She blinked. The hippie went away. The Fish Market was a placid pool again. Laura said, 'I'm sorry. What were you saying?'
'Nikki Sutcliff's little boy, Max. Eight years old, and he wanted to crop his hair and have a rat-tail. And he loves that rap junk, too. Nikki won't let him listen to it. You can't believe the dirty words on records these days! You'd better think about that, Laura. What are you going to do if your little boy wants to cut all his hair off and go around bald-headed and singing obscene songs?'
'I think,' she answered, 'that I'll think about it later.'
The salad and the gumbo were served. Laura listened as Carol talked on about politics in the Atlanta Constitution's Life and Style department. Laura was a senior reporter specializing in social news and doing book reviews and an occasional travel piece. Atlanta was a social city, of that there was no doubt. The Junior League, the Art Guild, the Opera Society, the Greater Atlanta Museum Board: those and many more demanded Laura's attention, as well as debutante parties, donations from wealthy patrons to various art and music funds, and weddings between old southern families. It was good that she was getting back to work in March, because that was when the wedding season began to blossom, swelling to its peak in mid-June. It sometimes puzzled her how quickly she'd gotten from twenty-one to thirty-six. She'd graduated with a degree in journalism from the University of Georgia, had worked as a reporter on a small paper in her hometown of Macon for two years, then had come to Atlanta. The big-time, she'd thought. It took her over a year to get onto the copy desk of the Constitution, a period she'd spent selling kitchen appliances at Sears.
She'd always harbored hopes of becoming a reporter for the Constitution. A firebrand reporter, with iron teeth and eagle eyes. She would write stories to rip off the mask of racial injustice, destroy the slumlord, and expose the wickedness of the arms dealer. After three years of drudgery writing headlines and editing the stories of other reporters, she got her chance: she was offered a position as a metro reporter. Her first assignment was covering a shooting in an apartment complex near Braves Stadium.
Only they hadn't told her about the baby. No, they hadn't.
When it was all over, she knew she couldn't do it again. Maybe she was a coward. Maybe she'd been deluding herself, thinking she could handle it like a man. But a man wouldn't have broken down and cried. A man wouldn't have thrown up right there in front of the police officers. She remembered the shriek of an electric guitar, the volume turned up and roaring over the parking lot. It had been a hot, humid night in July. A terrible night, and she still saw it sometimes in her worst dreams.
She was assigned to the social desk. Her first assignment there was covering the Civitans Stars and Bars Ball.
She took it.
Laura knew other reporters, men and women who did their jobs well. They crowded around the distraught relatives of plane-crash victims and stuck microphones in their faces. They went to morgues to count bullet holes in bodies, or stood in gloomy forests while the police hunted for pieces of murder victims. She watched them grow old and haggard, searching for some kind of purpose amid the carnage of life, and she'd decided to stay on the social desk.
It was a safe place. And as she got older, Laura realized that safe places were hard to find, and if the money was good as well, then wasn't that the best a person could do?
She wore a dark blue suit not unlike the outfits worn by the other businesswomen in the restaurant, though hers was maternity-tailored. In the parking lot was her gray BMW. Her husband of eight years was a stockbroker with Merrill Lynch in midtown Atlanta, and together they made over a hundred thousand dollars a year. She used Estee Lauder cosmetics, and she shopped for clothes and accessories in the tony little boutiques of Buckhead. She went to a place where she got manicures and pedicures, and another place where she took steambaths and had massages. She went to ballets, operas, art galleries, and museum parties, and most of the time she went alone.
Doug's work claimed him. He had a car phone in his Mercedes, and when he was home he was constantly making or receiving calls. That was a camouflage, of course. They both knew it was more than work. They were caring toward each other, like two old friends might be who had faced adversity and fought through it together, but what they had could not be called love.
'So how's Doug?' Carol asked. She'd known the truth for a long time. It would be hard to hide the truth from someone as sharp-eyed as Carol, and anyway, they both knew many other couples who lived together in a form of financial partnership.
'He's fine. Working a lot.' Laura took another bite of her gumbo. 'I hardly see him except on Sunday mornings. He's started playing golf on Sunday afternoons.'
'But the baby's going to change things, don't you think?'
'I don't know. Maybe it will.' She shrugged. 'He's excited about the baby, but… I think he's scared, too.'
'Scared? Of what?'
'Change, I guess. Having someone new in our lives. It's so strange, Carol.' She placed a hand against her stomach, where the future lived. 'Knowing that inside me is a human being who'll – God willing – be on this earth long after Doug and I are gone. And we've got to teach that person how to think and how to live. That kind of responsibility is scary. It's like… we've just been playing at being grown-ups until now. Can you understand that?'
'Sure I can. That's why I never wanted children. It's a hell of a job, raising kids. One mistake, and bam! You've either got a wimp or a tyrant. Jesus, I don't know how anybody can raise kids these days.' She downed a hefty drink of chardonnay. 'I don't think I'm the mothering type, anyway. Hell, I can't even housebreak a puppy.'
That much was certainly true. Carol's Pomeranian had no respect for Oriental carpets and no fear of a rolled-up newspaper. 'I hope I'm a good mother,' Laura said. She felt herself approaching inner shoals. 'I really do.'
'You will be. Don't worry about it. You definitely are the mothering type.'
'Easy for you to say. I'm not so sure.'
'I am. You mother the hell out of me, don't you?'
'Maybe I do,' Laura agreed, 'but that's because you need somebody to kick you in the tail every now and again.'
'Listen, you're going to be a fantastic mother. Mother of the year. Hell, mother of the century. You're going to be up to your nose in Pampers and you're going to love it. And you watch what happens to Doug when the baby comes, too.'
Here lay the real rocks, on which boats of hope could be broken to pieces. 'I've thought about that,' Laura said. 'I want you to know that I'm not having this baby so Doug and I can stay together. That's not it at all. Doug has his own life, and what he does makes him happy.' She traced money signs on the misty glass of Perrier. 'One night I was at home reading. Doug had gone to New York on business. I was supposed to cover the Ball of Roses the next day. It struck me how alone I was. You were in Bermuda, on vacation. I didn't want to talk to Sophia, because she doesn't like to listen. I tried four or five people, but everybody was out somewhere. So I sat there in the house, and do you know what I realized?'
Carol shook her head.
'I don't have anything,' Laura said, 'that's mine.'
'Oh, right!' Carol scoffed. 'You've got a three-hundred-thousand-dollar house, a BMW, and a closetful of clothes I'd die to get my hooks into! So what else do you need?'
'A purpose,' Laura answered, and her friend's wry smile faded.
The waiter brought their lunches. Soon afterward, three women entered the restaurant, one of them pushing a stroller, and they were seated a few tables away from Laura and Carol. Laura watched the mother – a blond- haired woman at least ten years younger than herself, and fresh in the way that youth can only be – look down at her infant and smile like a burst of sunshine. Laura felt her own baby move in her belly, a sudden jab of an elbow or knee, and she thought of what he must look like, cradled in the swollen pink womb, his body feeding from a tube of flesh that united them. It was amazing to her that in the body within her was a brain that would hunger for knowledge. That the baby had lungs, a stomach, veins to carry his blood, reproductive organs, eyes, and eardrums. All this and so much more had been created inside her, had been entrusted to her. A new human being was about
