A/N: Thanks as always to Jan, Barbara, and Alison for their tremendous beta skills.
Chapter 7
mid-December 2012
After two weeks back on the job, Lizzy knew she was in trouble. She was so exhausted that she could hardly get up in the morning, although she always did. With Emma lying there fussing for her attention, she had to. But she was falling behind with her work and she couldn't seem to catch up, no matter what.
Why? Before Emma, she had worked super-efficiently during the day. Now at the best times she was only working at three-quarters speed because she was so sleepy. And, since she was leaving the office at 5:30, that was an hour and a half or so less every day at the office than she had worked before. When she had hired Elena to work until 6 every evening, rather than having a live-in nanny, the idea had been that she would make up that lost work time in the evening after Emma was asleep.
Unfortunately, about half the time she fell asleep on the bed with Emma at 10 o'clock. Then when she woke up to nurse her again at 12 or at 2, she would get up and work for a couple of hours in the middle of the night until the next feeding, after which she would crash again until Emma woke up for good at 6.
Other nights she managed to stay awake after Emma nursed to sleep at 10, and then she got out of bed and sat down at her computer for a couple of hours until the next feeding. But most of the time she fell asleep at the computer and didn't get any work done at all.
When she was at work, she couldn't stop thinking about Emma and worrying about how she was doing. When she was at home with Emma, she couldn't stop thinking about all the work she had to get done. She was overwhelmed with guilt no matter where she was, and couldn't help obsessing about how she was letting absolutely everyone down all the time.
This really couldn't go on. She could feel herself rapidly falling apart; she had less and less energy, she was getting snappier and edgier, and she wondered if she were starting to come down with something. Normally when she had a big challenge at work, she could just dig down deeper, or kick it into another gear, or whatever metaphor seemed helpful at the time to inspire her to seek out the extra bit of energy she needed to get it done. But now, she found, when she tried to dig deeper, she hit bedrock. There was no lower gear. This was all she had.
And she couldn't quite understand how all of this was happening. Will was very supportive in his way, letting her know how important he knew her job was to her. Elena was a wonderful caregiver for Emma. Nanny and baby were developing a great rapport, and Elena had gradually eased Emma into both eating happily and sleeping for longer stretches during the day. With this fantastic support network, how could she feel as though she were edging closer every day to completely losing it? She would have called her friends with kids to talk about it, but she didn't have time. She would have called her mother or her sisters to ask for help, but they were all crazy or too busy with their own stuff.
A big part of it, of course, was that when Emma was with Lizzy, she seemed desperate for her mommy because she'd missed her during the day. She had reverted to her earlier furious and frequent nighttime nursing habits. Maybe it was a growth spurt. Whatever the cause, it was like having a newborn again.
On Friday night at the end of her second week back at work, she asked Will to take Emma for some of the day Saturday so she could sleep. He agreed, but said he had a court reservation at the club in the late morning and so he couldn't do it till after that. In the end, he didn't get back from his squash game until almost 1:30. Lizzy was exhausted from nursing all morning and then fighting with Emma to get her to take a nap.
Will walked in the door, hair still wet from the shower he'd taken at the club, gym bag in hand, and she handed Emma to him while he was still standing in the foyer.
"Hey," he said, simultaneously taking Emma, dropping his bag, and leaning over to kiss her cheek. "Where are you going?"
Really fast, before she could change her mind, she said, "I know I won't be able to sleep if I'm here with Emma. If she cries, I'll wake up and feed her. I'm going to a hotel. I just changed her diaper, and I fed her about 45 minutes ago. There are two bottles of milk thawing in the sink. The nipples are on the counter. You just screw one onto the top of the bottle. Warm the milk up by letting it sit in warm water. Not hot water, warm water."
"What?" He said, as if she were speaking Chinese. No, not Chinese, since he spoke Chinese. Greek.
She picked up her coat. "I'll be at The Kellynch." That was a boutique hotel a couple of blocks away where they'd had guests stay before. "Really, nothing's wrong. I'm not mad at you. I just have to get some sleep, and I need you to help me with this."
"Um, OK. Couldn't we have talked about this before?"
