Babyland

by Holly Chamberlin

  I complained about this impending problem to Alexandra. “It’s such a waste, really,” I said finally. “I’ve spent so much time and money on these beautiful clothes. And now ...”

  “Do you even like children?” she asked bluntly.

  What, I wondered, did children have to do with my wardrobe? And then, of course, I understood.

  “Of course I like children,” I said, although I realized I’d never really thought about liking them or not. “It’s just that I don’t really know many children, and I haven’t spent much time with the ones I do know.”

  “What about Kristen’s kids?” Alexandra asked.

  “What about them? I’ve never even babysat for them. I wonder if I should be insulted that Kristen’s never asked me.”

  “Have you ever volunteered?”

  “No,” I admitted. “I’m not really comfortable with the notion of babysitting. It’s such a huge responsibility. I don’t trust myself to keep a child safe and sound.”

  “Anna,” Alexandra countered, “you’re one of the most responsible, cautious people I’ve ever met. You’d be a fine babysitter.”

  “I lack experience with children.”

  “Well then why don’t you get some?” she suggested reasonably. “Why don’t you ask Kristen if you can watch one of the kids while she’s busy with the other two. Start slowly. And what about your brother’s kids? You’ve spent time with them, haven’t you?”

  “Some,” I said guiltily. “But mostly on special occasions. You know, on Christmas Day or at a birthday party. Come to think of it, I’ve never even read a bedtime story to a child, or given a bath to a baby, or warmed a bottle. It’s hopeless, Alexandra. I’m going to be a terrible mother.”

  Alexandra patted my hand. “Poor Anna. You’ll be fine and you know it. You’re just panicking. Let’s talk about something else, all right?”

  But I couldn’t let go. “Pilots are required to log a certain number of hours in the air before they can fly solo or get their license. Hair stylists have to practice on wigs before they’re allowed to cut real hair on live heads. Serious jobs require training. So why aren’t prospective parents required to spend a certain amount of time with children, learning all the basics like how to properly perform CPR, and how to safely use a Q-Tip, and, I don’t know, even how to change a diaper. Let’s be real. Prospective parents should be required to pass a battery of tests—psychological, experiential, and emotional—before they’re allowed to reproduce.”

  “Okay,” Alexandra snapped. “Now you’re just being silly. Look, no one can deny that lots of parents are totally unqualified to be caretakers. The world is full of idiots. But you’re not an idiot, Anna. You know that. You’re just experiencing a degree of very normal anxiety. Idiots don’t feel anxiety; they don’t understand self-doubt. They just blunder through life, and their successes are as much accidents as their failures. You’re different, Anna. You—and okay, even Ross—have a conscience. And you’re self-conscious, maybe too much so, but still.”

  “That’s all well and good,” I said, “but am I really qualified? I mean it, Alexandra. I’m going to be entirely responsible for the life of another human being. What makes me qualified for that job?”

  “The fact,” she replied, “that you’re educated and intelligent, and if anyone I know is qualified to be a competent, loving caretaker, it’s you. So, enough pretending to be an incompetent. I don’t want to hear any more self-indulgent whining from you.”

  “Okay,” I said. I’d keep my mouth shut but that didn’t mean my mind was going to stop its anxious racing.

  “Okay. So, what about Italy?” Alexandra asked.

  I shrugged. “What about Italy?”

  “Is the honeymoon still on? You planned on being away for a month, right?”

  I took a tentative sip of steaming herbal, decaffeinated tea before answering. “Of course it’s still on. Why wouldn’t it be?”

  Alexandra shrugged. “I thought pregnant women weren’t supposed to fly.”

  “Only very pregnant women aren’t allowed to fly. I think.”

  I was suddenly aware of just how much knowledge I lacked. Add to my To-Do list: Go home and read, cover to cover, Kristen’s copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting. And then go to and purchase every book Dr. Spock ever wrote.

  Alexandra raised her glass of merlot to the light and sighed.

  “I can’t imagine spending a month in Italy and not being able to drink wine!”

