Tales From the Crib

by Jennifer Coburn

  I hated when she made me explain to her the rules of an affair. I’d been faithful to my husband since our first date, and yet I was always called upon to give her the lowdown on the rules of adultery. “His family is his priority. You are a side dish on the side. I’m sorry, but it’s true.”

  “So I gave him an ultimatum. I told him to come with me to Barbados or we were through.”

  “Oh my God! What did he say?” My mother’s account of her dumping my son’s pediatrician was obviously just spin. He broke her cold, demented heart. Oddly, I felt protective of Anjoli.

  “He said he was sorry I felt that way and that he wished things were different,” she sighed as if to say Can you believe the nerve? “Like I haven’t heard that one before!” Uh, sorry, but whose fault is that?! Grown weary of your married lovers’ excuses? Cry me a river. My husband and his girlfriend now have a joint account at Blockbuster Video. “Then he calls back after two hours and says he can’t stand to lose me and he’ll go. He confided in his partner who promised to vouch that Edward needs to go on some impromptu trip with Doctors Without Borders to do cleft palate repairs on kids.”

  “Oh my God!” I shrieked. “This is the most awful thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “I know, talk about being a day late and a dollar short!” Anjoli added.

  “What?”

  “How dare he jerk me around like that, making me think he couldn’t go when obviously he very well could have if he only was resourceful enough the first time I invited him. It wasn’t until I threatened him that he even tried to make this happen for us.”

  “Mother, do you have any idea how horrible this sounds?”

  “So I dumped him right there and then, darling. I said, ‘Edward, I refuse to be treated this way by you. We are through. Go have your little dinner for the burnt people and don’t ever call me again.’”

  “Maybe he’ll spend his weekend actually helping kids with cleft palates,” I said.

  “Oh no,” she replied, missing my sarcasm. “That was just an alibi, darling.”

  “Well, I’m proud of you,” I said and meant it.

  “I am too. I cannot wait to tell my Pilates class about this.”

  You tell your Pilates class about this kind of stuff?

  “Which reminds me,” Anjoli continued. “One of the girls in the class says she lost four inches from her waist just from Pilates. Do they have Pilates in New Jersey?”

  “Yes, but it’s illegal,” I whispered. “Don’t tell anyone, but we have to go to the Pilates speakeasy because any thing that hip and cool is banned from New Jersey.”

  “Just make sure it’s a real Pilates studio, not some second-rate gym trying to put one over on a bunch of uninformed suburban housewives.”

  “Alrighty then,” I interrupted. “Gotta run, darling! Stay humble. And leave the married guys alone. We poor dumb suburban housewives don’t stand a chance against you.”

  “I didn’t mean that- ” I heard her voice from the receiver as it was en route to its cradle.

  Desdemona’s journey through the rain left her cold and sick. It was four days before she felt ready to face the world again. She promised herself she’d never walk in the rain again. As she closed her eyes to sleep, her mother burst into the room and decried her daughter’s foolish actions. “Never do this again, silly child!” Desdemona’s mother demanded. “I will walk wherever I please,” Desdemona replied defiantly. She muffled a cough and said she was fine.

  The following week, I drove into the city to meet Zoe for the Blubber Flush class at the Ninety-Second Street Y. It was April and the winter snow had melted, giving me greater comfort in driving the evening highway and city streets. Still, I wore a knit poncho and boots to camouflage my weight as well as protect me from the slapping night air.

  Zoe had saved us seats in a packed room of nearly 200 women ranging in size from two to twenty. The two women who taught the class sat motionless in the front of the room, like puppets waiting to be enlivened. In the back was a table with dozens of books written by the course facilitators. Flush Your Blubber was a New York Times best seller. Flushing Blubber in the Kitchen was their cook book coupled with Flushercise, an entire book dedicated to flushing blubber by jumping on a trampoline. Later that evening the woman announced the upcoming release, Flush This!

  The first woman looked like a porcelain doll. Her pale face was without a pore and was utterly motionless even as she spoke. It was not like my Bell’s palsy, but rather like someone Botoxed her entire face. Atop her freakish head was spiked ebony hair that was as frozen as her face. Olivia was the nutrition guru and standing beside her was her fitness counterpart, Randy. Like Olivia, Randy was in her forties, but taking every desperate measure to reverse the signs of aging. Their bodies were absolutely devoid of any fat and they both wore clothing that highlighted that fact, but there was something bizarre-looking about Randy’s eyes. She claimed to run one hundred miles a week and I wondered if this was why her eyes were bulging out of the sockets. As Olivia began speaking, Randy stood by her side, nodding her head and echoing choice inane phrases.

