Abbie’s made my favorite, beet Wellington with garlic potatoes and a peach crisp with vanilla ice cream to tempt me. I find after two hours of walking and copious breast feeding, I’ve worked up quite an appetite.
Everyone seems happy to see me when I walk into the dining room with Sophie snugged in her baby carrier next to me. Richard is the first to speak, “Welcome home, Mimi! How are you feeling?”
Pip, who’s sitting in the seat next to him, smacks him in the arm and reprimands, “Richard! You know how she’s feeling. Shhh.”
The earl hurries to add his own sentiment, “We’re so happy the birth went well. Good job, Mimi!”
After a few more “go Mimi” moments I decide to address the elephant in the room. “Look everyone. I know Elliot’s told you I’m not myself. And I’m sure Abbie’s mentioned something about postpartum issues. They’re both right.” I explain, “I can’t explain what’s going on in my head, but it’s not pretty. I’m anxious, fearful and claustrophobic. I won’t let anyone but Elliot hold the baby and I may not be around much. Thanks to Abbie, and her edict that I walk, I’ll probably be in the driveway for a good portion of my days until this passes.”
Pip interrupts, “Your grandma Sissy says the same thing happened to her. She promises you’ll be okay, just take it one moment at a time.”
Richard turns to Elliot’s sister, “Philippa, what a lovely sentiment. I’m sure Mimi is thrilled to hear from her grandmother.”
Pip snaps, “Are you being sarcastic, Richard? Because I don’t think this is the time or place.”
“Quite the contrary,” my friend responds. “I think your gift is wonderful and people are lucky to have you share it with them.”
My sister-in-law doesn’t look convinced. “Except when my message is directed to you, is that it?”
“Not at all,” Richard rejoins, “I’m very happy to receive all messages that come your way for me. Do you have another by chance?”
“Not at this time,” she looks skeptical, “but I’ll keep you posted.”
Abbie and Elliot bring in the dinner plates and the nanny joins us. She announces, “Mimi, you need to eat a lot of protein to keep your blood sugar up. It’ll really help with the postpartum, so I’ll be supplementing your food throughout the day.”
I smile, “Thank you, Abbie. I’m not sure what we would have done without you these last couple of months.”
Elliot contributes, “You may not be allowed to touch the baby, but we’re delighted to have you on as our cook and house organizer.”
The nanny replies, “Don’t worry. Mimi’s going to do great and she’ll eventually let me help with Sophie.” When pigs fly. This is my baby and unless you helped make her, hands off. But I don’t say that out loud.
I enjoy everyone’s company but I’m more than ready to retire to the solitude of my room when dinner’s over. Elliot accompanies me and carries the baby.
When the door is closed, he asks, “How are you feeling?”
“Very, very tired. I think I’ll just crawl into bed and go to sleep.”
Elliot kisses me on the forehead and replies, “You do that, darling. I’ll go back down and play host. Just call out if you need anything.”
The first thing I do when my husband leaves is to check all the windows to make sure they’re locked. Then I address the bathroom, closets and under the bed. Once I’m assured there are no boogey men about, I change into my nightgown and crawl into bed to nurse Sophie.
Sophie is only four days old and already I can’t remember what life was like without her. What did I do with my time when there wasn’t a baby to care for? What did I think about when not constantly gripped by fear? I vaguely remember my old life but it no longer seems like it was mine. It’s more like I’m experiencing someone else’s memories.
Chapter 49
Sophie wakes at three a.m. and seems bent of being up for a while. She doesn’t want to nurse; she just wants to be held. So I carry her downstairs to the den. This way I can turn on the light without disturbing Elliot.
After thirty minutes of playing ‘Where are Sophie’s Toes?’ she’s ready to eat. I get situated on the soft brown leather sofa, cover us with a cashmere throw and settle in. I haven’t watched television since the baby was born and decide to see if there’s an old movie playing. I’m a huge devotee of old romantic comedies. Anything with Rock Hudson, Cary Grant, Tony Randal or Doris Day totally floats my boat.
