Dating Big Bird (23 page)

“Unlike Karen.” She craned her neck to look past Simon. “I mean, look what the whale dragged in.”

Maybe it was because I disliked Arlene so much, or maybe
it was because of Karen’s recent scare with Marissa, but I suddenly felt protective of my impossible boss.

“Expectant
mammo
s are supposed to be big. You know, because they’re eating for two. Because they’re eating to give life to someone else. That’s what being pregnant means.”

Before I realized the slip I’d made, Arlene choked on an ice cube and started coughing so hard, I thought she might risk undoing her
cerclage
(“Month Five”). But after Simon patted her on the back until she’d recovered, she flipped open her steno pad and started scribbling.

“I keep forgetting,” she said, looking around the room for “material” to jot down. “I’m a journalist
and
a mother-to-be.”

And
an asswipe, I wanted to say before excusing myself to look for Renee.

When I finally found her in the back of the living room, she was flirting with a bartender, who apparently was gay, since she mouthed the word “fag” at me as I approached. She pulled me to her by the elbow so she could whisper as loudly as she could into my hair.

“Can we leave yet? I hate baby showers.”

“I know you do.”

“But let me clarify that statement: I don’t hate babies.”

“I know you don’t.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I know that underneath it all, you’re a big softie.” And she was. Especially when she was drunk.

“Don’t get carried away. I’m not that nice.”

“Yes, you are. In spite of yourself.”

“I just never wanted them—kids. Maybe I would have if one of my relationships had ever worked out. But none of my relationships ever worked out.”

“You’ll have a relationship that’ll work out,” I said.

“No, I won’t. It’s too late. And I’m too old.”

“It is not, and you are not.”

She threw her arm around me, and it landed on my shoulders with a heavy thud. “You think?”

“I know.”

“Maybe you’ll get back together with that impoholic of yours and have a kid, or maybe you’ll find someone better to have a kid with.”

A month had passed, and Malcolm and I hadn’t even spoken on the phone, so it seemed highly unlikely that a reunion was imminent, or possible. I’d even forced myself to disconnect the Caller ID box to train myself to stop thinking that he might call. And as far as my finding someone better—well, that looked equally unlikely, since I worked in a female- and gay-male-dominated industry. Not to mention that this was a party for mostly women.

“Maybe.”

“We’ve had our heart-to-heart, so
now
can we go?”

“Of course we can’t,” I said, and being two very visible members of Karen’s staff, we tacitly resigned ourselves to staying and suffering.

The first interminable hour was mercifully coming to a close, which was a relief since now there was the complete distraction of food instead of only the partial distraction of hors d’oeuvres. Gail’s huge dining room had been transformed into one big food station, with silver platters of hams and roasted turkeys and whole poached salmons; stone bowls filled with salads and side dishes; and wicker baskets stuffed with breads and muffins and every other kind of baked good imaginable. The sound of china and silverware clanging and people oohing and aahing over the buffet—even though most of these women never ate anything anyway—filled the air, until the decibel level was such that ten jets could have taken off and landed in the living room and no one would have noticed.

Once the food had been picked at, and the dishes were cleared, and coffee and finger pastries had been laid out and ignored, the moment Simon had been waiting for since January was close at hand. I could see Karen a few feet away, sitting in a huge stuffed armchair—like a Buddha—and then I saw Gail make her way through the crowd to Karen and whisper something in her ear—presumably that the gift-giving ceremony would soon begin. Gail then began to spread the word to those standing closest to her, and within minutes a space was cleared in a semicircle around Karen, and the wait staff began carrying in the gifts and laying them in a huge pile at her feet.

Which meant it was time to find Simon.

I found him in the kitchen, standing in the pantry flapping his arms like a chicken and flipping his hair out of his face so emphatically, he was practically hitting himself. I didn’t know exactly what the problem was, but I certainly knew we had one.

“I’ve just been informed that Celine’s not coming, so there’s no one to sing, and,” he said, as if the worst were yet to come, “we’ve forgotten something. Something incredibly fundamentally relevant to this day.”

I pointed to my KLNY microfiber tote bag attached to my shoulder like a third arm.

“What are you panicking for? I’ve got it.”

“You
do
? You’ve got a
card
???”

“What card? I’m talking about the gift. The gift you’ve been torturing me about the past five months.”

He put his fingers to his temples and pressed in for a second or two before speaking. “Ellen, we don’t have a card.”

“Hey. Chicken Little. Who cares about a card when we
have
this!
” I pulled the beribboned little box out of my bag and shoved it in his face.

His eyes lit up. “You’re right. The gift
is
the most important thing.” His fingers reached out like octopus tentacles, but I pulled back just in time to avoid them, clutching the box protectively to my chest. And before I could continue torturing him, we heard the unmistakable tinkling of crystal stemware and the final announcement coming from the living room:

“Gift time!”

By the fiftieth gift, even Karen was having a hard time feigning excitement.

Beautifully wrapped box after beautifully wrapped box was passed from Gail to Simon to Karen to be opened—each precious pearl contained within to be held up and beheld—and every time it was, a Greek chorus of oohs and aahs would rise up from the rapt crowd.

Ooooh!

Oshkosh B’Gosh unisex denim overalls and little white turtleneck!

Ahhhh!

A handmade alphabet quilt from Barney’s!

Ooooh!

Another handmade alphabet quilt from Barney’s!

Ahhhh!

More fabulous miniature silly ridiculously overpriced things from Petit Bateau and Bulgari and Kiehl’s and Tiffany!

