by Joanna Coles
‘We could always put the baby in the closet room,’ Peter observes, polishing off the muffin, his hand now creeping over to my plate to start mine. ‘I mean, when Martin Amis was a baby he slept in a drawer and it didn’t seem to do him any harm.’
Monday, 24 August
Peter
I have been strong-armed into accompanying Joanna to her doctor’s appointment. What worries me, as we sit in the reception, is that nothing is alive in here. The flowers in the vases are paper hydrangeas and silk stargazers. The cylindrical glass aquarium, which stands like a transparent column stretching up to the ceiling, is in fact dehydrated. It has an arrangement of shells, several fake pink jellyfish hanging by clearly visible fishing line, a scattering of gaudy rubber frogs and a solitary plastic turtle. The aquarium sits on top of a wide, circular chrome base which reflects our images. It is like looking at yourself in the back of a spoon. We are broad and distorted and ugly. We are grotesque and now we are breeding.
Over the speakers of the muzak system comes Eric Clapton’s song ‘Tears in Heaven’. Written to commemorate his toddler, who fell to his death from their high-rise New York apartment, I feel it is not necessarily the most reassuring of soundtracks for us would-be parents.
Behind the desolate aquarium, displayed along the counter side, are the icons of modern payment: Visa, Mastercard, Diner’s and Amex. And above them a large angry sign which declares, ‘A CHARGE WILL BE MADE FOR ALL BROKEN APPOINTMENTS.’ This rule apparently applies in only one direction, however. We have now been waiting for an hour past our time slot. On the door I notice another sign: ‘NO news is GOOD news – you will be notified only if your pap smear is ABnormal. Please DON’T call us, we’ll call you.’
Out of boredom I eavesdrop on one of the receptionist’s telephone conversations. ‘… Sexual relations, that’s how it passes back and forth,’ she says. ‘I’m gonna give you seven pills. Take one a day.’ She listens for a while, before interrupting again. ‘OK, honey, it’s Flagil. I just wanna be sure you’re not infecting each other.’
Listening with me is a Hasidic Jew in his regulation black suit, his sideburn coils trembling at his cheeks like two black springs. He purses his lips in disapproval and his eye line disappears beneath the broad rim of his black hat. Next to him sits a heavily tattooed woman, chin on chest, snoring gently.
We are finally ushered into the cubicle where the sonogram is to take place. Joanna changes into a white disposable paper robe and lounges on the examination chair beneath a pine-scented Magic Tree. I notice that the soles of her feet are filthy from padding about our apartment barefoot and I point this out. She tries to angle her feet down so the nurse won’t notice. The nurse is Luba. She is stout with tight poodle curls.
‘You English, yes?’
We nod.
‘I’m Russian,’ she says, rolling the ‘r’ for a lengthy breath. ‘I left eighteen years ago from Moscow, under Brezhnev. I’m Jewish so I got a visa for Israel, but I came straight here. There are too many Jews in one place in Israel, it’s no good. See, there’s its leg,’ she says, pointing at the sonogram image on her screen. ‘Its toes. Its heart. Let me see if it has all chambers. One, two, three, four. Yes. Pulse one-fifty, normal. Let me see if its spine is all joined up. Yes? Mmmm, yes. See, look baby’s waving, heh, heh, heh. You sure you don’t wanna know sex?’
‘No!’ says Joanna, starting out of the chair.
‘OK, Joanna.’
Afterwards, we both claim to have spotted the tell-tale signs of its gender.
‘I saw a little penis,’ I say.
‘Well, I spotted the ovaries,’ insists Joanna.
Tuesday, 25 August
Joanna
Peter has gone to Washington to discuss Zulus with National Geographic Magazine and I have decided to take advantage of his absence to do some initial apartment hunting. Though he has volunteered to traipse around the city with me and has already begun scanning the rental ads and drawing up lists, I would far rather do it on my own. The thing is Peter is completely unable to make a consumer decision. This tendency was well developed in London but has become far worse since we moved here, so much so that I can now barely stand to go shopping with him, either for clothes or food.
