“I know. I just need a little more time.” Brooklyn put plenty of pressure on herself. She didn’t need it from other people.
Dr. Swanson left and Brooklyn got dressed in her cute navy blue dress with the flouncy skirt and a pair of shockingly red heels. She met her driver, Tony, outside the doctor’s office and hopped in the car. The October day was sunny and bright, the perfect weather for wrapping one’s head around new ideas, like devising a plan to get pregnant as fast as humanly possible.
She was flipping through emails on her phone when her mother called. “Hi, Mom.”
“Well? What did the doctor say?”
“I’m like a grocery store before Easter.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Running out of eggs.”
“Oh, darling. Don’t compare yourself to a supermarket. It’s unseemly.” Her mom never got her jokes.
“Okay. I’m like an organic farm in danger of losing its flock of heritage chickens.”
“You’re stalling because I was right.”
Brooklyn grumbled under her breath. “Yes, Mom. You were so amazingly right about how your daughter practically has cobwebs on her ovaries.”
“There’s no need to get snippy. What do you intend to do about it?”
“Find a man and get pregnant?”
“You don’t need a man. No woman needs a man.” This had been her mother’s chorus since Brooklyn and her sister had been young and their father was nothing more than a fuzzy memory. “But if you want, I can put in a call to my psychic.”
“Why? Is he especially virile?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. He can tell you whether or not you have love on the horizon. If it’s in the cards. Although a sperm bank is a perfectly suitable option.”
Brooklyn did not want to know her fate ahead of time. Too scary. “I’ll ask Virginia what she thinks.”
“You know what your sister will say. She’ll say that there’s no way she’d be able to juggle two small children and a career right now without a partner. Someone to share in the enormous amount of work. But I’m sure you can do it on your own.”
“Yeah. You’re probably right. I mean, I make plenty of money. I can hire a nanny. And Virginia and I own a company. I can bring the baby to work whenever I want.”
“You just have to throw Posh Post in my face every time we talk.”
“Not throwing it in your face. That was merely a long string of facts supporting your theory that a sperm bank is the way to go.” Tony pulled the car up in front of the Posh Post offices down by the Chelsea Piers. “Mom, I’m at work. I need to run.”
“Let me know if you change your mind about the psychic. The clock is ticking.”
“And I’d like to hit the ‘snooze’ one more time.”
Brooklyn strode into the building and took the elevator up to the fifth floor. She greeted employees as she filed through the open office space, with polished concrete floors, arched windows, and soaring wood-beamed ceilings. The entire place buzzed with excitement and a bit of panic, too. They were all working like crazy. Ahead, was her assistant Laurel, with the phone surgically attached to her ear. She handed Brooklyn a thick folder labeled “Posh Male” and mouthed that she’d be in soon.
Brooklyn flipped on her light and got settled at her desk, a custom-made beauty of reclaimed lumber stained white—a mix of old and modern that fit Brooklyn to a T. Her roomy corner office had two glass walls, giving her a view of the domain she’d built with Virginia, whose office was on the floor’s opposite corner. The sisters’ workspaces were very much a reflection of their personalities. Brooklyn had a floor-to-ceiling inspiration board plastered with magazine clippings, color swatches, and a zillion Post-Its with indecipherable late night ramblings about new ideas for Posh Post. Virginia’s office looked like Martha Stewart and Marie Kondo had squared off in the first-ever cage match of cleaning.
Brooklyn was well aware that she had a cubic ton of emails to answer, but she couldn’t keep eggs off her mind. Outside her window, the leaves on the trees lining the street were edged with orange and crimson. The nights were turning crisp and before anyone knew it, the holidays would be here. What an amazing time to try to get pregnant. She imagined bringing the baby into the office in a year, taking phone calls while nursing, putting a note on the door that said, “Shh! Baby sleeping!”, and not feeling guilty about leaving before 7:00 PM. Her sister had done it. Why couldn’t she?
“Knock, knock.”
Brooklyn whipped around to see Virginia floating into her office, holding a paper tray with two coffees in one hand and her sweet baby, Paris, nestled in her other arm. Virginia’s children, seven-month-old Paris and six-year-old Dallas, were each named after the city where they’d been conceived, an old and duly odd tradition on their mom’s side of the family. Brooklyn was named for the New York City borough where she’d grown up and her mom and sister still resided. Virginia got stuck with the state her parents had driven through on their way to Washington, DC. Virginia complained when she was four. “Be glad I wasn’t in Boise,” their mom, who was named after Aurora, Illinois, replied.
“Oh my gosh,” Brooklyn whispered with glee. “You brought the baby in.”
“The nanny’s sick.” Virginia’s hard-to-tame brown tresses, a near match for Brooklyn’s, were up in a twist, a sure sign that she’d gone with dry shampoo.
