Maternity Leave (5 page)

The serial comma, (also known as the Oxford comma or Harvard comma), is the comma used immediately before a grammatical conjunction that precedes the last item in a list of three or more items. The phrase “Portugal, Spain, and France”, for example, is written with the serial comma, while “Portugal, Spain and France”, identical in meaning, is written without it. There is no global consensus among writers or editors on the use of the serial comma.

David’s response to this link was, “See, I’m right.”

After a half hour, David finally let Ralph get his first words in. David used this opportunity to mute our end of the speaker phone conversation and explain to me his brilliance over the past thirty minutes. He said, “Do you see what I did there, see what I’m doing, I’m laying the groundwork and schmoozing him. Seriously Jennifer, do you know what I did? He sure doesn’t. I’m getting him to agree with me, but making him think it’s his idea, he has no idea what I just did to his mind.” David’s summary of his legal prowess was always very helpful, especially in lieu of listening to the other half of a conference call.

I zoned out for the rest of the conversation. It frustrated me that David was asking to be lead counsel because the lead was actually going to go to me since I’d be handling the file rather than him. Subrogation cases are handled on a contingency basis, so I always prefer to do as little as possible on my cases when there’s another attorney to share the load.

I zoned back in and heard David saying “…just recently I settled a nine million dollar case. It actually went to trial, but after my opening statement, opposing counsel called a recess and just offered the money because he could tell that I was making a strong connection to the judge and jury.”

David continued beating his chest, oblivious to the fact that I was more antsy than usual. Not only was I bored, but I was in a hurry to tell David that I was knocked up. I wanted to do it before I thought too hard about it and lost my nerve.

David finally turned off the speaker phone and looked very pleased with himself. Technically, mission accomplished. However, considering that the interests of our client and Ralph’s client were the same, the task could have been accomplished with a one-line email which would have taken me four seconds to draft but for which I would have billed: “0.6—Draft correspondence to attorney Walker regarding litigation strategy.”

“See how I did that?” David said.

“Yes. Impressive,” I responded.

“Great, how’s your load? Can you take on more cases?”

David asked this question a lot and his creepy emphasis on the word “load” never failed to make my skin crawl. “Actually, I may have to slow down. I just found out that I’m pregnant.”

Mr. Socially Savvy responded by looking at me in disgust and asking, “Are you going to keep it?”

I responded with my own look of disgust and said, “Of course!” as though I were appalled by the suggestion that I would abort my fake fetus.

“Who is the father?”

Hmm. Probably should have anticipated this question. Somehow, the name “Ben Weinstein” came out of my mouth. David is a super-Jew and to him, the greater sin between an out-of-wedlock pregnancy and an interfaith coupling is the latter. As a result, I just blurted out an invented Jewish name for the father.

“Are you and Benjamin getting married?”

I almost said, “Who?” but caught myself, realizing that David had already converted Ben into the more formal, Benjamin.

I said, “Marriage isn’t in the cards right now. He doesn’t live in Florida anymore.”

“Where does he live?”

I should have expected this peppering of questions. David was an obscene over-sharer and as a result, he expected his employees to be as well. “New York City.”

“What does he do?”

“Marine biologist.” I do not know a New York City marine biologist named Ben or Benjamin, but the occupation was a nice tribute to George Costanza.

“Where did you meet him?”

I decided to nip this in the bud before I had to tell David what imaginary position Benjamin and I were in while conceiving our imaginary child. I put on a somber face and told David that I was still processing the information myself and was just not ready to talk about it yet.

David shrugged and said we’d talk about it later. Then he switched into law mode. This was a talent of David’s. Whether it be a party, funeral or six o’clock in the morning, David was in full lawyering mode. Therefore, not surprisingly, David set my impending bundle of doom on the back burner and spent the next forty-five minutes going over my case list so he could see how many of Sandra’s maternity cases to shift to me.

As an afterthought, on my way out the door, I told David not to say anything to my parents. It’s not that David and my parents hang out, but they coincidently live two houses away from each other and David might go out of his way to socialize with them to get the dirt on my pregnancy. Not only would this blow my cover, it would expose my parents to unnecessary David-time. Nobody should have to deal with David unless they’re receiving a substantial paycheck to do so.

