I Heart Christmas (18 page)

‘Oh, are you not feeling well?’ she asked, following me into the office like a very well-dressed lapdog. Today’s seasonally inappropriate outfit was made up of over-the-knee socks, a pair of leather shorts and a red silk pussy bow blouse. As someone who actually had got dressed in the dark, it was difficult to see her in that ensemble, in December, and not ask serious questions about her sanity. ‘Can I get you anything? Advil? Ginger ale? Coke?’

‘Actually, a Diet Coke would be really good,’ I said, collapsing in a sweaty mess in my chair.

‘Oh, sure, a Diet Coke to drink, that’s what I meant,’ she said, glancing around the ceiling and frowning at the security camera. ‘I’ll be right back.’

‘Don’t rush,’ I whispered, switching on my computer.

It was Thursday. My original plan for Thursday was to visit the Christmas market in Union Square, buy some more shit that I didn’t need and then go to a boozy screening of
Elf
with Alex at the Nitehawk cinema but now I was sitting in my office, staring at a nodding dog toy and willing myself to keep my morning coffee down. I could not face the indignity of throwing up in my rubbish bin. Although, if I did, would Cici have to clean it out? Before my stomach could make a decision, my phone rang, snapping me out of my nauseous reverie and reminding me I was at work. Which was a win when you thought about it.

‘Angela, it’s Mary,’ my boss barked down the line. ‘I need to go over some of these cover lines for next week. Are you free now?’

‘Free,’ I replied, forcing every ounce of strength into my voice. My arm and my ankle throbbed from where the tree had collapsed on top of me, suggesting my painkillers were wearing off and I just wasn’t ready for that. ‘Cici’s just run out to get me a drink and then I’ll come in?’

‘Nice to see the two of you getting along,’ she replied without a trace of emotion in her voice. I had to assume she was taking the piss. ‘See you in five if the hangover abates.’

I replaced the handset and looked up at the camera Cici had eyeballed moments ago.

‘Paranoid,’ I whispered, rubbing my temples. But I still turned my chair around to face the window before popping more ibuprofen and dropping a Berocca into a bottle of VitaminWater.

‘And all of that makes sense?’ Mary asked for the third time in an hour.

‘It does,’ I lied, scribbling nonsensical notes in my notebook that I had to believe would suddenly become incredibly enlightening as soon as I got back to my desk. ‘All of that makes sense.’

‘Right, so that’s everything,’ she said. ‘You know everything I know. Well, obviously you don’t but you get my point.’

Hmm.

‘Any other things you want to discuss while you’ve still got me?’ Mary wiggled the cordless mouse next to her Mac, clearly hoping that I would in fact not have anything to discuss. Unfortunately for Mary, she was shit out of luck. I had hit a wall and I had to talk to someone.

‘Alex wants to have a baby,’ I replied.

Mary froze.

‘I did mean issues regarding the magazine but that seems like a valid issue.’ She spoke calmly and quietly. ‘I know this isn’t going to be a very forward-thinking, feminist thing to say, Angela, but getting pregnant now wouldn’t be the best thing for your career. Maybe you’re only interim editor for now but who knows what’s next? Have you two talked about it?’

‘He really wants to have a baby,’ I nodded. ‘And I might have trouble if we wait that much longer.’

Saying it out loud felt insane, like I was talking about someone else or something I’d seen on TV.

‘I would never tell a woman to choose between her career and her family,’ Mary replied, her face softening for just a moment. ‘But even in this day and age, in this industry, I’ve got to tell you, having it all is a myth.’

‘But you managed it,’ I said. ‘Lots of editors have kids.’

‘Lots of editors have very unhappy second and third marriages,’ she replied. ‘And I managed it so well, it’s taken me three decades to finally find a way to be with the man I love. I couldn’t be happier right now but it breaks my heart to think about all the things Bob and I will never have.’

I nodded to show I was listening but I was totally lost for words. Was Mary really telling me I couldn’t have my job and a baby? Not that I wanted a baby. Probably. At the moment. For a while.

‘I can’t say I would have made different decisions if I’d had a crystal ball when I was younger, but as you get older you do start to realise people are more important than you might like to think. Or at least more important than I wanted to believe.’

‘You chose your career over Bob?’ I asked. ‘Back, whenever it was?’

‘It wasn’t the Dark Ages, Angela,’ she said, straightening a stray strand of hair. ‘It’s not really that simple but, for the sake of a shorter story, I suppose I did. Bob was already a very rich and successful man when we met. I wanted to be successful in my own right. He wanted a wife.’