"Yeah, I'm sorry. I was just sitting here, and suddenly I couldn't take it anymore. Can you do it?"
Will still seemed too stunned to realize precisely what was happening. "Um, yes?"
"Great. Thank you. Please don't call me. If you wake me up, I'll...I don't know what will happen. I'll totally lose it. I'll be back at 5 or 6."
She kissed his ever so slightly gaping mouth briefly, said "Bye," and slipped out the door.
Lizzy quickly walked the few blocks to the hotel, checked in, pulled the drapes closed, hung out the 'do not disturb' sign, put on an eyeshade and earplugs, got into bed and slept for almost four hours. When she woke up a little before 6 o'clock, she realized she'd just had her first dream since October 4th.
After she'd checked out, Lizzy called Will to let him know she was on her way home. He suggested that they meet up at a little Spanish restaurant near the hotel instead. It had good paella. She agreed and fifteen minutes later they both arrived at the door at the same time, Emma in the Baby Bjorn on Will's chest.
Since it was December, it was already dark at 6 o'clock. The restaurant was empty because it was early for New Yorkers to be dining, and so the hostess had time to exclaim over how cute Emma was there on her daddy's tummy. She seated them in the dark corner booth, which, like the other tables, had a red-and-white checked tablecloth and a candle burning in a little red lamp.
Will took Emma out of the baby carrier and of course she fussed and grabbed until Lizzy clapped her onto her breast, a coat rolled up underneath Emma as a nursing pillow. She didn't even bother to pull the nursing cape out from its customary home in the diaper bag Will had fortunately remembered to bring.
"So, how did you two do?" Lizzy asked.
"OK. We got into a little tussle about the bottle, but we worked it out. Did you get some sleep?"
"Yeah. I feel a lot better. Thank you for doing that on such short notice."
"Sure, you're welcome. Um, do you, can you tell me what's going on in, um, a little more detail?"
The waitress came and took their order. She told them it would take about half an hour for the paella, and suggested a few appetizers they might like in the meantime. Lizzy ordered them all because she was starving.
Lizzy said, "So, back to what happened today. I'm sorry, I should have talked to you about it before. I just suddenly felt overwhelmed. It's been a tough couple of weeks."
"You're looking really tired. What can I do?"
"I don't know. I'm still trying to figure it all out. It just seems like there aren't enough hours in the day to get everything done. Once I come home from work all my time disappears right into the Emma monster. I'm so exhausted I can't think straight."
"OK, well...are you ready to problem-solve, or do you need to vent first?"
"Problem-solve. Got any ideas?"
"All right. Do you want to stay at work longer at night? We could ask Elena to stay later, or we could hire another nanny for the evening. We can always get you more help."
Lizzy briefly covered her eyes with one of her hands. "Sweetie, I know you like to try to solve problems by hiring people to make them go away, but I don't think that's the answer here."
He looked mildly ticked off at that. "Do you have a better idea?"
"No, I don't. But it seems to me that part of why Emma is so needy at night is that she misses me during the day. Staying away even longer is not going to solve that problem. And I like spending time with her. She's my baby."
"You spend time with her all night."
"Do I detect a little jealousy there?" Lizzy asked, one eyebrow raised.
"No. Maybe."
"Well, you can always come join us in the big bed. Seriously."
"You know I can't sleep like that."
"Neither can I, obviously," said Lizzy ironically.
This wasn't productive. Will took a deep breath. "OK, so if sleep is the problem to be solved, then how can you get some sleep? Two things I can think of are: (A) letting Emma not sleep somewhere else, away from you, and (B) getting Emma to sleep through the night."
Lizzy nodded. "So, if we go with (A), that sounds like hiring a night-time nanny, or sending her off to the countryside with a wet nurse or something. Those both just seem crazy to me. We're not 18th-century aristocrats. For (B), I just really don't know. I've read everything there is to read about it, and talked to the pediatric sleep specialist, and it seems like there's no way to get a baby to stay asleep until its brain is ready to do that. It's a neurological thing. We can't just let her do that 'cry it out' thing, because that's to get babies to go to sleep on their own, not to keep them from waking up. Anyhow, she's too young for that, and I don't think I could do it anyway. You know I can't stand to hear her cry, ever."
