Page 37 of A Storybook Wedding

If a faculty member is married to a student, this relationship must be disclosed to the Director of the program in which the faculty member works. The Director may then use his/her discretion to determine if the married student can participate in the program; however, under no circumstances will the student be permitted to be placed in a grade-bearing workshop/class or receive formal mentorship from his/her spouse. These special circumstances are evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Well, shit.

I get to Penn Station and transfer to the Uptown 1 train, which I take to the 86th Street station. Once I emerge from the city’s underbelly, my phone goes off, letting me know I have a voicemail message. I listen to it in the elevator.

“Hi, Nate, it’s Cecily. I was just calling, well, because I said I’d call. I guess if you get this and want to call back, you have my number. Okay. Talk to you soon. Maybe. Bye.”

Once inside my apartment, I kick off my shoes, go to the bathroom, and then change into sweatpants. I’m reclined on the couch when I call back.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hey. Sorry I missed your call. I was on the train and it went underground.”

“No worries. How was your dinner?”

“Well, let’s see. My mother was upset that I didn’t bring you to the holiday meal, so there’s that.”

“Ha!” she exclaims and then begins coughing heavily, as if she just choked on her own spit. When she composes herself, she asks, “Seriously?”

“Yup. And then, not sure if you were watching the Giants game, but the announcers basically said my singing was crap, so that was a fun blow to my ego.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Evidently, I did something in a former life to deserve the karma of public humiliation, so Questlove took his lady friend to the Giants game for Thanksgiving, and the announcers commented on my lack of vocal ability. It was great. My brother-in-law thought it was the most hilarious thing he ever heard in his life. This is a man who has been freeloading off my parents and my sister for the past twelve years, so really, an opinion I respect.”

“Jeez, Pen. That’s rough.”

“Just a snapshot of my life at the moment. Ups and downs, right? Just riding this wave until it crashes me headfirst into a brick wall. Which may happen sooner rather than later, it turns out.”

“Really? How’s that?”

“Oh, I’ll tell you in a minute. First, tell me, how was your holiday celebration?”

“Well, you remember how I mentioned in your seminar about my sister marrying my ex-boyfriend?”

“Yeah.”

“They’re pregnant.”

“Ouch.”

“With triplets.”

“Triplets? Really?”

“Yup. It wasn’t enough for them to procreate. They had to do it three times as efficiently.”

“Wow.”

“They’re not the only ones. My older sister Melanie is also pregnant, but only with one. This is also brand-new information. It was really something. So we’re all at the table, and Jamie gets up and is all, ‘We have some exciting news,’ with a smirk on her face. I brace myself, because this is not a surprise. They’ve been married for a little under a year now, so if they hadn’t started to procreate, my mother would have staged a fertility intervention.”

“What’s a fertility intervention?” I wonder.

“Basically, she drops off salmon and avocados at your house every day until you get knocked up. Also, she’ll make you wear the necklace.”

“Do share.”

“She has a gold necklace with a medal on it that has a picture of Aphrodite. It looks sort of like a penny, but with a woman on it instead of Abraham Lincoln. Anyway, Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of fertility. She bought the necklace when my oldest sister, Anna, had a tough time getting pregnant, but to be fair, Anna had only been trying for two months. She wore the necklace throughout the third month and boom—baby central.”

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