by Judy Baer
Kim and Kurt are stalled in the adoption process. It’s out of their hands and they’re playing the waiting game. Kim has never been good at waiting for anything, and she’s doubly bad at this.
Mitzi is still on a hormonal Tilt-A-Whirl, and Arch, bless his heart, thinks she’s “cute as a button” in her frenzied state. The man is either a saint or an idiot—or maybe he truly enjoys being a knight in shining armor who continually rescues his damsel from distress. The more weepy, helpless and annoying Mitzi is, the more Arch pampers and adores her.
“My brave little wife,” he croons. “Everything is going to be okay.” Then he looks up at the rest of us and says, “You have to understand how much stress my darling is under.”
We all stared, our eyeballs hanging out of our heads in amazement. Doesn’t he realize how much stress we are under, just being around her?
Not only has Mitzi tried aromatherapy—which she finally gave up when Harry told her she smelled like a three-bean salad—and meditation, she has experimented with a half-dozen naturopathic remedies, including pressure acupuncture.
All the while I keep saying, “Pray, Mitzi, pray.”
“Doesn’t the Bible say, ‘God helps those who help themselves’?” she asked sourly.
“That was Benjamin Franklin, Mitzi, not God. Actually, God does like to help us, but He wants us to ask for it.”
“Why?”
“He doesn’t want to be like the stamp machine in the post office, spitting out help and having no one acknowledge His presence.”
“He’s very persnickety sometimes, isn’t He?”
“‘I am a jealous God,’ He says,” I murmured.
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“He wants us to recognize that without Him we are nothing. He doesn’t want work, money or material things to become more important to us than He is.”
Mitzi didn’t respond but she wore a thoughtful expression. It was better than nothing. Until Mitzi started praying for herself, I was willing to do it for her.
I used to view women who acted helpless and needy with disdain, but now I see that it has its useful qualities. Arch cooked her burger, dished up her plate and brought it to her with a glass of lemonade. He found a pillow to put behind her back, and arranged the footstool to show off her feet to their best advantage. She rewarded him with loving looks and a wan brush of her hand across his cheek and called him “my dearest darling sugar pie.”
It’s taken a while for Kim and me to admit to one another that we’re not really annoyed with Mitzi and Arch. We’re jealous. Today, while Arch played footman to Mitzi, Chase, Kurt and my father watched car races on television and reenacted them with Wesley and his miniature cars on the living room floor. They were blissfully unaware that they were in trouble with us for not being knights of the Round Table. Neither did they know when Kim and I came to our senses and forgave them—all during the space of an afternoon.
My mother, whose big day it actually was, spent her time in the kitchen working out the intricacies of her new cappuccino machine and carrying her experiments out to the deck to have us taste them, making us not only pathetic but also overcaffeinated.
Tuesday, June 1
The past few weeks have passed quietly. Chase works and sleeps, works and sleeps. The office is quiet, as long as no one pokes at Mitzi. She reminds me of a beehive with all sorts of touchy little things buzzing around inside. But, like a wasp’s nest, if she isn’t prodded—that is, if we don’t look at her crosswise, talk to her too early in the morning, criticize anything she does or suggest that she could work a little harder—she’s fine.
I’m watching programs on Animal Planet regularly to further develop my management style. There’s so much to be learned from nature. Sometimes, instead of thinking of Mitzi as a wasp’s nest, I imagine her as a sleeping alligator or a snapping turtle. Don’t mess with them, keep your hands away from their mouths, and you’ll be fine.
Something good is happening in our spiritual life, Chase’s and mine, since we’ve discussed starting a family. It’s heavy-duty stuff to think of bringing a new life into the world. It’s not all about cute babies, new high chairs and decorating a nursery, but about a life that didn’t exist before and never would but for our decision to create it.
Life is everlasting, which means that our child will be here for the long term, eternity, time without end. There is nothing else I can do in this life that will last forever except love God.
My mother insists I think about this too much. She says that if we’re meant to have children, we’ll have them. And if not, she suggests another cat. That’s the best motivation of all for having a child. I couldn’t live with another creature like Mr. Tibble or Scram.
