Chapter 30
NEW YORK CITY
AUGUST 6, 2019
AGE: 33
I’D KNOW WHERE I WAS EVEN WITHOUT THE PLAQUE BEHIND THE front desk. Just the smell of the place—eucalyptus mixed with disinfectant—told me I was in the waiting room of the J. T. Harris Clinic, one of Manhattan’s finest fertility centers. I used to come here with Geeta when she was struggling to conceive with Matt. There were no signs of my best friend now, but everything else was the same, from the potted orchids to the soothing white noise pumping out of the air vents.
“Jenny Green?”
I looked up and saw a woman in a crisp lab coat and white clogs. The attendant waved her clipboard, motioning for me to join her. I froze for a split second when I saw that I was on the cover of the magazine in my hands: I was wearing a macramé bikini and leaping over what appeared to be hot coals on a beach. The headline read, “How #GirlBoss Jenny Green Traded Gluten for Gorgeousness.”
I put the magazine down and followed the woman into a consultation room. “The doctor will be right with you,” she said as she closed the door behind her. I slipped into the hospital gown that was folded on the table.
At last, Dr. Rosequist—the same physician who’d presided over Geeta’s treatment—strode into the room. “Yes, chef!” He had a booming voice. “Fantastic to see you again,” he said, easing into the seat across from me. His tone turned more serious as he rifled through a set of papers. Then he guided me into a small consultation room, where I lay down on a patient’s table covered with a sheet of examination paper. He commenced a pelvic examination, sussing out my ovaries with the help of an ultrasound wand and a loud casualness that made me uncomfortable. “Your hormone levels are looking very promising,” he said. “And we have seventeen excellentfollicles!” He looked at me expectantly. “My bet is we’ll be cooking up a baby in no time.”
A baby in no time. My breathing went short. I’d always wanted to become a mother, but I’d barely spent a collective twenty-four hours in this strange world, and now I was going to oversee another person’s entry into it?
“I’m going to be a mother,” I said in disbelief.
“Not quite yet—we need to do the fertilization first. But all signs are a go,” he said. “It’s a lot to take in, I know. Alex is going to be over the moon when he hears how well everything is going.”
Right. Alex. It would have been nice of him to come with me to this appointment. Or nice if anybody had. Matt always said that he was worried about the clinic’s gamma-ray levels, and so he kept his distance. But I never let Geeta come here alone.
The doctor told me to put my clothes back on and led me back into his office.
I took a seat in the chair opposite him. He spun in his seat to face the bookshelf behind him. He turned back around to show me his copy of Flash by Alex Stone. “I tracked down a first edition,” he said. “I was hoping he’d sign it for me.”
“I’m sure he will happily sign it,” I told Alex’s fanboy, taking the book from his hands. “I’ll bring it back for our next appointment.”
“Tell him he can’t skip the fertilization. Doctor’s orders.”
“He’ll be here,” I said. “For your library’s sake if not mine.”
“Very funny, Jenny,” Dr. Rosequist said, running his hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “Life is complicated for young, driven couples like you two.”
“You have no idea,” I agreed.
“As you said when we first met, ‘It’s hard to have a baby when you’re not in the same city more than half the time.’ But you know what they say about absence.” He smiled, as if he’d personally come up with the maxim. I nodded, indicating that yes, I knew that absence made the heart grow fonder. Yet, Alex’s absence from this particular moment was just making my heart sink. “Make an appointment with Loretta for the fertilization, and I’ll see you tomorrow. I’d tell you to get plenty of rest and stay hydrated, but knowing you, none of that will be necessary.”
“I can assure you that I am really, really into hydration,” I said.
The doctor laughed. “You know I’m not supposed to have favorite patients, but...”
“And I’m probably not supposed to have favorite doctors.”
“Oh, there’s no law against that,” he said, with a wink.
As I came out of the office, the doctor’s assistant gave me a warm smile. I struggled to return it. My mind was racing as I thought about what the doctor had just told me. Seventeen viable follicles in my body. Seventeen miniature Jenny Greens. Or seventeen miniature Alex Stones. I pictured tiny versions of my husband swimming around a milky fluid.
“I’m excited for you,” the assistant said quietly. “Oh, by the way—your friend came.”