"OK, but that leaves us with...do nothing. What, give it some more time? Hope she gets used to your being gone all day and starts sleeping during the night?"
"I guess." Lizzy sagged down in her seat even more, cradling a nursing Emma. "She's still so little. She's only ten weeks old."
"All right. We'll give it a little while longer, and see where we are in, what, a week? Two weeks?" Will asked, taking Lizzy's hand on the table.
"Yeah, all right. Let's hope I can make it that long."
They sat silently for a few moments. Then Lizzy said, "There are some documents I couldn't get through last week, and they have to be finished by Monday. I'm going to need some time to work this weekend. Can you take Emma for a couple of hours tomorrow?"
"Um...I'm supposed to go to the indoor driving range with Trip Thayer in the afternoon. Maybe you could call Elena and see if she's free?"
"Oh, God, really?" Lizzy asked, covering her eyes again.
"What? It's business, a meeting with an investor."
"I know. I just...I wonder if there's any way you can cut back on those things. I need some help here, from you, not Elena or some other babysitter. And Emma needs to see her daddy, at least now and then."
"You know this is just how business is done. What can I do?" Will said, definitely irritated this time.
"I don't know. I have no idea. Anyway, can you take Emma before or after you see Trip? Please?"
"Yeah, OK."
The ceviche was probably great and the toasted bread with garlic, tomatoes and anchovies was most likely delicious, but they tasted like sawdust to Lizzy.
After Emma finished nursing, she fussed and had a lot of gas. Will and Lizzy each took turns standing up to burp and soothe her while the other sat down to eat what was no doubt an excellent paella.
"Here, get her up on your shoulder. She doesn't like it when you hold her that way," said Lizzy.
They didn't talk much other than making a few innocuous comments about the weather, the food, and the décor in the restaurant.
The next day, Will took Emma to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, though he wasn't very gracious about it. And Lizzy got her paperwork finished.
On Monday afternoon, Lizzy received a phone call from Eleanor, the wife of Will's cousin Richard. Eleanor was a senior staffer for Charles Schumer, the U.S. Senator from New York. One of the topics Chuck's office had been working on for years was immigration reform, and so Lizzy had worked often with Eleanor to get HRI's views heard on the matter. Eleanor said that Chuck was trying to get together a group of senators, Democrats and Republicans, to come up with a comprehensive kind of reform that everyone could live with. Eleanor said that Lizzy really needed to come to Washington, tomorrow morning, to talk with Chuck and a couple of the other senators' staffers. This was the moment to make HRI's case with regard to some of the foundational issues that the rest of the proposals would be based on.
"Oh, and I can't wait to meet Emma! Richard and I will try to get down to the city in a couple of weeks to meet our darling niece, or whatever she is. Second cousin by marriage seven times removed? Niece sounds better."
Lizzy laughed. "I don't know, either. Great. Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow." She hung up and started to plan.
It would just be a day trip. It would be OK, right? She asked Gina to book her a ticket to Washington National. She hoped she would be able to get back home by 6, but you never could tell with the folks in Washington. She'd have to see whether Elena could stay late, if need be.
The next morning, she had to leave before Elena arrived, so at 7:30 she left Will in his shirtsleeves holding Emma, who had a full diaper, and dashed downstairs to get a taxi. All day she waited around for Chuck or one of the other senators' staff members to see her. She spent a fair amount of that time staring at the gargantuan and truly impressive chandelier on the ceiling in his office. But what with one thing and another, emergency this and that, she didn't even get in the same room with them until almost 5:30. Eleanor had kindly offered to ask the legislative director to find an unoccupied office for Lizzy to pump in during the day, and that had gone OK except that she was currently toting two sloshing bottles of milk around in the Senate office buildings and feeling like she was about ready to burst because it was time for another pumping session.
By now she had of course called to update Elena many times and finally had to tell her she didn't know what time she'd be back. Elena had said that she could stay late, but she hadn't sounded happy about it at all, and had said they would have to work out something else for next time. Lizzy felt terrible when Elena told her that staying late meant she would have to miss a family dinner at her son's house. Lizzy hoped it wasn't someone's birthday party or anything like that.
