She's Having Her Baby

by Lauren Sams

  ‘Nice to meet you.’

  We clinked glasses. I was nervous. I’d told someone I was pregnant. A stranger. Suddenly I had made it real. The weird thing was, Colin didn’t appear to be troubled by the news that the woman he was chatting up was apparently single and with child. For an accountant, he seemed pretty easygoing. Which meant he was almost definitely a Mormon in Alec Baldwin’s clothing.

  ‘I actually don’t really like long walks on the beach,’ said Colin, looking a bit sheepish. ‘I don’t really like the beach.’

  ‘Are you kidding?’

  ‘No, I’m not, actually. I’m just not into it. It’s so … sandy.’

  ‘Oh my god. I have never met anyone who doesn’t like the beach before.’

  ‘Sorry – is that, like, a dealbreaker for you or something?’

  ‘No, no, it’s amazing. I hate the beach. I can’t remember the last time I went to the beach. It’s awful.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Yeah, seriously,’ I said. ‘God, you’re too good to be true. Next you’ll tell me you’re really into Nora Ephron movies.’

  His eyes widened and he put his glass on the table, staring right at me. ‘Oh my god, I really am.’

  My jaw dropped. ‘What? Are you for real?’ This was amazing. Who was this guy and who was the incredible woman who had raised him?

  ‘No.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m kidding. I have no idea who that is.’

  ‘Oh. Oh,’ I said, laughing. Colin laughed too. Well played, Colin. Little did he know, this was exactly the type of thing that would happen in a Nora Ephron movie.

  ‘Is she an actress?’

  ‘No. A writer. And a director. Well, she was. She was the greatest writer of female characters ever, actually.’

  ‘Like you,’ said Colin.

  I shook my head.

  ‘You’re a writer, aren’t you? What do you write?’

  ‘I don’t really write a lot anymore. I mainly edit – for a women’s magazine.’

  ‘Oh yeah? That sounds cool. Which one?’

  ‘Jolie.’

  ‘Really? My sister reads Jolie. She loves it.’

  ‘Oh yeah? She’s one of a dying breed, then.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  I sipped my wine. I was trying to make it last as long as possible, but it was hard. It tasted so good and I was so desperate for a drink that I was really taking gulps, not sips.

  ‘Oh, nothing. It’s boring, I’m sure.’

  Colin shook his head and made a hand gesture, like ‘go on’.

  So I did.

  For about twenty-nine minutes.

  ‘So, I’ve really done myself in this time,’ I said, finally finished.

  Colin grimaced. ‘Kinda sounds like it.’

  I laughed, because it was the only rational thing to do.

  ‘I hate the internet,’ I said. ‘Down with internet!’

  ‘Down with internet!’ Colin repeated.

  Then we were both laughing and singing ‘Down with internet!’ in unison. I stopped when I realised the other customers were staring at us, but Colin just kept going. When he did finally stop, both of us had wet eyes from laughing so much. I hadn’t had this much fun in weeks.

  ‘So … so what are you going to do? Do you really want to quit?’

  ‘No. I mean, no, I want to stay at the old Jolie. But this new thing … it’s not what I signed up for. I don’t know anything about iPads or leaderboards or click-throughs or whatever they’re called.’

  ‘You can learn. It can’t be that hard.’

  ‘Yeah, I s’pose. But … I don’t know. I don’t really want to. I just have this feeling that once I do that – once I learn all these things – there won’t be anyone to stand up for the print edition anymore. And then once that happens, they’ll just close it down and suddenly I’ll be the editor of a … of a website. Like a seventeen-year-old.’

  ‘So what else would you do?’

  I shrugged and shook my head, downing the last drop of delicious wine. ‘No idea. This is the only thing I’ve ever done.’

  Colin nodded. ‘Yeah, I get that. What if people didn’t need accountants anymore? What would I do?’

  ‘Open a bar on the beach, surely. You could play Nora Ephron movies at night.’

  ‘Surely,’ he said. I felt a little thrill that we had successfully formed an inside joke after having known each other for only an hour. I’d thought the only person I had inside jokes with these days was Lucas, and they were all directed at Ellie.

