Tales From the Crib

by Jennifer Coburn

  “What if I need you while you’re on your big date with Miss Could Be Special?”

  “You’ve got my cell number,” Jack said, shrugging.

  As I heard the front door shut, I fought down a lump in my throat. “Good-bye,” I said as a tear escaped.

  We borrowed David from another family until he eventually had to return to Westchester for good or face the wrath of his wife’s lawyer. Daddy partied himself into an early grave. JJ never made it out of the womb. And now Jack was gone too. It seemed every man in my life was a loaner.

  Chapter 7

  Anjoli walked into my bedroom as I was doing my “smile-ups.” My bedroom was in the same state as when I left for college. The walls were pale blue with champagne floorboards and window frames. A Victorian oak headboard supported the bed, which was covered by a floral spread. There was a vanity with pictures stuffed in the frame of the mirror and a wall lined with ribbons from horse shows I’d won or placed in. Never having too much of an eye for detail, Anjoli left a 1984 calendar hanging on the wall. The month was still August, according to my time warp of a bedroom. My clock radio was still set to WPLJ. On my bed rested a floppy-eared stuffed dog given to me by my high school prom date.

  I’d just tried to start writing the opening pages of my novel and almost finished the first sentence when I got distracted by my reflection in the mirror. The problem with this book I wanted to write was that I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted the book to be about. I figured if Jerry Seinfeld could make a television show about nothing, why couldn’t I write a book about nothing? Unfortunately, the Seinfeld writers came up with witty observations about everyday life. All I came up with was a dark, rainy night and some chick named Desdemona wandering a cobblestone alley.

  “Oh, are you doing the nonsurgical face-lift?” Anjoli asked, sounding overjoyed that we might be able to share our thoughts on the program.

  “It’s for the Bell’s palsy,” I said. “Thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six.”

  “Of course it is, darling. I simply wondered if it was adapted from the nonsurgical face-lift program.”

  “No,” I sighed impatiently. “I’m hoping to regain movement on the right side of my face. I’m not trying to give myself a face-lift.”

  Her own face was shining from the base of oils and creams she applied after her shower. “Don’t turn your nose up at it, darling. Kimmy and I took the class and it was wonderful,” she said, exaggerating the final word. “I purchased the DVD if you’d like to watch it with me. Five minutes a day and you’d be amazed at how the facial muscles tone up. Plus, forcing all of that oxygenated blood to your face helps smooth wrinkles so you won’t ever have to have a face-lift.”

  “Mother! My face is paralyzed. In another week, I’m going to be further along in a pregnancy than I’ve ever made it. I kind of have more important things to deal with right now. Plus no one has to get a face-lift.”

  She inhaled through her nose and straightened her back. “Point well taken. What do you need from me, darling?”

  “I don’t know if you can help me with this. I need to relax. I feel like I’m constantly on the brink of tears. I want to know for sure that the baby is okay, and I know this sounds so vain, but I need to know my face will look normal again.” Oh my God! My “important issues” are the same as hers.

  She smiled. “I have an idea for this evening,” Anjoli said. “Why don’t you finish your exercises, then we’ll take a short walk? I’m going to make a quick phone call and have Alfie open the shop today. Think about staying with me for a few more days, darling. It will be like old times. We can light a fire, sit by the tree, and gab for hours.”

  “We never did that.”

  “So, we’ll do it now!” Anjoli beamed. Staying in the city for a few days didn’t sound like a bad idea. I couldn’t walk for more than four blocks, which in Caldwell would place me right in front of someone else’s suburban home. In Greenwich Village, the same distance would take me by Jefferson Market gourmet foods, the Joffrey Ballet, street vendors, restaurants, and the public library.

  Anjoli’s home was always extraordinarily decorated for Christmas. Because her living room ceiling extended to the top of our three-story apartment, she could easily fit a twenty-foot tree. Each year she had a tree-trimming party where nearly a hundred guests brought ornaments, from drag Santa to hand-painted glass snowflakes. Since Anjoli knows mostly theatre people, nearly half of her guests could play piano and do wildly entertaining numbers where they’d play holiday songs, then engage the guests with a five-minute comedic commentary about the party-set to music. Anjoli’s best friend Alfie’s specialty was replacing lyrics of holiday classics with his own. Guests shouted famous tunes and Alfie reportedly made up new ones on the spot. He claimed they were improvised, but I knew he secretly wrote and rehearsed them beforehand.

