The Solomon Sisters Wise Up

by Melissa Senate

  How did you respond to that? Did you simply hang up in your sister’s ear or did you tell her off first?

  I opted for a “Whatever, Ally,” the response that always tended to annoy her the most, then I did the opposite of what she’d suggested. A little habit of mine.

  That night, I picked up the telephone and put it back down five times. Finally, I picked it up and forced it against my ear and dialed. “Hi, Griffen, this is Sarah. We met at DT*UT this morning?”

  “Sarah?” he repeated.

  I waited a second for my face and stained breasts to register.

  Silence.

  Panicking and thinking that perhaps I should have listened to Ally was another habit of mine.

  How many women had he met at DT*UT that morning?

  “You spilled my coffee on me?” I reminded him.

  Moment of silence. “Ah, that’s right,” he said. “Of course. The woman in the pretty sweater. So what do I owe you?”

  Not the pretty woman in the pretty sweater. Just the pretty sweater.

  Shut up and talk, Sarah!

  “Um, well, my sweater’s still at the cleaners,” I said. “They’ll definitely be able to get the stain out.”

  “Great,” he said.

  Silence.

  Shit.

  “It’ll be ready tomorrow, though,” I rushed on, “so I thought maybe we could meet at DT*UT, and you could buy me a cup of coffee to make it up to me.” Flirt, flirt. Coy, coy.

  Silence.

  Shit.

  “Or whatever,” I said, disappointment and Ally’s words of unfair wisdom filling my stomach.

  “Tomorrow’s no good for me,” he said. “Thursday’s okay, though, for a quick cup of coffee. Around seven?”

  Smile. Big smile.

  Ha! Ally had been wrong, wrong, wrong. If he wasn’t interested, he wouldn’t have made the date. He would have told me to call him when I’d paid the bill. Okay, granted—a “quick cup of coffee” wasn’t exactly dinner. It wasn’t even really meeting for coffee. But it was a start.

  And so on Thursday night, I spent an hour dressing for a quick cup of coffee (sexy-casual, which was much more difficult than my standard business-casual or casual-casual).

  He didn’t even recognize me. Hadn’t remembered me at all. But then we’d sat and started talking about our work—both our jobs were entertainment-focused—and then movies, and it turned out we were both huge Woody Allen fans and huge Chris Rock fans and huge Yankees fans and huge fans of Indian food, and twenty minutes later we were having Indian food in a narrow red restaurant with thousands of Christmas lights way down in the East Village, sharing Taj Mahal beer and chicken tikka and salmon tandoori. And two hours later, as we walked uptown, on the lookout for a taxi, we’d passed by Veniero’s, the famous bakery, and I’d commented on the cupcakes.

  And then he’d called the next day and asked me out for Saturday night.

  It was one heck of a date. We had chicken enchiladas, margaritas, saw a Jennifer Lopez movie, and then went back to my apartment and made a baby.

  “I’ll call you?” Sabrina said, slamming her palm on our little round table at Starbucks. “That’s what he said to the news that you’re pregnant—and then he just walked away?”

  Hurried away was more like it.

  While Sabrina muttered the word dick and Lisa shook her head, I stared out the window, counting baby strollers. In the two minutes we’d been sitting down with our coffees, my already dog-eared But I Don’t Know How To Be Pregnant! next to my Linzer torte, which I’d craved a second ago and now couldn’t imagine eating, I’d counted eight. Wait a minute—I spoke too soon. Make that nine.

  Yesterday, before I’d gone to meet Griffen for the big tell-him-the-news birthday dinner, Lisa and Sabrina and I had arranged to meet this morning at the Starbucks around the corner from my apartment. The plan was for me to sleep on Griffen’s reaction so that regardless of whether he got down on one knee or went screaming out of the restaurant, I could come to my own conclusions before anyone else’s opinions got thrown into the mix.

  Here were my conclusions: I’d expected Griffen to call last night even before he got home. I envisioned him in Central Park, shivering in his denim jacket by the Boat House, staring at the water and pondering deeply. I thought he’d call me on his cell, suggest we meet for a drink to talk things through. But he didn’t. And he didn’t call an hour later, or two hours later. Or three hours later. At four in the morning, I finally fell asleep with the telephone on my pillow.

