Karen pulled a pink jumper off the rack in a Babies “R” Us store and held it up. She said, “This one is cute.”
Tanya, who was with her in the store, held up a different pink jumper and said, “I like this one. Jesus, I can’t believe you’re going to have a daughter. You know what I really can’t believe, though?”
Karen said, “What?”
Tanya said, “You’re having a kid before me. How the hell did that happen?”
Karen said, “Well, when a man loves a woman, he puts his penis in her vagina—”
Tanya said, “Screw you. You know what I mean.”
Karen laughed and said, “I know. This is just so fucking weird.”
Tanya said, “Shopping for baby clothes?”
Karen said, “Yeah, that’s obviously pretty weird, but I meant actually being kind of excited for this. I really never ever thought in my entire fucking life that I’d have a kid, want to have a kid, be remotely excited about having a kid. I just feel like I’m not the person I always thought I was, I guess.”
Tanya said, “That’s the weird thing about life. You change.”
Karen looked at her watch and said, “We have to get out of here. My appointment’s in twenty minutes.”
The two women put the baby clothes back on the racks and made their way into the parking lot. Once they were outside the store, two photographers followed them to Tanya’s car, but they weren’t screaming and they weren’t trying to stop them from leaving. It had been a few weeks since the press conference, and while talk about her story hadn’t really gone away, things were certainly changing. The media had shifted from debating whether Karen was the most evil person in the world to a milder celebrity-style fascination with the baby, and what magazine might get the first image of the baby after she was born, and even an occasional voice hailing Karen as a national hero. Her initial supporters rallied behind her even more passionately than before, and even many of her detractors felt compelled to take her side now that she was having the baby, which is what they’d been clamoring for since the beginning. Some of them cited what they believed to be the obvious influence of God in her decision, which slightly bothered Karen, but overall she was happy to be rid of the feeling that more than half of the country hated her.
The thing Karen disliked the most was how people had more or less stopped talking about the issue at the center of her story. It seemed like things were slipping back into the way they were, despite her best efforts to put a dent in the armor of the religious right. There was no significant exodus from the Christian denominations. Legislators in the Southern states were still passing laws making it harder for women to get abortions. It just seemed like it might all have been for nothing, and that was disheartening. Karen knew there was little she could do or say that she hadn’t already done or said. She began to think that her parents were right: People tend to avoid making significant changes in their lives, no matter how beneficial that change might be.
This time, when Karen and Tanya pulled out of the parking lot, the photographers didn’t even follow them to her pediatrician’s office. Instead they merely took a few passing shots, and one of them even blew a kiss to Karen as they drove away.
Karen had been seeing Dr. Kang ever since Dr. Prasad recommended her. Although Karen had never wanted to switch doctors, she liked Dr. Kang and thought she was doing an excellent job. As she and Tanya walked into the doctor’s building, they saw two more photographers outside. As they snapped a few pictures of Karen, one of them told her that he thought she was the hottest pregnant celebrity he’d ever seen, even hotter than Kim Kardashian.
In Dr. Kang’s office, Karen went through the usual battery of questions and had a blood test to make sure everything was moving along as it was supposed to be. Dr. Kang said, “Everything looks good on my end. Is there anything that’s worrying you?”
God was a waste of time as an idea, and humanity had only ever used that idea to subjugate people and cause misery. Studying the universe and the fabric of reality were the most important of all human endeavors, but so few people saw value in them that the sciences suffered from underfunding and understaffing. And, beyond that, the sciences had progressed to a level of such esoteric intricacy that it was near impossible for a lay person to understand even the basic ideas behind them, let alone the mathematical minutiae at their core. The best thing a nonscientific person could do was to help ease the suffering of as many people as possible in the course of a lifetime. Having children merely meant bringing one more person into existence who would have to endure that suffering and grapple with the same questions about reality and the nature of existence that everyone else did. These were things that Dr. Kang understood to be true.
Karen said, “I don’t know. I’ve been having really weird and vivid dreams lately.”
Dr. Kang said, “That’s completely normal. We don’t really know why that is. It might have something to do with hormones, but I tend to think it has more to do with your baby’s brain development at this stage. She’s really growing fast, and so is her brain. It’s starting to develop certain functional processes that weren’t there before. And, though your brains aren’t connected, your bodies are, and I personally think that once her brain starts producing chemicals like serotonin and dopamine, you’re very likely getting some fluctuations in your own levels because of her. Anyway, it’s nothing to worry about. Anything else?”
Karen said, “Let’s see. Back pain, leg pain, stomach itching, trouble sleeping, difficulty walking, weird hairs, weird moles . . . You know. The usual.”
Dr. Kang said, “Well, the good news is you’re almost done with all of that. The bad news is, you’re going to have to have the baby to end it, which won’t be very easy, of course. But I’ve already booked you a room at Cedars. Your delivery staff is the best I’ve ever worked with. I’ll be there to make sure everything goes smoothly, and in a few weeks you’ll be a mother.”
Karen let that sink in. She knew that having a child meant she would be a mother, but that was the first time she’d heard the word used to describe her. It was strange, but it wasn’t as terrible as she might have once imagined.