Afterward, we had a little coffee and doughnut reception. Lisa Sights, a fellow second-grade mother, came up to me and said, “I saw you on TV last night.” Normally, nothing would make me happier than knowing that some of these nerd parents are actually watching my show. However, my heart stopped because the episode she was referring to involved a sketch in which I went to Chippendales in Las Vegas. In the sketch, after I give one of the dancers a lap dance, Sarah Colonna “accidentally” rips off my dress, leaving me in just a nude strapless bra and panties. Then, in front of a live audience, the Chippendales dancer I had just been grinding on lifts me up over his completely shaven and well-oiled chest, and carries me offstage.
Lisa Sights has no filter. She went on to explain to all of us how funny it was to see me standing there practically naked and then being carried off by such a hunky guy. Panicking, I tried to cut her off. “If we didn’t have a big ending like that, our executive producer was going to kill the shoot altogether, and since I had already secured a free dinner at Eva Longoria’s restaurant and Peter and I were going to make a whole Las Vegas weekend out of it, complete with Celine Dion concert tickets set for the following night, it would be the one time I wouldn’t mind someone mistaking me for her, so I couldn’t say no and had to agree to having my dress ripped off on film.” But it was too late. I saw the other parents’ uncomfortable faces as they rested their palms on their children’s ears to keep their now-clean souls from hearing about the way this married mother of three is forced to make a living. I looked over to my right and saw that Drake had left my side and was running outside to play in the yard. I tried to save myself by awkwardly adding, “I don’t let Drake watch Chelsea Lately. You know, you really need to monitor what your kids watch these days.”
That night as I relaxed in bed next to Drake we talked about him receiving his sacrament. Somehow I got him to tell me what he confessed to the priest. He said, “Well, I said how I hit Brandon sometimes just because I feel like it and then . . . never mind.”
“No, Drake, tell me. No matter what, I’m not going to be mad,” I said.
“OK, but you promise not to tell my teacher?” he begged.
“OK, I promise,” I said.
“I told the priest how I cheated in school, but just on, like, one thing, and it wasn’t even really cheating because it wasn’t math or spelling, it was art,” he said.
“How do you cheat at art?” I asked.
“We were told to draw something, but as the teacher was explaining it, my mind wandered and I started thinking about Black Hawks on my Xbox, so I was afraid to ask because she gets mad when I don’t listen. So I copied what Emma was drawing. I didn’t think it was a big deal because it was just a picture of a girl, but then the teacher said she had to hold on to it. I don’t know if she knows I copied it or not. I just wanted God to know and forgive me.”
Well, there you go. My son didn’t suffer from gender-identity issues, he was just a cheater with possible ADD. Once again Peter smugly said, “Well, of course it was something like that. I was never worried. God, why do you make such a big deal out of things?”
“It’s called being a parent who cares,” I said. I got into bed and just as Peter’s breath started to get heavier but before an audible snort, I said, “Do you think he’s going to be the kind of kid who would cheat on a high school entrance exam? Because a boy did that in my eighth grade and he ended up having to go to a public high school and no one has ever heard from him again.” Peter said, “God, will you just let me sleep for once?”
Last week for the first time Drake told me he liked a girl in his class named Missy. He pointed her out to me in the school play. She was quite cute—a thin, blond, blue-eyed girl who could actually sing. I’m not surprised by Drake’s type, since Emily was his all-time favorite Bachelorette. Sometimes I fantasize about Drake one day being the Bachelor, but then I worry because he is such a picky eater. What would he eat at the hometown dates? He’d insult every girl’s family. I voiced this thought at a writers’ meeting, where all but two writers screamed, “He’d eat four servings of pussy!” Seriously, I work with these people. But I can’t imagine what I would do if I didn’t like my son’s girlfriend, which is why I’m still secretly hoping he might be gay. That way, I’d be the only woman in his life forever. Some would argue it’s not healthy for a mother to tell her sons things like “No woman will ever love you as much as I do.” Or constantly ask them in my singsong voice, “Who is the prettiest mommy who ever lived?” I disagree. To me that’s just positive parenting for the mother and the child. I’m sorry, but I fear that some woman will break their heart with their Venus fly trap of a vagina.
