Excerpt from Tilt by Emma Pattee, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

LATE MORNING

IKEA, NE Portland

So here we are, thirty-seven weeks pregnant, at IKEA.

Picture me, Bean, if you can picture anything inside of there. My belly distended, a blimp exiting sideways out of my body. I walk in stiff little jerky motions like a stork. Grip on to stair railings. Every few minutes, I have to press my hands against my lower back to stop my spine from breaking in half.

I look so disturbing that I make the other shoppers nervous; they watch me from the corner of their eyes to see what I'll do next. They stop me to say things like, Bet you're ready for this to be over, or You look like you're about to pop! 

And IKEA. On a weekday. Dear god. Another reminder that I'm officially unimportant. Only the old people and college students and bartenders shop for furniture on a Monday. And of course the other pregnant ladies. Milling in the crib section like hungry alligators.

I'm wearing a lavender linen romper and Birkenstocks. The kind of thing I would see pregnant women on Instagram wearing and think, Over my dead body. The kind of outfit that takes the EDGE off, that says, I am no longer into fucking, I am now a mother. Please speak to me only in high pitches. But it turns out, Bean, that maternity clothes cost just as much as real clothes. And we still haven't paid off the bill the clinic sent me for my last ultrasound. So now I wear whatever hand-me-down maternity outfit I can get on Buy Nothing or at the thrift shop. Today: the lavender romper.

I've been standing in the kids section for at least an hour, trying to decide between the different crib mattresses, because of course a crib does not come with a mattress, what was I thinking? That you were going to sleep directly on the wood? So now I'm googling the difference between a spring mattress and a foam mattress, and Google tells me that it can be worth it to spend the extra money on an organic crib mattress, because toxins cause cancer, and if you're going to get a foam mattress, make sure it's made without polyurethane, but of course IKEA does not list on their website what kind of foam their crib mattresses are made of, or if they do I can't find it, and I'm looking for somebody in a yellow shirt to help me, but they've all vanished.

Your father and I sleep on a mattress we got on Craigslist, a mattress we dragged together through the dingy hallway of a dingy apartment building in North Portland, after handing some creepy guy $80 in cash. "Queen bed for my queen," your father said when we finally managed to squeeze it into the back of our car.

It's not just our shitty mattress, Bean. It's everything. Your father, Dom, is thirty-eight, still trying to get that big role. Still standing in line to audition. Still sending his headshots to casting agents. Still picking up shifts at the cafe that he's worked at since we first met. Your mother—Annie, speaking—thought she was destined to be the next Tennessee Williams, the millennial Beckett, wasted hours practicing that big, sweeping bow she'd do under those big Broadway lights, and is now thirty-five and spends her days staring at spreadsheets on a computer screen on the twenty-second floor of a glass building, pressing buttons with her fingers. Last I checked, your father and I have $836 in a checking account at Wells Fargo, a Subaru with 160,000 miles on it, and a two-bedroom apartment by Mount Tabor we can only afford because the landlord feels too guilty to raise our rent or kick us out. And here I am, thirty-seven weeks pregnant at IKEA. On a Monday. With a credit card I'll probably die before I pay off.

What I'm trying to say is that nothing, nothing about the first year of your life, will look like the years that come after, so enjoy your toxin-free mattress while you can.

I decide on the most expensive crib. A rule of the universe, Bean: the most expensive option is always the best bet. I'm reaching for a crib sheet dotted with gender-neutral penguins when a little boy runs around the corner of the aisle and bumps straight into my belly.

Excerpted from Tilt by Emma Pattee. Copyright © 2025 by Emma Pattee. Excerpted by permission of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.