He was right. She was tired, and it was getting harder by the day to cram her feet into heels.
“Um . . . alright,” she said, smiling, still with some suspicion. Betsy ate an egg, just to curb the hunger pangs, which came on intensely and often. She showered, slipped into black leggings, which resembled a deflated balloon animal when she pulled them out of the drawer, and a stretchy, heather gray dress that Jessica had passed along in a bag of maternity clothes that were chicer than anything Betsy owned pre-pregnancy. She plopped down on the edge of the bed, already winded from the morning’s effort, and slipped on a pair of Converse, grateful for a day that would not require decent shoes. She scraped her shoulder-length, dark blonde hair, which was longer and thicker in her third trimester than it had ever been in her life, into a bun, grabbed a scarf and her handbag, and made her way down to the lobby. She walked the handful of blocks to Murray’s, hurrying past her favorite newsstand, and started salivating as her bagel was plastered with cream cheese. She had sworn them off for years once she left Gainesville. Betsy recognized the irony of giving up bagels upon arrival in New York. Still, every time she passed a bagel bakery and the scent of caraway seeds and burned garlic singed her nostrils, she thought of her boss Tom and his vampiric 2:00 a.m to 10:00 a.m. schedule. Betsy never thought that she’d remember those painfully early mornings with any fondness. To her surprise, she often did.
Betsy barely made it onto a stool at the counter before she devoured her bagel, licked her finger to pick up stray salt crystals to devour those, too, and walked to the corner to catch the M20 uptown.
She hoisted herself up on to the bus, slid her MetroCard into the slot, and waddled toward the back. She pushed a discarded New York Post off of a blue seat and lowered herself down slowly. Betsy loved riding the bus. To Gavin, it was torture, a shuttle to ferry the elderly and nannies with their tiny charges, only for the very young or the very old who were in no particular rush to get anywhere, up and down the congested streets. When Betsy had the time, she stayed aboveground. She liked to see what was happening around her, the bikes weaving in and out of traffic, the NYPD gathered in suspicious clusters on the sidewalk for reasons unknown, the ambiguous steam that rose up from manholes on chilly fall mornings like this one. Taking the bus was a habit she picked up when she’d first moved to the city, when she felt an urgent need to learn about her surroundings, memorize intersections, master the landmarks that helped her get her bearings, and keep an eye on the people around her. She felt more in control of her life on the bus. She could jump out the back door at any point, if the occasion called for it.
Betsy was always planning her escape.
Once they hit Central Park, Betsy decided to walk. The office was only a block or two away, and she wanted to see if any of the autumn colors remained on the lingering leaves. Years before, she and Gavin used to take the train up to Cold Spring and marvel at the view along the Hudson. Growing up in the oppressive Florida climate had given them both a deep appreciation for the change of seasons. Fall had become Betsy’s favorite time of year.
“It looks like a puzzle,” she’d say every time she saw the intermittent patches of golden ash and bright red maple leaves along the riverbank. As a kid, she never understood the appeal of autumn, the cool dampness of the air and crunch of decaying leaves on the ground, the last dramatic, spectacular show of nature before the deathly grays of winter. Cold weather made her mother anxious. When her mom learned of Betsy’s baby’s December due date, Kathy was perturbed, claimed she didn’t want to be subjected to the crush of holiday crowds, but Betsy knew it was the cold that frightened her.
The cramped but tidy waiting room at Dr. Kerr’s office was empty, except for a woman dressed in a pink nurse’s smock rocking a weeks-old infant. She cooed at the baby, reassuring him that his mother would be out shortly. There was a low table piled high with parenting and pregnancy magazines, beaming infant faces looking up at her from their covers, locking on to her gaze. Betsy scanned the stacks for something that wouldn’t terrify her, with all of their caustic warnings about runny cheese and caffeine. The sets of massive, searching baby eyes and the crying of the fussy boy—short bursts of volume followed by a snorting inhale—made her tense. On the seat next to her, someone had left behind most of The New York Times. And though germy abandoned newspapers also occupied a slot on her list of phobic worries, Gavin had made off with theirs that morning and missing a day of the news would further stoke her anxiety. The headlines were predictable: Bush continued to bungle the situation in North Korea, seventy dead in a Baghdad car bombing.