American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s new study,” I muster, attempting to help Chloe out. “It’s a fifteen-year longitudinal study involving sets of brothers that shows babies do equally well sleep-trained or not. It has more to do with the constellation of love and support they receive from their fam—”
“Spoken like a woman without a child.” The familiar refrain sears into me again from the other side of the room. As if I haven’t worked at a baby magazine for the past ten years. As if I don’t know this stuff cold.
“Everyone knows full cry-it-out is best. A disciplined approach is the only thing that gets results. If you can’t hack it, then get a night nanny,” Alix says, purposefully folding her arms and looking at me directly. Message received: until you have a baby and become a mom, your opinions don’t count. Or, more accurately, you don’t count.
“How are things with you, Jules?” says Chloe, chirpily breaking through the awkward silence, which sets everyone off again into chitchat.
“Oh, we’re good. Working on business school applications for Henry. Which is a big pain in my ass because I have to do them all, of course.”
“Ha-ha,” giggles Chloe. “Good luck with that. I should go check in with Pam about the ‘Get Your Pre-Baby Face Back’ story. Talk to you guys later!”
My shoulders slump.
Jules gives me a stern look. “Liz, listen, I know it’s been hard dealing with what happened with JR this past winter, but you’ve got to get over it.”
“I’m trying,” I sigh. After years of canceling plans with JR because of work crises, I’d agreed without thinking to attend the Paddy Cakes Best of Babies Gala instead of JR’s annual sales recognition dinner for P&G’s East Coast reps. Ironically, I’d hoped that going to the gala would clinch my promotion to deputy editor, which would make all these years of hard work at the magazine all worth it, get me some assistant help and free me up to devote more time to my relationship. But when I told JR my plan, he walked out.
Jules sniffs. “Lizzie, he treated you like a fifties housewife, expecting you to act like some kind of WAG, not a woman with a job that keeps you at the office late most nights. Plus he secretly watched Fox News. He was not the guy for you. You were just settling and you know it.”
“I know,” I concede. “But he was ready. It’s a certified fact that no man under forty who is sane, has a job and is fairly attractive wants to settle down in New York City.”
Jules gives me a firm look. “Henry did.”
“You met him straight out of college. That’s not fair!”
Jules and Henry’s story is straight out of a romance novel—in reverse. Fresh-faced and right on the heels of our first jobs at the magazine, Jules had been on her way home one night and recognized the cute boy walking toward her. Henry had been a senior when she was a freshman at Emory. Now both were living in the same Brooklyn neighborhood, and they literally bumped into one another—or so Henry claims. Jules told me she spotted him fifty feet away and planned the whole thing. After their “fateful run-in,” he wooed her with his slow-cooked Carolina pulled-pork dinners and “power-cuddling,” as Jules joked. They moved in together after only six months, then spent the rest of their twenties having fun, going to hear live music and traveling all over the world before getting married last year—one of the lucky ones, but to her credit, she never rubs it in.
“It’s just, Talia’s right—there’s no time to waste. Just get back out there.”
“Like with this guy, you mean?” I hold up my latest attempt at turning a Tinder convo into a date. Want 2B scummy with me 2nite? reads the opening line from a sweet-looking Williamsburg man with a scruffy beard.
“Oh, jeez,” says Jules. “Just block him!”
“But he’s wearing a suit! That means he has a job at least!” I pretend to sniff, looking down. “Or was invited to a wedding...”
The next man that comes up has long, brown stringy hair, a mustache and is holding a poodle in his lap. I like it doggy-style, reads his profile. Shuddering, I click the app closed.
“Just keep pounding the rock,” nudges Jules. “One day it will crack.”
“I know,” I sigh, thinking, or I will.
I lean back onto the outer wall thwacking the cold glass with a loud bang as the sad realization hits me: unlike the twentysomething “little blonde girls” or LBGs I see husband-hunting around the East and West Villages, secretly quoting that Princeton Mom, I’ve been toting dog-eared Eat Pray Love and Lean In and actually believing the two rules my old editor in chief Patricia told me the first day I arrived as an intern at Paddy Cakes: do one thing a day toward your goal and don’t give up and eventually success will be yours. But now it seems like that Princeton Mom was right all along. I’ve been a total fool. Beyond a certain age (i.e. thirty), women still have no legitimacy unless they’re married, have kids and are running a household. We are still living in Austen-era England. I should have been spending my twentysomething nights sweating my ass off at PowerCycle, not powering through stories on attachment parenting styles.
PUSH! :) Notification! Pregnancy is one of life’s prime examples of letting go of control and allowing nature to take its course. You’ll find that your body has a wisdom all its own. Relax and listen to its messages.
That’s dark, I think, trying to figure out how to shut the app off.
Then, before I notice it, our new editor in chief Cynthia walks in and announces, “Sorry to cut this joyous affair short, but I need you, Alix.” Then Cynthia turns her steely gaze on me. “And you, too, Liz. Now.”
Me? Without a word, I leap up, ignoring the stares as I trail after Cynthia and Alix. They burn a path down the hallway to Alix’s office.
The second we’re inside, Cynthia immediately turns to Alix.
“Did you find those Asian couple options yet? We are going to rework the ‘Alternative Chinese Dialects’ story and go with the harder-hitting-themed issue you suggested—‘Tiger Moms Vs French Moms: The Battle Royale Heats Up.’ We’ll use that family with the Caucasian mom and Chinese-American dad on the cover along with their mixed-race baby. The press will eat it up!”
Alix looks over at me. “The revise is almost done...”
“When am I to see it?”
“Immediately after this. Right, Liz?” Alix’s eyes shoot daggers through me.
“Yes.”
Satisfied, Cynthia turns and walks out. Alix motions for me to stay. The pit in my stomach tells me what’s coming next.
“We have just about everything we need, correct? Did you incorporate all my notes? The revised draft was still a bit sloppy. Did you address my question about finding a more inflammatory quote from that one mom from California?”
“Yes, I went back to Tracey a few times but I don’t know if we’ll be able to get more examples of punishment. She’s okay with representing herself as a disciplinarian, but not in the more extreme way we, uh, would like her to.”
I preempt Alix’s next question. “I did ask her if she ever resorted to physical punishment. She said a few light spankings, but