  And then the process began all over again this morning. I stared at the phone, expecting it to ring. It didn’t.

  As Sabrina flipped through pages of But I Don’t Know How To Be Pregnant! and asked questions like “What the hell is an umbilical cord stump?” and Lisa filled her in, sharing a nausea-inducing story about her older sister’s cat making off with her nephew’s fallen off umbilical cord stump, I wondered what Griffen was doing now. Staring at the ceiling and saying Why, God, why, over and over again?

  Lisa covered my hand with hers. “Sarah? Are you okay?”

  My nod must have been very pathetic because Sabrina slung her arm around me, and Lisa patted my hand.

  “He’ll call,” Lisa assured me. She took a sip of her chai tea. “He’ll definitely call, Sarah. He just needs time to digest it, like he said. You had four days to think about it. He had five minutes. He’ll call.”

  He’ll call, I assured myself. Griffen was indeed a caller.

  “But what if he doesn’t?” Sabrina asked. “Or what if he does and says, ‘I can’t deal. I don’t want anything to do with you or the baby’? Are you prepared for that, Sarah?”

  “Jesus, Sabrina, you’re scaring her to death,” Lisa chastised. “She has enough to think about without what Griffen’s going to say and do.”

  “But what Griffen’s going to say and do has a lot to do with what Sarah’s going to be able to do,” Sabrina countered. “I just want you to be prepared, Sarah. If it’s just you, honey, you’re facing a lot.”

  Just me. It had been just me for so long that it didn’t sound frightening. But that was idiotic. Taking care of myself, my share of the rent, half of a few utilities bills and making sure I had enough money for a Metro Card every week wasn’t exactly neuro science. I had no idea how to be pregnant, how to have a baby, what that really meant.

  What did it mean?

  “Here’s what it means,” Sabrina said. “It means getting huge. Big as a house. It means not drinking coffee, drink-drinks or taking cold medicine when you have a nasty bug. It means being exhausted all the time, losing your mind, barfing your brains out, waking up five times in the middle of the night to feed a crying infant. It means bloody nipples. It means a lifetime. You can’t ever go back to the way things were.”

  “Jesus, Sabrina!” Lisa snapped. “Leave her alone.”

  “I just want her to know what she’s getting into,” Sabrina said. “It’s not about a cute little baby. It’s about reality.”

  I felt like I was going to hyperventilate. I stood up and ran to the bathroom, but you needed a key to get in. I burst into tears and slid down on my butt against the bathroom door.

  Lisa and Sabrina were beside me in seconds. “Sarah,” Sabrina said, cupping my face in her hands. “I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. I didn’t mean to be a bitch. I’m just scared for you.”

  Me too.

  After Lisa and Sabrina had helped me calm down, I’d had a sudden and desperate urge to know everything there was to know about what was going on inside my body and what I could expect. And so I’d grabbed But I Don’t Know How To Be Pregnant! and What To Expect When You’re Expecting and headed for the playground in Carl Shurz Park, where I could watch mothers and nannies and babies and children and be among this sudden new kind of mine.

  Two hours later, I closed What To Expect (I read up through the fourth month) and opened to my bookmark in But I Don’t Know How To Be Pregnant! It was the chapter on what a baby cost for
the first year.

  Infant Car Seat: $70. Good, I thought. We’re off to an inexpensive start, since I don’t have a car and therefore don’t need a car seat. And then I read the parentheses, which stated that you couldn’t even leave the hospital after giving birth without an infant car seat.

  Diapers: $13 for a package of 48. Expect to change baby’s diaper six to ten times per day. Six to ten times per day?

  Bottles: $10. Reasonably self-explanatory, except apparently there were around twenty-five different kinds—and nipples—to choose from.

  Breast Pump: $180. Breast pump? What the hell was a breast pump, and how did you use it, exactly? The paragraph went on to discuss hospital-style pumps, mini-electric pumps and manual pumps. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Skip.

