“Bethany works 16-hour days and is on call all the time and thus has never married. She wants a baby and for whatever reason wants to personally give birth to that baby and refuses to have one-night stands or pocket hospital sperm samples, so her biological clock is deafening. Not like yours, dear. Your fertility is like a pocket watch swaddled in cotton, drawn up in a velvet pouch, and tucked inside a Pringles can. But Bethany’s! Sometimes I walk past the Fifth Avenue Synagogue and worry a bomb is about to go off. I imagine my upper torso landing in a gyro cart. And the contents of my purse laid out for all to see. Then I realize it’s not anxiety hounding me, it’s Bethany’s biological clock. It ticks so loud, I’m amazed Mount Sinai isn’t evacuated on a daily basis. Oh, Bethany, don’t make that face. You know it’s true.”
—Helen Ellis