Baby proof

twenty-three

That afternoon, my father comes into the city to have lunch with me at the Mayrose Diner. He offered to take me somewhere nicer, but on the heels of the Villa d'Este, I'm in more of a laminated-menu mood than a cloth-napkin mood. We sit in our booth and make small talk about Italy. I tell him he needs to add Lake Como to his list of things to see before he dies.

"I don't have such a list," he says, transferring his onion, lettuce, and tomato from the side of his plate to his burger.

"You need to have one," I say.

He gives me a look as if he's considering this. That's when I tell him about my Google search. His face twists up in sympathy. "I'm sorry, kiddo," he says.

"Yeah," I say. "A bummer, isn't it?"

"I guess it's time to really let Ben go," he says. "You don't want to become as bitter as your old man."

I reach out and pat his hand. "Dad, you aren't bitter," I say. But as soon as the words are out, I realize that his happy routine could be just that. Maybe he still misses my mother. It strikes me that she is the sort of person who, if you are unfortunate enough to fall for, you might never be able to stop loving.

He nods and says, "In some ways I am… But it's too late for me to change. You, on the other hand, have your whole life ahead of you… So what about this fellow Richard? Sounds pretty serious if he's taking you to Italy?"

I shake my head. It feels a bit funny to admit to my father that I went to Italy with a man I'm not serious about, but I still say, "I don't think that's going to work out actually."

"Why's that? Does he want kids, too?"

I'm not sure whether this is a joke or not, but I laugh and then dab at my lips with my napkin. "No. He doesn't, actually. In that sense, he's perfect for me."

My dad tries again. "So what's the problem?"

"I don't love him," I say. "I'm never going to care about him in that way… I would have thought that was okay. But I end up feeling a little bit empty around him."

My dad puts down his burger and says, "Don't you wish we could pick the people we love?"

"Yeah," I say. "Or just make the people we love want the same things we want."

"Yeah," he says. "That would be pretty good, too."

Jess calls me back that afternoon and says, "Let's go out tonight." "I can't," I say. "I have to go to the gym and run a couple of nine-minute miles, thank you very much."

"You're not going to the gym tonight."

"I've heard exercise makes you feel better," I say, thinking that I've never really found that to be the case. More often, I find it to be frustrating when several consecutive workouts yield no visible results.

Jess says, "You need a few drinks."

I am tempted, but a few drinks with Jess almost never means a few drinks. Especially when one of us is dealing with any sort of upsetting professional, personal, or familial episode. It usually means a few drinks and then a long dinner and then a few more drinks. And then, if the tragedy is great enough, there is dancing at the cheesiest bridge-and-tunnel club Jess can dig up for us. It actually can be very therapeutic so I'm tempted to cave, but I consider the hangover that I will have tomorrow and make the thirty-five-year-old determination that it's not worth it.

I say, "I wish I could… But I'm too far behind in my reading. I accomplished almost nothing in Italy."

"Oh, c'mon. You're always behind in your reading," Jess says.

"Yes, but I'm perilously behind now," I say.

She says, "Tough. We're going out. Meet me at Temple Bar at seven sharp."

Then she hangs up before I can respond.

Temple Bar was one of the first bars Jess and I ever went to upon our move to New York. We got the recommendation from one of Jess's family friends, a girl named Caroline who had been living in the city for several years by the time we arrived. She gave Jess a list entitled "Cool Places to Be Seen in Manhattan," which we consulted before going out at night, putting asterisks next to our favorite spots. Temple Bar earned two asterisks. Even though the drinks were out of our usual happy-hour price range and we had to take an expensive cab ride to get to NoHo, it was always worth it. We felt cool when we were there-like we were making it in Manhattan.

One day, Jess's new boyfriend, a funny lawyer named Stu, came across the list in our kitchen. He and Jess had one of those relationships marked by merciless teasing; it was almost as if neither had evolved past the playground, hair-pulling stage. In any event, he took great pleasure in the find.

"Cool places to be seen?" Stu said, waving the list in the air, as she chased him around the apartment. "This thing is too queer for words. Who wrote this?"

Jess played dumb and said, "Oh, that ol' thing? Some friend of the family came up with that… Our dads work together. I barely know her. Tell him, Claudia."

"We barely know her," I echoed.

