The Solomon Sisters Wise Up (2 page)

“Are you tired?” she asked. “I mean,
really
tired? That’s a surefire symptom of pregnancy.”

Of course I was tired. Who wasn’t? I worked ten-hour days at
Wow Woman,
trying to outdo my rival for a promotion and impress our boss and come up with story ideas such as “What Your Eye Shadow Says About You” and “Is She Really Your Friend?” and assigning and editing those pieces (and sometimes writing them myself). Two weeks ago, the senior features editor had gotten herself a job at
Elle,
so there was an opening. My competition for the promotion and I both had four years at the magazine (we’d started as editorial assistants the same month), but until this past Monday, I’d thought the job was mine-all-mine. Danielle Ann (yes, that was her last name) was seven months pregnant, and our boss, editor-in-chief Astrid O’Connor, wasn’t exactly sympathetic to exhaustion, bathroom breaks, doctor appointments during work hours or maternity leave.

Note to self: reveal pregnancy to boss at last possible moment.

“And has your appetite increased?” Lisa had wanted to know as we walked into
Wow
’s loftlike office. “And are your breasts rock-hard yet really sore?”

“Yeah, and it’s called PMS,” I’d said on my way to the bathroom to make sure that my makeup, shirt, skirt, tights and shoes were Astrid-proof.

Astrid O’Connor knew that
Wow
’s staff made crap money, but she expected you to dress creatively-stylishly-on-a-budget if you worked for a women’s magazine. If she didn’t approve of your skirt or your lipstick, she’d stare at the offending item for a full ten seconds (which felt like an eternity), then turn her back and walk away. Before Danielle announced her pregnancy, Astrid had assigned her the “How To Dress Stylishly on a Budget” piece, since Danielle was the most stylish of all the junior staff. After the big announcement, Astrid glanced at Danielle’s maternity shirts, elastic waistbands and comfortable shoes with the word
sloth
in her eyes.

Self-Astrid-proofed, I’d disappeared into a stall only to find Lisa handing me a
Know Now
home pregnancy test under the door.

“For
me,
” Lisa said. “For
my
peace of mind, okay?”

If you want to waste the eleven bucks,
I thought as she whispered the instructions. I did as she said, then placed the stick on top of the toilet paper dispenser.

Lisa squeezed into the stall with me and stared at her watch. “Have you been super moody lately?” she asked.

“I’m not pregnant, Lisa. What you’re describing is called PMS, and I’ve got it big-time.”

“Okay, okay,” she said, eyes on her watch. “Ding. Time.”

“Be my guest,” I told her, gesturing at the stick.

Lisa picked it up and stared at it, her eyes wide. “Um, it doesn’t look
exactly
like the one on the back of the box.”

I elbowed her in the ribs with a “shut up.”

“Sarah—” She held out the stick to me.

I unlocked the stall door. “C’mon, we’re going to be late for the staff meeting.”

Lisa pulled me back and latched the stall and I expected her to shout out,
April Fools!
even though it was October. But she didn’t. She stared at me, then started gnawing on her lower lip. When her hand began trembling, I took the stick and looked in the little square.

And there was one life-changing quarter-inch, horizontal pink line, a bit fainter than the one on the test box, but there nonetheless.

I grabbed the box and read the bold print.
The appearance of a pink line, no matter how faint or broken, indicates pregnancy. See your doctor…

And then I dropped down on the toilet bowl, staring at the pink line that wasn’t supposed to be there.

With a very serious “I’ll be right back,” Lisa went to tell Astrid’s assistant that I’d gotten violently ill in the bathroom after eating a bad scrambled-eggs-and-bacon sandwich from the deli on the corner and that she was taking me home in a taxi. Five minutes later, the two of us were sitting on a bench in Union Square Park, where we didn’t move for two hours, except to get up to hug Sabrina, who came rushing over the moment Lisa called her with the news that I was pregnant with Griffen Maxwell’s baby.

“Embryo!”
Sabrina corrected. “It’s not a baby, it’s an
embryo!
And after it’s an embryo, it’ll be a
fetus!
It’s not a baby!”

