“I’m ready now. I’m ready last year, Jenny, and I’m starting to think that maybe you never will be.
You don’t even want to be ready. You act like getting pregnant is a disease you can catch from public toilets.”
<<Beth to Jennifer>> What did you say?
<<Jennifer to Beth>> What could I say? I’m not ready. And maybe I misled him every time I used the words “someday” and “eventually.” I can’t picture myself with kids …
But I couldn’t picture myself married, either, until I met Mitch. I always thought the kid idea would grow on me, that all Mitch’s healthy desires would infect me, and one morning I’d wake up thinking, “What a beautiful world in which to bring a child.”
What if that never happens?
What if he decides to cut his losses and find some perfectly normal woman who—on top of being naturally thin and never having turned to prescription antidepressants—also wants to have his babies ASAP?
<<Beth to Jennifer>> Like Barbie in a state of perpetual ovulation.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> Yes.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> Like the fictional new consumer-science teacher.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> Yes!
<<Beth to Jennifer>> It won’t happen.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> Why not?
<<Beth to Jennifer>> For the same reason Mitch tries to grow giant pumpkins every summer— even though your yard is too small, is infested with beetles and doesn’t get enough sun. Mitch doesn’t want the easy thing. He wants to work a little harder to get the thing he really wants.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> So he’s a fool. A fool whose seeds find no purchase.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> That’s not the point. The point is, he’s a fool who won’t give up on you.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> I’m not sure that you’re right, but I think I might feel better now. So, good work.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> Anytime.
(You know that I mean anytime after 10:30 a.m. or so, right?)
<<Jennifer to Beth>> (I do.)
JENNIFER SCRIBNER-SNYDER, ACCORDING to the company directory, was a Features copy editor.
Beth Fremont, Lincoln knew. He knew of, anyway. He’d read her movie reviews. She was funny, and he usually agreed with her. She was the reason he’d gone to see Dark City and Flirting With Disaster and Babe.
By the time Lincoln realized that he hadn’t sent a warning to Beth Fremont and Jennifer Scribner- Snyder—after who knew how many offenses, three? half a dozen?—he couldn’t remember why not.
Maybe because he couldn’t always figure out what rule they were breaking. Maybe because they seemed completely harmless. And nice.
And now he couldn’t send them a warning, not tonight. Not when they were actually worried about getting a warning. That would be weird, wouldn’t it? Knowing someone had read an e-mail you’d written about whether someone was reading your e-mail? If you were an excessively paranoid person, it could make you wonder whether all the other things you were worried about were also true. It might make you think, “Maybe they are all out to get me.”
Lincoln didn’t want to be the bad guy from Tron.
And also …Also, he kind of liked Beth and Jennifer, as much as you can like people from reading their e-mail, only some of their e-mail.
He read through the exchange again. “Ass” was definitely a red-flagged word. So was “blackjack”
and “porn.” He wasn’t sure about “perv” or “menstruation.”
He trashed the files and went home.
“YOU DON’T HAVE to pack me a lunch,” Lincoln told his mother. Even though he liked it when she did.
He’d practically given up fast food since he moved back home. There was always something baking in his mother’s kitchen, or frying or simmering or cooling on a plate. She was always pushing Pyrex containers into his hands on his way out the door.
“I’m not packing you lunch,” she said. “I’m packing you dinner.”
degrees. She’d started planning her days around feeding him.
“I don’t have to do anything,” she said, handing him a grocery bag with a heavy glass dish clinking inside.
“What’d you make?” he asked. It smelled like cinnamon.
“Tandoori chicken. I think. I mean, I don’t have a tandoori or a tandoor, one of those ovens, and I didn’t have enough yogurt, they use yogurt, don’t you think? I used sour cream. And paprika. Maybe it’s chicken paprikash …I know I don’t have to make you dinner, you know. I want to. I feel better when you eat—when you eat real food, not something that comes in a wrapper. I’m already so worried about you, the way you don’t sleep, and you’re never in the sun …”