Reality appeared suddenly—and rudely. Gravity kicked in and Eddie’s wetness escaped from me and was absorbed into my panties. I needed to get home immediately to shower myself with Clorox and vomit my Lo Fats chicken salad. “Good-bye, Eddie,” I said, my minivan screeching away.
I walked into my house ten minutes later to find Natalie feeding Adam a bottle of my breast milk as she and my husband watched a DVD. It was some romantic comedy where adorable Kate Hudson was charming her leading man—not being mistaken for a sperm receptacle that a dense cook may or may not want to shoot his wad into again.
Chapter 24
“Men are vile creatures, darling!” Anjoli said into the phone. She never bothered with “Hello” or “It’s your mother.” God knows I rarely heard her start a conversation by asking how I was. My mother immediately launched into her monologue of the day.
I lifted Adam from his bouncer seat and rested him on my hip. His hair was a thick patch, similar to Jack’s. He was starting to mimic the facial expressions of Jack and me, which was hilarious to see. Adam also picked up a few mugs from Natalie, which was far less adorable. “Mother, this is not a good time for me,” I said, about to explain that we were on our way to a La Leche League meeting.
“Me either, Lucy! That’s why I’m calling. I’m in crisis, darling!” She always pronounced “crisis” with a French accent.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, deciding I could pack Adam’s bag while still carrying on a conversation with Anjoli.
“It’s that bastard pediatrician of yours.”
“Dr. Comstock? What did he do?”
“Kiki’s boyfriend invited us to his place in Barbados next week. Just the four of us in his fabulous seaside villa with an entire staff, and a million nightclubs and places to shop. Guess what Edward said when I tell him about our plans?”
“That he can’t go,” I said flatly.
“Yes! How did you guess?”
“Mother, he’s a married man. You can’t expect him to be available to you on a moment’s notice like a single guy would.”
“He’s a bore,” she dismissed. “If he had any passion for living, he would find a way to make this trip happen for us. How many times in his boring little life does an opportunity like this fall into his lap?”
“This is your crisis, Mother?”
“It’s pushing my abandonment buttons,” she said. I sat on the couch, resigned that I would be late for my meeting. After a minute, I reconsidered.
“Mother, call my cell phone, so we can finish this chat while I’m driving.”
“Isn’t that illegal?” she asked.
“So is trading banned Kent cigarettes for Romanian money! So is ignoring a Czech order that you never enter the country again. And believe it or not, so is adultery in some states.”
“Not in New York!” Anjoli snapped.
“That’s right because nothing matters if it’s not happening in New York, least of all in New Jersey.”
“Darling, we’re talking about your safety. Driving while you’re on the cell phone is equivalent to driving under the influence of two cocktails.”
“Three if the person’s talking to you,” I replied.
“I simply care about you. There’s no need to get huffy.”
“Mother, if you don’t want me to drive while on the cell phone with you, then let me go. I will call you later. Dr. Comstock refusing your invitation to Barbados does not qualify as a crisis. I’m late and I need to go.”
“Lucy, this is a crisis for me,” Anjoli pleaded.
“It’s not for me, though!”
“Can’t you help me, darling? Talk to Edward for me. Tell him what a cad he’s being.”
