Miss Fortune

by Lauren Weedman

  Our French ultrasound lady sent us home from our last exam with a photo of the baby with his hand up over his head like he’s waving. Whenever I pass by the photo on the refrigerator I wave back. It’s exciting to see that he’s going to be good on a parade float. I like this “growing a baby” thing. Why didn’t I do it sooner? Oh, because I had no desire and was petrified of being so poor I’d have to learn to make a baby diaper out of car wash coupons.

  • • •

  When I told David that I wanted to stop our “Get off me now!” birth control method so we could try to get pregnant, he panicked. “Oh. Okay. Well, I don’t know. I’m really busy, I’ve got a lot of stuff to do and things to take care of at these places with some people. Maybe in a few years when I have less stuff with people in places.”

  The timing did feel particularly cruel, but isn’t freedom just another word for nothing left to lose? Besides, my ovaries were threatening to puff out dust clouds.

  The real panic inducer for both of us was money. I had no idea how much money David actually had. He rinsed out and reused old ziplock baggies from the eighties to store the Altoids he bought in bulk from Costco in the nineties. I’d always assumed he was super-thrifty in order to support the teenage son who needed to be clothed, fed, and deloused, but he could have been an eccentric millionaire trying to keep me off the scent.

  No matter. The baby idea was mine. I’d pay for it. I was the stable one, because we always knew what to expect when it came to me and money. Give me fifteen hundred dollars or fifty thousand (please give me that), and without fail, I’d still be three months away from being completely broke. My friends like to joke that I spend money like a rapper—if I suddenly had a lot of it I was buying iPads and gold teeth for all my moms.

  After I promised to “feed it, wash it, put it to sleep, and find a way to pay for everything,” David had said yes.

  Once the decision was final, he was excited. According to him, kids were pretty fun up until age eleven. He told me that I had better hope that I’m a movie star by the time the kid turns eleven so I can afford boarding school.

  David’s only son, Jack, whom he’d raised alone since Jack’s mother died, had just left for college. At a dinner party, I’d overheard David say to a young-looking dad type seated next to him, “That’s it, man. I’m free. I’m gonna buy a tent and camping gear. I’m going to go on road trips. Learn to parasail. Maybe I’ll jump in the ocean and just start swimming, because after eighteen years, I’m free!” He’d then thrown his head back and started laughing, tears of relief and joy running down his cheeks.

  Here we are, five months later, pregnant at Jack’s high school graduation. I love Jack but I hope nobody tells him that, because he’ll try to borrow money from me. I’m so happy we’re having a boy. It’s cheaper and everyone keeps saying, “Boys love their mothers so much”—hard to enjoy when I think about Jack. Jack’s mother died when he was eight. When that graduation procession music kicked in, I could have sobbed and pounded my chest. Instead I got teary and dabbed. There were a lot of families shouting back and forth at each other. “Can you believe it! It’s a miracle. I thought the day would never come.” It seemed like every kid at the school just barely graduated. Or maybe it was just our section—we were in the very last section of the arena because we got there late. All the parents sitting closer than us were shouting “Stanford! Thanks for asking. And you?”

  The day after Jack’s graduation, David left for his new job working on a salmon-fishing boat in Alaska. He’s been gone now for three weeks. This morning I woke up and thought I felt something in my stomach. I’m like a giant who’s swallowed a little person. It was just gas again, but this time it’s sadness gas. I’ve heard nothing from David since he left. When he said it was remote I thought he was just trying to sound macho, like when he described the housing as “barracks.” What if he made up the whole “Oh, I’m going to Alaska . . . no cell phone reception . . . I’ll call when I can” and then I never hear from him again? My friends keep telling me that I’m worrying about David so much because of my hormones. I think it’s more from the fact that I’ve eaten nothing but Fiber One toaster pastries since he left.