  “Italians aren’t as rabid about the alcohol thing as Americans,” I pointed out. “Lots of pregnant women have a glass or two of wine. Now and then. Once in a while.”

  But I’d better not, I thought. Just to be safe.

  “Okay,” Alexandra said, “I’ll admit Europeans on the whole are more reasonable about health than Americans. A glass of wine won’t kill you or create a horror show of a baby. But what’s Ross going to say?”

  Alexandra’s eyes narrowed to slits, although maybe that was in my imagination. Sometimes it seemed that one of Alexandra’s favorite hobbies was to pick on Ross. And what had he ever done to her but ask me to marry him?

  “He’ll be fine with it,” I said evenly.

  “You’re deluding yourself. If I know Ross at all, and I think I do, he sees this baby as his investment. Why don’t I just say it? He sees this baby as his property. And like any smart businessman, he’s going to do whatever it takes to protect that investment. To keep trespassers off his property.”

  “I thought I was his property,” I said, lamely attempting a joke.

  “You are.” Alexandra pointed first to my face and then to my midsection. “You and the baby. You better believe he’ll be ready to whack any guy who comes within ten yards of you.”

  “Ross is not violent.”

  Alexandra shrugged. “You’re right. But he is the jealous type. And he won’t stand for anyone imposing on his turf. He’ll hire someone to whack the intruder.”

  Now Ross was a member of the mob?

  “You’re horrible,” I said. “You have such a warped idea of Ross. Why can’t you try to like him, for my sake?”

  “Aren’t I always nice to him in person? I bet he doesn’t even know I don’t like him. Unless you’ve ratted me out.”

  “No,” I admitted, “I haven’t ratted you out. Ross is under the impression that you adore him. He’s under the impression that everyone adores him. It’s just the way he is. He doesn’t have a lot of imagination.”

  And at the time I considered Ross’s lack of imagination a good thing. Ross was stable, rooted. He didn’t make me roar with laughter, but he didn’t make me cry.

  “Maybe I should suggest we postpone our honeymoon,” I said miserably.

  “So you can take it with a bawling baby in tow?” Alexandra demanded.

  “No.” I hesitated. “Maybe we should just plan to go to Italy on our fifth anniversary or something. By then the baby won’t be a baby and we can leave him, or her, with my parents. Better yet, with Ross’s parents. Maybe we’ll have a live-in nanny by then. I don’t like the idea, but Ross thinks it’s smart.”

  I felt miserable. I’m sure I looked worse.

  Alexandra put her hand on my arm. “Anna,” she said, “you’ve been dying to go on this trip! And every bride deserves a honeymoon. Especially you.”

  Why especially me?

  “But not every bride gets a honeymoon,” I said glumly. “It won’t be the end of the world if I’m one of them. I mean, what if we go to Italy now and I’m sick every morning and can’t eat spaghetti carbonara, which is one of my favorite things ever, because Ross won’t let me near raw eggs? I’ll be miserable. Ross will be miserable. Maybe it will be better if we just stay home.”

  Alexandra sighed. “How much money will you lose if you cancel now?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly. A lot, I imagine.”

  “It is a shame to waste money,” my friend murmured.

  I wondered, What kind of person would value a tri
p to Italy over her own baby? I shouldn’t care a bit about my honeymoon. Alexandra was wrong. A person like me didn’t deserve a honeymoon.

  “Now I’m thoroughly depressed,” I said. “And it’s all your fault.”

  “And I can’t even buy you a drink to make up for my bad behavior.”

  “You could buy me an appetizer. I’ll have the grilled calamari.”

  Alexandra gestured to the pony-tailed bartender, busy at the other end with a gaggle of young blondes.

  “There is one more thing I wanted to ask you,” she said, turning back to face me.

  “What?” I asked. “Do you want to know if I have hemorrhoids? Do you want to know if I’m constantly peeing? If my extremities are swollen? If my waistline has widened yet? Do you want to know if I’ve grown hair on my chest? What? What else can you possibly ask me that will bring me any lower than I am at this very moment.”

