Tales From the Crib

by Jennifer Coburn

  Candace clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention. “One, two, three. Eyes on me!” she said. I made a mental note of that one to lend to Anjoli. She’d love the sentiment. “We’ve all shared a traumatic experience together here today. First, I must express my deepest regret about Barney’s, um, behavior. The paramedics say he should be fine. He’ll need a few stitches ...” And rehab. .. “but he’ll be good as new lickety-split! In the meantime, I’d like to introduce Dr. Colin Lee, family therapist. Dr. Lee is going to facilitate a discussion and help us talk about our feelings about today, okay?”

  After an hour, we learned that kids are amazingly resilient and therapists are highly overpaid. Dr. Lee recognized me and quickly averted eye contact.

  Four-year-old Kyle thought it was cool how Barney’s mom let him say bad words. A few children said they never knew that there was a “people head” under a dinosaur’s. Little Kisha said she felt sorry for Barney because he seemed “super-di-dooper mixed-up.” And Barbie said that she still loved Barney, even though he couldn’t remember her name. I shudder to think of her future relationships.

  For the first time in my four weeks as a mother, I believed what Candace told me. My new life as a mother really was more rich, interesting, and wonder-filled than ever before.

  Chapter 18

  A week later, Adam was still attached to the stuffed Barney that Candace gave the kids as a party favor. Dr. Lee said that since none of the children seemed particularly traumatized by Barney’s head injury, there would be no harm in sending them home with a memento of the event. The first time we left it behind at Lo Fats, Adam cried hysterically for twenty minutes before I figured out that Barney was missing. I changed his diaper, played the Baby Einstein video, gave him a pacifier, but nothing would soothe him. I even tried nursing him, which was my trump card. Adam was always comforted by nursing. Not this time. Not until we had Barney back in our possession. “That’s very unusual,” Jack said. “Infants don’t attach to toys so soon.” I really needed to buy a parenting book and read it. How did Jack know every developmental milestone?

  “I know!” I bluffed. “I don’t think he’s this attached to me and we sleep in the same bed and are together twenty four/seven. God knows his first exposure to Barney wasn’t a pleasant one, but he loves the thing!”

  Jack and I sat at the table sharing a rare meal together, discussing the appeal of Barney. When we were first dating, I would have thought his musings on Barney were his attempt at humor, but now I know better. He was genuinely curious about why the purple dinosaur was adored by millions of kids. “If you take a look at fertility goddesses and symbols of motherhood throughout the ages, the figures always have that rotund belly and soft arms like Barney. Across virtually every cultural divide, it’s the soft fleshy body that represents nurturing. I wonder if that has anything to do with it.”

  And he really did. My first instinct was to jokingly shoot back, “Yeah, Jack, kids are thinking, ‘Gee, that Barney reminds me of the fertility goddess of Zulu.’” A moment later, I thought he might have a point. “There’s something about Barney.” There’s something about Barney.

  The next day, I scoured the Internet for images of fertility goddesses and symbols of motherhood, and sure enough, they all looked quite a bit like Barney. I felt a bit guilty about leaving poor Desdemona out in the rain on the cobblestone street for all these weeks, but for the first time in months, I was actually inspired to write. I began pecking away at the keyboard about the Barney phenomenon and hypothesized that the popularity of this dinosaur is not a social commentary on the dumbing-down of today’s kids. Rather, any generation of kids in any part of the world would love Barney for the very same reasons the Greeks worshipped Demeter. Adam and I would play silly games while he was awake, then as soon as he nodded off, I was back at the keyboard. I watched Adam for signs that he might try to nurse from Barney, but no such luck of any breakthrough anecdotal evidence to support my theory.

  By the end of the week, I finished “There’s Something About Barney,” which admittedly would have been better timed with the release of the Cameron Diaz movie, and mailed it to Salon magazine.

  Jack agreed to watch Adam all day Saturday while Zoe and I treated ourselves to a day of pampering at Narcissa Day Spa. It was one week until Kimmy’s Valentine’s Day wedding and I wanted to feel cosmetically refreshed.