  Crib: $200-$500. Ah, now this was something I understood. A crib. Some parents like to use a bassinet or a cra-dle because the small-size bed makes a newborn feel more secure. So did I need both a bassinet and a crib? And where exactly was I going to put the crib?

  Thermometer (rectal), nasal aspirator, baby nail clippers, gas drops: $25. Okay. I knew what a thermometer was. And I had dim memories of a rectal thermometer from early childhood, but hadn’t there been thermometer advancement since then? I mean, couldn’t you just stick a thermometer in the baby’s mouth? I had no idea what a nasal aspirator was.

  Receiving Blankets: $50. I wasn’t sure why they were called receiving blankets. Apparently, they were just thin baby blankets that you used to wrap or swaddle (another new word) the baby in.

  Bathtub and Bathing Paraphernalia: $40. For the first couple of weeks, until the baby’s umbilical cord falls off, baby will be sponge-bathed. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.

  Stroller: $200-$300. Now there was another something I thought I understood. But according to page 200, there were countless makes and models, with varying degrees of bells and whistles, to choose from. There was something called an umbrella stroller, but it didn’t seem to mean that it came equipped with an umbrella.

  Layette: $100-200. Layette was French for baby’s wardrobe. It included everything from receiving blankets to onesies (there was a little drawing of a onesie, which looked like a T-shirt slash bodysuit), sleepers, which were footed pajamas, and various little shirts and pants.

  Monitor: $20. Hear baby’s every peep or lack thereof. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.

  Rocking Chair: $100. Sounded nice enough.

  Bouncy Seat: $30. Buy one of these baby chairs with a vibrating feature and soothe a fussy baby.

  Changing Table: $100, plus pad: $20. Apparently, you could turn a dresser top into a changing area if you laid a curved, waterproof pad on top of it to change baby on.

  Nursing Pillow: $25. Looked a bit like a life-preserver cut in half around your waist.

  BabyBjörn: $89. The premier baby carrier. Wear baby against your chest and he’ll feel safe and secure and your arms will be free!

  Diaper Genie: $20. Just drop the soiled diaper in the top, turn the little lever, and voilà, no odor!

  Crib Bedding: $100-$300. Expensive sheets, I understood all too well.

  Burp Cloths: $20. Buy at least twelve of these for baby spit-up alone.

  Pacifiers: $5-$10. All babies like to suck, the writer said, but some people worry that using one at all means baby will demand his binky until second grade. Apparently, there were many “controversial” issues involved in the raising of infants. Be prepared for relatives, friends, even total strangers, to offer their opinions on this and many, many other aspects of baby rearing.

  About to throw up (from fear and not from morning sickness, which had yet to plague me), I opened my pregnancy journal, a gift from Sabrina, and jotted down some sorry facts:

  My income: $31, 500 per anum.

  My monthly expenses:

  Rent: $812.

  Gas & electric: $30 (in summer, $60).

  Phone: $30.

  Cable: $35.

  Subway: $45.

  Coffee and lunch: $200.

  Groceries: $50.

  Laundry: $30.

  Visa: $50 to $60.

  Student Loan: $115.

  Grand Total: Frightening.

  And I lived with a roommate. Once I got my own place, I’d have to double rent and utilities.

  My Net Worth: $0.

  Which meant my choices were:

  A) Win the lottery.

  B) Rob a bank.

  C) Ask my father for help.

  D) Get promoted to senior editor, which came with a $10,000 raise in salary (because senior editors were considered management, despite having no one to manage except an occasional editorial intern).

  E) Pray that Griffen didn’t mysteriously disappear.

  Choice A was impossible, since I couldn’t afford lottery tickets and had never been a particularly lucky person, anyway. I couldn’t do B, since the experience of my mother finding out I swiped a Bazooka bubble gum from the bodega on our corner and making me return it and apologize and sweep the floor for four Saturday afternoons turned me away from a life of crime forever. Forget C. You might think that as the daughter of a major movie producer who made sick money, there might be a generous wad of cash in my birthday card every year, but there never was a birthday card. “I’m not good at birthdays or holidays, pumpkin, you know that. Here, here’s a fifty. Go buy yourself something nice.” Which was accompanied by a pat on the head and a run-along-now look.