  Yesterday, I was on an elevator going to my manager’s office and Janice Dickinson got on. Right as I was thinking how she looks like Mick Jagger in the form of a tall, thin woman she turns to me and screams, “Are you leaking yet?” The two men on the elevator started pushing the buttons to get them off at the next floor as quickly as possible. I was so thrilled she was talking to me, I told her, “Now I am.” And then: “No, I’m not, but other gross things are happening to me.” To which she responded, “No! You’re beautiful! Do you hear me? You are beautiful.” She had to get off the elevator, but not before turning again and screaming back at me, “You are!” Later that day, I got the news that Michael Jackson died and I saw the helicopters fly over me rushing to take him to the hospital. This is the surreal world I’m bringing a child into.

  • • •

  David is finally back from Alaska. It was a good season. Something to do with the massive global warming.

  We went to our all-day birthing class yesterday. The teacher was blissed out of her mind on babies. She described the importance of skin-on-skin contact. “You’re going to lay that baby on your chest, next to you, the yummiest baby you’ve ever seen, and you’re going to just eat him up.” It was a little cutesy for me. I feel about using “yummy” to describe something that isn’t food the way other people do about “moist panties.” David was taking copious notes while I scanned the room looking for people older than us. There weren’t any.

  We were by far the oldest in the room, I think. There was one abusive Dutchman who seemed somewhat old, but that may just be because he looked crabby. His wife kept having weepy breakdowns that she claimed were about being scared of birth, but I think she was trying to give the class subtle hints to call the cops and get her out of her relationship. Next door to the class, the hospital was giving out flu shots to family members who worked for the hospital and it was like they were murdering children in the next room. There were SCREAMS OF TERROR, kids just screaming their heads off as our instructor taught us how to slow dance with each other to help the labor pains.

  The birth is coming up. Today’s doctor appointment lasted less than ten minutes. I walked in. I peed a teaspoon of pee into a cup. (It’s getting harder and harder to do that—I asked the nurse if next time I could get seven or eight people to help me and she said, “How about a funnel?”) The report was that he was “perfect.” I’ll be sure to use that against him when he’s older: “You were sold to me as being perfect. What happened?”

  I’ve been having trouble sleeping. I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about how we live on a dark planet with dark horrible people, a place where monkeys eat other monkeys’ faces off. Sophie had to make a choice. John F. Kennedy Jr. crashed his plane, and the show Intervention will never run out of addicts to follow. If JFK Jr. could die, anyone could. The curse of the Kennedys. The curse of being born and knowing no matter how much money, power, or muscle tone you have, you will be a bad pilot. A baby is born into the cycle of suffering. It’s going to have to face my death and its own death. Oh my god, what have I done? I just wanted something to hug and go on walks with and now suddenly everybody is dead. After a few days of nonstop death anxiety I have a breakthrough—an Oprah “aha” moment. There is a death here. A part of me is dying forever. It’s what I want, but it is a death.

  I’ve decided to spend the day with my friend Julie because she is my one friend who has not let having kids change her one single bit. Being around her is the comfort I need right now.

  I go over to spend the afternoon at her house, and she’s standing in her kitchen trying to figure out how many Weight Watchers points are in a cosmo. “The glasses were minuscule, plus my husband kept taking sips from each drink with his big old horse mouth, so I’m
rounding down . . . Fuck it. Ten. I’m saying ten.” She says all of this while managing to also complain about her mother.

  “She’s selfish! Did I tell you about our trip to see her last weekend in New Hampshire? Oh my god. She was up all night playing her banjo! ‘Five foot two, eyes of blue . . . could she, could she?’ She’s a kook! And she knew my kids needed to get to sleep but she had a contra-dancing concert to go to the next night, so she insisted on staying up late and practicing. I told her she was being loud and my kids needed to get some sleep, but she doesn’t even care. She cares more about her sheep than she does her grandkids. All she cares about is her sheep and her banjo! And she’s cheap. I know she’s got money but she won’t buy the kids new gifts. It’s always something used. I’m sick of it. She’s an insane person. She just spent all this money on some special electrical fence for her sheep.”

  By the time she gets to the word “sheep” her voice is so shrill I feel like my ears are going to start bleeding. And my nose. And maybe my feet.

  “Yeah,” I say, “the last time your mom was visiting for Christmas and I came over to visit her, all she did was show me pictures of her sheep wearing wool sweaters that she made out of them.”

  Julie throws her head and back and screams, “Ahhhh! She should be showing you pictures of her grandkids—not her sheep.” She starts shoveling what looks like homemade tapioca pudding into a coffee mug.

