Free Mendocino and Other Stories by Ann Packer Page A

bits of my body begin to appear, small and then larger islands in a porcelain sea. If I were pregnant, my stomach would appear first. Pale and huge, yes, but I would love it.
    THE TRIP TO Indiana is in less than a month, and I have begun to dread it. The client will meet us at the airport, me and two of the executives. We'll be taken to our hotel and offered half an hour to freshen up, then it will be out to dinner. We'll go to a steak house. The lights will be low and we'll be shown to a big round booth. The waitress will be there to take our drink orders before we've had a chance to think about what we want. The client will have whiskey sours. The executives will ask for Glenfiddich, settle for Dewar's. And I will be unable to think of anything suitable. Aside from wine, the only thing I really like to drink is Campari and soda, and it will be months too early for that since it's a summer drink.
    I will be seated between two of the men in the light grey suits. They'll ask me questions about life in New York, about the cost of living, the impossibility of parking your car, the poor public schools. They'll ask, challengingly, what I will do when I want tohave children. Move to the suburbs? Send them to private school?
    To change the subject, I will ask about their children, and out will come wallets containing studio photographs, smiling families in front of fake fireplaces. They are of my generation, these men, only five or six years older than I am, and they will show me pictures of children in the fourth or fifth grade, of children, perhaps, in junior high. They will point to little blond heads, saying, This is Kerry, he's pitcher on his Little League team; this is Heather, isn't she pretty?
    The client is probably a good father.
    I'VE REACHED an impasse on the ad. I am keeping the guy, who, I think, will be out for a run; I am keeping the semiglamorous young woman; I am keeping their two dogs. I am trying to think dog food. But somehow it's hard to go on, without Lizzie.
    I decide that what I need is a fresh pad of paper. I head for the supply closet but stop, as usual, at Karen's desk, for a look at her knitting.
    “I just have the sleeves left,” she says, holding up the rest. “Donald's mother is going to do the crochet work around the neck.”
    “It's so pretty,” I say, fingering the soft gown.
    She puts it in her shopping bag and goes to the closet for her coat. It is only 4:30, but she's allowed to leave early these days, to ensure herself a seat on the subway. She lives way out in Brooklyn, twenty-three stops away.
    She buttons up, then comes over to the desk to get her things. Suddenly she starts laughing, her hand over her mouth.
    I turn, and there is Samantha, walking toward us in that funny pregnant goose step of hers. She is bundled up in her wool cape,ready for the walk home, and when she sees us, sees Karen in her big blue coat, she, too, starts to laugh.
    “What's so funny?” I say.
    “The two of us,” says Sam. “We're so … pregnant.”
    Karen giggles.
    “When I see other pregnant women on the street,” Sam says, “we always exchange this little smile, like we have a secret the whole world can't guess.”
    “You do that, too?” Karen asks, laughing.
    “Of course,” Sam says. She smiles at me, the trace of an apology in her expression, then turns back to Karen. “I'm leaving too,” she says. “I'll walk you to the subway.”
    We say good-bye, and they head for the elevators. I watch them for a moment. They are so entirely unalike—Sam is tall and auburn-haired, with an elegant, angular face, while Karen is hardly more than a child herself: short and small-boned, her blond hair pulled away from her face and held by bright pink plastic barrettes. Yet what I see first and most clearly is the fact that they are both huge—huge with child, as they say. Grand with child.
    The red “down” arrow appears over the door to one of the elevators. They turn and wave to me, then they are