Read Online Babyland by Holly Chamberlin - Free Book Online

no one to take care of him when he collapsed into bed each night—I think that maybe it would have made more sense for Paul and Bess not to get divorced.
    But what do I know of my brother’s life, really?
    I called Paul at his downtown office the very next afternoon. He works on State Street as a financial analyst.
    You can see again why Paul doesn’t have much time for himself. Virtually all the hours not spent commuting—about two hours daily—and working—ten-hour days are common—are spent with the kids.
    â€œHi,” I said, when his assistant had put me through. “It’s me.”
    â€œI know. Peg told me. What’s up?”
    He sounded distracted, busy, remote.
    â€œCan I come out for a bit this Saturday? Maybe for lunch. I’ll bring something.”
    â€œThe kids will be there you know,” he said.
    â€œI figured. That’s fine.”
    â€œThen sure. Come around noon. Emma’s got swimming lessons at two-thirty and Matthew has physical therapy at three o’clock, so that gives us about two hours before I have to get on the road.”
    I thanked Paul and hung up. I’m sure he was already deep into the next task or demand or crisis before I did. It exhausted me even to think about his life.
    Sometimes, too, I wondered how much my decision not to have children of my own had been informed by the example of Paul and his family. Maybe my choosing not to have children was like dodging a bullet pretty sure to shatter at least some aspects of my life.
    Dodging a bullet. How grim. And how ridiculous to think I’d protected myself from harm by deciding not to have children. Because now I was pregnant in spite of that decision, and if my life hadn’t exactly been harmed it certainly had been disrupted.
    Face it, Anna, I told myself. There are no guarantees in this world. You’d have to be dumb not to know that.
    But you didn’t have to like it.

12
    Sympathy for the Devil
    I called Michaela and suggested we meet for a drink one evening.
    â€œThis week is hell for me,” she said briskly, “but I can give you half an hour on Wednesday. Meet me at six at the bar at Leopard.”
    Michaela Newman seems to have everything. Sometime in her early thirties, she left the financial services firm where she’d been a bond analyst since graduating from business school and started her own financial consultant business. If her designer clothes, spectacular apartment at the Marina Bay condo development, 7 Series BMW, and twice yearly trips to Canyon Ranch are any indication of financial success, Michaela is a winner.
    To boot, she’s also stunning, tall, and voluptuous, with dark, glossy hair that falls just below her shoulders. Michaela is the woman every other woman hates on sight. And there’s some reason for women continuing to hate her after that first impression. The truth is that Michaela can be brash and self-serving and even, on occasion, cruel.
    I met Michaela about the time I met Ross, at a small women-in-business seminar I hadn’t wanted to go to in the first place. Neither, it turned out, had Michaela, but she’d been offered a nice honorarium to speak. Michaela, I was to learn, didn’t do much of anything without a self-serving motive.
    I was never really close to Michaela, not in the way I’m close to Alexandra, Kristen, and Tracy. We had no common history and no shared interests other than owning our own businesses. I’m not quite sure why we called each other friends; maybe we never actually used that term.
    So, if we weren’t friends, what were we? Circumstantial urban acquaintances? Or maybe Michaela was something like an unexplained rash. There seems to be no cause for it; it’s just suddenly there, and it itches, but after a while you learn to live with it, and one day you notice with surprise that it’s gone, and you realize there’s only a faint memory of irritation and you miss