by Emily Giffin
A half hour later, we are exiting the Long Island Expressway and approaching Huntington. It is now completely dark. Ben points out the sliver of a moon, and the multitude of stars not visible in Manhattan. The stars are the best part about the suburbs, I muse aloud. Ben says he agrees—but then adds, “Not reason enough to move out of the city, though.”
He is full of such subtle, conciliatory comments since our reunion lunch. We both are, although we are still dancing around the real crux of our divorce. We don’t speak of such serious matters at all, other than when we tell our friends and family the story of that fateful day at Pete’s Tavern. We will likely be asked to tell it again tonight. I’m sure we will roll our eyes and say, “Again?” while secretly relishing every part of the story—our story. The sickening hours leading up to our meeting, our slow-dawning realization, our euphoric cab ride back to my old apartment after lunch. I am sure tonight we will add a new detail, as we do every time. Perhaps I will imbue it with the literary significance that was never lost on me: There we were in O. Henry’s booth, playing out our own version of the “Gift of the Magi.” Each of us willing to give up something for the other, for love. It seems a fitting twist for Christmastime.
Zoe is waiting for us at the door when we arrive. She flings it open and yells, “Uncle Ben!” as she runs out into the driveway without her coat or shoes.
Ben swings her up in his arms and says, “Zo-bot! It’s good to see you again, girl!”
“I missed you soo much, Uncle Ben!” she says, looking at him adoringly.
“I missed you too, sweetie,” he says.
“I knew you’d come back!” Zoe says, and it strikes me that she will one day learn that not all endings are happy. With luck, her parents won’t be such an example. So far they seem to be forging ahead with a very fragile peace.
“Well, you’re a wise little girl,” Ben says, putting her down on the front porch. “Now let’s get inside. You’re going to freeze to death.”
Zoe beams and takes his hand, “Yeah! C’mon inside and see Baby Lucas!”
“Hey, Zoe, what am I? Chopped liver?” I say, pretending that I actually mind playing second fiddle to Ben.
Zoe smiles over her shoulder. “Hi, Aunt Claudia! You can come with us, too!”
By now, everyone in my family, except Daphne and Lucas, are gathered in the foyer, wearing huge, silly grins.
“Hi, everyone,” Ben says with a sheepish smile.
My dad emerges as the patriarch and official family spokesperson. “Welcome back, buddy!” he says, extending his right hand.
“It’s good to be back, Larry,” Ben says, and the two shake hands as my mom snaps a picture. She snaps another as my father says to himself, “Aw, what the heck,” and then gives Ben the sort of embrace you would expect when a man has just returned from a long tour of duty in a faraway war.
The others line up for their turn. First Maura, Scott, and the boys. Then Dwight. Then Tony.
“Congratulations,” Ben says to him.
“You too, man,” Tony says.
Meanwhile, my mother is photographing every embrace, snapping away. I let her—because I don’t want to stifle her spirit and because I have a feeling I’ll want to relive this night for years to come.
My mother ceremoniously hands her camera to Dwight, saving herself for last.
“Ben, darling,” she says, pausing for dramatic effect, “what took you so long?”
Ben laughs and says, “I don’t know, Vera. I was a fool.”
“Yes, you were,” my mother says with tears in her eyes. Then she points to me. “And so was this daughter of mine.”
“Okay. Okay. Enough!” I say, laughing at my family’s over-the-top enthusiasm. “We have a baby to meet!”
“Yes! Come in here,” Daphne calls out from the family room.
We round the corner, and there is my sister, in the soft glow of the fire, holding her newborn son.
“Ben, Claudia, this is your nephew Lucas,” Daphne says. “Lucas, meet Aunt Claudia and Uncle Ben!…That is what he should call you. Right, Ben?”
Ben takes my hand and says, “Yeah, Daph. That’s what he should call me.”
“Well, come get a better look at him,” Daphne says proudly, as she unfolds the blue blanket from Lucas’s face.