‘So what happened?’ I was curious to hear the ballad of Mary and Bob. As long as she left out the dirty bits.

‘He met his first wife, I met my ex-husband,’ she shrugged. ‘It’s not a long or dramatic story. My marriage didn’t work out because I put my job first.’

‘Because you were really in love with Bob?’

‘Because I loved my job more than I loved my husband,’ Mary admitted. ‘What was important to me mattered more than what was important to us. I love my kids but the family always played second fiddle to my work. That’s not something I’m proud of.’

It was weird to be having such a frank conversation with Mary. We’d spent hours, days, discussing stories, slaving over publishing plans and magazine roughs but we’d never really talked about her life, her family. And now I was starting to wish we hadn’t bothered. She was scaring the shit out of me.

‘Are you saying you wish you hadn’t had your kids?’ I gave my thumbnail a quick nibble and hoped Mary hadn’t noticed. She hated nail-biters.

‘I’m saying it isn’t easy,’ she replied with diplomacy. ‘If your heart is in one place, it’s hard to give something else everything it deserves. Everything it needs.’

‘But relationships are about compromise, aren’t they?’ I had definitely read that somewhere. Possibly in
Gloss
. Possibly in one of my articles. ‘Surely you can manage work and a family these days? We’ve got iPhones now, we can do anything.’

‘I don’t think Apple are really thinking that far ahead,’ she replied. ‘Actually, they probably are. But I digress … I’m lucky I’ve been given a second chance to get what I really want. Too many people choose pride and ambition over love. Not just men. It’s probably a lot more women these days when you think about it. Damn, we should write a feature about this …’

‘Then you don’t think you can have a family and a successful career?’ I asked.

My kingdom for a peppermint latte.

‘I think you can have whatever you put your heart and soul into.’ Mary rested her elbows on her glass desk and leaned towards me. ‘You’re taking on a job that is going to demand everything you have, at least for a while, until you find your rhythm. A baby needs all that and more. From you
and
Alex. And you’ll need each other.’

‘Alex and I are fine.’ I knew that was at least a fact. ‘Really, there’s no problem there.’

‘Babies don’t always mean to cause problems but sometimes they do,’ she said with a shrug. ‘What if you have a baby and end up losing the job while he goes on to have his enormously creatively fulfilling musical career? You won’t resent him at all?’

‘I can’t imagine resenting Alex for anything,’ I said softly. ‘But I can see how that might not be much fun.’

‘And what if you don’t have the baby then he goes on tour and he’s so mad at you, he gets drunk one night, the unimaginable happens and he accidentally gets someone else pregnant?’

‘Alex would never,’ I replied, quick and certain. ‘He wouldn’t.’

‘I’m not saying he would.’ Mary leaned back in her chair. ‘I’m just saying he could.’

‘Sometimes, life is a complete bastard, isn’t it?’ I said, nibbling on the end of my biro. ‘I mean, a complete shitter.’

‘You know, if this is bothering you that much, it must be bothering women,’ Mary said, wearing her ideas face. ‘You could always write a piece about it.’

‘Not a bad idea,’ I mused, scribbling down her suggestion. ‘Might help me make some sense out of it.’

‘Might make matters worse,’ she said with a warning. ‘But it would make a great article.’

‘You know, it always looks so easy on the telly,’ I sighed. ‘You just pop it out, stick it in a papoose and the next thing you know it’s in college.’

‘The fact that you’re referring to your future child as an “it” does not fill me with hope,’ Mary said with a doubtful expression. ‘They’re usually one or the other.’

‘Usually,’ I repeated. ‘But not always?’

She shook her head, more in disgust than confirmation, and turned back to her computer screen.

‘Brilliant,’ I muttered, standing up to leave. ‘Now I’ve got something else to worry about.’

‘Hey, Angela.’ Jesse called me over as I was crossing the office, trying to decide between a trip to the bathroom or the canteen. I either needed something deep-fried or I needed to throw up again – it was wide open. ‘You still coming tonight?’

‘Tonight?’ I looked blankly at my work husband. Had I made plans and forgotten?

‘The gig?’ He waved a flyer high in the air. ‘At Music Hall?’

‘Oh, God, right,’ I nodded, the urgent need to line or empty my stomach abating. ‘Yeah, I’m meeting my friends for dinner but we’ll definitely try to make it.’

‘What’s this?’

