Free What We Have by Amy Boesky Page A

for a reality check. Then I applied for the job and tried to put it out of my mind. No one at Georgetown knew about my application except my chair, one of the kindest academics on earth. And he seemed to forget about it right after e-mailing the department in Boston on my behalf. That made it easier for me to stop thinking about it, too.
    I’d managed to repress it pretty well, in fact, though my mother hadn’t. When are you going to hear about the job in Boston? How many other people did you say applied? What will you do if they want to interview you? “We’ll see,” I kept saying. Or sometimes, less kindly, “We’ll see !” Then that weekend, right before Jacques and I headed over to Dave and Lori’s, I got a call from the chair in Boston telling me I’d been chosen for an interview. I was dumbfounded.
    As a hypothetical, the job had seemed appealing. But as a reality—
    Be careful what you wish for , I was thinking now. Applying for the job had made more sense in September, when I could still get up and down stairs without hanging on to the banister. The baby was due in three weeks and three days. How was I possibly going to make it to an interview in another city the week after Christmas?
    They were nice, the people from Boston. They understood there was no way I could make it to the convention. But what if we set up a telephone interview next week?
    My situation, the chair pointed out, was not insurmountable. Of course, if I ended up getting a callback interview . . . her voice trailed off. I knew the chances of that were slim. That wouldn’t be until late January or early February, she said, and by that point—
    “Oh, by that point,” I agreed, matching her low chuckle. I could certainly make my way to Boston by then . If, of course—
    Late January seemed as far off as the moon.
    I was mulling all this over, Sunday night in bed.
    All weekend, Jacques kept finding ways to sneak in the virtues of Boston, and it was starting to grate on me. What happened to “wait and see”? Where was this newfound desire to plan coming from? I found myself shooting back all the advantages of the District. Short winters! Friendly people! It wasn’t just Boston versus DC, I realized now, shifting uncomfortably. It wasn’t even the prospect of the job—it was everything. The more I thought about our dinner with Dave and Lori, the worse I felt. Lori seemed so sure of herself, so experienced. What was I going to do? I had no idea what babies ate or how to get them in or out of their various pieces of equipment or what you did when you spent time alone with them. Sara and Julie were the ones who’d babysat during high school—I’d taken a job selling handbags at B. Siegel instead. Before Christmas, all sorts of nice middle-aged men would come in and open the bags up and look inside them, bemused, and after a lot of deliberations, they’d say, OK, I’ll take this one , and I’d ring them up and gift wrap, and then, the day after Christmas, the women themselves would come and wait in line to return them. “Things just fall right to the bottom of this!” one cried, shaking the bag at me like I was the harebrained designer. What a waste of time. I could’ve been learning to diaper and soothe.
    I had no idea what to do with a baby. I had a vague plan to work on my book while the baby slept next to me, but I got the sense from Lori that might not be realistic.
    “You’re really planning to work from home?” Lori had asked. She’s a prize-winning reporter; their ten-month-old was on a schedule; they had a great nanny. But Lori didn’t even try to work from home. Too many distractions, she said, not meeting my eye.
    “Are you going to have help?” she asked, when I mentioned my writing plans.
    Trust me, I’ve never been a hero when it comes to doing things on my own. I use full service in the gas station. I get things fixed at the dry cleaners. If I get a flat tire, I call AAA. I’m happy to delegate any and all