“Ma’am?” I blinked. The waitress stared down at me, pen and pad in hand. Somehow, my wineglass was empty. I’d had an oyster—Dan had ordered two dozen of them—and a single slice of bread, but nothing else.

“Oh . . . um . . .” I fumbled for my menu, doing the quickstep between what I wanted (scalloped potatoes and slow-roasted pork shoulder) and what I should allow myself (steamed asparagus, grilled salmon). I settled on the stuffed pork chop.

“Very good,” she said, and vanished. I turned back to Janet, who was gossiping with Dave and Barry about whether the pretty twenty-four-year-old pre-K teacher with the tattoos we could sometimes glimpse under the sleeves of her vintage blouses had actually worn nipple rings to Parents’ Night.

The food arrived. I used my heavy steak knife to slice into the glistening meat. A puddle of juice pooled underneath the pork chop. I squeezed my eyes shut and made myself nibble a tiny sliver.

“Not hungry?” Janet asked. She’d ordered the pork shoulder dish with a lot of garlic—per its name, Cochon was heavy on the pig—and the smell was making me queasy.

“I think I already drank my calories,” I said. The truth was, I hadn’t been hungry much lately, a strange situation for a girl who’d always loved her food. Nothing looked good, and the effort of purchasing groceries, preparing a meal, setting the table, and washing the dishes seemed monumental. I’d heat up organic chicken nuggets for Eloise and keep the freezer stocked with Trader Joe’s heat-and-eat meals that Dave could prepare on the nights I was stuck at my computer, writing or editing or interacting with Ladiesroom’s readers. For myself, I’d grab a yogurt or a bowl of cereal. The irony of the Internet comments was that I was thinner now than I’d been in years, but I didn’t look good, and I knew it. My complexion had taken on a grayish undertone; my flesh—even if there wasn’t as much as usual—seemed to sag and hang.

Janet touched my arm. I looked up, startled. We were good friends, but neither of us was the touchy-feely type. “Are you okay?” she asked quietly.

I bent my head. “I’m scared,” I said quietly.

“Of what?” Janet asked, looking worried. “What’s wrong?”

“Hey, honey, can we get that Pinot down here?” Dan asked. I reached out and managed only to knock the bottle onto the floor. There were gasps, a flurry of fast motion, Skinny Marie thrusting herself away from the spill like it was toxic. A waiter and a waitress hurried over with rags. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. Nobody appeared to hear me. “Oh, this’ll never come out of silk,” Marie was fretting, and Janet was asking, “Could you bring us some club soda, please?” and Barry was patting Marie’s back, saying “No big deal,” and, from the other side of the table, Dave was looking at me with his eyes narrowed and his lips compressed.

“It was an accident,” I said. My voice came out too loud, almost a shout.

“It’s okay.” Dave sounded cool. “It happens.” Which, of course, was what we said to Ellie when she wet the bed.

Eventually, the tablecloth got changed and the worst of the damage was mopped up. Marie had returned from the ladies’ room, where she’d fled with a carafe of club soda and an offended look on her face, and I’d apologized half a dozen times, my face hot as a griddle, wilting underneath my husband’s disapproval. I’d just tried to restart the conversation, asking Janet and Barry about the twins’ hockey season, a topic guaranteed to take up at least ten minutes of their time, when I heard Marie’s high-pitched voice from the opposite side of the table.

“Did you all hear about that Everleigh Connor?” she asked. I looked up to see Dave pouring the last bit of the last bottle of red into his glass. Everleigh Connor was a reality-TV star who’d launched her career on one of those shows about the private lives of rich people—she’d been the teenage daughter of one of the face-lifted fortysomething moms who were the ostensible stars of the show. Then she’d appeared in a sex tape—she put out some statement about how the tape was a private memento she and her boyfriend had made that had been stolen from a safe in her house, but it was obvious that the tape had been made with a hired porn star, not a boyfriend, and that she, her mother, and their PR firm had managed every step of its release. From there, Everleigh had gotten and dumped a boyfriend in the NFL, landed a small role on a network drama, and had most recently become the Las Vegas bride of an eighteen-year-old pop star.

