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Authors: Chrissie Manby
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something. If everyone is on Facebook, then the CIA will hardly have time to check us all out, right? Helen is well, as is the baby.”
“What flavor did you have?” Michael wrote back.
“Flavor?” I responded.
“What sex is your firstborn, dufus?”
At which point it occurred to me that I had no idea.
Despite having bent Helen’s ear for the best part of an hour that day, I couldn’t have told you with certainty whether she’d had a boy, a girl, or a baby elephant. I frowned at Michael’s question, which blinked at me accusingly from the screen. How come I didn’t know the answer? Was my alias about to fail at the first hurdle?
I toyed with the idea of calling up Helen and asking her again. But that would be wrong for several reasons. First, it was almost one in the morning. If Helen wasn’t up feeding the baby, then she would be trying to get some desperately needed sleep, and if she was up and she did answer my call, then I could hardly bear to think of how the conversation would go. Did I really want Helen to know that I had so little interest in her life that I didn’t know whether she’d had a boy or a girl?
I did not. So I did some more detective work. I trawled through my old emails, sure that somewhere among them there must be an email announcing the birth of Helen and Kevin’s first child. And there was. I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Helen and Kevin are pleased to announce the birth of baby Alex!” the email exclaimed. “Nine pounds two ounces. Mother and baby doing fine. Father suffering from shell shock.” Kevin was such a wag. Anyway, I prepared to take that information and regurgitate it for Michael, except that even as I opened the message window to respond to Michael’s question in my cyber-disguise, I realized that I still didn’t know what sex the baby was. There was a name. An unhelpfully gender-neutral name. And a weight. Nothing more.
“Bum,” I muttered to myself. I searched through all the other emails I’d received from Helen before or since the baby’s birth. In one she talked about the scan but added, “They asked us if we wanted to know what sex the baby is. Of course we told them we didn’t.” In the one email she had written after the baby was born, a round-robin to all her friends thanking them for their kind wishes and gifts (I imagine she included me to induce some gift-buying guilt), she continued to refer to the child in a thoroughly gender-neutral way: “Alex” or “the baby.” She never once used “he” or “she.” Kevin had written a similar email but there were no clues there, either. He didn’t mention his glee at having someone to take to the football or his disappointment at the years of ballet lessons ahead. Unusually mature for Kevin and exceptionally unhelpful for me.
Michael’s question was still waiting for an answer. And if I didn’t answer his question, how would I be able to start asking questions of my own? I would have to take a chance. After all, I had a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right. Alex. Over nine pounds. It had to be a boy.
“A bouncing boy!” I wrote back. “I’ve already got him in a CFC romper,” I added for authenticity. Kevin was rabidly devoted to Chelsea.
“Congratulations” came Michael’s reply. “Can’t wait to meet the little fella at his barbecue next week.”
Oh! I gasped. Helen and Kevin were having a barbecue and they hadn’t invited me. Which could only mean …
My hands trembled as I typed, “Will you be bringing anyone with you?” into the message box. I pressed send and leaned on my desk with my head in my hands while I waited for an answer. An answer that would surely be the answer I was looking for and yet dreading with every fiber of my being. But it didn’t come. After a while I dared to look up and saw that Michael was no longer online. He had logged off Facebook without responding to my/Kevin’s question and I was still in the dark. Damn.
I hadn’t finished snooping
“What flavor did you have?” Michael wrote back.
“Flavor?” I responded.
“What sex is your firstborn, dufus?”
At which point it occurred to me that I had no idea.
Despite having bent Helen’s ear for the best part of an hour that day, I couldn’t have told you with certainty whether she’d had a boy, a girl, or a baby elephant. I frowned at Michael’s question, which blinked at me accusingly from the screen. How come I didn’t know the answer? Was my alias about to fail at the first hurdle?
I toyed with the idea of calling up Helen and asking her again. But that would be wrong for several reasons. First, it was almost one in the morning. If Helen wasn’t up feeding the baby, then she would be trying to get some desperately needed sleep, and if she was up and she did answer my call, then I could hardly bear to think of how the conversation would go. Did I really want Helen to know that I had so little interest in her life that I didn’t know whether she’d had a boy or a girl?
I did not. So I did some more detective work. I trawled through my old emails, sure that somewhere among them there must be an email announcing the birth of Helen and Kevin’s first child. And there was. I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Helen and Kevin are pleased to announce the birth of baby Alex!” the email exclaimed. “Nine pounds two ounces. Mother and baby doing fine. Father suffering from shell shock.” Kevin was such a wag. Anyway, I prepared to take that information and regurgitate it for Michael, except that even as I opened the message window to respond to Michael’s question in my cyber-disguise, I realized that I still didn’t know what sex the baby was. There was a name. An unhelpfully gender-neutral name. And a weight. Nothing more.
“Bum,” I muttered to myself. I searched through all the other emails I’d received from Helen before or since the baby’s birth. In one she talked about the scan but added, “They asked us if we wanted to know what sex the baby is. Of course we told them we didn’t.” In the one email she had written after the baby was born, a round-robin to all her friends thanking them for their kind wishes and gifts (I imagine she included me to induce some gift-buying guilt), she continued to refer to the child in a thoroughly gender-neutral way: “Alex” or “the baby.” She never once used “he” or “she.” Kevin had written a similar email but there were no clues there, either. He didn’t mention his glee at having someone to take to the football or his disappointment at the years of ballet lessons ahead. Unusually mature for Kevin and exceptionally unhelpful for me.
Michael’s question was still waiting for an answer. And if I didn’t answer his question, how would I be able to start asking questions of my own? I would have to take a chance. After all, I had a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right. Alex. Over nine pounds. It had to be a boy.
“A bouncing boy!” I wrote back. “I’ve already got him in a CFC romper,” I added for authenticity. Kevin was rabidly devoted to Chelsea.
“Congratulations” came Michael’s reply. “Can’t wait to meet the little fella at his barbecue next week.”
Oh! I gasped. Helen and Kevin were having a barbecue and they hadn’t invited me. Which could only mean …
My hands trembled as I typed, “Will you be bringing anyone with you?” into the message box. I pressed send and leaned on my desk with my head in my hands while I waited for an answer. An answer that would surely be the answer I was looking for and yet dreading with every fiber of my being. But it didn’t come. After a while I dared to look up and saw that Michael was no longer online. He had logged off Facebook without responding to my/Kevin’s question and I was still in the dark. Damn.
I hadn’t finished snooping
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