Being in her late thirties and never having had anything close to a pregnancy scare, Marina had always assumed that she was simply infertile. But unlike her friends, who went from fearing pregnancy to pursuing it, Marina viewed her situation as a convenience or even a luxury since she had never once heard the ticking of her own clock. She assumed that the clock was broken along with her reproductive machinery and didn’t concern herself much with it. The inability to sustain a relationship with a man was far more worrisome.
It was Trudie who first suggested to Marina that she might be pregnant, after Marina ran to the bathroom twice while watching Trudie feed her baby pureed leftover spaghetti and meatballs with a spoon. It had been just over three months since the Barbados holiday.
“It isn’t possible,” Marina insisted. “I got my period.”
“You might want to get a test, just in case,” Trudie told her in a singsong voice. “Zachariah was a surprise. Weren’t you, my little Zach pack!” She kissed her boy extravagantly on the mouth and licked the sauce from the sides of her own lips, sending Marina sprinting to the toilet again. That night she picked up a pregnancy test kit on the way home from the gym and was stunned to see the plus sign materialize. She stared at the contraption in disbelief, doubting its accuracy. When the blue cross appeared on the second test, even more rapidly this time, she sat down on the edge of the bathtub, shaking her head. Holding the innocuous-looking piece of plastic in her hand, she was transfixed by the bright blue stain in its tiny window. It was like she had found a bruise that had appeared on her body overnight, with no knowledge of how or when the injury had taken place.
What Marina had assumed to be her menstruation was actually implantation bleeding; the cluster of cells that would later become her son was burrowing into her uterine wall. By the time she discovered the pregnancy, she was already well into her second trimester. Marina was dumbfounded. The thought of becoming a mother was unfathomable to her. She had only ever been vaguely interested in her friends’ children, a notable source of contention with her last serious boyfriend. One of their recurring arguments had been her patent lack of interest in having a family.
“There’s something wrong with you,” he insisted. “You have the maternal instincts of a black widow.”
“Black widows eat their mates, not their young,” she replied. It was a useless correction, however; she could tell by the sad smile and the way that the corners of his eyes tilted down that it was already over between them. And it was true, Marina had no interest in motherhood. She relished her freedom with a zeal that only grew stronger as she watched her girlfriends’ steady marches toward maternity. One by one, their personalities became as disfigured as their bodies. They were perpetually fatigued and unkempt, their walls were covered with sloppy finger paintings housed in expensive frames, and their speech was taken over by motherese—peppered with the words “potty,” “wee-wee,” and “wa-wa.” One night, Una actually licked her finger and rubbed it across Marina’s cheek, only realizing her gaffe when she saw the dumbstruck expression on her childless friend’s face.
“Oh! Sorry, honey.” Una laughed. “Mommy’s got baby brain!”
Marina wanted no part of it. As soon as she escaped the mommy brigade, it took twenty minutes on the elliptical until she began to feel like herself again.
And then for five long months, she watched her body metamorphose into exactly what she disparaged in her friends. The years that she had spent perfecting those twin lines down the sides of her abdomen, the delicate sloping inside toward her navel—she would have to say good-bye to these forever. At night, if she was really quiet, she felt as if she could hear the muscles tearing.
Marina followed her obstetrician’s advice and ate the minimum amount required to sustain the life of what she viewed as the alien growing inside of her, but even with that, there was no stopping the ruthless expansion; once she hit the thirty-pound mark over her ideal weight, she stopped stepping on the metal-and-glass bathroom scale. She grew deeply depressed when she could no longer wear her own clothes, and yet refused to buy anything that she wouldn’t need again, thinking it wasteful. Her friends donated boxes of frumpy, drool-stained maternity clothes to her, which she thanked them for as she resigned herself to the ugly garments. Gritting her teeth, she avoided her own reflection and waited and waited and waited for the reprieve.