  I must give Kim my credit for being the least uptight bride I’d ever seen. I’ve been a bridesmaid three times, and brides are the biggest pain-in-the-ass group of women I’ve ever seen. They act as though the world really just might come to a screeching halt if their flower arrangements aren’t perfectly coordinated with the pattern on the salad fork. Kimmy was almost laissez-faire about the whole thing. We went to the florist together a few weeks ago and she whipped out a cigarette and started smoking right there in the flower shop. An ultra prim swan in an orange suit asked Kimmy to kindly preserve the health of her blossoms and lungs, and extinguish the Camel Light. She clasped her hands together and leaned in to Kimmy and me conspiratorially. “Where is Mr. Right today?” she asked.

  “If you know, clue me in, ʼcause I’m marrying a controlling son of a bitch in a few weeks,” Kimmy said. She sounded so unlike herself (and so much like me) that I actually checked my body to see if we were having some sort of Freaky Friday experience. When I later asked if everything was okay, Kimmy said she was just experiencing last-minute jitters. But she didn’t sound nervous. Just angry. She hadn’t said anything negative since, but then again, she hadn’t said much at all about the wedding. She was the world’s coolest bride, but then again why wouldn’t she pull this off perfectly too?

  In any event, since there was no chance of my outshining the bride, I asked the good people at Narcissa to give me the once-over and recommend a beauty day. The reception area of Narcissa was completely mirrored, and had a koi pond as a centerpiece to the room. I found it comforting that we could be unapologetically vain there. I appreciated the sentiment of Candace and Mary when they told me I “glowed with the beauty of motherhood,” but I wanted to glow with the beauty of actual beauty. I tried yoga, Pilates, weights, and aerobics, but couldn’t seem to lose weight at the rate I wanted to. A half pound a week was always so little that, after I weighed in, I figured I’d pick up the routine the next week. After all, why suffer for eight measly little ounces? Plus, these exercise classes all had hidden hazards. In yoga, when I lay on my back and placed my legs up in the air perpendicularly, an avalanche of thigh came close to suffocating me. In step aerobics, my ass arrived on and off the step a full two seconds after the rest of me.

  Zoe and I were taken from the sea-foam green reception area and into a welcoming room. We were given two ultra fluffy terry cloth robes and told to join our concierge of beauty in the orientation room. The room was lit with vanilla-scented candles and softly in the background played music that sounded like it was composed by stoners in Area 51. If this were a cult, I would have signed up on the spot. There was no threat of baby screams. No one expected me to feed, bathe, clothe, or care for him in any way.

  After a salt scrub, seaweed wrap, and Vichy shower, I was bored out of my mind and ready to go home. My breasts were ready to explode with milk so while my fellow narcissists ate lunch, I pumped in the hot stone massage room. Zoe said she had a massage from Adonis who kneaded her inner thighs so skillfully, she feared she may have started speaking in tongues. She said she was so zoned out, she honestly couldn’t remember if she just thought it, or if she actually requested a full-on horizontal massage. She also had a scalp massage and a cellulite treatment that actually seemed to work. Meanwhile, I got spiced, wrapped in seaweed like a piece of sushi, and hosed down like a zoo elephant.

  In the afternoon, I was scheduled for an eyebrow, leg, and bikini wax. “Am I allowed to have hair anywhere?” I joked with a Narcissa employee with burgundy leather pants and eyes made up to look Asian.

  Without a bit of friendliness, she replied, “You can do whateve
r you want.” She closed a large appointment book and walked away from me without a glance. The combination of erratic sleep and blatant dismissal created a lump in my throat that alerted me tears were coming. My mother would say I needed to confront this woman or my pain would turn inward and create some sort of horrible disease. She’d go berserk if she thought I was suppressing anger because according to her heal-thyself heroine, Louise L. Hay, unexpressed anger manifests itself in the form of cancer. Most of the time, my mother’s ideas sounded pretty absurd, but I had to wonder if there wasn’t an ounce of wisdom in them. If all feelings are their own energy, where do they go if they are unresolved? Or are they just fleeting, intangible thoughts that simply dissolve into thin air? Not that I thought anger causes cancer, but it definitely causes frustration.

