Nick put his arm around her. “I never knew you were so fancy.”
Bella was toddling around the room and arrived at Clara’s feet, wrapping her arms around her knees. Clara picked her up, inhaling her scent. “Did you know,” she said, “that baby powder is a carcinogenic? I had no idea. My sisters used it on their kids all the time. I don’t know how else you’re supposed to make a baby smell like a baby, but apparently you shouldn’t use it at all.”
Adam shrugged. “We don’t.”
“Oh, you’re getting steeped in the mom facts already, Clara!” said Jess, who was putting plates in the oven to warm. “This is all so exciting.”
“Make sure you get it written down now while you still know it all,” said Adam, getting Bella to high-five him. “When this baby comes, you won’t remember your own name.”
They sat down to eat, and Jess told them about a display she was creating at work about giants and fairies. “I spent yesterday morning cutting out diaphanous wings. Not an easy task, actually. Who knew cutting and pasting could be a thing you do for a living?”
“What a dream job!” marvelled Clara. Then she turned to Adam, who worked for a consulting firm specializing in finance and executive compensation. “Still busy linking pay to performance?”
Adam said, “There are worse links.”
Nick was feeling feisty. “Capitalism is a scourge. Why should everything be about the money?”
“Except everything already is about the money,” said Jess. “The point is to tie that money to something tangible.”
“Shareholder value,” said Nick. “The rich just get richer.”
“Not if business is bad,” said Adam.
“But it’s your job to fudge the numbers, right? The dollar took a nosedive last year, but I bet everybody still took home a fat paycheque.”
“Relatively speaking, yes,” admitted Adam.
“It’s manufactured,” said Nick. “The whole thing’s a scam.”
“The economy?” asked Adam.
“This is getting heated,” said Jess, holding Bella on her lap. “Clara, why don’t you just give us more parenting advice? Much less controversial,” she joked. Bella was meant to be eating spaghetti noodles but was mainly hurling them to the floor. There was a piece in Jess’s hair, and Bella picked it out and ate it.
Jess eventually put her to bed. Soon after, Nads and Nahlah knocked on the sliding door with video monitors in hand and two bottles of wine. They shook off their shoes and got glasses from the cupboard because they already knew where everything was. When Clara held out her hand, Nahlah hugged her instead. “The BFF. I’ve heard all about you.” Everyone toasted to the house, to friends new and old.
And then they were back to talking about money. Nads was a banking renegade, having left the industry to co-found a credit union, so she was able to bolster Nick’s anti-capitalist arguments, leading Adam to throw up his hands in mock-frustration, or at least Clara thought it was mock. She didn’t mind that her husband hadn’t been proven a fool.
And then they all sat down to watch the baby monitors, which apparently was a normal thing to do. Nads and Nahlah’s children were sleeping, one not so soundly, and Bella was still awake but quiet, pulling her blanket over her face and then hurriedly pulling it off again.
—
“They’re yuppies!” Clara exclaimed when she and Nick were on the subway going home. “I thought the yuppies had all gone extinct.” For a long time, they’d been observing parents, promising each other they’d do it all in a different way. But this was the first time since parenthood had become so imminent. “We’re never going to be like that.”
Nick said, “Never.”
“But we’re going to be good at this, right?” They’d been waiting so long. Clara was cuddled up against Nick’s shoulder. It had to be kind of okay, having babies. Especially if people were having one and even another one after that.
“The truth?” he asked.
She looked up at him. “What do you mean?”
He said, “I’m terrified.”
“Okay, I get that,” she said. She was scared too. She took his hand and squeezed it.
He said, “I’m happy, but I am so bloody scared that I’m going to mess this one up too.”
She squeezed his hand again, “It’s different this time.”