"Well, the only thing more queer than writing such a list is anyone who would actually save it," he said, cracking up as he made the L-sign for loser on his forehead. "And then make check marks and notes all over it!"

Jess's face reddened as she said, "Well, you're the loser who has accompanied me to half of those places!"

She promptly crumpled up the paper and tossed the list in the trash, but by that point Temple Bar had been firmly established as our favorite hangout.

A lot has changed since then. As a thirty-five-year-old senior editor and a nearly-as-old managing director at a top Wall Street firm, Jess and I no longer hang out much in that Village-NoHo area. Nor do we enjoy lounges like we once did, vastly preferring restaurants where people will dare to be seen in a color other than black. But, like a song that is inextricably tied to a certain time in your life, Temple Bar evokes much nostalgia from our early twenties.

So whenever I see that lizard sign adorning the entrance on Lafayette Street and then step into the romantically lit, red-velvet, deco interior, I have a wave of being twenty-three and so poor I had to nurse one drink all night (I made nineteen thousand a year when I started out at Elgin). I also remember the way I felt-both wildly intimidated and impressed by the city, both filled with a sense of doom and full of hope. Most of all, I recall our many twenty-something mishaps, almost always caused by a member of the opposite sex.

That much is actually still true, I think, as I find Jess in a corner table with a cosmopolitan. She hardly ever drinks cosmopolitans anymore, but the beverage remains part of the Temple Bar ritual (a ritual she established way before Sex and the City ever aired). She hands me my personal Temple Bar favorite, a martini with a kiss of vermouth, and says, "How are you?"

"I'm okay," I say.

"Really?"

I nod, but then say, "No. Not really."

"Okay. Look. I was thinking. This marathon thing is just not your style anyway," Jess says.

I think, If that's the best you came up with all day, I'm really in big trouble, but I say, "I've always wanted to run a marathon."

"Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You say that," Jess says. "You say that in the same way I fancy myself the sort of girl who would enjoy snow-boarding and bungee jumping and white-water rafting. I wish I liked adventure sports. But you know what? I don't. They're scary. They're not fun. So no, thanks… And you might think you want to run a marathon, but c'mon, do you really want to run twenty-six-plus miles? Do you really want to get up at the butt crack of dawn and train? No. You don't. So let the dream die, already."

"I guess so," I say. "I don't know… I know that this shouldn't bother me as much as it does. Nothing has really changed since I went to Italy with Richard… or talked to Ben… or saw those Internet results. I'm in the exact same place I always was-or have been since I got a divorce. So I'm really not sure why I feel so much worse now…"

"Well, suspecting that Ben is in a relationship was one thing. Confirmation is another. It's hard. I get that."

"I know. But I really thought I was moving on," I say, recalling my dad's pep talk at lunch. "Richard or no Richard, I thought I was okay with my decision."

"You are okay, Claudia. You did make the right decision," she says. "It's just that moving on sometimes consists of some minor setbacks along the way. You had to have your rebound guy in Richard. You had to worry about Ben's rebound girl. Which is probably all Tucker is in the long run. But regardless of whether she is or isn't, you are moving on."

"Just like you're moving on and forgetting Trey?" I say hopefully.

"Exactly!" she says, grinning. "He's actually coming into town next week. He left me a message. But I haven't called him back."

I shoot her a dubious look.

"I swear I haven't. And I'm not going to. I'm done with him. You need to be done with Ben, too."

I nod and say okay.

"So here's to fresh starts," she says, raising her glass.

"To fresh starts," I say, thinking that this time I almost, very nearly, mean it.

We then proceed to get really drunk together, and it feels just like old times, when a few cocktails at a trendy lounge could fix just about anything.

I don't mention Ben and Tucker for another few days, until one of my authors, Ethan Ainsley, stops by to say hello. Ethan recently moved from London to New York which made me happy because he is one of my few authors who has a perfect score on my four-point checklist, namely: (1) I like him; (2) I like his writ-ing; (3) his books sell; and (4) he's reliable. More typically, I like the author and the writing but the books aren't as commercially successful as I'd hoped. Or I like the writing and the books sell well, but the author is pompous and unreliable.

So when Ethan appears smiling in my doorway, I smile back and tell him to come in, have a seat.

