Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Amy
The bar doesn't care that I'm thirty-four weeks pregnant.
It doesn't care that my center of gravity relocated to somewhere just north of my navel and way south of my dignity three months ago.
It doesn't care that my bladder has the structural integrity of a sandwich bag filled with jello and barbed wire.
It doesn't care that I haven't seen my own feet in a very long time without the assistance of a mirror, a prayer, and a series of grunts that would make a competitive powerlifter file a restraining order against me.
The bar just sits there, loaded with plates, being a bar.
So I press it.
Leg press. Four plates. I drive through my heels and the sled glides up, smooth, controlled, quads firing, glutes doing their contractual duty.
The weight settles at the top and I hold, then slowly lower.
My pelvic floor participates without being asked, a competent employee who doesn't need to be micromanaged.
I push again.
And again.
I am a machine. A machine that has to pee constantly and whose bras look more like cantaloupe slings these days, but a pregnant power-weight-lifting machine nonetheless.
Vince stands three feet away, filming me on my phone because Hamish is in London doing pre-production for his Str1kecast debut and demanded visual evidence that his wife is "a wee beastie.
" Vince was only too happy to become my personal cinematographer.
He's holding my phone at an angle that suggests he learned camera work from a nature documentary crew filming a rhino giving birth.
"Depth is good," Vince says. "Keep your low back pinned."
"My low back is pinned," I grind out. "Everything below my ribcage is pinned. I am a human bulletin board."
He doesn't laugh. He never laughs at the gym. Laughter is power leaking out your mouth.
I press out another rep and the shake starts. The good shake. The one that means muscle fibers are being recruited against their will, like jurors.
"I love this," I say between breaths. "I love lifting. I love that my body can do this. I used to run, too. Real runs. Long ones. Where your brain finally shuts up, somewhere around mile three, and you're just legs and lungs and the absence of a to-do list."
"Used to," Vince repeats.
"I never have time anymore. Between work and Hamish's schedule and the appointments and the mothers—plural, Vince, I have two of them now, both of whom text me ultrasound interpretations they got from Facebook groups run by women named after weather patterns—"
"It's not about time."
I pause mid-rep.
"If you say it's about priorities, I will leg press you through that wall."
"It's about priorities."
He pulls a stool over and sits, which in Vince language means buckle up, Buttercup, wisdom incoming, resistance is futile.
"Everyone gets the same twenty-four hours. You, me, Hamish, and your mother, who somehow fills hers with enough lunacy to power a midsized city."
"Mendon is not midsized."
"Some of those hours you can't control. Sleep. Work. Commute. The portion of your evening your mother-in-law spends texting you photos of tartan baby accessories she's knitted from what I can only assume is wool she sheared from a sheep she's named after Hamish."
"Gordie."
"What?"
"The sheep's name is Gordie."
He rolls his eyes. "But some of those hours you can control. And you have a partner who wants you to thrive. You've got a brain that could optimize the U.S. tax code and still have bandwidth left over to reorganize your spice rack by Scoville units."
"I did that last month. Cheaper than therapy."
"So the question isn't whether you have time to run," he says. "The question is what do you want your life to look like?"
The leg press machine ticks as the weight settles. I stare at the ceiling, which has a crack in it shaped like the state of Florida, and let the question simmer.
What do I want my life to look like?
Not what does Hamish's career require? Not what do the Grandmonsters expect? Not what does James McCormick try to engineer from behind his mahogany desk because his ego is too fragile and he's alienated everyone who loves him?
What do I, Amy Jacoby McCormick, MBA, crisis communications strategist, person who alphabetizes her vitamins and has strong opinions about kerning—what do I want?
"Think about it." Vince stands, stool returned, speech concluded, billed to my emotional insurance.
"Now do your cooldown. Stretch your hip flexors.
If you skip it, I'll tell Hamish and he'll send me forty-seven concerned emojis and a voice note in that accent of his that makes my phone think it's having a stroke. "
I stretch. The baby shifts low and heavy, head down where Coyote put her, and I rest my hand on the spot where her skull presses against me from the inside.
Hello, you.
The locker room shower has better water pressure than our condo, a testament to Vince's plumbing or an indictment of Boston's infrastructure.
