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MANAGE YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONGeorgie's Big Break
GEORGIE SAW THE NOTICE on a listserv online: the upcoming citywide book festival, Lit Expedition, needed volunteers to introduce speakers. Perfect. It would be a perfect way for Georgie to keep her hand in during a long maternity leave. She had a semester plus a summer off from her teaching position at the university. This year the festival had an environmental bent: “Eco-Tours in the Life of the Mind.”
It was a big deal, this literary party the city hosted. Georgie held the warm bundle of her baby daughter to her shoulder and turned the idea over. There’d be no travel involved; she lived in town. Other than a little research and the writing part, being a volunteer would take only a few hours. Maybe an afternoon. She patted Elana’s back. It’d be a reason to put on makeup, get out of the house, see colleagues, maybe friends from grad school.
Her department chair, her boss, Dan, had joined the Lit Expedition advisory board the first year it was established. By now it was his baby, his hobby, his creative outlet. Dan wrote Georgie’s annual evaluations.
She sent her name in.
The organizers e-mailed back. They’d love her help — that’s what they said; they’d love it! They were desperate for volunteers, but they were still making assignments and wouldn’t have hers until the day of the festival.
“So how will I have time to research and write the introduction?” Georgie e-mailed. She wanted to put her skills to use. Show off, maybe? Sure. She’d prove that her mind hadn’t gone with motherhood; she was still part of the dialogue, the discourse, the academic dream.
An e-mail came back: “Well write it.”
What did they mean, Well write it? She was missing a crucial piece. Elana spit up ever so softly on her shoulder, and Georgie shifted the baby to her other arm. She dabbed the patch of white dribble with a wet cloth, then pecked on the keyboard with one hand: “Sounds good. I’ll gladly write it once I know who I’m introducing. OK?” She tried to put a smile in her words without sinking to emoticons.
It was a full day before an e-mail came back. “We’ll write it,” this one said, more clearly. “All you have to do is show up and read it onstage.” Signed with a smiley face.
OK. Georgie could handle that, no problem. Less exciting, but fine. It was still a way to keep her hand in.
Georgie hired a neighbor girl to come along and hold the baby while she mingled with adults. Elana would be eight weeks old when the festival opened. Georgie’s husband, Rick, wouldn’t be able to stay home with her baby. He ran his own computer-programming company and was on call when computers crashed or somebody changed over a system. As Rick said, the self-employed are never off work.
Georgie wanted to keep Elana close. The baby would still be so young. When she put her down, the absence of that weight in Georgie’s arms was like a phantom limb. She wouldn’t leave her wallet with a stranger; why would she leave her nearly newborn daughter?
From the day Georgie signed on until the day of the event — as she changed diapers and sang songs and read board books; as she got up three times a night to nurse Elana back to sleep and then sat around in a daze, eating too many chocolate-chip cookies, reading the New Yorker, and letting the baby tug on her tit — she’d daydream about who she might be assigned to introduce: a writer, an editor, a theorist, a filmmaker. Johnny Depp was coming to talk about Paris and sustainability. He’d probably be there for about five minutes. Al Gore was a keynote speaker. He’d be shuttled in and out in a swarm of bodyguards. Joyce Carol Oates was reading and signing books. Those were the biggest names. Maybe Georgie would introduce an academic she already knew; maybe her department chair, Dan. Even that would be all right. Once she went back to teaching, her goal was to become a tenured faculty member. Dan was on the committee. His vote could be key.
THE DAY OF THE FESTIVAL, while Elana napped, Georgie squeezed into a prepregnancy skirt. She let her shirt hang loose to camouflage the snug waist. It was a gorgeous shirt: indigo blue and made of spun hemp and silk. A lucky, luxury shirt.
The baby sitter walked over from down the block. She was a plain noodle of a girl with beige hair, muddy eyes, and a brand-new septum ring. The girl thumbed the ring, tugging at the spot in the middle of her nose. Georgie couldn’t look at her; she didn’t want to watch her flick, and flick, and flick the ring, like a miniature door knocker. The girl was so plain she could’ve started crafting her hipster uniform with her hair, not her nose — chop the hair short, dye it pink. Then get a tattoo, for color. Georgie smiled, ushered the baby sitter in, and went back to gathering diapers, wipes, three changes of onesies. “I’m almost ready.”
“Cool,” the girl said. She followed along, flicked her septum ring, and blended in with the paint on the walls. The baby sitter was small, but her t-shirt was smaller, like it was meant for a toddler. Her jeans had a yellow wash like a permanent urine stain. She asked, “Now, what are you doing, again?”
“Introducing a speaker,” Georgie said. “Part of Lit Expedition.”
The baby sitter’s face was blank.
“The book festival?” Georgie said. It was hard to live in the city and not hear about the event. There were banners hung from every lamppost. There were temporary public sculptures — giant books, painted by local artists — chained to newspaper boxes.
“Huh. Introducing somebody famous?” The baby sitter picked up a postcard on the counter and turned it over as if the mail were for her.
“Could be,” Georgie said. “They’re all pretty big in my world, anyway.” She packed picture books, a pacifier, extra blankets, a rattle, and a soft toy — anything to calm a screaming baby. Mostly, at eight weeks, the answer was nursing: boobs, boobs, boobs.
The whole point of the day was to let Georgie feel like a person, a brain, not a milk dispenser. She put a bottle of frozen breast milk in a side pocket of her diaper bag. The baby sitter leaned on the arm of the couch and watched tv as though the tv were on, even though it was off.
“Do you have plans for college?” Georgie asked. Maybe she could be the girl’s mentor, a role model of some kind, pick her up from the empty world of consumer culture and chaperone her into the never-ending party of big ideas, the century-old conversations.
The baby sitter shrugged, then bit a fingernail and spit it on the floor.
THE FESTIVAL WAS IN THE COLISEUM. The parking lot was so big Georgie had to park practically at home. They took a shuttle from the car. The three of them sat in two sideways-facing seats, the folded stroller jutting into the aisle, the diaper bag crouched on the floor like a seeing eye dog.
In the stuttering light of the shuttle bus, Georgie smoothed the dark, silky swirl of her daughter’s hair, looked down, and saw a mark at the edge of her own lucky shirt. It was a milk stain, or a water mark. It was almost invisible, but no, there it was. Had that been on the shirt when she put it on?
Then she saw another one, higher up. And a little splatter. Breast milk or toothpaste? The shuttle-bus lights, with their hint of green, brought the stains out like subliminal patterns.
In the coliseum Georgie put Elana in the stroller and broke into a power walk to keep the baby from screaming. Elana hated being in the stroller and cried if she was left standing still, but movement usually kept her quiet. The baby sitter loped along at their side. They found the volunteer coordinator in a lone, free-standing booth. The woman handed Georgie an envelope and a name badge. Inside the envelope was a form letter:
Thank you for volunteering. Your guest today will be Mr/Mrs/Ms CLIFFORD. Please meet Mr/Mrs/Ms CLIFFORD in the Green Room at least one hour before the assigned time of the event. . . .
There was a map, a schedule, and a coupon for a cup of Starbucks.
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