Jennifer Close - The Hopefuls

“I’m sure it is different,” Matt said. He cleared his throat. “But it’s not like we’re so far away from having a baby.”

“I just feel like we’re not ready yet. Don’t you?” I sounded desperate for Matt to agree with me.

He shrugged. “I feel ready,” he said. “But we both need to get there.”

Our conversation was awkward and I could tell that neither of us knew how to make it less so. Shockingly, we’d never talked about any of this, not in any sort of serious way. We were so young when we got married that we didn’t have to discuss timing — we had all the time in the world! And now, all of a sudden, we didn’t anymore.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to make a joke. “It is something we should both be involved in.”

Matt attempted a smile. “But we should start thinking about it,” he said. And then he was the one trying to make his voice jokey. “It’s not like we’re spring chickens.”

All I could manage was to say, “Ha,” like a low-budget laugh track. His comment stayed with me, sat funny in my chest. Even though he was older than I was, it felt like my ovaries were being insulted, like he was trying to shame them into action.

—

Jimmy was busy that summer, traveling with the President everywhere, which now included campaign stops, and we rarely saw them for Friday dinners. (Most of the administration couldn’t take any part in the campaign, because of something called the Hatch Act, but there were exemptions and Jimmy was one of them, which he pretended bothered him but I knew made him feel important.) Sometimes we went out with just Ash, but it felt a little strange, like we had a sister-wife situation going on. This was mostly because Matt insisted on paying for Ash and treating her like she was handicapped instead of just pregnant, pulling out her chair for her and making sure she had enough water. Once, he asked the waiter if the cheese on her salad was pasteurized. “I just wanted to make sure,” he said, after the waiter left our table. “Oh, you are the sweetest,” Ash said.

Honestly, that night I hated them both just a little.

When Jimmy was in town, we talked only of the campaign. In July, during one of the rare Fridays that he was there, the four of us went to Mintwood Place, a restaurant in between our places that had opened that winter but that we still hadn’t tried. I’d been looking forward to it, had been feeling nostalgic for our Friday dinners, but as we sat there and talked about Romney and fund-raising and polls, I got agitated. “Remember when we were the only couples in DC who had real dinner conversation?” I asked. No one answered me, although Ash did make a face like she was annoyed too, but didn’t do anything to stop it.

Jimmy was describing a campaign event in Las Vegas when Matt said, “God, sometimes I wish I’d jumped on the campaign.”

“You do?” I asked. He didn’t seem to realize that this was surprising and also a little hurtful. Did that mean he wished he was in Chicago? Or that he was traveling? Either way, he’d be away from me.

“Absolutely,” he said. “All the time.”

“You know,” Jimmy said. “They always need volunteers on trips. A lot of people are taking vacation days and jumping on. Just to feel like they’re doing something.”

“Volunteer?” I asked. But no one really answered me. Matt just turned and said, “Yeah, Hatch. You know.”

“It’s something to think about,” Jimmy said to Matt, who was already nodding in agreement.

—

There was no doubt in my mind that Matt would arrange to go on a trip. Never mind that he’d be using all of his vacation days and we wouldn’t be able to go anywhere, or that he’d never really done advance in the first place. “They know I can figure it out,” he said, when I brought it up. “I did enough events in finance to know what goes on. Plus, I’ll probably just be a P2.”

“A what?”

He sighed. “Assistant to the press lead,” he said.

“Right,” I said.

But the thing was, I didn’t totally blame him. We both felt powerless, and despite his promise to stop watching MSNBC at night, that was all we did. I could hear Rachel Maddow in my head, always. Within a week of that dinner, Matt was scheduled on a trip and I was left to watch twenty-four-hour campaign coverage all by myself.

—

I wish I could say that I got over my initial reaction to Colleen and Ash and was a good friend to them that summer. But I didn’t. Even though it was lonely with Matt traveling, I sometimes made up excuses not to see them. It was a pity party of the greatest kind.

Ash had always been a big fan of Facebook. She posted everything — oversharing and updating her status about things no one could possibly care about, like “Just got my butt kicked at Bar Method!” “Time for a pedicure to reward myself!” But her pregnancy posts took it to a whole new level. She made her sonogram her profile picture, gave weekly measurements of the baby, updated everyone on her food cravings and aversions. There were times I’d start to feel bad that I was avoiding her, and then I’d go on Facebook and see “Feeling sick. Threw up three times today. Baby Dillon sure knows how to let her mama know she doesn’t like Mexican food.” Or “Feeling HUGE! My maternity jeans no longer fit. I’m a whale. L”

Was she going to live-tweet her birth? Why did she feel the need to share everything? And of course the comments on her posts were even worse, most of them from her girlfriends she’d grown up with in Texas. “Stop it! You are looking beautiful, Mama!”

When, I wondered, did every pregnant person get together and decide that Mama was the appropriate term to use? Why did having a baby turn these people into hillbillies?

Ash had a gender-reveal party, where she and Jimmy strung up a piñata on their back patio, took turns whacking it until pink knickknacks and candy sprinkled out of it. “It’s a girl,” she shrieked, and everyone clapped. I always judged Ash for the way she thought God personally looked out for her, but I myself thanked the good Lord above that they scheduled that party on a weekend I was already set to visit my parents in Wisconsin. (But don’t worry, she posted the video of the two of them taking a bat to the piñata, just so anyone who couldn’t make it was still able to watch.)

I’d sworn never to force Colleen and Ash into a social situation again, but that summer I did just that and suggested that we all go to brunch together. I was slightly worried they wouldn’t have much to say to each other, but they quickly bonded over their pregnancies, moaning about finding cute clothes that fit them, listing all of the things they couldn’t eat.

As Ash and Colleen talked that day about coffee and lunch meat and sushi, I was reminded of a gluten-free girl who worked with Matt and once asked if she could smell my Bo-shaped cookie at the White House Christmas party. “I miss cookies so much,” she said. “Can I take a sniff?” I didn’t know what else to do, so I held out the little frosted dog for her and she leaned over and breathed in deeply. When she was done, I put the cookie down on the table. I didn’t want it anymore. Her nose had been too close to it and it had lost its appeal.

I knew that girl didn’t want to smell my cookie, she just wanted to remind me that she couldn’t eat it. So when Colleen said dramatically, “I really miss eating fried eggs,” and Ash said, “Oh girl, me too!” I just sipped my coffee and spaced out.

At the end of brunch, Ash and Colleen exchanged phone numbers and made plans to send their registries to each other, so they could make sure they weren’t missing anything, and I watched them hug good-bye with the beginning of a headache behind my eyes.