The Three of Us

by Joanna Coles

  ‘Listen, did you read the e-mail I sent you from BabyCenter.com today?’ I ask Peter over supper of meatloaf and onion gravy at the Metro Diner.

  ‘No, not yet.’

  ‘Well, they reckon that you should start saving now if you want your kid to go to college, because in eighteen years’ time it’s going to cost quarter of a million dollars.’

  ‘Oh, bollocks.’

  ‘And that’s in addition to the other quarter of a million. But they say that if we manage to save $542 a month from now on, we’ll have enough to cover it.’

  ‘Double bollocks,’ says Peter and orders another cappuccino.

  Tuesday, 10 November

  Peter

  I am making my first pilgrimage to Albee’s on Amsterdam Avenue. It is a haj I have been trying to delay for as long as possible, as Albee’s, New York’s well-known emporium of kiddie equipment, represents the tyranny of strollers and other essential accessories of breeding. Albee’s is even more depressing than I had anticipated, a tawdry bazaar which makes no attempt to shop dress but rather tries to give the impression of a bargain basement with prices sliced to the marrow.

  Joanna tasks me to track down something called a Diaper Genie, apparently as crucial to a baby as a litter tray is to a cat. As I slouch along the winding alleys flanked by tall piles of baby merchandise, I brush against a precarious tower of tiny, gaily coloured plastic lavatory seats that are designed to fit into full-sized ones and they come tumbling down. I flee the scene in search of my designated quarry, the Diaper Genie. It is, I eventually discover, a three-foot plastic cylinder with a hinged lid, that, its advertising blurb promises, will store soiled diapers in a sanitary, odourless and convenient way. I wrestle it to the counter, carefully stepping over the scattered debris of dozens of mini loo seats.

  Wednesday, 11 November

  Joanna

  In the last two weeks my nights have begun to follow a terrible pattern. No matter what time I go to bed I wake up at around 3.45 a.m., unable to get back to sleep.

  I have always been a good sleeper, but waking in the early hours is turning me into a zombie. I feel like a car parked in a quiet street, with its ignition turned off but its engine still roaring away in neutral. A colleague, who has two children, told me cheerfully that she found this one of her most creative times and that she would usually get up and write. But I have no desire to write at 3.45 a.m. Instead I lie there sorting through the arbitrary jetsam which floats in and out on my tide of fatigue, while Peter sleeps heartily beside me, his luxurious slumber only frustrating me further.

  I get up, feel my way into the kitchen without turning any lights on, make myself tea and stare out at the neighbouring block, counting the number of other insomniacs by their illuminated windows. There are seven of us tonight, not counting those others who might be huddling incognito in the dark, like me.

  I sit there fretting about what sort of mother I will make and how I will cope when the baby actually comes. Then at about 5.45 a.m. I get back into bed and drift off into an unsettled sleep and dream that I have given birth to a long thin baby who never needs feeding. She looks like my sister and I stand holding her at a party and people keep coming up to me and saying, ‘Hello, I hear your baby doesn’t need feeding, lucky you!’

  Thursday, 12 November

  Peter

  Joanna announces that once the baby is born she intends to chew its food before feeding it. This is a practice, she says, prevalent among French women. It is supposed to infuse the child with the mother’s antibodies. She logically extends this idea and declares I will have to do the same so that the child has access to both sets of antibodies. The thought of a kid being fed a spoonful of premasticated gunk makes me want to retch.

  Friday, 13 November

  Joanna

  No matter how long I sleep during the night, I always wake up feeling dark grey and fizzy with fatigue. This morning, trying to write a column, I find myself staring at perfectly simple sentences unable to tell if they make grammatical sense. My brain feels as if it is slowly disappearing.

  Though people have warned me I will feel shattered after the birth, no one has warned me about this pre-natal fatigue. Even the books skim over the subject, suggesting a fifteen-minute nap in the middle of the day as a cure-all. Today, after sending off my article I slip back into bed, quite desperate for sleep. But even with a Virgin Airways eye mask and yellow rubber earplugs in place, it never comes. Instead I lie there worrying about not sleeping enough and about whether my worrying will harm the baby.