When all the boxes were finally opened, I saw Simon signal me and Renee and Annette, whom I hadn’t seen all morning, and the rest of our office staff: It was time for us to gather around Karen and finally bestow upon our boss our
own perfectly wrapped box, too, and to wait and watch breathlessly as she opened it up and said …

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

She made a face.

She moved her lips in an attempt to pronounce the word but gave up almost instantly.

“It’s a
necklace
!” she said, looking out into the sea of familiar staff faces for help while she forced herself to keep smiling. “A
necklace
with a
word
hanging off of it!”

A hushed wave of ooohs and ahhhs undulated through the crowd.

A necklace!

With a word hanging off of it!

I felt sick to my stomach. What could I possibly have been thinking to risk such complete and utter public humiliation by giving Karen such a ridiculous gift?

Simon glared at me and elbowed me to say something. I stood there for a second or two trying to gather my thoughts and hoping to get some silent sign of moral support from Renee, but for once, she was speechless.

Then I looked at Karen. One hand was outstretched with the necklace still dangling from it, while the other hand rested on her stomach protectively. She seemed, for a moment, to have forgotten where she was—forgotten her friends and clients and staff and sister, forgotten the effort to be courteous in the wake of our indecipherable gift. And I suddenly realized that you could never know what was in someone else’s heart or mind, no matter how smart you thought you were. Sitting there, smiling even, she looked surprisingly at peace, and buoyed by her quiet contentment, I reached down and plucked the necklace out of Karen’s hand and held it up so everyone could see it.

“The necklace says … 
mammo
!” I proclaimed dramatically.

Nobody moved.

Or spoke.

Now the
entire
room was silent.

I felt myself starting to sweat and panic, and I realized that I had better do my combination karate-chop stance and Mother Power explanation as quickly as possible and get the hell out of there.

Which I did. And when I was finished, I handed the necklace back to Karen and started to turn away. But before I could, she grabbed my hand. I looked at her nervously and was shocked to see a grin forming on her face.

“That’s the most
fantastic
word I’ve ever heard,” Karen pronounced.

I stopped dead in my tracks and stared at her in shock. “You like it?”

“Like it? I
love
it.”

I could hear Simon and Renee both breathe sighs of relief, but before we all finished patting each other on the back for a disaster averted, the crowd around us started to part, and a woman appeared, like Moses, in its midst.

Demi Moore.

She came up next to Karen and touched the
mammo
as it dangled from her fingers, staring at it with the kind of reverence and awe celebrities usually reserve only for staring at themselves.

“What’s it made of?” she asked.

Karen nudged me to answer.

“Platinum,” I said nervously. I’d never seen Demi Moore—the
Vanity Fair-
anointed Mother of All Mothers—up close before, and I had to say, she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

“And the cord?”

“A special twisted silk thread.” I tried desperately to remember what Renee had told me when I hadn’t been listening. “It’s made in Peru.”

“I have to have one.”

Karen elbowed me again.

“Okay,” I said, completely detached from reality.

“Where did you get it?”

“Well, I … it’s—I kind of had it made.”

“So it’s yours.”

I nodded.

“So if I asked you, you could have one made for me, too.”

I nodded again.

“Do you have a card?”

I reached into my bag and handed her one.

“My assistant will be in touch.” She bent down and gave Karen a kiss on the cheek, and then she turned around and walked back into the crowd.

In seconds the women standing around Demi Moore had formed a support group—all of them excitedly talking over each other about their children and stretch marks and weight gain and sex after vaginal deliveries and Mother Power and the need for maternalistic feministic conviction and pride and …

mammo
mammo
mammo

Seconds later the crowd parted again, when Renee wheeled a matching silver-frosted
mammo
cake toward Karen. But as Karen huffed and puffed trying to extricate herself from the armchair, then finally stood up, those of us close to her heard a strange gushing sound.

And then a high-pitched screech:

“My water just broke!”

The room erupted in cheers and spontaneous applause. Gail ran to her side and helped her through the crowd and toward the bathroom, and Simon, who had been perched on
the edge of her chair, suddenly looked green, then white, then completely translucent, until I thought he might collapse in a heap on the floor.

Being a fainter myself, I rushed over to him. And as I did, I noticed Arlene Schiffler, who had been scribbling furiously all afternoon stealing other people’s comments and quotes, holding up a hand-held tape recorder into the air to capture the tail end of the
mammo
comet and sporadically bringing it up to her mouth and talking into it,
reporting everything that happened as it happened!

Simon stared glassily at me and then at the floor, and then he turned green and white and translucent again.

“Wait until the columns hear about this,” he whispered in complete and utter repulsion, pointing at the puddle of amniotic fluid seeping slowly into the antique carpet. “It most certainly will not be
a good thing
.”

Karen gave birth later that evening—at exactly 6:57
P.M
.—to an eleven-pound eight-ounce baby boy. Gail had called an ambulance shortly after Karen’s water broke, and they’d both headed into Manhattan to Mt. Sinai Hospital where Karen’s ob/gyn was waiting. Gail said she would call Arthur from her cell phone and asked me to stay behind and deal with the mass exodus of the guests and caterers. Simon and Annette and Renee stayed behind, too, and between the four of us, we thanked and said good-bye to the final hangers-on; oversaw the kitchen staff, who packed up the leftover food, which was to be donated, as per Karen’s instructions, to two homeless shelters on the Island; organized the presents, which were still strewn all over the living-room floor; and made a list of gifts and gift-givers, so that Simon could get started on the thank-you notes the next morning.