David assured me that he would keep my secret in the strictest confidence. His expression changed and he plastered a goofy smile on his face. I could tell he was very pleased that I told my deepest, darkest secret to him instead of my own parents. Inherent in his promise to keep quiet was the understanding that, other than my parents, he would tell everyone else the news immediately.

After being dismissed from Principal Greene’s office, I went to the kitchen to grab a cup of coffee. As I rounded the corner into the kitchen I glimpsed Sarah Smith out of the corner of my eye and stepped back. Sarah has been David’s paralegal for the past twenty years. He always introduces her as, “She’s a paralegal, but she’s like an attorney.” He pauses for dramatic effect during this phrase. Even after twenty years, Sarah never fails to blush when David says this about her.

I turned the other way because Sarah has a reputation for trapping people in the kitchen for hours at a time to issue updates about her life. She is sixty years old, which she works into every conversation just to hear you say, “Really? Sixty? You don’t even look thirty.” Sarah also likes to say, “I’m getting so fat,” in every conversation, so that you correct her and tell her how thin she looks. This is when she tells you with a frown, “I’m a size two now, that’s huge! I used to be a zero. That’s when I was younger though. I’m sixty now…” (insert pregnant pause)

In actuality, Sarah looks fifty and is a size six. Not bad, but not as described. Her appearance would actually go unnoticed if she weren’t constantly telling me and everyone else how hot she is, enticing us to observe her every flaw. While she has the potential to look very nice for her age, she’s not helping herself by lying in the sun every weekend, dressing in tight shirts and short skirts, and updating her boob job biannually to maintain her freakishly flotation-device-looking-rack.

Talking to Sarah is excruciating, especially on a Monday, because she gives a blow by blow of her wild and crazy weekend, including detailed descriptions of every hot guy that hit on her at every bar in Ybor City and on Howard Avenue; the hangouts of eighteen-year-olds and twenty-five-year-olds, respectively.

As I was sprinting the other way to my office I heard, “Jenna! Hey Jenna!”

Shit! “Yes, Sarah.” I said.

She responded, “I knew it! I could tell you were gaining weight.”

I’d told David about the pregnancy three minutes ago and Sarah had already heard the news. This meant that the rest of the office knew or would know within minutes. I was a little pissed about the accelerated rumor mill, but mostly I was just pissed that she called me fat. Couldn’t she have told me my boobs looked bigger or that I was glowing?

I replied, “I’m only two weeks pregnant, I’m pretty sure I haven’t gained weight.”

“No,” Sarah said, “you’ve gained at least four pounds, I can tell. Do you know that I only gained fourteen pounds during my entire pregnancy? You’ll be that big in six weeks.”

“Weren’t you eleven when you were pregnant?” I said as I grabbed my coffee.

“No, I was sixteen. What are you doing? You can’t have coffee.”

Damn it! I forgot about the nine months without coffee aspect of pregnancy. I grabbed the decaf and added a ton of sugar and cream to it. I’d get real coffee later when no one was looking.

Sarah started telling me the details of her weekend: the free martinis she received from hot guys, the people who mistook her for being her daughter’s sister, getting carded at several bars, finally giving into temptation and getting a belly button ring…She was in the middle of asking me whether I thought she should get a “Truth” or “Honesty” tattoo in Chinese lettering above her right boob, when a secretary walked into the kitchen. I decided that the secretary could take my place as a captive audience and walked away without answering her tattoo question.

I shut my office door and Googled pregnancy. I figured that the ban on caffeine was not the only thing I should know about as an expectant mother. I found a website with a week-by-week description of pregnancy and bookmarked the page. This would come in handy. I looked at week two:

This may sound strange, but you’re still not pregnant! Fertilization of your egg by the sperm will only take place near the end of this week.

What? I read on and discovered that pregnancy, which is forty weeks long in its entirety, is measured from the date of the knocked-up individual’s last period, even though ovulation and fertilization doesn’t take place until two weeks later and it’s another two weeks before you miss a period and test positive for pregnancy. This means that by the time a woman pees on a stick, she’s already a month pregnant. What a deal, first month is free.