“She did?” I said, my spirits lifting. I guessed Geeta and I had made up after the say-yes-to-Sebastian debacle. All hope was not lost!
And then I spotted Desiree in the corner of the waiting room. She was wearing a tailored yellow suit, her hair pulled back in a neat, tiny chignon. “I’m so happy for you, Jenny,” she said, rising to hug me. I stiffened in her embrace.
“You look less than thrilled,” Desiree said on the elevator ride down. “What’s going on?”
What wasn’t going on? Geeta was excised from my life. And I’d just learned I was on my way to becoming a mother, and soon.
“I am not entirely sure about this baby thing,” I said. We were now heading toward Fifth Avenue. “I’ve always thought I’d wind up having a family, but to have the news sprung on me like that? Seventeen follicles? It’s just a lot to take in.”
“Don’t get all twisted up,” Desiree replied. “Do you think anybody is ever completely ready for motherhood? Besides, you don’t have to be sure about anything. It’s all written out for you. You don’t need to overthink, or think at all.”
“But... with Alex?” I lowered my voice.
“Only one woman gets to be married to Alex Stone. You’re welcome.” Desiree grinned.
“We barely know each other. How is that fair to my child?”
“Children,” Desiree corrected me. “You’ll have two. Two at once!”
“We’re having twins?” I gulped.
“Twins are a must for people of your caliber. Get the baby making out of the way. Look at Geeta and how well she did. Don’t worry, you’ll have all the childcare you need.”
“Are you even listening to me? It’s not the childcare I’m worried about.”
“Having kids will give you more credibility when you become an icon for mompreneurs,” she said. “They are essential for your brand.”
I felt a spike of dread. “Look,” I said, trying a different tack. “Isn’t mother-baby bonding incredibly important? All that imprinting, attachment, and whatnot?”
“The imprinting will happen,” she said in a tone that suggested that I was boring her.
“What about the memories? If I have babies ‘now,’ and then I blink and it’s 2022 somewhere, I’d effectively miss the first few years of my own babies’ lives! How is that fair?”
“The kids will be fine. They won’t remember any of this, and you’ll have a superb relationship with them. Your memories will eventually be full of joyful moments, indistinguishable from your actual experiences. And your live-in nanny, Hazel, could not be more nurturing.” She sighed. “I cannot say the same for your night nurse, but you’ll cross that bridge when you come to it. Goodness, I’m starving,” Desiree said, and made a beeline to a hot dog stand on the corner. “It’s been such a busy, busy day. I was just at a meeting with the Consortium, reviewing your case.”
“What did they say?” I asked earnestly. She held up a finger, a sign for me to be quiet, and ordered extra sauerkraut from the vendor.
A few minutes later, Desiree had her lunch in hand, and we resumed our walk, heading down Fifth Avenue toward Central Park. “Despite your fumbles, the team remains impressed with your work and your dedication to the cause.” Desiree wiped a dollop of mustard from her mouth with a paper napkin. “We’ve never seen anything quite like this before. If you can successfully lock in, we will be rolling out the beta in the next quarter. Oh—that reminds me.” She popped the final bit of hotdog in her mouth, wiped her hands with a fresh napkin, and tossed it in a nearby trash can. Then she opened her briefcase, from which she extracted a wandlike device.
“We can do this right here,” she said, leading me to a green wood bench abutting the park, and inserted the instrument into my mouth.
It beeped a moment later. She snatched it back. “Your temperature has gone up three-tenths of a point! This is terrific! It means your energy levels are heightened.” She yanked me to my feet and resumed walking. “This will make your transition through the portal easier.”
“Right,” I said, keeping up pace with her. “The portal.”
As we entered Central Park, I noted the birdsong rising above the city noises. A horse-drawn carriage clomped by, with a couple of tourists—a man and his very pregnant wife—on board. I stared at the woman’s swollen belly as she rode past. Desiree noticed me notice it.
“Don’t you remember how hard it was for Geeta to conceive?”
Of course I did. It was painful to think about. So many false starts, every month a tragedy. She’d gotten into experimental treatments too—both normal, like acupuncture, and strange, like eating Jordanian poppy seeds and placing healing crystals in strategic locations in her bedroom. I’d assumed Geeta had read about these therapies on the Internet. But maybe her Memo had been their true wellspring?