  This must be what a degenerative brain disease feels like, a slow, lingering realization that you are losing control, coupled with a fear that you will never feel normal again.

  Sunday, 15 November

  Peter

  I perk up this evening when I realize that Joanna has forgotten to sprinkle wheatgerm on any of our meals today. It would seem that her wheatgerm stage has drawn to a close. It has lasted a week and, naturally, has made no discernible difference to our health.

  Monday, 16 November

  Joanna

  During another midnight surfing session I come across a rival to BabyCenter.com, the rather more urgent-sounding BabySoon.com. As well as offering competing weekly updates on foetal development, BabySoon.com also organizes daily opinion polls of new parents.

  Today’s question, blazoned across the home page, is, “How Has Parenthood Changed Your Sex Life?”

  a) It’s better than before.

  b) It’s the same.

  c) It’s not as good.

  I click on the word sex to get the answer. ‘Thirty-two per cent of BabySoon.com subscribers say their sex life is better than before. Twenty-six per cent say it’s the same. And forty-three per cent say it’s not as good.’

  I decide against telling Peter.

  Tuesday, 17 November

  Peter

  I have changed hairdressers. At Michael’s suggestion I go to DopDop, a hip salon on Mercer Street, just below Houston. It is in a cavernous basement, a veritable catacomb of hair. Dozens of tiny candles have been placed on little irregular ledges that form part of a jagged, unfinished brick wall. The high priestess of DopDop is Jo, an ebullient Goth from Philadelphia, who treats me to a stream-of-consciousness riff about her ‘personhood’. She notices me glancing at the faint subcutaneous candelabra on her upper arm and she stretches the skin for me to get a better view of the dime-sized insert: ‘Contraception,’ she explains. ‘It’s a two-year dispenser, the pill does bad things to my system, but necrotin is much gentler.’

  Jo turns to examine my somewhat undisciplined hair, tousling it into an even wilder bush. ‘Your problem is dark hair, light eyes, long face, prominent jaw. We need the cut to be boxy, sharp cornered and flatter on top. But I’m gonna give you some advice – now hear me out, OK?’ She looks at my hair in the mirror and I think she is about to comment on the sprinkling of premature grey that I have managed to convince myself makes me look more distinguished. ‘I would suggest that we dye your eyebrows. You’d be amazed at the difference it makes.’

  ‘But my eyebrows are black,’ I point out. ‘What colour do you want to make them?’

  ‘Well, see, though they’re dark, they’re not quite as dark as your hair – they need more definition.’

  I raise my eyebrows quizzically, while looking at them in the mirror. Then I try to lower them one at a time. It is the first time in my life that they have enjoyed this kind of attention.

  ‘And my advice?’ continues Jo. ‘Don’t tell anyone, not even Joanna, that you’ve had it done. No woman likes to think her man is vain. She probably won’t realize you’ve had it done – she’ll think you look great.’

  Wednesday, 18 November

  Joanna

  For the first time in my adult life I come back to discover I have left the apartment without my keys. I ring the bell, with the tiny autumn corn cobs still attached, but Peter has gone out. I have never done this before, I am meticulous about keys. I sit on th
e oxblood Chesterfield in the lobby reserved for guests, unable to do anything except gnaw on a sandwich I’ve been saving for later and wait for Peter.

  Spotting me in the 40-watt gloom, a neighbour offers to let me wait in her apartment, but I lie and say I’m waiting for Peter, who is parking the car. We don’t even have a car, but I can’t face the prospect of talking to someone I hardly know.

  I have also developed a cough, which I can’t seem to shake. The doctor told me to take Robitussin, but when I tried to buy some the pharmacist stopped me.

  ‘Is this for you personally?’ he asked as I rummaged for my purse. I nodded.

  ‘But ma’am, I can’t help noticing you’re pregnant.’

  ‘Yes, but my doctor told me this was safe,’ I explained.

  ‘Well I can’t recommend it,’ he said. ‘My wife had the flu when she was seven months pregnant and I looked into everything, and there was nothing she could take that was safe. I must urge you not to.’

  There was something about the way he stressed the word ‘urge’ that made me feel I should listen. Defeated, I picked up a packet of Hall’s mentholated honey and lemon cough drops. ‘What about these?’ I asked, feebly trying to make a joke. ‘Will these do me any harm?’