  Never one to miss the chance to throw a dinner party, Anjoli also hosted a Seder at Passover for her Jewish friends. In New York, even the Roman Catholics were Jewish friends. They set out a cup of wine, not for the spirit of Elijah, but for Liza. Minelli, that is. Every year they sent her agent an invitation to the Seder and pretended they were completely shocked when she didn’t show up. “Some alcoholic she turned out to be!” Alfie gasped.

  I picked up a book at the library and bought a furry black beret from one of the guys on Sixth Avenue. “No problem is so big that a new hat can’t fix it,” Anjoli claimed as she handed the vendor ten dollars. When we returned home, she insisted that I take a nap because sleep was the best medicine. Other times she said it was water. Often it was Echinacea. But today the remedy was rest and I couldn’t have agreed more.

  The doorbell rang. “Perfect timing!” She fluttered to the door. Anjoli is birdlike in her stature and movements. Painfully thin, she has the body of a ballerina, which she, in fact, once was. After having spent a lifetime of extending her neck, it is unusually long and slender. It supports a dainty head with porcelain skin and a sharp nose. She has a European sexiness about her as opposed to Kimmy’s milk fed Ivory-girl look. “Entrez-vous, Henri.” In entered a gorgeous, tan twenty-something Frenchman with a shock of wavy brown hair and a smirk that said “I’m so sexy, I’d blush if it weren’t so uncool.” Unaware that I was standing at the rail of the third floor looking down, Anjoli shouted to me. “Lucy, I have a little surprise for you. Someone is here to help you relax!” she sang. My mother is never one to overlook the healing properties of a sexy man’s company.

  My mother is the best! I was such a lousy, ingrate to ever say that my mother is not nurturing. She is undoubtedly the coolest mother on the planet to bring home this fantastic man for me. This is soooo going to relax me! I absolutely love her to- huh? What the hell is that? What is that thing he’s schlepping in the front door? What does he need a harp for? Oh man! He’s not here for therapeutic sex? He’s going to play music for me? Sweet thought, but I’m not going to be able to fall asleep with Henri in my room. I haven’t had sex in seven months. That’s two full seasons without the feeling of a man’s firm body pressed against my flesh. My God, just the mention of sex—even in the context of not having it—is driving me wild with desire. I am supposed to take this delicious creature upstairs to my bedroom and lie in bed while he plays harp for me? And I’m supposed to fall asleep during it? Ha! I’ll be lucky if I can refrain from humping my stuffed dog’s paw while Henri plucks and caresses goddamn harp strings.

  “Yes, Anjoli?” I descended the staircase with a dramatic flair usually reserved for her entrances. “Oh, hello,” I said as if I’d just noticed that yet another gorgeous Frenchman was in our living room.

  “Mademoiselle,” Henri said, kissing my hand.

  You think you could use a little tongue?

  “I read an article in Healings and Feelings that harp music is very therapeutic, darling. Even alpha wolves are completely docile when they listen to harp music. The vibration of the harp music is deeply relaxing.”

  Deep? Vibrations? This evil woman is
simply toying with me!

  “Zees eez true,” Henri concurred.

  “Henri’s harp will really take the edge off, Lucy,” Anjoli said.

  Not as much as a long passionate night of exhilarating, glorious, and ultimately exhausting sex.

  “You haven’t heard music until you’ve experienced what this man can do with his instrument,” Anjoli smiled.

  Oh now she’s just being cruel.

  “Okay, off to the bedroom, you two! And don’t you come out until Lucy’s off in dreamland.”

  Bitch!

  As we walked up two flights of stairs, Henri asked if it was “deefeecult” to climb stairs with my cane.

