“I hate baby showers,” she says. “I mean, I cannot even tolerate them. How could I have a baby when everything baby drives me nuts?”
“I think it’s different when it’s your own,” I answer. “Mom says she wasn’t a kid person before she had us. She’s reassured me I’ll like my own.” I see the wheels turning in Carolyn’s head.
“Maybe we should do it together. If they’re close in age, we both only need to have one,” Carolyn says. I laugh. She’s again making plans for us to do things at the same time.
“I’m not sure if we can perfectly plan that, Carolyn.”
Chapter 33, San Francisco, 2015
THIS IS THE KIND OF DAY I MISS
Before school starts, I plan special mommy-daughter joy-filled time with Fliss. She is just old enough to be deeply shaken by Carolyn’s illness. We plan a long weekend in San Francisco. Fliss, her two-year-old Pekingese, Dolly, and I check into a hotel in Union Square. We order veggie burgers from room service and watch the movie Spy. Fliss runs a bubble bath in the oversized tub. The bathroom is as big as Fliss’ bedroom at home, and the thought of this is a thrilling realization. We stay up way too late and fall asleep deeply in the comfort of white high thread count sheets and blackout drapes. The next day we put on our walking shoes and chart our day. First stop, ChinaTown. I point out to Fliss that I never knew there were actual entrance gates to ChinaTown. We walk through the southern entrance, where the gate is inscribed with the words of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, “All under heaven is for the good of the people.” We snap a few pictures. Fliss remarks that Dolly must feel at home since Pekingese are from China. A few stores in, we find tourist memorabilia, pillowcases with whimsical screen print drawings, matching pearl and silver earrings and jade bracelets. Dolly is tired, and we put her in her pink dog carrier bag while walking in search of homemade pasta in Little Italy -just past ChinaTown, North Beach.
We discover a shop on Columbus Avenue with pottery from Deruta, Italy. I have collected this pottery for twenty years, inspired by Marcelle Hazen’s cookbooks and Italian family recipes shared by my cousins through marriage. We tour the shop carefully, using our eyes more than our hands. I love the Orvieto black and white patterned dishes, and the shop owner tells me it’s modeled after the floor of a famous church in Orvieto. “We have to go there, Mom!” Fliss says with enthusiasm. We catch a bus to Ghirardelli Square, where Fliss enjoys one of their famous chocolate sundaes. Dolly, renewed with energy, enjoys a walk on the shore of the bay. We take a long stroll down Pier Row. Dolly rides in a rented stroller (hiding under a blanket) through the Exploratorium.
Fliss and I decide to end the day at the Ferry Building, looking at Heath Pottery, buying gourmet olive oil and Cowgirl Creamery cheese. We polish off two grilled cheese sandwiches at Hog Island Oyster.
“MOM, THIS IS THE BEST DAY!” Fliss exclaims as we begin to head home. It is so terrific to see her full-faced smile. She is truly beaming. We make our way to the bowels of the Pier District and attempt to figure out San Francisco’s subway system. As the stops pass by on our way back to Union Square, the lights flicker on and off, and it hits me that this is the kind of day I miss sharing with my sister. I stroke Fliss’ blonde head. Thank God I have my girl.
Chapter 34, Los Angeles, 2004
I HAVEN’T SEEN MY FEET IN MONTHS
It’s April, and it’s a hotter spring than normal in Southern California. I am so pregnant that I haven’t seen my feet in months. Carolyn says, as only a sister could, I am the largest pregnant woman she has ever seen. I have short legs and a short torso. Pregnant, I am almost a completely round ball. It is two weeks past my due date and simple things like walking ten feet from the front door to the curb to get the mail have begun to be impossible. Most days the only comfort I can find is lying on my left side on the couch.
The phone rings. It’s Carolyn. “Can I come by?”
“I didn’t know you were in LA,” I answer, “but sure. I can barely move. I’m here. Back door is open. Just come in, please, so I don’t have to get up from the couch.” A few minutes later.
Carolyn is sitting in the living room with me. I can hear Chris on the phone in the kitchen. “What’s up?” I say.
“Ugh…” Carolyn sighs, looking at the floor. “I was going to surprise you when you had the baby.” She looks up and her eyes have tears in them. “I am…I was pregnant.”
