Babyland

by Holly Chamberlin

  “Hear, hear!” Tracy raised her glass and we toasted.

  Alexandra grinned. “Our former so-called friend Michaela would say a girl needs wild sex and lots of it.”

  “What do you mean by wild?” Kristen asked.

  “Passionate,” Tracy said. “And yes, I’ve certainly had passionate sex.”

  “With your husband?”

  “Alexandra!” Kristen exclaimed. “That’s so personal!”

  “That’s okay,” Tracy said. “Yes, I have had passionate sex with Bill. But there were a few other special men in my past. In case you’re wondering, I wouldn’t trade Bill for the world, let alone one more night with the others.”

  “Well,” Kristen said, “if Tracy can admit to having passionate sex with her husband, then I can admit to having passionate sex with mine. Brian is the love of my life.”

  “But not your first and only lover?” Alexandra asked.

  “No. There were two before him but neither really meant anything. And I never, you know, felt anything. And that’s all I’m saying about that!”

  “Alexandra?” Tracy asked. “Wild sex?”

  “Oh, my, yes. Once upon a time.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Oh, come on, Alexandra. Tell us about him,” Kristen pressed. “Were you in love?”

  Afraid my face would give away Alexandra’s secret, I pretended to find a California roll deeply interesting. Alexandra let everyone wait while she poured herself another glass of wine.

  “I’ve said,” she finally announced, “all I’m going to say. Anna? What about you? Have you ever had wild, crazy, nothing’s-off-limits sex? The kind of sex that makes you feel like you’ve died and gone to heaven. The kind of sex the angel has with Prior Walter. Otherworldly. Astounding. Addictive sex.”

  “I get the picture,” I said dryly. “And the answer is no. Okay, everyone can feel sorry for me now. My life is an empty shell. My romantic life, at least.”

  “Oh,” Kristen said. “You know, Anna, there’s more to life than sex.”

  I sighed dramatically and put the back of my hand to my forehead. “So I’ve been told. But alas! I’ve yet to find satisfaction anywhere.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Tracy said. “I always thought Ross’s affect was kind of flat. He’s very handsome but he’s just not very sexy.”

  Alexandra and Kristen burst out laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” Tracy demanded.

  “It’s just that these two clowns have said the exact same thing. Kristen has even suggested that Ross is gay. In the closet, but gay.”

  “Well, that’s just ridiculous,” Tracy replied. “If anything, Ross might be asexual.”

  “Please,” I said, “you’re destroying what’s left of my self-esteem!”

  “Ross and his dubious sexuality have nothing to do with your self-esteem,” Alexandra said forcefully.

  I thought for a moment before saying, “Ross has nothing to do with me at all. He never really had. I think that’s why I didn’t want to have a baby with him. I think I knew we couldn’t sustain that level of intimacy. And that still scares me. Why was I going to marry him?”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Anna,” Kristen said. “You and Ross might have had a fine marriage if the issue of a family hadn’t, well, hadn’t been thrust upon you.”

  Maybe, I thought. But then I wouldn’t have Jack. Not that I really had him. What I did have was the realization that I was falling in love with a man who didn’t have any feelings for me in return. Wonderful.

  “I know this question is unanswerable,” Tracy said, “but I’m going to pose it anyway. If having a baby with someone is so monumental, why are so many men able to leave their wives and kids?”

  “It isn’t always easy for a man to leave a marriage.” Alexandra shot me a look I took to mean, My secret is still safe with you, right? I reassured her with a nod. “Sometimes,” she went on, “the marriage just isn’t working. Divorce doesn’t necessarily mean abandonment. It can be the healthiest thing for everyone involved. It can be the end of a destructive dynamic and the opportunity for a fresh start.”

  “Of course,” Tracy said. “But I’m talking about those men who just walk away from their family without trying to make the marriage work. I can’t imagine how a woman gets over that. I just can’t.”