They have started sitting in my kitchen sink when I’m not home. There is a small drip in the faucet that Chase can’t seem to fix, and they laze there, catching drops of water on their tongues. Chase thinks it’s funny, but I have to sanitize the entire area before I can start supper.
And then there’s that little issue of their discovering soap operas on television. We’ve had to start putting the television remote in the silverware drawer so they can’t get at it. Otherwise they watch TV all afternoon. I’ve secretly observed them. They have favorites, and switch from NBC to ABC to CBS depending on what show is on. At first I thought it was an accident, but they follow a pattern. Then Mr. Tibble puts his paw on the power button and turns it off to make it appear that he and Scram have had nothing to do all day but feel abandoned by their humans. Later, Chase lies on the couch, pushing harder and harder on the remote control buttons and wondering why the batteries get weak so quickly.
Fools. These cats take us for fools.
Scram isn’t smart enough to have figured this out on his own, and would have been content to watch my plants grow, but Mr. Tibble is a genius. Sometimes he stares at me so intently that he scares me. I can’t help but wonder what he’s thinking.
Mr. Tibble here.
I hate to say it, but Whitney’s other pet, the two-footed one, is getting on my nerves. He’s been hogging the sofa at night for weeks now. How can I get my daily twenty hours of sleep if he’s got the couch? The other one—Scram—is ridiculously poor company. How they expect me to enjoy something whose only two hobbies are shedding and chasing his tail is beyond me. No scholarly stimulation, no thought-provoking conversations, not even an incentive to hypothesize on the mysteries of life. It’s hard being an intellectual trapped by such plebian surroundings and low-brow activities. I do trust that Hope and Bo never leave Days of Our Lives. That would be the last straw.
Mr. Tibble, signing off.
Wednesday, June 2
Mom stopped over with an armful of photo albums.
“Isn’t that cute?” My mother pointed to a photo taken of me with a full diaper drooping somewhere between my calves. I was also topless, barefoot and obviously howling at the top of my lungs.
That, it appears, is a recurring theme in my baby pictures. Other themes include photos of me with food outside my mouth instead of in it, ridiculous outfits pulled together from my mother’s closet—her bra and pearls and Dad’s work boots, for example—and me with every four-footed thing that ever crossed my path.
My mother, an aspiring Anne Geddes, took pictures of me as an infant in a flowerpot, a flower bed and a flour sack. She recorded every time I sucked on my fingers, put on a hat or a ballerina costume. She managed to snap a shot every time I pouted, therein making a pictorial record of my lower lip jutting outward like a Ubangi woman in the making.
Most unfortunate of all, there were several baby pictures of me looking like a small Winston Churchill. So much for that old Bing Crosby song “You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby.” I’m keeping these photos under wraps. If Chase ever sees them, he may decide it would be a good idea if we never reproduced.
“Did you ever get a good photo of me, Mom?”
“What do you mean? These are all good.” She beamed deliriously at a photo
of me digging in the garden, round little backside to the camera. “This was the day your dad bought you a new pail and shovel. You were the cutest child ever born.”
Talk about being blinded by love!
Mother looked at me, her eyes sparkling. “Whitney, I was so head over heels in love with you from the moment you were born that I thought I’d burst. There you were, all goopy and wet, howling like a banshee, your dark hair curled to your head—a very large head, I might add—and I knew immediately that you were perfect. If I hadn’t believed in God before then, I would have from that moment on. Birth is a miracle, an absolute miracle. You are our miracle.”
“Oh, Mom…”
“Oh, Whitney…”
We did one of those mushy hugs that we do sometimes when we’re overcome with emotion.
“So that’s how it is to be a mother.”
“I didn’t say that.” Mom looked aghast. “I said that’s how it is to give birth. Motherhood is a different thing entirely. Motherhood is being in the trenches—changing diapers, trying to get prunes into a moving target, driving a minivan full of eight-year-olds to soccer practice, sewing a ladybug costume at three in the morning, making cupcakes for a hundred Girl Scouts…that’s motherhood.”
“Whoa. You’re making me tired just talking about it.”
“Oh, you will be tired. But it’s worth it.”
