The Solomon Sisters Wise Up

by Melissa Senate

  “Sar-ahhhh,” Danielle moaned. “Mark is…ahhhh! Ahhhh! Going to be a…a.. aaaaaaaaaaaaa…a wreck…in the delivery roooooom ahhhhhh! Staaaaaaaaaaay, pleeease!”

  And so I did.

  Once she was more comfortable, the effects of her epidural working nicely, I told her all about my bathroom conversation with Astrid and that I wouldn’t be surprised if a huge bouquet of flowers arrived for her tomorrow morning from Wow. Danielle beamed in between contractions.

  At three o’clock in the morning, Danielle Ann gave birth to a baby girl, six pounds, twelve ounces. Her husband got a little faint from all the screaming, so I took over as videographer. I wouldn’t have to buy But I Don’t Know How To Give Birth! after all.

  “Attention, everyone!” Astrid announced the next day at Wow’s staff meeting. “I have some big announcements to make. First, I’m thrilled to report that Danielle gave birth very early this morning to a healthy baby girl!” Astrid tried to adopt a warm and fuzzy expression, but she failed. “Okay, listen up,” she said with her trademark snaps for attention when everyone started buzzing about the weight and length and how many hours Danielle was in labor. “I’m also thrilled to report that Danielle and Sarah wrote a truly fabulous exposé on how pregnant women are treated in the workplace, and that we will absolutely publish it in an upcoming issue.”

  My mouth dropped open.

  “In fact,” Astrid went on, “after sharing the article with Human Resources this morning, Sarah, I decided that you should even go a little farther, interview a few other pregnant women at many different types of workplaces.”

  Ah, so Astrid and the powers-that-be were scared of our little article. They should be.

  “Sarah, come see me after the meeting and we’ll discuss the revisions I want,” Astrid added, fake smile on me. A moment later she was back to her usual witchy self, yelling at Carol for a fact-checking error (in front of everyone, of course) and killing a story she’d approved yesterday, her favorite thing to do.

  After the meeting, I practically skipped to her office.

  “My star writer!” she exclaimed. “Have a seat, Sarah. Would you like a glass of water?”

  I was going to milk this for everything it was worth. “Yes, actually, I would. With a twist of lemon. Cravings!”

  She smiled tightly and buzzed her assistant.

  “Sarah, I’m pleased to announce that I’m promoting both you and Danielle to senior editor. For now, the two of you will share the job. You’ll perform the duties of the job until she returns from maternity leave, and then she’ll handle it when you go. Once you’re back, the job will be defined for two people.”

  Yes! Yes! Yes!

  “In fact,” she said, “I was thinking that you and Danielle—once she’s back from her leave—would like to do columns on the pregnant woman’s perspective—married and pregnant, single and pregnant. Just an idea, of course.”

  She looked absolutely sick, and I realized none of this was her idea. Our article had made her nervous enough to show HR, and they’d been nervous enough about potential lawsuits and bad press to give us the moon.

  “That sounds great, Astrid. Wow, my own column!”

  “Yes, just great,” she said, pulling at the collar of her shirt.

  As Astrid twittered on about pregnancy and how it affected all women, I calculated my new salary.

  And beamed.

  20

  Ally

  The sperm donor catalog at Womanlyhood, a reproductive services center in Midtown, was much like the profiles on FindAMate.com. I could choose everything I wanted in a donor, from height to hair color to weight to eye color to profession. Graduate students were there aplenty. Sarah, who sat on my left rubbing her foot with one hand and flipping through a catalog with the other, was partial to a six-foot-two Scandinavian chemical engineering student with gray-blue eyes, blond hair. Zoe, on my right, was still marveling about how many poets donated sperm.

  “Too bad you can’t mix the soul of the poet with the responsibility of the engineering student,” Sarah said, flipping through the donor book.

  “Actually, they both sound great,” Zoe said. “They all sound great. How does anyone choose?”

