The Three of U.S.: A New Life in New York

The Three of U.S.: A New Life in New York
Peter Godwin

Joanna Coles

After a decade in the London media, Joanna Coles and Peter Godwin set sail for a new life in New York. The Three of U.S. is the amusing diary of an affectionate but unconventional and frequently volatile relationship between two competing hypochondriacs about to become parents.He’s preoccupied by the lump on his elbow. She’s trying to determine the accuracy of the DIY pregnancy-testing kit.In September 1997, as the quay side band played them off in the drizzle, they anticipated a life of glamorous parties, power brunches and weekend trips to the Bahamas. She had been posted to New York as the Guardian correspondent – but discovered that most New Yorkers mistake the paper for the in-house pamphlet published by La Guardia Airport. He decided to write ‘the novel’: a year later, it’s largely unfinished.What will make them most anxious – learning that they earn less than their neighbour’s dog, or being mistaken for a serial killer by the local newsagent? Neither of these: it’s the pink line on the second box of the tester stick… For Joanna’s is a pelvis with a passenger.In this joint diary, we follow the progress of two resident aliens acclimatising to the eccentricities of the Big Apple – and to the idea of parenthood. Drawing on an eclectic cast of supporting characters – from over-achieving, pill-popping friends, to their drill sergeant of a birthing instructor and fearsome cleaning ladies – The Three of U.S. is a wryly real look at the panic of thirtysomethings everywhere.

THE THREE OF U.S.

A New Life in New York

JOANNA COLES

&

PETER GODWIN

DEDICATION (#ulink_760dec1c-22fa-5abf-bb4c-dfa807e8983f)

For TAG, whose pram is in the hall

CONTENTS

Cover (#ueee5f46f-147a-51f9-baf3-a7c766c1659a)

Title Page (#u4712343e-42ac-5d83-9103-6afadf12b862)

Dedication (#u662761b2-38d9-5232-89fd-5e21d996ea84)

Preface (#ud1b7b783-0a36-50ef-8516-00c475d2e959)

May (#u6286fd0b-36fa-5a38-bb66-4c144269d67b)

June (#ub3c24d6a-49ea-5e15-ae7f-0fb775548fad)

July (#u30b36c75-54ea-5eaf-bab0-98e238d1352f)

August (#litres_trial_promo)

September (#litres_trial_promo)

October (#litres_trial_promo)

November (#litres_trial_promo)

December (#litres_trial_promo)

January (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

PREFACE (#ulink_5e30ca34-d2d1-5e55-becb-dad4ea39205e)

At the risk of degenerating into Oscar speak, we would like to thank the following: our agent, Gil Coleridge and our editors, Val Hudson and Andrea Henry, for doing their respective jobs with such elan; Jane Thynne and Andrew Solomon for allowing us to quote from their emails; and our New York friends (especially Dani Shapiro, Michael Maren, Suzanna Andrews, Dana and John Tierney, Andre and Leina Schiffrin, Ron Gallen, Betsy Fagan, Sheenah Hankin and Tom Masland) for their patience and humour in dealing with our incessant questions; Sheila Kitzinger and Dr Miriam Stoppard for letting us quote from their work. We are also grateful to be able to quote from Dr Seuss and from the websites of BabySoon.com and BabyCenter.com.

Joanna would like to thank Alan Rusbridger and Roger Alton at the Guardian, for posting her to New York. And Peter Stothard and Sandra Parsons at The Times, for continuing to accommodate her dispatches.

The Three of U.S. is not a forensic record – occasionally we have changed names, dates and other identifying details, largely to prevent intrusion. But this principle is defined in the exception. Our labour coach, for example, is so instantly identifiable to any of the scores of New Yorkers who have passed through her ante-natal academy, that to change her name would be pointless.

Joanna Coles

Peter Godwin

Manhattan 1999

MAY (#ulink_dfcd9714-6de0-5ba7-a900-722546c53308)

MANHATTAN

Friday, 1 MayJoanna

The test is negative. There is no pink line in the second box on the tester stick, but I’m sure I am pregnant. I haven’t done it wrong either. Over the years I’ve done enough of these tests to know exactly how to use them; how to pee in a squatting position without splashing all over the tester stick and precisely how long to wait before looking for the tell-tale sign. Sometimes they use a red tick to indicate you’re pregnant; sometimes it’s a blue cross. With this one, the Answer Test, a positive answer is indicated by two pink lines. But there is only one. The other box, the important box, remains clear, white and unambiguous. I am not pregnant.

Friday, 1 MayPeter

I have just returned from the doctor, who has managed to convince me that 1 am dying. The cause of my premature death will be the polyp that has developed under the skin of my left elbow. I became aware of it a few days ago as I walked along Hudson Street from the Printing House gym, favoured exercise yard of the West Village literati, back to our loft on Horatio Street. My polyp is hard to the touch, like a walnut, and curiously mobile. I fiddle with it constantly, my own internal worry bead.

At first I thought I had overdone it with the free weights. Although in denial about my own competitiveness, I am loath to lessen the weights when alternating on a machine with someone else of comparable size. Over the years I have sustained various injuries to ligaments and muscles due to such hubris, and this elbow polyp, I figured, was simply the latest. But there were worrying differences: the suddenness of my polyp’s first appearance. One minute nothing, the next a subcutaneous walnut. The lack of surrounding swelling. And the fact that it didn’t actually hurt. Finally, when the walnut refused to diminish on its own, I went to the doctor.

Under the American health insurance system my family doctor is, as far as I can deduce, a gatekeeper. He is there to prevent me from having access to specialists. The more often he can stymie my attempts to reach the doctors who really know what they’re doing, the expensive doctors, the more lavishly he is rewarded by our insurers.

Dr Epstein has a practice on 14th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenue. It is one of the most depressing streets downtown – not quite Chelsea, not yet Greenwich Village – strewn with tacky shops selling cheap plastic luggage and knock-off trainers, polyester clothes and tinny boom boxes. Many of the shops urgently proclaim that they are in the throes of closing-down sales, EVERYTHING MUST GO, their banners read. Several announce that they are going bankrupt and in POSITIVELY OUR VERY LAST WEEK. But in all the months I have traversed the street, none of these shops has actually closed.

The other patients waiting in Dr Epstein’s reception are all longshoremen – wide men in steel-toed boots, checked flannel shirts and jeans. For Dr Epstein’s practice is above the Longshoremen’s Union headquarters. My appointment comes and goes, but my name remains uncalled. Perhaps, among these giants, I am not big enough for my physical presence even to register.

‘Mr Gobwun?’

‘Godwin. It’s Godwin, actually.’

‘Whatever. Dr Epstein will see you now.’

Dr Epstein is small and hairy and rotund. He is evidently suffering from a terrible cold and his voice is clogged with catarrh. After taking a brief medical history, he places two stubby fingers on my polyp and chases it around my elbow. ‘Hmm,’ he muses. ‘Odd.’

Odd? I am a doctor’s son and I know that ‘odd’ is not good.