  “Welcome to Blubber Flush, where miracles happen,” Olivia said, moving only her bottom lip.

  “Miracles happen,” Randy repeated, nodding frantically and smiling like a game show contestant on a winning streak.

  “If you want to shed blubber, live a healthier lifestyle, and look like a million bucks, you have come to the right place!”

  “Oh, you have come to the right place.”

  “I am so excited to be here with you ladies tonight,” Olivia continued with the enthusiasm of a mortician on Prozac. “We are going to flush blubber right off your body and you are going to love looking in the mirror.”

  “I like looking in the mirror,” Randy added. The more she spoke, the more she looked like a mole rat begging for food. Her short red pigtails bounced around as she nodded in agreement and her hands were even clawing under her chin.

  For the next half hour the women showed us before and after photos of some of their Blubber Flusher success stories. “We have a cruise every holiday season where we literally take you away on a ship so you’re not tempted by cookies and cake.” Zoe shot me a look as if to apologize.

  “We literally take you away on a ship?” I whispered, not able to control a laugh. “Is that unusual for a cruise?” She elbowed me, urging me to behave.

  “No cookies, no cake,” Randy said, nodding to every corner of the room. “You’re on a boat.”

  “And we have Camp Blubber Flush, which is our spa,” Olivia said, advancing the next slide to their fat camp.

  “Remember her?” she asked Rand y as they showed an unbelievably unflattering photo of an obese woman. “Oh yeah,” Randy snickered. “Blubberella.”

  The next photo was a studio portrait of the same woman after she lost forty pounds at the three-week Camp Blubber Flush. And on and on the slide show went until I looked at my watch and noticed that forty-five minutes had gone by without their imparting any of their blubber-flushing wisdom on us. It was the closest I’d ever come to sitting on the set of an infomercial—and paying one hundred dollars for the privilege. No one else seemed bothered by this. They were all taking copious notes. Of what, I’ll never know.

  “You’re probably asking yourself, okay so how do I become a Blubber Flusher? “ Olivia noted.

  “You want to do it, don’t you?” Randy added. I’d never understood the impulse to kill another human before this evening.

  “It’s all about food—combining, drinking enough water and longevity cocktail, the right vitamins, and eliminating no-no foods,” Olivia said.

  No-no foods?

  “We can leave at the break if you want,” Zoe whispered.

  “Shh, they’re finally getting to the good stuff,” I assured her.

  “To flush blubber you need to cut out all dairy products, wheat and gluten, fruits, and carbohydrates,” Olivia said.

  I had to raise my hand. “What can we eat? I me
an, can you give me an example of a blubber-flushing dinner?” I couldn’t believe I was using this ridiculous terminology.

  “It’s in the book,” Olivia answered.

  Another woman shot up her hand. “You mentioned we need to take vitamins. Can you tell us which ones, please?”

  “In the book,” Olivia snapped again.

  “All in the book,” Randy echoed.

  Another hand shot up. This woman looked pissed-off to have spent one hundred dollars to keep hearing that she’d have to buy a book. “Uh, yes,” Olivia smiled and pointed to the rough-looking woman.

  “Don’t tell me this is in the book. I want to know what the hell a longlivity cocktail is.”

  “Longevity,” Randy corrected, nodding her head. I realized that the constant head bobbing had injured her brain. “Means long life. Lon-gev-ity.”

  “What’s in the shit? “ the woman snapped.

  “Okay, calm down. Deep breathing is also a part of flushing blubber so let’s all take some deep, blubber-flushing breaths.”

  “You bitches better tell us what the fuck is in this cocktail!” The woman stood. I was seriously rooting for her to go and knock an expression onto Olivia’s face. Preferably replacing it with one that communicated Ouch!

  “A longevity cocktail is a patented weight-loss formula consisting of ...” Olivia said, pausing for us to take notes, “hot purified water with lemon juice and psyllium husks. Stirred briskly.”

  Randy added, “You’ve got to stir briskly.”

  Zoe leaned in and asked, “Isn’t that Metamucil?”

  The chubby gangster girl heard Zoe and demanded to know if this was accurate.

  “Metamucil is a brand name,” Olivia said.

  “It’s a kind of psyllium husk,” Randy said, adding her usual nothing to the discussion.

  “This is what you bitches call a miracle diet?” the gang girl shouted. “Your book says we can only eat nine hundred calories a day.”

