Page 21 of The Librarians

The ninth voice mail is longer. “Hey, Sophie, you know I don’t leave messages if I can help it.

And I really wish you were here, by my side, so I don’t have to keep annoying you with these voice mails.

But it’s important and I don’t want to blurt out what I need to say to you in a stupid text.

So please, please, please call me. Please. ”

On the next one Jo-Ann starts to sound desperate. “I’m sorry, Sophie. I’m sorry for everything I’ve put you through. Will you at least let me apologize properly, which I can’t do talking into an electronic device?”

Her voice breaks on the thirteenth message.

“Oh, God, I don’t know why it never occurred to me before.

You haven’t moved on from me—from us—have you?

I think about us all the time. I’ve been so inspired.

I bought a house for us, Sophie. You never talked about it, but I know you weren’t sure yet whether you should invest in a lifetime with me.

This is me telling you that I’m so sure of us still being together decades from now that I will literally bet my house on it.

Just say yes and I’ll transfer the house to your name.

But please at least listen to my messages.

If you delete them unheard then what am I going to do? ”

All at once Sophie knows why Jo-Ann’s calling.

And she knows what Jo-Ann has been up to since she last saw the impulsive, preposterous bitch.

Dear God, if Sophie is right, then Jo-Ann used the “break” to get herself artificially inseminated.

The whole thing was just so that they didn’t have to actually break up because she went to a sperm bank over Sophie’s objections!

The house isn’t a gamble. It’s a baby-I-done-did-you-wrong present!

What was Jo-Ann smoking that she thought she could spring a baby on Sophie and it would be okay?

Sophie deletes the messages, one by one, with vicious satisfaction. You think you’re too good for compromises like the rest of us mortals? Then enjoy this baby all by your lonesome self, because I will not be coming by with flowers and casseroles.

The final message is over a minute long. Sophie hesitates. What would be better if they ever run into each other—to tell Jo-Ann that she expunged this last voice mail without hitting play, or that she listened to it, laughed at its futile pleas, and hit delete anyway?

She envisions herself as her most terrifying auntie, the church organist who never made a single mistake in thirty-odd years, declaring, with a genteel sneer, “Oh, I heard. But no reason for me to answer, was there?”

Sophie goes for it.

Jo-Ann is now frantic. “Sophie, help me!”

Sophie stops eating her imaginary revenge bonbons.

Jo-Ann sounds scared.

Jo-Ann is never scared. She is one of those individuals who glide through life certain of their specialness, convinced that nothing will ever stand in their way, not really.

And people don’t maintain such attitudes in adulthood unless it’s been demonstrated again and again that life will always stand down where they are concerned and that they can always behave like kids going wild at a buffet.

“I was so sure I could handle this on my own, but now I don’t know anymore. Ahhhh! Oh, fuck. Ahhhh!” Jo-Ann wails.

“Breathe now. I know it hurts, but you need to relax and breathe,” says a woman. “You have to remain calm for the baby.”

Jo-Ann doesn’t exactly have a high tolerance for pain.

Sophie stands up.

“Oh, God, that was a motherfucker of a contraction and they won’t give me anything because I’m not five centimeters dilated yet.

But Sophie, Sophie, listen, the baby is in trouble.

I don’t know what’s going on. This whole pregnancy was so easy—I never even had morning sickness.

But now they say her heart rate has dropped and they have to do an emergency C-section. ”

Sophie falls back into her couch, her hand over her open mouth.

Black women in the United States are three times as likely to die from pregnancy and childbirth. But surely statistics don’t apply to Jo-Ann Barnes. That shit is for others, not Jo-Ann Barnes. Never Jo-Ann Barnes.

“Can you please come? I’m at St. Paul’s Hospital in Albany, room 435. Please help me. I know you don’t agree with this but please come. You’re already listed as my emergency contact—cuz you’re my sister, don’t you know, and—”

“Ms. Barnes, we need you to put the phone away. We have to sedate you right now.”

“Okay. Okay. Sophie, I love you. I love you. Please, if anything happens to me, please look after the baby. Her name is Elise—I wanted something beautiful and sophisticated like yours. You know you are family to me. You are my family. Please, Sophie—”

“Ma’am, you have to hang up now.”