  Every year for the past eleven years, since my mother’s death from a sudden and senseless brain aneurysm, Ally had bought me something for my birthday that she thought my mother would have given me that year had she been alive. The card always said, I think Mom would have liked to see you in this, and it would be something I desperately needed but would never think to buy myself, like a raincoat. Despite how bossy and pushy and overbearing Ally was, she was all I had. Which was basically the reason why I wouldn’t ask her for financial help. She’d give it to me, because she had it to give and because I was her sister. I was pretty sure that Ally would do just about anything for me.

  D, the promotion, was the answer. E was a toss-up that I couldn’t depend on, so it was up to me. I couldn’t imagine Griffen ducking out on his financial responsibility to the baby, but he wasn’t exactly making a fortune himself, either. So even if Griffen did magically propose marriage, we’d still come up short if the list of what it cost to raise a baby was accurate. And if it was accurate in anywhere, U.S.A., it was even more expensive in New York City.

  D was my only option. Since I hadn’t suffered from morning sickness once, perhaps my luck had turned after all. No one at work would have to know I was pregnant until it was obvious. I could work my butt off for the promotion. And according to But I Don’t Know How To Be Pregnant!, I had a good four to five months before my belly swelled to showing proportions.

  A woman wheeled a baby carriage past my bench and I put down But I Don’t Know How To Be Pregnant! for a peek at the results of pregnancy. The baby was sleeping inside what looked like a tot-sized sleeping bag. The sleeping bag was navy blue, so I assumed the baby was a boy. He looked very peaceful. He wasn’t crying at the top of his tiny lungs or passing gas or pulling his mother’s hair. The woman sat down at the far end of my bench, smiled at me and pulled a paperback book out of the diaper bag hanging on the push handle. It wasn’t a book on babies or how to stretch your salary. It was a novel. She gently rocked the carriage with one hand and turned pages with the other.

  A peace came over me, a cuddly, warm peace, and I touched my belly.

  And then, from the other side of the playground, a baby screeched so loudly that it woke up the baby near me. The woman put down her book and picked up the infant and hugged it to her, shushing and cooing. The baby wouldn’t stop crying.

  “Are you hungry?” the woman singsonged to the baby. “Still tired? Too hot? What? Tell your mama what’s wrong.”

  The baby wailed. The woman tried a bottle. The baby turned red. She burped the baby. The baby wailed louder. “Well, if you’
re hot, Nicholas, we have to go home. It’s too cool out to take off your fleece bundler.”

  And so she put the wailing Nicholas back into the stroller. The moment she moved the stroller, the baby stopped crying. “You just wanted to keep moving, huh, Nicky-wicky?” the mother singsonged, blowing kisses.

  She forgot her novel on the bench. I picked it up and ran after her. She turned around and looked at me as though I were handing her a paper towel or a leaf. “Like I’ll ever have time to read half a page,” she said with a laugh, thanked me, and then continued wheeling Nicky-wicky around the playground.

  Deep breath. Deep breath. Deep breath.

  I lunged for my cell phone and called Lisa and told her that my baby’s first year would take one third of my salary.

  “That’s what baby showers are for,” Lisa said. “My sister had a shower and got two car seats and two playpens. She won’t have to buy baby clothes for a year. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  Somewhat relieved, I went back to But I Don’t Know How To Be Pregnant! and read for another half hour. I skipped the section on breastfeeding out of pure fear, then realized that breastfeeding was free and started reading.

  5

  Ally

  The things you found in your husband’s pockets and drawers when you knew he was cheating on you made you wonder if you’d been blind, an idiot or simply in total denial. Evidence of Andrew’s indiscretions were all over our bedroom, his office, even the downstairs bathroom’s little wicker trash can, which contained one well-buried used condom.

  The last time Andrew and I used a rubber during sex was thirteen years ago.

  Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!

  And I was a fool, fool, fool.

  How could I not have noticed a used condom? A pair of panties that weren’t mine? Lipstick stains on his shirts from colors I didn’t use?

  In the dry-cleaning hamper (in four of his pants pockets), I found: