Steven took the 1 train downtown every morning to Christopher Street and walked to theVoice’s offices in Cooper Square. Once he was gone Louisa made a second pot of coffee and sat down in the postage-stamp-size kitchen to work. Two afternoons a week she exchanged her slippers for shoes with actual soles and taught an intro lecture to Columbia undergraduates.
At a wedding that September for one of Steven’s BC buddies Louisa finally met the infamous Aggie Baumfeld. Aggie gave Louisa a cool, assessing glance and offered her long-fingered bejeweled hand to Louisa; for a brief, horrifying second, Louisa thought she was supposed tokiss Aggie’s ring!
A proposal in late 2008, Christmas Eve. Accepted, with glee. Champagne, phone calls home. More champagne. Of course they’d get married at Ships View! Louisa wouldn’t consider doing it any other way. Steven had visited Owls Head with Louisa the previous summer, placed in the Bunk Room, while Louisa had the Pink Room: reasons of propriety. And while perhaps he wondered if all of their future vacations would take place in this very house, with Louisa’s parents in residence, Steven certainly didn’t voice any doubts aloud. After all, he was in love! And the view of the water from the picture window in the dining room was as stunning as promised.
They set a May date.
2009. The day before Louisa Fitzgerald went before the committee to defend her dissertation she threw up in a bathroom in Fayerweather Hall. Nerves. Perfectly normal; whowouldn’tbe uneasy? All that work, all those hours, whittled down to one terrifying afternoon.
Three days later, she and Steven went out to Louisa’s favorite restaurant, Pisticci Ristorante. When the server placed in front of Louisa her favorite dish, penne pisticci, her queasiness returned. The chunks of homemade mozzarella in the yellow and red vinetomato sauce turned her stomach. To the bathroom she repaired. The Duane Reade on Broadway was open twenty-four hours.
Only she and Steven knew why the seamstress had to let out the bodice of Louisa’s wedding dress ever so slightly, and why Louisa took a twenty-minute power nap before stepping into her open-toed, three-inch white shoes with a sprinkle of diamonds across each forefoot. There was a collection of cells inside her uterus, multiplying mightily, on their way to becoming Matty McLean.
2010, a mild winter day, Matty in a BabyBjörn, Louisa taking her daily walk through Morningside Park, a call from her advisor about a job at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Her advisor had talked her up to his colleagues; she should apply. (I can’t possibly fly across the country, can I?thought Louisa.I have a baby!)
Well, but. This was academia. You had to be willing to go where the jobs were. You flew when you were asked to fly.
A flight; a breast pump packed in a sleek black bag. LouisalovedReed. She loved Portland. She loved the idea of living on the other side of the country, with the open spaces for Matty he’d never experience in New York. A series of interviews, an offer put forth by phone, Steven opening the apartment door just as he ended his own phone call.
“I have news,” Louisa said, brimming with excitement and pride.
“I do too.” Steven’s eyes were panicked.
She swallowed and said, “You go first.”
“That was Joe on the phone,” he said. “He’s at my parents’ house. My mom is sick.” He blinked and looked suddenly both younger and older than he actually was. “Really sick. She had a massive stroke.”
Louisa turned down Reed; Nancy McLean died six months later.
Louisa was devastated about the job—tenure track positions in history did not exactly fall from the sky; they didn’t fall from anywhere—but Steven was more devastated about Nancy, so shetamped down her disappointment. She joined a playgroup, but she wasn’t sure anyone else ever picked up a book or thought about anything other than organic teething rings and mastitis. She did some adjunct teaching at Columbia, but only one class. Her friend Franklin from her program, single and gay, got a job at the College of Charleston. He had no strings tying him down. Louisa tried not to be envious—although she was. She spoke at a conference; she published a single paper. But she could feel the new grads nipping at her heels.
Things at theVoicegot rough. Everything was political; it was hard to rise. Steven wanted to get into radio. There was an opening at NPR.
The days go by slowly,someone once told Louisa about motherhood.But the years fly.
2011, a call from Louisa’s advisor, with whom she had remained close. “I have great news,” he said. “No, wait. I shouldn’t say that. I have very somber news. There’s been a death in the history department at NYU. Gary Rosenthal?”
“That’sterrible,”Louisa said. Her heart fluttered. Gary Rosenthal had sat on Louisa’s dissertation committee; her work was considered an extension of his. “I’m so sorry to hear it.” She waited a long, long minute.
Gary Rosenthal had suffered a heart attack in his office. A grad student found him with his head tipped forward onto Doris Kearns Goodwin’sTeam of Rivals,which he was reading for the sixth time. Possibly, Louisa thought, there was no better way for a legend like Gary to go.
Louisa, as an only child herself, told Steven early on she didn’t want tohavean only child. It was too lonely! Steven wasn’t afraid of chaos—look at the home he’d been raised in. One semester into her position at NYU Louisa began feeling the telltale queasiness that signified Abigail. A home search; a three-bedroom on Prospect Park West, a breath-snatching price tag; a move.
Two children for female professors was rare; three was almost unheard of. And yet! Here came Claire, in November 2014. The cost for a nanny was astronomical; when Annie and Martin Fitzgerald offered to contribute, Louisa and Steven couldn’t say yes fast enough.
The days go by slowly but the years fly? Untrue. The days and the years both flew.
A BC buddy got divorced, remarried at the Chatham Bars Inn on Cape Cod. Again, Aggie was at the wedding. Did Aggie go to every wedding of every former Eagle? It seemed so. While Louisa was battered by motherhood—she felt like she was losing the battleandthe war—childless Aggie seemed not to have aged at all. She was the Benjamin Button of BC alums. She looked like she was getting younger!
“I’ll call you about that thing,” Louisa heard Aggie say to Steven.
“What thing?” she asked.
“A business thing,” said Steven. “A question I had for Aggie.”
2015. “Listen to this,” said Steven. He placed one earbud into each of her ears and sat Louisa down at the kitchen table. “Marc Maron interviewed Barack Obama! In hisgarage. For this podcast.”
Louisa hadn’t seen Steven look so smitten since he moved aside the striped newborn blanket in the hospital to count the fingers and toes of each of their children. “Look at what they did withSerial,too. There are so many stories waiting to be told this way. This is what I want to do. I want to start a podcasting company.”