“What happened?” I asked . . . Did my voice sound the tiniest bit slurry?

Marie smiled. “You didn’t hear? OMG. It’s all over Twitter!”

“What?” There. It was impossible to slur on words of one syllable. To reward myself for sounding coherent, I had another sip of wine.

“She’s pregnant,” said Dave, directly to me.

“They’re saying that she basically forced Alex to put a ring on it,” said Barry.

Janet rolled her eyes. “My husband the twelve-year-old girl. ‘Put a ring on it,’ Bar? Really?”

I looked down the table at my husband. He looked back at me, his eyes meeting mine, one eyebrow lifted, like he was daring me to say something.

I felt as if I’d been slapped, having him give me that look, when I wasn’t the one sending dozens of chatty, flirty e-mails to someone who was not my spouse. I raised my chin, suddenly furious . . . and sober. Or at least it felt that way. “Honey, you should tell everyone about your big story. The one about the casino.” For months, Dave had been tracking down rumors about which consortium would be the next to put a casino in Philadelphia, about where they’d buy, what they’d build, which neighborhood could brace for the boom and the nuisance of dozens of buses loaded with slot-machine-playing, quarter-toting retirees and well-lubricated frat boys rolling through its streets each day.

“Seriously, Dave-O, give me a tip,” said Dan. “We build a parking lot in the right place, we’re golden.”

“Dave’s got all the best sources,” I said, my tongue loose and reckless. “Who’s that woman in the mayor’s office you’re always talking with? Lindy someone?”

From across the table I thought I saw my husband flinch, and saw hurt in his hooded eyes.

“She’s a wonderful source, isn’t she?” I asked. “What’s the word . . . ‘forthcoming’? Is that it? You’re the word guy, right?” Janet was looking worried. Barry was, too. I got myself away from the table in a series of small steps: pushing my palms against the edge, unlocking my knees, levering myself upright, making my way carefully around my chair, squinting through the dimly lit restaurant past groups of laughing, red-faced men with empty bottles lining their tables, until I found the bathroom, a spacious stall for just one, thank God. I locked the door and, without turning on the lights, sat on the toilet and rested my cheek against the cool stainless steel of the toilet-paper dispenser, feeling stunned and empty and furious.

There was a gentle tap at the door. “Allie?” Janet said, her voice a whisper. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I told her. “Just a little too much wine. I’ll be right out.” My heart was thudding; my temples were pounding. My purse was in my hands. My hands were in my purse. My new little blue friends were in their bottle. I shook one of them out into my palm, craving the comfort they would give me, the easing-toward-sleep feeling that would take away the scalding hurt, the shame of the way Dave had looked at me.

Nobody knew this—not Janet, not my parents, not anyone—but after Dave and I had been dating for a little over a year, my period, typically regular, had failed to arrive. I was on the pill, and I’d always remembered to take it, but I knew, from my tender breasts to the way I woke up nauseated by the smell of coffee, what had happened. I’d freaked out and gone to Dave in a panic, watching his face turn pale and his lips tighten until they were almost invisible as I’d laid out the options: I could have the baby and place it for adoption. I could have the baby and raise it myself. Or we could get married.

By then, we’d been seeing each other exclusively for months. The Pablo Neruda girl was gone—or, at least, I’d never seen evidence of another female in his apartment, or on his phone (which I had guiltily checked once). We’d been saying “I love you” and talking, casually, about which neighborhoods we liked, whether we preferred condos in the new high-rises in Washington Square West or a row house in Society Hill or Bella Vista. There had been no explicit promises, we were spending three or four nights a week at my place but not yet living together, we had not plighted our troth nor promised our future, and I would never have tried to trick Dave, or trap him by getting knocked up accidentally on purpose. Still, I’d been confident that, in light of the reality of our situation, he would do the thing he’d been planning on doing, albeit on a somewhat expedited schedule.

