I’m not expecting this at all. I give him the same 917 number I’ve had since college.
“To stay or to go?” calls out the woman at the counter. Ryan looks at me, expectantly. I would like to stay and hear more about his job, his love of British soccer and the exact origins of his Gap jeans, but the weight of today’s events added to the lemon drop and the vodka-cran have sent me crashing and I don’t feel confident about what might come out of my mouth next.
“Ugh, to go, I guess,” I tell the woman.
“Make mine to go, too,” Ryan says.
“That will be twenty-four dollars,” says the woman.
“Oh, they must have combined our orders—” I start fumbling for cash.
“That’s okay, I’ve got this,” says Ryan, waving away my attempt.
“No, I don’t mean to make you feel sorry for me.”
“I’ve got it,” he pushes. “Anyway, I don’t feel sorry for you, Liz. I know you’re going places. Soup’s on you next time.”
He grins and takes off down the street.
I notice my stomach has grown warm feeling and it’s not just the soup.
PUSH! :) Notification! Week 17: Think of every pound gained as a sign of a healthy, happy baby. Of course you don’t want to gain too much. So stop and give us 40. Lolz. J.K. Baby Smiles: 15!
“Aren’t you in desperate need of a makeover?” says Hudson, Ford’s just-a-touch-judgmental friend, as he’s sizing me up through his Mr. Rogers black-rimmed glasses in an empty makeup room at the Naomi Marx Show. At 9 a.m. on Monday morning the dressing room is quiet. None of the other production assistants are in yet, but all around me are racks of jewel-toned dresses, five-inch stilettos, scary-looking hair pieces, and big blown-up posters of Naomi staring back at me, with her signature Cleopatra-like closed-mouth smile.
“I haven’t had time,” I say in a daze. I need coffee.
“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