  “Pretty much that way,” said Womanlyhood’s director. She leaned forward in her swivel chair behind her desk. “If you’re very short, you can pick a very tall donor. If you’re very left-brained, you can choose someone very right-brained. But all this is really the final step. Right now, it sounds like Ally here is exploring all her options.”

  And I was. At this point, I was at the researching stage. But I definitely had learned my lesson about choosing anyone based on looks or how he “sounded.”

  Rupert hadn’t sounded like my type, and he was turning into one of the best friends—and lovers—I’d ever had. Me, with a man who went to journal-writing seminars on long weekends? Me, with a man who spent two hours in the kitchen cooking elaborate dinners—and for just the two of us? Me, with a man my family described as “incredibly nice”?

  And he was. Between Thanksgiving night and now, which spanned a few weeks, the two of us had spent a lot of time together. We walked, we talked, we made love, we visited museums and city hot spots, we sat on cold benches in Central Park eating hot dogs. Emotionally, Rupert and I were in very similar places. It was like having my own personal support group.

  I collected the literature from Womanlyhood, and my sisters and I headed to the elevator bank.

  “Thanks for inviting us to come with you,” Zoe said. “I don’t mean to get all gooey and sappy, but I’m really happy to be a part of such a major decision and event in your life.”

  I slung an arm around her. “And I’m really happy you feel that way, kid, because I’ve already signed you up for future baby-sitting duty.”

  “Count me in,” she said. “Wow, Ally. I can’t believe how much your life has changed in such a short period of time.”

  Me either. A few days ago, I’d been practicing a few of the yoga positions Zoe had taught me (I’d gotten out of shape from avoiding gyms and Pilates instructors) when Sarah had come into the bedroom with my mail, which got forwarded from the house in Great Neck. I’d recognized the law firm Andrew used and slit open the envelope while in my pretzel pose, or whatever it was called, and breathing my breathing exercises, and the divorce papers inside had absolutely zero effect on me. I breathed in and out, my heartbeat didn’t skip or jump. I simply was glad that he’d initiated so I wouldn’t have to. He’d added a note which said he was willing to go no contest, a fifty-fifty split on the house, which we’d bought together, and a fifty-fifty split on the furniture, unless we both wanted the same thing, which was doubtful since we had completely different taste and he could have anything plaid or leather, which I’d always hated. I’d put the papers back into the envelope without breaking my position, wrote Send to My Lawyer on the envelope and hopped into a downward dog.

  Speaking of My Lawyer, that was about to change too. Kristina and I were in talks to hang our own shingle, and as part of our benefits package, we were planning to include a day care center for our support staff’s children. Funwell and Funwell could kiss my ass, in about two or three months, once Kristina and I worked out the details.

  “What about getting pregnant the old-fashioned way?” Sarah asked, patting her five-month-pregnant belly as we stepped into the elevator. “Who knows what will happen between you and Rupert—you could be married and pregnant in six months.”

  “The key words are who knows, Sarah,” I said. “I can’t put my dream on hold for a man or for a maybe. I’ve done that. Things between Rupert and me are great, but I want a baby more than I want anything in the world, and I want to start the ball rolling.”

  “Even if it affects the relationship?” Zoe asked.

  “If it does, then Rupert isn’t the man for me, is he?” I said.

  “Nope, he’s not,” Zoe said.

  “No siree,” added Sarah.

  “I want a man to enhance my l
ife, not make my life,” I thirded. And it was true. I no longer needed a man, needed anyone to make me feel like a woman, like a person. And I didn’t need a husband to give me a child. I only needed to love.

  And I needed a house, a house of my own, which was also in the works. It was a stone cottage with three bedrooms, a lot of light and a view of the Hudson, and I would take possession on New Year’s Day.

  It would be the best New Year’s of my life.

  21

  Zoe

  As I headed toward Annie’s restaurant, where I was meeting my mother and Daniel for New Year’s Eve brunch, I saw two guys checking out a woman who was bent over, rummaging through her big toile bag on the bench in front. They were staring at her ass.

  Oh God. It was my mother.