"Look what I got this morning," I say, handing him a mock-up of his next book jacket that the art director just gave me. "What do you think?"

Ethan looks down at the stark navy cover adorned only with a small, white pillow and breaks into a huge smile. "I love it," he says. "It's so simple… but perfect."

"I know," I say. "I think it's really good."

"Those guys in the art department are brilliant," he says. "Let's just cross our fingers that people judge my book by this cover."

I smile and say, "So what's doing? Just in the neighborhood?"

"Yeah. I was over at Paragon picking up ski gear… We're taking the boys on a little ski trip."

"That sounds fun," I say.

"Yeah. Should be a good time," he says.

"How is your family?"

"Good. John and Thomas just started kindergarten… and, in bigger news, they have a little sister on the way!" Ethan says, beaming.

"Ethan! That's awesome news!" I say, feeling genuinely happy for him. "Darcy really wanted a girl, didn't she?"

I suddenly realize that I might be confusing his wife with a character named Ellen in his first book. It's something I often do when it comes to Ethan's books, because in one of our early conversations, right after I bought his manuscript, he admitted how much his novel mirrored his own life and marriage. Specifically, he confided that like the hero in his book, he fell in love with a girl, despite her baggage, despite her flaws, despite his own fervent wishes to be free, unencumbered, and blissfully alone. All that went out the window. Because he just had to be with her. Needless to say, I was fascinated when I met Ethan's wife at his first book signing last year, and after only a five-minute conversation with her, I could see why he had fallen so hard for her. She was charming, unaffected, and drop-dead gorgeous.

Ethan says, "Well, Darcy insisted that she didn't care, but she was giddy at our ultrasound. I think she was feeling a bit outnumbered at home… And I secretly wanted a girl, too."

"Well, that's really good news," I say, thinking that I can be happy for someone when the news of conception is normal, straightforward, and unfettered by drama and controversy. "Congratulations!"

"Thanks," he says. "So, what about you? How are you doing?"

Ethan knows about my divorce. I recently gave him the abbreviated version ("I don't want a baby; he does") of why we split.

So I say, "Oh, I'm fine… Just keeping busy… you know." I consider telling him that I was briefly dating someone, but reconsider when I remember that Richard has done some work on his books. Incidentally, other than a couple of e-mails, I've yet to talk to Richard since our return. I'm starting to wonder if he came to the same conclusion about us.

Ethan hesitates and then asks, "Have you talked to your ex at all?"

The question shouldn't catch me off guard-Ethan is candid that way. But it does, so I find myself blurting out the latest on Tucker and the marathon. I tell the story with a self-deprecating, humorous bent, but Ethan's face stays serious. When I finish, he says, "So how do you feel about all that?"

I shrug, trying to brush it off. "The doctor-jock combo is certainly annoying," I say with a smile.

"So just the standard postbreakup pang?" he asks.

"More or less."

"But you don't want him back, do you?"

I think of my talk with Jess at Temple Bar. Then I think of the reason Ben and I broke up-and how nothing has changed since then. I think that I certainly know what the answer should be. But I still shock myself when I say, "Well, yeah. Sure I want him back. In theory."

"So go get him back, then," Ethan says matter-of-factly.

"I can't, I say."

"Sure you can."

"It's too late. He has a girlfriend. And, you know, there's the whole baby issue."

"Both are surmountable obstacles."

"Not really… I mean, who knows about Tucker? But the baby issue certainly isn't surmountable."

"Yes it is."

I look at Ethan, processing what he is saying. He is, more or less, telling me to have a baby to get Ben back. It is just about the worst advice I've ever heard-akin to Jess's dishonest attempt at entrapping Trey.

I shake my head and say, "I can't have a baby just to get Ben back."

"Well, then," he says slowly. "I guess he's not your soul mate… So that should be a consolation when you're looking up their future marathon results."

"Why do you say that?" I ask, feeling oddly defensive. As much as I want to feel okay about Ben in the present, I don't like the implication that what we had wasn't, at one time, the real thing.

"Well, because," Ethan says, "you'd do anything to get a soul mate back, right?… I mean, that's the nature of soul mates. You know, Romeo and Juliet swallowed poison to be together… So if Ben were really the one for you, don't you think you'd go ahead and have his baby?"