  “Make yourself comfortable in zee bed and tell me when I am to begin,” Henri said. This guy would be so excellent in bed. Jack never asked when I was ready to begin. No guy ever told me to make myself comfortable in zee bed before. “Can I bring you some water?” Henri offered. He is so accommodating. I wonder how he would react if I matter-of-factly asked him to lick my inner thighs and lightly bite the skin on my legs. I mean, if I just said it like it was the most normal request in the world, he might think it’s an American bedtime ritual and just do it. “Should I close zee curtains to keep zee sunshine outside?” Henri asked, reminding me that it was two in the afternoon. When there’s a Frenchman in your bedroom, it always seems like midnight.

  Pull me in by my ample waist and kiss me as if you’ve been waiting a lifetime to have me. Rip my blouse off right now. Run your extremely heterosexual razor stubble across my burgeoning, rotund breasts immediately. Hold my hands down with your strong grip and thrust into me so hard that I will feel you inside me weeks later.

  “Yeah, great idea, Henri,” I said. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on the soothing wave of music coming from his harp. I felt my head sink into my old pillow as the smell of home began to unwind my nerves. The clean Egyptian cotton sheets rose to meet my skin. I felt fatigue leave my body and sink into the mattress. The left side of my face grew as placid as the right as my breathing slowed and steadied into a meditative state. I instinctively knew that everything was going to be all right. I wasn’t sure what everything was, but I knew that all would turn out exactly as it should. I felt more of a sense of peace than I ever remember experiencing.

  “Relax, ma chere. Let yourself have sleep, beautiful girl.”

  My eyes shot open and my body stiffened. Was he talking to me?! Beautiful girl? Ma chere? There’s no way I’m sleeping through this. Just talk to me, Henri. Just look at me with those French eyes and keep telling this seven-months-pregnant fat chick with facial paralysis that she’s a beautiful girl. There’s no way I’m sleeping through this!

  Chapter 8

  After spending three weeks, including the holidays, at my mother’s apartment in the city, Anjoli grew suspicious that all was not well on the suburban frontier. After all, Jack drove to the gallery every day and could have easily taken me home with him at night. I loved being back in the Village, walking past my old elementary school yard, checking out the dynamic graffiti art, and remembering simpler times with my father as I walked to Washington Square Park. I missed Jack, and probably would have returned home if he protested my absence. But he didn’t so I stayed. He was dating someone, and I didn’t have the energy for a fight. What would I have done anyway, clubbed her knee with my cane like Tanya Harding’s thug boyfriend? I preferred to lay low and keep my twisted face out of sight.

  I had no articles or company newsletters due and my doctor said it was best if I just took it easy for the last month of pregnancy. I used this as an excuse to not return to the keyboard to continue with the tragic tale of Desdemona in the rain, or even think about what she was doing wandering that dark cobblestone road anyway. I was, however, exceptionally motivated to do my facial exercises, which were amazingly effective. In just under a week, some of the movement had returned to my face. Still, I hadn’t returned home.

  “I’m thrilled to have you, darling, but isn’t Jack missing you?” Anjoli asked one day after she placed our dinner delivery order from the Zen Palate. Normally they didn’t deliver, but for Anjoli they made an exception. Everyone did. Even her auditor from the IRS had a little crush on her and helped her fix her many careless errors on her tax returns. Most of the time, she cheated herself out of money, so there was no question that Anjoli was simply scatterbrained.

  “Thank you for letting me stay here,” I said. “I really appreciate it.” I sat in front of the Christmas tree and inhaled the evergreen scent and eucalyptus candles burning on the mantel. I sank into a chair and pulled a silver chenille lap blanket over myself. She brought a cup of Fortune Delight tea for herself and sat next to me.

  “That’s what mothers are for. I am rather concerned, though, that you seem to be in no hurry to return to New Jersey. God knows I can’t blame you for avoiding suburbia, darling, but seeing how you and Jack chose to make your home there, I’m curious why you’re not there with your husband.”