I’m in luck! Lover Come Back is on TCM, with Doris, Rock and Tony! I’ve only seen it about twenty times, but can’t wait to experience the hijinks all over again, as it’s one of my favorites. Just as the Universal logo shows up on the screen, I’m overcome with a new emotion, nostalgia. Not nostalgia as though I’m reminiscing about a good time in my own life. I wasn’t even alive when this film was made. I’m flooded with a deep melancholy that this amazing era has come and gone. It’s no more and never will be again. My heart hurts so badly, it feels like it’s going to stop working.
This new symptom of my insanity leaves me breathless at the thought that two of these three actors are dead, not even on the planet, and the other is an old lady barely clinging to life. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, a surge of grief rushes through me and I’m about to climb the walls. I try to force myself to watch the show and pass through the moment but it’s no good. Every time Doris shows up in a snappy new outfit, I want to cry. How can I ache so much for a time I never experienced to begin with?
Sophie is sound asleep and I don’t want to wake her by dragging her up and down the driveway in the cold. Not to mention, there are so many untold dangers lying in wait in the dark, I could never keep us safe. So I do the next logical thing. I situate her in the center of the room and start walking laps around the den. This isn’t quite as crazy as it would have been in my little yellow house on Mercer St. Our den now, is as big as my whole downstairs used to be. Still, I know it’s plenty nuts, but throw me a bone, huh?
As the days unfold, I adopt the strange schedule of all new mothers. I sleep when I can and am often up for a good portion of the night. I talk to my family and allow them to visit in small groups. I let no one hold the baby.
I find I’m unable to talk to Ginger for very long, which is weird. You’d think I’d be craving her company more than anyone else’s, as she’s in the same new motherhood boat I’m in. It’s just I’m afraid I’ll start to panic for her much like I did for Sophie when she was still in utero. I can’t even think of my sister for too long without feeling itchy. I have no idea how she’s handling the rigors of new motherhood. If I were her, I’d have to be institutionalized. The jury is still out whether or not there’s a padded room with my name on it.
Sophie’s first doctor appointment comes and goes and she’s thriving. My visit isn’t for weeks and I can’t wait. I need fixing and I need it now.
Richard stays for a week and if you can believe it, decides to commute back to our house on the weekends to continue his pursuit of Pip. Elliot’s parents appear to have moved in and I don’t even suggest to my husband that he tell them to leave. They pretty much leave me alone and take care of themselves so I figure, no harm, no foul.
Abbie and Pip spend their days stringing off the areas in the yard they envision for the gardens. It used to be just one garden, but they’ve gotten creative and want to plant several smaller ones with interwoven paths. They’re calling it a permaculture paradise. As long as they leave me and the baby alone, I’m good with it.
The nanny continues to cook all of our meals as well, which truthfully, is a godsend. We’d be eating a lot of Cheerios and frozen pizza if it was up to me. I join the family for dinner every night, but other than that, see very little of them.
Now that I can no longer watch old movies or old television shows (same reaction to those as I have to the movies) I’ve have to discover new forms of entertainment. It turns out laugh tracks cause me extreme anxiety, so sit-coms are out. News programs are definitely a no-no because of all the dre
ary tidings they bring. I try to watch a variety of talent shows but find myself in a state of terror for the contestants. That’s when I land on my new addiction, alien programming. Apparently there’s such a profession as ‘ancient astronaut theorist,’ and they are full of ideas on how our planet became populated.
If you believe what they’re preaching, earth was settled by various ET colonies. Our brothers from other worlds landed here and bred with the 1.0 version of man in order to form a slave population to do their bidding. Early man supplied the physical form that could sustain life on this planet and the aliens contributed the grey matter which allowed us to evolve into semi-intelligent beings.