  “It happened to a friend of mine,” Kristen said as she reached for another spring roll. That made four; Brian really needed to learn to like Chinese. “Her name was Joyce. Her son and B.J. were in playgroup together. Anyway, she was pregnant with their third child when her husband just moved out. He didn’t even give her a reason.”

  “Maybe he had a nervous breakdown,” I said.

  “Or maybe,” Alexandra added, “he was just a bucket of slime. Go on, Kristen.”

  Kristen shrugged. “Well, that’s it, really. Funny. I met her husband once and he didn’t seem like the type to do something so—violent.”

  Alexandra rolled her eyes. “He was a nice man. A quiet man. Who knew he had an ax under his pillow? Oh, please.”

  “None of us who knew Joyce and Bob could believe it,” Kristen said, ignoring Alexandra’s remark. “She had to wonder if he’d ever felt any tenderness for her, or if all along he’d been disgusted by her. It’s almost too awful to think about. To be so vulnerable with someone and then to be discarded like an old shoe.”

  “What happened to Joyce?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Kristen admitted. “She took the kids and moved to New Jersey. Her parents live there. She just couldn’t stay in that big house all by herself. Anyway, I haven’t heard from her since. I think maybe she just wanted to erase everything connected to her life in Wakefield.”

  “For some reason sitcoms would like us to believe otherwise,” Tracy said dryly, “but in the real world, eligible men aren’t exactly beating down the doors of single mothers. Kristen’s friend might be single for the rest of her life.”

  “Maybe she wants it that way,” I remarked. “Maybe she’s through with men. At least, through with marriage.”

  For a moment or two no one spoke. I poured myself a bit more wine. Tracy seemed lost in thought. Kristen added more duck sauce to her plate. Finally, Alexandra broke the silence.

  “There’s another scenario we’re not considering.”

  “What’s that?” Kristen asked.

  “A scenario in which the man is the victim or the long-suffering party. What if the wife has made her husband’s life miserable?”

  “I suppose it happens,” Tracy said.

  Alexandra nodded. “You bet it does. Maybe the marriage was a mistake from the start but the husband stuck it out for all the so-called right reasons. Maybe his love for his wife was more a duty than a passion. And then maybe he just couldn’t do it any longer. Maybe he broke down or maybe, incredibly, he met the love of his love, the woman he should have married, the woman he would have married if she’d been around when all his friends were getting married and he figured he should get married, too. You know, to fit in, to be grown up. To prove something to his parents who never thought he’d amount to much of anything. To prove something to himself. To—”

  I caught Alexandra’s wildly gesticulating hand in mid-air. “I think we got your point,” I said quietly.

  “Oh,” she said. “More wine, anyone?”

  “Love dies,” Tracy said abruptly. “Not always, but it does die. Sometimes two people who were in love come to hate each other. Or to feel indifferent about each other. I think that happens a lot more than anyone wants to admit. It’s so terribly depressing to accept the death of love as a fact. I mean, if you accept that love can die, how can you ever make a forever-after commitment? And yet, people do it all the time. Over and over again, just hoping the next love will outlive them. Just hoping that only physical death will part them from their loved one.”

  Kristen sighed. “It’s all so sad.”

  “Or all so wonderful,”
I said. “Isn’t it a testament to the human spirit that we keep reaching for love?”

  “That we keep struggling for survival,” Alexandra corrected. “Maybe it’s all a biological urge at bottom.”

  “It can’t be. Can it? I don’t want it to be,” Kristen said urgently. “I want to believe there’s something noble and fine about romantic love.”

  “I don’t know if I could stand my love for Bill dying.” Tracy sighed. “Or his love for me dying. Just imagining that possibility makes me overwhelmingly sad.”

  “Then don’t imagine it, Tracy,” Alexandra said fiercely. “Block it out. Live for today, carpe diem, be in the moment. And in this particular moment you and Bill are in love and your marriage is fine.”

  “Thank my lucky stars. Knock on wood and all that.”

  “I’m sure your marriage to Bill has nothing to do with superstition or luck,” Kristen said. “I’m sure you guys work to stay in a good place.”