When I think about my boys dating, I often remember a story my sister Shannon told me about a client she was defending for a DUI. He had received a full scholarship to UCLA, but right before he was about to settle into his all-expenses-paid dorm room he met a twenty-year-old single mother of two, fell in love, and decided to instead get a job and move in with her. She then got pregnant with his baby, or so he thought, until the baby came out very black. Once it was confirmed that the baby’s father was their next-door neighbor, he started drinking a lot and was subsequently arrested for driving under the influence. His poor parents! At least if my son were gay, his boyfriend couldn’t trap him with a pregnancy that wasn’t even his. But for now I try not to worry about who my boys will fall in love with and just try to enjoy the little things, like the fact that they are not cheating in art class anymore.
How do I know Drake is no longer cheating in art class, you may ask? Well, at our school, they offer to make Christmas cards out of your child’s original artwork for you to send to family and friends. I signed up Drake for two dozen cards without looking at his drawing. This was negligent on my part. When I got the cards, Drake insisted that we send all twenty-four out. I would have been excited if this particular Drake original wasn’t a drawing of a Christmas tree with one boy shooting another smaller boy and red blood splattering over wrapped presents. Hey, at least he drew himself as a male, so merry Christmas, everyone, from our family to yours.
21
OMELET
After a couple years of marital bliss with her husband, Michael Goldstein, my sister Shannon decided to go off the pill and try to become pregnant. Michael really is a perfect husband. He is Jewish but told my mother that when they have kids that they could be raised Catholic because Shannon is a much better Catholic than he is a Jew; besides, Jesus was a Jew and a total babe—just look at his abs! Forget about the Situation, what about the Crucifixion? My mother always told us Jews made the best husbands because they loved to give their wives jewelry! She adores Michael as a son-in-law, and anytime she meets someone Jewish, the next thing out of her mouth is, “My daughter married a Jew and couldn’t be happier. Now she’s Shannon Clare McDonald Goldstein.” As if the person thinks what a nice Christian she is for letting her daughter marry one of them, how liberal of her. My mom’s “positive racism,” as I like to refer to it, would come out when she’d be trying to sell a house to a potential buyer who is African American. He would come in and she’d strike up the conversation by saying, “Oh, are you a professional athlete?” And if he said no, she’d continue with, “You must be in the music industry.” In one case the man answered, “No, I’m an ER doctor.” And my mom’s face lit up and she said, “Do you know Dr. Keith Black? He’s an internationally renowned neurosurgeon at Cedars-Sinai. His name is Black but he is black too.” When the doctor told my mom he did not know Dr. Black, my mom said, “Well, you should meet him, you’d really hit it off.” Let me make it clear that my mother has never met Dr. Black herself. She has only read about him in the L.A. Times, and therefore thought he was brilliant, and quite handsome, and not just for a black man but for a doctor in general.
I knew Shannon had Michael pussy-whipped when he said to me in all seriousness, “Your sister makes the best shrimp cocktail.” I said, “Not to take anything away from Shannon’s culinary sk
ills, but you do realize that all she has to do is buy the peeled shrimp and open a jar of shrimp cocktail sauce and the dish is done?” And he said, “Yes, but it’s the way she does it that is just so amazing.”
Shannon and Michael started trying to get pregnant about a year and half in, but nothing sprouted. So Shannon decided to see a fertility doctor. As directed by her doctor, Shannon gave herself shots in her butt cheek and boned her husband on the certain days when the doctor had calculated she was ovulating. During these times, she was also instructed to place pillows under her butt while holding her legs straight up in the air for an hour after sex. By the way, single ladies, if you ever want to really freak out a one-night stand, after you have sex with him, wait for him to return from the bathroom and then have him find you with your legs straight up in the air with pillows propped under you, and then just say to him, “Don’t worry, the doctor says I only need to do this for an hour after. I just think you’d make such a wonderful father and provider.”
The treatments eventually got more invasive, with Shannon’s husband having to masturbate into a cup so she could be artificially inseminated. After that failed several times, she moved into in-vitro, where they would extract her eggs from her ovaries and then fertilize them with Michael’s sperm in a Petri dish, and then they’d choose the strongest-looking embryos to put back inside her uterus, and freeze the other embryos in a super-size Sub-Zero fridge to use in the future.
