The Perfect Mother(8)

A waiter with a shaved head and a line of stud earrings above one eyebrow approaches the table. “Table service is open, ladies. What’ll it be?”

Nell rests her hand on Winnie’s arm. “What are you drinking? This round’s on me.”

Winnie smiles. “Iced tea.”

Nell sits back in her chair. “Iced tea?”

“Yeah. They have good iced tea. Unsweetened.”

“Good unsweetened iced tea? There’s not even such a thing.” She raises her eyebrows. “I don’t want to get all before-the-tenth-grade-school-dance on you, but tonight is about getting a proper drink.”

“I’m fine,” Winnie says, glancing at the waiter. “Just the iced tea.”

“Suit yourself,” Nell says, raising her glass. “Another gin and tonic for me. Who knows when I’ll be able to get another night out like this.”

“I don’t know how you’re going to do it,” Francie says after the waiter finishes taking orders and leaves. “Go back to work next week.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” Nell says. “It’ll be fine. I’m antsy to get back to work, in fact.” She looks away, hoping nobody can sense the truth: she’s sick about the thought of cutting short her maternity leave in just five more days. She’s not ready to leave the baby, not yet, but she doesn’t have a choice. Her company, the Simon French Corporation, the nation’s largest magazine publisher, is forcing her back.

“Of course, we’re not forcing you back, Nell,” Ian said when he called from the office three weeks ago to “check in” on things. “It’s just that well, you’re the chief technology officer, and this switch to the new security system is the entire reason we hired you.” He paused. “You’re the only person who can do this. The timing is bad, but this is important.”

Important? Nell wanted to ask Ian, her cowlicked cartoon character of a boss. Ian of the ironically preppy belts—navy blue with pink whales, bright green with woven pineapples. What was important? Making sure nobody hacked into their secure files? Keeping away the shadowy Russian operatives intent on gaining access to the painfully dull interview with Catherine Ferris, some reality television star, uncovering her heavily guarded top secret tips to clear skin (two tablespoons of fish oil every morning, a cup of jasmine tea each night)?

Nell peers down the table at the crowd of women, their faces slack with pity. “Oh, come on, ladies,” she says. “It’s good for babies to see their mothers going off to work. It makes them self-reliant.” And what am I supposed to do? she wants to ask. She can’t risk being replaced, not with how much it costs to live in New York, not with the rent on their two-bedroom apartment two blocks from the park, not with their student loans. She makes more than twice what Sebastian earns as an assistant curator at MoMA, and it’s her salary that allows them a life in New York. She can’t jeopardize everything for four more weeks of unpaid maternity leave.

“I went to Whole Foods yesterday,” Colette says, her stack of gold bracelets catching the light. “The cashier told me she was given just four weeks off after having her baby. Unpaid, of course.”

“That’s against the law,” Yuko says. “They have to hold her job for three months.”

“I told her that. But she just shrugged.”

“I have a friend who lives in Copenhagen,” Gemma says. “She got eighteen months of leave after she had her son. Paid.”

“In Canada,” Colette says, “they have to hold a woman’s job for a year. In fact, the US is the only country besides Papua New Guinea that doesn’t mandate paid leave. The United States. The country of family values.”

Nell takes a drink, feeling the alcohol going to work on her muscles. “Do you think if we remind people that babies were fetuses not so long ago, more will be inclined to support maternity leave?”

“Listen to this,” Yuko says, reading aloud from her phone. “Finland: seventeen weeks paid leave. Australia: eighteen weeks. Japan: fourteen weeks. America: zero weeks.”

The song changes, Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell” blasts from the speakers. Nell points a finger in the air and sings along. “She don’t like slavery. She won’t sit and beg. But when I’m tired and lonely, she sees me to bed. This should be the anthem of motherhood,” she says. “Our fight song. I walked the ward with you, babe. A thousand miles with you. I dried your tears of pain, babe. A million times for you.”

Nell notices Winnie looking at the phone in her lap again and reaches down, takes it from her hands, and places it on the table.

“Come on, dance with me,” she says, standing up and tugging Winnie to her feet. “I’d give you all and have none babe, justa justa justa just to have you here by me, because— Here we go!” Nell clutches Winnie’s hand as the volume surges, as every woman at the table explodes into song at the refrain. “In the midnight hour, we need more, more, more. With a rebel yell, we cry more, more, more.”

Nell laughs and raises her glass. “Slash the patriarchy!” she yells.

Winnie smiles and then gently pulls her hand from Nell’s and looks away from the table, past Nell, beyond the crowd pressing around them, as the flash of someone’s camera, for just a moment, lights the features of her perfect face.