Maternity Leave

by Trish Felice Cohen

  “Oral and, well, anal if you want.”

  “You’re kidding right?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “It’s not sex.”

  “You mean to tell me that, for God, you only engage in oral and anal sex?

  Paul turned red and mumbled, “I’ve never had anal, but I’m okay with it if you want.”

  “Did the Jesuits teach you that? No wonder they’re okay with molestation, they don’t think its sex.”

  “No they didn’t teach us that,” Paul said, getting visibly angry. “It just makes sense.”

  “Actually, it’s completely illogical. It’s amazing that you blend into society like a normal person. I’m stunned,” I said.

  “This isn’t funny.”

  “I’m not laughing,” I pointed out.

  Paul paused, looked at me earnestly, and said, “You know, I don’t care that you’re not a virgin if that’s what this is about.”

  “That thought actually never crossed my mind. As an aside, you’re not a virgin either if you’ve come in a girl’s mouth while the two of you were bare-ass naked.”

  “Of course I am,” Paul insisted. Then he said, “Stop making fun of my religion.”

  “I don’t care what religion you are so long as you’re not religious,” I replied, just as earnestly.

  “It’s not just religion. You’re treating me like a freak when this is just a decision I’ve made.”

  “I’m sorry, it’s just that personally, I think you’re crazy. Honestly, I would respect you more if you told me that this isn’t really your belief system and it’s just your ploy to create an all-oral sex relationship.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Paul insisted.

  I opened the bedroom door, grabbed the untouched peanut butter jars off the floor and got dressed. Paul followed me out the door and went home.

  * * *

  The next day on the Island, Paul rode up to me and asked how I was doing.

  I said, “Still in shock. You?”

  “Still a little humiliated. Why don’t we grab dinner tonight?”

  Wow, he still thinks we’re together. “Paul, I don’t think this is going to work out.”

  “Why?” he asked in all seriousness.

  “Didn’t we already cover this last night?”

  “That’s it? You can’t make a sacrifice for a while and see how it goes?”

  That thought actually did cross my mind for one fleeting second. I thought, I can deal with this for a bit, during which time I’ll convince Paul that his views on sex are warped and irrational. However, the real issue was that the relationship was going nowhere and now I had the perfect excuse to end it. While I was sure I could change him into a well-adjusted atheist, I was far from gaga. So, I decided it was best not to spoil him for his future wife.

  I looked at Paul and said, “Sorry, your warped stance on sex is kind of a deal breaker for me.”

  “You’re really breaking up with me over this?”

  “Yes, and it’s not me, it’s you.”

  Paul sprinted off with a pissed look on his face and I let him go. A few minutes later, I met up with Danny. He immediately asked me why I wasn’t riding with Paul. I swore him to secrecy, then told him the story. He laughed his ass off for a good three miles.

  That Sunday night at dinner, I told my family about Paul. I hadn’t planned to tell them. But after a half hour of listening to how picky I was and how I broke guys’ hearts for no reason, I was forced to defend myself. I was glad I had such a good reason to dump him. Dumping him for improper earwax levels would have set my mom over the edge.

  I said, “Paul’s a virgin.”

  “So deflower him,” my mom said, a bit too eagerly for a mom talking to her daughter.

  “By choice, Mom. He is a virgin by choice. He’s saving himself for marriage.”

  I told them the whole story. My dad said, “Well that’s one I haven’t heard before.” Mom laughed. Jason said that from here on out, he was dating exclusively within the Catholic faith. Julie’s comments were restricted to a “that’s so fucked up” every few minutes or so, and John didn’t believe me. On the plus side, they were all off my back for dumping Paul the Wonderful.

  * * *

  In December, I started wearing baggy clothes to work. According to my research, it didn’t seem like maternity clothes were necessary just yet, but I figured I should begin the transition. Because it was the off-season for cycling, there were almost no cycling-related articles for me to read as a method of procrastination. I decided this was a good time for me to read up on my second trimester, which was just around the corner.

