Perfect. Picture perfect. And here I am now, right in the middle of the picture.
Well, this is happily-ever-after if ever I did see it. Oh, it’s here all right. Of course it is! I mean, if there’s a problem, you can’t blame the picture and you can’t blame happily-ever-after.
If there’s a problem, it’s … me. All this new stuff inside me. The void. This newly discovered mother in me. She’s really mucking things up, no matter how hard I try to get rid of her.
Ever since I got back here to the farm, I’ve been trying to get rid of her. And the way I’ve gone about getting rid of her has been to hold her in. In. In. In. This, oddly, is just the immediate impulse you have when you are trying to get rid of something. You hold it in. You think if you just don’t talk about the thing, if you just ignore the thing, it will go away.
Well, I am here to report, live from the Land of Holding Everything In, that it doesn’t work. I’ve tried every which way to make this motherhood thing go away. I’ve tried deciding that it was utter nonsense. A baby? Oh, forgodsakes. The idea had, after all, hit me when I was away from home. Not in my normal life. It hit me when I was in a heightened state of horribleness, dealing with a paralyzed mother, for heaven’s sake.
And everything looks so different when you’re home. Everything! Who doesn’t know this one? There you are, off on vacation, far away from home, you’re sitting on some beautiful beach drinking a fruity drink, and you get this giant urge to change your life; you vow to quit your job and start a new life. Yes! Because the truth is you’ve always wanted to open a cooking school or something—yes, a cooking school! Yes, as soon as you get home you will get right on that!
And then you get home, back to your real bed and your real dust under your real couch, and you think, Cooking school? And you go back to work, and your old job really isn’t all that bad, and the routine of your days lulls you back to a kind of comfortable, if slightly fitful, sleep.
That’s what I’ve been thinking about the whole baby deal. I’ve been thinking: That’s so silly. Now get back to the real world.
The problem, of course, is that what I have inside me isn’t some harebrained scheme to start a cooking school. No, I am changed. Like it or not, I’m a mom now: a mom who happens to have no kid.
“I have something to ask you,” I say to Alex as we walk. Just that abruptly, I say it.
“Well, I’m not afraid of her, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he says.
Um, no. That’s not what I was thinking. What is he talking about?
“I mean, it’s not like the old lady is going to pull out a pistol and start shooting us,” he says.
Oh, the old lady. A pistol? Our brainwaves are way out of alignment here.
“Actually, my guess is she’s more the sawed-off-shotgun type,” he says.
“Right.”
“But we’ll just go in there, tell her our business, ask her to think about it, and walk out. It won’t take more than a minute. How bad can it be?”
“Right.”
Our feet are crunching even louder now, our pace quickening with entirely separate types of determination.
“Well, what I had to ask you wasn’t about the old lady,” I say.
“No?”
“No.”
Something in my tone, I guess I’ve got his attention.
“It’s important?” he says.
“I think so.”
“You’re mad at me?”
“Nope.”
And then everything falls out of me like rain.
“Now, I know this might not be something you want,” I say, pointing my finger like a teacher. “In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s not something you want, and that’s okay, because I’m not saying it’s something we have to do, I’m really, really not, it’s just if we don’t talk about it, then I’m all alone with it, and that’s not fair to you or to me or to the relationship, and so really my first goal here is to protect our relationship that we worked so hard for and I think is pretty good, don’t you think it’s pretty good?”
“Yeah …”
A chipmunk comes darting out from the brush and scurries across.
“Okay, then.” I take a breath.
“Okay …”
I bite my lip for a moment. “Well,” I say, finally. “I feel better already. Whew. It’s never good to hold things in. Let that be a lesson. Out! Out! Out!”
“Right,” he says. “But—the question?”
“Oh.” And, damn. “Well, it’s important that you understand where this is coming from. Okay?” I’m trying to think of where to start. “It’s just that, well, the wind is blowing,” I say. “The wind is blowing really hard. And I know my wind is not the same as your wind, and there can never really be an our wind, not in any relationship, not really, anyway.”
“There can’t?”
“There can?”
“I’m really not sure what we’re talking about so I’m reluctant to take a stand.”
Oh, for heaven’s sake. See, this is why it’s bad to have an imaginary conversation with your husband for months on end. He’s so far behind you. I run through the events of last spring in my mind. I grab his arm. “Look,” I say. “I want to remind you that I did not bring that Chihuahua home.”
“Oh my God, this is about getting a Chihuahua?”
“No, the Chihuahua has nothing to do with it.”
“Okay, then. So we’re not getting a Chihuahua.”
“No.”
“Well, that’s … good.”
We walk in silence. Oh, we’re really making headway now.
“I just want you to know that this is not a case of the train leaving the station,” I say. “I am totally in control of the train.”
“I can tell.”
“And I am not going to stand here trying to convince you to do something you don’t want to do, I’ve already come to peace with that, but I’m in a bit of a quandary here because I have this hole in my heart and I really don’t know how to go about filling it.”
