Rich and Pretty(75)

“I’m not supposed to pressure you, or question your choices.” Gabe had a huge, very prominent Adam’s apple. He was so much taller than her it was right at her eye level. “But Lauren.”

That second time was harder, she admits that. Gabe, tears in the corners of his eyes. A good man, a great man for someone else. He’d gone out to get maxi pads, sorbet. He still asked her about getting married, even after, but with less optimism, with something like heartbreak. If it wouldn’t have worked before that day, it certainly wouldn’t have worked after. From that moment on, nothing between them was the same. Sarah doesn’t know any of this, no one does—a secret you keep from your closest friend is one you share with no one. And she is that, after all this time, isn’t she, Sarah, her closest friend?

It’s the sort of evening that makes you feel very small in the world. Maybe she will give up the apartment and sell the cute little vintage sofa and go to Portland, maybe she’ll buy a dog, and learn to drive stick, and become a vegan. Maybe she’ll stay here and marry Rob and have a baby and time it to the birth of Sarah’s next baby and their children will be best friends just as they are best friends and every Sunday they’ll get together for a big, communal dinner, a roast chicken, on colorful porcelain plates. Sarah thinks anything is possible, but of course, for Sarah, anything is possible. Lauren has never quite believed that.

Lauren is not Sarah, and Rob is not Dan. There’s not going to be a fairy-tale wedding at a mansion; there’s not going to be a happy, healthy heir to the throne, or the family fortune, anyway. She’s a different person, they are different people. She knows what she wants to do, after all. There’s a movie theater on Sixty-Sixth Street, an artsy one, but there’s a stupid-enough movie playing, so she goes inside, takes her seat, turns her phone off, and watches the movie.



The baby eats, dozes, complains, burps, a little of the milk, undigested, spilling out of his soft, gummy mouth and onto Sarah’s shirt. There’s a washcloth somewhere around, but she ignores the wet spit-up, hushes him, calms him, and he’s asleep. She places him in the bassinet, carefully, then sighs with relief. The apartment is mostly tidy. She dumps the cold coffee from Lauren’s mug, runs the dishwasher. The steady thrum of the dishwasher is so reassuring. She takes a shower, stripping out of her milk-scented clothes, running the water lukewarm, gingerly soaping her tits, which were bloody only a week ago, horrifyingly. Women are raised to be comfortable with blood, but you never expect to see the stuff on your breasts.

Sarah considers her naked body in the mirror, after the shower. One of the disadvantages of this particular bathroom, a note she’d pass on to the developers if ever she met them: Few people want a huge mirror to confront them as they step out of the shower. Her breasts are enormous, even though Henry’s only just done the hard work of depleting the supply of milk therein. Her hips are wider than they were before, than they were a year ago, and what she knows but doesn’t quite want to admit is that they’re this way forever; she can stick to whole grains and lean meat for the next ten years but nothing will make her very bones shift. At least her vagina looks less swollen, less purple, and the discharge has stopped altogether. Her physician recommended some exercises, starting to urinate, then stopping; it’s meant to forestall future incontinence. She’s horrified but also mystified; did Lulu go through this? She can never ask her, of course.

Her hair looks good. It’s always been thick, but the pregnancy seems to have tamed it somehow, and of course, it’s always looked its best right out of the shower, or while in the pool, wet, as one mass, tucked demurely behind her ears. She’s always felt her ears were nice, and overlooked. Not everyone has nice ears. This body. This body Dan wanted to possess, and together they made a baby, asleep right now in the very next room. She tells herself that he’s alive, that he’s well, though some instinct in her tells her, every so often, that the baby is dead, that she needs to rush to his side. Either this will pass, or it never will. This is motherhood.

Dan is home. She steps out of the bathroom, her body hidden in the robe, her hair hidden in the towel. This always makes her feel terribly old, when her hair is wrapped up in terrycloth; she hates for Dan to see her this way.

“Hi there.” Dan’s mouth is full of baby carrots.

“Hi yourself.” She kisses him on the lips, gently. “How was work?”

“Work was work,” he says. “How were the festivities?”

“Festive.”

“I see you had a good haul there. Presents galore.”

“I should write the thank-you notes tonight, while I’m thinking about it.” She has some, stashed in the desk drawer. It won’t take too long.

“Society won’t collapse if you wait a night,” Dan says. “How’s the little man?”

“He’s good.” She smiles, an involuntary response at even the thought of Henry. “He was the hit of the party.”

“Naturally. Those good looks. How could he not be?”

“You should have seen it, though.” She tries to paint the picture for him, but knows she’s failing. “Amina held him, Mom held him, and he was just so chill and happy. He’s a people person.”

“Your dad, I think.” Dan pops another baby carrot into his mouth. “It’s in his blood.”