by Janis Powers
My mother came out of the nursery, holding Henry on her shoulder. He was pounding the cloth she had placed over her pressed white shirt. She was rubbing his back trying to soothe him. “I think he’s still hungry,” she said. “Didn’t the doctor say to feed him whenever he’s hungry? Especially now?”
“He’s not hungry. He’s tired. I just fed him and got him all settled so I could take this call. Can you just put him back in his crib?”
I heard someone mention my name on the conference call. I ran into the bedroom, shut the door and took the phone off mute. I could hear Henry crying, so I headed into my closet, hoping my clothes would muffle the sounds of my upset child.
After the call was over, I took Henry from my mom. “Look, I will nurse him—again—but I’m going to need you to let him sleep. I have some work I have to get done right now, O.K.?”
My mother removed the blanket from her shoulder and folded it up neatly. “I don’t know why you called me into the city to help you. If I had known that Henry was going to be napping, then I wouldn’t have rushed to get in here.”
My phone was buzzing, undoubtedly with questions from the conference call I had just been on. Not only did I have to deal with Henry, but I had to manage my mother, who, in grandparenthood, seemed to have forgotten all of the skills she had bragged about during motherhood. “Mom, why don’t you take the opportunity to walk around the neighborhood? You always complain that you never get to spend time in the city. Go shopping or something, all right?”
“But how much time do I have? It’s kind of silly for me to go all the way down to Saks if I can’t shop when I get there.”
“Then go to Bloomingdale’s!” Henry had fallen asleep again. So much for his insatiable appetite. I picked him up gently and placed him in his crib. I shut the door and sat down at my computer.
My mother was still in the apartment. “Don’t you want the monitor on?”
I threw the chair back as I rushed to stand up. “Henry is right on the other side of the door. Perfectly fine. Nothing’s going to happen to him. I have work to do.”
My mother gathered up her things. “Maybe I should just go home.”
“No! Please. I need help.” Specifically, I was thinking about the four o’clock call I had scheduled, and there was no way Henry would sleep until then. I scrambled to task my mother with something. “Uh, would you mind going to the store and picking up a rotisserie chicken for dinner?” I rummaged through my purse and gave her some cash. “I don’t care. Whatever looks good. It would be a huge help.”
My mother took the money and folded it up carefully. “You know, they pump all kinds of fat and salt into those store-prepared birds. You should really learn to cook.” I ignored her. She was right, but at the moment, I didn’t exactly have the time to master the art of French cooking, or reign supreme over anything except my skyrocketing stress level.
She left, and I busied myself with my work duties. I worked productively and tidied up all of my responsibilities about five minutes before my next scheduled call. This allowed me a few moments to reflect on the progress, or lack thereof, I had made to find a new nanny. Over the past few days, I had interviewed five candidates, all of whom had been rejected.
One middle-aged woman had been a high school Spanish teacher, so Dale and I were excited about the prospect of Henry growing up in a bi-lingual environment. Surprisingly, it was her bastardization of the English language that was the problem. Her use of the term “ain’t,” overuse of the word “awesome” and unabashed confusion over the grammatical status of the word “good” resulted in her immediate disqualification.
A male applicant and a 65-year-old woman were also given the kibosh purely because I didn’t like them. Knowing the potential legal issues related to discrimination based on sex or ageism, I had requested that NYC Baby Prep perform a background check on sexual offenders for the first candidate, and expressed concern over the pile of prescription medications in a certain applicant’s knitting bag which may or may not have been easily accessible by an infant for the second. Tawny and I agreed to move on to other candidates.
A well-qualified Hispanic woman with young children didn’t even garner more than five minutes of my time because her profile was too reminiscent of Olga’s.
The final candidate, a pretty Middlebury graduate with a Psychology degree focused on Child Development, had been the best hope for a replacement. She had made the cut from Skype to an interview at our apartment. During our discussion, Dale had returned home early from work. The girl held onto Dale’s hand just a fraction too long as he shook hers, all while he was undoing his tie. Her lips parted as Dale smiled, and the interview, as well as any chance of her winning a position in our household, was terminated shortly thereafter.
