Babyland

by Holly Chamberlin

  “Let’s drop the subject,” I said testily. It wasn’t as if I was hearing any real and useful advice on how to deal with my libido-less fiancé.

  “I’m sure everything will be all right,” Kristen said with a knowing pat on my arm.

  Her condescension annoyed me even more than Michaela’s hitherto unknown familiarity with the shape of my fiancé’s butt. “Of course it will be all right,” I snapped. “Everything’s already all right. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “Has anyone seen the new Baz Lurhman film?” Alexandra asked brightly.

  Tracy grabbed onto the new topic like a drowning woman grabbing for a life raft. “Yes, I have, have you? I’ve been dying to talk about it with someone.”

  They launched into an animated discussion about the movie; Kristen made small talk at Michaela, who didn’t even pretend to listen; and I sulked. A fat lot of good it had done to ask for my girlfriends’ advice. From now on, I vowed, I’m keeping my personal life personal.

  37

  Carpe Diem

  What , I wondered, as I kneeled on the old but well-preserved Oriental carpet, can Mrs. Kent possibly find so fascinating in a scale drawing?

  Earlier that morning I’d taken exact measurements of the room where Mrs. Kent wanted the party to be held. It was at the very back of the house and opened onto a splendid garden. And now, as I worked on the plan, I was aware of Mrs. Kent’s unnecessary presence just behind me on that overstuffed couch. Every day was the same; Mrs. Kent was just—there.

  Maybe, I thought, I should speak to the officious Ms. Butterfield next time I found her lurking in the hall and explain my discomfort. But I rejected that idea as potentially incendiary. Who was I to criticize the behavior of my employer? Besides, I wasn’t sure I had the nerve to approach La Buttercup unless it was a matter of life and death.

  I wondered as I drew in a center table, Maybe Mrs. Kent thinks I’m going to steal her silver. Anna Traulsen, supposed good girl, worms her way into the homes of the rich and famous only to case the joints and make off one night with the family jewels.

  Or maybe, I thought, Mrs. Kent is lonely; maybe she just likes the company of someone else in the room. She wasn’t really a bother, was she? It wasn’t as if she kept up a stream of chatter; in fact, she never spoke a word until I asked a question. And it wasn’t as if she was staring at me fixedly, watching for mistakes. In fact, she sat quite silently on the overstuffed couch reading a novel or book of poetry. Mrs. Kent favored Edith Wharton and Edna St. Vincent Millay; neither choice much surprised me.

  “You seem like a nice young woman,” Mrs. Kent said, apropos of nothing.

  I almost tottered to the floor; it wasn’t a long fall, but it would have been an embarrassing one. “Thank you,” I murmured.

  “Are you?”

  My head shot up. I found Mrs. Kent staring intently at me from her perch on the overstuffed couch. I laughed nervously.

  “I, uh, I think so. Yes. I’m a nice person. I try to be.”

  “Too nice,” said with the air of a hanging judge pronouncing a sentence of guilty. “I sense you are too nice a person, Anna.”

  “Can anyone really be too nice?” I asked rhetorically, and against my better judgment. I wasn’t there to discuss the flaws and foibles of my character. I was there to work.

  Mrs. Kent showed her magnificently perfect teeth in what I thought might be a smile. “Absolutely,” she declared. “There is a difference, my dear, between a kind and thoughtful person and a martyr. A difference between having a generous nature and allowing yourself to be taken advantage of by every grasping, needy specimen who comes along.”

  I was too stunned to be insulted. Besides, I sensed Mrs. Kent wasn’t insulting me as much as she was trying to educate me. In her own interesting way.

  “Yes,” I said. “I suppose there is.”

  And then, in what I was to learn was a common habit, Mrs. Kent changed conversational directions without warning.

  “You know, my dear,” she pronounced, “there’s nothing good about getting old except that you stop caring so much about lots of ridiculous things that used to occupy your precious time. When you’re fifty, sixty, seventy, you realize—if you’re smart, of course—that you just don’t have any time to waste caring a damn about an extra pound, or the stray hairs that have been appearing in the strangest places since you turned forty, or the liver spots and skin tags that have been wreaking havoc with your complexion for the past ten years or so.”

