Mendocino and Other Stories by Ann Packer Page B

pregnancy. She told me first, alone, because I was the one who would be handling her work while she was gone. She trusted me, she said, to keep the place calm while she was off having the baby.
    “Six weeks, Virginia,” she said. “Two before and four after. That means you'll have to go to Indiana.”
    “Right,” I said. Indiana is where the client's main offices are. I've met the client once, here in town, but Jennifer was talking about the big meeting where we would show storyboards and chew our fingernails. The client, of course, isn't a single person at all, but a group of nearly indistinguishable men of about forty who wear suits of a slightly too-light shade of grey.
    “Actually,” said Jennifer, “it'll be a great opportunity for you.”
    Up the ladder.
    “It'll give upper management a chance to see how dedicated you are.” She stood up, a signal that our talk was over. “In fact,” she said, “you should thank me for getting pregnant.”
    I smiled but resisted her suggestion; it didn't seem like a requirement of office protocol. I stood up and headed for the door.
    “Virginia,” she said.
    I turned.
    “Aren't you going to congratulate me?”
    Her real face came through and for a moment she looked softer, almost vulnerable. I felt like going around to where she was standing behind her big teak desk and hugging her, but I didn't know how she'd take it. “Congratulations,” I said. “It's wonderful.”
    “I'm really happy,” said Jennifer. And then, as if she'd just remembered that business, after all, was business, she laughed and added, “John and I decided it was time to test-market a new aspect of our relationship.”
    I PASS BY Karen's desk countless times a day—on my way to the bathroom, the supply closet, the elevators. Her job as receptionist allows her quite a bit of free time, and she has taken to knitting. She holds the baby-soft yarn low in her lap, ready to drop it into the open shopping bag between her feet. The executives wouldn't like it, if they knew. They would say it was unprofessional, and of course it is. It is an entirely domestic act, a miraculous thing, really. A pair of smooth sticks, mysterious turns of the wrist, and a little garment begins to appear.
    She is making a christening gown.
    “SAM,” I MOAN into the phone, “I want to be pregnant.” I am kidding, half. I am thirty-four and I am not married, nor, I suspect, was meant to be. Could I ever have a baby alone? Would I?
    “No, you don't,” says Sam. “Your face would turn fat and your ankles would swell and you'd have heartburn on a daily basis. Believe me.”
    “But I want a baby,” I say. “A little bundle of joy.”
    “Virginia, you live in one room.”
    “I could partition.”
    She laughs. “Oh, Virginia,” she says.
    “Do you feel like a different person now?”
    She's silent for a moment. “It's not really like that,” she says. “I feel like something new is starting, like I'm going to be different, but I'm not yet.”
    “It's so incredible, when you think about it.”
    “I know,” she says. “At the beginning, when all I felt was nauseated, it hardly seemed like what I was going through had anything to do with having an actual baby.”
    “But now it does?”
    “Now it does.”
    A kind of hollow feeling comes over me. “Oh, God,” I say.
    Sam doesn't speak, but I can hear her breathing, slow and soft. “Listen,” she says finally, “think of your freedom. What about men, what about relationships?”
    “What about them?”
    “Virginia,” she says, teasing, “you're the queen of relationships. You couldn't stand not having at least five intrigues a year.”
    I am not the queen of relationships. I am more like the court jester. I'm the one who can comment, wittily, on them all. On the guys who, sliding a hand up your sweater, insist that they just want to be friends. On the men, the young and serious ones, who ask if it will make you feel claustrophobic if they leave a toothbrush