Having gone through this mental summary, I realized that what I really needed was an asexual version of myself, only about ten years younger.
I was in the middle of an email to Jeffry when my mother returned with the groceries. I finished up so I could help her unpack.
“I decided to make you a pot roast,” she declared.
“Oh. Thanks.” I didn’t want to push my luck, but I needed her as a babysitter, not a personal chef. I unloaded a big cut of meat, some potatoes, carrots, celery, tomatoes and miscellaneous herbs. “Should I just leave all this stuff out?”
My mother was in full food-prep mode, having unearthed an apron from somewhere in the kitchen. “Yes. You get back to work. I’ll take care of dinner.”
I had to push my cause. “I really appreciate your cooking, but what about Henry? I’ve got a call coming up.”
My mother waved me off. “I said I would take care of it. I think you should go to your room, though. You can close the door. That way I can watch Henry in the living room while I cook.”
Little cries were coming from the nursery. My phone rang. I couldn’t respond to both, and my mother was holding a vegetable peeler. She didn’t look up. “I don’t get to say this anymore, but go to your room, Maxine. Multi-tasking was not invented in your generation.”
33
The bustle of Lower Manhattan faded as I passed through the entrance vestibule into the minimalist and chic TriBeCa Relaxation Salon. The ceilings of the lobby had to be about 12 feet tall, the height emphasized by the polished concrete floor. Long silver beads hung the length of the floor-to-ceiling windows. Between the dimmed light and the piped-in sound of trickling water, I felt like I was standing on the inside of a waterfall.
Having discovered that we had both purchased the same half-day spa package from LivingSocial, Angela and I had agreed to schedule our treatments together. Angela was already waiting for me at the reception desk, drinking a bottle of TriBeCa Relaxation Salon mineral water.
The receptionist greeted us, checked us in and directed us to the elevator. In the confined space of the metal box, the smell was unmistakable. It was lavender and flowery with a vanilla undertone. Fresh, light, yet sensual. No doubt about it: the distinctive odor was Parfum Aix’s Eau de Vie.
“Do you smell that?” I asked.
“You like it? I tried this new perfume at Macy’s on the way over here. It’s called Perfume X.”
Most Americans botched the pronunciation of Parfum Aix, but the double meaning was part of the brand’s charm. “You mean Parfum Aix, Eau de Vie, right?”
“No. I mean Perfume X. Like X-rated. Like unknown, mysterious.” She sniffed her wrists and smiled. “I think it’s an awesome name. I can’t believe nobody’s ever thought of it before.”
“Somebody has thought of it before!” I said, my voice rising. The elevator doors opened, and we were handed some white robes and locker keys.
“What are you talking about?” When I explained my background with Parfum Aix, Angela became suspicious. “So you’re telling me that Perfume X is some sort of a knock-off of another perfume? I don’t believe it.”
I started to undress, hungry for details. “Tell me what happened—you saw this at Macy’s? In th
e cosmetics section?”
“Yeah. I got spritzed by one of those perfume handlers, you know? They had this big display and everything. A black curtain with a picture of a man grabbing a woman by her waist . . . . All the women wore black miniskirts and corsets. Totally hot.”
It sounded sleazy, not hot. “Did you buy a bottle of the perfume?”
Angela reached into her purse and pulled out a box. The merchandising was uncanny. The branding and the bottle were all knock-offs of Jacques’s marquis creation. I handed it back to her. “Do you mind opening that? I want to see what it smells like.”
Angela ripped off the plastic cover and opened the box. She took the bottle out and pushed the atomizer so we could both inhale the scent. We both grimaced. “What the fuck?!” she exclaimed.
One of the women in the locker room glared at Angela.
