After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall

NOVEMBER 2013

Julie sat in a crowded Starbucks in D.C. across the table from her best friend, Linda Campinelli. Julie’s latte and Linda’s double caramel macchiato sat untouched. The women known each other since Princeton, brought together by the vagaries of the roommate-matching computer even though they were complete opposites. Linda, a large untidy woman with a large untidy husband and three riotous sons, was an animal psychologist in Bethesda. She told long, funny stories about neurotically territorial cats or schnauzers that developed a fear of their water dishes. But not today.

“Ju… are you sure?”

“I’m four months along. Of course I’m sure.”

“Gordon?”

“Of course it was Gordon! How many men do you think I was banging at once?”

“I meant what will Gordon and you do?”

Julie had expected this. Linda was not only a romantic, she was sociability squared. Maybe even cubed. Not even after four years of dorm living did Linda understand Julie’s preference for silence and solitude. For Linda, all decisions and all endeavors were group activities.

“Linda, there is no ‘Gordon and me.’ And I don’t want there to be. I’m having the baby, I’m keeping the baby, I’m raising the baby. Georgetown’s given me a year’s sabbatical, for which I was overdue anyway. I’ve got great medical coverage. I feel fine now that morning sickness is over. And I’m happy to be doing this alone.”

“Except for me,” said Linda, to whom anything else was unthinkable.

Julie smiled. “Of course. You can be my labor coach. Always good to have a coach who won all her own games.”

“And your due date is—”

“May 1.”

Linda sipped her caramel macchiato. Julie saw that her friend was still troubled. Linda would never understand isolates like Julie and Jake.

As if reading Julie’s mind, Linda said, “And how is that gorgeous brother of yours?”

“Still monitoring mud in Wyoming.” Jake was a geologist.

“What did he say about the baby?”

“I haven’t told him yet.”

“But he’ll come here for the birth, right?”

“I’m sure he will,” said Julie, who was sure of no such thing. She and Jake liked being affectionate at a distance.

“Then you’ll have me and Jake, and I’m sure that Lucy Anderson will come to—”

Ah, Linda! Even parturition required a committee.

That evening Julie’s cell rang just as she was tapping the lid back on a paint can in her D.C. apartment. Paint had spilled over the side of the can and flowed down its side, but fortunately she had laid down a thick wad of paper. Winterfresh green puddled over a science article: POLLUTION FROM ASIA CONTAMINATES STRATOSPHERE. Julie’s paper mask was still in place; the baby book had recommended a filter mask if a pregnant woman felt it absolutely necessary to paint something. Julie had felt it absolutely necessary to paint her mother’s old chest of drawers, after which she would apply decals of bears. The ultrasound showed she was having a girl. But no Disney princesses or any of that shit; Julie’s daughter would be brought up to be a strong, independent woman. Bears were a good start.

The nursery, formerly Julie’s study, was very cold, since the baby book had also recommended painting with open windows. She shivered as she picked up her cell and walked into the hallway of the two-bedroom apartment, squeezing past the furniture and boxes moved from her former study. Somehow she would have to find room for all this stuff. At the moment her computer and printer sat on the dining table and her file cabinet crowded the kitchen. The baby wasn’t even here yet and it had disrupted everything. “Hello. Julie Kahn speaking.”

“It’s Gordon.”

Damn. She said neutrally, “Yes?”

“Is that really you? You sound all muffled.”

She took off the filter mask and said crisply, “What is it, Gordon?”

He was direct, one of the things she’d liked about him, when she still liked things about him. “There was no kidnapping Thursday at Hingham.”

That threw her. “Are you sure? Could there possibly be a child missing but the parents didn’t report it, or… or maybe just another burglary, the algorithms used those to—”

“I know my damn job. If there were so much as a misplaced screwdriver in this town tonight, we’d fucking well know about it.”

In his unaccustomed irritability she heard his tension over the situation. Unless his tension was over her, which she definitely did not want.

She said, “I explained to you that the burglaries complicated the algorithms, made them more than a simple linear progression. It was a judgment call which ones to include. I might have included some that were inside jobs with no forced entry, I might have missed some that—”

“I know all that. You did explain it. Several times. But the fact is that your predictive program isn’t working, and you need to fix it in part because I’ve staked my credibility with the A-Dic on it.”

Not like him to say so much. Her temper rose. “You can’t blame this failure on me, Gordon. I told you when you approached me at the university that predictive algorithms with this kind of data—”

“I know what you told me. Stop talking to me like I’m an idiot. Just put this new non-data in and give me something else I can work with. If you really can.”

“I’ll do what is possible,” she said stiffly.

“Great. Call me whenever it’s done.” He hung up, everything else unsaid between them.

Julie closed the door to the freezing nursery-to-be, put on a heavy sweater, and went to her computer.