  In the waxing room there was a paper-covered table like the ones in a doctor’s room. On a rolling, metal table was a pot that looked a lot like Pooh’s honey jar. Beside it were hundreds of Popsicle sticks, cotton, a magnifying glass, and tweezers. Why was I doing this anyway? The eyebrows I could understand, but it was not as though anyone touched my legs or saw me naked.

  In walked the burgundy pants woman, smelling like she’d just stepped out for a smoke. “Hello,” she said coldly. “I’m Vilma.”

  “Yes, I believe we met a few minutes ag-”

  “Let’s do your eyebrows first, then move down.”

  “I’m Lucy.”

  “Mmm,” she glanced down to her bowl of wax.

  “I’m a little nervous about this,” I said. Vilma said nothing. “Is it going to hurt a lot?” Again nothing. “Do you hear me?”

  “You’re nervous, so what? What am I to do with that? Will the waxing hurt? Yes.”

  “You know, on second thought, I’m going to skip it,” I said, hopping off the table and onto my feet.

  “Why’s that?” Vilma asked, barely moving her face. “Well, Vilma, to be honest with you, I’m not crazy about the thought of having a total bitch tear the hair off my body.”

  “Excuse me?” she raised her perfectly arched eyebrow. I inhaled for courage.

  “Which part was unclear?”

  “The part where you’d let someone else stand between you and what you want,” she said icily. “I assume you came here because you want beautifully shaped brows to change the look of your face.”

  “Well, I- ” I muttered.

  “And I assume you want your legs to feel smooth and sexy for four weeks, correct?”

  I nodded. I appreciated the tactful exclusion of mentioning my bikini area.

  “Then what does it matter if I’m a bitch? Look, frankly, Lumeta- ”

  “Lucy,” I corrected.

  “Whatever. You don’t want some sweetie puss in here yanking out your pubic hair. This is a job for a bitch.”

  I stared at her agape, completely at a loss on how to respond. “I, um, I don’t know. Maybe you’re, urn, maybe you’re right.”

  “Be happy I’m a bitch. I’m going to get every last piece of hair off your- ”

  “Okay, gotcha. Let’s just get this over with.” I sat back on the table, then rested my head on a pillow. The wax actually felt soothing as Vilma brushed it on my eyebrows.

  As she tore the muslin sheet off, I was shocked at the places I felt burning, excruciating pain. Why would I feel pain in the back of my neck? Why did my nose feel like someone kicked it with a pair of size twelve Doc Martens?

  I tried to make small talk with Vilma during the bikini wax, since she seemed to find this part of her job distasteful. “I just had a baby,” I said.

  “Mmmm,” she said, looking utterly disgusted at the prickly muslin sheet she just stripped. “You’re very hairy.”

  “A boy,” I tried again. “Adam. He’s five weeks old. Born on New Year’s Day.” Vilma tore another strip. The pain actually made me sweat this time. Vilma put on a pair of glasses with a magnifying glass attached to the front of it. She made an irritated tsk-tsk sound and grabbed her tweezers.

  “Stubborn hair,” she said, glaring at me as though this was all part of my evil plan to keep her at the muff longer than she’d planned. “Lift your leg,” she snapped. “Hold this for me,” she said, grabbing a pair of latex gloves.

  This was more complicated than gynecological surgery. She was unfolding so much skin and going places I didn’t even know existed, much less grew hair. “I wish you could pull my pregnancy pounds off with those strips. Now there would be a spa treatment.”

  “Hmm,” she nodded. “When was the last time you waxed?”

  “I’ve never waxed.”

  “I can tell.”

  Then why did you ask? “Do you have kids?” I asked Vilma.

  “I hate children,” she said flatly.

  “Oh, well then you shouldn’t have any. My friend Mary says it took her nine months to get back to her pre-pregnancy weight, but I just read an article that said Cindy Crawford was modeling just three months after she gave birth.”

  “She should chip a tooth,” Vilma said. Finally, I felt a moment of solidarity from this bitch. But just for a moment. “I have to charge you extra for all of this hair,” she said. “It’s not supposed to take this long. My clients aren’t usually this hairy.” She handed me a mirror to inspect her work. I couldn’t help gasping. “What?” Vilma said, annoyed.