It is a moment I’ve been wondering about ever since Thanksgiving. Will I feel differently than I did when Maura gave birth to her three children? I am worried that I will. But as soon as I gaze down at Lucas, I am relieved to realize that I feel exactly the same. Filled with pride and wonder and gratitude and anticipation of so much to come.
“He’s exquisite,” I say.
Too good to be real. And yet, he is real.
“I know,” Daphne says. “I can’t believe it.”
“Aunt Daphne, can I please hold baby Lucas?” Zoe asks—which is William and Patrick’s cue to chime in with their own request to hold the baby.
“Not now,” Maura gently tells her kids. “Lucas needs his mommy right now.”
Daphne gives Maura a grateful glance. I can tell she is not ready to pass around her child. She has waited way too long for this night.
We all have.
Much later that night Ben and I are back in our old apartment. It is finally starting to feel like home again—which is a good thing because Michael is moving in with Jess in January. They’re calling it a “trial run” but I know better. Sometimes it’s easier to take things in small steps.
Like Ben and I are doing now. I have moved about half of my clothes back in with Ben, and am rifling through our dresser drawers now, looking for my red flannel pajamas.
Ben laughs, and I say, “What?”
“I knew the lingerie get-back-together stage wouldn’t last forever.”
“It’s Christmas Eve!” I say. “Time to be cozy. Not sexy.”
“Well, I got news for you,” Ben says.
“What’s that?” I say, smiling.
“You’re both,” he says.
I smile as I head to the bathroom to brush my teeth. Then I hesitate for a long moment before taking my pill. I return to the bedroom where Ben is waiting for me in his own green flannel pajama bottoms. We turn out the lights and get under the covers. Our kisses are cozy at first, like our pajamas, but quickly become urgent and hungry.
“How can I love you this much?” Ben says at one point.
It is one of those things you just can’t answer. Like trying to explain magic or miracles or faith.
“I don’t know,” I breathe, thinking that there are a lot of things I don’t know. I don’t know whether I will ever overcome my fears of motherhood. Whether I will someday be a mother. Whether I am capable of being a good one.
But for now, it is Christmas, and I am with Ben, and that is all that seems to matter. So I hold on to him tightly and whisper his name. As a wish and a promise for things to come.
A Reading Group Guide
Do you think that there is a stigma against women who do not become mothers? If so, how much more damning is it for a woman who chooses not to have children rather than one who is simply unable? Do you think women who don’t want children are judged more harshly than men who don’t?
Do you view Claudia as a selfish person? How much do you think she is defined by her decision not to have children? Was your first impression of her a favorable one? Did you draw conclusions about her character after the first sentence of the novel?
Do you think that most people would see a partner who doesn’t want children as a deal-breaker? Is this an issue that one can compromise on? Is there such thing as a deal-breaker when it comes to true love, or does true love conquer all?
Do you believe in soul mates? If so, do you believe that soul mates, by definition, want the same things in life?
There is a statement in Baby Proof that reads, “The biggest decision a woman can make in life is not who to marry but who should be the father of her children.” Do you believe that, for most women, the issue of children
and motherhood (and who to share that with) supersedes every other decision in their lives? Or do you think that women today wresde with the decision to have children more than they care to admit?
Do you feel it was fair and reasonable for Ben to back out of their agreement not to have children? Is this a realistic promise in the first place? How would this have been a different story if it had been Claudia who changed her mind? Were you more frustrated with Ben for changing his mind about having children. or with Claudia for being unyielding in her views?
Through the characters of Daphne, Maura, and Jess, Baby Proof examines ways in which motherhood impacts relationships and vice versa. How do these side stories relate to the central theme of Claudia’s decision to be “childfree”? How do you think Claudia’s relationship with her own mother contributed to her feelings regarding having children?
