My Inappropriate Life

by Heather McDonald

  Me as the Octomom—aka “The woman with one too many eggs.”

  My mom always tried to make the best of the situation and said to me, “We’re all going to watch your sister defend your brother at the courthouse today.” When I’d object and say it was depressing, she’d argue, “Come on, what kind of sister are you? They always come out to see your stand-up. Besides, it’s Margarita Monday and I’ve got a coupon for Acapulco’s, so we can all go there after, it will be fun!”

  At the hearing, my mom would whisper to me, “Doesn’t Shannon look stunning in that red suit, and who knew orange was Rob’s color?” What if that happened to us? What if I gave away my Shannon egg and was only left with the Rob egg? I imagined twenty-five years into the future, me sitting at Shannon’s son’s medical-school graduation, and when they announced his name, “Whatever Goldstein,” I’d be compelled to lean over to the stranger sitting to my right and say, “You know, he’s not only my nephew. He’s actually my son.” Then I would lean over to my left and roll my giant son, Drake, over from his tummy to his back so he could see the rest of the scholars graduate.

  I told Shannon Dad’s reaction and his concerns about me giving her my egg and she said, “Well, I’ve seen the donors in Dr. Paulson’s office waiting room. Once there was a girl around thirty and she had come down from San Jose with her sister and they seemed happy; they were making a weekend out of it.”

  “Well, what did the woman look like?” I asked.

  “She was fine-looking, with blond hair,” Shannon said.

  “How thick was it?” I asked.

  “How thick was what?” she questioned.

  “Her hair. Was it thick and shiny, or flat and dull?” I asked.

  “I don’t remember,” she answered.

  “Well, I don’t think you should pick an egg from someone who doesn’t have good hair. You and I both have really good hair. Do you want your daughter to have to suffer through hours of having painful and expensive hair extensions sewn into her scalp? How much would an egg from a woman like that cost anyway?” I asked.

  “I think they pay them a standard fee of, like, three thousand dollars,” she answered.

  “Three thousand dollars, that’s it? That’s not what they were offering in Newport Beach for eggs,” I said.

  “Well, I guess that is because this is not a Newport Beach egg. It’s a San Jose egg.” Shannon laughed. “Heather, don’t worry about it. If we even do it at all it’s not going to be for a few months. Michael just wants to enjoy the Jacuzzi again without stressing that it’s killing his sperm count.”

  I thought about the show Big Love on HBO, where one man has three wives. They have their own babies but they all share the same husband and help raise each other’s children. Not that my sister and I would do that, because she lives a few hours away, but they seemed pretty happy. Even today sometimes I really feel like I could use a sister wife, not so she could have sex with Peter on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but just to help out with the homework and the school projects. I’m not crafty, and those Mormons really know their way around a glue gun. On TLC’s Sister Wives, when the sole husband, Kory, was going to get a fourth wife, at first the other three wives seemed happy. I think because they thought she’d help babysit their thirteen kids. But that all changed when wife number four was instantly pregnant. Now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t want a sister wife.

  I would like to be on a reality show called Gusbands. It’s me and my three gay husbands and what we go through all living under one roof. Each gay husband I choose would have a quality that I need in a partner. One would help dress me and curl the back of my hair; another would be really good at computers and paying our bills, like my current real husband; and one would be an amazing chef and an interior decorator. The gusbands would have conflict with one another (because that is what makes for great reality TV) and they’d get all pissy with one another just like they do on Sister Wives. I’d have special nights designated with each one but then during awards season I’d inevitably spend more time with the stylist one, and that would just be something the other two would have to accept if we were going to make this family work. And there are no kids. The three gay husbands just cater to me and vie for my attention.

  But Shannon didn’t want three gay husbands, she wanted one baby. So one night I called her and I said, “I know I’m not the smartest woman in the world, but I also know I don’t have a learning disability. And even though I’m not athletic, and have a tendency to trip on my own feet a lot, I am in excellent health. Besides, I’m tall and have great full, thick, shiny hair and have some unique talents for impersonating people and telling crass jokes. My point is, I’m not perfect but I’m better than some San Jose egg, and if you decide you want my eggs you can have some of them.” Shannon began to cry, as did I, and she said it meant a lot to her that I was willing to share whatever piece of an omelet I had.

  Shannon still had four frozen embryos, so she decided to implant those before using an egg donor and, lo and behold, one of them took. Shannon gave birth to her son, not conceived on a rock but in a lab where it had waited six months to be defrosted and then cooked to perfection. When Michael held his son for the first time, he said to the nurse, “Have you ever heard of 50 Cent? Well, meet 75 Grand.” Yes, in-vitro is very expensive but worth every penny. Three years later, Shannon hadn’t had her period in a couple of months and wanted to drink alcohol so she sent Michael out to get a pregnancy test. Sure enough, it was positive. At thirty-nine, Shannon gave birth to a daughter who was conceived the old-fashioned and cheaper way.