  Now would be a good time to mention that, in addition to being a Manhattan snob, Anjoli was raised in New Jersey. So while she never has a kind word to say about the “other” boroughs, Westchester County, or Long Island, she has a special place in her arsenal for New Jersey. She says she never fit in to the Newark Catholic social scene, but the breaking point was when she was disqualified from a beauty contest for a talent entry of a performance art piece far too radical for the 1950s. “They are all such small-minded bigots in New Jersey,” she says, missing the irony of the fact that she’s made a sweeping generalization about an entire state. “Twenty years later, Yoko Ono did the same damn thing and everyone said she was a genius. That’s why I ran away to the Village. Why bother putting a state so close to New York if everyone’s going to act as though they’re in Iowa?” Mother’s a bit snooty about the Midwest as well. I attended several writing conferences at the University of Iowa and fell in love with the area. Anjoli once looked out from her airplane window and concluded that there was “nothing” in the Midwest. I reminded her that she was above the clouds at 30,000 feet, but she was convinced that it was snow. Two more things. Anjoli loves to talk about her “running away” to Greenwich Village, but she didn’t exactly tie a hobo bag to a stick and hitchhike through the tunnel. She left New Jersey at nineteen to attend NYU and lived in a very cozy apartment paid for by her parents. Anjoli was actually born Margaret Mary DeFelice. When she was thirty-three, she went to a weekend workshop on “finding your true name.” A guru looked deep into her eyes and saw that she really and truly could bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never, ever, ever let you forget you’re a man.

  “I still can’t believe you decided to move there,” Anjoli shook her head.

  “We live in an excellent school district,” I reminded her for the zillionth time. “It’s a great place for kids, which I’m thrilled to say is exactly what we need right now.”

  “Then why aren’t you there?”

  “The baby isn’t here yet,” I said.

  “The husband is, though. Tell me, darling. You can tell Mommy what’s wrong.”

  “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “Darling, I know what a troubled marriage looks like,” she said, reaching over to brush my hair from my eyes. Except there was no hair in my eyes. I think she saw the gesture in a script note once and thought it seemed like a maternal thing to do, so she adopted the move.

  I had a dozen bitchy comebacks about how she was familiar with unhappy marriages because she’d caused so many of them, but I refrained. I knew it would be too cruel a lob. I knew she hadn’t really caused any troubled marriages as much as she’d capitalized on them. But most of all I knew I was just being harsh because she was coming so close to finding out that Jack pretty much regarded me as his friend and incubator. Another part of me wanted to tell someone – anyone—what was going on with Jack. Since she was right there, Anjoli was my choice.

  “You’re right,” I admitted. I knew if I laid these two words at her
feet, she would go easy on me. “Jack’s and my relationship has changed. We’re sort of married in name only. We’ll raise the baby together, but have separate lives.”

  “That sounds like a divorce.”

  “No, we’ll still live together. We’ll just be friends—and co-parents.”

  “There was an article in the Times about this!” she said excitedly. Then she gave a moment of thought with knit brows. She rarely knit her brows because of the wrinkle it caused. In fact, every night she walks around the house with a piece of Scotch tape between her eyebrows so she cannot create a “concentration line.” So when she knit her brows, I knew she was in serious contemplation. “Jack is gay, isn’t he?” Anjoli said.

  “No, he’s straight as ever.”

  “Are you sure? I could see him being gay.”

  “Mother, Jack is not gay. He’s already dating—women!”

  “He may still be in denial.”

  “Jack is not gay, Anjoli! Stop saying that.”

  “Please don’t tell me they’ve turned you into a homophobe out there in New Jersey!”

  “Mother, stop it! Look, if Jack were gay, I’d say he was gay, but he’s not.”

  She seemed disappointed. “Oh. He seems so gay.”

  “Mother! What is your problem?!”

  “I have no problem, darling. It’s just I know someone I think Jack would really hit it off with, but if you say he’s not gay then it won’t work.” Anjoli continued, “It would be so much easier if he were gay.”

  “Why is that? Do you think I’m hoping for a reconciliation?” I accused.

  “No, darling. It seems such better PR to have him gay, though. If he’s gay, no one will say the breakup was because you were difficult, or because of another woman. Oh come now, Lucy, be sensible. Let’s tell people he’s gay. I have a friend, Marlies, in California who lives with her gay husband and she came out of the whole thing beautifully. Who could blame the wife if it turned out the husband was just gay?”