Lizzy also called Will and asked him to come home as soon as he could so that Elena could go to her son's place as early as possible. But he wasn't sure when he could get away. As usual, he had a meeting, and he didn't know how late it was going to go.
"Really? You can't cancel something this once?" she whispered furiously, standing against the wall in a busy hallway and trying to make herself inconspicuous by hunching over her phone.
"No! I've been working on this guy for months, and I think he's finally going to commit some big money to the project."
"Fine! We'll talk about it later. This is really not helping me here."
This was not what she needed to be freaking out about when she was supposed to be concentrating on the intricacies of hammering out a new path to citizenship for tens of thousands of people, and trying to explain why one senator's demand that someone build a huge, bazillion-volt electrified barbed wire fence along the entire border with Mexico would not just solve every single problem with immigration. Again.
She finally staggered in the front door a little before 10 o'clock. The meeting had gone late, her plane had been delayed, and there had been bad traffic coming home in the taxi from the airport. She had skipped dinner because she wanted to get back as fast as she could to relieve Elena and Will. She was starving, her breasts were leaking, and she really needed to pee.
Will met her in the foyer holding a nearly hysterical Emma. He didn't say hello, and he didn't kiss her like he usually did. Instead, he said, "Oh, thank God! She's been crying for you for the last hour and I had no idea what to do," and held Emma out to Lizzy, before she had even had a chance to take off her coat.
Seriously? She didn't know whether to yell at him, to laugh, or to cry. So instead she settled for dumping all of her stuff in a big pile on the floor in the middle of the hall, holding up her index finger, and saying "One minute, please." She left him standing there holding out a screaming Emma, and walked to the bathroom. Sometimes, just sometimes, Mommy had to come first.
Once she had settled down in the living room, Emma latched on, much to their mutual relief. Will came in and sat down next to her.
He cleared his throat. "So...how did things go today?" he asked.
"It was really boring for about six hours and then totally frantic for about four. I think I'm going to pass out from hunger. Is there anything to eat in the kitchen?"
"Uh, I don't know. I had a dinner meeting. I didn't get back home till about nine."
Poor Elena! thought Lizzy. A 13-hour day. God. That was definitely not in her contract.
Lizzy took a deep breath. Hmm. To pick an argument, or get some food? Her desire for food won. "Well, do you think you could take a look for me? Please? If there aren't any leftovers, maybe a sandwich or something? I think there are some cold cuts in the fridge somewhere. And, please, a glass of water?"
"OK." He got up and went into the kitchen. She could hear him rummaging around in the fridge, apparently unsuccessfully. "Where did you say the meat was?" he called.
"Um, in the drawer marked 'meats,'" she called back, gritting her teeth. She refrained from adding even one of the snarky comments that leapt to mind. She was just too tired for a fight.
Emma woke up what seemed like about every five minutes all night long, nursing for a few moments and then falling back into a light sleep. Lizzy thought that this time her darling baby, whom she loved so very much, might possibly suck all of the life-force totally and completely out of her body once and for all.
On Thursday morning, Lizzy had to apologize to Elena for a long time, and she knew it still didn't make things any better. Elena was nice enough about it, but Lizzy could tell she was still mad about having to stay the night before. She wasn't quite her usual friendly, open self, and she didn't make eye contact with Will, either. Had they had words last night or something? Lizzy and Elena agreed that they would need to talk about backup plans for when she needed to travel next, which Lizzy imagined would be soon.
When Lizzy slumped into the HRI offices at 9 o'clock, Gina greeted her cheerfully with a rundown of all the things she would have to do today to make up for being out of the office all of the previous day. Lizzy smiled wanly, went into her office and closed the door. She crashed down into her chair, and sat staring at the ceiling for a few minutes. Emma was so very demanding, and the work just kept piling up. Something clearly had to give. But she knew lots of women, lots of them, who were managing all right. What was she doing wrong?
Lizzy called Vanessa to see if she had any insight on how the hell to make this work. After all, Vanessa had a kid and she was on a partnership track, which was much more demanding than Lizzy's job. How was she doing it?