  “I didn’t realize you were taking off so much,” I said, horrified. Vilma left me with a postage size stamp of hair that sat a half inch over my completely bare lips. Wow, I hadn’t seen them since before puberty. “I thought you were just doing the bikini line so I’d have a neat little triangle. This looks like, like Hitler!”

  Chapter 19

  Zoe couldn’t believe my experience with Vilma. Of course she had some sort of naked-body-nibbling therapy performed by Colin Farrell until she had multiple orgasms and white chocolate truffles served from Ben Affleck’s abs. Over dinner, we recalled the first night we met at college, how we stole a realtor’s “For Sale” sign and put it in front of the snootiest sorority. The finishing touch was the teaser on the sign that read, “Foreclosure.” Zoe and I were al ways in some sort of trouble, together and on our own. One semester, I was busted for reverse plagiarism, which basically meant I was too lazy to research a paper for my psychology class so cited false references to support my own theories on deviant behavior. Zoe failed a Shakespeare class for trying to bluff about Twelfth Night on a final. Her essay strictly referred to the video she checked out at the library.

  “Listen, I hate to drop this bomb on you, but there’s something I need to tell you,” Zoe said, changing the mood of dinner. “Rich Cantor passed away.”

  “Why would you say something like that?” I gasped.

  “I’m sorry. I saw his obituary in the alumni news. I wanted to tell you before you heard it from someone else.” I deflated. My first real love was dead. I could see him plainly in front of us, approaching Zoe’s and my table in the dorm cafeteria. He had a scruffy, unpretentious cuteness about him that had me way before hello. “So what do you recommend here?” he had asked.

  “The thinly sliced veal delicately bathed in a white wine and caper glaze is excellent,” I suggested.

  He smiled. “I was trying to find a way to meet you all last semester, so my New Year’s resolution was to do it first thing when we got back to school.”

  Zoe smirked. “It’s March.”

  Rich said if I went out with him he’d make it worth the wait.

  I did. And he did. For the next two years we were inseparable best friends with incredible chemistry. We always said we wished this could last, which might sound as though we were making plans for the future. But actually, it was a realization that while we had something special, it was a relationship on a meter that expired upon graduation. After college, I was going to stay in Ann Arbor for my MFA and Rich was going to teach English in Japan. We wrote for a while, but then I met Jack and I heard through mutual friends that Rich married a Japanese woman and lived in Kyoto with two child
ren. Last I heard he was a software engineer and started a few dot-coms, some of which were actually viable. Now Zoe was telling me he was dead.

  “How did he die?” I asked.

  “Cancer.” And with that one word, a small part of me died too. That always sounds so dramatic when people say it, but it felt so true right now. A part of my youth, my love, my history was gone. Suddenly I felt a slap of guilt over making his death somehow about me. Frighteningly, I was becoming my mother. I forced myself to imagine a Japanese woman holding his hand through chemotherapy, then dressing two little boys for their father’s funeral. God, he was such a good guy. I knew my mother’s theory about cancer being unexpressed anger was a crock of shit. Rich had the most insane temper I’d ever seen. When he was pissed about something, he’d curse, throw things, and scream for hours.

  As I drove up to my home, I saw an unfamiliar car parked in the driveway. A perky sports car with no infant seat or baby gear packed in it. I unlocked the door to a burst of voices on the television screen. Jack was watching a movie, but he wasn’t alone. “Oh hey, kiddo.” Jack sat up and reached for the remote control. He paused the film to introduce the woman sitting beside him on my chair. “Natalie, this is Lucy. Luce, Natalie,” he gestured with his hands at each of us. Natalie looked a bit like Alanis Morissette, with long, wavy brown hair and clear pale skin. She wore a loose-fitting, embroidered peasant top with well worn Levi’s and a silver skull ring on her middle finger. It nearly crushed my finger as we shook hands. Her shoes were strewn across the floor next to her tote bag. Everything about this setup screamed fifth date. They’d already had dinner at a restaurant, done their quirky off-beat date like chasing the grunions at midnight, and had sex. Now they were renting videos and dressing comfortably. “I thought you were at the spa this weekend,” he said.

  “It’s a day spa,” I said.

  With that, Natalie got up and started collecting her things. “Jack, why don’t I call you tomorrow and we can take Adam to the park like we planned?”