Like all the best villains, Cici appeared from out of nowhere, plucking the flyer from Jesse’s outstretched hand and pursing her red lips. ‘Music Hall? Where’s that?’

‘Williamsburg,’ Jesse said, his face full of fear and the horn. I glanced over at Megan, the beauty editor who sat opposite Jesse, and she rolled her eyes in response. It must be hard being a man, knowing that something was so awful but desperately wanting to put your penis in it anyway. I imagined it was a little like my love-hate relationship with Ben & Jerry’s, only with added peen.

‘Oh.’ Cici looked desperately sympathetic and handed back the flyer as though she might catch something from it. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, it’s really OK. You should come,’ Jesse said quickly, looking to Megan for support. Megan’s eyebrows were so high up her forehead I was amazed we hadn’t had a call from air traffic control asking her to bring them back down. He had no help coming there.

Cici laughed, slapping Jesse on the back and then waving her hand at him.

‘Oh, you’re funny,’ she said, holding a finger horizontally underneath each eye to avoid mascara smudges. As if fembots could cry, even if it was from laughing at people. ‘I should come. Hilarious.’

Jesse sat in his chair, confused and embarrassed and not sure why, as Cici sashayed away and Megan began to laugh.

‘Dude.’ She shook her head slowly, never looking away from her computer screen. ‘Dude.’

‘What just happened?’ Jesse asked me, utterly perplexed.

‘Nothing good,’ I replied, tossing him a gingerbread Christmas tree for his troubles. ‘Nothing good at all.’

Deciding against a snack-slash-puke pitstop, I turned back to my office and swished my mouse to bring my computer back to life. Ignoring the IM full of smiley faces from my seemingly lobotomised assistant, the email from Dr Laura’s office asking me to schedule an appointment and the picture message from Jenny that showed a can of sugar-free Red Bull and a slice of pizza, I opened a new Word document and began to write.

My husband wants to have a baby and I don’t.

There it was, all written down in black and white.

My husband wants to have a baby and I don’t.
Not as in, I don’t ever want to have a baby, but more I really like my life right now and I’m somewhere in the middle of the scale of mildly scared through to thoroughly petrified at the thought of heaving a living person out of me and then being expected to keep it alive for the next eighteen or so years before I send it off to college, full of hopes and dreams and resentment, and finally get my life back.

I looked at the first paragraph and frowned. Did it sound selfish? Maybe a little. But then maybe I was being a little bit selfish.

I realise that doesn’t sound terribly motherly but then that could be why I don’t think I’m ready to become a mother. Every time my husband raises the issue, I want to throw a box of cereal on the floor and shout
But I’m the baby!
– hardly the best qualification for parenthood. But regardless of whether or not I’m emotionally stable (or mature) enough to have a baby, a recent trip to the doctor’s office suggests I might not have a lot of time to make my decision. It might be a baby now or a baby never, and I have no idea what to do.

As well as a husband, I have wonderful friends, I’m about to move into a beautiful new home and I have a job that I love, a career that I have worked hard for and am thrilled to see develop. But I can’t ignore that nagging voice deep inside that says none of it matters until I have a kid. I should clarify – I don’t mean I’m hearing a soothing, earth mother coo that’s compelling me to fill my womb with offspring. Rather, it’s a scratchy cackling that sounds a bit like my mother crossed with anyone who ever played a witch crossed with dial-up internet. It’s not a nice voice, it’s a voice that tells me women shouldn’t feel fulfilled or inspired by their careers. It’s the same voice that tells single women they’re not good enough until they’ve got a boyfriend or that they really ought to lose ten more pounds. It’s the judgemental chorus that we all hear and we all know we should ignore but can’t. It’s too loud.

As women, we’re constantly trying to keep all our balls in the air – friends, family, careers, relationships. And it’s not that guys don’t have the same concerns, it’s just that maybe they’re able to prioritise a little easier. When they decide they’re ready to start a family, they choose a mate, they settle down and maybe they hit the bar a little less often (gasp). Perhaps they even move out of Manhattan. But as women, we have to be ready to give up so much more. Imagine telling the Wall Street banker he had to take a year out of his job and hope it was there when he wanted to go back to it. Consider sitting down with the marketing director and saying ‘well, you’re going to gain about forty pounds which will be a bitch to get off, and you’ll be exhausted all the time and maybe you’ll throw up for three months but it’ll be OK after that. Until you actually have the baby and you’re completely incapable of maintaining a simple train of thought for more than fifteen seconds.’