  “I can’t talk about her anymore. Okay, let’s go get Annabelle and Henk out of the hot tub.”

  Annabelle and Henk are Julie’s kids, and they are five and six years old. I didn’t even know that they were home because I’ve been here for more than an hour and haven’t heard them screaming and fighting like I normally do. I just assumed they were being driven around town by their seventeen-year-old live-in nanny from Yugoslavia who doesn’t have a driver’s license. Per usual.

  There are no noises coming from the backyard, and I can’t imagine that kids this age are just lying back in a hot tub, relaxing with their thoughts.

  Julie must see the panic on my face because she hits my arm and says, “Take it easy. It’s empty!”

  It turns out that Julie wanted us to spend the day drinking wine (“Oh, come on, pretend you’re a French mom!”) and soaking in the hot tub (“Come on, pretend you’re a Swiss mom! They do it all the time!”), so she drained the tub, but when she saw how filthy it was, she stripped her kids down, gave them each a sponge, and plopped them in the empty tub with a running hose, telling them to “Scrub, scrub, scrub!” before going inside to make herself a cocktail.

  We get to the edge of the hot tub and peer in. Henk and Annabelle are naked, smeared with dirt, and sitting in about a foot of filthy black water while quietly chewing on their antiseptic sponges. These are the kind of sponges they tell you not to clean your fish tank with or all the fish will die.

  Julie hoses the kids down and then sends them inside to play. About a second after they’re back in the house we hear a scream, one of definite physical pain. At eight months pregnant, I go running into the house full speed. I look behind me and assume I’ll see Julie about to pass me or at least keeping up, but instead I discover her at the fridge, scooping more pudding into her mug. She sees me see her and says, “Oops!” and laughs and then follows me into the bedroom.

  When we get to the bedroom, Annabelle is pulling on Henk’s penis. Full weight, leaning back like she’s water-skiing. Henk is freaking out, screaming. It’s so horrifying I can’t even speak.

  Julie jumps in and ungrasps Annabelle’s hand from poor Henk and scolds, “No, no, no!” with her mouth full of pudding.

  “You guys, go put your clothes on, and if you want you can do your ‘High School the Musical’ show for us—we’ll watch.” Henk still has the hiccups from crying, but this cheers him up and suddenly he and his sister are back on. “He’ll thank her later, I’m sure,” Julie says after they run, hand in hand, out of the room.

  As soon as Julie’s sure the kids are in the living room rehearsing, she takes her one-hitter out of her pocket, packed and ready to go, and offers it to me. “Here, take a tiny hit. It makes their shows so much better. Otherwise, they can get really long.”

  I calmly explain to Julie that I’m pregnant and I’ve decided that I’m going to wait until my kid is born to start fucking him or her up. “Oh, come on,” Julie says, “take a tiny hit. Pretend you’re a Dutch mom!”

  In the living room, there’s no preshow excitement in the air. In fact, Annabelle and Henk are both just lounging on the couch. Still naked. I head toward the La-Z-Boy chair in the corner of the room, but Julie races over and beats me to it, leaving me to sit on the couch flanked by naked children.

  Rocking in the La-Z-Boy while eating another mug of pudding starts to make Julie uncharacteristically self-reflective.

  “When both the kids were first born, I talked on my cell phone all the time. I think that’s why Annabelle has attachment issues. Poor Annabelle, she’s all fucked up.”

  “Julie, she’s right here.”

  “Oh, she didn’t hear me.” Julie waves me away and jumps up, gets a handful of pistachios and throws them in her mug, then flops back down in her chair.

  “Yes, I did,” Annabelle says.

  I’m going to spend more time with her, I think. I’m going to look in her eyes. I look over my shoulder to start the resolution right now and discover Annabelle sitting on the couch with her feet up in the air, staring off into the distance as she puts a pistachio in her . . . crotch. She’s doing it very innocently and absentmindedly. Just la-la-la. She doesn’t even seem like she’s aware she’s doing it. I, on the other hand, notice.

  “Julie . . . Julie!” I’m trying to get Julie’s attention without shaming the child.

