Revenge Wears Prada (17 page)

She said this last part wanting her mother to deny it, rationalize it, come up with some ridiculous analysis or opinion that of course Alex wasn’t serious about the girl, but Mrs. Sachs merely shook her head and said, “Yes, Roberta hopes they’ll be engaged by the end of the year. Of course, she’s only in her midtwenties, so I don’t think there’s any rush. But I’m sure Roberta is as eager for grandchildren as I am.”

“You have grandchildren. Three, actually. Treasures, each of them.”

Andy’s mom laughed. “They’re a handful, aren’t they? I wouldn’t wish three boys on anyone.” She took a sip of her tea. “I don’t remember you bumping into Alex. Did I know about it?”

“I was still working at
Happily Ever After
and I had just met Max. You were on that riverboat cruise with your book club. I remember because I wrote you about it and your reply was from some funky keyboard that replaced every
y
with a
z
.”

“Your memory never ceases to amaze me.”

“Alex was in the city for the summer doing some sort of educational internship through Columbia. I still don’t know why he was at Whole Foods that day, but of course Max and I had just gone for a run and stopped in to pick up some water. I looked like hell, and Alex was dressed for an interview. The three of us got coffee for ten minutes upstairs, which was every bit as awkward
as you’d think. He mentioned then he was dating a master’s student, but that it wasn’t serious.”

Andy omitted the part of the meeting where her heart was racing through the entire too-short latte, how she laughed a little too hard and nodded a little too vigorously every time Alex cracked a joke or made an observation. She didn’t tell her mother how she wondered if he was excited to see his girlfriend later that night, if he loved her, if he thought of this new girl as the one person who truly understood him. Andy didn’t mention how desperately she hoped he’d follow up their accidental meeting with a phone call or e-mail, and how she’d been hurt—despite her excitement over her new relationship with Max—when she didn’t hear from him. How she had cried that night in the shower remembering all the years they’d spent together, wondering how they’d become such strangers, before yelling at herself to put Alex out of her mind once and for all and concentrate on her feelings for Max. Handsome, sexy, funny, charming,
supportive
Max. She didn’t say any of it, but something told her her mother understood.

Andy helped her mother clean up the dishes and put away the cake. Mrs. Sachs provided a highly detailed running commentary on every interaction she had during Andy and Max’s wedding, opinions on what people wore, how much they drank, whether or not they appeared to be having a good time, and how it compared to all the weddings of her friends’ children she’d attended in the past few years (superior on all counts, of course). She was careful not to mention the Harrisons either way. Jill reappeared briefly to pour two cups and one bottle of milk, and Andy felt like she was betraying both her mother and sister by not telling them the news. Instead, she wished Jill a happy birthday, kissed them both good night, and retreated to her childhood bedroom, the one farthest from the stairs on the second floor.

Plans were under way to update Andy’s bedroom now that she was all grown up—she’d helped her mother choose a queen
bed with a leather headboard, plus a set of those hotel-style sheets and a duvet, crisp white with a straight line of espresso stitching—but nothing was ready yet. Her white shag carpet, colored gray from years of illegally wearing her shoes inside, and her purple-and-white-flowered quilt felt a thousand years old. A half-dozen bulletin boards were covered with remnants of her high school years: the tennis schedule for the fall 1997 season, assorted magazine tear-outs of Matt Damon and Marky Mark, a
Titanic
movie poster, a phone list for the yearbook staff, a shriveled stem from some dance’s corsage with its flower long dropped, a postcard from Jill’s postcollege trip to Cambodia, a pay stub from the TCBY she worked at the summer after graduation, and pictures, so many pictures. And almost every one of them featured Lily, smiling right alongside Andy, whether the girls were in taffeta dresses for prom, jeans for volunteering together at Avon’s no-kill shelter, or matching tracksuits for the single season they went out for the cross-country team. Andy removed a pushpin and pulled one of the pictures from the board: she and Lily at the state fair with a group of friends, walking off the Gravitron, each looking greener than the next. She remembered rushing into the bushes to puke mere moments after that shot was snapped and trying to convince her parents for the next three days that her reflexive vomiting was only the result of too many go-rounds on that evil ride and not a rebellious act of teenage drinking (although there was that, too, of course).