  Tracy shrugged. “Sure. But don’t you think luck or fate plays some part in everyone’s life? The day Bill hobbled into my office started out like any other day. I had no idea I’d meet my future husband at 2:15 that afternoon. How did that come about? Luck, fate, serendipity? No one set us up. No one played matchmaker, which, I suppose, is also a form of fate. Fate personified.”

  “Maybe fate explains why some people never find true love,” Kristen wondered. “Maybe they have bad luck. Maybe they have bad karma.”

  “I think,” Alexandra said, “that most people who never find love don’t find it because they’re not looking for it. Or they’re not open to experiences that might put them out in the world where luck and fate happen. I find it hard to believe that every single woman in this city is single because of bad luck. Or because of something bad she did in a former life!”

  “So,” I said, “therapy or a self-help program will guarantee finding a soul mate? Or at the very least, a summer fling?”

  “Well, therapy might help dislodge some unhealthy mental and emotional habits.”

  “Like?” Kristen said.

  Alexandra considered. “Like, for example, the tendency to date significantly older, powerful men because they remind you of your father, whose love you never achieved because he thought you were an airhead. Or whose love you never achieved because you thought he thought you were an airhead and so you actually were the one to sabotage any attempts at building a relationship he initiated.”

  “But what if dating older, powerful men makes you happy?” Kristen said. “What if you meet a man who really loves you, and supports you in your work, and who wants to marry you?”

  “You have a point,” Alexandra conceded. “Sometimes our neuroses work for us, not against us.”

  “In such cases a neurosis becomes a coping mechanism,” Tracy said. “A survival strategy. A means to a healthy life.”

  “Speaking of a healthy life,” Kristen said, “and I mean that with irony, has anyone heard anything about Michaela’s adoption quest?”

  “Now there’s a woman who should not be a parent!” Tracy declared. “She’s got absolutely no maternal instinct. I bet you couldn’t even train it into her. I shudder to think what a child of hers would turn out to be like. At the very least he’d be an emotional cripple.”

  Alexandra snickered. “More likely a long-term resident of a state penitentiary.”

  I refrained from commenting. Let Tracy and Alexandra have their opinions about the bleak future of Michaela’s adoptive child. Would the child that was so briefly mine have been any better off? Would she have been an emotional mess or a hardened criminal, too? Since losing the baby I didn’t feel I had the right to judge other people’s parental possibilities.

  “Anna,” Kristen asked, “have you heard anything?”

  “After she tried to steal Ross out from under my nose at that awful party I haven’t talked to her. Except for one very unpleasant moment just after the party.”

  “What happened?” Kristen asked breathlessly.

  I sighed. “I said, ‘Our friendship is over as of right now.’ Very cutting, don’t you think?”

  “So, what did Michaela say back?” Tracy asked.

  I didn’t miss Michaela in my life and I’d never loved her like I love my other girl friends. But let’s face it. No one likes rejection.

  “She said, and I quote, ‘Like you matter to me?’ And then she laughed. The end.”

  “Bitch,” Tracy said.

  “Whore.” Alexandra grinned. “Tramp.”

  “I think she’s pitiful,” Kristen said. “I feel sorry for her.”

  “You’re wasting your time feeling anything for her. She probably never even registered your presence.”

  “Alexandra!” I scolded. But I was pretty sure she was right.

  “You know,” Tracy said, “now that you and Ross are no longer a couple, I wouldn’t put it past Michaela to make another move on him.”

  “Well, she’s welcome to him,” I said. “He’s single, he’s wealthy, he wants a family. They’d make the perfect couple.”

  Although I didn’t really believe that. Ross, for all his flaws, wasn’t a harsh person.

  “Yeah,” Alexandra said, “they’re both egotistical, shallow, and morally ambiguous. The only problem I see is that Michaela is so much smarter than Ross. She’d be bored with him within a month.”

  “Hey!” I protested. “What does that say about me? I was with Ross for almost a year and I wasn’t bored. Entirely. Are you saying I’m not as smart at Michaela?”

  “No, honey, of course not. But you are an awful lot nicer than she is. You give people the benefit of the doubt. You see the good in them. I’m sure you kept thinking that someday Ross would wow you with—well, with something.”

  She was wrong. I’d never expected anything spectacular, from Ross or from me.

  “I think Michaela might do well with Ross,” Tracy said then. “I think she needs a man she can easily manipulate.”

  “Ross isn’t as pliable as he looks,” I muttered. “Look, can we stop talking about my ex-fiance? I’m getting depressed, and that wasn’t the point of the evening.”

  Kristen gasped. “You don’t regret breaking up with him, do you?”

  “No, no, of course not. And I didn’t really break up with him. We broke up with each other. But the point is that if I’m going to move on I shouldn’t be dwelling on my past, right?”

  “Right,” Kristen agreed. “You should be focusing on your future. You should be thinking about falling in love again.”

  “I have a feeling,” Alexandra said slyly, “that Anna’s already working on it.”

  Kristen’s eyes went wide. Tracy cleared her throat.

  “Falling in love is the last thing on my mind!” I protested.

  And I knew that none of my friends believed me.

  Truth: Falling in love was the only thing on my mind.

  83

  The Scene

  “So, how about it? Can I give him your number?”

  “Ginger,” I said, “I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  The last thing I wanted to do was go on a blind date. But Ginger Matthews, that suspiciously enthusiastic lady, was not to be deterred.

  “Anna, listen,” she said. “Tom and I have known Russell for five years now. He’s a great guy. Trust me.”

  “It’s too soon,” I said.

  “You know what they say about falling off a horse.”

  “I don’t ride.”

  “Anna, you need to get back into the dating scene.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re not getting any younger. If you want to get pregnant again you’re going to have to find a man first, and the clock is always ticking. Tick, tick, ticking!”

  Maybe, I thought, Ginger had a point.

  I didn’t need a therapist to tell me that I was making little or no progress in my personal life. I didn’t need a therapist to tell me that I had been crazy for quite some time. All on my own I’d re
alized that the real reason I’d been afraid to tell Jack that I was pregnant was because on some deep, unexplored level, I felt as if I’d betrayed him by sleeping with another man.

  I know. It’s insane. How can you cheat on somebody you’ve never even been involved with? Someone you’ve never even kissed? Someone you don’t even know you’re in love with?

  Someone who clearly isn’t in love with you.

  “Okay,” I said. “Give him my number.”

  Three times in the days before the date I picked up the phone to call Russell and cancel. Each time I called on every ounce of determination in my being and resisted the urge. Look at this as a job, I told myself. Be your own client. Your client needs something; she needs to get over a man she can’t have. She’s hired you to provide that service for her. Step 1: Go on the date.

  Russell Hill met me at Tundra. Maybe, I thought, there’s more to Ginger Matthews than meets the eye. Russell was well educated (Harvard undergrad and Columbia journalism); a good conversationalist (he spoke easily of politics and of pop culture); athletic (he told me he rode his bike to work every day); funny without being crude or nasty (he admitted to knowing every episode of Seinfeld almost verbatim); and handsome in a sort of boyish, blond way (he reminded me of a young Robert Redford).

  He paid for everything. He was a gentleman at the end of the evening. He promised he’d call. And I hoped he wouldn’t because the date had been a failure.

  Russell Hill, bachelor extraordinaire, wasn’t Jack Coltrane.

  84

  The Morning After

  Russell did call. I turned him down. He sounded surprised. I explained that it was me, not him. And I prepared to receive a scolding from Ginger.

  I thought about the night I told Jack that Ross and I had broken up.

  I thought about the afternoon I stumbled upon the report written by Jack’s teacher Ms. Sidler.

  I thought about the extravagant bouquet of flowers.

  I thought about the time Jack and I ran into each other at the café and he’d asked me to stay for a while. It wasn’t because he needed my opinion on the student’s work. It was, I knew, because he wanted to help distract me from my grief. I remembered his gentle touch that day. I remembered wanting him to touch me again.