Meternity Read online

  “I was thinking we could do one size for each month, since your clothes will cover it. I already have months four through six from the time when Naomi was doing that series on ‘Teen-Mom Boot Camp.’ I’ll have to take your measurements now and then get you the rest of the months later,” he says, wrapping the tape around my waist, hips and bust.

  I’m thinking I’ll just need the one, but then again no harm being measured.

  “Now, if you’re really going to do this right, you have to wear the bump, cover it with Spanx, then a thin slip. Leave no lines. Think you can do that?” says Hudson, snapping the measuring tape off my waist.

  “Yes, of course.” I sneer and grab the largest of the bumps out of his hands, walk behind a changing screen and slip it over my head. After wriggling it down so it sits right over my pooch, I fit my empire-waist dress over it and come back out to look in the mirror.

  “Looks real,” says Ford with an eye raise. “Totally real.”

  “I know,” says Hudson. “I’m really good at this.”

  “Weird,” I say, almost in a trance. Staring back at me in the mirror is a six-months pregnant Liz. The bump makes my roundish cheeks look thinner than usual (or is the bump creating an optical illusion?) and my ice-blue eyes have a watery gleam to them. Even in my old peacock-blue jersey dress, my five-foot-five frame looks, well, not bad. My thinnish medium-length “brond” hair seems to fall differently—fuller and wavier.

  “At least you’re well-proportioned—nice legs, square shoulders—so as long as you don’t mess up the application, the bumps should sit perfectly.”

  I feel the taut orb. It seems to be made of a foam rubber that is slightly firmer than usual, not unlike a half a Nerf football, sitting perfectly over my lower abdomen.

  Hudson eyes me. “Memory foam.”

  “Tempur-Pedic?” I respond.

  “Yep—but slightly different—not as squishy. I have a supplier in Sweden.”

  “Wow,” I say, grateful for this little bit of luck on a Monday morning. I thank Hudson, pack up the first little eighteen-week belly and make plans to get the rest later—if I should even need them. Despite the extreme terror I feel as I walk out of the midtown sound studio, I’m buoyed. Could this actually work? But my reverie fades as soon as I walk into the office around ten fifteen.

  “Liz, come here,” says Jeffry, signaling me over to the spot outside his own corner office. “Alix says she’s been emailing you questions all morning about the cover story research and you haven’t gotten back to her. You know we’re on a tight schedule.” He proceeds to tap away at his computer calendar, looking down at my stomach conspicuously. I reach to wrap my arms around myself instinctively.

  “I emailed Alix that I had a doctor’s appointment this morning.”

  “Well, you can’t take time off just because of your situation,” he says, which makes me feel both mad and seriously guilty. “By the way I’ve forwarded you our Family and Medical Leave Act paperwork. Make sure to have it back to me by end of the week. Otherwise, you might jeapordize your maternity leave benefits. And you also need to figure out how you plan to use vacation in addition to the six weeks paid.”

  Jules and I had taken issue in theory with the fact that the medical leave act FMLA essentially likened pregnancy to a disability, but now I was finding it downright disturbing. Just six weeks paid leave? Maybe the moms in the office don’t have it as easy as I thought they did.

  Just then, the UPS guy brings over an enormous package. It’s from Giggle, the high-end baby store we’re forever mentioning in our pages. “Alix emailed us the great news! Congrats, mama-to-be!” says the card inside from Carly, the PR contact I’ve worked with for years. Shit! Hoping no one sees the display, I paw through the box, instantly feeling a wave of complex emotions—guilt, and glee—that Carly now thinks I’m pregnant.

  Inside the tissue, there’s everything I could ever want or need—maternity sports bras, softer-than-soft pajama tops. There’s even a pillow to put between my knees while I’m sleeping. Beneath it are gift certificates for the Nuna swing, the Keekaroo changing pad and even the Silver Cross pram, the mythical stroller of the gods that all the royals use—it’s like three thousand dollars. I stuff the package under my desk into a corner to get to work lining up French moms, almost thankful I can take my mind off things.

  By midday, group emails about the tiger/French moms story sits stalled on the screen while I make up my profile on BabyCenter.com. As a joke, I send the link to Jules. I’ve been terrified to tell her what I decided, but I figure now is about as good a time as any.

