by Jenny Mollen
From my spot on the floor I heard Sid crying. Jason woke up to a half-empty bed, hyperventilating.
“Everything okay? Baby? Baby?” he called out, like he’d just dreamed I was mowed down by a school bus.
It didn’t surprise me that I’d married a man who was the exact opposite of cavalier when it came to injuries. Jason was an overreactor of the highest degree. Not only was his threshold for pain low, but he was an actor. On countless occasions, he would take what I’d consider a small event and heighten it to a full-blown catastrophe. When he stubbed his toe, he’d start screaming like he was being sodomized with a hot poker.
“Oh MY GOD! FUUUUCK!” he’d howl, then do a Chaplin-esque pratfall and writhe on the ground in agony.
Sometimes I’d laugh at his act, but for the most part, I ignored him and charged ahead—the same way my mom was now doing with me. I never intended it to be hurtful. It just never occurred to me to make a big deal of it. He was fine. And he didn’t have AIDS.
“Babe?!” he called again, then jumped out of bed and scrambled toward me.
“Yes?” I said, lying on my back now, staring up at my mom.
I explained to Jason that I was too afraid to stand on my leg for fear of damaging it further, but I needed to pee and hadn’t wanted to wake him. I still needed to pee, but Sid was demanding he be removed from his crib and placed back on my boob. So Jason grabbed Sid while I climbed up my mom’s body like a toddler and used her shoulder as a crutch to the toilet.
“This really blows,” my mom said.
“Is there a doctor on the island who could look at me?” I sat on the toilet, defeated.
“Only on Maui.”
Maui was a forty-five-minute boat ride away. The idea of packing up my leg and heading over to have some nurse practitioner give me an Ace bandage seemed like a giant waste of time. The other pitfall of having parents in the medical profession is that you become a know-it-all medicine snob. Whenever I needed a prescription my dad would write it for me. If I wanted to see a specialist I got right in. I was quick to throw around medical jargon: subcutaneous, anaphylaxis, hyperlipidemia. And aside from the one time I offered my high school boyfriend’s father a Xanax instead of a Zantac, I was fairly adept. In many ways I feel like my entire life has been building to that one watershed moment where I get to storm through a crowd of concerned citizens and say, “Clear the way, people, I’m a doctor’s daughter!”
From the bathroom my mom helped me outside to her new teak lawn chairs, where Sid was anxiously waiting. I nursed him and told Jason that I wanted to hold off on seeing a doctor. The plan instead was to head over to the hotel and ask for a pair of crutches.
Jason changed Sid’s clothes and then obligingly changed mine.
“Chop-chop, Jen!” my mom called out from her personal golf cart, urgent, like an ambulance driver with a half-dead passenger in the backseat.
“I had the governor ripped out of this thing while we were in San Diego last month,” she confessed as she peeled down the road toward the hotel.
“What’s a governor?”
“You know, the brake that keeps you from hauling ass? Fuck that!”
She gunned it over a pothole just to prove her point. Sometimes I would look at her and wish I could be as cool. At her core she would always be that recalcitrant sixteen-year-old girl. The one who endured belt beatings from a brutal mother for sneaking out to see Led Zeppelin. The one who rode topless on the back of a Harley, protesting the war. For as much as she’d hurt me, my deepest desire was still to merge with her, to fully gain her acceptance and finally be let in. But like all the pretty, popular girls of grade schools past, she was always two steps ahead of me, with blonder hair and newer shoes, forever evading my grasp.
My mom parked her golf cart directly in front of the valet and told him not to touch it. She assured him she’d be right back; he naively believed her.
I sat in the cart with one leg propped up, staring at the sun-kissed surfer kid in his wrinkled polo shirt as my mom scampered into the lobby, looking for the hotel manager. I was used to my mom doing as she pleased, regardless of rules. One of the Moc’s most notable quotes was “Rules don’t apply to me,” and for the most part, they seemed not to. She parked overnight in twenty-minute loading zones, cut airport security lines, and scored me a fake ID at fifteen so I could, as she put it, “continue hanging out with me.” There was something so thrilling about being a part of her capers—being in on the con, even if it was just jockeying to get the best table at Nobu. Watching her in action was like watching James Bond walk into a party, tango his way into a backroom safe, steal a top-secret device, down three glasses of champagne, and then slip into an escape submarine off a nearby dock.
