“Oh Des, it’s true, isn’t it?” She could feel her throat constrict with relief and happiness.
“I love you, Sonny. I’m so pleased and proud that you’re going to have my baby.”
It was such a sweet speech it almost made her cry. He looked like the little Catholic altar boy he once was, a Des she had never known and rarely seen any evidence of.
“I love you, too.” She didn’t know what more to say and she was afraid if she did she would start to cry. She couldn’t possibly have a scene here in Bice’s. Already several people they knew were looking at them.
The waiter was the only one who dared approach them with their drinks. Des took his glass after the waiter had left and lifted it to her.
“Here’s to Junior,” he said.
“I’m so happy to know that I’m going to live, not to mention that I’m going to have a baby, that I’m not even going to get annoyed with you for assuming it will be a boy.”
“If this is what pregnancy does to you, I’m all for it. The mellowing of Sonny Sterling.”
“I’m mellow because neither of us has any control over whether it’s a boy or a girl. Anyway, we’ll soon find out. They have a new test now that’s much faster than amniocentesis. It’s called something like chorionic villus sampling. You take it three to six weeks into your pregnancy and you get the results within a week or so. That way, if there’s a problem…”
She was talking so quickly and so excitedly that it took her a moment to notice that Des’s face had stiffened.
“What do you mean, amniocentesis? You’re not going to consider that, are you?” There was an urgent tone to his voice.
“Well, no, I just told you, there’s an earlier test. I’ll have to discuss it with my gynecologist but…”
“Sonny.”
“What?”
“We can’t do this. You can’t do this.”
“Do what? What are you talking about, Des?”
“I’m talking about amniocentesis or whatever the hell the other test is. Those tests. We can’t do those tests. Any of them.”
“Why not?” She was genuinely puzzled.
“Well, suppose they showed that something was wrong with the child?”
“Then, unfortunately, I’d have to have an abortion.”
“No.”
“No what?”
“I can’t let that happen. I can’t allow you to abort our child. My child.”
“First of all, I would be aborting a fetus, not a child. Second, you can’t not allow me to do anything. And third, what the hell is the matter with you? You’ve always been pro-choice. Or at least you haven’t been anti-abortion. What’s this about?”
“We weren’t talking about my baby.”
“Des, let me get this straight. I am forty years old. You are over fifty. We are older parents. The risk of having a defective fetus is much greater for us. You are saying that you will take a chance on having a seriously damaged child rather than abort a fetus early on.”
He didn’t answer for a minute or so but she could see that he was struggling and that it was very painful for him.
“I guess that’s what I’m saying.”
“Well, Des, I’m the mother. And I couldn’t hack it. I know myself too well. Frankly, I know you too well. You’d leave it to me to deal with. You are not the most liberated soul I’ve ever met. I am not prepared to be a single parent to a severely retarded or handicapped child. That’s all there is to it.”
“And I can’t stand by and let you destroy our baby.”
They stared at each other, stone-faced and determined.
“It’s not negotiable, Des. It’s simply not negotiable.”
* * *
She felt so illicit, reading a baby book in the office. She hid it under her desk and brought it up under the newspaper to take a peek whenever she had a free moment.
No sooner would “the boys” leave after her morning meeting than she found her heart racing. She would look around furtively, carefully spread the paper out and hold it up completely open. Then she would reach down and slide whichever book she was obsessed with at the moment into her lap. Like a man taking clandestine glances at a girlie magazine, she would thumb through until she found her favorite mother/baby profile.
She was particularly interested in the descriptions of the working mothers and how they coped with their new babies, how they divided their time and still managed to be relatively guilt-free. It was becoming clear that they didn’t. In fact, now that she was watching the working mothers in the office more closely, she was beginning to see all kinds of things she hadn’t been aware of before. She felt as if she had been living in a dark closet and suddenly somebody had turned on the lights. The women in the office had a sort of underground system of sympathy and support. And well they might have. The stress, the compensation, juggling of schedules, covering up, all to care for their children and present a facade of professionalism in the face of the most daunting obstacles was a revelation to her. And it was so obvious for anyone who took the time, who knew to look for it, right out there.
