“I’ve got to go write to her.”
“Don’t make it mean so much. She loves you,” he shouted to my backside.
Back at the ol’ slowing MacBook, I deleted the Wow, you’re pregnant . . . should I pretend I don’t know? comment and rubbed my chin with my forefinger, wondering how many others had been cheated out of knowing their best friend was pregnant.
M-a-u-r-e-e-n, I wrote, seething still. I’d love to come to your baby shower. Thank you for the invitation.
Then I added, for a touch of jagged humor, By the way, are you pregnant?
I almost hit send, but paused instead.
Maybe she really did want to tell me? Maybe I should let her? I didn’t want to be a passive-aggressive fuck. My breathing slowed for a moment, and I remembered the day she’d introduced herself to me, so kind, smiling, with her long, curly hair. Some people ask, “How are you?” merely as protocol; she’d asked me like she really wanted to know.
“Okay,” I said to the ceiling, saving the draft. “I’ll give her a week.”
Chapter 18
Carpool
Birds had crapped quarter-sized gobs of dark-brown and speckled-white mini-logs on the expansive white hood of the ’97 Mercury Marquis I’d inherited from my other grandmother when she passed away. I noticed them as Gabe, Jack, Connor-the dog-not-mycousin’s-baby, and I sat in the car line waiting to drop Jack off at school.
“Do you have a coupon for a color copy, Mommy?” Jack asked me the question from his usual backseat ride.
I didn’t hear it, didn’t answer, just stared at the bird shit on the hood.
What will the schoolteachers tending the car line think? Will they say I’m a bad mother, dirty, not fit to raise a child? Maybe it’s more than a sign I shouldn’t have babies; maybe I should definitely move out of state? And I’ll probably have to seriously reconsider my relationship. I mean, maybe this is just a big ol’ sign that Gabe and I aren’t right for each other anymore. And, my God, how many birds does it really take to do this kind of poop job? What does it mean that Maureen hasn’t called and I have all this shit on my car? Is it a metaphor for the sewage-like nature of life? My life?
The muse chimed in, “Metaphor my monkey ass! Run it through a damn car wash.”
Maybe if I hadn’t done that thing in college, that thing we can’t talk about, maybe then I would be making a higher salary. Or I’d have sold a novel. Oh dear God, I’m definitely going to have to go shopping. Maybe if I have nicer clothes, the birds will like me and shit on Gabe’s mini-van instead.
“Poop! Poop! Poop!” The monkey muse danced in my head while Jack shouted from the back seat.
“M-o-o-o-o-m! Do . . . you . . . have . . . a . . . coupon . . . for . . . a . . . color . . . copy?
Then again, maybe the shit on my car is really just shit. Maybe my goo-ridden car just means that some birds sat on a tree branch all night eating berries, worms and whatever else birds eat; then they took a community dump.
“Mom!”
“Sorry, baby. I was distracted. I’m present now. What did you say?”
“Oh, never mind.” He rolled his eyes, glassy from sleep.
Oh God, I wasn’t listening to my child. What does that mean? What will Jack think? Will he need therapy for the rest of his life? Does he think I’m a bad mother? Not fit to raise a child? I should definitely move out of state. Does Gabe really love me?
“Have a great day at school today,” Gabe said as he pulled the car up to the entrance.
“Look for miracles today,” I said, positivity on overkill, unsure if I was trying to inspire him or me.
“There are no miracles at school, Mom,” Jack corrected, clearly irritated, as he forced himself out of the car, red backpack slumping his shoulders. The bell rang; Jack jumped to attention, slammed the car door, and rushed off.
“He’s a cutie. It’s tough growing up,” Gabe said, shifting the car into drive.
I rolled down the back windows so Connor-the dog-not-baby could suck in the fresh air, while I contemplated having babies or not.
A couple of days had gone by and still no word from Maureen, which was exactly why I should not have wanted to have another baby. How could Maureen and I raise our kids together, side by side, like sisters, if she doesn’t even tell me she’s having a baby?
But there was much more to my indecision: I could feel myself slowing. I liked to sleep in. And through the night. I also liked naps, and reading quietly in a chair, undisturbed. With each year Jack aged, I became less and less interested in planning Spring Flings at under-attended PTO meetings, playing catch in the street, or jumping up and down like we used to when Jack was a toddler and a fire truck passed.
Plus, I recognized the irony of talking babies while in a rough patch. Shouldn’t there be a warning label? Don’t be thinking about getting pregnant at the same time you are pricing antidepressants.
Stranger still, I was beginning to see a pattern that I could not—would not—admit to anyone: I seemed to want babies the most when I felt unhappy, unfulfilled, and unsatisfied. Perhaps, just perhaps, during a depression is not the best time to pop a little Joey into my pouch, for the hospital has a “no return” policy and won’t refund the charge.
Despite all the reasons not to, I just couldn’t get the feeling gone. “Let’s have babies,” I blurted out to Gabe.
He slowed the car to a stop at the sign at the end of the road and rubbed the top of his forehead, ruffling the blond bush of his Christopher Lloyd brows. “Can we talk about this later?”
“Why don’t you want to have kids with me?” I knew the question wore him out.
“Why is it so important to you? Why do you want to have a baby?” he asked.
“You never answer my question.”
I could see him thinking, really thinking. Not once had he ever answered a question of mine (no matter what topic) with sheer and utter abandon. The methodical engineering with which he constructed his thoughts earned my trust. Without his planning and focus, we would be a pinball machine. Yet, I wanted him to be wild. Just once.
“Well,” he started, “For one, the less responsibility the better. I want us to have more freedom to travel and have adventures. Two, I don’t really have the headspace for a baby right now. I’m focused on completing my business projects so we can move on. I can’t afford anything that would distract me. Thirdly, while I’m optimistic in general, my worldview of the macroeconomics has not changed, and I think that in the next decade, it will be difficult enough without adding extra worry. We have Jack to look after.”
“So you are saying that you don’t ever want to have children with me?”
“Baby, we have a child. We are raising a child, already.”
My God, did I find his priorities irritating. The birds definitely better shit on his car.
He rubbed his eyes again with one hand on the steering wheel and licked the corner of his lips like he was looking for water. “So, why is it important to you to have a baby?”
“Because it just is” seemed like a perfectly acceptable response to me, but I knew he wouldn’t take the bait. I would have to first think of an answer to inspire him to act, to counter his reasoning, but besides the bird shit, all I could think about was coffee.
I don’t drink coffee. I wish I did; I could use a hit of caffeine. The burnt toast taste is too bitter for me to ingest, but I do love the smell. Coffee grounds are rich, earthy. They make a home smell lived in, weathered like a Western saddle. When the fear of an unknown I can’t distinguish has tangled me captive in my own bed, the coffee grounds bring me into the world. I can practically feel the waves of aroma holding my hand, reminding me I am safe. The water percolates and drips into the pot, warm, flavorful, inviting me over. It laughs a little. “Are you sure you don’t want to have me?” the brew teases.
Yes, indeed, I was sure I didn’t like coffee. The more rejected I felt by Gabe and the more suspicious I became over Maureen’s silence, the more exhilarating it felt
to be sure about something. I used to get so excited about trips to Europe or speaking engagements on radio shows or a weekend training course or moving into a new home. As uncertainty crept in at work, in love, in friendship, and in myself, I found that in order to “be normal” I had to be stoked when I showered in the morning. I forced myself to celebrate in the basic necessities of life and the simple mundane truths like the flame of a burning candle, the fraying toothbrush on my sink, and the profound knowing that I did not like the taste of coffee. If I didn’t embrace that knowing, I wasn’t sure I would survive the twisted spat of psychological winter.
Gabe kept on driving, and I couldn’t remember if Maureen drank coffee. After fifteen years of friendship, surely I must know her preference. I’ve heard it said our brains are so powerful that our memory bank stores even the information we only hear once; we’ll know it forever. According to this theory, I could, hypothetically, speak Spanish fluently.
