A thing like Valentine’s Day can poison a fledgling relationship. In truth, forgotten tulips can undo even a marriage. Women are weird about these things. So, too, are men, though. Rob brings a box of chocolates, heart shaped, the next time he comes, but it’s meant to be a joke, and Lauren gets it. They eat them all, though they’re not very good.
Even if she’s not using any nouns with respect to Rob—and she’s not, or hasn’t, she’s been careful—he is going to be her date to Sarah’s wedding, which implies a certain seriousness, at least to Sarah. That afternoon, after Sarah had announced her pregnancy, they’d left the hotel in Midtown and just walked, past Mr. Morgan’s library, past the Empire State Building, through that weird intersection near the Toy Center, through a Union Square filled with slush instead of skateboarders. They’d kept walking, past the smoking undergrads at the New School and the smoking undergrads at NYU, past counterfeit handbag sellers and praying Muslim cabdrivers. They turned toward the bridge, slipped down streets lined with seafood markets and fruit vendors and the odd, colonizing art gallery. There was an organic restaurant Sarah had read about somewhere.
“You haven’t sent your response card in,” Sarah said.
“I haven’t decided if I’m coming.”
“I’m serious, you’re going to fall afoul of Willa, which I would not recommend.” Sarah smiled. “I assume you’re bringing the temp?”
“We can call him Rob now,” Lauren said. Sarah’s invitation had arrived: thick stock, postage in a denomination she’d never before encountered, flawless calligraphy on the envelope, and on the card itself, the vague promise of herself, Lauren Brooks “and Guest.”
“I’ll need a bit more information. Like his surname. You know Lulu needs to know everyone’s last name.”
Lauren did know this. Lulu has a thing about knowing a person’s first and last name, some weird colonial tic, a strain of old-world formality. “Well, it’s Rob Byrne.”
“I’m glad you’re bringing him,” Sarah said.
“Well, I’m sure he’s glad to be going.” This was a lie. She wasn’t sure how he felt about it at all. Their relationship wasn’t old enough to handle Valentine’s Day; a best friend’s wedding—it was asking more than she’d like to. She was doing it for Sarah. She knew Sarah would be happier to have a relative stranger in attendance at the wedding, because she wanted Lauren to have a date. This was like the rehearsal dinner party: a gift.
“Lolo?” Sarah looked at her, pantomimed rubbing a hand over an extended belly. “I’m pregnant.”
“I remember,” Lauren said. They laughed.
There is what you think, and there is what you say. Of course, Lauren’s heart is warmed by the idea of mother and father and baby, that unbridled joy, those sweet infant smells, the softness of new skin, and those pliable, plastic faces. Perpetuating the species is all important. But she cannot brook the smugness of a certain class of parent, the mother in yoga gear pushing the Brobdingnagian stroller, vaguely Scandinavian and overly efficient, the mommy sighing and eyeing passersby, her face now a beatific smile, now a suspicious glower. Lauren’s neighborhood is lousy with such women, and it’s not always women, indeed it can be worse when it’s men, men eager for you to notice that strapping baby Hazel to their chest makes them different from, and better than, other men. Having a baby, she often wants to tell these parents, is no cause for sanctimony. Doing what the body is designed to do; teenagers the world over do it. Girls can bake up babies in rapid succession; boys can get boners moments after ejaculating.
Lauren isn’t certain Sarah will end up one of these smug sorts, but she does know that she’ll be the friend Sarah calls when she’s got to report a transgression by one of her other mommy friends’ horrid children. And she will have mommy friends: Fiona will one day pop out a Quentin, Amina will birth a Nikhil, and the babies will enjoy a friendship based only on the fact of parentage; no more random, in the end, than a lifelong relationship based on having once sat next to someone at the school orientation when you were eleven years old. An undercurrent of hostility, the inevitability of competition when Max crawls/takes solid foods/develops teeth/speaks clearly/poops on the potty/rides a scooter/learns Mandarin/loses his virginity/gets into Yale sooner or more easily than his pal Theo. Lauren knows what women are like. She is one. Sarah will get through it though. That much she knows. She always wanted to be like Sarah, when she was younger—to be loud, and listened to, and smart, and comfortable dealing with adults, and able to solve problems on her feet. She never knew Sarah to get into trouble, not once, not ever.
“You are that,” Lauren had said.