by Ashton Lee
Later on, a stocky girl with thick glasses named Rita Carkeet from a small town in rural Kentucky had moved to Brentwood their sophomore year in high school, and Elise had been absolutely floored by something Rita had confided to her at the lunch table one day.
“There aren’t any strict rules here in Brentwood,” Rita said between bites of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Elise had perked up, putting down the ham and cheese on rye that her mother had packed for her. “What do you mean? The teachers hand out demerits right and left from what I’ve seen.”
“No, I meant that you can go up any stairwell you want here. At Mansfield High back in Kentucky, there was a stairwell for the boys and a separate one for the girls, and they were strictly monitored. You could get detention for disobeying.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope, and sometimes if you had a class at the bottom of the boys’ stairs but you were on the second floor, you had to walk all the way across the second floor and go down the girls’ stairs and then all the way across the first floor to get to it. The boys had to do the same thing.”
Elise sat back, shaking her head in amazement. “But why? ”
Rita shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess to keep us apart for a short time.”
“But didn’t you have coed classes?”
“Yep, we did.”
“What nonsense! I don’t see the point.”
“That’s why I like the fact that you can walk up and down any stairs you want here,” Rita concluded. “Brentwood is cool.”
Thus was born the militant feminist and Professor of Women Studies at the University of Evansville that Elise had studied to become. Who had never tired of confronting her extended family with criticism of their conventional choices—particularly their marriages with children—wherever she turned. Husbands and wives raising the nuclear family were considered the ideal by everyone. But there were other ways to live life, she had told them all at family gatherings, and they had not appreciated hearing that. They had smiled and nodded politely, but it was quite evident that they had resented Elise’s radical posturing.
Then came the epic confrontation with her mother, Susan, one summer when Elise had uncharacteristically visited from Evansville. The two of them were having spinach salads and garlic toast at a fashionable restaurant in the Cool Springs Galleria, where Susan ran her “empty-nest” crafts boutique. Anyone observing the two of them from a nearby table could not have failed to notice the contrast.
Where Susan was impeccably coiffed, dressed, made-up, and accessorized, all of which flattered her still-attractive, middle-aged face and figure, Elise was strictly unadorned in jeans, her long blond hair parted down the middle in retro, hippie fashion, and her features fresh-scrubbed and simple with no trace of cosmetic enhancement. They were from two different eras, both in appearance and in thinking.
It was Susan who unleashed the fury from somewhere deep within her daughter’s psyche by saying absolutely the wrong thing at the wrong time between bites of spinach leaves and feta cheese.
“Will you be totally honest with me, darling?” Susan began. “I think we’re both mature enough to appreciate the truth now. Are you . . . well, is all this interest in Women’s Studies because you are . . . well, I’ll just come out and say it. Are you gay? Is that why you never bring home any men to meet us? I know you had your crushes on certain boys in high school, but nothing ever seemed to come of it. We had to force you to go to the prom with that nice Ellis boy. Could you just level with your mother for once?”
Elise had dropped her fork noisily into her salad bowl and sat there staring at her mother for an uncomfortable minute or so. Then she delivered what she considered to be the speech of the ages.
“As a matter of fact, Mom, I’m not gay. But what if I were? So, you think my lifelong devotion to women’s issues is because I am sexually attracted to other women? That’s what you’ve been thinking all this time? Do you not understand anything about what I’ve been trying to accomplish? My mission at the university is to help women understand that they don’t have to take a backseat to men and what men want. They have a right to their own lives apart from men. And so what if some women are attracted to other women? I get the impression that you would be horrified if that turned out to be the case with me, your own daughter. Oh my, how would you explain it to all your friends in Brentwood? What a social mess that would be, wouldn’t it? Well, don’t worry. You’ll never have to do that. I’m not sexually attracted to women, but I don’t need a man in my life to make it complete, either. I really thought you understood that after all this time, but apparently I was mistaken.”