“You want to tell me what you’re talking about?” he says. He pulls a maple leaf off a tree, hands it to me. He knows I like deveining maple leaves.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll tell you what it is. It’s … the old lady. The cranky old lady in the big horrible house who no one will make eye contact with. That’s me someday, you know.”
“It is?”
“You’ll be dead and gone and I’ll be all alone out here and I’ll turn into a mean old witch without a name.”
“Wow,” he says. “So, um, you want to make sure I don’t die before you?”
“That’s not—”
“I can’t really promise, but I can certainly do my best.”
“That’s not really—”
“You’re afraid of being left alone?”
“Partly.” I messed up the maple leaf and lost the minor veins; now all I have is the big one that runs down the middle. I tie it in a loop, slip my finger through.
“You have a lot of family,” Alex says.
“Yes, I do. And so do you. But what about us?”
“It’s our family,” he points out.
“I know.”
“We have a huge family. We have half of suburban Philadelphia related to us. And my kids in New York. And the Israelis. And jeez, all the babes in Pittsburgh. And now George and Pat and—”
“I know, but—”
“You want more family?”
“I do.”
“Oh.”
There are no sounds at all now, nothing but the foot crunch and a distant cowbell.
I hand him my maple leaf vein ring. He slips it on the tip of his pinky.
“I’ve been thinking about this for months now,” I say. “Ever since my mom got sick, and I know you don’t want a kid, I know you already did that, so I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with this hole in my heart, and for a while it was going away, but now it’s just getting bigger and I don’t want to be a train that’s le
ft the station, and I certainly don’t want you to have to live out your retirement years with some cranky teenager in the house, and I don’t want you to have the stress of, you know, car seats and McDonald’s Happy Meals, but I would happily do all of that part, I really would, but I know that’s not enough, I really do, but I don’t have much else to offer.”
“Do I get to participate in this conversation?”
I don’t answer.
“You know,” he says, “it sounds like you’ve been having this conversation with me for the past six months, except I haven’t had a chance to talk.”
“Yeah. I knew you would think that. See, that’s what I mean. I already know what you think.”
“No, you don’t,” he says. “Hell, I don’t even know what I think.”
“You don’t?”
“I don’t.”
I pull down three more maple leaves.
“So you want, like, a baby?” he says.
“In a word.”
“Well, I was wondering if you might.”
“You were?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t you want a baby? You’re a natural mom.”
“I am.”
“You’re a mom to your friends. You’re a mom to all our animals. You’ve been a wonderful mom to your own mom.”
“That’s the one that got to me. That’s the one that got me all twisted up with this.”
“You think it’s twisted?” he asks.
“You don’t?”
“I think it’s pretty normal.”
“You do?”
“Why wouldn’t wanting a baby be normal?”
“Well, you don’t go marrying someone fifteen years older who’s already raised two kids and who you know is quite past the kid-raising thing and then just walk around thinking about having a kid.”
“Well, it sounds to me like you do.”
“Well, it’s stupid,” I say.
“It’s not stupid,” he says.
“Well, what is it then?”
“It’s something to think about.”
“Can you tell me what you think about it?”
He looks down at his feet. He looks over at the cows again. He looks down at his feet again. “I have a lot of thoughts,” he says. “Not the least of which is, you don’t go marrying someone fifteen years younger who’s a born mom and who hasn’t had kids and just walk around thinking the kid thing isn’t going to become an issue.”
“Issue,” I say. “We have an issue.” A real issue. Not just an SUV issue. Issue. What a horrible word. A word that sits heavy in my stomach.
The air is beginning to get moist now, humidity moving in. Suddenly the bugs seem a lot more eager for their bug meals. We wave our hands over our heads, swatting. See, it would be good to have a tail like a cow. Or at least ears that flicked. I hand Alex one of my maple leaves to use.
“Well, I’ll be honest,” he tells me. “It’s not something I want.”
“I know.”
“I never wanted kids. In fact, that was the one thing I was sure I didn’t want to be: a dad.”
“You told me.”
“And yet raising Peter and Amy is the thing I’m proudest about in my life. It’s the one thing I think I was good at.”
“I know.”
“So it’s not about wanting,” he says.
We talk about wanting. We talk about how the wanting in life might just be the smallest piece of the whole happiness equation. Either way you look at it. If you think about people who go through life wanting the next thing, and the next, and each time they get what they want, they want what’s next. There’s no happiness in that. There’s no life in that. There’s just the tease.
“Then if you look at it the other way,” Alex says. “Me with Peter and Amy. Or me with this farm. How does anybody know what they want before they have it? I never in my wildest dreams wanted to live on a farm. And now look at me. I love living here.”
“Maybe you’re just adaptable.”
“Or maybe just a chump.”
“No.” I tell him I think adaptable people just have to make sure they’re surrounded by people who won’t take advantage of them. “I don’t ever want to take advantage of you.”
“You don’t,” he says.
Well, we’re making some headway.
One foot in front of the other, that’s how it goes when you walk.