Chapter Nineteen
Monday, June 7
Harry’s birthday is a big deal around our office. We like birthdays. Or, more specifically, we like birthday cake.
He’s a real softy, where his birthday is concerned. Harry likes to reminisce about his childhood, eat chocolate fudge cake with chocolate icing and chocolate ice cream and open presents. Sometimes he gets a little misty-eyed recollecting the past. This year he’s especially maudlin. I have a hunch it has to do with his balding pate. Harry has looked the same ever since I’ve known him—ageless. He could be forty or sixty. No one knows for sure, and no one ever asks, but the hair thing is getting him down. He’s finally succumbed to a comb-over, and he isn’t happy. Next thing on the agenda for him is the monk’s tonsure, like the dust ruffle on my bed—nothing on top, but a decorative fringe beneath.
That’s probably the reason Harry got three hats for his birthday—a billed baseball cap from me, a Stetson that Betty purchased on eBay and a shower cap and back-scrubbing brush from Bryan. Mitzi, of course, forged her own path in the gift department—and not a very tactful path, at that.
She gave him a piece of torture chamber equipment for tightening his abs. It frightens me a little to think that Harry actually has abs to tighten. People aren’t usually born without them, so that must mean he does have muscles somewhere under that soft pillow of flab he carries. Not a pretty visual.
His gifts didn’t cheer him up much this year, and I regretted not buying him my first impulse, a box of Godiva chocolates.
Then I recalled the box of truffles that Chase had given me two weeks earlier and made me take to the office so he wouldn’t be tempted to eat them. He’s obviously more worried about his own waistline than mine. I’d hidden the box well, because the Pierogi Bandit is still striking occasionally, even though Bryan seldom brings them anymore.
The chocolate was in the one place where no one would ever find it, a wide-bottomed file in my desk labeled Things To Do. Nobody would look there in a million years.
I slipped out of the break room, found the chocolate and added it to the birthday party foods we’d already assembled. Betty had brought cucumber sandwiches, Kim had provided chips and dip, Bryan’s offering was M&M’s and I’d purchased the cake. Mitzi, as usual, had donated a tin of caviar and some tasteless crisp bread to serve it on. Also as usual, no one would eat it, and she and Arch would finish it off at home while they watched videos of Extreme Makeover, Mitzi’s favorite show.
We made small talk as we drank pink lemonade out of Dixie cups and, because we didn’t have enough forks, ate with our fingers.
“Have you set goals for this year yet, Harry?” Mitzi asked as she spread fish eggs on cardboard toast.
Harry looked at her with bulging eyes. “Goals?”
“I always make birthday pledges. This year my birthday pledge is to use my elliptical trainer, even if it does make me perspire.”
Mitzi doesn’t believe in sweating. She ranks it right up there with other undesirable bodily responses, like drooling and twitching, to be done only when one is completely helpless to do otherwise.
She slid a piece of birthday cake onto her plate and nibbled at the frosting. “Arch’s birthday pledge is to do a triathlon.”
It’s difficult not to hyperventilate just thinking about it. Jumping into a lake, swimming into the middle where it’s a zillion feet deep, flailing back to shore, leaping on a bike with a seat the width of dental floss and then running a race isn’t my cup of tea. Jumping into bed and dreaming of swimming, biking and running is plenty for me.
“I tried kickboxing,” Betty offered helpfully. “It’s supposed to be very good for you.”
“Is that when you dislocated your hip?”
“No. That was when I fell off my bike in spinning class.”
Is it any wonder I’m afraid of exercise?
“You still work out with Bernard, don’t you, Whitney?” Mitzi asked as she dug into my box of candy.
My trainer is the only reason I’m as fit as I am. I’m afraid to quit going to him, for fear he’ll hunt me down and drag me back to his studio by my hair. It’s easier just to keep going than it is to have the cousin of the Incredible Hulk stalking me.
The gym really isn’t all that bad. Lest I be thought of as a completely fitness-averse person, I always point out that my sports club makes great protein shakes. I prefer the Macho Smoothie—six kinds of fruit, protein powder and something that’s white and quivers, maybe tofu, or a spare internal organ.