  Alexandra looked at me steadily.

  “Have you told Jack?”

  22

  What Makes a Man

  Jack was—is—Jack Coltrane, professional photographer. I’d known him for close to six years at that point and worked with him on maybe twenty events. His massive loft, which served as both studio and home, is in the Sowa district on Harrison Avenue near East Berkley.

  Jack Coltrane and Ross Davis are polar opposites. Ross is sophisticated; Jack is rough around the edges. Ross is clean shaven; Jack is often scruffy. Ross is a businessman; Jack, although he owns a successful business, is an artist first. Ross watches his diet and works out at the gym three times a week. Jack eats whatever he’s in the mood to eat, whenever he’s in the mood to eat it. And the last thing he’d do is waste his time on a treadmill walking away his day like a hamster on his wheel. The “waste” is Jack’s term.

  In some ways Boston is more like a small town than big city. Sometimes it seems that everybody knows everybody, at least within certain geographically and socially defined circles. Jack knew of Ross through some of the larger corporate and charity events he photographed. Ross knew of Jack through some of the larger corporate and charity events he attended. And they both came to despise each other through me.

  Consider the afternoon I showed up at Jack’s studio for a shoot wearing for the first time the three-carat emerald-cut diamond and platinum engagement ring. Jack pointed at my left hand, which, I admit, I was waving around rather conspicuously.

  “That thing is monstrous,” he growled.

  “I know. I like it that way. And thank you for the heartfelt congratulations.”

  “I didn’t offer congratulations of any kind.”

  “I know. And I don’t care.”

  Jack grunted. “That Davis idiot?”

  My good mood could not be broken by a grumpy old man. Okay, Jack was only forty-five, but I swear there were times when he masqueraded as a nasty old coot. I wondered what he got out of the act. The pleasure of pissing people off? The satisfaction of being considered a genuine curmudgeon? Was keeping people at arm’s length really his desired result? If so, he was doing a fine job of it.

  On another afternoon I stopped by Jack’s studio to review the layout I’d completed for the twenty-first birthday of a bimbo-esque socialite. In my bag was an article from the business section of that morning’s Globe mentioning Ross as one of the city’s up-and-coming, and handsome, entrepreneurs.

  “Did you see this?” I said, sticking the article I’d clipped in his face.

  Jack squinted at it then pushed my hand aside. “I think your taste in husbands is lousy.”

  I felt the tiny pinpricks of blood vessels popping just beneath the surface of my skin. Jack Coltrane, I vowed, was not going to make me break out in a rash!

  “Haven’t you ever heard of the white lie?” I asked rhetorically, smiling nicely. “Wait, of course you haven’t. You’ve never been introduced to the social graces.”

  “He’s not as smart as you are.”

  Yes, it seemed Jack Coltrane was going to make me break out in a rash. Most infuriating, his own demeanor was bland, unruffled.

  “How do you know that?” I cried. “And even if he isn’t as smart as I am, so what? What does it matter? Where do you get off making that kind of judgment? Ross owns his own very successful business!”

  “It’s his father’s.”

  “It was his father’s,” I corrected. “Now it’s his. Mostly.”

  What’s wrong, I thought, with a parent helping his son get a start in life? The family business was a venerable tradition. Jack, I decided, was just jealous that nobody had handed him part-ownership in a successful business. Jack was just pissed that he’d had to do everything on his own. Jack was a bitter, self-made man, that’s what he was.

  I crossed my arms and waited for Jack’s comeback.

  “You’re right,” he said simply. “Hand me that Exact-O knife?”

  Jack might have been willing to let the subject drop, but I wasn’t. I grabbed the tool and thrust it at him.

  “You’re just jealous,” I said, all self-righteous.

  Jack carefully took the sharp instrument from my hand and looked at me with mild amusement. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s it exactly.”

  I was instantly mortified. Of course Jack wasn’t jealous of Ross. The truth was self-evident, at least to me. Ross was jealous of Jack and he didn’t even know it.

  “Let’s just drop the subject,” I said, fully aware I was the one who’d refused to let it go. “Let’s just agree to disagree about Ross.”