After playing phone tag for most of the day, Lizzy and Vanessa finally managed to talk to each other around 3 o'clock. Lizzy explained that she was really struggling to get her work done and that her energy reserves, already drained from not sleeping during her maternity leave, were almost totally depleted. Yesterday's travel had been the last straw, and she knew that there would be more trips coming up soon.
Vanessa said, "Well, you know that I cut back to half time, right?"
"Yes, and I also know that that means you're now working roughly 9 to 5 like a normal human being."
"Sometimes more. Well, anyway, we're doing OK. Michael doesn't help out much, and I have a babysitter sometimes on the weekends. But it sounds like the big difference here is that Tory sleeps. She's older, and she sleeps through the night now. It's hard, and I have to take a day here and there when the nanny gets sick, but we're making it work."
Lizzy sat silently for a minute, looking at the picture of Emma surrounded by Lizzy's work and vacation photos on the wall.
She almost whispered, "Vanessa, I am just not sure I can make this work. Not with this baby. If she slept more, or if she needed me less, maybe—."
"Oh, Lizzy..."
"I love this job, you know that. It's so important to me. And you know I know how to work hard, and I love that, too. But I don't know if I can do this." Lizzy felt terrible saying this. She had never given up, just quit, anything, ever, in her whole life. She wasn't that kind of person.
"Oh, honey. I think we've all been there. It sounds like you've finally found your limit."
"Yeah, maybe. Maybe."
"Have you talked to your boss about going part-time?"
Lizzy sniffed. "No. I guess I should, huh? See if maybe we can work something out."
"Yeah. Hey, I'm really sorry. Have you and Will talked it over?"
"Um...sort of. But his solution to everything is just to hire more people to take care of it. It makes me so mad."
"You know, he's not the first guy to do that, and I'm sure he won't be the last."
"I guess. But I really don't get why he doesn't understand, doesn't see, the value in just being there with Emma."
"I think you'll have to ask him, because I don't get it, either. Michael does the same thing."
They sat quietly for a moment.
Finally, Lizzy said, "OK, then. I'll let you know what I come up with. Thank you. It helps so much to be able to talk to you about this."
"You're not in it alone, Lizzy. Never forget that."
After Lizzy hung up, she decided that, if she were going to make some kind of momentous decision, it was time to gather some intelligence. So she took the unprecedented, horrifying step of calling Stephanie, the director of human resources. She had a list of questions on the legal pad in front of her, and she also opened up the employee handbook and pulled up a few relevant websites on her computer. It always paid to be prepared when you talked to those sneaky HR weasels.
Lizzy tried to avoid Stephanie whenever she could. Stephanie had that apparently prized HR combination of being totally rule-bound on the one hand, and absolutely lacking personal boundaries on the other. She was also an inveterate gossip who had a habit of spreading everyone's confidential personnel matters far and wide through innuendo and thinly-veiled hints, while never quite sharing enough to get herself fired. Lizzy knew she'd have to tread carefully, because otherwise she'd end up committing herself to a course of action when all she really wanted was information.
She took a deep breath and dialed Stephanie's extension.
Stephanie's phone obviously had caller ID, because when she picked up the phone she said, "Hello, Lizzy."
"Hey, Stephanie," Lizzy replied. "I have a couple of hypothetical questions about our company policies. I guess you could call them family-friendly policies."
"Oh, sure," Stephanie chirped. "Happy to help. You've just come off your maternity leave, right? How's your baby? Are you feeling OK? Oh my God, I had so much tearing with my first child, I couldn't sit down for weeks! I thought I would be all done with my hemorrhoid pillow after I gave birth, and then I just had to get it right back out again! Ha ha ha! Have you tried sitz baths?"
Thanks for sharing that, thought Lizzy.
"Um, no. We're doing fine, thanks. So, my first question was, you know, hypothetically, do we have any kind of a part-time track for new parents?" Lizzy twirled her pencil between her fingers and silently begged Stephanie not to ask her why she wanted to know this.
"You mean, like, cutting back to half time for a while?"
"Right."
"That depends on what level we're talking about. Do you mean non-exempt staff positions, or exempt managerial positions like yours?"
"Just hypothetically, let's say exempt staff, managers."