Shannon was still not pregnant. She always got her results around four p.m. and when my phone would ring, my heart would drop as she’d say, her voice cracking, “It didn’t work. I’m not pregnant.” Shannon began to try any alternative methods she could get her hands on, like acupuncture. Besides having to drive two hours to have some strange Chinese guy poke needles in her, he also instructed her to drink this tea that looked like dirt from my backyard, which she had to make in a special teapot, not just any teapot. After driving to five different stores she finally found the teapot and drank the dirt tea, but still no pregnancy. She and Michael even considered going to Hawaii, where you’re supposed to bone on some rock shaped like a huge penis to get pregnant. They were ready to buy their plane tickets when Shannon heard from a friend who’d got pregnant two years earlier on the rock. She had just filed for divorce, and that made Shannon more superstitious about why not to bone on the rock.
In the meantime, I got pregnant with Drake and a few months after he was born Shannon called me after she visited her fertility doctor and said, “I don’t know what we are going to try next, but Dr. Paulson did bring up the possibility of me using a donor egg.” Shannon at this point wasn’t even thirty-five yet, so it wasn’t that her eggs were too old. They just weren’t implanting and blooming inside of her and growing. She continued, “And Dr. Paulson said, ‘If you use one of Heather’s eggs, since you are sisters, the baby will be twenty-five percent your own DNA.’ What do you think?”
My sister Shannon. Just two hot moms on a private jet to Las Vegas, where I opened for Chelsea at Casears Palace.
Now, Shannon and I had shared clothes. We even had shared bikini bottoms once, which should be illegal even between sisters, but my bikini bottom was wet and there is nothing more uncomfortable than putting on a wet bathing suit. Even though we had shared so much already, I had never even considered the possibility of us sharing eggs.
Before I was married, I’d spent a weekend in Newport Beach, a very wealthy beach community in Southern California. I was having my coffee at the local Starbucks while perusing South Coast magazine and the Orange County Register, and I had never seen so many advertisements looking for young women to donate their eggs. Some were willing to pay up to twenty grand for the right egg. All the ads were asking for women in perfect health whose family had also had a history of good health. I had that. My grandmother on my dad’s side had lived well into her nineties. When she died at ninety-one, it was discovered she was actually ninety-nine but changed her age at Ellis Island. How great is that? I would spend three weeks on a smelly, cramped ship if it meant I could scrape eight years of my age without anyone knowing. They also all asked for women who were over five-foot-nine, which I am. In fact, I’m five-foot-nine and a half, which I thought gave me an added bonus. Some ads were for blondes, but plenty asked for brunettes; all had to be college graduates and under thirty years old with good SAT scores. I had all these attributes, and for a moment as I looked out at Newport Harbor, I imagined being twenty thousand dollars richer and giving my egg to some super-wealthy childless couple. At the time I was auditioning a lot and was rarely ever getting a callback. I thought how nice it would feel for someone to finally choose me and say yes, you’re the one, even if it wasn’t a part in a TV show. It would still be very flattering. But then I started getting a little jealous of my egg and the life it would have growing up right by the water. My egg would probably have its own yacht and a big gorgeous house decorated in anchors. I actually called a clinic and asked whether you actually had to show your SAT scores. When they said yes, I knew I most likely wouldn’t be picked. Don’t get me wrong, my SAT scores were decent, but it was my essay on Ronald Reagan’s influence on the sitcom Family Ties that got me accepted into the seven universities to which I applied. I decided that my egg would probably grow up to be a spoiled brat living in Newport Beach and if she ended up going to USC, she’d be a Delta Gamma, because all the girls from Newport who go to USC become Delta Gammas. I was a Gamma Phi, so I couldn’t have that on my conscience. But when my own sister was considering my egg, it was totally different. I knew the kind of parents Shannon and Michael would be to my egg, and I knew it wouldn’t grow up to be spoiled, or ungrateful, and if it did become a Delta Gamma, it wouldn’t be because of the town it was raised in. Besides, Shannon was only asking for my egg, not for me to carry it for nine months, which I think is a much bigger favor to ask.
