Size 12 and Ready to Rock

“Like what?” he asks. “Besides pilfer your best doll? Gone through your diary? Is that the secret you’re so worried I’m going to find out? Don’t tell me Jordan knows it now and I don’t. Although we all know even if he knows it, he probably put it in his Crazy File—”

“No,” I say. “I meant what they did in here sexually.”

Cooper looks appropriately disgusted. “Do we have to discuss my brother’s sex life? I know you’ve been there and done that, but it’s really not a subject I enjoy visit—”

“We’ve all made decisions that we’re not so proud of,” I interrupt quickly. “Even you. I’ve met some of your ex-girlfriends. And what Jordan lacks intellectually he makes up for in good intentions. He has a very kind heart. He also has a very big—”

Cooper picks up the pillow again and holds it threateningly over my face.

“—ego,” I finish, laughing. “And I don’t have a secret diary.” I sit up, growing serious. “But there is something we need to talk about. I went to the doctor a couple of weeks ago, and she said . . .”

I don’t know where I find the courage. Maybe from the same place where Tania found the courage to tell Gary Hall he wasn’t on the invitation list to her Rock Off and so he needed to leave, even though he was pointing a gun in her face. In any case, somehow I manage to tell Cooper what the doctor said about how if we want to have a baby, we need to get busy . . . and how it probably isn’t going to be that easy.

When I’m finished, he doesn’t appear to understand.

“Baby?” he says, shaking his head. “Who said anything about wanting a baby?”

I’m confused. “Cooper. Don’t you want kids someday?”

“We already have kids,” he says, pointing toward Fischer Hall, though the windows of my room face the opposite direction so he ends up jerking his thumb at the wall behind my bed. “We have an entire dorm full of kids. Every time I turn around, you’re rushing over there to help one of them out. Gavin, that Jamie girl, that one who was going to have to go back to India, the other one whose dad hates him because he’s gay, not to mention an entire basketball team—”

“Those are other people’s kids,” I remind him.

“It doesn’t seem like it to me,” he says. “We see them more than their own parents do.”

“Cooper,” I say. “Most of them are in their early twenties. They hardly qualify as kids.”

“Then why do I always have to pay for dinner whenever we go out with them?”

“Cooper—”

“Let’s say the odds aren’t really as bad as you think and you don’t have to get this operation, or whatever it is,” he says, growing serious. “Let’s say you somehow end up with a baby. Are you going to quit working at Fischer Hall to stay home to take care of it?”

I have never thought of this before. In my fantasies, I always magically have three children, and they’re five, seven, and ten, delightfully self-sufficient, and dressed in charming navy blue plaid school uniforms. “Well,” I say, “I don’t know—”

Quit working? I haven’t even gotten a chance to look at Lisa’s wedding binder yet. She’s the first fun boss—aside from Tim, who doesn’t count, because he was never officially my boss—I’ve ever had.

And what about Sarah? Even though she and Sebastian seem to have reconciled, I’m sure he’s still going to Israel. Who’s going to hold her hand through that? Not like I’m going to get pregnant and have Jack, Emily, and Charlotte right away—it will probably take years—but still, there’s a lot of stuff I have to do, none of which involves staying home with a crying baby . . .

“Because,” Cooper says, “and I don’t mean this as an insult or anything, so don’t get mad, but I don’t really see you as the stay-at-home mom type. I know I am definitely not the stay-at-home dad type. I love my job . . . on the days when people aren’t trying to kill one of us, that is.”

“Most people can’t afford to quit their jobs when they have a baby,” I explain to him. I realize that many of Cooper’s friends don’t have children yet, because they’re either incarcerated or famous rock stars, so it’s possible he doesn’t know these things. “They hire nannies or find day care. But yes, you’re right, I do love my job, and I have to finish school. So I don’t want to stay home to take care of a baby either. But—”

“Well,” he says, “if neither one of us wants to take the time to stay home and take care of it, it seems to me like neither of us actually wants to have a baby yet. Or am I wrong on this point?”

I try to digest this, but it’s extremely difficult, since everywhere I go, it seems, I’m bombarded with images of women my age pushing baby strollers or showing off their baby bump or telling interviewers that they never knew what true love was until they “looked into the eyes of their newborn.”

“But if we don’t try to have one now, we may never be able to have one. And doesn’t everyone want a baby?” I ask. “Isn’t it a primal urge?”

Even as the words are coming out of my mouth, however, I remember what Lisa said in our office. She doesn’t want kids. I know Tom doesn’t either. Is there really a chance Cooper feels the same way?

“Parenthood is the most difficult, demanding job in the entire world,” Cooper says. “Even if you do it right, you could end up with a kid like . . . well, I think over the last few weeks we’ve both seen plenty of evidence of the kind of kids you could end up with. I think the worst thing anyone can do is have a baby because they think it’s what’s expected of them, or because it’s what everyone else is doing, or because they don’t know what else to do with their lives. If you decide to have a baby, you’ve got to be 100 percent committed to the job. But if you ask me, Heather, you already are committed to it.” He points again in the direction of Fischer Hall. “Whether you’re willing to admit it or not, you’ve already got a bunch of babies. They just came pre-toilet-trained. And you didn’t have to have an operation or risk your health squeezing them out.”

“Okay,” I say. “Fair enough. But I can’t really see Gavin or any of those guys supporting us in our old age, can you?”