  ‘Well, personally, I would just ride it out,’ he said. ‘But if you’re desperate, I wouldn’t recommend more than two a day.’ I bought them and sucked the first of my daily ration on the way home. It tasted suspiciously buttery and much too sweet to be doing me much good.

  Wednesday, 18 November

  Peter

  Having dislodged a large chunk of tooth, I need a dentist in a hurry so I canvass friends. ‘Wasserman - he’s great,’ recommends Ron. ‘A pain-free practice. Tell him I recommended you. He’s on Park and 62nd.’ I call them up and the same afternoon I find myself reclining in Wasserman’s chair getting a temporary filling.

  Wasserman’s room is equipped with all the tools of the dentist’s trade. A huggy bear clings to the overhead light; on the wall facing me hangs a seaside scene from the Big Sur, and a Dutch canal pastoral with Friesian cows grazing nonchalantly on what appears to be a dangerously precipitous bank. And on his little alcove, above a large hollow china tooth bristling with pens, is the obligatory Farside cartoon. Next to the cartoon is a home-made sign: ‘Ignorance can be fixed,’ it reads, ‘but stupid is for ever.’ A mobile of brightly coloured cancan girls dangles from the ceiling, and a nurse doll called Anna Septic stands in a bell jar by the sink.

  Dr Wasserman snaps on blue rubber gloves and a mask and approaches, dazzling me with the pencil light strapped to his forehead. His eyes are huge as he squints into my mouth through the jeweller’s lenses protruding from his glasses. He pokes a tiny pen camera towards my teeth and talks me through the blue movie that is my magnified mouth. The image is displayed on a TV suspended from the ceiling. It is all glistening pinks and swelling reds and pulsing whites and bubbles of translucent saliva. I feel faintly embarrassed.

  ‘One of your wisdom teeth is impacted,’ he accuses, as though I have contracted a social disease through poor oral hygiene. He and his nurse, Evelyn, laugh pityingly at the examples of pathetic English dentistry on naked display in my gob.

  ‘Metal fillings,’ says Evelyn in wonder, as though observing rare examples of the lost folk craft of coracle weaving.

  Thursday, 19 November

  Joanna

  I had never intended to hire a yoga teacher to come to the apartment on a weekly basis, but I am unable to make the times of any local classes, so Peter gives me an early Christmas present of ten home sessions.

  Today we have our fourth session and already it feels indispensable, though sometimes I have to stifle snorts at what the two of us must look like, solemnly sitting on our mats drawing quick ‘Breaths of Fire’, like a poor man’s Sting and Trudi Styler.

  Despite initial grumblings when I suggested he join in too, it’s clear that Peter is beginning to enjoy our sessions, even though he goes through a ritual of protest before each one.

  This morning he wakes up with a hangover. ‘I’m far too ill to do yoga today,’ he moans. But at 9.45 a.m., as soon as our instructor, Mary Barnes, arrives, he slopes sheepishly in, clasping his yolk-yellow camping mat and crosses his legs straight into the lotus position with no prompting.

  Thursday, 19 November

  Peter

  When I agreed to join in Joanna’s yoga classes, I didn’t realize that this would entail doing sphincter exercises to tighten my pelvic floor. ‘I’m fairly content with my pelvic floor just the way it is,’ I tell Joanna, but this sort of attitude is thrown back at me as supercilious – further proof, she says, as if any were needed, of just how out of touch I am with my inner self. So once a week Mary Barnes, the astonishingly flexible teacher, arrives with her Peruvian nose-pipe CDs and her pimpled purple mat.

  After a brief prayer we launch into our various moves, most of which have bizarre names that are supposed to be descriptive. I seem to have particular difficulty with Downward Facing Dog, which happens to be Mary’s favourite. In this move we are required to kneel on all fours, extend our hands and straighten our legs ‘as if hanging from a meat hook’. I always emerge red-faced and out of breath. Annoyingly, Joanna even with her large belly performs the Downward Facing Dog with evident ease. I far prefer Angry Cat, in which all we have to do is kneel with a rounded back. The truth is I feel ludicrous doing yoga and I’m only doing it to be supportive.