As soon as we get into a shop he is overcome by an almost pathological gloom. Even if the expedition is his idea, after five minutes he will announce he has developed a headache or become silent and unresponsive until I suggest he goes and finds the in-store café or waits outside.
I think it comes from growing up in Africa, where he had no consumer choice, but he has no ability to commit to a purchase. He will also debate buying an item for weeks until he has battered any enjoyment from the event. Recently it took him several weeks to decide between two almost identical leather jackets and, of course, once he had finally settled on the deerskin jacket the shop had run out of his size and he had to wait another six weeks, fretting that he had made the wrong choice, until the new stock arrived.
He’s just as bad with food. Last week I asked him to buy some supplies for supper and he returned triumphantly from D’Agostino’s brandishing a solitary tub of potato salad and a packet of weary smoked mackerel as if he’d bought enough supplies to last a serious snowstorm. He seems permanently surprised that food we bought a week ago is no longer in the fridge.
‘But we’ve got loads of salad stuff,’ he protested last week, when I asked him to pick up a bag of ‘Pre-sliced, Pre-washed, European-Style Salad’ on his way back from the gym. ‘No,’ I remind him, ‘we bought and ate it last week.’ No matter how many times I point it out to him, he seems genuinely astonished that buying food must be done on a regular basis. On the rare occasions we do venture to D’Agostino’s together, we only avoid a row if I take charge and ask him to find specific items, like a jar of capers or Carr’s Water Biscuits. Only then, oddly, does he seem to enjoy himself.
SEPTEMBER
The baby is now completely formed. From now on its time in the uterus will be spent growing and maturing until it is able to survive independently. Lanugo (fine down) is starting to form all over the baby, following the whorled pattern of the skin. The baby is 63⁄4 inches long and weighs nearly five ounces.
Sheila Kitzinger, The New Pregnancy and Childbirth
Saturday, 5 September
Peter
It is Labour Day weekend and we rent a car and drive down to Maryland for a pig roast, to be held at the house of a tugboat captain on the Chesapeake Bay. We have been invited by Tom, my laconic friend who works for Newsweek, but whose real passion is the saxophone.
The pig weighs in at 260 lbs. It lies belly down and legless on the griddle of a pig roaster made of oil drums welded together. There it sizzles for most of the day, its molasses-dark juices draining through a small hole in the griddle into a tin below. Much to the children’s squealing delight, steam issues in a strong jet from the pig’s cored anus. After several hours its eyes shrivel up – tiny dried peas that slide slowly down its blistering cheeks, like two last tears. Its ears swell until they are like two inflated balls. From time to time someone uses a floor mop to baste the beast. Finally its back sags and its leathery hide wrinkles into dark brown ripples as it transforms into crackling.
It is a strange cast which has gathered here on the grassy banks of Chesapeake Bay, around an original nucleus of friends who all lived on the same block in downtown Philadelphia. There is Neil – a Falstaffian character – with a rotund belly, a black beard, trousers that hang loosely by their braces, and a non-stop chatter, interrupted only by his own appreciative laughter. Neil runs an outfit called the Dumpster Divers, who scavenge for antiques and collectables at construction sites and abandoned buildings.
‘Our drama group in Philly does a solstice play every year,’ he tells me later as we swim in the muddy bay. ‘We did one called The Berlin Wall. It was the year the Wall came down. We inverted the “W” of wall so it became The Berlin Mall.’
He begins singing in a rich barito
ne to a syncopated beat:
‘They came,
They saw,
They did a little shopping.’
‘That’, says Neil proudly, as the words float out across the bay to the yachts on the sound, ‘was the opening chorus.’
Also among our number is Talane, a thirty-something, apple-cheeked blonde. She used to be Tom’s bank manager in Manhattan but is now a personal coach. ‘Not a trainer,’ she quickly corrects me, ‘a life coach, someone who helps people achieve their goals.
‘It’s not like therapy,’ she explains. ‘I don’t deal with unresolved problems of the past, I deal with the goals of the future.’ She trained at Coach University, an institution which exists only on the Internet. After a six-week course she was ready for business. Her clients fill out a lengthy questionnaire, in which they must note down and prioritize their goals. But first they have to practise attaining more modest, easily achievable tasks.
