Never Simple by Liz Scheier

Author:Liz Scheier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

CHAPTER 10

Hitched

The younger dimwit cat, afraid of everything bigger than a dust mote and sometimes those, too, refused to eat the tranquilizer treat before getting in the car. The genteel old-lady cat obliged, and while Pisa scratched and panted in a carrier at my feet, Elvis sat contentedly in my diminishing lap as we drove away from Brooklyn, paws on the window frame, watching the highway spool by. They both looked calmer than I felt. Except for college, I had never lived outside New York, and leaving it felt unreal. John Updike was right when he said, “The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.”

With every mile that passed, I breathed a little easier. Mom had responded to the news of the move with characteristic panic and anger, and the growing distance between the car and her apartment felt as figurative as it did literal. I had stopped sending her money when I lost my job, and she seemed to be managing just fine. I took a deep breath and rolled my skull back and forth against the headrest, relieved.

I was three months pregnant, engaged to a man, and about to move to a city with hundreds of politicians and zero publishing industry. One of my favorite mental games is to go back in time and tell my mopey twenty-year-old self where I am now, gleefully watching her surprise; I updated her silently and watched her spontaneously combust.

We settled into a small, nondescript apartment in DC and I promptly got a job at a nonprofit, where I wore loose-fitting pants to hide my stomach. After a lifetime in New York, DC felt like a city designed by Disney. It’s small—even the most generous definition of the metro area doesn’t bring it to the million-occupant mark—and transient, as people move in for administrations and then back out when a new one comes in. In fairness, we were at a sedate stage of life. We were approaching middle age and I was pregnant. If there were orgies happening in our building, no one was inviting us anyway.

We went home to New York to get married. There’s something to be said for being five months pregnant at your own wedding. Quite a bit, actually. Wedding planning takes a backseat to doctor’s appointments, dress options are narrowed down considerably, and you can eat a diner platter of chocolate chip pancakes the size of a hubcap for pre-wedding brunch without worrying about bloating. Claire and I sat in a Sixth Avenue diner, chatting and kicking our feet against the high-set booth. I tried to get her to try my egg cream. It took all of her Midwestern politeness to say no nicely.

The photographer trailed around after us as I got my face made up and airbrushed (yes, this is a thing) and my hair done up and as Claire zipped me into the practical empire-waist white J. Crew dress I’d gotten on eBay. It turns

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