Even in my state of numbed
I’m-pregnant
shock, I understood that my dear friend Sabrina was telling me that I had options to consider. Choices.

The only choices running through my mind on that park bench were nature’s: Would the baby god pick Griffen’s wavy blond hair or my poker-straight dark brown? Griffen’s light brown eyes, or my blue ones? His dimples, or my lack of them? The Solomon aquiline nose or Griffen’s Roman one?

“Embryos don’t have hair or eye colors!” Sabrina practically shouted when I wondered those thoughts aloud.

But they sort of did, and that was when I burst into tears and wished more than ever that my mother was alive, so I could run straight into her arms and
be
the baby. Was
I
going to
have
a baby? I
was
going to have a baby.
I’m pregnant,
I thought over and over and over.
I’m pregnant. Pregnant. Pregnant. Pregnant.

“I guess we can’t go to Princess for their killer margaritas,” Lisa said, and we all turned to look across the park at our favorite trendy bar.

“We can if she’s going to have an abortion,” Sabrina pointed out.

And then they both looked at me, and I bit my lip and shook my head.

“Earth to Sarah. Earth to Sarah.”

I glanced up from my picked-at filet mignon in béarnaise sauce to find Griffen Maxwell smiling that smile, the one that had led to sex on our second date.

“You were a million miles away,” he said, taking another sip of the champagne that I wanted to chug. “Trying to figure out what I got you for your birthday?” He eyed the bright red gift bag next to him. Silver tissue paper puffed over the top. “It’s something you hinted you wanted,” he added, surprising me even more than he had by getting me a gift in the first place.

That reminded me of the “Is He Your Boyfriend or Just a Guy You’re Dating?” quiz that Lisa had written for
Wow
a couple of years ago:

Q: You’ve been dating for six weeks, but aren’t exclusive. For your birthday, he gives you:

A) Nothing.

B) A gold bracelet.

C) Dinner and a movie.

D) A book.

I’d given it my best guess,
C,
which turned out to be the
He’s on the Way To Becoming Your Boyfriend
answer. Answer
A
meant he was a jerk.
D
depended on the book.
The History of Western Civilization
from the bargain bin meant he didn’t care about you but knew no present meant no sex. The hardcover you’d mentioned you wanted to read when you were browsing Barnes & Noble together meant that he not only liked you but was a good listener (not that Griffen and I had ever browsed a bookstore together).
B
meant he was a potential stalker.

I’d been right about
C,
except for the movie part, but Griffen
had
also gotten me a present.

Maybe Lisa was right. Maybe he was more committed to the relationship than I thought.

Tell him,
I ordered myself.
Tell him right now.

I opened my mouth, but slid in a forkful of steak.

I opened my mouth again, but the waiter came over, granting me a twelve-second reprieve. And while Griffen ordered another bottle of Pellegrino, I stared at his Roman nose and hoped the baby inherited it.

My stomach churned. How
would
he react? Unlike Ally, I didn’t think Griffen would run screaming out of the restaurant, never to be seen or heard from again. I also didn’t think he’d drop down on one knee and offer me the ring of my choice in Tiffany’s (I rented
Sweet Home Alabama
a few nights ago).

I had no idea what he’d say. I knew only that as he sat across from me, I had visions of the two of us in the nursery of our Upper West Side brownstone or Upper East Side two-bedroom prewar high-rise on the twenty-something floor, deciding on a
Where the Wild Things Are
or
Peter Pan
mural and registering for essential items like musical mobiles and bouncy seats.

Tell him! Tell him!

“I’m
dying
to know what’s in that bag,” I said.

Chicken shit.

With that sex-inducing smile, Griffen slid the red bag across the table.

Inside all that passionate red and silver puffing was a thick paperback biography of Theodore Roosevelt, which was right up there with
The History of Western Civilization.

“Griffen, are you seeing anyone else?” I blurted out.

We both froze, his fork in midair, midway to his mouth, my mind in midthought. I hadn’t meant to ask that question; it was way too loaded for what I really had to blurt out tonight.

He took the bite of herb-encrusted salmon. “Uh-oh, you don’t like the book,” he said, coy smile on those lips. “I should have gotten you the scarf. I knew it.”