“Oh, Carolyn,” I say.
“Chris is scheduling my D&C in the kitchen.” She says, pointing to the kitchen. “There was no heartbeat at my appointment today.”
“How far along are you?” I ask.
“I think about four or five weeks. If it was a girl I was going to name her Albee.”
“Edward Albee, right? That’s a beautiful name.” She nods and sits next to me on the sofa. She seems so calm. I think to myself that I would be a wreck, if I were her. “You can make another Albee, Carolyn.” I say, moving closer. My stomach touches her upper leg as my shirt unexpectedly rolls up my oversized belly. “Oh God, this must be terrible for you.” I say, trying to pull the front of my shirt down.
“I wanted us to do this together,” she sighs… “We will!” I exclaim. “How soon can you try again?”
“I have no idea…”
“Did you even have to try more than once for this one? You must be super fertile, like mom. This baby took me a year. I was scared I couldn’t get pregnant.”
“Yup. This baby was one night…Your guest room, actually.” Carolyn laughs.
“Ugh…don’t tell me that!” I say, putting my fingers in my ears.
“I wish you could drink with me,” Carolyn says as she walks to the bar cabinet in the dining room.
“I can!” I bellow after her. “I’m almost two weeks overdue. The midwives are encouraging red wine!”
“Thank Goooooodddd,” she says, returning with a bottle of red and two glasses.
Chapter 35, Europe, 2014
SLIGHTLY OFF
It’s the summer of 2013, and Carolyn and I are off to Europe with our kids. Matson has gotten so used to traveling with the frequent flier Gold Status his mom has acquired selling art worldwide, he is disappointed we are only in the Economy Comfort section of Virgin Airlines. Carolyn and I joke we should use her miles and put ourselves in first class, or at least business class, but in the end it seems wrong to leave the kids alone alongside strangers for the ten hours it will take to land in London. Everyone but me sleeps most of the flight anyway, and I make sure to photograph them all, mouths gaped open, in deep sleep. I’ll surprise them with these shots in my online photo book of our trip. First stop on our trip is a visit with our friend, Brooke. I met Brooke in Los Angeles through mutual friends from back home, and soon we were roommates in a large West Hollywood craftsman home shared with two other young women. We were never home. Our determination and “twenty-year-old motivation” left just slivers of time beyond our multiple jobs. Discretionary time often found us at Jones Bar or the Formosa Cafe. Brooke eventually married a Brad Pitt look-alike Englishman, which is why she ended up in London.
Carolyn books a wonderful place to stay during our visit. It is a half block from Brooke’s brownstone, above a cool pub. There are twelve rooms, and the owner often stops us on our way in to share a new label of wine he is trying out for the pub. The pub has that old-world, traditional English feel. Barstools are covered in hard, aged brown leather, and shelves of liquor bottles behind the bar extend up to the ceiling.
Fliss is entranced with Brooke’s daughter, Ella, who is one year older. Brooke allows Ella to take public transit on her own all around London. We all ride a double-decker bus at Fliss’ request, and Ella picks our destination. Looking back, this is the first moment I notice something is off with Carolyn. She looks tired. She is less engaging than normal. Brooke has a fun dinner party with some local friends - an English couple whose kids attend the same school as Ella, and an American girlfriend currently earning her Masters Degree in London. The conversation is light and witt
y, but normally the night would have crescendoed with a hilarious story or two from Carolyn, eliciting deep belly laughs and continued drinking. Instead, Carolyn quietly sits next to me and politely smiles.
The kids squeal with glee when we tell them we will be leaving London and riding the Chunnel to Brussels. Carolyn has been in the London station many times but seems incredibly confused this time. I hold the maps in the absence of Chris, and I find our departure platform just in time to make our train. In Brussels, we meet up with our childhood neighbor and dear friend, Anne. Anne works for the foreign service. She could be our sister with her blonde hair and blue eyes. Anne is hilarious. Her tales regale the whole family. Her job keeps her travel schedule full, sometimes to exotic destinations that are intriguing. Anne has a great, fully committed laugh. It begins often mid-sentence, before she’s gotten to the punch line. Her laughter is highly contagious and inevitably, by the end of one of her stories, we are all doubled over, laughing to the point of tears. After our days with Anne, I notice that Carolyn is sleeping in later than normal, but seems happy and well as we tour the city, shop, and buy the children lots of local chocolate and macarons.
