<<Beth to Jennifer>> Me, too.
At least they’re having a big party to say good-bye. That’s nice. And the proceeds are going to some film preservation charity. I’m writing a story about it.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> Will you be done by lunch?
<<Beth to Jennifer>> Probably, why?
<<Jennifer to Beth>> I was going to see if you could give me a ride. I’m meeting Mitch at the midwife’s office. It’s our first regular, prenatal visit. We’re supposed to be able to hear the heartbeat.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> Of course I can give you a ride. That’s so exciting! It’s like it’s real now.
Aren’t you getting excited? Even a little?
<<Jennifer to Beth>> I think I must be. I finally told my mom that I’m pregnant. Only an excited (or stupid) person would do that.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> Was she happy? I’ll bet she was happy.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> She was. I’d just taken her to pay her gas bill, and we were having dinner at Hardee’s. I blurted it out, and she about choked on a curly fry. She was like, “A baby? We’re having a baby? Oh, a baby. Our very own baby.” I thought her response was weirdly possessive, but it was definitely positive. She kept trying to hug me.
Then she said, “Oh, I hope it’s a little girl, little girls are so much fun.” I think she meant to add “to screw up,” but whatever.
A full 45 minutes passed before she said something evil: “You better try not to gain all that weight back. Mitch never knew you when you were fat.” Which isn’t even true. I was a size 18 when Mitch and I started dating. I didn’t lose weight until years later. I told her so, and she said, “You were a size 18? At your height? I never knew it had gotten that bad.”
<<Beth to Jennifer>> Sometimes I feel really sorry for your mom …and sometimes I just hate her.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> Welcome to the last 20 years of my life. It’s like she thinks she did me a favor by raising me to believe that the entire world was out to get me, by making sure I never get my hopes up.
When I got home, Mitch was fixing the light in the spare bedroom. (I know he’s turning it into a nursery, but I’m not ready to talk about it.) It’s always weird to go from my mom to Mitch. It doesn’t seem like I should have been able to get to this life from my old one, like there aren’t even roads between those two places.
Anyway, I walked in, and Mitch—who obviously didn’t now what hell I’d just traversed—said something so nice, I was able to let it all go.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> What did he say?
<<Jennifer to Beth>> It’s kind of personal.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> I’m sure it’s deeply personal. But you can’t just say, “And then Mitch said something so wonderful, it healed the tubercular ill that is my mother” without telling me what he said.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> It’s not that profound. He just said, instead of hello, that I looked beautiful— and that, when we got married, he never realized that I would look more beautiful to him every year.
He said it had nothing to do with me glowing. “Even though you are.” He was standing on a ladder when he said it, which made it seem almost Shakespearean.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> If you die in a freak combine accident, I’m going to marry Mitch and live happily ever after. (I’m going to live happily ever after because Mitch is the best husband ever. Mitch, however, will spend the rest of his life pining for his one true love. You.)
<<Jennifer to Beth>> My appointment is at 12:30.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> I’ll be ready to go by noon.
CHUCK THE COPY editor had invited Lincoln to join the nightside breakfast club. A few editors and a few people from paste-up got together every Wednesday at noon at a diner downtown. Chuck told him the paste-up people were a cross between copy editors and artists, but with knives. He’d taken Lincoln down to the production room one night to watch them work.
The Courier still didn’t paginate on computers, so all the stories were printed out in long columns, then cut and pasted down with wax on master pages, different masters for each edition. Lincoln had watched a paste-up artist rebuild the front page on deadline, slicing and waxing columns, and rearranging them like puzzle pieces.
The paste-up artists and the copy editors were pretty sure they could still get the newspaper out on time New Year’s morning, even if the computers failed them.
“When do they not fail us?” Chuck said through a mouth full of club sandwich. “No offense, Lincoln.”