The practical application of my entire four years of learning, however, translated into “Dónde está la playa?” Frankly, “Where is the beach?” did not qualify me to be a Hispanic diplomat, or even a camarero at the local bar. Whatever study found that my brain knows everything it has ever encountered needed to also provide the 800 number to the locksmith, so I could have someone come over right away to jimmy rig the portal. Then, I could know whether I ought to offer Maureen coffee or tea next time I saw her. If I ever saw her again.
Did it make me a terrible friend that I didn’t remember her caffeine preferences? Was my forgetfulness the reason she hadn’t yet told me about the bun in the oven?
I hoped not; I loved her and all the hours it takes for her to apply sunscreen before she will go outside. I loved her when she didn’t return my call for weeks. I loved her even if I didn’t see her for months. When it came to Maureen and me, the measure of time seemed so inadequate, like pound cake.
Why hasn’t she called to tell me?
Why do I want a baby, when Gabriel does not? To prove him wrong? To prove he really did want kids with me (an expression of our unified love) after all? Because Jack will someday not want to snuggle? Because, if it’s a girl, she will have blond curls like her daddy? Because a child must love his mamma? Because I want to be loved best of all?
“Get a kitten!” the monkey muse, unsympathetic as usual, butted in.
Because, if he wanted to have a baby with me, then I’d have a purpose?
If he loved me enough he’d just do it, I thought.
I slumped in the passenger seat. Arms folded. Teeth gritted. Gabe drove home, next to me, his eyes gentle, trying so hard to find the key to unhook the baby-wanting padlock clasped to my armor.
For a couple of years, we had a lot of those third-grade moments. I’m not proud of them, but I didn’t know how else to respond. Years later, I would recognize the spotty self-love and the grip that lived around my neck, and I would find the answers to my questions. Back then, I only felt desperation.
I looked at him, squinting my eyes. His mouth was still, no remnants of words, no evidence he’d say anything more, just waiting patiently for me to respond to his ever-question “why?”
“Just because,” I answered at last.
Chapter 19
Of Course Happy
“John and Jayda called,” Gabe said later that night while frying onions for spaghetti sauce, a dishtowel draped over his left shoulder. I admired his thick bicep as he lifted the frying pan from the burner to shuffle the onions. He’d gained some weight over the past few months, and his belly stuck out over his jeans, but I loved that belly, rubbing it for luck every chance I got.
“How are they?” I asked, remembering the sweetness of being in his arms as I attempted to move through another gray patch. He’d learned not to “fix it” anymore. Instead he’d hold me and say simple words like, “Just cry. It’s okay. I’m strong enough for both of us.” His chest, when I snuggled up to it, felt inflated, hardened, packed-full of the unspoken. At times, as he held me, I caught him staring up at the corner of the ceiling, looking just as lost, just as unsure as I felt.
“They’re getting married,” he said, adding ground meat to the pan and sending up plumes of smoke and steam.
“Great, when’s the wedding?” A trip to Malibu might be the perfect reset button. I’d bring my fleece and wooly hat for walks on the beach to watch dolphins surf. We could drive down to Abbot Kinney for the day, hold hands, and window shop for eclectic items to help me remember that I’m of the world, not just this small town in the South. While there, I’d pop into the Hard Tail store and pick up a new yoga top. Maybe we’d lollygag along the boardwalk in Venice Beach and see if we could spot anyone famous or tripping on acid. I wondered what was playing at the theaters on the Strip? God, even the thought of city life felt invigorating.
“Not sure,” he answered, focusing on the sauce. “But, they’re also pregnant.”
I walked out of the kitchen without a word.
Of course, I was happy for John and Jayda. I was happy for all the goddamn pregnant people.
Chapter 20
Unsinkable
When Maureen finally called a week later, I answered the phone thinking about a seventy-degree, sunny Colorado day in May when our twenty-year-old bodies had pedaled bicycles up a mountain. I remembered how Maureen rode the bike like my mother rode a horse: at ease, with command. Just the slightest shift of her thigh, and the bike would take off up an incline. Steady. Consistent. Effortless.