My worries increase when we get to Paris. Again I notice Carolyn seems slightly off. The train station is confusing, the subways even more so. At meal times, Carolyn cannot remember her French with her usual fluency. She is braiding her hair in one single braid as she did as a child. She is forgetful of what I call the “Carolyn Paris Loop” – the journey from our Hotel in the Sixth Arrondissement, past a few great landmarks (the love lock bridge), street vendors, the Seine, boutique shops, and the Pompidou Center. We conclude with lunch atop the museum facing Notre Dame.
I tell myself Carolyn is overworked and overtired. She has calls from clients daily, despite the fact that we are traveling. She never seems to have a day off. We have fun in the best moments. My dress gets stuck in the escalator on our way from lunch. She helps me rip myself free just moments before I would have been involuntarily undressed and nude in my boots and Spanx in the Pompidou Center lobby. This amuses us for weeks, imagining the alternative outcome and the ridiculous visual. We buy pretty handbags on our boutique “walk about” and handmade pajamas at Bluet on Rue du Pre - an incredible store we discovered years earlier on a sister trip to Paris. We find a French mall where locals shop. Matson eats mussels at his favorite French bistro - Cafe Henri - and Fliss returns home, courtesy of Carolyn, with a great pair of French suede boots.
Chapter 36, Minneapolis, 1987
YOU’VE TOTALLY GOT THIS
I’m dressed in my best friend’s mother’s coat, handbag, and shoes. “I AM Linda.” Repeat… “I AM Linda.” I don’t have a fake ID, so this had better work. It’s up to me to buy all the booze at Liquor Lyle’s for our party this weekend. Carolyn and I are staying at our friends Jen and Steph’s house in Golden Valley. Their parents are out of town. Carolyn and Jen are picking up groceries, and Steph and I, discovering there’s only a four pack of wine cooler and five beers, decide to head out and buy wine. Carolyn has lost her fake ID, so we have to be inventive. Traveling slowly down highway 55 in Steph’s Chevy Nova, I continue to work on my “sophisticated lady voice.” The wheels are turning in my head. I have a plan. I’ve used this voice before, actually just last weekend, calling my father’s well-known Home and Garden radio show. Carolyn and I decided it would be hilarious to prank call the live Saturday show. Initially, even he is fooled into believing I am a middle-aged garden buff named “Joyce.” Carolyn thinks my voices are hilarious. My biggest challenge is to avoid laughing with her and at myself as she sits in the room with me, giggling into a throw pillow.
“Fred, it’s Joyce! I’m one of your biggest fans…never miss a show…never never never.” Carolyn has convinced Dad’s producer to patch me in ahead of all the other calls. The moment I utter my fake name, in my fake voice, Carolyn grabs a sofa pillow and holds it in front of her mouth to silence her laugh.
“Well, thanks, Joyce,” Dad says. “How can I help you today?” Dad sounds, on the radio, just like he does in person. His voice is like Archie Bunker’s from All in the Family, or as older radio fans have commented, Jackie Gleason from The Honeymooners. The Minneapolis paper once did an article on my dad and his co-host entitled, Minnesota’s Real Grumpy Old Men. Every year, on Christmas Eve, the radio station plays a recorded version of my dad reading, The Night Before Christmas. He not only sounds like Santa Claus, but he looks like him too. Carolyn scoots closer to the phone and leans into the call. I continue…
“Well, you see, Fred, I feel like I can’t take down my Christmas Tree. My fern is in love with it and starts wilting if I even start to take it down. It’s an old fern. But I just adore it! It’s like a part of the family. I don’t want to lose it…”
“What kind of fern is it, Joyce?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Fred…it’s like a big, giant, jungle-sprawling fern. It’s very attractive.”
“Well, it could be the heat of the lights, Joyce, or the humidity that watering the tree may be adding to the room. You may just have to keep it up all year.” He laughs from his belly.
“Why, yes, Fred…I think we will! There is a certain sparkle in that Christmas tree’s eye. Fred, I don’t know if you’ve been getting our thousands of fan letters, but the Fizzman’s LOVE you. We are HUGE fans.” Carolyn’s face plants into the pillow beside me, her body jiggling in laughter. I am silent because I too begin to laugh. Dad might be catching on… Dad laughs…he’s figured us out.
