Secrets to Happiness by Sarah Dunn

Author:Sarah Dunn [DUNN, SARAH]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction / General
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2009-03-25T00:00:00+00:00

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When Holly arrived at the pediatrician’s office, Amanda was already there, sitting in a chair in the corner with Jacob plopped on her lap like a sack of all-purpose flour. Holly was always a bit shocked by how much things had changed since she was a kid, but never more so than in Jacob’s Upper East Side pediatrician’s office. It used to be Highlights magazine, searching for the ladle up in the tree, but this place was like a Chuck E. Cheese’s, with electronic toys scattered everywhere, beeping and flashing. There was a fifty-inch plasma TV on one wall, blaring a show about a talking train in what seemed to Holly to be frighteningly high definition, and several toddlers were standing in front of it, mouths open, nearly catatonic.

“Thanks for coming,” said Amanda.

“No problem,” said Holly. “Hi, Jacob!” Jacob’s blobby blond head stared past Holly in the direction of the talking train.

“You are so great to show up here for this,” said Amanda.

“I love to hold babies while strangers inflict pain on them. It’s a way to endear myself to the next generation.”

“I can’t watch him get hurt,” said Amanda. “And I don’t want him to catch my neurotic needle thing. Mark was supposed to meet me here, but at the last minute something more important than preventing his son from contracting polio came up.”

Holly looked around the room. There were two women breast-feeding newborns over by the magazine rack, one with a beatific look on her face, the other wincing in pain. A forty-something woman in a blue suit was focused on her BlackBerry while an au pair played peekaboo with what was undoubtedly the woman’s miracle baby.

“Can I ask you something?” said Holly. She lowered her voice a bit and went on. “How is it that all these women have babies and I don’t? I don’t understand it. What happened to my life? I’m completely baffled by it. Where did I go wrong?”

“Do you really want to know the answer to that question?”

Holly thought about it for a second. “No.”

“Because I’ll tell you.”

“I know you would. Just not today,” said Holly. “Today’s not a good day for it.”

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