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cozy. Then they bought themselves a new living-room suite in honor of their empty nest.
    Olivia spied my ring soon as I walked in the door. She was unusually subdued. I figured she was hurt that I didn’t confide in her before I took the plunge, but maybe she saw the writing on the wall. She and Eliot had eloped too. She did come around though, gave us a hand-blown glass vase. I still have it. She also understood when I said I wanted to leave school for a while. That’s when she invited me to come on full-time. She had moved manufacturing to a small plant in New Jersey, and she was having the loft remodeled to make room for a sales staff. She couldn’t pay me benefits yet, but she’d started talking with lawyers about how to structure her kitchen-table company into a corporation. If I hung in a little longer the company would turn that corner. I never hesitated. I wasn’t about to give up my spot as first employee. That’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing. It was a relief, finally being out of school. I wasn’t exactly a dropout, since I had some kind of degree, and the extra money was right on time.
    Unfortunately, the reality portion of my marriage set in pretty soon. The part about What’s for dinner? Who’s doing the laundry? And, What time are you coming home? Still, life was more Newlywed Game than Divorce Court. We even drove his piece-a car to Key West to salute the sunset for our first anniversary. Sometimes I hung out when he played, but I headed home early so I could get up and go to work. After I nudged him a little—OK, a lot—and made a few phone calls as his “manager,” he started hustling commercial jingles, which he informed me were artistically beneath him. I said I’d be happy to cash the checks if it was too painful. But he was tickled silly first time he heard a jingle he did for a local tire chain on the radio.
    Amber was as much a surprise to me as she was to herfather. One morning I slapped on my Apricot Sage Crème as usual and promptly washed it off because the smell was making me sick. When I got to work the smell of everything including Wite-Out made me want to puke, and Olivia said, “Bet you’re preggers.” I said she was nuts. That’s why I never gamble.
    After several days of needing a clothespin for my nose, I swallowed my pride, which always sticks in my throat, and found a clinic. It was filled to the rafters with women and wiggling children and strollers and crying babies and overworked nurses—it sobered me up from my bohemian romance in a heartbeat. When I got the official word from a doctor that I had company, I wanted to go cry to Mom and Dad, but I distinctly remembered telling them I was grown, so that was out. Papa Bear was so excited he stayed up all night writing a lullaby. I stayed awake too, worrying about paying for college, baby food, and a car with a backseat. Then the arguments started. I wanted him to look for a job, at least part-time. He said a job would waste the creative hours he needed to compose. Right. I reminded him he wasn’t Ashford or Simpson yet. Then he decided we should move to LA, since more recording was coming from the West Coast. I ended that when I said the one of us who did have a job worked in New York.
    By my fifth month I craved sweet potatoes, and I wasn’t real happy with my marathon prenatal clinic visits, or that we were searching in Salvation Army stores for a crib. I told Mom we didn’t want to waste money on something the baby would only need a short time. That’s how he explained it to me and I halfway bought it—maybe a third of the way. But she was not interested in having her grandbaby sleep in a used crib. “You got a new bed, didn’t you?” So she bought one, which made me feelabout two feet tall. And worry about what kind of life I was—we were—bringing a baby into.
    I didn’t talk about the bad stuff at work—my misery