She hadn’t told anyone yet she was pregnant. She wanted to wait until after the test. The bloody test. She had seen her doctor. He had presented the options: amnio or chorionic villus sampling. Amnio you took after four months, and didn’t get the results until you were into your fifth month. If you had to “terminate the pregnancy” it would be really awful. The baby would have started kicking. She knew somebody it had happened to. Her friend never even tried to get pregnant again. Besides, she had to consider Des. She had been appalled at his position on prenatal testing, stunned that he was so deeply emotionally opposed to it. He had always been pro-choice, at least nominally, yet not when it involved his own child. This was the second time now that religion had intruded into their relationship and it was profoundly upsetting to her. First, it was having his brother, the priest, be part of his marriage, or rather their marriage ceremony. Now this. He couldn’t stop her from having either test. He couldn’t stop her from aborting a defective fetus. But the depth of his feeling had shaken her. It had convinced her that their marriage could not survive the abortion of his five-month-old-plus baby. Which is the way he would see it. There was a slightly greater risk of having a miscarriage with the chorionic villus sampling, especially for a woman of forty-one, and she would be forty-one in July. She could, however, take the test at ten weeks and have the results in one week. She wouldn’t even be three months pregnant. She wouldn’t tell Des she was having the test. If the results were bad she could have a simple D and C and tell him she’d miscarried. He’d never know the difference. He might suspect, but he’d never know for sure. The question then would be, could she live with the lie?
This was such a macabre line of thinking. She would find herself wandering off. Then she would pull herself back to the baby book and a chapter on how the mother could bond with the child and not feel her role usurped by t
he baby-sitter.
Actually, she found herself wandering off constantly, about everything. She couldn’t concentrate on any one subject for more than a few minutes at a time.
The whole idea of being pregnant had come as such a shock to her even though they had discussed it before they were married. She had gone so long without having a baby or even wanting one that the idea of a child was more a fantasy or an illusion; she never really expected it to be a reality. It was only when she and Des first talked about getting married this time that she had developed this terrible physical longing, this baby hunger. Even then it seemed she was destined to be denied this final gift. She was so used to personal losses that she had accepted the fact she would never be a mother. Now she was going to be and she was having a difficult time coming to terms with it.
Part of that had to do with her job. Her new job. She hadn’t even been back from London a year. She was a workaholic, obsessed with the office, her career; so much so that it was even difficult making time for Des, her husband. Now that she was pregnant, she was strangely, unexpectedly of two minds about it.
Her time of adjustment had been endless, it seemed to her, like going from freedom to prison. The subject matter—from foreign to national—had been completely different. Even though she had been on the national staff before, there had been three years of politics to learn. Washington had changed drastically in those three years. In just that short a time it had gone from being a company town to a corporate metropolis. It wasn’t just about politics and government anymore. The White House no longer wielded the influence on the city that it used to, either politically or socially. The Congress was never in town, always on the road, politicking and raising money. Congressmen and senators were isolated and disillusioned. The diplomatic corps was irrelevant. The lawyer/lobbyists were in such proliferation and had been so exposed as fixers that they no longer had the kind of influence or stature that once commanded huge amounts of money. The glamour of the press had worn thin. They had become as institutional as the other “estates.” They were now too cautious and establishment to have the cachet they had in the seventies or even early and mid-eighties. The new breed of journalists were more like yuppie accountants, more concerned with their mortgages than with throwing bombs.
It had taken her the entire past year just to absorb all of this, the kind of thing that she would have automatically understood if she had stayed as a reporter covering the White House.
This was all on top of just plain information that she had had to learn, not to mention learning how to be a boss. As much as Des teased her about finally finding her metier, it was difficult for her to order people around. She did it and she gradually learned how to make it look easy, but much of the time her stomach was in knots trying to take in as much as she could and convince people that she knew what she was talking about. It was only in the past few months that she had become comfortable with her role as editor, as a supervisor. She had always been used to being her own agent, doing things for herself. Now she was responsible for other people. For that reason she was conflicted about the baby, about the timing. Just as she had gotten her feet on the ground, she was going to be distracted for months, then away for at least three months, then distracted forever after. If the other women on her staff were any indication of how she would be pulled back and forth, she was going to be in for some tough times.
There was another side to it that pleased her, though. She had finally allowed herself to admit that she needed a child to make her feel fulfilled. She wanted someone of her own, some family of her own. Somebody with her own blood. It was visceral. Her grandparents were all dead. Her parents were dead. She had no brothers or sisters. Uncle Rog and Aunt Molly were all she had and they weren’t going to be around much longer. She needed kin. Des was her husband but he didn’t count. He wasn’t a blood relation. He could leave her any time. That wasn’t the same. This was a very primitive, tribal feeling she had. She had always felt so lost. So alone. Early on with no mother, no siblings. Even more so after Nana died. Sam never remarried so it was just the two of them. When Sam was murdered she didn’t think she could bear it. Now she had a chance to feel whole again. To feel found. Her baby would give her that.