“I remember all too well,” I said.
“You’re going to get pregnant on your first try,” Desiree said as casually as if she were making an observation about the weather.
“It was nice of you to come to the clinic...”
“But?” Desiree eyed me warily.
“If I’m being real with you, I’d be feeling a lot better now if Geeta had been there for me.”
“But she’s not there for you,” Desiree said, twisting the knife. “She’s on her path and you’re on yours. Far better that way. Believe me.”
I didn’t know what to believe anymore. Maybe it was true that such a world didn’t have room for both of us to be at our most successful or that we wouldn’t have time to “waste” on our friendship. Maybe I’d move on.
“Where isAlex, anyway?” I asked.
“Never close at hand,” Desiree said with a laugh. “Which suits you fine. You have nobody’s needs and desires to tend to but your own. You can barely keep up with yourself!”
“I’m not going to argue with that.”
“You speak Mandarin. You are on the board of seven highly regarded nonprofits, one of which you co-founded with that Coppola girl. You know everyone. You are on a first-name basis with the governor. It beats baking breadsticks and singing a cappella versions of Maroon Five tunes before drowning your sorrows in cheap Riesling.” She gave me a pitying look.
“Do Alex and I love each other?” I asked quietly.
“You are a great team.” Desiree watched me intently. “Oh, Jenny. This doubt, it will fade away.” Desiree pulled a lollipop out of her purse. “Eat this. The sugar will help.”
I bit down on the candy. “I think I need to sit down again for a second.” I walked over to a bench. From my seat I watched the passing joggers. A little girl in unicorn leggings and rainbow roller skates was playing with a white puppy.
“Ramona!” a man’s voice called out.
Come again?
Sure, there were girls named Ramona, but not that many. This girl appeared to be around five. When I saw who was calling her, my heart lifted. There was Gabe once again—or some disjunction-mediated manifestation of him—wearing shorts, a Wayne Gretsky T-shirt, and in-line skates. His legs looked surprisingly muscular but his expression was one of pure sweetness and devotion. I couldn’t help thinking that this was a guy who would show up for his wife’s fertility appointments.
“Mo-Mo, wait up,” Gabe shouted, gliding toward his daughter. I wanted to run over to him, but Desiree held me back, her arm cutting across me like a tight seatbelt.
“What is he doing here?” Desiree said through gritted teeth, then mumbled something about QB disjunctions. Just as I thought Gabe was about to skate off, he pulled a U-turn and started back our way. I saw Ramona running into the arms of a woman with strawberry blond hair, her mother, as Gabe came toward us.
“You’re going against the flow of foot traffic!” Desiree called out to him in a shrill tone. “Turn back around!”
Gabe gave no indication of having heard her, and kept gliding against the stream of joggers and cyclists. He passed a groundskeeper slicing a branch off an enormous tree that looked to be hundreds of years old. The tree was surrounded by barriers and hazard tape, but Gabe didn’t change course. I had a feeling about what would come next. Within seconds, the tree branch fell to the ground and Gabe vanished in a cloud of smoke. I looked over at Ramona. She was playing with her mother as if nothing had even happened.
“Good one,” I said to Desiree. “Very cinematic.”
“We thought you would have learned by now. We need to get you out of here.” Desiree tugged me to a standing position and frog-marched me toward a park exit. Did she really believe I’d intentionally brought Gabe into this realm? The same Gabe who didn’t even want to be my friend in the other one?
Just as we were reaching the street, my phone rang. It was Alex.
“Hey babe,” I said to my husband, trying my best to play the part.
“Ciao bella! Such good news.”
There wasn’t an iota of ambivalence in Alex’s voice, which made me feel more than a tug of guilt. “Big news, that’s for sure,” I said. “How did you find out?”
“The transfer went through to Banca d’Italia, and the lawyer said that because of the size of the purchase, we are on the express path to dual citizenship if we want it,” he said, and launched excitedly into an update. I now understood Alex wasn’t celebrating my doctor’s appointment but the Italian home, the convent that Desiree had mentioned to me before, the one with the rocket, and the displaced nuns. He moved on to talking about a group of community protesters. “Not that I have anything against the old nuns, but come on, did we really sign on for this?”