Instead of looking happy, though, Dave had pinched the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb and looked everywhere but at me after I’d laid out the news.

“You wouldn’t get an abortion?” he had asked. We were in my walk-up apartment on Arch Street, Dave on my denim-covered couch, me in the armchair I’d inherited from my mother and had slipcovered in a pricy French toile I’d found on Fabric Row. My cute little living room, perfect for two, was in no way big enough for three. Even the thought of dragging a stroller up three flights of stairs left me exhausted. My eat-in kitchen would be just a kitchen if I had to add a high chair; my bathroom had a luxurious shower, with extra showerheads poking out of the walls, but no bathtub. It was all entirely unsuitable for a baby.

“I don’t know,” I said slowly. I was certainly pro-choice in my beliefs—I’d gotten my well-woman checkups and my contraception at Planned Parenthood since I was an undergraduate, and I’d been supporting them with regular, if modest, donations since I’d gotten my job—but in my mind, it was a baby, Dave’s and mine, and I could no more consider aborting it than I could hurting myself, or hurting him.

The silence stretched out until I heard Dave give a slow sigh. “Well, then,” he said, “let’s get hitched.” It was not, needless to say, the proposal of my dreams . . . but Dave was the man of my dreams, and, surely, the life we would build together would be the stuff I had dreamed about, the life I had always wanted, a partnership with a man I adored and admired. I flung my arms around his neck and kissed him and said, “Yes.”

Four weeks later, with a hastily purchased one-karat princess-cut diamond ring on my finger and the memory of the Indomitable Doreen’s stiff smile and my mother’s insulting exuberance at our meet-the-parents-slash-engagement party still crisp and bright in my mind, I’d gone to my obstetrician and learned, during the ultrasound, that there was an egg sac, but no heartbeat. No baby. My body, it seemed, had ended the pregnancy before it really started. He gave me four pills; I went home and took them, then endured the worst cramps and bleeding of my life while Dave fetched me hot-water bottles and shots of brandy. Half-drunk, with my fifth industrial-strength sanitary napkin stuck into my high-waisted cotton briefs, I’d said, “We don’t have to go through with it now, if you don’t want to. I won’t hold you to anything. You’re free.”

“Don’t be crazy,” Dave had said. He’d been so tender as he helped me into the shower. He washed my hair, soaped my body with my favorite vanilla-scented body wash, and then smoothed lotion on my arms and legs before bundling me into a warm towel, putting me into my pajamas, and tucking me into bed. I’d hung my future on that night. Whenever I’d had doubts, whenever he seemed quiet, or moody, or distant, I remembered the smell of vanilla and brandy, and how gentle he’d been, how kind, how he hadn’t considered, even for a minute, the possibility that he could be rid of me.

“Allison?” Janet’s voice was worried. “Tell me you’re okay or I’m going to get a manager and have them unlock the door.”

“I’m fine. I’m okay,” I rasped. I’m fine, I told myself, even as a voice inside whispered, softly but firmly, that I was a world away from fine, that I was not okay at all.

FIVE

I splashed water on my face, freshened my lipstick, and crammed my feet back into my shoes. With Janet’s help, I found the waiters, gave them instructions, and led the crowd in “Happy Birthday” after the cake I’d ordered from Isgro’s, with buttercream icing and a flaming crown of candles, was brought to the table. I clapped when Dave blew out all the candles, without letting myself wonder what he might have wished for, and used my fork to push bits of cake and frosting around my plate. I laughed at the jokes, raised my glass in a toast, and discreetly managed the payment of the check. I kissed Dan and Marie goodbye, let Barry hug me, and whispered, “I’m okay. I promise,” after Janet pulled me into a hug and said, “You know I’m here if you want to talk about anything.”