She was also tired. She hadn’t thought about it before. When she calculated the amount of leave she had taken over the years in London it probably didn’t add up to more than a few weeks. There was always something and her vacation time had been expendable. Her career always came first, even over her private life. It used to annoy Julian no end. Now she couldn’t think of a greater luxury than to be able to take three months off and do nothing. Not that having a baby was nothing. She would have a baby nurse full time, around the clock. Doing nothing to her meant doing anything but newspapering. This would be enforced time off with something more important to do than putting out a paper. With no guilt. She had worked so hard over the years, canceled so many plans, so much of her private life, that she felt no guilt at all. She knew it would be a big pain in the ass for Walt and Alan, but she also knew that they were enlightened enough to think it was a good thing. In the end, it all balanced out. She felt really happy about her circumstances. In fact, she was happier than she had been for as long as she could remember.
‘That’s yesterday’s paper.”
She started as though she’d been shot, then quickly pushed the paper on top of the baby book, covering it up so that he couldn’t see what she was reading.
“What?” She looked up to see Sprague smiling knowingly at her.
“Yesterday’s paper,” he said and gestured toward the journal lying on her desk. “What’ve you got under it, Playboy?”
What was it about him that rattled her so? He made her angry and frustrated in a way that nobody else did or could. He had this combination of Southern gentlemanly manners and confrontational arrogance that drove her crazy. He managed to be hostile and courtly at the same time. She prided herself on never being outdone by anyone, especially a man, giving as good as she got, being quick with a comeback. With Sprague, she always felt tongue-tied and it infuriated her. She could never decide whether she was angrier at him or herself.
“Playgirl” she said, pleased that she could think of anything to say, yet she felt the blood surge to her face.
He didn’t say anything. He just smiled.
She blushed even redder. Damn him!
He reached over and pulled the glass door to her office closed.
“May I?” he asked after the fact.
Without waiting for an answer he sat down.
“May I?” he asked again, as an afterthought.
Now it was her turn to say nothing. She waited to see what was on his mind.
“I need to go to Colombia.”
“This doesn’t sound too safe.”
“I’ve got a lead on Mendez. I think Antonia Alvarez and he are working together and there is some evidence that they have sucked Foxy in. They may be blackmailing him. There is a limo that pulls up every week in the early morning in front of the Jefferson Hotel. The doorman is Colombian and he says the limo driver is from the Colombian embassy. The driver always delivers a package to Foxy’s suite. He delivers it in person. He will never leave it at the desk or let anyone else take it up to him.”
“What do you think is in it?”
“I think it’s drugs. Cocaine.”
“Holy shit!” she said.
“Holy shit!” was an expression in the newsroom reserved for only the most incredible stories. It was sparingly used.
“Tyson, you’re talking about the attorney general. You’re telling me that the attorney general of the United States has been turned on to drugs by the deputy chief of mission of the Colombian embassy while he’s fucking her? That she is delivering drugs to him at his residential hotel on a regular basis? That she is blackmailing him into God knows what—we’ll get to that later? And that she is in cahoots with the Foreign Minister of Colombia?”
“That’s what I’m telli
ng you.”
“That, my friend, is a great story. Go for it, baby. It will bring glory to us all. You have my blessing for your trip to Colombia.”
“That’s a switch. You’re usually so reluctant to let me do anything.”
“Ah, but now I can see my own name in lights.”
Why was she talking to him in such a flip manner? She never talked to any other reporter this way.
“However,” she added, “we are forgetting one small thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I think we need to run this one by Fineman and Warburg. They’re upstairs in a meeting right now, but the minute they get back we’re going in to see them.”
“But you have no objection?”
“Absolutely none.”
“What about my safety? Aren’t you concerned about my safety anymore?”
“You have to be fatalistic about this. We all have to die sometime. It might as well be for the Pulitzer Prize.”
“You’re tough, boss,” he said, picking up her flip tone, as he walked out of her office. “You’re very, very tough.”
He paused, then stopped and looked back at her.
“Or are you?”
Slightly chagrined, she watched him make his way through the newsroom, his walk so confident and assured that he might have owned the place. If only he had known that the minute he left she had picked up the baby book and flipped through to the section on breast feeding.
She sat there for a moment intent on breast preference, delay in the mother’s milk, is the baby getting enough, and the manual expression of breast milk, when suddenly she broke out in a cold sweat.
One of her reporters had just walked in and dropped a bomb in her lap, what might be the hottest story of the decade, the greatest scandal in Washington since she could remember, and she was reading about breast feeding. This was pathetic. This was terrifying. Ten minutes pregnant and her brain was turning to pablum. Is this why so many normally bright, talented, ambitious women turned into cows overnight simply because they were going to have a baby? It was like being married with three children and then discovering in middle age that you were a repressed homosexual. She had to get a grip on herself before it was too late. She took the baby book and shoved it into her briefcase under the desk, determined to take it home and never bring it to work again. Never mind that it would be like a chain smoker having a pack of cigarettes in her briefcase for the rest of the afternoon.