  Week Thirteen:

  Mom: This is usually the time when mothers feel their best. They are also beginning to feel pregnant.

  These two sentences seemed at odds with each other.

  Baby: There are a lot of things going on this week! All twenty teeth have formed and are waiting (Teething is yet to come!). Your baby weighs in at approximately 1 ounce.

  I thought babies were born without teeth. One ounce? My cycling pedals weigh 5.7 ounces. I think I have a ways to go.

  Week Fourteen:

  Mom: The hormonal changes in your body are becoming apparent. You may have also developed a dark line down the middle of your abdomen to your pubic bone called a linea negra. The areola may have darkened and gotten larger as well.

  Nice to know David finds linea negra and dark areola to be insanely sexy.

  Baby: Your baby is now producing urine and actually urinating into the amniotic fluid.

  That’s fucking nasty.

  Week Fifteen:

  Mom: Your belly starts to show.

  I marked my calendar to start wearing maternity clothes around the end of January.

  Baby: Your baby may have developed the habit of sucking his or her thumb.

  Stop it fake baby, because I’m not getting you braces.

  It seemed as though there was nothing for me to do until I needed to look bigger after the holidays. Something that inadvertently happened anyway to us all. I shut the screen and continued my research project for the day: learning the in-depth historical significance to every lyric of We Didn’t Start the Fire. As I was doing this, I received an email from “junk mail.”

  We have an interoffice email system whereby employees can email other employees by typing in their name, rather than their email address. This system also allows you to send emails to categories, like “Everyone”, “Attorneys,” “Paralegals,” “Secretaries” etc.

  There is also a category called “Junk Mail” to which any member of the office can opt in or out. Junk Mail is where employees try to sell or buy stuff from other employees, ask for feedback on restaurants and complain. I get about fifteen emails a day where people ask “Does anyone have a stamp I can buy?” This gets annoying, even if I’m just surfing the web and not working. However, I would never opt out of Junk Mail because it is a constant source of entertainment. I have a folder filled with Junk Mail highlights that I can’t bear to throw out. The one I just received was focused on selling an algae-eating fish. I added it to my “Buy, Sell, Giveaway, Trade” Junk Mail folder. The fish was the fifth Junk Mail advertisement that made it to the folder this week. The other four items entered into the free market of Junk Mail were a used Halloween costume, a car, two cats, and a McDonald’s sandwich. These items had very thorough descriptions. The costume was “Tina the Target” from “Psycho Circus Sideshow,” including dress and accessories, for fifteen dollars. According to my colleague, it was a costume you “have to see, because it’s hard to describe.” The car was a fourteen-year-old Buick with 140,000 miles on it in need of “a little TLC” for only four grand. The cats, Andy and Cody, were described as “large and strong and let you pet them if you sneak up behind them while they’re asleep.” Both were free to a good home. A Filet O’ Fish combo meal (without the drink) was available for two dollars and fifty cents because the meal was “buy one, get one free,” and the person decided to sell
the free sandwich, a picture of which was included in the Junk Mail advertisement. God I will miss Junk Mail during maternity leave.

  Chapter Four

  The week before Christmas, David sent an email to the entire subrogation department to inform us, “I do not want a holiday present. But if you insist, please make a charitable donation to the Tampa Jewish Community Center.”