  One of the guys whistled, and my mother turned around and smiled. Confusion crossed both guys’ faces and they resumed walking.

  “They like the package, but not the years,” my mother said as I approached. “Their loss!” She enfolded me in a hug. “The Sally Jesse producers would be thrilled.”

  “Huh?” I asked as we sat down inside and ordered coffee and orange juice.

  “Yesterday, a man and a woman who said they were from the show stopped me on the street and asked if I wanted to be on the show, if I had a daughter or son or husband who thought I looked and dressed too sexy.”

  Oh God. Was my mother going to be on the Sally Jesse Raphael show?

  “And you said?”

  My mother sipped her juice, leaving a pink rim on the white mug. “I said I did indeed have a daughter who thought I should look and dress my age, but that I liked my look just fine. I asked them why they thought anyone would have a problem with how I looked in the first place.”

  “And what did they say?” I asked.

  “They said that when a person didn’t look and dress the way they were supposedly supposed to look—” she made quote marks above her ears “—it made people uncomfortable. Unable to catalog, classify, put away as this or that.”

  “I guess that’s true,” I said. “I would like to catalog you as my fifty-year-old mother, in a wool tunic and flowing pants and sensible shoes.”

  “Why, Zoe?” she asked.

  “Because…”

  “Because why, honey?”

  “I don’t know.” And I didn’t, suddenly. “Well, actually, I guess because you went so overboard when Dad left. Yes, you always looked younger and dressed younger, but a year ago, you went crazy with it. Got Botox and little plastic surgeries. You turned fifty and stopped the clock.”

  “And that’s a bad thing?” she asked.

  Was it?

  “So I’m supposed to accept that I’m fifty and age gracefully, whatever that means?” she continued. “I’m supposed to cut my hair and mute the makeup and not wear tight jeans, even though I have a great body? I’m supposed to look like how other people think I should look, instead of how I feel inside?”

  “How do you feel inside?” I asked.

  “I don’t feel like a jilted woman, not anymore,” she said. “Yeah, Zoe, I did. And yes, I went a little crazy with the dieting and exercising and Victoria’s Secret catalog clothing when your father walked out on me. But so what? What does any woman do when she gets hurt? When her heart is broken? Some eat, some go on vacations, some lie under the covers for a few months. I decided to focus on the outside so that at least I could get some positive reinforcement.”

  “And did it help?” I asked.

  “Yes, it absolutely did. Your father’s leaving me for a woman half my age made me feel like total shit, Zoe. Like an old hag. I knew I wasn’t. I knew I didn’t look my age, but I needed to focus on it for myself. Not for him, not for anyone else. For me. And it worked. I was fine over the past three, four months.”

  “You came here to ‘destroy his and that child’s life’ or don’t you remember, Mom.”

  “Zoe, your father sent me an engagement announcement with a personalized note that said, ‘See, I didn’t leave you in vain.’ Yes, I flipped for a little while. Gross insensitivity will do that to a person.”

  She was right. She was absolutely right. About everything.

  I took her hand. “If we went on the Sally Jesse show, Mom, I would tell all of America that you look absolutely great and that everyone, including me, should mind their own business.”

  “Now, that’s my girl,” she said.

  “I’m sorry I gave you such a hard time,” I said. “It’s taken me a while to see that people should be allowed to be who they are. No one should change for someone else.”

  “That’s right, honey. No one should.”

  “All this time I thought you were changing to get Dad back, but I didn’t realize you were changing for yourself. There’s a fine line there.”

  “It must be like the dates you critique,” she said. “Do people want to change their behavior or attitudes or how they come across because it’s truly not working for them, or because it’s not working for other people?”

  “Exactly. It’s hard to answer that, and I guess even the person doesn’t really know at the time.”

  “Well, you know what they say about hindsight.”

  “Hindsight would have made Zoe say yes to me in junior high,” Daniel said.

  We both turned, and there Daniel was, looking absolutely irresistible in his sweater and jeans.

  My mother beamed at him. “I always liked you, Danny Marx.”