  Things were going so well, the conversation was flowing so easily, that I had almost forgotten about the elephant in the room: me. When Colin asked me if I wanted another drink, I made the international sign for ‘no’, placing my hand over my glass. He returned with a glass of wine and an expensive bottle of mineral water, handing the latter to me.

  ‘My sister was always saying how thirsty she was when she was pregnant,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. I wanted to reach out and touch this guy, to make sure he was real and not some fantasy I’d dreamed up in my bonkers emotional state. I settled for watching him drink his wine. If I’d conjured him, there was no way I’d let him drink without me. ‘Pinot noir?’ I guessed.

  ‘Yeah, I wanted to try it. I probably shouldn’t, but …’

  ‘Two glasses on a school night? I reckon you can handle it. So I guess you’re wondering what my story is, right?’

  He put up his hands as if to say no. ‘No, that’s OK. We don’t have to … I mean, unless you want to.’

  ‘It’s fine. I mean, it’s really not fine, it’s really the opposite of fine, but, you know, it’s not like it’s some massive secret. You know?’ I said, laughing a little too heartily and pointing to my stomach. And then I proceeded to tell Colin everything. I told him about the surrogacy and the injections and the accidental pregnancy and even the episode of Lateline after which conception had (most likely) occurred. And even though he did not ask for more details, I kept giving them to him, until he said, ‘Wow. That is quite the story.’

  ‘I know.’ I reached for my water but there was none left.

  ‘Uh, would you like some more?’ Colin motioned to the glass.

  I nodded and he went to the bar.

  I took the opportunity to check my phone for #Joliecovermeltdown tweets. A mistake. After scrolling through what seemed like hundreds of tweets, I decided the best thing to do was never, ever, ever use Twitter again.

  Suddenly I realised Colin was taking an extra-long time at the bar. When I looked up, I couldn’t see him anywhere. My chest started to get that tight, anxious feeling it does when it knows something is up. I knew that he wasn’t coming back. I sat there for a few more minutes – I wasn’t sure how many – and told myself that it was beyond silly to cry over a guy I barely even knew.

  Then I got up, walked to the bus stop, and went home.

  Well, to Ellie’s.

  21

  Week 25

  To: Georgie Henderson

  From: Kelly Burns

  Hi Georgie!!!!!

  Kelly Burns here from St Jude’s. Remember me? I used to be Kelly Hooper … Anyway, just wanted to email you to see if you were coming to the reunion. I know it’s a bit weird to have a reunion in an odd year but one of our old teachers (Mrs Griggs, remember her? PE) asked me to put it on and how could I say no? And what the hell, we all need a night out, don’t we?

  I know you’re probably heaps busy with your magazine and everything, but it’d be good to see you. Oh and maybe you could get my little lady in for some work experience, hey?

  Let me know.

  Kelly xoxox

  Kelly Hooper. Over the years I had tried to shake off my distaste for Kelly, a girl so abhorrent to me in high school that saying her name used to made my mouth pucker with sourness. It wasn’t her fault she’d had a kid at eighteen or that she, apparently, still spoke like a teenager. But then I remembered the way she used to sashay arou
nd school like she was winning a daily beauty pageant, looking down on those of us outside her circle jerk of sycophants.

  Kelly was also the reason Nina and I had become friends in the first place. One day, during our Year 7 English class, the teacher – Ms Graham? Ms Gray? – had asked us to think about the pros and cons of euthanasia. Having never heard the term for assisted suicide before, I thought she was talking about kids in Japan. When I started talking about Norwegian Wood, which, come on, was pretty bloody advanced of me, Kelly led the rest of the class in laughing at me. For the rest of the day. Until Nina turned to her during lunch and told her to ‘shut up before I deck you’. She’d been decking people for me ever since.

  ‘Georgie?’

  I looked up at Fran.

  God bless Fran. The shit had well and truly hit the fan at Jolie – I’d overheard the team speculating about when (not if, when) I’d be walked out and whether I’d be put on gardening leave after my Twitter fiasco. I’d walked in on hushed conversations that stopped abruptly as soon as I entered, but I’d still managed to hear the words ‘pregnant’ and ‘single’ in the same sentence. Clearly my newly knocked-up status was contributing to the rumour mill. But Fran rose above it all and refused to be drawn. She wasn’t the gossipy type and I knew she was staying as far away from the rumours as humanly possible. She’d been treating me as if nothing at all had happened.

  ‘Yes, Fran?’

  ‘Lee Stone is here to see you.’

  Lee Stone? How do I know that name?

  ‘Sorry, Fran … do we have a meeting scheduled?’

  She shook her head. ‘No … I told her that she should have called first, but she said that you knew each other. No, wait – she said you knew someone in common. A mutual friend.’

  ‘Oh! Yes, we do.’ Lee. Lee Stone. Dr Tim Kane’s Walkley Award-winning friend from uni. ‘Send her in, please.’

  I made a hasty attempt to tidy my desk before Lee came in. Unlike Fran, she walked straight in without pausing to knock.

  ‘Georgie!’ she said, warmly.

  I’d only ever seen Lee in the profile picture that ran alongside her column. In it, she looked serious and plain: all sharp eyes and unrelenting mouth. In real life, she looked as if she’d just stepped off the set of The Farmer Wants a Wife. She looked like a McLeod daughter who’d found her way to the big smoke. Slim dark jeans, R. M. Williams ankle boots that I had briefly considered purchasing myself until I’d remembered there was a rather significant chance I wouldn’t have a job soon – and a silk flannie. A silk flannie. I was dumbstruck.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, standing to greet her. I saw her eyes travel to my belly. There was no hiding it now. And no point in hiding it. ‘I’m pregnant,’ I said, entirely redundantly.

  Lee smirked. ‘I can see that. Congratulations! I didn’t know.’

  ‘Nobody does. You got the scoop.’

  She raised her eyebrows and cocked her head, but said nothing.

  I gestured for her to sit.

  ‘Would you like a coffee? Water?’ My hand hovered over the handset, ready to call Fran.

  ‘No, no, I’m fine. Thanks.’

  ‘So, how’s Tim?’

  ‘Tim …?’

  ‘Tim Kane. You guys went to uni together, right?’

  ‘Oh … yeah. Tim Kane. Doctor?’ she asked.

  I nodded, neatening the edges of a stack of international mags.

  ‘Ah, I have no idea. I haven’t really kept in touch with him lately. You?’

  ‘No, me either. Last time I saw him …’ I trailed off, realising I should bite my tongue. Tim was Lee’s friend. I’d already done enough damage to my own friendships, I didn’t need to ruin anybody else’s.

  ‘Let me guess? He was a total wankhead to you?’

  I laughed. ‘Yeah, something like that. I thought you guys were friends?’

  Lee rolled her eyes. ‘No, not really. I mean, we know each other, but the guy is so far up his own arse, he could lick his own perineum.’

  ‘Now that’s a line we haven’t run at Jolie yet. You want a job?’

  ‘Actually, I was hoping you might want one.’

  I lifted my chin. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We’re starting a new supplement in The Standard. It’ll be a bit magazine-y, but very grounded. Serious, but some fun stuff, too. Not glossy, though.’

  I said nothing, but stood and walked to the door. I closed it behind me.

  ‘Ah,’ said Lee. ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘It’s fine. Nothing they wouldn’t hear in Confidential tomorrow.’

  ‘Right. Look, this is a really good opportunity. You won’t be editor, but it’s a great gig. I want you to write a column – you have a great voice. I loved what you said on Twitter about the mag industry. I’ve never heard anyone – well, not anyone currently employed – talk about the challenges of a job like yours like that. I found it … refreshing. I want someone like that – like you – on the team.

  ‘Writing’s not dead, we just need people who are willing to have their own perspective and not just regurgitate some blog they’ve bookmarked. Fuck, I hate that so much. And I see it all the time.’

  I nodded. ‘Yeah, I know what you mean.’

  ‘So there’d be a column. And other writing, too: maybe some profiles. Maybe a bit of travel writing.’ Again, Lee’s eyes made the journey to my stomach but I found myself nodding along, already imagining where I’d put my pot plant in my new office for the best feng shui and making a mental note to call the PR for kikki.K for some new stationery.