“Ha…she’s good, isn’t she?” he says to his producer before breaking for a commercial.
I can do it again. I can keep a straight face. This grown lady voice thing is old hat a week later! “I AM Linda.” It’s snowing heavier as we turn off the highway. When we park the car and I open my door, Linda’s shoe is engulfed in the slushy-salty parking lot snow cover.
“You’ve totally got this, Lila…I mean, Linda!” Steph says, starting to laugh.
“Shut up! Don’t start laughing! I’ll lose it.” I shut the car door, leaving Steph inside the Chevy Nova’s heated blue interior. I walk the hundred or so feet into Liquor Lyle’s. Guessing that confidence may be my best tool, I bravely approach the salesman at the checkout counter. He’s young, maybe a college student. “Hi, there. I’m having a dinner party tonight, just a few friends from the office. I have to be honest with you. I barely drink and I need to buy some wine. Could you help me by suggesting some things?”
“Sure, ma’am,” he says as he moves around to the front of the counter. “Follow me.” I notice his name tag says “Bryce” and the back of his hair looks super greasy. He tucks in his Liquor Lyle’s team shirt, which is way too big for him and creates an awkward shirt tail ball in the back portion of his pants. He leads me to the chilled wine aisle and says, “Since your party is tonight you may want already-chilled wine.” He opens one of the walk-in sized doors and pulls out a bottle of Chardonnay. “This one’s nice. A lot of ladies buy it.”
“Yes…yes..that should work. How about four bottles? My friend Rhonda is coming, and she’ll throw one whole bottle back on her own,” I say in a low laugh.
“Yeah, no problem. You need red too?” I suddenly notice the price on the wine and internally panic; I may not have enough cash for red too. I exhale.
“Oh, just give me one of those cheap boxes, Bryce. My intern is the only one who drinks the red, and I don’t need to spend any money on him.”
“Cool,” he says, grabbing a wine box. As we walk back to the checkout counter, I remove my fifty-dollar bill from Linda’s purse.
“Oh lord! Look at the time! My guests may arrive before I get home!” I slap the fifty on the counter and begin pushing the cart towards the door. “Keep the change, Bryce! Thank you! Gotta run!” Inside the Chevy Nova, Steph gives me a high five as we peel out of the parking lot, blaring a 10,000 Maniacs cassette. Steph’s house is less than five minutes away. Our sisters are eating Planter’s cheeseballs and unpacking groceries in
the kitchen when we come through the back door. Seeing our cache of bottles and boxed wine, Jen smiles and says, “Impressive.” I feel like one of my sister’s cool friends.
“We lucked out,” I say. “The guy working there wasn’t much older than us. He either totally believed me or didn’t give a shit.”
“I’m sure it was the voice, Lila,” Carolyn says, licking her orange cheese ball-stained fingertips. “Your voices rock. Jen - we should totally have Lila call that horrible, slutty sophomore girl who broke up my friend Heather’s relationship!”
“Oh my God, that would be so cool! You totally have to, Lila!” Jen squeals.
“Wait, what happened with Heather?” I ask.
Carolyn steps closer to me and hands me a glass of wine she has poured. I feel so inside her cool friend circle. I don’t want this day to end! “Heather’s boyfriend, whom you don’t know - he goes to Southwest - totally dumped her for the slutty, loose sophomore who gives blow jobs during free period.”
“Yuck,” I say. “Really?” Jen walks over to me, holding the cordless phone. She punches in a number Carolyn has written on the back of an envelope before handing it off. Suddenly, I’m nervous. But I press the speaker button as we all hear the phone dialing the digits. We crowd together in a circle in the middle of the kitchen. I take a quick sip of the sour-tasting white wine and clear my throat.
“Johnson Residence,” a woman answers on the other end. Carolyn puts her forearm over her mouth and appears to be laughing. I turn around so I won’t make eye contact.
“Hello Mrs. Johnson. This is Joyce Fizzman from Planned Parenthood. I’m calling to confirm your daughter’s appointment for a diaphragm fitting at 3:45 Monday afternoon.”
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