She flopped on her twin-size bed, now slightly sagging in the center from so many years of use, and dialed Lily’s phone number. It would be ten to nine in Colorado, and Lily would probably have just put Bear down for the night. She answered on the second ring.

“Hey, beautiful! How’s life as a newlywed?”

“I’m pregnant,” Andy said before she could talk herself out of it.

There were three, maybe five seconds of silence before Lily said, “Andy? Is that you?”

“It’s me. I’m pregnant.”

“Oh my god. Congratulations! You people don’t waste much time, do you? Wait, that would be impossible . . .”

Andy held her breath as Lily did the math. She knew the entire world would do the exact same thing and that it would drive her crazy, but Lily was different. It was such a relief to tell someone. “Yeah, totally impossible. They think it’s not a ‘new’ pregnancy, whatever that means, and obviously we haven’t even been married two weeks. I’m scheduled for an ultrasound next week. I’m freaking out . . .”

“Don’t freak out! It’s scary, I know, I remember that part. But it’s so wonderful, Andy. Are you going to find out what you’re having?”

There it was: the quintessential normal question to ask a newly pregnant friend. It made Andy choke up with its innocence, and for a moment she was doubly upset to realize that this conversation with her oldest friend in the world couldn’t be solely a celebration. They wouldn’t get a chance to debate whether Andy was having a boy or girl, or list favorite names, or discuss the pros and cons of one ridiculously expensive stroller versus another one. There were other things to say.

“How excited is Max? I can’t even imagine! He’s been talking about babies since the day you met.”

“I haven’t told him.” Andy said this so quietly she wasn’t sure Lily heard her.

“You haven’t
told
him?”

“Things are weird between us. I found a letter from Barbara the day of our wedding, and I can’t stop thinking about it,” Andy said.

“Weird how, exactly? Weird enough to make you not tell your husband you’re carrying his baby?”

Once she started talking, she couldn’t stop. She told Lily everything, absolutely everything, including some of the details she hadn’t even admitted to Emily. How she debated asking for some
time apart to think and was five seconds away from telling Max when she got the call from Mr. Kevin. How she didn’t want to touch him. Andy even managed to articulate, for the very first time, how she couldn’t stop wondering if Max was telling her the entire truth about Katherine.

“So . . . there you have it. Pretty picture, isn’t it?” Andy pulled the elastic out of her ponytail and shook her hair. She laid her cheek against her pink floral pillow and inhaled: it was probably just the same Tide or Bounce or whatever, but it smelled like her childhood, and she didn’t ever want it to change.

“I don’t even know what to say. Do you want me to come there? I can leave Bear with Bodhi, probably, and be on a plane tomorrow . . .”

“Thanks, Lil, but I’m headed to Anguilla for work in the morning. And you were just here. But I appreciate it.”

“You poor thing! And screw Barbara! What a witch. But god, you must feel so vulnerable! I distinctly remember being pregnant with Bear and having these fears, terrors really, that Bodhi was going to leave me stranded, pregnant, alone. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about expecting a baby that puts you in this . . . this
mind-set.
I can’t explain it.”

“No, you just did, and I know exactly what you mean. A week ago I was considering a time-out to think things through. Give us a chance to be honest with each other and really figure things out. It wasn’t going to be easy, but I was doing it. Now? There’s a
baby
! Max’s baby. And I want to be upset with him, but I already love his baby.”

“Oh, Andy. I know. It’s just the beginning.”

Andy sniffed. She hadn’t even realized she’d been crying.

“You think you love that baby now? Just wait.”

“I . . . I just thought it would be different.”

Lily was quiet for a moment. Andy knew her friend well enough to know that Lily was debating bringing up her own experience, as worried as she probably was about turning the focus
back to her. But then she said, “I know, sweetie. You have this vision that you’re going to wake up one day next to your adoring husband of two years, and you’re going to stroll into the bathroom together to look at the stick you just peed on, and you’re both going to collapse back onto the bed together in joy and excitement, hugging and laughing and thrilled. And he’ll come to every appointment with you and rub your feet and buy you pickles and ice cream. Well, you know how often that happens? Like, never. But I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t make it any less wonderful.”