  “Are you on crack?” She practically leaps over the desk partition.

  “No, why?” I say innocently.

  “I said keep pounding the rock, not jump off the ledge!” Her whispers have a hard edge as she eyes around the office floor. Jules motions for us to go into the only semiprivate conference room. “Aren’t you worried about how you’re going to pull this whole thing off? I mean, you’re not hooking up with anyone right now. Don’t you think everyone’s going to wonder who the father is?” she asks.

  “I have some time to figure it out.”

  Jules still looks at me like I’ve got two heads. “But what about your paycheck, future career prospects, your dignity? You can’t pretend to be pregnant for five months. People are going to know you’re lying. You work in an office full of people who are fully aware of every nuance of pregnancy.”

  “True,” I say, trying to hold my ground. “But so do I.”

  “You mean to tell me the first time someone starts quizzing you about the tests, the names, the schools, the doctors, whatever, you’re not going to ‘pull a Liz’ and go completely blank. The jig will be up before you can even start to show.”

  “I’ll work it out somehow.” I’m not sure why I feel such a great urge to push back at her on this. Then I see Alix wending her way over to my cube, armed with a bunch of file folders. Wait—what is she doing here! The least she could do was TAKE HER VACATION!

  Without saying a word, she drops something on my desk, allowing the contents to scatter over my already-disheveled pile system. Jules and I head back, and I sit down. Rather than the tiger moms/French moms revise, she’s given me the “Stages of Newborn Spit-up” story I’d helped her with over two weeks ago. It must be back from Cynthia with edits.

  “Thanks for that,” she says, nodding at the story covered in Cynthia’s red pen. “Tyler developed a fever and Marisol couldn’t get him to sleep, so I had to cancel my trip, after all. I’ll need you to be on call just in case he gets worse and I have to go to the doctor with him.”

  “Sure,” I say flatly, thinking how easy it is for mothers to employ the verb have, like I have to leave work early to pick up Tyler’s nut allergy results; I have to go get Tyler’s organic baby puree before Whole Foods closes. I wonder what would ever happen if I said, “I have to meet Brie at happy hour or she’s going to hook up with her ex-boyfriend who’s just using her for sex.”

  “Better get that revise to me ASAP. You should be boning up on the latest in prenatal digestion anyway. The mother’s microbiome has a significant effect.” She eyes my stomach with a hint of suspicion.

  “You know what all our moms say—I can eat whatever I want for the next five months.”

  “Watch out. I’ve seen people gain weight that never seems to come off with that attitude. It’s just plain lazy.”

  Kicking away the piles of baby toys I’ve gathered over the years under my own desk, I start in on one of my August stories. This time it’s on the benefits of unbleached cotton swaddling blankets costing upward of two hundred dollars, ethically sourced and “designed” in the USA by a cute couple in St. Louis who used to work in digital marketing in the city—perfectly punny adjectives about the benefits of organic cotton are coming easily (“Walk like an Egyptian”). Before I know it,
it’s 10 p.m. and the day, and night, are gone.

  Wearily, I make my way to Alix’s office to hand off the files for her top edit. An artful arrangement of lilies crowds the corner of her desk, an ever-present feature thanks to all the glowing coverage of advertisers. As I place the files on her desk, a few slide into her mouse and knock the screen alive. On it there’s an email from Jeffry.

  Locanda Verde. 8 p.m. reads the subject. Don’t worry, it’s all going to be okay. Wait a second. That’s odd. Why would they be going there? It seems awfully intimate if it were for business purposes. Wait. Could they be having an affair? And she’s using her “sick kid” as an excuse to cover for the fact that she didn’t want to go on her own family vacation because her marriage is on the rocks? I snort to myself, that would be the kicker, now, wouldn’t it.

  Somehow I manage to make it to Friday—a few pints of vegan cashew may have helped—and just as I’ve shored myself up to face the day with the help of pure, delicious caffeine, I see Alix has made her way to my desk. She hands back a bunch of copy so covered in red it looks like someone’s been wiping up a crime scene with it.