There’s a scene in the novel in which Claudia, Maura, Daphne, and Jess are having lunch, and Claudia observes: “But as I listen to the three women I love most, I can’t help but think how crazy it is that we all want something that we can’t seem to have. Something that someone else at the table has in spades.” How does the issue of motherhood in Baby Proof tup into more universal themes of unexpected outcomes and unfulfilled desires? What do you think of Daphne and Tony’s request of Claudia? What do you think of Maura’s decision to stay with Scott?
Claudia’s disdain for Scott’s infidelity is evident in her comments about him. Her disapproval of Jess’s serial dating of married men seems more tempered, even though it could be said that without women like Jess, Scott would have no one to cheat on his wife with. Do you feel that our love for our friends frequently allows us to give them a pass for bad behavior? How often do you hide or minimize your true feelings in order to be supportive of a friend?
Discuss the ending of Baby Proof in relation to O. Henry’s classic tale “The Gift of the Magi.” Do you feel that the ending was satisfying? Do you think Claudia and Ben will go on to have children?
For more reading group suggestions, visit
www.readinggroupgold.com.
Enjoy a sneak peek into the novels of Emily Giffin, and discover why millions of readers all over the world have fallen in love with them…
something borrowed
Emily Giffin’s debut novel about young Manhattan attorney Rachel White—always responsible, always the "good girl." Until she does the unthinkable and falls in love with her best friend’s fiance…
something blue
The heartwarming and heartbreaking follow-up to Something Borrowed—a novel that shows how someone with a "perfect life" can lose it all—and then find everything.
love the one you’re with
Emily Giffin’s powerful and emotionally compelling novel in which one woman finds herself at the crossroads of true love and real life, asking herself: how can I truly love the one I’m with when I can’t forget the one who got away?
Love the One You’re With
It happened exactly one hundred days after I married Andy, almost to the minute of our half-past-three o’clock ceremony. I know this fact not so much because I was an overeager newlywed keen on observing trivial relationship landmarks, but because I have a mild case of OCD that compels me to keep track of things. Typically, I count insignificant things, like the steps from my apartment to the nearest subway (341 in comfortable shoes, a dozen more in heels); the comically high occurrence of the phrase “amazing connection” in any given episode of The Bachelor (always in the double digits); the guys I’ve kissed in my thirty-three years (nine). Or, as it was on that rainy, cold afternoon in January, the number of days I had been married before I saw him smack-dab in the middle of the crosswalk of Eleventh and Broadway.
From the outside, say if you were a cabdriver watching frantic jaywalkers scramble to cross the street in the final seconds before the light changed, it was only a mundane, urban snapshot: two seeming strangers, with little in common but their flimsy black umbrellas, passing in an intersection, making fleeting eye contact, and exchanging stiff but not unfriendly hellos before moving on their way.
But inside was a very different story. Inside, I was reeling, churning, breathless as I made it onto the safety of the curb and into a virtually empty diner near Union Square. Like seeing a ghost, I thought, one of those expressions I’ve heard a thousand times but never fully registered until that moment. I closed my umbrella and unzipped my coat, my heart still pounding. As I watched a waitress wipe down a table with hard, expert strokes, I wondered why I was so startled by the encounter when there was something that seemed utterly inevitable about the moment. Not in any grand, destined sense; just in the quiet, stubborn way that unfinished business has of imposing its will on the unwilling.
After what seemed like a long time, the waitress noticed me standing behind the Please Wait to Be Seated sign and said, “Oh. I didn’t see you there. Should’ve taken that sign down after the lunch crowd. Go ahead and sit anywhere.”
Her expression struck me as so oddly empathetic that I wondered if she were a moonlighting clairvoyant, and actually considered confiding in her. Instead, I slid into a red vinyl booth in the back corner of the restaurant and vowed never to speak of it. To share my feelings with a friend would constitute an act of disloyalty to my husband. To tell my older and very cynical sister, Suzanne, might unleash a storm of caustic remarks about marriage and monogamy. To write of it in my journal would elevate its importance, something I was determined not to do. And to tell Andy would be some combination of stupid, self-destructive, and hurtful. I was bothered by the lie of omission, a black mark on our fledgling marriage, but decided it was for the best.