Two hundred yards behind her, I huffed. My feet pedaled in fast bursts just to catch up. But I never could. I’d stop every hundred yards, exhaling in quick, sharp gusts like an airport security puffer machine. My legs ached and protested every yard, my knees boycotted each spin of the wheel, my thighs wrote resignation letters with each turn. When I came to the same incline Maureen had zipped up, I popped off my seat and walked. Again and again, I pedaled fast to catch up, then tuckered out.
Fifteen years after our bike ride in Glenwood Canyon, waiting for Maureen’s explanation of “not telling the best friend about the baby,” I still puffed. I felt frantic and hysterical, pedaling through life just to catch up to the steady human kindness, openness, and acceptance Maureen embodied for me. Just out of college, she had introduced me to Tori Amos at a Red Rocks concert where the music swallowed me just like the little earthquakes Amos writes about and awakened me to lyrics and thoughts and ideas that catapulted me out of my childhood Disney cocoon into the real world. One year, she had planned a birthday surprise for me at the Molly Brown House Museum because, at some point that I don’t remember, I’d mentioned that I loved watching Debbie Reynolds dance and kick her heels in The Unsinkable Molly Brown. During my first marriage, when Maureen caught Tom shouting at me, “You should be happy to be married to me. I don’t beat you,” she took the edge off, comforted me, and distracted me. After Hurricane Katrina destroyed my home, Maureen had flown to Louisiana, then driven with me, Jack, and our surviving books, photo albums, and clothes to Colorado, to hunker down and figure out what do to next. Years of friendship deeds dotted my memory as I listened to her on the other end of the phone, trying so hard to make it right.
“I’m sorry,” Maureen said, sounding every bit the thousands of miles away that she lived. Though we both knew our distance was no longer measured by the expanse over mountains. It was now measured in the age gap of my son to her unborn child, my preference for variety versus her comfort in structure, and metaphors like the size of our wrists. Her wrist is solid, a persisting difference, a forever physical reminder that she is she, and I am I. She can wear a bangle bracelet like no other. My wrist is too bony. I get lost in a bangle, overpowered, like a forest choked by kudzu. Maureen, like her wrist, was solid in life. She’d built a clientele over years, lived in the same house for years, religiously set aside money in a retirement account, and exfoliated her lips every night with a toothbrush. I, on the other hand, lived my life as if being chased. I dashed from job to job, moved from sta
te to state, spent money before I made it, and prided myself on the fact that eating was the only routine thing I did every day. I liked the adventure of not knowing what came next. Maureen always knew.
“I really wanted to tell you. But I wanted to do it in person and was hoping we could talk on the phone,” she said. Another measure that gapped us: Maureen needed talking. I would have happily engaged with a written “I’m prego!” in a quick email or a text.
“Our lives are so different,” Maureen sighed, speaking what I had been thinking. “What do we have in common anymore? Sometimes, I wonder why you even like me. You’ve grown so much. I haven’t.”
If I had grown, Maureen had something to do with it. In her eyes, I’d learned about being a friend. I’d learned to be steadier. I’d learned to show up when she expected me to. In the quarreling times, I had learned to feel safe in our friendship despite our differences because I knew we’d work it out, no matter what. I knew she wasn’t like the man who put his hands on my neck. From her, I’d learned that we don’t walk away simply because we are different. She made me want to be a better friend; I didn’t want to disappoint her. I wanted to be the friend she could count on as much as I had counted on her over the years.
I was angry at the hands I still felt around my neck. I kept running from those hands. Tom’s hands. Teachers’ hands. My parents’ hands. All the hands that I thought were trying to choke out self-expression, make me someone else, someone they wanted me to be. As I began to see how I was conditioned to feel betrayal, to look for evidence of betrayal more than support, I became aware that I was not angry with Maureen at all. Maureen had never asked me to be anyone but me. She loved me when I was grumpy. She loved me when I was sad. She loved me when I flaked on her. She loved me. Period.
The Elegant Out Page 7