And then, exactly on the due date, Marina woke up with contractions. Three hours later she was holding her seven-and-a-half-pound son in her arms, staring in awe as he snuffled around her breast and fastened on with a hungry little rosebud mouth. She had never seen a face so fine and symmetrical in her life. He didn’t look anything like her, but very much like the caramel-skinned surf instructor she had rolled around on the beach with during those last nights of her holiday. Her baby had a soft carpet of circles covering his tiny head, and gray eyes the color of pussywillows. He was the most beautiful creature she had ever laid eyes on, and Marina was shocked to find herself at the age of thirty-seven so deeply in love. She named him Oliver.
For the first few weeks, Marina was terrified that she would not be able to keep Oliver alive. Never had she had even so much as a plant to take care of, let alone a little boy. Growing up, her family had an outdoor dog, but mostly her father took care of it. Marina personally never had anything to do with the dog, and if her parents went away on vacation, they would hire a dog walker to come by each day, feed the animal, and give it a modicum of affection. This was so that they wouldn’t return to a situation, as they did the first time they had left Marina home alone, where the dog nearly starved.
When Oliver was a baby, Marina found herself waking up in the middle of the night terrified that he had stopped breathing. She stripped his crib of any potential smothering hazards, getting rid of stuffed animals, pillows, bumpers, and blankets, but even with this precaution in place, Marina would find herself in his room night after night, camped out next to his crib, listening for the sweet inhalation and exhalation of his tiny lungs.
And despite or perhaps because of her fears, Oliver thrived. Though not particularly hefty, he hit all of his developmental milestones and was thought to be an exceedingly healthy child. He was breastfed longer than most children and never exhibited anything resembling an allergy: peanuts, shellfish, soy, dust, dander . . . nothing threatened him. The only thing to which he demonstrated an adverse reaction was a haircut. Oliver screamed anytime a pair of scissors came close to his long, curly hair. The first two words he uttered in sequence occurred when Marina brought him to a children’s hair salon for his first haircut.
“NO, MOMMY!” He held out his arms to her, his gray eyes widened in terror. The experienced stylist tried to distract him with cartoons and, when that didn’t work, to bribe him with lollipops and Hershey’s Kisses, but Oliver continued to howl in protest. When it was clear that Oliver would not submit, Marina scooped him up and paid the woman anyway, overtipping as she mumbled an embarrassed apology and rushed out of the salon.
Now, at six years old, Oliver had dark, curly, shoulder-length hair. Marina mastered the French braid so that she could fake a short haircut when necessary, but most of the time Oliver wore his hair loose in soft glossy waves that arranged themselves around his delicate face. He was beautiful, but more than that, he was pretty. Marina was used to people asking her the name of her little girl. “His name is Oliver,” she would say. “He’s a boy,” she would add, and smile at the ill-disguised looks of disbelief.
She wasn’t exactly sure when Oliver became Olivia at home. Most of the time she called him Oll, or Ollie, but just after his fourth birthday—shyly at first and then with more insistence—he asked that she call him Olivia.
“But Oliver honey, you’re a boy.”
“I want to tell you a secret,” he said.
They were snuggled in her bed reading Raggedy Ann in the Deep Deep Woods. She put the book aside and looked down at him.
“Okay, honey. What’s the secret?”
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��Well . . .” He looked nervous, and then grinned at her. “I wasn’t going to tell you, but you’re my mommy.”
“That’s right, hon. I’m your mommy, and you can tell me anything. Anything at all.”
“I’m really a girl,” he said in a whisper.
She stared at him, wanting to say the right thing, fearing to say the wrong thing.
“You may feel like a girl sometimes . . .” she began.
“No! I am a girl,” he said, his voice rising.
She waited a moment for him to calm down and then, gently, she tried again to explain. “Do you remember when we had that talk how what you have between your legs is different than what mommy has and—”
“My penis is going to fall off,” he said. “And when it does, everyone will know that I’m not lying. I’m a girl. My name is Olivia!” He put his head down in her lap and cried. She ran her hands through the tangle of his hair and did the only thing that she knew how to do. She comforted him.