  “Cynthia emailed me to tell you that the piece on new secondary C-section alternatives went in the completely wrong direction,” Alix says. “You’re going to have to research it more. The trends you found were lame,” says Alix, dropping the story on my desk.

  “But I also noted in the original proposal that there was nothing new out there. I did the research. That’s what happens when the top editors come up with the headlines before the stories are actually written.” It’s another trait, along with all the made-up quotes, Alix seems to have brought with her from her old magazine.

  “Well, do you want me to tell Cynthia that?” Alix looks peeved.

  “Just tell her the truth—there aren’t any real ways to make a C-section scar any smaller or minimize the pain. I found those acupuncture treatments in Chinatown and I thought they sounded promising.”

  “You know the issue.” Alix’s not conceding an inch. “Not mainstream enough. What soccer mom in Darien or Evanston is going to creep into some sketchy alterna-practice for strange herbs and needles? Back to the drawing board.”

  “But they do for fertility treatments. What’s the difference?” I’m mad now so I don’t care that Alix is giving me the death stare. “You know that’s a different story.”

  Alix sniffs. “You do seem to find all the problems and never the solutions.”

  “Okay, I’ll keep researching,” I mutter, and take the copy out of her hands. Jules is nowhere to be seen for a postmortem bitch session. Now I’m going to be spending the weekend making up fake C-section alternatives, instead of meeting up with Addison and Brie tonight as I’d hoped.

  My phone chimes loudly on the desk. I see that it’s my mom. I have to answer this time.

  “Just checking in to make sure you’re still alive. I got your email last weekend about Paris. I’m sorry, Lizzie. I know how much that trip meant to you.”

  “Thanks, Mom. Yeah, it was pretty disappointing.” Ever since her cancer’s gone into remission, even though it all turned out fine, an odd thing has happened. I’ve been avoiding her calls. I think it’s because I can’t bear to feel it. That I could have lost her. And that I let her down. Which makes it even worse.

  “I know you’ll get there someday. You just have to be patient,” she says, transferring over my pain, as always. “Well, I wanted to check in with you about Margaret’s son’s best friend. Did you see my email about that?”

  My mom never interfered in my dating life before, but now grandchild envy has hit. All my friends from home have been moving back to the suburbs to be closer to their parents, and my mom is feeling left out. “Mom. I’m super busy with an article now.”

  “Too busy to make a two-minute phone call?”

  “Sorry,” I say, biting my lip, immediately feeling guilty—and mad—that my job doesn’t often let me break focus for even a few minutes during the day to check in.

  “So, what should I tell Margaret? Can you just give me a yes or no?”

  “Thanks, Mom, but I’m not feeling the setup dates at the moment.”

  “You don’t have to go to dinner. Just coffee,” she urges.

  “Mom, seriously, coffee’s worse,” I say, thinking that at least with dinner you can drink alcohol. I’ve attempted a few of these setups. They usually turn out to be the kind of guys who speak Klingon for fun.

  “Okay, bye, sweetie. I’ll just tell Margaret ‘possible yes’—love you.”

  “Love you, too, Mom,” I say, throwing my phone onto my desk in frustration.

  At thirty-one, so far not one PH has come along. Since JR broke up with me five months ago I’ve gone on exactly two actual dates: Amir, the thirty-nine-year-old douchey divorced hedge-funder, who called me “too Catholic” because I wouldn’t give him a blow job on the first date; and Taylor, the “internet entrepreneur” (really an unemployed web programmer)—the twenty-seven-year-old emotionally unstable crazy pants who told me he liked me because he “was into curvy girls who could pay for their own drinks.” I’d deleted his contact from my phone immediately and canceled my subscription to OkCupid.

  As I’m contemplating how cynical I’ve turned these days, Ryan’s Facebook profile somehow magically opens on my desktop.

  “Hey, looking for Europa League Finals tickets. Message me if you’ve got a hookup.”

  * * *

  Yep, still cute, still “single,” and no new lame flirty girl posts to his wall since I’d last checked (this morning). Then an email pops into my inbox reminding me Cynthia will be back on Monday. The tiger moms/French moms story must be in Final by Monday, which means another late night finishing up Alix’s edits after she skips out at five unless I want to spend even more time working this weekend.