In my imaginary world, I tested pregnant before I even ovulated. Oops. Thank God no one seemed to notice. I found it impressive that while I was not pregnant, in actuality or by the medical definition, Sarah could tell I was pregnant. She really does have a sixth sense. I skipped ahead to week three. Nothing much happens there either, though I should apparently experience spotting.

After work, I met Danny in the garage below my office. As per the usual schedule, Danny started playing bike bitch, pumping my bike tires and filling my water bottles while I changed into cycling clothes. After this ritual, we generally rode to Davis Island or St. Petersburg to meet up with other cyclist friends of ours.

Bike bitch is actually a narrow definition for Danny’s role. In addition to being my bike mechanic, Danny acts as my unofficial teammate at unofficial group rides several times a week. We also usually travel together to each race in Florida and Georgia. Danny tends to be my regular bitch as well. In the two years I’ve known him, Danny has acted as pest control (removing roaches, rats, raccoons, opossums, dead squirrels and other vermin from my house and yard); driver (to the airport and races, occasionally driving through the night to races while I sleep in the back seat); and handyman (snake my sink, build me a deck, fix my air conditioner, build me a fence).

Danny’s actual occupation is massage therapist and cycling coach. As a result, he works odd hours and often has downtime during the day while I’m at work. Thus, in addition to the aforementioned duties, Danny tends to be on-call for me unless he’s working. Danny refers to my assignments as JRAs or Jenna Related Activities. I should clarify that Danny is my best friend, and when I call him from work to ask him to crawl through my doggy door and get the dead rat out of my attic, I am very nice about it. Still, I can’t help but think on occasion that I owe Danny a blowjob.

I fully subscribe to the
When Harry Met Sally
premise that men and women can’t be friends because one of them always wants to have sex with the other. My relationship with Danny works because I know he wants to have sex with me and he knows it’s not going to happen. Though he’s tall, smart, attractive, funny and all the other positive attributes of a man, he is solidly in the friend category. I thought about dating him when we first met, but I knew the result would be the same as when I dated my best male friends from high school, college and law school: As soon as I slept with him, I’d confirm my gut feeling that I wasn’t sexually attracted to him. Then I’d spend the next few months trying to push him back into the friend category without breaking his heart. Simultaneously, Danny’s infatuation with me would turn into full-blown obsessive love and he’d be proposing to me right around the time that I finally built up the balls to dump him.

To be clear, Danny has never formally asked me out and thus he has never formally been rejected. In fact, he scoffed at my arrogance the one and only time I accused him of having a crush on me and advised him that it was not reciprocal. I did not do this to be an ass, but merely to give him the opportunity to opt out of painting my house if he was only doing so in the hopes of getting laid. I suppose it’s possible that Danny is not sexually interested in me and that he just likes hanging out with me and doing all of my chores, but I have my suspicions.

This dynamic sounds crazy, but somehow, it’s not actually that rare in cycling. Brenda is married, but her husband rarely attends cycling events. Instead, Jeremy, a divorced doctor and competitive cyclist, travels with her to nearly every race, stays with her even if their races are hours apart, and helps her by tuning her bike and feeding her water and food in the feed zone on the course. To my knowledge, they’ve never slept together either, though I have no doubt that Jeremy, like Danny, is interested.

Once we got out of the parking garage, which I was paranoid had been bugged by an overly nosy secretary, I announced to Danny, “I’m racing the Tour de West.”

“That three week women’s race? How? Are you finally quitting your job? Do you have enough money?”

“Nope, taking a maternity leave.” I knew it wasn’t a great idea to advertise my fraud, but I had to tell someone about my ingenious plan and Danny was the most logical choice since he’s one of the few people who knows that I measure my self-worth by my cycling ability. Even if I wanted to confide that information to other people, it would be difficult to convey my point since no one in America cares about cycling. Of the seven Americans who have heard of the Tour de France, five think it is a competition sandwiched between a swimming and running leg. It irritates me that people cannot distinguish between triathlons, which are two-thirds crazy, and cycling, the most beautiful and challenging sport in the world.