"OK. No, we don't, not at your level, for example. It would be too hard to find someone at that level to bring us back up to full-time staffing. Actually we don't do that for anyone. It's too difficult to manage."
"I see." So apparently they didn't have part-time for anyone, and Stephanie had just asked about the level so she could draw Lizzy out. Hmm. Lizzy firmly drew a line through the first item on her list. "OK, in that case, let me ask you about family care leave. Hypothetically, someone at the managerial level is eligible for FMLA leave, right?"(1)
"Yes, that's right. That entitles employees like you to up to 12 weeks of unpaid job-protected leave in a given twelve-month period due to your own medical condition or in order to provide care to a close family member with a serious health condition." Lizzy looked down at her copy of the employee handbook and saw that Stephanie was reading this directly from the section on FMLA leave.
"And, so, for example, for someone in my situation, maternity leave uses up eight weeks of that, right?"
"Yes, that's right. You had eight weeks of leave at full pay. Isn't that great? Federal law requires only unpaid leave, so our company policy is very generous. I just love how we really care about families here. Did you know that HRI's UK office offers a 12-month paid maternity leave? That's the law there. Isn't that incredible? Wow. Almost makes you wish you could work in the London office instead of here!" Stephanie laughed heartily. "But anyway, we have 8 weeks. So someone in your situation still has four weeks of eligibility left in this 12-month period."
"OK, so here is my question: could someone in my position, hypothetically speaking, use those remaining four weeks of unpaid leave as sort of, um, parental leave to take care of her child? You know, because I see here," and Lizzy, fighting fire with fire, read from the Department of Labor's FMLA guidelines that she had pulled up on her own computer screen, "that the leave can be taken for, and I quote, 'the birth of a child and to care for the newborn child within one year of birth.'"
"Is the hypothetical child seriously ill?"
"No."
"Hmmm. Well, good question. I don't know. Let me take a look at something for a moment, OK? Can you please hold?"
Lizzy shuffled some papers and tried to work while she waited, but she couldn't concentrate. She drew little doodles of ferrets and weasels on her legal pad. Finally Stephanie came back on the line.
"Well, Lizzy, bad news. Looking over your personnel file here, I see you've already been back at work for three weeks, right?"
So much for the "hypothetical" smokescreen, which Lizzy of course knew wasn't fooling Stephanie anyway. She shifted around uncomfortably.
"Yes, that's right."
"OK, well, that's unfortunate. You see, the thing is that leave for your own medical problems, and leave to take care of a sick family member, those can be intermittent, like if you need a day a week to take someone to chemo or something. But the leave for taking care of a new baby can't be intermittent. You have to take it all at once, consecutively."
"Hmm. But I see here that the FMLA says the employer may allow intermittent parental leave. It's just not mandatory."
"Yes, that's right, but HRI policy doesn't allow for that. I'm sorry if that doesn't meet your needs. As I said before, I'm sure you'll appreciate that it's just impossible for the organization to find part-time replacements for someone at your level."
"I see." Lizzy was indeed beginning to see. If she hadn't made a point of coming back to work right on schedule, if she hadn't been trying to do the right thing for the organization, she could have had an extra four weeks of leave. Damn. She crossed off the second item on her list. "All right. And since you have my personnel file open there, can you please tell me how many sick days and vacation days I have remaining now? Could I use those for family care if I needed to?"
"Yes. In principle, sick days can be used to take care of an ill family member, and of course you can use your vacation days whenever you like. But you used up all of your sick and vacation days with your maternity leave. That's how it could be paid leave, you know. You had ten days of paid vacation time, and 10 days of paid sick leave, which is four weeks, and the organization generously gave you four extra paid weeks of leave after that."
Lizzy scribbled out the third item on her list.
"OK, I understand. So here's my last question, Stephanie. Is there any policy or arrangement we haven't yet discussed under which I could possibly take an extended unpaid personal leave of absence?"
"Would that be for military service, or for public service, such as jury duty or taking a position with the Federal government?" Stephanie asked officiously.
"Um, no." Not unless you conceived of bonding with your child as a public service, thought Lizzy. Which apparently nobody did.