  I elbow my iced coffee, spilling it all over. Shit. I grab for a twenty-dollar organic paper diaper we’ve been lauding when my phone starts buzzing itself off the desk.

  Ryan reads the screen. My cheeks warm. I clear my throat and pick up the vibrating phone.

  “Hey there, Ryan,” I say, trying to sound casual.

  “Deputy Editor Liz,” chimes Ryan.

  I chuckle. “I told you that’s not my title.”

  “I don’t know, there’s just a ring to it,” he chides. “Anyway, I thought I’d call to check in about our upcoming calendar and see if there were any more synergies. Sales was pleased with ‘Mega-Multiples’—it brought in a boatload of new ad dollars.”

  “That’s because I know what I’m doing,” I say in a flirtatious tone.

  “You sure do,” says Ryan, not wasting a second.

  Just then, I see an email from Jeffry:

  RE: FMLA: Need back now!

  I open the email and the contents make me cough.

  Liz, if you don’t return FMLA paperwork asap, you’re at risk of termination once you go on maternity leave. You must sign by 3 p.m. I sit up in my chair.

  “Liz? You still there?” asks Ryan.

  “Yes, I’m here. Sorry. I just got an urgent email. I should probably go.”

  “Okay, no worries, but one more thing. I was wondering if we could set up a meeting at the Paddy Cakes office in the next couple of weeks. I’ll bring our fall lineup, and you, Alix and I can go over the magazine plans to see if there are any more partnership opportunities. What do you say?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Jeffry walking down our floor right toward my cubicle with paperwork in his hands.

  “Sounds good.” My eyes dart back toward Jeffry. “Hmm, I’m a little busy next week—we’re crashing a last-minute story. How about next Friday?”

  Jeffry is coming toward my desk. I make a motion that I’m on the phone.

  “Okay, Buckley, pencil me in,” says Ryan.
r />   I have to start sporting a bump next week, but I can’t think of what to say. I’m thrown off guard reading the lines from FMLA paperwork: “...perjury will result in immediate termination and possible prosecution.”

  “Okay, we’ll figure it out. Thanks for calling. I have to go now. Bye.”

  “Buh—” Ryan starts before I hang up.

  “Bye!” I click down the receiver just as Jeffry reaches my desk.

  “Liz, I need this paperwork signed. Now.”

  I look around toward Jules, who just gives me a scolding look. She knows I’m committing serious career suicide. But if I don’t sign, I’ll be fired. Besides, I’m not the only one who’s not telling the truth around here, I think, as I imagine Alix sidling up with Jeffry in a dimly lit Locanda Verde corner booth. I take the pen and paperwork out of Jeffry’s hands and sign Elizabeth Joy Buckley. In one sharp move the act is done. And, possibly, so am I.

  Five

  PUSH! :) Notification! Week 18: You’ve got backaches and swelling? You’re growing a baby! Suck it up! Lol, j.k. But yeah, there’s this really annoying thing called edema, or water retention, that can create some serious cankle action. Seriously, it’s gross. Baby Smiles: 17!

  When you find yourself on the verge of a major life transition, like walking across the Grand Canyon on a tightrope, the only way to get through it is to stay focused on one small detail. For me, today, the middle of my second official trimester when I’m about to “show,” the detail at hand happens to be sliding a pair of too-small “Spawn-x” around my now-artificially-fattened frame.

  This baby is finally going to get some use, I think, as I try with all my might to coax on the offending article of shapewear I’d bought for my friend Katie’s wedding in the Hamptons two years ago. I was a bridesmaid and needed all the help I could get for her sky-blue Vera Wang silk shantung shift. Little could I predict it would be used for an entirely different purpose a few years down the road.

  First, I pull out Hudson’s bump with straps that go around my back. I slip it over my head. Then, I struggle to slide up the waist-reducing undergarments over it. Thank God my air-conditioning works, I think, remembering the record extreme summer heat Al Roker has predicted for this summer. Finally I put on the Lycra slip Hudson gave me to smooth the whole thing out. I take a deep breath and let it all out as the tiny bulge settles in place on my abdomen.