Andy thought of the day, almost four years earlier, when Lily called and announced she was pregnant. She’d been living in Boulder for two years already and had decided to slow down on her PhD path in order to teach more. The girls didn’t speak that often, but when they did, Andy was always envious of how happy Lily sounded. At first Andy thought Lily’s new yoga obsession was like her own long list of short-lived interests, all of which she’d embarked on passionately and discarded quickly: tennis, pottery, spinning, cooking. When Lily announced she’d be punching class cards in exchange for a small stipend and discounted classes, Andy shook her head knowingly. So Lily. When she’d announced she’d signed up for the five-hundred-hour teacher-training course, Andy laughed to herself. But then, when she’d completed it in record time and spent the following four months at an ashram in Kodaikanal, India, taking courses like “Yoga for Emotional Imbalances” and “Yoga for a Strong Heart” under world-famous swamis with unpronounceable names, Andy began to wonder. Soon after her return to the States, Lily began dating the owner and head teacher of her yoga school, a converted Buddhist named Bodhi, originally Brian, from Northern California, and a year after that, Lily called to give Andy the big news: she and Bodhi were expecting a baby in six months. Andy could barely believe it. A
baby
? With
Bodhi
? She’d met him once when Lily brought him to Connecticut, and she’d had a
hard time getting past his thick dreadlocks and even thicker muscles and his penchant for sipping green tea from a thermos, hot or cold depending on the season, every minute of every day. He seemed like a nice enough guy, and he was clearly in love with Lily, but none of it gelled for Andy. She hadn’t asked many questions, but Lily knew her well enough and said, “This wasn’t an accident, Andy. Bodhi and I are committed to being lifelong partners, and we don’t need some legal whatnot to make it official. I love him, and we want children together.”

She guiltily harbored doubts all through Lily’s pregnancy, wondering what her friend was thinking, why exactly she’d dived off the deep end. But from the moment she laid eyes on Lily nursing her infant son a couple weeks after his birth, Andy knew Lily was doing exactly the right thing for herself, her partner, and her son. There had been distance between them for a little—Andy couldn’t begin to understand everything Lily was feeling in her new role as mother and (sort of) wife—but she was grateful her friend had created this new life for herself. And now she was grateful that Lily knew exactly what she meant.

“Foot rubs and ice cream? Hell, I’d settle for just a few weeks of no chlamydia scares.”

“I’m glad you can laugh about it,” Lily said, and Andy could hear the relief in her voice. “I know this is an incredibly hard time, but I’m still allowed to be happy for you, aren’t I? You’re having a baby!”

“I know. I wouldn’t believe it myself if it weren’t for the crushing exhaustion and constant nausea.”

“I thought I had cancer before I found out,” Lily confessed. “I literally could not keep my eyes open for longer than a three-hour period. I couldn’t think of another explanation.”

Andy was quiet, processing how wonderful and strange it was to be talking about her pregnancy with her oldest friend on earth, and she must have drifted off, because Lily said, “Andy? You there? Did you just fall asleep?”

“Sorry,” she mumbled, wiping a touch of drool from the corner of her mouth.

“I’ll let you go,” Lily said.

Andy smiled. “I miss you, Lil.”

“I’m here for you, sweetie. Call
anytime.
And give yourself permission in Anguilla to get a little sun and drink a virgin piña and forget about everything for a day, okay? Can you promise me that?”

“I’ll try.” They exchanged a few more good-byes, and Andy told herself not to feel guilty for failing to ask after Bear or Bodhi. If there was ever a time to be a little self-centered, Andy figured, it was then. She yanked off her jeans, which were already starting to feel uncomfortably snug, and pulled her sweater over her head. Teeth brushing, face washing, flossing . . . it could all wait, she thought as she returned her head to her cool floral pillow and pulled her girlhood quilt up to her chin. Everything would look better in the morning.

Eleven
A.M
. flight. A three-hour delay with an unplanned stop in Puerto Rico. A “ferry” boat ride from Saint Martin that felt like riding a Jet Ski through a hurricane. And finally a long wait at an un-air-conditioned customs gate followed by a ride on dusty, bumpy local roads. Traveling was tough when you weren’t knocked up, but pregnant it was almost intolerable.