“Okay, Mother, I will help you.” I took a deep breath and looked at Adam dressed in his jacket and spring hat. “Here’s my advice. Stop dating married men. They are not emotionally or physically available to you. You are far too high-maintenance for this gig. I can’t remember a single legitimate relationship you’ve ever been in, and it takes its toll on everyone who has to play a role in it—including me. Especially me. Mother, I am by no means blaming you for every relationship problem I have, and you know that I love you dearly. But I am so tired of your boyfriend dramas. Do you know how many times I’ve heard this same story? Your married boyfriends always fail you, and guess what? They always will. I think you like it that way because it gives you something to complain about. You know something else, Mother? I think you like that these men are unavailable to you because it gives you an excuse to be unavailable to them. I’m sorry to be so harsh. I love you, but I have real problems to deal with. I like going to these La Leche League groups because I can talk to women who have issues that I can relate to. I like hearing about sore nipples and introducing solid foods because it’s some thing I can understand. And even though none of them has a husband who dumped them the day the pregnancy results came in, they can understand many of the things I’m going through with Adam. I am now ten minutes late for my meeting and I’m not going to make it eleven. I’m going to hang up now, and because you’re so concerned about my safety, I will not be calling you from the road. Your problems will be here when I get home. If not, I’m sure you’ll have some new ones, so I’ll call you then. I love you. Good-bye.” I wish I could report that I hung up the phone and strode out the door without an ounce of guilt. “Are you still there?” I asked after a moment.
“I’m here,” Anjoli said, clipped. “Are you going to say anything?”
“You’re very dramatic, darling. Enjoy your meeting and call me the moment you return.”
“Are you mad at me?” I asked.
“I have anger, but I wouldn’t say you were the cause of it. It’s not my style to blame other people for my feelings.”
“Be careful, Mother. Louise Hay says passive-aggressive behavior causes wrinkles.” And then I hung up the phone and strode out the door without an ounce of guilt.
As I expected, I was late for the La Leche League meeting. What was a pleasant surprise was that my ten-minute lag was considered neither rude nor unusual. Only three mothers were there—Mary, Candace, and an overweight hippie who I hadn’t seen before, but she seemed as if she were an old-timer with the group. Hannah wore a loose fitting faded t-shirt, corduroy pants, and utilitarian shoes. Her long, curly, salt-and-pepper hair was pulled back into a tortoise-shell barrette and draped over the denim jacket on her seat back. Mary looked at her watch and said she was expecting another three mothers, and asked if we minded waiting another ten minutes. We shook our heads that we didn’t.
“So anyway, I’m telling you, they’re worse than the tobacco companies,” Hannah continued.
“It just sounds as though you’re being terribly judgmental of women who use formula,” Candace countered. “It’s hard enough being a mother without these divisions between the stay-at-home moms and the working mothers, the nursing mothers, and the ones who use formula. I don’t know, Hannah. I hate to sound like Rodney King, but can’t we all get along? I mean, every month we sit here and talk about how people condemn our extended nursing and chide us for nursing in public. It’s hurtful when your friends and family don’t support you. It seems like we’re simply turning around and doing the same thing to women who formula feed.”
“It’s different,” Hannah’s husky voice defended. Mary set out books and pamphlets on a table and hand-wrote a sign reminding people to return books they’d borrowed the month before.
“How?” Candace asked. I always envied people who could deliver one-word inquiries. I don’t have the confidence to be concise.
“I’m not judging the mothers who use formula,” Hannah said. “I have a major problem with the misleading tactics the formula-makers use. I think mothers are being duped. I’m not pitting us against them. I’m on their side.”
“Ah yes, the poor victimized mothers who make a choice you disagree with need you to come educate—read save—them, is that it?” Candace said. “Look, I hear what you’re saying. I�
��m not blind to what Nestle did to those women in Africa. But I have friends who use formula, and my unspoken deal on nursing, and in life, is that I let them do their thing and not try to change them, and I hope they return the courtesy.”
“Candace,” Mary interrupted. “What Hannah is saying is that it’s the formula companies she has a problem with, not the mothers. Is there something you want to talk about this week? Is your mother-in-law still pestering you about weaning Barbie?”
Mary is one of those people who says very little, but when she does, it’s always relevant. I always feel as though if I spout out enough words, sooner or later something will make sense. As it turned out, Candace’s friend suggested—well, insisted—that she refrain from nursing at a dinner party. “She said, ‘You’ll be more comfortable in the den’ and stupid me actually thought she was concerned with my comfort, so I said that I was fine. She shook her head no and made this sad little face.” Mary rushed over and hugged Candace.