Stephanie sucked her breath in between her teeth, and Lizzy could practically hear her shaking her head negatively. "In that case, no, I'm sorry. We don't have anything like that. It's not our policy to hold a job for someone if they take personal leave. But you might want to talk to your direct report about this situation. That's Mr. Redfield, I believe. At your level, maybe you can make some kind of special deal." Stephanie's voice dripped with acid with this last comment, although she was plainly trying to hide it. Aha. Lizzy had thought that Stephanie might have some sympathy for her given that she was a mother, herself, but there seemed to be some other resentment at work here overriding any motherly solidarity.
And, yes, Lizzy did know who her own boss was, and yes, it was Ian Redfield, the executive director of HRI. She crossed off the fourth item on her list over and over so it made a big black line. Talking to Ian was, in fact, the fifth and last item there. And she knew she'd better try to get in touch with him right now, because Stephanie would be up on the rooftops shouting the news that Lizzy was asking about taking family leave the minute she hung up.
"Thank you, Stephanie. You've been extremely helpful." Not.
"Oh, it was my pleasure, Lizzy. Give that beautiful baby of yours a big kiss from me." Lizzy could just imagine Stephanie's teeth gleaming in a wolfish grin, her finger poised over the phone as she prepared to dial the extension of one of her cronies down the hall in accounting with this choice bit of information.
Lizzy dialed Ian's assistant's extension. Ian was in meetings for the rest of the day, so she made an appointment to see him the next morning.
That evening, Will came home at 9 o'clock because he had had to attend a holiday party given by an important business associate. There had been a lot of those parties during the past couple of weeks, since Christmas was the following Tuesday. HRI's party had been earlier in the week, but Lizzy had skipped out early so she could get home to Emma by six. Tonight, they just had time to scarf down some reheated mac and cheese from Dean & DeLuca before it was Emma's bathtime and then time for Lizzy to nurse her to sleep on the bed.
Lizzy managed not to fall asleep next to Emma, and she padded, blinking, into the light of the entertainment room where Will was watching a news program on TV. She sat down next to him on the leather sofa, one leg tucked under her, and she took his hand. He clicked off the TV.
"No work tonight?" he asked, smiling.
"Not right now. Look, I need to talk to you about some stuff. I'm thinking about doing something kind of momentous, and I want to talk it through with you."
He nodded, and so she told him how rough things had been this week, especially the trip to D.C. Because Emma's sleep wasn't getting any better, just staying awake, let alone doing her job, was getting more and more difficult for her. She told him she had decided to find out what kinds of options she had on the work side of things, since it was becoming clear that he didn't have more time to give. Finally she told him about her talk with the HR weasels that afternoon.
"So, basically, it looks like my options are, gutting it out and trying to keep on going the way we have been, or quitting HRI, unless I can work out some kind of special deal with Ian for an unpaid leave."
Will tried to soothe her, rubbing the back of her hand. "He may be able to make an exception for you. You're pretty uniquely qualified. How many other former Supreme Court clerks are there who specialize in human rights and immigration law and want to have an underpaid position at a public interest group?"
Lizzy shrugged. "Well, we'll see. I don't think there's ever been another woman at my level who took maternity leave at HRI, so I don't know how he's going to handle it. But we have to be prepared. And I think..." She paused, took a deep breath, and looked into his eyes. "I think that if I can't get a leave, I'm going to have to resign."
Will sat stunned for a moment. "Really? It's that bad? I—I didn't know."
Lizzy hung her head, unable to make eye contact any longer. "Yeah. I can't—It's just too much. I'm at my limit. Beyond my limit. This is much more difficult than I thought it would be. It's harder than when I was putting in hundred-hour weeks at DeWitt. They didn't make me work all night, at least not every night. It wasn't hard physical labor. I had time to exercise. I didn't feel guilty all the time. I wasn't locked in mortal combat with a fickle and passive-aggressive psychotic boss. Oh, wait, yes, I was," she looked up at him and laughed, thinking of the crazy partners at DeWitt whom she'd worked for.
"Anyway, the point is, I don't think I can do this anymore," she said with finality. "It feels like a big mistake. If my maternity leave had been longer, or if we had had a different baby, I think I could have managed. But this is just not humanly possible."