Fifteen minutes later, my mom popped back out of the lobby carrying a pair of crutches and a plate of pineapple that she’d probably taken straight off someone’s table in the dining room. She offered the valet a piece that she expected him to eat out of her fingers (which he did), then got back in the cart and took off.
“All right, Choppy! We have crutches. They belong to Allen the Bartender, but he claims his ACL is pretty much healed, so you can borrow them for the week.”
Bartenders loved my mom. She could drink like a Scotsman and was always able to persuade the table next to her to do a shot out of her navel. As long as you kept her fed and didn’t pour tequila on her after midnight, she kept her clothes on and was a gift the whole family could enjoy.
When we got back to the condo I used Allen the Bartender’s crutches to hop inside. I guessed that Allen was six feet tall, because every time I leaned on the crutches, my feet left the ground and I was suspended in the air like a gymnast on the parallel bars. I found a chair and Jason handed me Sid. He was smiling and warm from lounging in the sun.
“Do we think he’s hungry again?” I said, searching for something I could offer him that Jason couldn’t.
“I don’t think so.”
“Maybe he wants to take a nap?”
“No, he just woke up.”
Sid started fussing and reaching for his toys on the floor. I placed him on the ground and propped up his back with a pillow.
“Choppy! Not that pillow, that’s Rocky’s.”
I looked over to see Rocky fuming in the corner. He chewed on the same small toy he’d had since birth: the Baby Shoe. Rocky was obsessed with it and never let it out of his sight. Over the years, my mom had had to dismantle it and re-stuff it with a look-alike toy several times. I thought of the way my mom had discarded anything in the house that wasn’t bolted down when I was a kid. This included my She-Ra: Princess of Power action figure, my Sweet Sea mermaid doll, and my cocker spaniel, Rusty.
Rocky and his baby shoe stayed back at the condo while the rest of us headed out to the beach. I tried getting the hang of my newly acquired crutches, but I kept tripping over my one good leg. Jason futzed with the crutches, attempting to lower them, but it was no use, they were too tall. I didn’t want to stand (or hang, really) in the way of his scuba plans, so I urged him to get out on a boat and take a few dives. John disappeared to the golf course, and before I knew it, it was just me, my mom, and Sid.
I lost myself in the sterling-silver rings trapped around the Moc’s overgrown toe knuckles, deformed from years of bar-hopping in python pumps. I watched as they repeatedly buried themselves in the sand, then reappeared like the crooked talons of a parrot, eternally perched on an invisible branch. I flashed to an image of her when she was young—so hopeful, so arrogant. I remembered the waves of flaxen hair that cascaded down her back, her ruffled string bikini, her acrylic French-manicured nails. I remembered how I would lie next to her on the beach for hours, longing for her to notice me, silently watching her skin bronze in the sun. When she wasn’t home, she was out on a date. I’d find myself in her still-warm room with no expectation that I’d see her before bed. I’d sneak into her closet and try on her low-cut dresses. I painted myself with her Christian Dior lipstick, I drowned myse
lf in her Calvin Klein Obsession eau de toilette. I wanted all of her and yet she kept me at such a distance. I fought off sleep, I fought off her suitors, anything to spend one more moment in her presence.
As I returned to the present, it dawned on me that with Jason gone, my mom was the only one I could rely on for assistance. I was bound to my beach chair. If Sid needed anything or, worse, if I needed anything, it was going to fall to her.
After ordering a beer and a coffee, my mom discreetly peeled back her top, exposing a dental floss–like bikini that barely hid her still-perfect breasts. I looked at her, both mortified and envious.
“What?” she asked, genuinely.
“Your boobs are basically out!”