“Anybody want another piece of cake?” Mitzi inquired. “I think I will. It’s very good, Whitney.”
She took a bite, closed her eyes and rolled it around on her tongue. “Very nice. I’ll order this next time Arch and I have a party.”
I watched her with a growing sense of disorientation. Something was out of kilter. I looked around the table, trying to puzzle out what it might be. Harry was wearing my baseball cap and eating M&M’s. Betty and Kim were debating the merits of regular paper plates versus reinforced ones while Bryan arranged M&M’s by color. Mitzi was eating cake—chocolate cake.
“Mitzi, what are you doing?” I asked in astonishment.
She looked at me innocently and glanced down at the table. “I’m eating Harry’s birthday cake. What else?”
“Mitzi, the cake is chocolate. You hate chocolate.”
“I certainly do….” Her voice trailed away.
Everyone stared at Mitzi, whose finger was suspended in midair, a glob of chocolate frosting halfway to her lips.
She looked at her finger, puzzled, as if it held a great mystery of life. “I don’t get it. Chocolate is disgusting.”
Then she lifted the finger to her mouth and licked the frosting with as much delicacy as Mr. Tibble might display when sampling a bit of tuna. “But it isn’t. It tastes good.” Then she asked the question we were all asking ourselves. “Why?”
“You should have seen her, Chase, gobbling up chocolate cake and truffles like there was no tomorrow.”
We were seated on the floor across from each other, huddled over the Scrabble board on the coffee table. Mr. Tibble was curled into a boneless ball, just out of reach.
I’m a people pleaser, the kind who bends over backward to make sure that everyone is happy and that I am well liked. I allow others ahead of me in line at a buffet and then discover that, by the time I get there, the chicken legs and the fruit salad have run out. I keep the peace. I share my Hershey bar. I let someone else have the last peanut butter cup in the bowl.
I also agree to more than my share of chores. “Let Whitney do it. Busy people always get
things done.” “Everyone else has turned us down, let’s ask Whitney.” And “Whitney isn’t here, so we’ll appoint her chairman of the committee.”
Cats don’t allow that to happen. They won’t even come to supper when you call them. A cat would never stoop so low as to be on a committee.
We’ve been tricked into believing that they are domesticated creatures, but nothing could be further from the truth. At any moment, Mr. Tibble could stage a mutiny, shred every curtain and cushion in the house and choose the life of a feral cat. I see it in his eyes, the disdain, the icy regard, the haughtiness. He plans to the inch how far away he must lie down from me so that I must be the one to move to pet him. If I’ve been on a trip—our romantic B and B escape, for one—when I return I can count on him to refuse to sleep on our bed and to spend the next night howling just outside our bedroom door as punishment for abandoning him.
I laid out my tiles to spell F-E-L-I-N-E.
But back to Mitzi. “She was as shocked as the rest of us, Chase. I could tell by the look on her face.”
He looked amused but not surprised. “If she’s on fertility meds her hormones are changing. She may have an altered sense of taste and smell or…” He set out F-I-N-I-C-K-Y. “Thirty-eight points.”
“So that’s what it is?” I asked, still stuck on Mitzi’s weird behavior. “C-R-A-Z-Y. Fifteen points.”
“It could be something nutritionally based, too. A-V-O-C-A-D-O. Twenty-six points.”
This isn’t a game, it’s a rout. I laid out M-O-T-HE-R-L-Y. “Twenty points, plus I used up all my tiles.”
“For example,” Chase continued as he trounced me with S-Q-U-A-S-H, “pregnant women often crave pickles because they’re salty and their body is low in sodium. Also, their taste buds usually have a heightened acuity.” He looked at the board with satisfaction. “Forty-two points.”
But Mitzi isn’t…Of course not. Not yet.
M-A-D-N-E-S-S. Twenty-two points.
Tuesday, June 9
At noon today, Mitzi opened her Gucci lunch box and began to lay out her lunch of leftover poached salmon, three stalks of cold asparagus, a whole wheat dinner roll with a pat of butter and two Ziploc bags of chocolate candy.