  There are a lot of common sense notions that become workplace rules because people don’t use logic. I’m quite sure that Johnson Smith will soon have a rule stating, “Do not ask people to donate money to your religious organization as a holiday present.” There was no way I was going to give money to the JCC in David’s name. First, because the JCC, like my alma mater, was doing quite well. I couldn’t believe either institution had the gall to hit me up for money. Additionally, not to be insensitive, but I liked to give to charities that could someday benefit me. For example, I’m more likely to get breast cancer or have a head injury from a bike accident than to starve in Africa, so my funds go to brain and breast medical research. My final pet peeve about charities are the fundraisers. If anyone actually asked me to my face, rather than on email, to give them fifty dollars to walk three miles I’d punch them in the stomach. I donate to this shit all the time because it’s for a good cause and it does some good, but I can’t stand it. If someone wants fifty dollars for cancer research, I’ll be happy to write a check. If someone wants to walk three miles or do a triathlon, register and do it. It’s absurd for me to donate money to someone I barely know so that three months later they get off their ass and exercise one morning. It’s even more ridiculous that a significant portion of the money raised by these do-gooders goes toward shutting down streets, providing refreshments and making crappy T-shirts instead of their worthy cause.

  My gift from David was a fifty dollar gift certificate for the mall. David was incredibly cheap, so this impressed me until Kimberly told me that he gave her a $150 gift certificate for the mall. For some reason, it never occurred to me that my dislike for David was a two-way street.

  The holidays came and went and it was still not yet time to start training or looking pregnant in earnest. On the biking front, I continued to crank out base miles even though I had become antsy to start riding balls-to-the-wall. The season was technically from February to October, but it was impossible to be in top form the entire time. Since my goal was to be competitive in September, there was no need for me to start intensity rides until at least February.

  In mid-January, I took off for another of my five-to-seven-hour rides. I generally rode from my house to meet up with some friends in North Tampa. From there, a small group of us took off on a different route every Saturday and Sunday: to San Antonio, St. Petersburg, Lakeland, Tarpon, Plant City, Dunedin, Safety Harbor, West Chase, a loop around Tampa Bay, Zephyrhills, Palm Harbor, or Thonotosassa. This Saturday, we had a large group and rode to San Antonio via the Suncoast Trail. When we arrived, we ate Cuban sandwiches from the local market, rode around Dade City, then headed home through the well-fields, which required us to hop a fence. I’d ridden 104 miles by the time I arrived back at my house.

  As usual, I wasn’t hungry immediately when I got home, but I was starving ten minutes later when I got out of the shower. I ran out on my bike and picked up Thai food three blocks away. Make that 105 miles total for the day. I ate half of it, along with four glasses of water, then fell asleep outside on my hammock.

  On Sunday, it was more of the same. A new face showed up on the Sunday ride, though he seemed to know everyone. I had been riding long enough to have had met nearly every serious cyclist in the Tampa Bay area, and even throughout Florida, so this surprised me that everyone knew this guy except me. During the ride, I learned that his name was Quinton and as it turned out, he rode and raced for several years, though this was his first ride in four years.

  Quinton’s reemergence on the cycling scene made me nervous because while I loved the social aspect of base miles, the main goal was to get the miles in. I didn’t have patience for taking breaks for the guy who’d decided to take a four year hiatus. Fortunately, Quinton rode well and didn’t bitch. We rode two abreast and there were seven of us. We rotated pulling at the front, each pedaling into the wind for a few miles, then peeling off and moving to the back until we wound up at the front again. We tended to pile up each time we approached a stop sign, disrupting our order and giving each of us a chance to talk to a new partner.

  My goal on any ride with an uneven number of riders was to avoid being stuck without a partner. I like to talk a lot and feel better when someone is next to me either listening, or pretending to do so. The more someone laughs at my hilarious stories, the better. By the end of the ride, I had ridden with everyone, including Quinton.

  The best way I can describe Quinton’s appearance is average. Not tall but not short, maybe about five-ten with a medium build. He had decent leg muscles, but not the huge cycling thighs I’ve come to know and love. Average weight, but for a cyclist, he was on the heavy side in that he had more than four percent body fat. Quinton wore a helmet, so while I could tell his hair was blond, I couldn’t decipher whether he had a receding hair line or bald spot. Either way, if he had a personality, he seemed datable.

  I rode next to Quinton briefly and learned that he stopped cycling when his dad died, and never seemed to pick it up again until now. He was my age and grew up in Tampa as well. We talked about basic stuff like jobs and cycling. I gave him the short description of my job which was, “It’s okay.” He told me he was in the finance industry. Finance bores the shit out of me, so I didn’t ask for any details.