‘I give them homework,’ she says.
‘Homework – like what?’ I ask incredulously.
‘Like – “Go clean your closet.” You see, everything you have takes up energy, so before you start on something new you have to get rid of some of the old stuff, stuff that’s cluttering up your life – to make space.’
She coaches her clients on e-mail and via half-hour weekly telephone calls. Price? $50 an hour.
Sometimes she works with ‘clutter consultants’, who are an even newer profession. For a fee they will come in and sort out your cluttered life.
Bob the tugboat captain has rummaged through a chest and produced a British ensign. He tacks it to the side of the house next to the Stars and Stripes and the flag of Maryland. It flaps over the porch as the children swing in the hammock, as the adults munch on corn cobs and soft-shell crabs and tear at great slabs of roasted pork, and as we get slowly drunk on bourbon and beer, and a blues band blasts its music out across the wide Chesapeake estuary.
Neil joins me as I survey the scene of plenty.
‘You know they had a competition once to think up a motto for America,’ he says, tugging on his braces.
‘Yeah, and what won?’
‘I don’t remember. No one remembers. But I do remember the motto that came second: “America – more of everything.”’ His big belly shakes as his baritone laugh booms out again over the water.
Tuesday, 8 September
Joanna
I have been advised by Kelly that the best real estate broker in the city is Feathered Nests. I call them and am put through to Inez, a proficient-sounding woman who claims she has several ‘perfect’ properties in our price range or, rather ominously, ‘maybe just above’.
‘OK, OK, I need details,’ she says. ‘First, you know we charge a broker’s fee which is fifteen per cent of the first year’s rent?’
‘Of course,’ I say, realizing we probably did know but had forgotten to factor it into our costs.
‘Then you must be ready to fax me bank details, employment details, social security details, two personal references and one professional reference as soon as I tell you. Oh, and bring your passport. Now do you want pre- or postwar?’ she asks. ‘Downtown, uptown or midtown? Apartment building or brownstone? Doorman or non-doorman? Pets or no pets? Outside space important? View? Where are you now?’
‘Um, well we’re currently in a loft in the Village, but we’re having a baby, so we need somewhere with more rooms…’
‘You want to see a selection maybe? I can do you a selection. In fact I have a loft in SoHo which would be perfect for a couple with a baby. Perfect.’
‘I’m not sure we want another…’
‘What, you think I’ve been a broker for twenty-five years and I don’t know what people want?’
‘No no, I…’
‘I think this property would suit your parenting needs,’ she says aggressively. ‘But you’ll have to make it by first thing tomorrow morning. Eight a.m. Greene Street. Perfect location. Perfect. Lots of cafés, film companies, you can mix with arty people. You’re British, right? I thought so. You’ll love it, it’s a very European scene. Meet me there. Don’t be late because I don’t know how long it’ll stay on the market and then you’ll be disappointed and blame ME.’
At 3.30 p.m. when Peter phones from the Washington shuttle, I announce to him that I’ve arranged to view an apartment in SoHo.
‘SoHo? How many rooms has it got?’ he asks dubiously.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Well, didn’t you ask?’
‘Um, it’s sort of a loft, but the broker says it’s definitely OK for a baby,’ I say quickly, drawing the conversation to an end.
Tuesday, 8 September
Peter
‘You didn’t go swimming in Chesapeake Bay?’ asks Jeff, interrupting my report of our weekend pig roast.
‘Sure. Why not?’
‘Why not? Because they’ve discovered a brain-eating microbe that hangs out there. That’s why not! It’s been chowing down on fishermen’s brains.’
It is true that my memory has been even more faulty of late. And Joanna’s has almost ceased to function altogether. I had put this down to pregnancy, but maybe … I hurry home to research the deadly lergy.
I log on to the New York Times’s website in search of the details and sure enough my search delivers a piece from April, alarmingly headlined: ‘Fears of Deadly Organism Cast Shadow on Chesapeake’. But the site will provide me with no further information unless I am a registered subscriber.
