Chapter 1
Lacy smiled and sipped from her water as she listened to her friend Wendy talk. The wind blew gently across their table as they ate al fresco, easing the warmth of the afternoon sun. The sidewalk was busy enough to let Lacy’s eyes wander occasionally during one of Wendy’s particularly boring anecdotes, but not so busy as to be overly distracting.
It wasn’t that Wendy was boring, actually. Lacy had to fight to keep her thoughts straight on that. If she were being totally honest, it was that she was jealous of her friend. That jealousy fed into depression, regret, and anxiety for the future. All of these, of course, were too much for the thirty-something corporate lawyer to accept or process. Thus the burden of dealing with such emotion was alleviated by her rather diplomatic soul white washing everything in an air of boredom, sparing Lacy the immediate response. Which, at the moment, would be a flood of tears.
“…so I found her in the bathroom, her teddy face down in the toilet, and she’s yelling at the thing for making a mess.” Wendy tore off a piece of bread and after swirling it in the leavings of her salad dressing, took a bite. Laughing around the bite, she added, “You can imagine.”
Lacy smiled and widened her brows in a show of dramatic sympathy. She knew that Wendy wanted to keep talking about the experience, but what were the right questions to ask? Should she ask about the psychological health of her child, comment on the ruined bear?
“So did Teddy clog the toilet?”
Wendy chortled and shook her head. “No, thank goodness. She hadn’t gotten him too far down. Plus she had just poopooed, so the toilet was freshly flushed. We just gave the bear a rinse and tossed him in the dryer.”
Lacy couldn’t stop the grumble in her throat. She tried to cover it up by coughing into her hand. “You gave it back to her?”
“I’m sorry,” Wendy said, as if suddenly realizing that she’d been talking about her kids for the last forty-five minutes. “I’ve been talking about me this whole time.”
Ah, yes, so she did realize it. Good. Lacy readjusted in her seat, hopeful that the conversation would move onto something more interesting.
“So how’re you? We haven’t talked for a bit. Any special men in your life?”
Lacy swirled the water in her glass and sighed before taking a drink. “No, no men. Not all of us have had the chance to be so blessed.”
“Aww, darnit,” Wendy said, frowning. “Work got you busy, huh?”
Lacy kept her face still, but Wendy’s insistence on not swearing, not even a hint, irked her to no end. She was out with adults. How could she respect a grown adult that thought the word “damn” was a swear word? Children gasped and pointed out when a swear word was said, not adults.
“Yep,” Lacy said, “but that’s okay. The bright side is I’m happy, so it’s cool.”
“Well don’t worry, it’ll happen when the time is right.”
“Yes, but as I said, I’m happy, so there’s no rush.”
Wendy smiled patronizingly and put her hand out as though she were reaching for contact, as if to soothe a burn victim without actually touching them. “Oh, you don’t know happiness until your little one pees in the potty for the first time. I swear, I thought little Jonathan was going to be in diapers until high school.”
Lacy sighed softly. “He’s three.”
“I know, but it was just constant. I mean, we were trying everything. The pull-ups were too hard for him to work out with this little thumbs, and the…”
Lacy’s eyes drifted to the sidewalk again. It was insulting the way Wendy assumed Lacy couldn’t be happy unless she had a man and children. In a way, she knew Wendy was just trying to help. She was happy with her life, so she wanted others – her friend included – to be happy too.
The thing is, the thin shell of boredom was a poor protection from Lacy’s own thoughts on the matter. She knew full well how old she was. If she got pregnant that day it would still be nine months before she had a child, possibly ten. Ten months! That’s almost a whole other year!
Of course, she didn’t want to have a child with someone she didn’t know. She wanted a family, not to be some workaholic mother who let the nanny raise her child. That meant at least a year or two in a relationship with someone. Of course, that’s assuming she met the right man that day. Tack on a few months for dating, and failed dates…
Lacy watched a woman in a gray suit walk down the sidewalk as she did some quick math in her head. The resulting sum was a number that only read as depressing. She may not only have not advanced to the next stage in life fast enough, but her supreme focus on work and making her life a matter of success may have lost her the game. Wendy was married for eight years now.
Eight years!
They were on their third kid, and she was a year old already. Her family was done, it was made. All Wendy had to do now was telling boring stories about her kids and let time make her children into adults. Meanwhile, Lacy was going to have to put a lot of work into trying to find anyone halfway decent to breed with.
She ran an agitated hand through her hair and fixed Wendy with a smile that said “Shut up.” After a few sentences, Wendy got the hint, and stopped talking. Lacy honestly couldn’t have said what she was talking about.
“Lacy sweetie,” Wendy said.
“Yes?”
“You look like you’re about to cry.”
In that instant, Lacy felt terrible about every bad thought she’d just had about her friend. “It’s not your fault,” Lacy said. “I just wish I was where you were.”
Wendy reached over and actually took Lacy’s hand in hers. “I know. Why do you think I tell you so many stories about my kids? It’s all I can think to do to help.”
The shell cracked, and Lacy’s lip started to quiver. “You’re a beautiful woman, Wendy.”