  He beamed back at her. “If the waiter comes, will you order me the French toast?” he asked, then excused himself to the bathroom.

  “I told you Charlie wasn’t the one,” my mother said. “A mother knows.”

  I laughed. “Maybe I’ll start listening to you a little more.”

  The waiter did indeed come, and we ordered a brunch feast. “You’ll have to do that from three thousand miles away,” she said. “I’m going home tomorrow. It’s one of the reasons why I wanted to see you today. To say goodbye—not that I saw you much while we were both here. I needed to come to grips with some things, Zoe. That’s why I kept my distance. But I have come to grips and now I’m ready to go home.”

  “I’m so happy, Mom. I really am.”

  “I know,” she said. “And I think one of those reasons has to do with the very cute guy coming this way.”

  Daniel put his hands on my shoulders, bent down to kiss me on the cheek with a pucker sound, then sat.

  “Well, this amazing guy and school,” I told her. “I’m applying to grad school programs for the spring. I’m finally going to get the master’s I started four years ago.”

  “Good,” she said. “I know that’s important to you.”

  “And thanks to Sarah, I’ll be paying for it by writing a monthly dating column for Wow Woman. Isn’t that amazing?”

  “You’re amazing, Zoe. You’re a great kid. I’m glad that you and your sisters got to spend this time together. If I could ever spend some time with them, I’d do a lot of apologizing. I wasn’t exactly stepmother of the year. I wasn’t even a nice person to them. And they were just kids. I’ll always be ashamed about that.”

  “I don’t know what I would have done without them these past few months,” I said. “I’m not sure how I survived all these years without my sisters as my best friends. That’s what they’ve become.”

  “Well, maybe when I come visit you,” she said, “I can spend some time with them too. If they’ll let me.”

  I smiled. Sarah and Ally had both changed so much over the past few months that I had a feeling they’d add forgiving my mother to their Why The Hell Not lists.

  “You’ll be okay in California without me?” I asked.

  “Silly girl,” she said, grabbing my hand and placing it flat over her heart. “You’re always here. Distance means nothing.”

  I threw my arms around her. “I love you, Mom.”

  “I love you too, Zoe.”

  “Aw, shucks,” Daniel said. “I love you guys too. Actually,” he added, l
ooking at me, “you, I just like. I don’t love you at all. Not one bit. Not one single iota.”

  “I love you too, Daniel,” I said.

  His smile filled my heart. “Did you hear that, Mrs. Solomon?” Daniel said. “She loves me.”

  “I raised a smart girl,” my mother said. “And you can call me Judith or Ms. Gold from now on. I’m taking back my maiden name.”

  My mouth dropped open. For my entire life, my mother’s identity had been wrapped up in being Bartholomew Solomon’s wife. Tonight, or tomorrow at the engagement party, I would make sure my father knew that I was done holding his love for Giselle over his head.

  “I think Ms. Gold sounds sexy, don’t you?” my mother asked.

  Daniel and I both clapped.

  22

  Sarah

  Sixty or seventy of my father’s and Giselle’s closest friends and relatives were packed into the apartment, celebrating the occasion of their engagement and New Year’s Eve. Giselle looked amazing in a long, slinky ivory dress, her wild blond curls flowing down her shoulders, and my father, tanned and decked out in a tuxedo, was clinking champagne glasses and beaming from room to room.

  Zoe and Daniel were holding hands and making out when they thought no one was looking, and Ally and Rupert were feeding each other cake and fingering dots of icing off the sides of each other’s mouths and looking into each other’s eyes and arguing the finer points of the Atkins diet versus the Zone.

  “Speaking of the Zone, Sarah,” my father said, taking my hand and leading me to a quiet corner by the window, “you’re either way out of the Zone or pregnant. And I’ll bank on pregnant.”

  “I guess it’s pretty obvious now, huh?” I said.

  He nodded. “I wasn’t sure whether or not I should say anything until you chose to tell me yourself, but it was getting obvious and you weren’t telling me, so…”

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” I said. “I’ve been wanting to tell you, but I guess I felt funny.”