Susan had gathered herself as best she could, taking a sip of her Chardonnay for good measure and managing a polite smile. “I certainly didn’t mean to offend you, sweetheart. And, no, if it turned out that you were interested in women that way, I would accept it. Your father and I have known for a long time that you were your own woman. Give us a little credit. You do remember the party we gave you when you nailed down your teaching position at the university, don’t you? We were very proud of you. But you just don’t talk to us very much about anything anymore. You leave us guessing about everything important in your life.”
Elise had allowed herself to calm down a bit. The big payoff was that it felt good getting all those words off her chest. “Okay, maybe I overreacted a little going on and on like I did. I just want you to understand that I have no intention of ever giving up my mission in life.”
“No, I would never ask you to do that. I just wanted you to level with me, that’s all. There are some things a mother needs to know as the years go by. I don’t think I was out of line to put any misconceptions to bed.”
Mother and daughter had left it at that, calling an uneasy truce.
Yet after she had entered her thirties, and somewhat surprisingly, Elise found her priorities shifting somewhat. Teaching young women how to think and redefining what it meant to be female was immensely gratifying, to be sure. But they were young women who entered her life briefly, exiting upon graduation as they learned how to invent themselves and venture forth on their own. What if her influence could extend beyond the period of matriculation? What if, despite her protestations about marriage and children, she boldly undertook at least part of that proposition? A child of her own might afford her that opportunity. If she had a daughter, she could bring her up to be the perfect, dynamic, well-adjusted female in the twentieth-first century; and if she had a son, he could become the ideal man, respectful of women and treating them as equals. Both would be major accomplishments in this day and age.
Beyond that, however, there was the issue of loneliness. Some people could handle it, whereas others could not bear it. Elise had examined her heart and emerged with the idea that she neither required nor feared it. Under those circumstances, bringing a child into the world seemed not only reasonable but also inviting. She felt she was on solid ground and had given herself the go-ahead for her pregnancy.
So she decided that a part of herself would continue. She wanted her genes to enter the mix and continue to do laps in the pool. As for the origin of the other half of the person she would bring into the universe, did she really need the man behind the genes hanging around in her life? Clinging fast to her proclivities, she decided that all that was necessary was the fertilizing, not the patronizing a man might bring to the equation. To be sure, she was willing to concede that there might be a diamond in the rough out there, but she also was convinced that there were more than enough hard black lumps of coal for the taking, and that was hardly worth the risk.
So it was that she opted for the emotionless convenience of a sperm bank in Evansville, and now, like her sister-in-law in Cherico, she had a baby on the way and a lifelong adventure before her. She firmly believed that a woman could indeed have it all—a career and a family on her own terms. Why was that so difficult for some people to understand? She did not have to settle for the conventional and
the socially acceptable to be happy.
And then, once she had settled into the upstairs guest room with the unparalleled view of the lake and the four-poster bed that her aunt Connie and uncle Doug had graciously provided her until the baby was born, the reality of being pregnant began to invade every cell of her being. It was chemical, hormonal, and emotional, but in any case, it wasn’t what she thought it was going to be—at least not so far.
But she did not panic. Surely, her sister-in-law, Maura Beth, was experiencing the same thing. Didn’t all women have these kinds of doubts? It was time to compare notes and get some reassurance. Yes, that would do the trick. They were both mothers in the making, and they would start commiserating with each other in earnest.
* * *
“Don’t you two stay out here too much longer,” Connie McShay said to her two favorite pregnant young women. “It’s getting chilly, and we have that nice, warm fire waiting for you inside.” In fact, a late-October killing frost had set the tone for comfort inside the lodge’s sprawling, high-ceilinged great room, and Douglas had done his manly, husbandly thing and put in a generous supply of wood as a result.
“We won’t,” Maura Beth answered. “But you know how it is. We’re thick as thieves these days.”