“I was told to ‘put my breast away’ at a wedding reception. Well, a jilting reception,” I said, hoping to get in on the act. Catching my Anjoli tendencies, I stopped and offered, “That’s terrible.”
“I really don’t know what the middle ground is,” Candace said. “I know some people are uncomfortable with my nursing, and it would’ve been fine if she didn’t shake her head like she was disgusted with me.”
“It’s not fine!” Hannah shouted like a battle cry. “People need to get used to seeing mothers breastfeed. Why are you so damned conciliatory, Candace?! These people would never ask you to bottlefeed in the den.”
“Well, it is their home,” I offered.
“And it’s Mother Nature’s planet!” Hannah shouted.
Hannah was militant, but there was something I liked about her. Beneath her bravado and breast-thumping, I saw someone very wounded by the fact that her politics and intellect had alienated her from mainstream culture. I couldn’t see where she fit in the world, but hoped she had a community of peaceful, angry people to share her life with. She didn’t necessarily want to be accepted by mainstream culture, but at the same time was frustrated that she wasn’t. I must also admit that part of my affection for Hannah was that her comment about formula companies using tobacco-industry-like tactics sparked my interest.
While Adam napped, I surfed the Internet and found thousands of articles supporting her theory. Dozens of obscure left-wing papers and even medical journals documented some pretty unsavory strategies used by formula-makers. I found that they spent an average of $8,000 per pediatrician per year supplying free gifts to offices. Not a bad thing to do until you consider that everything has logos and is a tacit endorsement for formula. I read about a formula company that offered to build a new maternity ward at a hospital, provided it was far away from the nursery. The author explained that the farther the distance between mother and newborn, the more difficulties the couples experience nursing. I read dozens of other examples of shady deals and unethical tactics used, but the one I found most disturbing was the funding of emergency room television dramas where babies died from “insufficient milk syndrome.” Nursing women were characterized as selfish flakes who were responsible for their babies’ deaths by refusing to use formula. Brought to you by the good people of the formula industry.
Hannah was right. There was a vast right-wing conspiracy to undermine breastfeeding. It was all about economics. And mothers and babies were being sacrificed at the altar of corporate greed. The problem was that Candace was right too. It was time for a cease-fire in the mommy wars. I wanted to do a piece that exposed the formula industry for exploiting mothers, while still being respectful of women’s diverse lifestyles and choices.
Without even thinking through my pitch, I called the editor of Mothering magazine, which I discovered through the La Leche League traveling library. The magazine catered to women from Hannah to Candace and everyone in between who expressed some level of commitment to “natural” parenting. That could mean anything from simply buying organic fruits and veggies to homeschooling and having a family bed. As the phone rang, I drifted into thought about the arts community Jack and I never started. We’d planned to grow our own fruits and vegetables and toss our scraps in a compost heap located just beyond the horse stable.
My fantasy was interrupted by a lovely woman who listened politely to my pitch. At first, I thought the line had disconnected because she was so quiet. Then I realized she must’ve hated the idea. After a seemingly eternal pause, she told me my timing was perfect. My husband asked for a divorce the day I discovered I was pregnant. My timing is anything but perfect, but please continue. “We were talking about doing an investigative piece on the ties between the formula industry and the American Academy of Pediatrics,” she explained. The woman asked me to send her samples of my writing and explained the scope of the piece. Three days later, she called back and asked me to write the piece for their summer cover story.
Thrilled as I was to be writing all of these articles about mothering, I felt guilty about not working—not even wanting to work—on my novel. Poor Desdemona. Ignored first by her husband, then her creator.
Chapter 25
“I have to cancel lunch today, Lucy. I’m sorry.” In the background of Candace’s apology was the cacophony of a household of multiple children. “Everything’s crazy right now. Manny’s been working late, I’m having family in this weekend, and Barbie’s having a fight with her imaginary friend.”