  “Oh,” I said. I was slightly horrified. Old people were monsters, and I would be one, too! I did a quick calculation: When my as-yet-unborn child was twenty, I would be almost sixty. Certainly, I would repulse my own child!

  “But that’s it, my dear,” Mrs. Kent went on with a magnificent sigh. “There’s nothing else good about growing old. Nothing. Except maybe not being dead. But even that’s debatable.”

  I could see that. Who wouldn’t rather be dead than, say, suffering a horrible, prolonged, and ultimately fatal disease? But still. I didn’t want to accept Mrs. Kent’s thoroughly negative view of aging.

  “What about wisdom?” I countered boldly. “What about wisdom and a sense of peace that comes with experience?”

  But Mrs. Kent was having none of it. “A myth, my dear,” she said firmly. “Very few people learn from their mistakes. Most old people are as stupid and wrongheaded and prejudiced as they were in their youth and middle age.”

  “But surely some people achieve wisdom,” I protested. An image of Katharine Hepburn came to mind. She was wise, wasn’t she? I’m not a Catholic but I’m pretty sure the pope is wise, too, and he’s quite elderly. The Queen Mother seemed wise. At least, she was always sporting that beatific smile. “Surely some people make it a point to learn from their mistakes.” I almost added, “I do.”

  Mrs. Kent dismissed my silly notion with a wave of her bejeweled hand.

  “Fine. So you’re an eighty-year-old with wisdom to impart. Well, it doesn’t matter at all. Nobody listens to the elderly. The young find us laughable. Our adult children find us inconvenient. That’s when we’re not being depressing reminders of their own mortality. The government would prefer if we conveniently died en masse. The drug companies would like us to linger on and get sicker.”

  “That can’t be entirely true,” I murmured. But how would I know? Aside from my neighbor Mr. Audrey, and now my client Mrs. Kent, I didn’t know anyone over the age of seventy. Except for my parents, of course. But my parents were different. They were—well, they were my parents.

  And would I come to consider them an inconvenience? Would I come to see them as depressing reminders of my own mortality? Was there something wrong with me that I was almost thirty-eight years old and hadn’t yet come to recognize them as—old?

  “The stink of decay lingers around us, Anna.” Mrs. Kent’s voice was sepulchral in its tone. Her face had taken on an expression of exaggerated angst last seen in a silent movie. What must the young Beatrice Kent have been like onstage!

  “Why are you telling me all this?” I knew I sounded angry. I was.

  Suddenly, Mrs. Kent was full of life and purpose. She scooted forward in her chair and pointed a bejeweled finger at me. Sapphire, I noted automatically. And diamonds. Many diamonds.

  “Because life is short, my dear Anna,” Mrs. Kent said, with force. “And you’re dead a very, very long time. So, my dear, whatever it is that you’re not doing even though you want to do it, whatever it is you’re avoiding out of fear or laziness, do it. Face it. Seize the day, my dear Anna. Before it’s too late.”

  I left Mrs. Kent’s mansion at four that afternoon, completely exhausted. It wasn’t the work that had tired me; it was my estimable employer.

  I wondered. Mrs. Kent had lots of money and most of it old, not in any great danger of dissolving, as far as I could tell. She lived in a magnificent house on the corner of Marlborough and Berkeley. Her wardrobe was lovely and obviously expensive. How, then, could she be so negativ
e, so bitter?

  I reached Boylston Street just as the light turned red for pedestrians. Two women, probably in their seventies, stood arm in arm at the corner with me, waiting for the green light. They had the air of old friends, two people completely comfortable with each other. They seemed happy. At least, they seemed to be enjoying the moment.

  I thought again of Mrs. Kent.