If you grew up Christian, like I did, these theorists even credibly explain away biblical miracles as being of otherworldly origin. For instance, manna from heaven is the food the aliens brought to keep Moses and his followers alive when they were banished to the desert for forty years. These theorists even speculate they’ve found the remnants of a manna machine, which I muse is really just an ancient bread machine. Chariots in the sky, Jesus’s ascension and Jacob’s ladder are all references to spaceships beaming up, Star Trek style.
One of the theorists, who likes to wear his hair in creative ways, ponders why humans are so willing to believe in miracles of old, and are so set in this historic thinking, they’re unwilling to listen to a plausible explanation. He asks, “How can man be so eager to accept something unexplained on the basis of faith and not be willing to hear possible elucidation?”
Another ancient astronaut theorist, who claims to have been brought up in the church wonders, “Why would a God as powerful and great as ours stop creating at humans? If He could form vast colonies of galaxies and dimensions, why would He pick earth, the equivalent of a speck of dust on sheep, and call it quits?”
I get so worked up over this whole thing, I decide to call Father Brennan. I share I’ve been having a hard time since Sophie was born and ask him to please stop by the house when he has time. Today is that day. I’ve asked Abbie to come and get me when he arrives, which is at two p.m. sharp.
Father Brennan has been my family priest since I was a kid. He’s got to be nearly seventy, so I’m thinking my questions are going to shock him to the core. After all, he grew up before Steven Spielberg introduced us to the possibility of close encounters of any kind, yet alone the third kind.
Abbie has made us madeleines and Red Zinger tea and she serves us in the library. “Father Brennan,” I greet, “thank you for coming!”
He stands up to hug me and replies, “Thank you for inviting me. I assume I’m here to talk about Sophie’s baptism.”
“Um, no, not really,” I explain. “I haven’t begun to think about that yet.” I confess, “I’d really like to talk about aliens.”
Father Brennan sits down and asks, “What would you like to know?”
I start, “I’d like to know what you think of aliens. Do you believe they exist?”
He smiles, “Well, Mimi, I’ll level with you. I do.” Of course this is not the response I anticipated. I expect him to refute the prospect and call my faith into question for even suggesting the possibility of life on other planets.
I ask, “Is this your opinion or the church’s opinion or both?”
He replies with a question of his own, “Did you know the Vatican owns the second largest telescope in the world?”
I did not know that and I say as much. “What does the Vatican need with a telescope?”
“The church doesn’t believe religion and science are separate entities. In order to appreciate the world that was created for us, we need to understand it. We look to the heavens to learn and we look to the heavens for further appreciation of God.”
I’m floored by his response and ask, “So the church believes in aliens?”
Father Brennan confirms, “One of the Vatican’s astronomers wrote an article for the Vatican newspaper called, The Alien is My Brother. I’ve committed to memory the following quote because it so beautifully addresses human speculation of other worldly beings.” He quotes, “‘As there is a multiplicity of creatures on earth, so there may be other beings, intelligent, created by God. This does not conflict with our faith, because we cannot put limits on the creative freedom of God.’” He explains, “If I tell you there is no such thing as extraterrestrials, then I’m taking it upon myself to speak for God and that’s not my job. My job is to share the love of God, the word of God, but not to speak for Him. That is His job alone. And He does it in a myriad of ways.” Taking a sip of his tea, he adds, “If only man were paying closer attention.”
I venture, “Do you believe these beings are visiting earth and trying to make contact with us?”
He answers, “I believe if it is in their power to do so, they would be crazy not to establish communication. I’m sure they’re just as curious about us as we are about them.”
If I didn’t think I was stark raving nuts before, I do now. “Father Brennan, if they’re here, do you believe they’re here to help us?”
My priest goes quiet while he contemplates his answer. “I believe,” he eventually states, “that we would be very foolish indeed, to accept all extraterrestrial life as benevolent. Mankind certainly runs the gamut of intention. I think we would be well advised to believe the same of life created in other worlds.”
Well crap, now I not only have to worry about suicide ninjas, terrorists, old movies and enclosed spaces; I have to worry about mean spirited aliens invading our planet. I want to press rewind on my life and go back to a time when I didn’t think about any of this.