A scarf would have been better. A biography of
Eleanor
Roosevelt would have been better.

Damn. Damn. Damn. There was no denying that Griffen Maxwell wasn’t in love with me. You knew when a guy really liked you and when he just
liked
you and liked having sex with you. You knew. From date one, I’d figured Griffen was somewhere in between. But I still thought there was potential. After all, as article after
Wow
article said, you weren’t supposed to have expectations. You were supposed to
have fun while leading your busy life!

“He’ll never marry you,”
Ally had said two minutes into our phone conversation last night.
“Signs, Sarah,”
she said.
“You have to pay attention to the signs. A guy in love doesn’t leave your apartment at three in the morning. A guy in love doesn’t play racquetball on Sunday mornings when he should be having lox and bagels and the
Times
in bed with you. It’s like that Fleetwood Mac song says—if he doesn’t love you now, he’ll never love you again.”

I told her I thought that was the most depressing thing I’d ever heard, that we
had
been dating for only two months.

“Duh!”
and
“Stop living in a fucking fairy tale already”
were among just a few of her responses.
“The guy doesn’t even sleep over, Sarah. He’s not going to pass out cigars when you tell him you’re pregnant.”

I wasn’t sure why Ally, who married her smarmy husband right out of law school at age twenty-three, thought she knew anything about men or dating. That expertise had been bestowed on my half sister, Zoe, who at twenty-six somehow managed to make a very good living as a relationship guru by critiquing people’s dates. I would have hired Zoe myself during my early dates with Griffen, but she lived in L.A. and we weren’t exactly close on sisterly terms.

Griffen was flipping through my birthday present. “I think you’ll really like the book,” he said. “Teddy Roosevelt’s one of my heroes. The station’s doing a segment on him next week. I’ll set up your VCR to tape it.”

Before the pink line, a statement like that would have gotten me very excited. I would have read into it, extrapolating: 1) I want to see you again. 2) I want to be inside your apartment. 3) I want to do things for you. 4) I want to share my work with you. 5) This relationship is definitely going somewhere.

Now, though, all I heard was exactly what he said.

I took a sip of my Pellegrino and wondered if he’d still come over to tape it for me after running screaming out of the restaurant. “Great! Thanks,” I told him.

“So you
do
like the present,” he said. “Whew! It’s not easy buying a birthday present for someone you haven’t been seeing that long.”

Bad sign number two.

He then rushed into a monologue about Teddy Roosevelt and the turn of the last century. As he talked on and on about old New York and corruption and poverty and the Lower East Side, I realized that he knew I wanted an answer to The Question and that he was hoping I’d either back down or be bored to death.

“Um, Griffen?”

He paused, busying himself with the saltshaker, sipping his champagne, slicing, dabbing.

“I was serious back there,” I said. “I really need to know if you’re dating anyone else.”

“Sarah…” He smiled a bit tightly and suddenly took both my hands across the table. “You know what
I
really need to know? If you’re finished with your dinner so that I can propose a toast.” He didn’t wait or even take a breath. He raised his champagne glass. “To you, on your twenty-ninth birthday.”

The words
so that I can propose
echoed in my head.
So that I can propose. So that I can propose. Propose. Propose. Propose.

I didn’t lift my glass. He eyed me, then took a sip of his champagne.

“Griffen?”

Blank stare. Slight tinge of annoyance on his face.

“Sa-rah…”

I could feel my cheeks turning red. “Look, Griffen, we’ve been seeing each other for two months, and I’d like to know where we stand. It’s not so out of line for me to ask.”

Screw how loaded the question was, given what I had to tell him. I wanted to know. I had to know.

He sighed. “Okay. You’re right. It’s not out of line at all.”

I waited.

He took another sip of champagne, then leaned across the table, took both my hands again and smiled. “Sarah, I really like you and we have a good time together. How about if we leave it at that for now and just enjoy ourselves?”

Why did guys always say that? Why? It meant
Yes, I am seeing other people,
or
Not necessarily, but I want to reserve the right because I don’t really feel that way about you, even though I like you fine and enjoy your company.