“A fight with her imaginary friend? “ I said, laughing.
“It’s kooky, I know, but what can you do? Last week, Nina wasn’t speaking to Barbie. Last month, Nina punched Barbie right in the face.”
“Nina?” I asked.
“The imaginary friend,” explained Candace matter-of-factly. An operator interrupted our call with an emergency breakthrough from Anjoli. “Oh dear!” Candace shrieked. “You’d better get that. I hope everything’s okay.”
“It’s fine,” I said, sure I sounded like the daughter with no compassion. It’d been decades since I was startled by my mother’s emergency breakthroughs. Once she interrupted my phone call to ask where I put the salad dressing. Another time, she wanted to know if I was hungry and wanted to grab a bite. (She lived in the same apartment building at the time, mind you.) Sometimes her motives were less selfish. A few times she’d called because she was at a sale and wanted to know if I’d like her to pick up an item she claimed was “to die for.” Then she’d ask if I was still a size twelve or if I’d “slimmed down any.” Back when I protested these interruptions, she reminded me that she wouldn’t have to break through if I just got call waiting. I suggested she call my cell phone, but she said she loved me too much to contribute to my ear cancer.
“Darling, it’s Mommy,” she sobbed into the phone. I knew this was for the benefit of the operator connecting the call. “There’s been a terrible, terrible emergency in the family,” she recited between sniffles. “Thank you, operator, that will be all.”
“What’s up?” I said, biting into an apple. Today reminded me of my days in grad school. Jack and Natalie were out with the baby so I had no childcare responsibilities. My morning of researching my article was highly productive. And my calendar was free for the next several hours.
Anjoli’s voice perked right up. “I did it!” she said.
“Did what?” I played along.
“I dumped Edward,” she sang. “I wanted to tell you just as soon as I hung up the phone with him because I knew you’d be proud of me. Oh, Lucy, I was so empowered. You should have seen me. I was magnificent.” And there I could see my free time being sucked up into the black hole of my mother’s ego. As I settled back into one of the avocado La-Z-Boys, I realized that every time Anjoli monopolized my time with her drama, I allowed her to. But I didn’t have to. Part of me wanted to hear her Edward story. And truth be told, I enjoyed feeling self-righteous and put upon as Anjoli’s one-woman audience.
“Mother, that’s wonderful,” I began. �
�I have about ten minutes for you, so give me the highlights.”
“Ten minutes?! Where are you going?” she demanded.
After a few moments of deliberation, I told her the truth. “I didn’t say I was going anywhere. What I said was that I have ten minutes for your story.”
“Since when are you so stingy with your time, darling? All your life I listened to your stories without putting time limits on it.”
“Mother!” I could not help jumping into her fray. “You had me tell stories to entertain your friends. Plus, you are the mother. You’re supposed to listen to me.”
“God, how I wish you had a daughter so she would visit this type of insensitivity on you some day!” Anjoli shrieked. “I can’t be held to some ludicrous deadline simply because you’ve taken some sort of boundaries workshop. I get quite anxious with time limits.”
I sighed, exhausted just by the thought of where to begin. “Mother, first, I haven’t been to a boundaries workshop, though now that you mention it, it seems like a good idea. Second, you deal with deadlines every day. You run a business in Times Square, not some little sweat lodge in North Dakota. Get on with it and tell me about dumping Dr. Comstock!”
Less than one second after I’d finished, Anjoli obliged. “So, as you know I’m off to Barbados this weekend, and Edward says he can’t go because his wife is on the committee for this Burn Victims Society Gala or what not, and the event is Saturday night. Now I care about burn victims just as much as the next person, but he’s already bought a table so what does it matter if he’s there or not ?”
“But his wife is on the- ” I started .
“This is about choosing her over me,” she said. “It’s about making one relationship a priority and the other some little side dish on the side!”
Side dish on the side?
Tales From the Crib Page 16