  I have a single friend who went to Dr. Paulson a few years ago to freeze her eggs so that later on, if she met the right guy, she could say, “Yes I’m forty-two, but I’ve got eggs that are only thirty-eight waiting to meet your sperm whenever you are ready to start a family with me.” Now, I hope that is not the first sentence that comes out of her mouth on a first date, but essentially that is the thought behind freezing them. She is very successful and could afford the procedure and saw it as insurance. A few of us met for dinner after she had frozen the eggs and she said, “Dr. Paulson said he had never seen such good-looking eggs before. He was able to get eleven eggs from me, which I guess is unheard of. He said the cells were just so full and perfectly round.” I mean, was she serious? This is the same woman who rolls her eyes when I talk about my kids, and I don’t even brag.

  In fact, I do the opposite of bragging. When someone compliments Drake on his baseball techniques, I say, “Well, he’s been on five teams already. He started really young and he works privately with a coach just to strengthen his pitch. He actually should be doing better.” But bragging about an egg that hasn’t even met sperm in a Petri dish yet is just too much. I feel like saying, “Well, Cindy, you can relate, being that you’re a mother to eleven brilliant eggs. I don’t know how you do it all? It must be that great day care you send them to, La Freezer. I wish my kids weren’t so spazzy in a restaurant. Yours are so still they haven’t moved for years.”

  One thing I’d like to do is to clone myself and raise a mini-me as my daughter. The way I understand it is that the baby would be exactly like me. It would look like me, and have my personality and everything. I would love to tell her when she is fourteen, “Don’t worry, your head will shrink in a few years and you won’t look like you have Lupus anymore.” I’d also like to tell her, “No matter how many miles you ride your bike up a hill, your ankles will never get bigger in circumference. Your calves are always going to resemble those of a baby colt that has just been birthed.” We’d have such a good time together because I’d know everything she likes, but eventually she’d get to the stage where she wouldn’t shut the fuck up and I’d have to ask her to move out and pursue blue-balling guys until she found one she liked who would marry her and put up with her crap.

  22

  I DON’T WANT TO BORE YOU WITH THESE STORIES, BUT . . .

  Have you ever noticed how kidnap victim and bestselling autho
r Jaycee Dugard has amazing skin? Sometimes I think about things like that. She’s now in her early thirties, and she still looks fifteen. It’s imperative to avoid the outside, pretty much forever. So when I went to my son’s soccer game recently, I was frustrated that we could not find which field our team was playing on. I was dragging two heavy chairs, a whiny kid, and one soccer ball at a large university that had twenty-six fields with fifty-two different uniforms all merging into one. My son’s uniform is orange with a hint of black on the sleeve. We would spot an orange team, and I would make him go play with the little orange men until Brandon discovered that this particular team had a hint of navy on their uniform’s shirt. We trudged on to another soccer field with orange uniforms only to get closer to see that they were girls and not his team either. I was fighting back tears, saying to myself, Life is too short, who cares about soccer? This is America, not Argentina. By the time we found the correct field, I felt I had experienced the agony of defeat and the thrill of victory.

  I immediately placed my folding chair in the one space available underneath the shade. Then Brandon came up to me and said, “You’re not on my team’s side; you’re on the Dyno Blasters’ side.”

  I said, “But that side is blazing hot. Don’t you remember when you and Mommy watched the TV special about the girl who was kidnapped and didn’t go out in the sun for eighteen years? Do you remember how she didn’t have a hint of crow’s feet underneath her eyes? I’m sorry, Brandon, but I’m going to cheer for you in the shade. Complexion is more important than competition.”

  Brandon started to get upset and I was all weary from the long walk, so I agreed to sit in the blazing-hot sun and slathered on some sunscreen. There’s just something about the smell of Coppertone as it seeps into my baking skin that just makes me really crave a margarita.

  My father sat down next to me and he soon started telling me the stories I had heard my whole life, including how his first job was selling Schick razors to pharmacies, and how he headed up the Coca-Cola account for his advertising firm, and of course the inevitable Marine stories. Maybe because I was no longer a teenager or being overly distracted as a busy mom, I actually started to listen to his stories with interest. He told me how it was to be a young boy in Long Beach, New York. “Well, my best friend, Monty McKinney, and I, used to go into the caves by the beach and smoke cigarettes that we stole from our parents. One day when we were there, we saw two of our other friends’ older brothers, who were about fifteen, fucking each other in the ass . . . . Oh, I don’t want to bore you with these stories. Do you want to hear a story about when I was working on the Toyota account?”

  The game had ended and my father was in the middle of this juicy story.

  I said, “Wait, Dad, so the two teenage boys were gay?”

  He replied, “Well, no, I don’t think so. I think they were experimenting.”

  I said, “Did they know that you even saw them?”

  He replied, “No, and Monty and I never talked about it again.”

  I said, “Dad, no, I think they were gay.”

  My father said, “But they both went on to get married. One had eight kids, and the other had eleven.”

  I said, “Dad, this sounds like a version of Brokeback Mountain, where they were in love but had secret rendezvous in Long Beach until one of them died.”

  My father said, “Now, Brokedown Hill, wasn’t that with the Heath Bar Ledger who took too many pills and died, and then his wife became Marilyn Monroe?”

