The Hopefuls(42)

—

When I talked to Matt about it, he said, “Are you jealous?” He looked hopeful, like I was going to get caught up in some pregnancy pact with Ash and Colleen, decide that we should have a baby immediately.

“No, it’s not that. I just—I know what it will be like. This is all they’re going to talk about.” Matt was silent, and then I said, “Just so you know, I realize how shitty I sound. I can’t help it. I’m a bad friend, I guess.”

“You’re not a bad friend,” he said. “But I think maybe you think this is worse than it is.”

“I mean, I’m happy for them,” I said. “I just wish it wasn’t happening right now.”

“They’re not going to stop being your friends just because they’re having babies.”

“They won’t be able to drink.”

“I’m sure you can work around that,” he said, all of a sudden speaking slowly, like I was a brain-damaged giraffe.

“You don’t get it. It’s different for guys.”

Matt looked at me, like he was trying to decide if he should continue this conversation. Lately, there had been a different tone when we talked about babies. It was a subtle shift, but I felt it. Now when Matt showed me pregnancy announcements on Facebook, I felt like he was really saying, What d’ya think? Are you ready? It was stressing me out. I started to blame Facebook and everyone’s need to announce their impending babies in creative ways, like they were all involved in some giant Pinterest competition. If I saw one more tiny pumpkin with a date on it, one more Big Brother Promotion sign, one more picture of an actual bun in an oven, I thought I might lose it. Or vomit.

“I’m sure it is different,” Matt said. He cleared his throat. “But it’s not like we’re so far away from having a baby.”

“I just feel like we’re not ready yet. Don’t you?” I sounded desperate for Matt to agree with me.

He shrugged. “I feel ready,” he said. “But we both need to get there.”

Our conversation was awkward and I could tell that neither of us knew how to make it less so. Shockingly, we’d never talked about any of this, not in any sort of serious way. We were so young when we got married that we didn’t have to discuss timing—we had all the time in the world! And now, all of a sudden, we didn’t anymore.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to make a joke. “It is something we should both be involved in.”

Matt attempted a smile. “But we should start thinking about it,” he said. And then he was the one trying to make his voice jokey. “It’s not like we’re spring chickens.”

All I could manage was to say, “Ha,” like a low-budget laugh track. His comment stayed with me, sat funny in my chest. Even though he was older than I was, it felt like my ovaries were being insulted, like he was trying to shame them into action.

—

Jimmy was busy that summer, traveling with the President everywhere, which now included campaign stops, and we rarely saw them for Friday dinners. (Most of the administration couldn’t take any part in the campaign, because of something called the Hatch Act, but there were exemptions and Jimmy was one of them, which he pretended bothered him but I knew made him feel important.) Sometimes we went out with just Ash, but it felt a little strange, like we had a sister-wife situation going on. This was mostly because Matt insisted on paying for Ash and treating her like she was handicapped instead of just pregnant, pulling out her chair for her and making sure she had enough water. Once, he asked the waiter if the cheese on her salad was pasteurized. “I just wanted to make sure,” he said, after the waiter left our table. “Oh, you are the sweetest,” Ash said.

Honestly, that night I hated them both just a little.

When Jimmy was in town, we talked only of the campaign. In July, during one of the rare Fridays that he was there, the four of us went to Mintwood Place, a restaurant in between our places that had opened that winter but that we still hadn’t tried. I’d been looking forward to it, had been feeling nostalgic for our Friday dinners, but as we sat there and talked about Romney and fund-raising and polls, I got agitated. “Remember when we were the only couples in DC who had real dinner conversation?” I asked. No one answered me, although Ash did make a face like she was annoyed too, but didn’t do anything to stop it.

Jimmy was describing a campaign event in Las Vegas when Matt said, “God, sometimes I wish I’d jumped on the campaign.”

“You do?” I asked. He didn’t seem to realize that this was surprising and also a little hurtful. Did that mean he wished he was in Chicago? Or that he was traveling? Either way, he’d be away from me.

“Absolutely,” he said. “All the time.”

“You know,” Jimmy said. “They always need volunteers on trips. A lot of people are taking vacation days and jumping on. Just to feel like they’re doing something.”

“Volunteer?” I asked. But no one really answered me. Matt just turned and said, “Yeah, Hatch. You know.”

“It’s something to think about,” Jimmy said to Matt, who was already nodding in agreement.

—

There was no doubt in my mind that Matt would arrange to go on a trip. Never mind that he’d be using all of his vacation days and we wouldn’t be able to go anywhere, or that he’d never really done advance in the first place. “They know I can figure it out,” he said, when I brought it up. “I did enough events in finance to know what goes on. Plus, I’ll probably just be a P2.”