  ‘I probably won’t be able to pay you as much as you’re making here, but I think it’ll be worth it in other ways. We won’t be so dependent on advertisers. We can put whoever we want on the cover – nobody sees it until they buy the paper anyway. It’ll be a small team, we can run things we’re actually interested in. No beauty pages. I promise.’

  The possibility of working for a magazine that didn’t depend on beauty advertising was so alluring I wanted to shut down my computer right then and walk out with Lee, possibly arm in arm, perhaps skipping. Beauty clients essentially paid for the magazine to keep printing, but they were universally hard to please. Picky to the point of pedantry, so needy that they practically required weaning. Just the thought of never having to deal with them again was a relief. But there was more than that to consider.

  ‘I can’t leave now.’

  ‘Why not?’

  It was a good question. Why, indeed, did I still feel such a tie to Jolie? I felt like a kid who had overstayed her welcome at a birthday party. The candles had been blown out, the cake was just crumbs now, but here I was, still looking for a chocolate crackle and refusing to go home.

  ‘I still love Jolie. And even after my massive fuck-up, my publisher’s given me another chance. So I think I owe it to her to try to make this work.’

  Meg had faith in me – not much, admittedly – so I owed her the same faith. But deep down, I knew that the Jolie I loved was gone. Meg might have faith, but she didn’t have the power to put her money behind it. We were cost-cutting everywhere and soon, it would start to show. Instead of covering the New York shows by sending our fashion team, we’d be live-streaming to cut costs. We’d use more and more stories and shoots from the international editions, to save money. We’d start to lose, in short, what made Jolie so great. I knew the reality, but I needed to see it out.

  Lee grimaced. ‘Fair enough. Here’s my card. Call me if anything changes.’

  I took it.

  22

  Week 26

  A new waiting room, thankfully not filled with women whose stories made me feel guilty and ashamed. No, this one was filled with children with red-rimmed eyes and snot-crusted noses they refused to have wiped clean. Parents with weary faces and coffees to energise them for looking after sick toddlers. I spied an elderly woman – she looked to be about eighty – sitting alone, reading a dog-eared copy of Fifty Shades of Grey. I tried to imagine Mum – at the comparatively spring-c
hicken age of fifty-six – reading some light erotic fiction in public. She’d last about thirty seconds before she’d have to ask the person sitting next to her what ‘fisting’ meant, I reckoned.

  Still, it was a relief to not be among women desperate to be pregnant anymore. For the forty-thousandth time, I wondered how Nina had had the energy to keep trying. It had exhausted me just to go to the clinic and see those women, to feel their desperation make the air thick and heady. How had Nina kept going and going? I wondered if I would ever be able to ask her.

  ‘Georgie?’ I looked up from the old copy of Jolie I’d found in the pile of mags next to me. I was combing it for inspiration but couldn’t find any. The baby had taken my brain hostage.

  A tall woman was scanning the room – for me, I realised. I smiled and she motioned for me to follow her.

  Her office was small and clinical, not like Dr Fisher’s office at all, which had looked like an apartment straight out of Vogue Living. The only clue it was actually a doctor’s office had been the small, framed photograph of a certain Oscar winner’s baby, with a signed card that read, ‘Thank you, Dr Fisher, for giving us this joy.’

  What Dr Tan’s office lacked in warmth, she made up for herself.

  ‘Hi Georgie, I’m Dr Tan. You can call me Anna. What are you here for today?’

  ‘Uh, I’m pregnant.’

  Dr Tan nodded. ‘Approximately how far along, do you think?’

  ‘About twenty-six weeks, I think.’

  More nodding, this time more quickly. ‘Oh, I see. And have you seen another doctor?’

  ‘Um, no. Not really. It’s a long story.’

  ‘OK, well let’s just do a read of the heartbeat and do a few measurements to see where things are at, shall we?’

  I nodded. Dr Tan gave me a medical gown and I quickly changed, noting the convex shape of my tummy as it made the paper dress protrude. I lay down on the bed and waited for Dr Tan to come back. I heard the snap of rubber gloves and then she was there, feeling the outer edges of my belly.

  ‘How have you been feeling?’