"So...do you want to leave HRI and look for another job, maybe in January?"
"I don't think you're quite getting what I'm saying. Until or unless Emma starts sleeping, I can't work full time. Period. And as Stephanie so eloquently pointed out to me multiple times today, at my level there's no part-time work, either, so I doubt that will be an option."
"And so that means...?" he raised his eyebrows in inquiry.
"Stay at home with Emma. I don't see any other way."
Again he sat silently, gobsmacked. "Really. Are you sure? That just seems so—radical? Extreme?"
She thought about this for a moment. "No, I'm not completely sure. But I don't know if there's anything else I can do right now. Anyway, most of this is premature until I talk to Ian tomorrow." In a rush she added, "I think—I think that if I do end up deciding to resign, we're going to have a lot of things to talk about. We haven't been very, uh, intentional in how we've been doing things around here since Emma was born. We've kind of been stumbling around in the dark, staggering from one crisis to the next and...I think we're going to need to have some serious discussions about how we're going to proceed from now on."
Will looked perplexed. "Um, OK. I'm not sure what you mean by 'crisis.' Maybe I've been too wrapped up in this Copenhagen project, and with the deal falling apart in Hong Kong, but I really thought things were going OK. Obviously you've been irritated with me, but I just thought, you know—" he shrugged.
Lizzy nodded. She was too tired to get into it with him right now. "I know. Let's see what Ian says tomorrow. Whatever it is, we'll have four days, the long weekend, to talk it over." Both HRI and WPD were going to be closed on Monday, which was Christmas Eve, and Tuesday, Christmas Day. Elena had all of those days off, too. "Right now, I think I need to go to sleep. I'm a zombie. Is that OK? Can we talk about it tomorrow when we have all the information?"
Will nodded and shrugged. "Yeah, sure." He still looked like he wasn't sure what had hit him, but also like he thought he'd been wronged somehow.
That pissed her off. What the hell did he have to feel wronged about, anyway? "Will, it looks like you have something to say to me. I just can't deal with it tonight. I can't go on like this anymore. We're both going to have to make some changes."
Will rolled his eyes and said, "All right."
"Don't be like that. I love you," said Lizzy, and she leaned over and kissed him hard on the mouth. "Please remember that. No matter what." Then she went straight to bed and immediately fell asleep. Until midnight, 2, 4, and 6.
The next day Lizzy met with Ian. She explained her situation and asked if the organization could accommodate her needs for a few months by letting her work part time until Emma became less needy. He told her that he was sorry, but at her level there was no such thing as workplace flexibility. HRI needed someone to do the work full time. He said he would be really sorry to lose her if she did decide to resign, because they were very happy with her work. If that was her choice, though, she would need to hang around for a while to give him time to hire a replacement. He would be willing to let her work part time through the end of January, while she wrapped things up. She thanked him very much and told him she would let him know the next week what she had decided to do.
She went back into her office, closed the door, and sat looking at the pictures on her wall, images of weird newborn Emma, and happy, smiling photos with her workmates. Apparently she had to make some kind of Solomonic choice here. Well, it wasn't much of a choice, really. That was it. She would talk about it with Will over the long weekend, and, unless something happened to change her mind, she would turn in her resignation the next week. She just had to figure out the details.
Footnotes:
(1) The FMLA is the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, a U.S. federal law which says that employees who meet certain kinds of criteria (for example, work for an employer with 50+ employees, have worked a certain number of hours during the year, etc.) are entitled to up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave with job security for the purposes of receiving medical care or for caring for a parent, spouse or child who has a serious medical condition. (If you Google "Department of Labor FMLA Fact Sheet" you can find out more.) Employers are allowed to be more generous than that, but many are not. And as of 2013, about 40% of American workers are not even eligible for FMLA leave because they work for small companies, are self-employed, have not worked enough hours, or do not meet the requirements for some other reason. That means that they do not have the right even to unpaid family or medical leave and can lose their jobs if they opt to take time off for those reasons. Lizzy is indeed very lucky to get paid maternity leave.
How about them thar apples? Let me know below.