“Not even! I usually catch rays topless. I’m just trying to be respectful of Sid. Nana is getting tan lines for you,” she said to Sid as a cabana boy stood next to her, handing her both drinks.
“You know my boobs look this way only because I didn’t breast-feed you. It wasn’t the cool thing to do back then,” she informed the cabana boy as he walked off.
I’d been anticipating my mom’s anti-breast-feeding rant for months.
“Formula saved my tits!” she called out proudly, adjusting her sunglasses.
“Did I ever latch on?”
“Oh, you tried, all the time! But I had to bat you away like you were a deranged little bird.” She sipped on her beer and smiled, shedding light on why my nickname had been Bird before it was Choppy.
Eventually, Sid fell asleep under a makeshift chuppah between my legs. For the next four hours I listened to my mom rant about her three favorite topics: her condo in San Diego, how my sister’s kids gave her pneumonia, and my dad’s inability, after thirty-two years of divorce, to have a normal friendship.
“It’s just, like, get over it already. What did I ever do to make things weird?” For as much as she protested, I think part of my mom loved the fact that she and my father still had an awkward dynamic. What annoyed me the most was that behind closed doors, things between them were amicable. It was only in front of us kids that my dad pretended he wanted nothing to do with her. He used her when it was beneficial, calling her up to ask for advice or to sniff out gossip. But when called out for yenta-ing, he would blatantly lie. My dad’s ego was too big to admit to speaking to a woman who’d divorced him. And my mom’s ego was too big to corroborate his lie, which constantly left them at an impasse.
We talked about my upcoming book release. Namely, the chapter about her.
“Oh, God! You don’t talk about me having lots of boyfriends, do you? John won’t like that!” she said, with faux modesty.
“Not really. Maybe? I don’t know, it’s supposed to be funny. Was I funny as a kid?” I asked, curious.
“Hmm…You might have been…I wasn’t really listening.” She looked out at the water as if she was genuinely trying to recall. “But I think you were pigeon-toed. That could be why your leg is fucked up. You know you are slightly pigeon-toed, right?”
When Jason returned he was salty, sated, and in completely different scuba gear than he’d left in. I tried to be happy for him and not guess how much money his new outfit cost.
“Did you have fun?” I asked, faking a smile.
“My dive watch was the wrong one. I gotta return it when we get home. But it’s gorgeous out there. We saw two pods of spinner dolphins over at First Cathedral and the water is crystal clear,” he said with the passion of a schoolboy who still thinks he’s going to be a marine biologist. Jason grabbed Sid and we started packing up.
The longer I stayed off my leg, the more it seemed to hurt. I hurled my body toward my mom, forcing her to lend her support as I tried to stand.
“I can’t keep using the crutches. They suck.”
My mom suggested checking with the hotel for a wheelchair.
“Then at least you could hold Sid while we pushed you around,” Jason said optimistically.
I wrongly assumed that after a day and a half of sitting, I’d be fully recovered. I wasn’t. Not even remotely. In fact, I felt worse.
“I can’t take this anymore. I need to get back to taking care of my child, not watching him fly in and out of my life like a set piece in The Lion King.” The idea of cruising around the island in a wheelchair was maybe the only thing more embarrassing than sitting on the beach next to a scantily clad sixty-year-old whose tits had been suckled by everyone but me. The only other time I’d been in a wheelchair was when I was thirteen. My mom took a group of hemophiliacs to Disneyland and we ordered a handicap pass in order to skip the lines. None of the boys wanted to sit in the chair, so my mom made me do it. I’ll never forget the looks of pity I got from worried strangers and park personnel. Little girls would whisper to their parents and point. Cute guys who under other circumstances might smile refused to acknowledge my existence. I was the Grendel of the entire theme park. But I agreed to explore the wheelchair option this time because Sid was more important than my image.