I wash, dry, and dress in maternity business clothes that still fit, barely, a minor miracle I attribute to the pregnancy gods and a lot of stretchy fabric pretending to be professional.
At the front door, a woman I've seen around the gym stops me. Athletic, mid-thirties, earbuds looped around her neck.
"Hey," she says. "Sorry to bother you. I've been watching you in here for months and you're kind of amazing? You're super pregnant and you're pressing more than half the guys in this place."
"Thank you. I just like the push."
A flush creeps up my neck. She grins and looks at my belly.
"So it's training for the main event?"
"Leg presses. I like leg presses, not vagina presses."
"I've had two kids," she whispers. "You push with your asshole. Sorry to be the one to break it to you."
It's so easy to laugh.
"I have an oversharing mother and two older sisters who've given birth.
There is nothing about the feral nature of childbirth they haven't described in detail.
My sister Carol told me she pushed so hard, her prostate fell out, and when I told her she doesn't have a prostate, she said, 'That's what the OB thought, too, until it rolled off the table. '"
She laughs until she folds in half, then pats my shoulder.
"I hope to see you again. Maybe we could lift together? You're normally here with that tall redheaded guy who smiles nonstop."
"My husband."
"My husband would sooner eat sawdust than come here with me. He's a biker, not a lifter."
"I'm Amy," I say. We shake hands.
"Tina. Keep at it," she says, and holds the door for me like we're friends.
A friend. Not a sister, not a coworker, not a family obligation. Someone who chose to talk to me because she wanted to. The thought is so small and significant that I carry it with me all the way to work, warm in my chest next to the baby.
I walk to work. The June morning is warm and the city smells like coffee and hot asphalt. My quads have that post-workout hum. My shoulders are loose.
My brain is doing something unusual: being quiet.
Vince's question haunts me.
What do you want your life to look like?
I barely sit down before Singapore explodes.
Not literally. A client has a PR firestorm that requires containment by end of their business day, which gives me four hours, factoring in time zones, human stupidity, and the speed at which bad news travels on social media, which is faster than the speed of light and if Einstein were alive he'd study TikTok instead of relativity.
I sit, open the laptop, and let my brain do what it was built for.
The Singapore mess needs a three-pronged response: a holding statement, a stakeholder letter, and a counter-narrative planted through a friendly trade journalist who owes me a favor. I draft all three in forty minutes.
Done.
SpeedLove's tax case has a new wrinkle. Plea negotiations shift our position from "monitor calmly" to "prepare for him to flee to a country without an extradition treaty." I adjust the flowchart, flag general counsel, and update the C-suite deck.
Done in twenty minutes.
A junior associate sent a media pitch to the wrong journalist, who is now threatening to run an unflattering story because he has a deadline and no scruples. I make one call. The journalist agrees to hold for twenty-four hours in exchange for an exclusive on something better.
Three fires. One hour. All out.
I am very, very good at this.
My desk phone rings.
"Amy." James McCormick's voice fills my office, projected and oiled, speakerphone on his end. James treats every conversation as a TED Talk for an audience of adoring fans. "Glad I caught you."
I put him on my speakerphone and stand up, hands on my hips.
"The resort campaign," he continues. "Family-forward branding. Hamish is the face, you are the adoring wife and mother, and the baby is the emotional core. Everyone wants what you and Hamish have. Creative has mocked up concepts. They're extraordinary. Once you see them—"
"James, we've discussed this. The answer hasn't changed."
"Once you see the mock-ups, you'll feel differently."
"I won't."
"Amy, think bigger. This is a platform for both of you. Hamish is on board with exploring it."
He is not. Hamish told James he'd "think on it," which in Hamish-speak means he's never thinking about it again and hopes it dies of natural causes.
"The answer is no, and you need to accept that."
"You're being shortsighted."
"I'm being clear."
"You're hurting the company you work for."
"My career is not a subset of your resort portfolio, James."
He inhales, a slight whistle to the sound of anger filling his lungs.
The gym. Tina at the door. Vince, sitting on that stupid stool: What do you want your life to look like? Coyote's hands on my belly, her voice low: You can always find more fear. There is an unlimited supply.