Can you imagine if you carried someone’s baby for them and then they refused to do a favor for you when you asked? It would be hard not to be a little passive-aggressive and say, “No, I don’t want to put you out by having you pick me up from the airport. I know you’re busy with your child—the child that was only possible because of me, which I’m reminded of every time I look in the mirror and see the purple stretch marks across my abdomen. No, I don’t mind never wearing a bikini again; besides one-piece bathing suits are back in. It was a sacrifice I was happy to make so you could celebrate Mother’s Day while I wait at the airport for a cab.” Donating an egg would just require a few hours in the doctor’s office. (Unlike George Lopez’s wife, who gave him one of her kidneys, only for George to divorce her a few short years later.) I told Shannon I was flattered that she wanted my egg and that I’d have to think about it.
For the next couple of days I couldn’t think about anything else. Was Shannon even sure she wanted my egg? Drake was healthy, though I have to be honest, here, Drake was slow to roll. Babies are typically supposed to be able to roll over from their backs onto their tummies by themselves at around four to five months. At five and a half months Drake hadn’t done it yet, and I was getting concerned. I expressed this concern to my friend Tara, and she told me not to worry, but what does she know? She wasn’t a mother. The next day Tara’s and my mutual friend, Nicole, called me out of the blue. Nicole’s son was born a few weeks after Drake. We did some small talk and then she started talking about her son, Dylan. She said, “Dylan is just rolling and rolling all around my apartment. I can barely keep up with him. He sees a toy that he wants and he just rolls until he gets it. Good thing we don’t live on a hill.” Well, that doesn’t even make sense. If you lived on a hill, would you put the baby on the grass and let him just roll down it? I tried to change the subject and talk about how cute Drake is when he just lays there flailing his limbs like a turtle on his back, and how he’s so flexible he can suck on his own big toe. But Nicole would interrupt and say, “Dylan used to suck on his big toe about a month ago but now that he can roll, he is just into so many more sophist
icated things than his toes.”
I reminded Shannon that Drake still hadn’t rolled over on his own yet, and asked her if that worried her. She just laughed and said, “Heather, I know your egg would be amazing but I also know it’s weird.”
I talked to my dad about giving my egg to Shannon. I thought he’d be all for it, since he used to hide the Easter eggs for Shannon and me. He went to great lengths to ensure that we both ended up with twelve each. I already had a baby, so wouldn’t he want Shannon to have a baby too to keep it fair? But my dad, the former combat Marine said, “This is like when you girls would swap Halloween candy. This isn’t about sharing a goddamn Snickers bar.” He began to raise his voice. “It’s one thing to share your K-ration of SPAM with a fellow Marine in a foxhole, but sharing eggs, what the hell is this? An omelet? This sounds like some hippie-dippy shit to me, and it’s gonna backfire, baby, like an AK-47.” I tried to explain how by having my egg Shannon would be raising a baby with part of her own DNA. My dad cut me off and said, “I know all about DNA. I watched the O.J. Simpson trial from start to finish. You don’t want those O.J. detectives on it. I just think it will cause problems. You’re opening up a whole can of worms, baby.”
“Or in this case, a carton of eggs,” I joked. However, I did see my dad’s point. What if Shannon got my one winner egg and I was left with the loser eggs? It can happen. I’ve seen it in my own family. Out of the five kids all born to the same mother and father, only Shannon and I went to college, and my parents faced many challenges raising the other three. That is one of the reasons Shannon became a criminal defense attorney, so she could help out my siblings, which she has done pro bono over and over again. This is especially true for my brother Rob, who was arrested for stalking. Don’t get freaked out, it was really a misunderstanding. He was working security at a Home Depot and someone in Kitchen Appliances said hi, and he got the wrong impression. He was the world’s worst stalker, leaving answering-machine messages with his phone number and mailing love letters with his return address, so Shannon had to defend him. When she’d visit him in jail, he’d tell her that some of the other inmates would say, “Oh man, how’d you get such a hot attorney? That’s who I want representing me, homie.”
My Inappropriate Life Page 16