  Friday, 20 November

  Joanna

  My cough is still bad and today silver stars start shooting across my eyes while I am hacking away. Peter is unsympathetic, telling me I should have followed the doctor’s advice and not listened to the pharmacist. But he shuts up when I raise the possibility that I might have contracted TB after he forced me to take the subway last week, though I had begged to take a cab.

  Not having a car is usually an advantage in Manhattan. Garaging alone can cost $500 a month, and as we are saving so much money by not running a car I feel justified in taking cabs. But today I start worrying about how we will get to the hospital when I go into labour.

  My greatest fear, given my due date is 22 January, is that New York will be snowbound as it was in the winter of 1996 when twenty-six inches of snow fell in twenty-four hours and people were skiing down Fifth Avenue.

  What if the roads are impassable, even to ambulances?

  On our maternity tour of Roosevelt Hospital, they made it pretty clear that we shouldn’t arrive until I am in serious labour, otherwise we will be dismissed, to return only when the contractions are three minutes apart. The hospital is forty blocks away from our apartment, about two miles, so clearly I won’t be able to walk there. But similarly I can’t face the idea of squatting in the back of a grubby yellow cab, doubled up in pain, fumbling with the seat belt as the driver lurches from lane to lane. I have debated asking Michael to drive us, but I may need to go in the middle of the night. Besides, he has to give two hours’ notice whenever he wants his Volvo fetched from the bowels of West 97th Street garage – by which time it may be too late. Last month it took the garage men so long to retrieve the car that Michael was convinced one of the valet parkers had borrowed it. This is apparently quite common, especially if you don’t use your car very often. But a vacant parking space on a Manhattan street is as rare as an Anglophone cabbie.

  Friday, 20 November

  Peter

  A rather embarrassing thing has happened. I have apparently started to enjoy yoga. It has somehow flanked my subversive attitude and actually seems to work. I feel a strange sense of calm when the session is over and my pulse definitely beats slower. Soon I have quite forgotten the silly names of the various moves. Oddly, the pain in my left leg that I have diagnosed as either sciatica, after a phase of fearing it might be deep-vein thrombosis (which could prove fatal if the blood clot travelled up through my artery and lodged in my heart) or gout (except that I haven’t really been drinking sufficient port and brandy or eatin
g enough Stilton to trigger it), seems to have faded, following my repeated sessions of Downward Facing Dog.

  Monday, 23 November

  Joanna

  Today we drop into Bellini, an enchanting if pricey baby store on West 86th Street. Shocked by the eight-week lead time for furniture orders, I am promptly panicked into asking if we can buy any of the floor samples. I point out a white cupboard with a trellis of hand-painted pink roses dancing over the drawers. ‘This’, I say, fingering the little rose-shaped drawer-knobs, ‘is perfect. I really don’t mind the store wear-and-tear on it if you can deliver it soon.’

  ‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’ asks Peter crossly. ‘What if it’s a boy? He’s not going to want pink bloody roses.’

  I ask the assistant to strike the order.

  Monday, 23 November

  Peter

  My mouth is full of stainless-steel instruments when Dr Wasserman picks his moment to break the news to me. ‘You need an onlay. The whole procedure will cost $1,175.00.’

  I gag on the small mirror that is reflecting the offending molar.

  ‘We have to take a cast of the tooth and send it away to the lab for them to build the onlay,’ adds Dr Wasserman defensively.

  Gargling with the puce mouthwash, I struggle to regain my composure. My health insurance doesn’t cover dental work.

  ‘This may feel like a small electric shock,’ warns Wasserman, brandishing his syringe. After he has liberally injected me, he and Evelyn, who work on the ‘hot seat’ principle, depart to attend to another patient, while my anaesthetic takes effect. I sit there, assailed by the whine of his unseen drill, and turn my head to one side where a computer stands blinking my case history ominously on its screen. My onlay is already logged up there. Price: $1,175.00. I stare at the Friesian cow balancing on its steep canal bank, and then peer up at one of the cancan girls on the mobile, to see if she is wearing knickers. Finally the drill in the neighbouring room subsides and Dr Wasserman returns with Evelyn.