  Jack didn’t answer; I left soon after.

  And now Alexandra wanted to know if I’d told Jack that I was pregnant.

  23

  The Lion in His Den

  When you think about a couple, you don’t usually think about the details of their intimate life together. Usually, you assume they have an intimate life, and that’s really all you need to know. And unless one member of the couple decides to share an intimate detail—say, a medical problem like dysfunction—you remain blissfully ignorant of private matters that are really none of your business.

  And then someone gets pregnant.

  Pregnancy, as everyone knows, is proof of sex. It’s proof of the intimate life your friends assume you have; it’s proof of the intimate life your family would like to pretend you don’t have. When someone announces her pregnancy, you’re forced to imagine her having sex; even for a split second, the thought flashes into your mind. You can’t help it, can you? Announcing a pregnancy is like inviting a person into your bedroom, if only for a moment.

  That was why I was not looking forward to telling Jack Coltrane I was pregnant. Because telling him I was pregnant was telling him that yes, I definitely had sex with Ross Davis. My fiancé. The man Jack disdained.

  Of course, I argued with myself about this. Anna, I wondered, why do you care if Jack doesn’t approve of Ross? Ross doesn’t approve of Jack and that doesn’t bother you in the least. Well, it doesn’t bother you that much.

  And here’s what I told myself: I care that Jack doesn’t like Ross because I want all of my friends to like each other. It’s the same thing with Alexandra and Michaela; I’d like them to like each other. That’s all.

  Maybe, I thought, Jack will hear about my pregnancy from someone else. Maybe I can go the whole nine months without ever mentioning it at all.

  Like that could happen.

  Finally, I determined to just spit out the news like I was spitting out news of a sale on toothpaste at CVS. Matter-of-fact. No big deal. No emotional content.

  I dropped by Jack’s studio late one afternoon, unannounced. Was this my first ever drop-in? I believe it was; it certainly wasn’t my last.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked with a scowl.

  “Hello to you, too.” Anna, I thought, maybe this is a bad time. Maybe Jack is too busy.

  “Look,” I blurted, “there’s something I have to tell you. Actually, I don’t have to tell you, I want to tell you ...”

  Jack looked to the cei
ling and then walked away, right across the room, to a row of shelves. I stood there with my mouth open, like a fool.

  “Hello?” I said loudly, to his back. “I was talking to you. You don’t just walk away when someone’s in the middle of a sentence.”

  Jack looked over his shoulder. “You were?” he said. “Sorry. I’m a bit involved here.”

  “You’re socially inept,” I declared, once again to his back.

  “Uh.”

  “See? You grunt instead of forming an answer with words. An adult answer. A normal person’s answer.”

  “Hmm.”

  “It’s like you were raised in a cave. Were you?”

  “Was I what?” Jack, having found whatever it was he was looking for across the room, rejoined me at one of the cluttered worktables.

  “Raised in a cave! And there’s another thing. You don’t listen.”

  “Is there anything at all about me you find acceptable?”

  “Yes,” I admitted. “Your work. I find your work more than acceptable.”

  I saw a tiny smile play at the corner of Jack’s mouth. “Howie Manowitz’s bar mitzvah photos?”

  “No. Well, that too. I mean your work. Your own. Jack Coltrane’s photographs. The few I’ve seen of them, anyway.”

  “Jack Coltrane, artist, retired some years ago,” he said evenly. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “You didn’t disappoint me,” I said inanely. I wondered how the conversation had gotten onto the subject of Jack’s work and so far away from what I wanted to talk about.

  Just tell him, Anna. Just say it.

  “What’s wrong?” Jack asked. “You look like you ate a bad clam.”

  My stomach lurched. It wasn’t bad clams; it was nerves. I felt as nervous as I had just before going onstage as a lineless member of the shabby crowd in my senior year’s production of Les Miserables.

  “Amendment,” I said, archly. “You were raised in a cave with a big pile of bat poop for a playmate.”

  “Guano. Bat poop is called guano.”