Issue date:
July 3-5, 1998

The Pickle

A woman's biological clock is winding down. But she discovers she has company in her intense longing to have a baby.

he weekend I ran into Hillary after not seeing her since high school was not a good weekend.

I had baby-sat a close friend's 4-year-old son Saturday night and sometime after we'd watched several hours of Barney videotapes and before he climbed up onto my lap to hear me read Curious George, he suddenly asked me this:

"Where your hud-band?"

"I don't have a hud-band," I replied without shame and with just enough lilt in my voice to suggest pride.

"Do you have a big boy?"
A big boy? "You mean a boyfriend?"
He nodded.
"No." Less pride. A little more shame.
His forehead grew furrowed. "Do you have a baby?"
Ditto my forehead. "No."
"Do you have ... a dog?"
"No."
"Do you have ... a cat?"
"No."
Deeper furrows. "Do you have ... a elephant?"
"No."

He scanned the room, desperate to find something in it I might possibly have. Finally, he spied a small bouquet on the dresser. "Do you have flowers?" He stared at me, then shrugged with his arms outstretched. "Then what do you have?"

I have nothing. Nothing, that is, except for my big job working for a big fashion designer, which I hate. And my big, big, big desire to have child.

had not always been this way, obsessed with wanting a child. It came to me relatively late in life, compared to some of my friends who knew they wanted children about the same time we were picking our college majors.

With me, it took longer to know. It took until I grew tired of myself and wished for the relief of distraction. It took until the nights became too quiet and too lonely to bear. It took until I laid eyes on my niece -- I call her The Pickle. That's when I knew I just had to have one. And that's when I knew there was no going back.

For a while, actually, I wasn't planning on reproducing at all. I thought I might just kidnap my niece and spare myself the aggravation. Why risk having a child you might not like when there's already an existing child you adore? At first, my sister was moved by such passionate displays of aunthood. Then, as the first year passed and moved into the second, and The Pickle became more and more of an animal, my sister began to latch on to the idea. "You can have her," she'd say, staring at the floor where the wailing, fit-throwing beast-in-a-diaper had thrown herself down in protest over a nap. But the fit of histrionics only made me covet her more. She's an animal, I'd swoon. But she's my animal.

Not that I really considered stealing her. I wasn't that demented. I just liked to borrow her sometimes. Take the baby idea out for a reality test-drive. I'd beam at passers-by with the pride and bliss of a new mother. "She's got her father's temperament," I'd say. Which was true. My brother-in-law always got cranky when he was tired and hungry.

he morning after baby sitting, I was still obsessing about how I had nothing as I walked through Washington Square Park on my way to the office to put a few hours of work in before the nightmarish week ahead: As P.R. director for Karen Lipps New York, I had a million things to do. Most of which -- or all of which -- had to do with making sure nothing went wrong.

Like I cared. I mean, it wasn't like The Pickle was coming to visit.

Anyway, there I was, on that beautiful September morning, when I saw a woman pushing a baby carriage, and when she turned around and revealed the grin of a blissfully happy new mother, I knew immediately that I had seen that smile before. I just couldn't remember where.

And then it came to me. High school.

t 17, Hillary Abrams was everything I was not: namely, popular. And now, given the child in the stroller, at 33 she was still everything I was not: obviously, a mother.

As you can see, I'd really made a lot of progress since the insecurity of my teens.

I edged over beside a tree and froze, wondering whether or not to say hello, until something -- perhaps the baby, perhaps the fact that I couldn't take another person asking me if I had a hud-band -- tipped the scale of indecision and made me edge over a little farther to make my escape. But that was not to be.

"I can't believe it's been 15 years," she said. "You look as great as you did back then."

Liar. Back then I had one eyebrow that went straight across my forehead and big '70s frizzball hair, though I almost liked her right then and there for saying it.

But then I remembered. The boyfriend. The one from high school. The one who was going to go to medical school and become an ob/gyn. The oppressive weight and opacity of loserdom enveloped me as I imagined their perfect life: His Park Avenue practice, the pregnant women coming and going all day long. Their fabulous apartment in a nearby doorman building, complete with FAO Schwarz-equipped nursery. Her weekly pedicures and manicures. The live-in nanny, apparently off on Sundays.

It was time to cut this conversation short. But somehow I couldn't. I couldn't take my eyes off the Pickle-esque bundle of cuteness in the carriage. "Great baby," I said, despite myself. "How old is she?"

"Eight months."

Walking? Maybe. Talking? Probably not. Toilet-trained? Definitely not. I wasn't sure, actually. My sister and the The Pickle lived in New England, which made it impossible for me to acquire the knowledge of a child's day-to-day minutiae firsthand. "You must be thrilled."

"We are."
We? Yuck. "Do you ..."
"Stay home with her full time? No. We have a nanny."
"A nanny. That's great." Of course.
"Well, I mean, she's full time but she doesn't live in."
I nodded, then stared admiringly in silence at the baby.
She cleared her throat. "So, do you ...?"

"Have one? No." Not unless you count The Pickle. I fell silent for a few seconds, then blurted out before I could stop myself: "But I really want one."

"I know," Hillary said, nodding, too. I couldn't tell if the expression on her face was pity or smugness, but whatever it was I suddenly wanted to get away from it ... and her.

"Well, listen," I said. "I've got to run." Then I mumbled something -- big job, big week, big big big life -- and put my KLNY sunglasses back on.

"Speaking of which, what do you do?" she asked.

"I work for Karen Lipps. P.R. director." I ran my hand dramatically through my thick-though-now-straight hair and smoothed the waxed path between my now separate eyebrows.

So what if I didn't have a kid? At least I had a job. A big, big job.

"You're kidding," she said. "I work for Calvin Klein. In-house counsel."

"Wait. You're a lawyer?"
"What, you hate lawyers?"

"No. It's just that ..." She waited for me to finish my sentence, but I didn't. At least not audibly. Since you were lucky enough to have a baby, I didn't think you would also be lucky enough to have a big job, too.

Hillary suddenly looked uncomfortable, as if she, too, had had enough of this conversation, confirming my belief that high school is a time and a place that should never, ever be revisited.

"She's not mine." Hillary blushed, then laughed guiltily. "She's my brother's."
I stared at her, overcome with enormous relief. Clearly, I was not the only loser here.

"Sometimes I just pretend she's mine."
"You do?"
"Things just come out of my mouth and somehow, at the time, they seem -- "
"True," I said. "I know. I do the same thing with my niece." We stared at each other and smiled.
"So, what ever happened to ...?" I tried to remember the name of her boyfriend-husband.
"Jonathan? It's a long story," she said. "What about you? Any potential ..."
"Sperm donors? No. Not really." I sighed, "It's a long story, too."

It was always a long story.

"So, we should get together sometime," I said. "Form our own Imaginary Mommy Group."
"I could get a sitter. Or we could just double up on my nanny."
We laughed. "So, by the way," I said, "do you like your job?"
"No," she said. "Do you like yours?"

"No."

We smirked and exchanged cards, and I knew then that we were destined to finally become friends.

Close friends.

Illustration Credit: ROBERT GOLDSTROM FOR USA WEEKEND
Photo Credit: MOLLY ROBERTS FOR USA WEEKEND