  Five years ago, before his father died, Quinton raced all over the country and lived out of his car. This intrigued me. I would never date a guy who, through some stroke of misfortune, lived in his car. However, if an intelligent person chose to live in his car rather than conform, I found that irresistible. I couldn’t tell whether Quinton was intelligent, but he was quiet and worked in finance, so I was guessing that he was.

  Even though Quinton wasn’t very talkative, he asked for my number almost immediately. There is no better male quality than appreciation for Jenna Rosen. Clearly Quinton was gifted, as he picked up on my charm and beauty in spite of my goofy helmet and prolific shooting of snot rockets out of my nose to the ground.

  Later in the ride, I told Danny that Quinton asked for my number.

  Danny said, “I hope you gave him 867-5309 like you do with all of the other freaks who ask you out.”

  “Why?”

  Danny got quiet and said, “Never mind, just be careful.” I asked why but all I could get out of Danny was that Quinton was once very wild.

  Danny tried not to act jealous when I had a date. That was the only explanation I had for the fact that, unlike everyone else we knew and gossiped about, Danny never had anything to say, good or bad, about any of my dating prospects, until they left the picture. He just sat back and waited for my bad date stories, which were always forthcoming, before he gave his opinions. But this was the first time Danny was acquainted with a potential suitor.

  “Just tell me what you know,” I said, annoyed by Danny’s silence.

  “I don’t want to be an asshole and talk shit about the guy, especially since I haven’t seen him in four years. Just be careful.”

  Danny’s warning intrigued me. My impression of Quinton was of a quiet, smart guy with a wild streak that was presumably tamed by his father’s death. Even though I only talked to Quinton for about twenty minutes, I was hoping he’d call me.

  I learned my lesson after the virgin disaster and opted not to tell my parents about Quinton, or any other dates, until the relationship was firm. So Sunday dinner after the ride was pretty uneventful other than the fact that Julie showed up with a new set of boobs. I hugged her hello and complimented her rack, which was spilling unnaturally out of her top and looked ridiculous with her size zero waist.

  My dad’s response was much more classic. He said, “Ho
ly shit, I think those are bigger than Jenna’s.”

  “Thanks Dad, those are the words every daughter longs to hear,” I said, rolling my eyes and turning bright red.

  “Seriously, they’re huge.”

  “They’re a full C,” Julie said.

  “I’m calling bullshit on that,” I replied. “They’re a D. I’m a C and as Dad so eloquently pointed out, yours are bigger.” In truth, I was a C when I used to run, but they shrunk to a B as I became leaner with competitive cycling. However, I did not want to point this out because it would weaken the boob inflation argument in which I was about to partake.

  “I special ordered these. I assure you, they’re a C.”

  “This is the problem with fake boobs,” I explained. “Every woman wants huge knockers but no one wants to act greedy and ask for a size D. So C has become D and now I have to try on a bra before buying it because I never know what size the bra company is using for a C. It’s boob inflation.”

  “They’re inflated all right.” John said. “I bought the left one.”

  “You’re such a romantic.”

  “Thanks, Jenna.”

  “They don’t even look real,” Mom said. “No one’s boobs are that big if they’re as skinny as you.”

  “Mine are,” Julie said, “and they look hot!”

  Julie looked to me for approval, so I put my feminist thoughts aside and said, “Nice titties, Julie.”

  My mom play-slapped my face and said, “Jenna.”

  “Sorry. I always forget what words you hate other than cunt. Julie, I meant to say, nice breasts.”

  My Mom smacked me again for saying “cunt,” then turned to Julie and said, “You’re going to have to get a whole new wardrobe. Do you want to shop this weekend?”

  “Sure.”

  “Jenna?”

  “No, I’m still allergic. But feel free to pick out nice stuff for me.”