I didn’t care because Angela had perfectly articulated my thoughts. I wafted the smell towards me again. “Eww. That’s disgusting. It smells like flavored rubbing alcohol.”
“This is total bullshit,” said Angela angrily. “They sprayed me with one thing, and then I bought that. What a scam!”
“Totally. I bet they are freaking out at McCale, trying to deal with this.” At least I hoped that they were. Caine and company had to be threatening Perfume X with all sorts of legal posturing, just based on the name alone. But the perfume swap scheme was a different ball of wax. If Parfum Aix could prove what Angela had described, the legal ramifications for Perfume X would be criminal.
But I wasn’t on the account anymore, and I had enough on my mind. Angela and I migrated to the Quiet Room so we could try to relax before our treatments. I lay down on a pea green chaise and stared at the white-washed walls. The blankness of the room didn’t empty my mind. Was I supposed to reach out to Jacques? Or offer my help to Caine?
“Maxine? Angela?” called a woman in a white lab coat. “Your therapists are ready to see you now.”
Our rubber spa shoes squealed on the concrete floor as we followed the woman down a hallway painted a sterile hospital-green. Teardrop lights hung from the ceiling, marking pairs of closed, white metal doors. The place looked like a refurbished sanitarium. Between the sexy spritzers at Macy’s and this place, it seemed that New Yorkers would go for anything.
Angela, her face contorted, leaned over and whispered, “Did we sign up for a massage or a lobotomy?”
“Not sure,” I replied. “But I’m going to decline the scalp massage, just in case.”
Angela was fully splayed on one of the chaises in the Quiet Room, her eyes closed, her face content. I sat down next to her and gently tugged on her robe. Slowly, she opened her eyes. “That was awesome! I am so relaxed right now. And even better, the masseuse used some heavily scented massage oil, so I don’t smell that Perfume X crap anymore.”
“Well, my masseuse said that I need about 800 more massages to get the lumps out of my shoulders. She told me that I needed to get the stress out of my life. Helpful, right?”
“Not. Let’s hope she doesn’t quit her day job because she sounds like a lousy shrink.”
We were guided to the nail room for deluxe mani/pedis. “Speaking of day jobs, how’s yours?” I asked. Angela always had some hilarious story about somebody drunk at a work site or a foreman caught pilfering bricks from inventory for his home patio project.
“Did I tell you about the guy who brought his baby to a worksite?”
“No. But I can empathize with him already,” I mused sarcastically.
Angela spun the Opi nail polish display case. “No. No, you can’t. The guy’s wife was on a trip, and since he couldn’t find anyone to watch the kid, he thought the responsible thing would be to bring it into an environment with dust, nail guns and plastic tarps.”
I picked out a conservative shade of pink. “He did not do that.”
Angela switched out my pink for bright red. “Yes, he did. And when I called him to the office, he tried to get me to watch the kid.”
I couldn’t imagine doing something like that at McCale. And of late, there were plenty of situations where I would have wanted to try. “So what did you say to this guy?”
“I sent him home. And he thanked me. He thought I was giving him paid leave, but I really just deducted a day of work from his paycheck. He probably won’t even notice.” She pulled out a shade of neon orange for herself. “The better question is: How is your job? What is going on with the nanny search?”
Angela had listened to me complain about the interim childcare situation ad nauseam. She knew that I was at the whim of whichever babysitter was scheduled to watch Henry whenever I needed to go into the office. Not having a regular sitter was hard on Henry and required me to spend time, each time, explaining the ropes Chez Pedersen to another stranger. “Well, I can’t seem to find anyone from the list of nanny candidates that NYC Baby Prep has provided.”
“Well, I think you’re just burned and paranoid. But I don’t blame you. If something like that had happened to Gina, I’d have quit my job and become a housewife.”
I looked down at the small pool of swirling warm water that surrounded my feet. In my worst moments of despair, I had considered quitting McCale. But I knew that the radical notion of leaving my job for a temporary respite would have a major negative long-term impact on my career. If Paola had been able to manage motherhood and a job that required travel, I could at least pull off an in-town job. “I can’t quit, Angela. And I really don’t want to quit. I like my job.”