Chapter 50
Over the next week, I totally focus my anxiety on the presence of aliens on our planet. I add more programming to the ‘ancient alien theorist’ brigade and now have more questions than ever.
For instance, I’ve been very comfortable not knowing how the pyramids, Stonehenge and other ancient marvels were built. I’ve just accepted them as a fait accompli, until the alien theorists got ahold of me. Now I’m left wondering if these awesome structures weren’t built as communication towers by the beings that fashioned them. You know, ET phone home?
How could pyramids have been erected all over our planet before intercontinental travel and communications were even possible? Some chief in Mexico and a King of the Nile wake up on the same day and think, “I know, let’s start building an impossibly huge, triangular-shaped edifice that won’t even be finished in our lifetimes. You know, just for kicks.”
Without technical knowhow, how did our early ancestors even fathom such a thing? If you believe the theorists, which I’m starting to do, it was made possible by civilizations from other worlds that had the technology, and who guided said construction.
If you triangulate the pyramids in Egypt with the ones in Mexico and Indonesia, they point directly to the star system Pleaides, which some claim is the cradle of all life in the cosmos. They are supposedly the humanoid type beings that seeded our planet.
I make another call to Father Brennan about this because the concept seriously rocks my religious foundation. My priest encourages me to remember the bible was written by humans, at a time when they didn’t understand technology. He assures me we have to interpret the stories not as absolute truth, because our knowledge is so much greater than theirs was, but more metaphorically.
He encourages me not to place so much emphasis on how we were created but what we are going to do with our creation. “Remember, Mimi,” he says, “even if God used another one of His creations to start ours, we are still of His design.”
By watching these shows I learn more bizarre information. Ancient spaceship shaped earrings are still housed in the museum in Machu Picchu. If you look closely at some of the paintings from the old masters, you can spy UFOs in the background. Sculpture and glyphs dating back to 10,000 B.C. clearly depict other worldly phenomenon. Then there are the Nazca lines in Peru and disappearances of whole cultures like the Anasazi, in North America. Oh my aching head! Why doe
s all of this come into my life now, when every day is a challenge to get through?
Tonight, I’m up with Sophie at three a.m., as per her norm, and I flip on a new alien program. This one is dedicated solely to exploring the origin of man through an alien-human assumption. They discuss how RH negative blood types are considered an indicator of extraterrestrial ancestry. My mom’s AB negative. Super! What in the hell does that make me?
I really perk up when they broach the subject of the royal family. As you know, my husband has some genetic ties there, so this directly affects me, or rather Sophie, who shares her father’s blood. Apparently, there’s a species of beings that lives under the earth’s surface in an intricate underground cave system spanning the globe. They are known as the reptilians, and are hypothesized to be the offspring of an ancient civilization that was forced to move underground because of a catastrophic atmospheric phenomenon, like the eruption of a mega volcano which would have resulted in ice age like conditions above the surface.
The more I hear about the reptilians, the more I want to pour bleach in my ears and scrub the images out of my brain. They are supposedly a malevolent society bent on world domination. They began creeping out of their holes around the time royal families started to pop up in history. It’s theorized all royal families, including American “royalty” like the Vanderbilt’s, Rockerfellers and Kennedys are of reptilian lineage.
I know this all sounds totally absurd and I’m sure if I had working use of my faculties, I’d disregard it as lunacy. But I’m not currently sane and even my family priest seems to be of a mind to believe some of this alien nonsense.
That’s when it hits me. This is what’s been freaking Abbie out! She has revulsion for all things royal and was even mumbling about creepy reptiles when Elliot’s parents arrived. Holy crap! I do the only thing I can think of and that is to grab the baby and go bang on the pool house door.
Yes, it’s four in the morning and no, I haven’t considered how rude it is to wake the nanny because I’m obsessing over my husband’s potential connection to malicious under lords. I just do it.
Mimi Plus Two (The Mimi Chronicles Book 2) Page 20