They had all just finished up one of Connie’s delicious dinners consisting of bell peppers stuffed with wild rice, baked squash casserole, and—with a nod to autumn—homemade pumpkin pie for dessert. Jeremy and his uncle Doug had retreated to comfortable chairs in front of the Tennessee sandstone fireplace to talk about the woeful world situation and lesser matters, while Maura Beth and Elise had insisted on venturing out onto the deck for a breath of the crisp air. At the moment they were leaning against the railing, enjoying the lights of the fishing camps on the other side of Lake Cherico—little jewels dancing on the surface of the dark water, they were.
“Yes,” Connie told both of them as she stood in the deck doorway. “I imagine you two have some notes to compare as usual.”
“That’s exactly what we’re doing to do, Aunt Connie,” Elise said, turning around for a moment. “In fact, we can’t wait.”
“I wish I had had a gal pal to go through my pregnancy with my Lindy,” Connie continued. “But I’m glad you two have each other. Enjoy.”
After Connie had left, it was Elise who was the first to address her concerns. “I think I’m losing track of the person I used to be. Are you experiencing the same thing, by any chance? ”
Maura Beth looked down at her belly. She was wearing her very first maternity outfit—a floral sheath—even though she still wasn’t showing as much as Elise was. But she couldn’t wait to show herself off to the world, despite still standing before the mirror and trying to figure everything out all at once. What a confounding but exhilarating experience this was turning out to be, nothing quite like she had imagined. If Jeremy couldn’t write a book about it, maybe she could. Now that was a thought, but it seemed a bit bogus when she reflected just a little. Taking Jeremy’s “pregnancy” away from him might be more than problematic at this point.
“What do you mean by losing, Elise? I think you’re still very much you. You’re still the same liberated woman who refused the bouquet at my wedding when she caught it by accident.”
“But that’s just surface stuff. What I mean is, I don’t feel the same way I used to about important things.”
“You mean politically?”
Elise looked up at the night sky, as if searching for inspiration. “Not exactly. I mean I don’t seem to get worked up about issues the way I used to. The outrageous things certain politicians do would drive me up the wall, and I would go on and on about them during my lectures in class. My students loved my passion and fed off of it. Now, all I seem to do is lie around and eat things. I feel like Mae West in that movie where she says, ‘Beulah, peel me a grape.’ Almost the same way, I ask Aunt Connie to fix me the most outlandish concoctions in the kitchen, and she’s such a sweetheart about it. She never complains, no matter what I order up. She brings them up the stairs to me on a tray. She won’t even let me come down and eat at the table, although I tell her the exercise is good for me. But she won’t hear of it. Can you imagine? At least I convinced them to let me pay them for room and board. They were going to let me stay for free, you know. Now that wasn’t going to fly with someone who firmly believes women should always pay their own way.”
Now it was Maura Beth’s turn to laugh. “Hey, you’re family. What did you expect? You’re going to be treated like royalty because you’re pregnant. Did you imagine you were in training for a marathon? Lean isn’t going to cut it. You’re going to go a few sizes up when all is said and done, and Connie is delighted to help you get there. She went a few sizes up years ago, as she’s always happy to confess.”
There was more subdued laughter between the two, more sisterly than anything else. “I understand that, but I have to level with you. I seem to have jumped ahead about three or four years in my mind to the time when I can interact with my child and teach her—or him—about the world. I want to get this gestation part over with quickly, but it’s not going so fast. Or at least not fast enough for me.”
Maura Beth drew back slightly, barely avoiding a confounding smirk. “It is what it is, Elise. It’s not like having a cocktail or a big dinner that’s out of your system in a matter of hours or overnight at the most. Didn’t you consider that before you got pregnant? That’s pretty much what happens when sperm and egg meet. They don’t say good-bye to each other at the door and stop dating, you know.”
Elise laughed at the image, but afterward, her sigh was quite prolonged. “But I just want to get to the important part—the part that really matters, which is when I get to see who it is I’ve brought into the world. Aren’t you even the least bit curious about that, too?”