That evening, Jason and John took the golf cart back to the hotel while my mom helped me with Sid. The Moc sat on the bathroom counter, watching me float Sid around the bathtub. I tilted him backward and his hair splayed out like a fan around his face. He seemed happy and drowsy and blissfully unaware of the dysfunction with my leg and my mother. When I was finished, I lifted him out of the water for my mom to wrap him in a towel. My lack of mobility made asking for help less of an option than a necessity. Of the three people in the room, my mom was the only one on two working legs. It freed me from my own pride and inhibitions, because I didn’t have to fear her rejection. She had no choice but to come through, and I secretly loved it.
After getting Sid to a safe place, my mom walked back over and helped me out of the tub without my even asking. Happily surprised, I nuzzled into her plush terry-cloth robe, still warm from the dryer, and tried to savor the sensation of her arms wrapped tightly around me.
“You got it from here, Choppy? Rocky’s dinner has been in the oven for over an hour and he hates his meat overcooked.” She angled me face-first toward the sink and let go.
I silently fumed. How about instead of free-range chicken, Rocky makes himself a cream-cheese sandwich and waits for you to come home from a date that started two days ago?
She gleefully scampered out of the room to the kitchen like a teenager whose boyfriend had come to visit her while she was babysitting. I looked at my adult self in the mirror, feeling foolish for my infantile thoughts. I couldn’t let my frustration over my inability to take care of Sid take a backseat to my frustration over my mom’s inability to care for me. But that was exactly what was happening.
An hour later, Jason and John arrived with Allen the Bartender’s old wheelchair. It was roughly the same width as a Smart car.
“I guess that guy gets hurt a lot.” John shrugged.
I’d been looking forward to feeling super-skinny in an oversize wheelchair, but this was a loveseat on wheels. I couldn’t help but wonder if Allen needed a lap band.
The next morning, I sat patiently on my wheelchair bench as my mom pushed me around the hotel grounds. It was the closest I’d ever gotten to being pushed around in a stroller by my mom. She said she felt like they made her look like a hobo pushing a shopping cart, so she usually made one of her boyfriends carry me or just shoved me in her purse. Unlike with the crutches, I couldn’t maneuver the wheelchair without her, and I didn’t intend to try. I was a baby again in a giant fat-man stroller. I had my mom just where I wanted her: by my side, at my complete disposal.
I used the ramp to the restaurant, I used the largest stall in the lobby restroom, and I was crane-lifted into the swimming pool.
Sitting under an umbrella eating a spicy tuna roll, Jason covered his face with his hands as my mom worked the chair lift, lowering me into the deep end.
“I love you, baby,” I called out, giving him nowhere to hide. I was starting to accept my disability and I wasn’t going to let Jason distance himself from it. He was my husb
and and he made a vow to love me in sickness and in health, with legs and without.
Minutes after I was in the water, my mobility issues were eradicated. My limbs were lightened and I was free to move as I pleased. I swam laps up and down the crescent-shaped pool, weaving through pockets of day-drunk honeymooners and children learning to snorkel. I let out a small trickle of pee to test the water for that dye that apparently notifies the people around you that you are peeing on them.
“Looking good, Choppy!” my mom called out encouragingly. I glanced over my shoulder and saw my mom smiling. Her eyes were trained on me.
“Watch this!” I called back, dunking under and doing a handstand.
When I surfaced she wasn’t watching. Instead, she was dangling Sid over the hot tub.
“Mom! What are you doing? He can’t go in there!” I swam toward the adjoining Jacuzzi, draining my entire bladder along the way and demanding she pull Sid out.
“Jason?” I looked over at Jason, who’d been up with Sid all night and was now sleeping under his National Geographic.
“The pool is too cold for him,” she said. “He likes this better because it’s more like the womb.”
“Mom, you can’t put a baby in a hot tub,” I said loudly, adjusting my voice as I heard the words coming out of my mouth.
“You can’t? It’s not that hot.”
“I’m fairly certain you can’t.” I paused. I hadn’t actually read anything about babies and hot tubs, but then again I hadn’t really read anything about babies in general. “I’m almost positive.”
“Excuse me, babies aren’t supposed to be in Jacuzzis, are they?” I whispered to a passing pool boy.
“No. Definitely not.” He looked at me, then at my mom, then at his manager, and walked away.
