When It Happens to You by Molly Ringwald

that it was modeled on the fiberglass child-size mannequin in the boutique window made it unmistakably a dress.
    Oliver was Marina’s only child, the result of an impetuous island holiday she had taken with girlfriends in order to lift her spirits after yet another failed relationship. She had never been to the Caribbean, and her girlfriends Merle, Trudie, and Una pooled their funds to splurge for a suite right on the water. It was a raucous, rum-soaked weekend full of girlish tear-stained confessions and ninety-minute massages in the height of hurricane season. When Marina returned to California with stuffy sinuses and a sudden dislike for the smell of coffee, she was sure that she had contracted a bug.
    Being in her late thirties and never having had anything close to a pregnancy scare, Marina had always assumed that she was simply infertile. But unlike her friends, who went from fearing pregnancy to pursuing it, Marina viewed her situation as a convenience or even a luxury since she had never once heard the ticking of her own clock. She assumed that the clock was broken along with her reproductive machinery and didn’t concern herself much with it. The inability to sustain a relationship with a man was far more worrisome.
    It was Trudie who first suggested to Marina that she might be pregnant, after Marina ran to the bathroom twice while watching Trudie feed her baby pureed leftover spaghetti and meatballs with a spoon. It had been just over three months since the Barbados holiday.
    â€œIt isn’t possible,” Marina insisted. “I got my period.”
    â€œYou might want to get a test, just in case,” Trudie told her in a singsong voice. “Zachariah was a surprise. Weren’t you, my little Zach pack!” She kissed her boy extravagantly on the mouth and licked the sauce from the sides of her own lips, sending Marina sprinting to the toilet again. That night she picked up a pregnancy test kit on the way home from the gym and was stunned to see the plus sign materialize. She stared at the contraption in disbelief, doubting its accuracy. When the blue cross appeared on the second test, even more rapidly this time, she sat down on the edge of the bathtub, shaking her head. Holding the innocuous-looking piece of plastic in her hand, she was transfixed by the bright blue stain in its tiny window. It was like she had found a bruise that had appeared on her body overnight, with no knowledge of how or when the injury had taken place.
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    What Marina had assumed to be her menstruation was actually implantation bleeding; the cluster of cells that would later become her son was burrowing into her uterine wall. By the time she discovered the pregnancy, she was already well into her second trimester. Marina was dumbfounded. The thought of becoming a mother was unfathomable to her. She had only ever been vaguely interested in her friends’ children, a notable source of contention with her last serious boyfriend. One of their recurring arguments had been her patent lack of interest in having a family.
    â€œThere’s something wrong with you,” he insisted. “You have the maternal instincts of a black widow.”
    â€œBlack widows eat their mates, not their young,” she replied. It was a useless correction, however; she could tell by the sad smile and the way that the corners of his eyes tilted down that it was already over between them. And it was true, Marina had no interest in motherhood. She relished her freedom with a zeal that only grew stronger as she watched her girlfriends’ steady marches toward maternity. One by one, their personalities became as disfigured as their bodies. They were perpetually fatigued and unkempt, their walls were covered with sloppy finger paintings housed in expensive frames, and their speech was taken over by motherese—peppered with the words “potty,” “wee-wee,” and “wa-wa.” One night, Una actually licked