The old lady’s house is now looming just over Alex’s left shoulder. “Let’s get this over with,” he says, nodding in its direction. We’ll continue our conversation later. He needs some time to think, to catch up. Right now I’m relieved that I’m not alone with the subject anymore.
But—“issue.”
The house is a Wedgwood-blue Victorian towered over by a row of shaggy Norway spruces. There’s a cardboard sign tacked to the back door: “NO Trespassing. NO Solicitors.”
I elbow Alex.
He knocks.
“Who are you?” we hear. A thin voice, but a loud one. “Who is there?”
I elbow Alex again.
“We’re neighbors,” he shouts, in a tone suggesting that we come in peace. “We live down the road. The second pond down?”
“The frogs?” she says. “The place with all the frogs? You’re the new people in the place with the frogs?”
“Um, we have frogs,” I say, and now the screen door is swinging open. The old lady is in a light blue housecoat with butterflies on the collar, and bare feet. Her hair is the whitest silky white, tied loosely back. She might be tall if she stood all the way up; as it is, her back is bent round as a turtle shell.
We can see that there are two other women in the room, and a teenager. All three are sitting around a gleaming mahogany table, set with formal china.
“Oh, we didn’t mean to interrupt your supper,” I say.
“Come in,” the old lady says. “It’s really nice of you. I’m surprised. People don’t do this anymore.”
Right. Um. Do what?
“When I was a girl, everyone new introduced themselves to the neighbors.” Her voice is high, like the sound of a violin barely in tune. “You don’t see it anymore, not hardly.”
Right. And do we need to mention that this is not why we’ve come? Yes, we need to clear this misunderstanding up immediately.
“You must be good people,” she says. “Sit down. This is lemonade. This is lasagna. I made pie. We’ll have that later. What are your names? Where did you move from? What nationality are you?” In a matter of seconds, we skip all the way up to religious affiliation.
“Jewish,” Alex says.
“Catholic,” I say.
She looks up at Alex. “Land’s sake. I don’t believe I’ve ever had one in my house. Well, welcome. You don’t look any different.”
The two women smile politely. They have identical black bobs. The girl watches intently, as if she has no problem following anything.
“A Catholic,” the old lady says to me, looking me up, then down. “Well, it’s none of my damn business.”
I’m not quite sure what is happening here. First of all, the lady is not living up to her reputation. She isn’t the sawed-off-shotgun type. I’m not sure what type she is. But she’s certainly a force. In fact, it’s hard to believe the world hasn’t heard more from her. The women at the table, who we soon learn are her daughters who live a few towns over—the teenager is her granddaughter—bring us chairs and lemonade. It all happens so fast, as if a great vortex of welcome has swept us up.
It feels great. And it feels awful. Great in that we are being welcomed like honored guests. Awful in that we are imposters. We are not who they think we are. We’re here on business. We are not, technically, country people. We are not, let’s face it, George and Pat. We are not people with time for random neighbor visits. We are normal busy Americans with cars and TVs and errands and phone calls to make and appointments to keep. And—neighbors? We come from the city. We come from a place where neighbors are just people to keep the peace with. Peop
le you talk to only when you need something. People outside the place you call home.
Around here neighbors are something altogether different. Neighbors are people you just automatically pull up a chair for. It’s been strange for us to have been invited this way into virtually every neighbor’s home. It is especially strange to have been invited this way into the home of the notorious “old lady.” And why hasn’t she been embraced by the other neighbors? What secrets does she hold? What secrets do they hold?
“Tomatoes,” the old lady says. “I have tomatoes growing. You need tomatoes, you come here.” Her daughters nod. She says the sauce in her lasagna is her own. The apples in the pie are from her own orchard. She asks if we’d like to see pictures of the family, the cousins who still live in the Old Country. We look at the pictures. We laugh. We write down our phone number in case the old lady ever needs anything.
“And would you like to see the graveyard out back?” says Lisa, the teenager. “There are stones from the eighteen hundreds.” She says the Weaver family is buried there. “The people who settled this land.”
Eventually, as if everyone in this room had this whole thing planned in advance, we end up following Lisa out the back door, past the apple orchard, and through an overgrown hay field. Lisa’s a slim girl with dark, happy eyes. She’s giving us a history lesson. She says she loves history. She asks what we know about the Whiskey Rebellion. “Everyone thinks of it as a lesson in taxation,” she says, “but if you ask me, it was a much bigger lesson in political deal-making.”
Well, then.
She asks if we have a favorite war, says her current favorite is the Revolutionary War. “But the Civil War is a very close second.”
Okay, then.
She has sandals on. Pink sandals with the thinnest soles. I’m so impressed with the way she walks through the field, into and out of the briars, with just those sandals. Alex and I have on our “hiking boots.” We know they are “hiking boots” because it said so right in the Eddie Bauer store, it said “hiking boots.” We bought the most rugged-looking ones they had. Wasn’t this what country people wore?
The Exact Same Moon Page 10