  Finally Julie sees what’s going on, looks slightly embarrassed, and says, “Oh, gross. Annabelle, stop!”

  She then starts talking about how important making eye contact with your baby is.

  “I know it sounds dumb, but you have to try and remind yourself, if you can, to look your baby in the eyes. Believe it or not, it makes a difference. I didn’t do any of that stuff, the skin on skin after they were born . . . none of it. I really regret it. I do.”

  For a moment Julie looks like she’s going to cry. I might join her. When someone with seemingly no self-awareness suddenly becomes aware, it’s painful. I feel as if she were in a coma for years and we all just assumed she had no idea what was going on around her, but it turns out she heard us talking shit about her the entire time.

  I’m about to tell her, “I’m sure it’s going to be okay; you can make it right!” when I notice a little hand feeling around on my face. At first I don’t know what’s going on, but then a pistachio is suddenly being shoved into my mouth. I clamp my lips shut, but Annabelle’s little fingers manage to push the nut in through the side of my mouth. Annabelle, Henk, and Julie shriek with laughter.

  Welcome to the earth, little spirits; thank you for teaching me that underwear and shame are key to a happy houseguest. I’ll try to remember this after my child is born, which will be happening never. This pregnancy is endless. I’m going to be pregnant my entire life.

  • • •

  That was quick. Less than twenty minutes ago I had a baby. I’d suggested the name Kareer Killer but we decided on Leo. It’s amazing, and if I weren’t so nauseous, I’d be crying tears of joy. I have to do the skin-to-skin contact—putting Leo on my naked chest—that the birthing classes went on and on about, ASAP; otherwise he’ll get a learning disorder or never learn to love unless it’s a woman (or man, fingers crossed) swaddled in a hospital-issued baby blanket.

  David rips open my hospital gown and lays Leo’s little body on my chest right as a wave of nausea hits me so hard that I’m forced to hand him right back. After a few deep breaths I feel like I can probably hold Leo without yacking on him so I turn to tell David this and am met
with a sight that I cannot make any sense of. I literally cannot figure out what I’m seeing. David is sitting in a chair in the corner of the recovery room with his shirt off and Leo is on his chest. There’s a young blond nurse pinching David’s nipple and directing it toward Leo’s mouth. The nausea comes back with such force I can’t speak. I just lie there watching the bizarre first moments of Leo’s life.

  David claims the nurse acted of her own accord. She saw him trying to give skin-on-skin contact (like the classes told us to do) and assumed that we were doing some hippie bonding moment, so she jumped in and was trying to support whatever it was we were about. The nurse says that she walked in and was shocked to find a half-naked man in the corner holding Leo. When she told David she was going to give me the baby to nurse, David said, “I’ll do it,” and she thought, “Okay, dirty hippies, whatever you want.”

  The first night after Leo’s birth I’m not able to sleep. I’m anxious that he’s starving. I’m starving him to death. I’m killing him. He’s not able to latch on for breastfeeding and it’s going to give him brain damage. Are all of his organs formed? They haven’t told me that yet. His heart could be riddled with holes. One of his eyes is loose. It’s rolling around too much. I need a Sharpie so I can connect the moles on his back and see if they spell out “666.” I can’t catch my breath. This isn’t some postnatal hormonal anxiety attack. This is THE TRUTH coming through.

  The next morning, I wake up to Leo crying to be nursed. I sit up in bed, ready for the anxiety again, but it isn’t there. While I nurse I stare at Leo and wait for it to return, but it has vanished. Leo with his wispy brown hair and big eyes that are looking deeply at the world, yet I have no idea what he’s seeing. They remind me of the eyes of a whale. At first I’m relieved, and I want to guarantee the anxiety won’t return by going online and getting a month’s supply of Xanax for Leo and me. But maybe it’s a good thing. If I can face the existential angst of being alive, I think I’ll be a better mother. Yes, a few dark nights of the soul are a good thing, a necessary thing, and I shouldn’t spend my valuable time trying to escape them by brushing them off as hormonal or shutting them down with some online black market Xanax from India. Especially because my niece, Kaitlin, will be coming to visit again next month and she could hook me up with handfuls of the real stuff for free.