“Well, I’m sorry to tell you this, but if you don’t get your butt back into the office on a regular basis, they’re going to make you quit.” Angela pulled her feel out of the water. “Seriously. They’ll counsel you out.”
“What? Why? Why can’t I negotiate a position where I work out of the house some of the time and just go to the office for meetings?” That’s really what I had been doing for the past three weeks. And I had subconsciously intended to keep doing it until someone said otherwise. I thought I was working the system, but with Angela’s revelation, I realized that I might be positioning myself for termination.
Angela rolled her eyes. “Does anyone else in your office do that? Does your firm support that kind of set up?”
“No. But maybe I can be the first one. You know, set the standard for the other women at McCale.”
Angela wasn’t convinced. And quite frankly, neither was I. If we didn’t walk around the office at McCale haggard and weary, then by all appearances, we weren’t working hard enough. “It’s all about expectations, Maxine. If you didn’t work from home before the baby, they’re never going to let you do it now.”
The pedicurist started to aggressively clip my cuticles. “I never thought about it that way.” I should have thought about it that way, since Deirdre Morgan had given me practically the same advice months ago. Now I was playing defense, waiting for the fallout that would inevitably come from working at home. I wasn’t controlling expectations at all. I was ignoring them.
“I gotta tell you—this might be the perfect time to start looking for another job. If talking to your boss doesn’t work, you could go somewhere else and negotiate your work-from-home situation on the front-end.” Angela was nodding vigorously in approval of her own advice. “And besides, you should always look for a job when you already have one.”
“Duly noted,” I concluded, my head spinning. Angela was probably right. But considering the fact that I couldn’t even find a nanny, the odds of me finding the time to embark on a job search were slim to none.
I watched laconically as the pedicurist started to paint my toenails bright red. My fingers were next. If McCale, Morgan & Black did ever fire me, I could always audition for the part of trampy perfume spritzer for Perfume X.
34
Henry was down for a nap and Dale was at the gym. I had a rarified moment of serenity on a Sunday afternoon. I could have read a book. I could have watched television. But I eschewed relaxation for masochism. I went into my bath
room, took off my clothes and stared at myself in the mirror. My body, with the extra pounds of baby weight, was a metaphor for almost every aspect of my life: it had great potential, but I just didn’t have enough time to work on it.
I turned sideways. This was the least flattering viewpoint, and standing up straight didn’t help the cause. Yes, the boobs were bigger, but that didn’t mean the rest of my body should have grown in proportion. More exercise and less eating were the keys to dropping the weight. And there was no hiding my need to do it, as I stood nude on a cold tile floor.
Yes, I would throw out all the junk food in the kitchen and try to order healthier meals. I would buy better snack food for the apartment. But I needed to burn calories, and relying on excreting breast milk as a means for weight control was becoming less effective now that Henry was moving to solid foods.
I reminded myself that at one time, I had actually enjoyed exercising. Maybe I should have used this moment of self-reflection to do yoga while Dale was at the gym. Somehow, with his busy schedule, he had made the time to work out. I was busier than he was—I should have been the one to go to the gym!
I spent some time being angry with him while I sucked in my stomach and flexed the vestigial muscles in my arms and legs at a flattering angle. Yes, Dale could have done more to watch Henry or help around the apartment. But basic biology required me to be the source of Henry’s food. So whether I was pumping milk or nursing Henry directly, more of my time was eaten up by feeding our son.
I looked at my unshaven armpit and considered going all negative-feminist on Dale. I could demand that for every hour I nursed, he should provide some equal contribution to the household. I could calculate all the money I saved on formula from nursing and then spend it on myself. But I couldn’t threaten him with that, or much else for that matter. I had no leverage. I was just pissed that I was the one who had to deal with the majority of Henry’s upbringing by myself.