“What can I get you?” the waitress, whose name tag read Annie, asked me. She had curly red hair and a smattering of freckles, and I thought, The sun will come out tomorrow.
I only wanted a coffee, but as a former waitress, remembered how deflating it was when people only ordered a beverage, even in a lull between meals, so I asked for a coffee and a poppy seed bagel with cream cheese.
“Sure thing,” she said, giving me a pleasant nod.
I smiled and thanked her. Then, as she turned toward the kitchen, I exhaled and closed my eyes, focusing on one thing: how much I loved Andy. I loved everything about him, including the things that would have exasperated most girls. I found it endearing the way he had trouble remembering people’s names (he routinely called my former boss Fred, instead of Frank) or the lyrics to even the most iconic songs (“Billie Jean is not my mother”). And I only shook my head and smiled when he gave the same bum in Bryant Park a dollar a day for nearly a year—a bum who was likely a Range Rover–driving con artist. I loved Andy’s confidence and compassion. I loved his sunny personality that matched his boy-next-door, blond, blue-eyed good looks. I felt lucky to be with a man who, after six long years with me, still did the half-stand upon my return from the ladies’ room and drew sloppy, asymmetrical hearts in the condensation of our bathroom mirror. Andy loved me, and I’m not ashamed to say that this topped my reasons of why we were together, of why I loved him back.
“Did you want your bagel toasted?” Annie shouted from behind the counter.
“Sure,” I said, although I had no real preference.
I let my mind drift to the night of Andy’s proposal in Vail, how he had pretended to drop his wallet so that he could, in what clearly had been a much-rehearsed maneuver, retrieve it and appear on bended knee. I remember sipping champagne, my ring sparkling in the firelight, as I thought, This is it. This is the moment every girl dreams of. This is the moment I have been dreaming of and planning for and counting on.
Annie brought my coffee, and I wrapped my hands around the hot, heavy mug. I raised it to my lips, took a long sip, and thought of our year-long engagement—a year of parties and showers and whirlwind wedding plans. Talk of tulle and tuxedos, of waltzes and white chocolate cake. All leading up to that magical night. I thought of our misty-eyed vows. Our first dance to “What a Wonderful
World.” The warm, witty toasts to us—speeches filled with clichés that were actually true in our case: perfect for each other…true love…meant to be.
I remembered our flight to Hawaii the following morning, how Andy and I had held hands in our first-class seats, laughing at all the small things that had gone awry on our big day: What part of “blend into the background” didn’t the videographer get? Could it have rained any harder on the way to the reception? Had we ever seen his brother, James, so wasted? I thought of our sunset honeymoon strolls, the candlelit dinners, and one particularly vivid morning that Andy and I had spent lounging on a secluded, half-moon beach called Lumahai on the north shore of Kauai. With soft white sand and dramatic lava rocks protruding from turquoise water, it was the most breathtaking piece of earth I had ever seen. At one point, as I was admiring the view, Andy rested his Stephen Ambrose book on our oversized beach towel, took both of my hands in his, and kissed me. I kissed him back, memorizing the moment. The sound of the waves crashing, the feel of the cool sea breeze on my face, the scent of lemons mixed with our coconut suntan lotion. When we separated, I told Andy that I had never been so happy. It was the truth.
But the best part came after the wedding, after the honeymoon, after our practical gifts were unpacked in our tiny apartment in Murray Hill—and the impractical, fancy ones were relegated to our downtown storage unit. It came as we settled into our husband-and-wife routine. Casual, easy, and real. It came every morning, as we sipped our coffee and talked as we got ready for work. It came when his name popped into my inbox every few hours. It came at night as we shuffled through our delivery menus, contemplating what to have for dinner and proclaiming that one day soon we’d actually use our stove. It came with every foot massage, every kiss, every time we undressed together in the dark. I trained my mind on these details. All the details that comprised our first one hundred days together.