  What did I know of her personal life? Not much, just a few facts. (Of course, I’d researched her when she offered me the job.) At the age of twenty-one she’d married Ambrose Williams Kent, whose family and fortune were both old and well established; not long after she’d become a society hostess to reckon with. For almost thirty years she had been on the board of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; for forty years she’d been the chairwoman of a charity she’d established to help “wayward girls.” She had two sons, both now in their fifties. I’d heard from one of Ross’s friends that they had both established vanity businesses and that they lived in Cohasset. Ross had mentioned that the older son, Charles, owned a second home in Tortola. The younger, Francis, spent four months of the year in Europe. All together, Mrs. Kent had five grandchildren.

  Not much information at all.

  The light turned green, and I stepped into the street. Maybe, I thought, Mrs. Kent had never been deeply in love. Or maybe she had been deeply in love and betrayed by her lover. Maybe she’d resented having to be a mother; maybe her sons resented her for resenting them.

  Maybe, although she looks healthy enough, Mrs. Kent is dying of cancer. Maybe Beatrice Kent was just born this way, able to cast a cold eye on the stark realities of life, unsentimental, unromantic, a pragmatist.

  I was almost to the loft when something else Mrs. Kent had said that afternoon came back to me.

  “Better,” she proclaimed, “to regret actions you have taken than to regret not having had the courage to take them in the first place.”

  I wondered if I would ever know if she was right.

  38

  What’s in a Name

  Ross and I were spending a quiet night at home. Rather, at the half-finished condo that would be our home once we were married, once I had sold my own apartment on Roland Street. I’d told Ross that I’d spoken to several real estate agents about the listing, but that was a lie. I’d put off making it official; the idea of selling my home made me sad. Besides, I told myself, the apartment was sure to sell immediately once it was on the market. There was no rush in listing it when the wedding was still months away.

  After dinner I loaded the dishwasher—that appliance had been hooked up the week before—and Ross leaned against the center island, watching me.

  “I spoke to my mother today,” he said.

  “Oh? How is she?”

  “Fine. She and Dad had dinner last night with the Cirillos. She was all excited about telling Mrs. Cirillo she’s going to be a grandmother. Aggie Cirillo is one of those professional grandmother types. Mom says she’s always pulling out photos and report cards and bragging about how her grandchildren are the most perfect little angels.”

  “Oh,” I said. I poured liquid detergent into its compartment and closed the door of the dishwasher. “That sounds annoying.”

  “By the way, my mother wants to know what the baby will be calling her.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Grandma, I guess.”

  “Isn’t that usually what a kid calls his mother’s mother?”

  Was it? I’d mostly grown up without grandparents. All four had died before I was five. And for the life of me I couldn’t remember what I’d called any of them.

  “I’ll ask my mother about it,” I promised. I pushed Start, and the expensive, almost silent, Bosch began its wash cycle.

  “She was thinking maybe Nana.”

  My distaste must have been all too obvious.

  “You don’t like Nana?” Ross asked.

  “Not particularly,” I admitted.

  “Well, my mother really likes it. It’s what she called her father’s mother.”

  Then why ask my opinion, I wondered. If Ross and his mother had already made a decision, why bother with me?

  “Fine,” I said. “It doesn’t really matter to me.” But it will, I thought, if my mother decides she wants to be called Nana.

  “Good. I’ll tell her right away. I think she’s having something engraved.”

  Ross went into the study—really his at-home office; Ross hadn’t studied in many a year—to call his mother. I put away the dishcloth I’d been folding and walked to the giant window overlooking downtown Boston, now glittering in the night.

  And what, I wondered, would the baby call me? Mommy, of course. Maybe Mama. And later, when he or she grew older, Mom. Never, I hoped, Ma. Or Mother.

  Mom. That was okay, wasn’t it?

  I wondered what Mrs. Kent’s sons called her. Mater?

  I thought back to my lunch with Kristen. I’ll always be Anna, I’d told her. Just Anna. I wanted to believe that, but the truth was I was no longer sure that was possible.

  Standing at the window, looking out over the darkening city, it occurred to me that I’d never been known as anything but Anna. I’d never even had a nickname, unless, of course, you counted Anna Banana, which some big bully had dubbed me in second grade. Thankfully, the moniker hadn’t stuck. Even Ross rarely called me “honey” or “sweetie.”