“Of course I am. Who wouldn’t be? But I’m willing to be patient. It seems to me the part before we get to that is pretty important, too. I know that holding and touching and talking to your baby grounds the child from the very beginning. Maybe the early parts are a bit messy with the spitting up and the diaper changing and all that, but we have to go through them. Dr. Lively will be there to guide us, no matter what, and Jeremy has promised to do his fair share of it all.”
Elise gave her sister-in-law an exasperated look. “You mean to tell me you haven’t experienced any doubts at all about being pregnant and what the future holds? There are people out there who think that being pregnant automatically means you’re happy. A blessed event, they call it. Maybe that’s true in some cases, but it can’t be universally true.”
Maura Beth wasn’t quite sure she wanted to go there but relented in the end. “Well, to be totally honest with you, I have had some doubts about all of this. I conduct these long sessions with myself before my full-length mirror in the bedroom. And no, I’m not being narcissistic. Jeremy doesn’t know about them, and I’m not sure I’ll ever tell him. He might think I’ve gone off the deep end. How will it all turn out? I ask myself over and over.”
“Then you do understand what I’m talking about. I’m so relieved. For someone who’s always been so self-assured, I find myself uncharacteristically uncertain. That’s so unprofes-sorial of me.”
Maura Beth reached out and took Elise’s hand. “You know it’s probably the hormones, don’t you?”
Elise nodded, but there was reluctance in the gesture. “I guess. But I find myself waking up in the morning and thinking that it might be nice if men could get pregnant, too. Then they might understand women better. Do you think I’m being vengeful and unreasonable?”
Maura Beth squeezed Elise’s hand emphatically for a second, as if the bond between them had just been cemented forever. “Not at all. I’ll level with you and tell you that I’ve had to take Jeremy to task about mimicking all of my symptoms. Sometimes he wants to be a part of the pregnancy too much, but deep down, I really like him being so solicitous. He really means well, and I wouldn’t like it the othe
r way around where he thinks everything is up to me until the end.” She paused, averting her eyes. “I hope you don’t mind my asking, and I’m certainly not trying to start anything, but do you . . . well, do you miss not having a husband to share it all with?”
Elise offered up surprising but carefree laughter. It seemed to last much longer than it needed to, and Maura Beth wondered if she had struck some sort of nerve. “But you’re wrong about that. I have Vittorio.”
“Who is Vittorio?”
“My sperm bank donor.”
Maura Beth’s puzzlement produced a studied frown. “But you told me before that your donor was anonymous. Did you find out who he was somehow? Have you been snooping around, doing detective work like some of these people do when they find out they’re adopted?”
“No, nothing like that. The donors are anonymous, but you’re allowed to determine things like ethnicity, any health issues, and even whether they’re college-educated before you choose their swimmers. Did I not mention that mine turned out to be Italian American with a degree? I could have had a Scandinavian if I’d wanted, of course. But I’m already blond. I decided to go in a different direction and try for a little different look in the genetic crapshoot.”
Maura Beth shook her head, fascinated but saying nothing.
“Well, anyway, I decided to name him Vittorio. Very international, don’t you think? It just seemed to fit. And I have to say that Vittorio does not meddle at all, especially when I have one of my frequent mood swings. He’s gotten very good at staying out of my way, and that’s just fine with me. I don’t think a real husband would be anywhere near as cooperative at that as he is.”
Maura Beth was grateful for the whimsy and the humor and decided to forge ahead. “Then you don’t have buyer’s remorse about this after all? Since you’ve come this far, this is one you don’t want to take back.”
Elise’s tone was resolute. “It’s funny. The phrase ‘buyer’s remorse’ has occurred to me now and then. But I took the one-year sabbatical from teaching to do this, and I’m not one to take things lightly. I don’t back out once I’ve committed, as you well know. Maybe I’ve been overthinking this too much.”