Another piece from August is headlined ‘Fish-Killing Microbe Is Found to Cause Serious Harm to People’. ‘A toxic microbe blamed for killing millions of fish in the Chesapeake region’, I read, ‘can cause a serious but reversible neurological syndrome in humans, researchers from the University of Maryland say in a new study. The single cell microbe, Pfiesteria…’
Then the text runs out. This is all I am allowed to peep at without being a subscriber. I hurriedly register, but at the very end of the tedious process it rejects my English credit card and I am left again to nurse my burgeoning fears.
‘Serious but reversible…’
Wednesday, 9 September
Joanna
Inez is waiting outside the apartment as I arrive, full of hope. Perhaps there really are child-friendly lofts and we are not looking down the barrel of suburbia in Brooklyn or Connecticut. Greene Street, like most of central SoHo, is beautiful, a corridor of grey and white six-storey buildings, zig-zagged with fire escapes. Formerly factories, most of them have now been converted to swanky loft apartments with pressed-steel ceilings, central columns and wide wooden floors.
‘Joanner? I knew it was you already, even as I saw you turn the corner, I said to myself, “That’s Joanner.” Come, come,’ Inez cries, pressing the apartment number and pushing the heavy grey security door as the buzzer sounds.
She’s about forty-five, skinny as a starling’s rib with dyed tufts of black hair, a short black suit, flat black pumps and tired, pale-blue eyes. I follow her into the industrial-style elevator, sliding the grille behind me as she grapples with the old-fashioned handle, which has to be eased slowly to the side as if pulling a pint of Tetley’s.
I try to grin optimistically as we wheeze up the three floors. ‘Great location huh? Isn’t it? Isn’t it?’ insists Inez. I feel exhausted by her manner already. ‘And I have two more for you to look at nearby, straight after this.’ I nod as we judder to a halt. The door slides open directly on to the apartment, but before we can release the grille a woman of about fifty has pressed her face and wild shaggy hair against it.
‘Are you a lawyer?’ the woman demands suspiciously.
‘Er, no,’ I reply.
‘No lawyers, OK?’
‘I’m British,’ I volunteer, hoping this detail will divert her from asking my occupation, journalism rarely scoring higher than the law in most people’s estimation.
‘Oh, British?’ She seems momentarily nonplussed and nods permission to Inez, who slides open the
grille. We find ourselves standing in the quintessential Manhattan loft: bare brick walls, hardwood floors, Sixties tie-dye wall prints and one massive window at either end.
‘It’s beautiful,’ I murmur, briefly forgetting that it is even less practical than our present place on Horatio Street.
‘Yes and we have some famous people living in this building,’ the woman says proudly, ‘though I can’t give you their names for security reasons. How-do-you-do,’ she adds formally in a mock British accent. ‘I’m Renée.’
‘Joanna,’ I say, extending my hand, which she takes and, instead of shaking it, squeezes wetly. ‘I love your apartment,’ I say politely.
‘Oh, everyone loves this apartment,’ says Renée waving her arms expansively and laughing in a strange way. ‘The trouble is, I don’t like everyone.’ Inez makes a little snorting noise and goes off to investigate the bathroom.
‘What sign are you?’ asks Renée.
‘Sign?’
‘Star sign. Durr. You know, zodiac, astrology, the cosmos.’
‘Oh, sorry. Aries.’
‘Aries is good,’ says Renée, clapping her chapped hands. ‘Aries is very good. And your husband?’
‘Sagittarius.’
‘Very compatible, very compatible, if you’d said Scorpio I’d have said no way. Rent my apartment to a Scorpio? Get out of here! Now what about your actual birth date?’
‘April 20th,’ I mutter, hoping that her birth sign expertise stops short of the knowledge that I share this birth date with Adolf Hitler.
‘Oh, you’re on the cusp with Taurus, also good,’ she says. ‘Very good. Now what about your moon?’
‘My moon?’
‘I have to know where your moon rises.’
* * *
‘How did it go?’ asks Peter, who is back at his desk when I return.
‘Hopeless. The loft was nice but even less practical than this place and the woman who owns it was a nutter. I looked at two other places and both were completely unsuitable. I’m exhausted and I’m never going to use that broker again. I don’t know, maybe we should stay here until the baby’s born at least.’