  I was Anna. And now I was also going to be Mommy. The thought frightened me.

  “She’s thrilled.” Ross was off the phone. He joined me at the window.

  “Good,” I said.

  “How are you feeling, Mommy?” he asked, putting an arm around my shoulders and a hand on my stomach.

  “I think,” I said, “that I’m going to be sick.”

  39

  The Lady Doth Protest

  Ross was meeting a friend from the gym for drinks and dinner; far preferring the specialty bed at the loft, he planned on going there afterward, not to my apartment. I felt antsy; I just couldn’t stay home alone. I called Alexandra, who happened to be in the neighborhood, having just attended a yoga class.

  “Sure, I’ll meet you,” she said. “I’ve done a healthy thing; now I’ll have a drink and ruin all my good work.”

  We met twenty minutes later at a small local restaurant called Poodle. It was early; the place was otherwise empty.

  “I thought pregnant women are supposed to be tired all the time,” Alexandra commented, placing her yoga mat on the floor against the bar. “But these days you’re hardly ever home.”

  “I’m going out on the town while I still can,” I explained to her. “Frankly, I’m exhausted, and I’d love to just curl up in bed with a good book and be asleep by eight. But these are my last days of freedom. I want plenty of memories to cherish when I’m knee-deep in dirty diapers and hooked up to a breast pump.”

  “Ah, that does sound like the life!”

  “Be careful,” I warned. “It could happen to you.”

  Alexandra pretended to shudder. “I’ll have a martini,” she told the bartender. “A big one. Dry, two olives.”

  “You got it. And you?” he asked me.

  “I desperately want a cocktail,” I said to Alexandra. “You know, before I couldn’t drink I never felt that I needed a drink. Now, I feel like an alcoholic.”

  “It’s all in your head,” Alexandra informed me annoyingly. “We always want what we can’t have.”

  “No kidding. I’ll have a seltzer with lime, please,” I told the smirking bartender.

  When our drinks arrived, and after a toast that was half-hearted on my part, I said, “So, entertain me. Allow me to live vicariously. Who are you dating?”

  “Who says I’m dating anyone?”

  “You’re always dating someone,” I pointed out. “And that’s not meant as a criticism. So, who is he?”

  “Actually, at the moment I’m not dating anyone. It’s rather a relief, really. Of course, the offers are still coming in, but I just don’t have the ener
gy to spare.”

  I shrugged. “The men will be there when you’re ready to get back into the game.”

  “If I choose to get back into the game.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Oh, nothing. It’s just that dating can be such a bore. And I’m not in the market for a husband, so what’s the point of wasting all that precious time on someone who’ll be in and out of my life—and my bed—within a month or two?”

  “You’re sounding cynical this evening,” I commented. “Very world-weary, very fin de siecle, and it’s only the start of the century. What about falling in love?”

  Alexandra’s answer was right on the tip of her tongue.

  “I won’t be falling in love.”

  “How do you know?”

  Alexandra carefully sipped her drink before answering. “I just do.”

  “Aren’t you the woman who declared that the future is deliciously uncertain?”

  “Yes,” she said, “I’m that woman. But our lives aren’t entirely random. We do have some control over what happens to us.”

  “Like falling in love? But I thought you believed—”

  “Let’s change the topic, shall we?”

  I shrugged. “Fine. I’ll just have to read the tabloids for some vicarious excitement.”

  For a little while we talked about the mundane stuff of daily life. Which long distance phone carrier we’d switched to; interest rates; how hard it was to get in to see a dermatologist; recent changes in the tax laws.

  And then I said, “I know I promised to drop the subject of your love life but—”

  “But you’re going to ask me something personal anyway.”

  “Just this. Have you ever lived with a man?”

  Alexandra leaned back and eyed me warily. “Why do you want to know? And why now, after—how long have we known each other? Three years?”

  “Four,” I said. “I’m just curious. There’s a lot I don’t know about you. Maybe that’s my fault. Maybe I don’t ask enough questions.”