“I’m sorry—I will. Just come, Sophie. Please. Soph—”

The message ends abruptly. Did someone yank the phone from Jo-Ann?

Sophie springs up. The time stamp on the message is fifteen minutes ago. How long does a caesarean take?

She turns on her desktop computer and looks it up online. Forty-five minutes to an hour.

So Elise is about to be born. Or maybe she’s already out of the womb and the medical team is just stitching Jo-Ann back up.

Sophie taps her fingertips against her phone. Her mom hates to see her fidget; Sophie deplores it no less. The dak-dak-dak of keratin on hard plastic drives part of her up a wall, yet she cannot make herself stop.

After a few minutes, she finally sets her phone aside to google post-C-section care.

She is not going to get back with Jo-Ann.

A woman who pulls a trick like this—having a baby and expecting that Sophie will eventually go along with it?

Lord knows what else she might do in the future.

Pop culture can preach spontaneity all it likes, but spontaneity is for people who can afford it, people who have comfortably situated parents and personal social standing to cushion them for when that spur-of-the-moment decision turns sour.

Jo-Ann’s spontaneity has cost Sophie a lot and she will not put herself through that again.

But she also doesn’t want Jo-Ann to be all alone after a major operation.

And Baby Elise—Jo-Ann wanted her so badly, someone ought to take that child some balloons and a teddy bear, mementoes that she can point to, when she’s much older, that show she was welcomed into this world, heartily and with great joy.

Sophie makes up her mind and calls Jo-Ann. It immediately goes to voice mail. The operation might be over, but Jo-Ann is probably still under anesthesia.

She listens to the message again to write down the name of the hospital.

Why did Jo-Ann choose to have her baby in Albany? Wouldn’t she have preferred to give birth at a hospital either in Manhattan or on this side of the Hudson River in New Jersey?

Sophie groans. Of course she isn’t the only person from whom Jo-Ann is keeping the pregnancy a secret.

That four-month leave from work might have been devoted to pro bono work, but its ultimate purpose must have been to keep her law firm in the dark about her impending motherhood.

After all, a woman with a child, especially an infant, is more likely to be passed over for major assignments and further promotion.

Jo-Ann, already a partner, is dead set on making managing partner.

And as long as she still hopes that Sophie will come around, why not keep the maternity of the baby a secret so that later on she can say it’s Sophie’s, in the expectation that this way, having a baby won’t affect her career any more than it would any of her male colleagues?

To do that, she must give birth where those in her normal life are unlikely to run into her.

Sophie groans again and packs a small bag for herself.

The three-hour drive turns into five with traffic and Sophie becomes increasingly antsy.

Jo-Ann should have regained consciousness long ago.

A conscious Jo-Ann would have asked for her phone in short order.

She would have asked for it to be plugged in if the battery had died.

And she would have asked with such amiability and wide-eyed gratitude that the nurses would have been delighted to help.

So why hasn’t she called yet?

Midway through the drive Sophie veers into a rest stop and calls Jo-Ann.

It goes to voice mail yet again. A chill creeps into Sophie’s heart.

Potential disaster is the language she speaks most fluently, having been raised to consider risks arising from all quarters every step of the way.

Yet now, as she merges back onto the highway, for the first time in her life, she finds herself reasoning the way Jo-Ann must.

What can possibly happen to Jo-Ann? Nothing, that’s what.

After the agony of labor, the strain of an abrupt operation, the joy and relief of learning that the daughter she’s yearned for has arrived safely into this all-too-imperfect world, Jo-Ann must be sleeping, completely knocked out by the events of the day and the painkillers sloshing through her system.

That’s it. No catastrophic scenarios. Occam’s razor all the way.

Occam’s razor all the way has Sophie sweating despite the AC in the car blasting on the highest setting.

When she finally reaches the hospital, she nearly clips another vehicle in the parking lot.

Jo-Ann still doesn’t pick up her phone. Sophie grabs a couple of random items from the gift shop and charges up to the maternity ward.

“Hi, I’m here to see Jo-Ann Barnes. She was in room 435 earlier, but she had to undergo an emergency C-section and I haven’t heard from her since. Do you know if she’s back in the same room?”

The young Black woman at the nurse’s station does not even look up. “Let me check for you. What’s the name again?”

“Jo-Ann Barnes.”

“Oh, honey!” exclaims a voice from behind Sophie.