Marina sat in the shade of a silver maple tree next to the father of Oliver’s best friend while they watched their respective offspring swing from the monkey bars. Though it was April in Southern California, the promise of spring seemed to have become the unseasonably punishing heat of summer. Marina hid beneath her sunhat while her friend sat beside her, exposed, getting redder and redder.
“Don’t tell me you aren’t wearing sunscreen,” she said to him.
Phillip fanned himself with the sheaf of papers in his hand.
“I’m a man,” he said.
“You’re an idiot,” she said, grinning, and punched him in the arm. She opened her bag and took out a packet of moistened sunscreen wipes.
“You aren’t going to put that on me, are you?”
“Are you kidding?” she said. “These things are expensive! I don’t like you that much. Charlotte!”
She yelled at the blond girl dangling from the monkey bars behind her son. “Ollie, honey. You and Charlotte come here!”
The kids dropped to the soft dirt and raced over to their parents.
“Feel how hot I am,” Charlotte said as she climbed up on Phillip’s lap and touched her cheek to his.
“You are hot,” he said. “And Daddy wasn’t thinking when he didn’t put any sunscreen on you this morning. . . .”
“Mama always puts sunscreen on me,” Charlotte said.
“I’m sure she does.” Phillip took a deep breath and let the air out slowly.
“Here, let me help . . .” Marina reached out and swiped the towelette across Charlotte’s face, neck, and bare arms.
“I don’t need sunscreen!” Oliver crowed. “I don’t get sunburned ’cause I have dark skin already!”
“Not so fast,” Marina took another towelette and performed the same task on her son. “Skin cancer is for everyone,” she said, handing the used towelettes to her son. “Go throw these away, and then you can do more monkey bars.”
The children scampered off, screaming something unintelligible.
“Thanks,” Phillip said. “And the neglectful parent of the year award goes to . . .”
“Whatever. You owe me a Coke.”
Phillip smiled at her and then glanced down at his BlackBerry.
“Sorry, I have to put this fire out.”
“Go ahead,” Marina said.
She took off her hat and wiped away the perspiration from her forehead, then put her hat back on. It had been several months now since she and Phillip had begun meeting for a standing playdate, usually every other weekend when it was Phillip’s turn with his daughter. Phillip and Charlotte’s mother had separated some time after the holidays, and though Charlotte seemed to be taking the situation in stride, Phillip carried the air of a man condemned. Not wanting to pry, Marina didn’t ask for the specifics of his marital difficulties, but she surmised from his guilty countenance that he was in some way responsible—while knowing enough about relationships to acknowledge that their failure was rarely, if ever, unilateral. They all have a built-in expiration date, Marina thought, and if people would just realize this up front they could save themselves a lot of pain. Why not just appreciate the time they have together—the exalted sex, the precious antecedent moments of rapture, the delight of finding the sublime in the banal? Instead, we demand that the other hold up a mirror and reflect back to us everything we hope to believe about ourselves. And we love them for it . . . until the mirror becomes too heavy to hold, or breaks altogether, and then the punishment never ceases. But, ah, this was coming from Marina. She had not had even one sustained relationship since her son’s birth, and strikingly few before. For years she had more or less resigned herself to a life alone, but then recently she found herself drawn to the sad and guilty man beside her.
Phillip bobbed his knee up and down while he listened with mounting impatience to the caller.
“Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” He nudged Marina with the tip of his foot and mouthed the words “I’m sorry.” She waved her hand at him and deliberately turned to watch the kids playing in the distance to give him space. The children had taken a break from the monkey bars and now sat facing each other, their legs in a V, toes touching, talking. She could tell that Oliver was telling a story, and she tried to decipher its subject from the grand hand gestures. Charlotte threw her head back and the high tinkling laughter traveled all the way to the bench where their parents sat.