  I said, “Dad, you’ve screwed up movies with actors’ real lives, but that’s not the point. What you’re missing here is eternal love that wasn’t accepted.”

  He said, “Well, Heather, maybe you’re on to something.”

  I said, “Dad you have been telling me some boring stories over time. Why do you pick today to tell me a real juicy one?”

  He replied, “I don’t know. It just popped up in my memory. I am eighty-five. I’ve got plenty of other juicy stories, but none of the other ones involve me walking in on two men fucking, so I don’t know if you’d be interested.”

  “You’re right, Dad, I wouldn’t.”

  My parents are settling into their golden years. Whenever my friends see them together, they say, “It’s so cute. Your parents are so in love.”

  I reply, “Yeah, they really are in love now, but they sure didn’t come across that way in 1988 when I was a teenager and would go to bed dreaming about how I wished one of them would have the sense to call a good divorce attorney.”

  I think this goes to show that kids sometimes do factor into a divorce. People always tell their children, “Mommy and Daddy are getting a divorce, but it has nothing to do with you.” But I call bullshit on that. Eighty-five percent of my fights with Peter are over the kids. If they weren’t around, we would only have 15 percent the number of fights. Just yesterday, I gave Brandon some milk in a cup and he accidently spilled it. Peter then started criticizing the cup I chose. I argued back that if he felt that strongly about it, he could have gotten off his ass and poured him the milk in the first place. See, my point is, if Brandon didn’t exist, that fight would have never taken place.

  It seems the divorced woman is almost celebrated now. It’s like, “You go, girl. You kicked that guy to the curb. You were so brave to leave. Sisters are doing it for themselves.”

  How come no women stand around saying, “You know, I have so much respect for Jackie. She’s been married to that obese fat fuck of an asshole and she just continues to wake up with a smile on her face year after year. What a strong woman she is.”?

  I wonder why it is that no one is celebrating the woman who stays and gets through the shitty teenage years with their kids. So then when a couple is alone again, there’s the possibility of them rekindling their love, just like my parents did.

  23

  MY HIATUS

  I had two weeks off from Chelsea Lately, a break we call a hiatus. Most of my colleagues went on exotic vacations or booked stand-up gigs. I, however, decided to spend my days off being the perfect mother and wife, volunteering at my children’s school and attending a Playboy charity golf tournament with my husband. In short, I was planning to win the Mother and Wife of the Year Award.

  On my first day off, I walked Brandon to his kindergarten class, like many mothers do. As I walked back from his class, my neighbor snarkily called out to me, “You’re actually here on campus. We never see you.” Through clenched teeth, I said back, “Yeah, I am.” As if a mother would ever say that to a working father whom she happened to spot at school. It doesn’t help that everyone at the school thinks Peter is so wonderful. He happens to be the only father at St. Ignatius who is invited to the Mothers’ Appreciation Luncheon, where he enjoys sipping white wine and nibbling on tiny cucumber tea sandwiches while the ladies toast him for putting together his very successful golf tournament. I mean, sure, Peter did raise money for the school, but let’s be honest—Peter being the chairman of a golf tournament is like me offering to wear free Gucci clothes to help get the word out about Gucci’s green initiatives. It’s a little self-serving. He’s certainly not Mother Teresa reincarnated.

  Peter enjoying his tea while being honored at the ladies’ luncheon.

  Later in the week I was asked if I could volunteer at St. Ignatius’s annual Easter-egg hunt. I immediately offered my help. The e-mail included a list of what to bring. Upon close consideration, I decided a bag of mini bagels was a lot easier than cut-up fruit or homemade cupcakes. In fact, since I was feeling especially generous, I wrote back to the room mom that I would bring not one, but two dozen bagels, so no one else had to purchase any. I have to admit, it felt pretty good. I was definitely on my way to making up for missing the robot parade (in which Brandon’s was hands-down the worst one). However, the night before the big hunt another e-mail was sent to me stating, “Please make sure the bagels you bring are made with no peanuts, to protect the children who are allergic.”

  “Oh shit,” I said as I read
my iPhone. How is it that I always pick the wrong thing? I thought bagels would be easier than carving strawberries into the shape of red rosebuds, and honestly mini bagels are the entrée of the kindergarten Easter brunch. After inspecting the back of the bagel package, I was relieved to read that there were no peanuts used in the making of the mini bagels. Phew. Super Mom prevails for once in her life.

  The next morning I carefully chose my outfit. The previous day I had volunteered for library duty and made the crucial mistake of wearing a skirt with a hem that met with most of the kindergartners’ heads. I chose sensible, loose-fitting tan slacks with a button-down, long-sleeve shirt and flats. I looked like I was straight off the pages of the Ellen DeGeneres ad in the JCPenney catalog. I grabbed my twenty-four peanut-free bagels and arrived in the school’s play yard a whole eight minutes early to help set up. How do I do it? I thought as I imaginarily patted myself on my conservatively clothed back. I cut each bagel in half and placed them on tiny bunny plates around the luncheon tables. With a few minutes to spare before the children came, the other mothers and I began to talk about our plans for Easter Sunday. Then one mother, Tammy, asked, “Who brought the bagels?”