“Thank god you’ll be able to handle it in your sleep,” I told him.
Alex chuckled. “I’ve got my team on the case. The neighbors will love us in no time. The only real downside, as far as I can see, is if we’re going to have to start taking long weekends to oversee the reno. I know what a freak you are when it comes to tiles. Can you handle being away from work for three-nighters?”
“I guess. I mean, what are they going to do, fire me?” I said. “Hey, while I have you, the doctors said they’ll do the, uh, insemination tomorrow.” I waited for him to reply. “Evidently, I have seventeen viable follicles.”
“Always an overachiever,” he said.
Why was I not surprised that his response was to do with achievement?
“Well, it’s not a done deal yet. Dr. Rosequist recommended that we have sex today and tomorrow, which I suppose is out of the question since you are away.”
“Oh man,” Alex said in a wistful tone. “And I’m stacked with meetings. You know what? I am going to try to take the red-eye tomorrow night. But in case I can’t be there, I’ll just send my, uh, seed, by FedEx. They do that now, on dry ice! Health insurance even pays for it.”
“Wow,” I said. “You’ve got everything covered.”
“No, darling,” he corrected me. “We do.”
Neither of us said “I love you” before hanging up. I needed to gather my bearings. There was one thing that always worked. I reached for my phone and scrolled through the names in it. There were hundreds of G names in my address book—Greta, Greta Assistant, Greta West Coast, Gal Gadot, two Gyllenhaals—but no Geeta. Good thing I knew my best friend’s number by heart.
Desiree’s expression turned stern. “Who are you calling?”
It was now my turn to hold up a finger. I smiled at the sound of Geeta’s raspy voice, even if it was just a recorded message. “Hey you, if you know me, you know I never check my voicemail. Just text me.” I was then informed that the mailbox was full.
I hung up and texted. The response came immediately:
This message was not delivered.
My heart hitched. She’d blocked me?
“Better to have been loved and blocked than to never have loved at all,” Desiree said briskly.
“Lost,” I corrected her. “Loved and lost. Are you saying I lost my best friend?”
“I am sure you will patch things up eventually,” she said.
“Is this still about my saying yes to Sebastian and not coming to her wedding?”
“Does it matter what the trigger was? The trigger is never the issue. She needed her space so she could shine, and she needed a reason to pin it onto,” Desiree said.
“I didn’t need to make it so easy for her,” I said.
“We must stay focused on your objectives, our eyes on the prize. You did the right thing, going to that panel. One must have priorities. She’s being ridiculous.”
“Then why do I feel so awful?” I was clenching my fists so tightly I could feel my fingernails digging into my palms. “Look, I need you to help me fix things with Geeta,” I said stonily. “She’s my best friend.”
“Your best fwend?” Desiree said, mocking me in a baby voice. “How old are you, eight?” I wanted to smack her briefcase over her head. “Speaking of your fwends, are these young ladies pals of yours or just adoring fans?”
I now saw a trio of young women gawking at me. One of them, with long ombré hair and wearing a mock turtleneck crop top, was eerily familiar. Her abdominal muscles were so defined they made their own hashtag. I realized whose stomach it was. Brie! She stared at me for a moment before speaking. “Jenny Green of Jentle Lentil?”
What was going on here? Brie should be in Pittsburgh. She was a bit player in my garbage life. God help me if my destiny was also tied up with Brie’s.
Desiree pretended not to notice my discomfort while Brie gave a jump in her puffy sneakers. “I knew it! I love your overnight gluten-free oats! The berry carob ones are so yum! And my boyfriend stans the red lentil shakes.”
I felt a tightening in my chest. “Hal?” I ventured.
“How did you know his name?” Brie looked taken aback.
I glanced at Desiree, who was shaking her head in disapproval. I’d overstepped. “Hell!” I said jumpily. “Hell yes! Those shakes are so good, right?”
The confusion clouding Brie’s face faded. “Not to be weird,” she said, “but would you take a selfie with me? We’re just so obsessed.”
Brie cooed as I arranged my face next to hers. “We’re platinum subscribers, four meals a week,” she said. “We’d do more if it were an option.”
“That’s what I like to hear!” Desiree said, a note of triumph in her voice. “As I was just saying to Jenny here, why dabble when you can go all the way?”