“God, it’s nice to hear her laugh,” Phillip said. He had finished the phone call and slipped his BlackBerry into the breast pocket of his broadcloth button-down.
“I think Ollie could make anyone laugh. He could make the Taliban laugh,” she said.
Phillip smiled and ran a hand through his closely cropped blond hair. “Christ, it’s hot. I’d like to round up all those global-warming naysayers shoulder to shoulder and just watch them bake.”
Marina laughed. “Well, that would be my entire family.”
Phillip raised an eyebrow with interest. “No kidding.”
“Yup. No such thing as global warming. Evolution is questionable. And, of course, homosexuals are all going to hell.”
“And where exactly did you come from?” Phillip asked.
“Orange County,” she said. “From the virginal loins of Joyce Pennock née Hartcourt. I think my parents did it precisely three times in their lives, and each time she got knocked up.”
“Brothers? Sisters?” Phillip asked.
“One of each,” Marina said. “And boy-oh-boy do they toe the party line. Ollie and I are the black sheep of the family. Literally.” She laced her fingers above her head and stretched. She noticed his eyes flit across her ribcage and then just as quickly dart away. “Holidays are loads of fun at the Pennocks’.”
“All families are horrible, aren’t they?” Phillip said. “I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who just straight-out likes their family.”
“That’s depressing,” Marina said.
“I shouldn’t say that. I mean, mine really wasn’t so bad.”
She was about to ask for details when he took the vibrating phone out of his pocket and looked at it. She glanced over at the screen and saw the face of Charlotte’s mother.
“Go ahead,” she told him.
Phillip jumped up and walked a few feet away from their bench. Marina had only met Phillip’s estranged wife once in passing at their children’s school, when they found themselves standing alone in the school parking lot several minutes too early for pickup. Marina introduced herself as the mother of Oliver, Charlotte’s friend. The woman nodded and smiled, but Marina had the strange feeling that she was looking through her, as though Marina were invisible. They exchanged e-mail addresses and the vague promise of setting up a playdate. This was at the beginning of the school year. Marina sent her two e-mails that remained unanswered. A few months later she and Phillip got to know each other, and she was relieved that a friendship with her was never forged.
Marina watched Phillip pace while he talked on the phone. His back curved suddenl
y as though a weight had been placed on his shoulders, pitching him forward. With the phone up to his ear and his other hand wrapped around his forehead, he pressed his thumb and index finger into the pressure points of his temples. “He’s a disaster,” Marina thought. “Toxic,” she could hear Una say. “Unavailable,” said Merle. “Damaged,” said Trudie. As her gaggle of married girlfriends listed the litany of his many obvious failings, Marina knew that given the chance, she would surely go to bed with him anyway.
“Okay, okay! I hear what you’re saying. And I’m sorry,” she heard Phillip say. He walked back to the bench and began gathering Charlotte’s things. “I’m just in the park with her now. I can meet you in a half hour.” Phillip’s face was red. “If we hurry, maybe fifteen, okay? I’m sorry. I . . .” He stood for a moment with the phone in his hand. It was clear to Marina that she had hung up.
“Everything okay?” she asked him, knowing it wasn’t.
He grabbed Charlotte’s tote and his messenger bag.
“I’m sorry. I—”
“Hey. You don’t need to say you’re sorry to me.”
“It’s a habit,” he said.
She reached out and grabbed his wrist. She could feel his pulse race against her fingers.
“Well, you need to stop it,” she said, still holding on to him.
Phillip looked at her, clearly surprised by the touch. He snapped his head around—to find his daughter, she figured—and she dropped his hand, embarrassed by her forwardness.
“Let me be the person you don’t apologize to. That’s all I mean.”
Phillip reached out and turned up the brim of her sunhat. She looked straight into his eyes. She had never seen that color on a man. They reminded her of an old Edwardian ring that she had inherited from her grandmother—what was the stone? Tourmaline? Aquamarine? She noticed a birthmark next to his left eye and wanted to kiss it.
When It Happens to You Page 5
