Love Saves the Day

Josh had been overjoyed at the news; he’d actually had tears in his eyes. But Laura had to spend a few hours composing herself before she could even get the words out, because her own first reaction had been panic. The best time for her to have gotten pregnant would have been four years ago, when she was a first-year associate and therefore more expendable to the firm—or it would be seven years from now, when she would (hopefully) have made partner. The fifth year was the worst possible time to take maternity leave. Now was the time to put in the hours, to take on the caseload, to wine and dine clients after hours and cultivate the relationships among partners that would—after a grueling, decade-plus slog—lift her to the heights of success she’d always striven toward. She’d seen other female attorneys who’d gone on reduced schedules once they had children. The idea was something of a grim joke among women in the firm, because what a “reduced schedule” meant in reality was that you ended up doing the same amount of work for less money. Most of them never regained their pre-pregnancy standing in the firm. Laura realized, too late, that questions like when they’d have children, and how many children they’d have, were among a million things she and Josh hadn’t discussed before rushing into marriage.

And she’d had deeper fears even than that. There were an infinite number of ways to be unhappy. Laura had learned from Sarah that marriage and children were no guarantee of avoiding any of them.

Still, it was impossible to ignore Josh’s happiness or remain untouched by it. One Sunday afternoon they’d painted the walls of their spare bedroom a soft, sunny yellow—perfect, as Josh had noted, for a boy or a girl. She thought about this peanut-sized thing—something made of her and Josh—traveling with her wherever she went, a secret sharer who sat in with her on meetings and rode with her on the subway and inhaled the same smoky-sweet smell of early winter that she did. She felt a kind of tender pity for it sometimes, so small and defenseless. Poor thing! she would think, and then wonder why she pitied it so much.

So the pregnancy had remained their secret, hers and Josh’s, which made things infinitely easier when, one Friday night in mid-February and just before the official end of her first trimester, the pain had started in her lower back and blood began to flow.

She’d returned to work on Monday, a bit pale and tired but otherwise not noteworthy in any way to her co-workers. Because she hadn’t told anyone she was pregnant, she didn’t have to go through the ordeal of telling everyone she no longer was. Not even Josh’s parents had been told. (“Let’s give Abe and Zelda a couple of months before they drown us in parenting advice,” he’d said.) The only exception they’d made—or, at least, that Josh had thought they’d made—had been telling Sarah. “Of course you’ll want your mother to know right away,” he’d said. Laura hadn’t bothered to correct him, because what could be more expected, more perfectly normal, than a young woman, pregnant for the first time, sharing the experience with her mother and leaning on her for advice and support?

But Laura hadn’t said anything to Sarah. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because when you told your mother you were pregnant with your first child, she was supposed to tell you how you don’t even know what love is until you hold your baby for the first time, or how you’ll never love anything in life the way you’ll love your child. Except that Laura already knew this hadn’t been true in Sarah’s case, and Sarah knew that Laura knew. So what could Sarah have said? You’ll love your baby, but only as much as you love some things and less than you love others?

Perhaps if Laura had told Sarah about her pregnancy, Sarah would have told Laura about the bottle of nitroglycerin pills Laura had found when she’d cleaned out Sarah’s bathroom. Sarah had been keeping her own secrets. And even though Laura was angry now, angrier than she allowed herself to realize, she could guess that Sarah’s reasons for saying nothing to Laura about her heart condition had been similar to Laura’s reasons for saying nothing about her pregnancy to Sarah. Because when your mother told you she was sick, you were supposed to tear up and hug her and beg her to do everything the doctor said because you absolutely couldn’t bear to lose her.

Sarah must have known that Laura couldn’t and wouldn’t have said any of those things. Not because they weren’t true. But because she and Sarah had already lost each other years ago.