  “Then we’re supposed to drink constipation medicine twice a day?!” barked another participant as she leafed through the book.

  “Please don’t touch the books until you’ve purchased them!” Olivia said. I despised this woman, but had to admire her boldness. It was pretty clear that at least one of these very pissed-off women was packing some sort of weapon, or at the very least could crush a windpipe with her thumbs. And yet, the only thing that seemed to register with Olivia was that she was getting her greasy fingers on the pages of her twenty-nine dollar book.

  Randy giggled. “You read, you buy. This is not a library.”

  Suddenly I was overcome with a need to join in. “Yes, but it is a class and we all paid one hundred dollars to be here tonight under the assumption that we would actually learn something. All we’ve learned is that you’re selling books. I didn’t even know we weren’t supposed to exceed nine hundred calories a day until that woman opened your book.”

  “I told you the no-no foods!” Olivia shot angrily.

  “How ‘bout some of the yes-yes foods so we know what the hell we can eat,” another woman shouted.

  Zoe beamed. “It’s a Blubber Flush riot! Where the hell is a camera crew when you need one?”

  “Look, you bitches better knock the fat outta this bullshit class right now and tell us what we can eat, and give us the names of them vitamins,” the gang girl shot.

  Another woman joined in. “Excuse me, but does it concern anyone that a nine-hundred-calorie-a-day diet and regular use of laxatives is basically what anorexics do? “

  “No one here’s anorexic, bitch,” the gang girl shot. “I got weight to lose, so sit down, shut up, and let this freak show get on to the part where we find out what we need to eat to get skinny.”

  “Okay,” said a startled Olivia. “Sounds like you’re all ready to move on to the step-by-step Blubber Flush plan.” It was satisfying to see her look this terrified.

  “Let’s do the plan,” Randy said, nodding at double speed.

  Chapter 26

  Three weeks after taking the Blubber Flush class, Zoe lost six pounds. Her hips jutted like spears from her low-rider jeans. I, on the other hand, shed a pound and a half. It was no fault of the program, though. At the very end of Olivia and Randy’s presentation, one remembered, “Oh yeah, if you’re pregnant or nursing, you shouldn’t be a Blubber Flusher.” Still, I felt so motivated hearing about their principles of weight loss that I incorporated a few into my lifestyle. I figured cutting out candy and capping my calories at 2,500 a day couldn’t hurt my milk supply. I also joined Candace’s stroller club, which was a group of about six women who met twice a week to push strollers and gab for four to five miles.

  It was May, so I had no more excuses not to exercise. The weather had finally warmed enough where I actually wanted to be outdoors taking a walk.

  Adam looked more like a little baby boy than an infant, crawling and cooing back at strangers who said hello to him.

  It was funny, but the busier I got, the more I was able to do. I’d written four pieces for Salon, was in the midst of editing and fact-checking my cover story with Mothering, and even contracted with a handful of online parenting magazines, which paid surprisingly well.

  Zoe was at the house on Saturday night. We’d planned to catch a movie while Jack and Natalie played house with Adam, but a hotly sought-after artist finally returned one of Jack’s numerous calls and said he’d be willing to meet to discuss representation—right then. Ever the supportive girlfriend, Natalie immediately agreed to meet Jack later that evening and cook him dinner “whenever” he arrived. Even I was starting to fall in love with her. I wondered how I used to respond when similar situations arose in our marriage. I was pretty understanding, wasn’t I? Is that what went wrong between us? Was I not self-sacrificing enough for Jack? Then I looked around my house and realized I was living his suburban dream, not mine, and gave myself a break. After thirteen years of marriage, even St. Natalie might stomp her foot with disappointment once or twice.

  “I have a confession to make,” Zoe said, leaning in conspiratorially over the kitchen table.

  “Roll ʼem,” I joked. When she didn’t laugh, I urged her to continue. “Want a longevity cocktail?” I offered.

  “Why not?”

  After mixing the sour grit and returning to the table, I placed the drinks on the table. “Remember when we used to drink things like fuzzy navels and sex on the beach? Now it’s Blubber Flush juice.”

  “Doesn’t that seem like forever ago?” Zoe sighed.

  “I can’t believe Richie is dead.” I nodded.

  “Puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?”

  “What’s going on with you, Zoe?”

  She said that, compared to Richie Cantor’s, her problems were small.

  “This is true, but it doesn’t make yours irrelevant either,” I said. I always hated when Aunt Rita completely negated my feelings by telling me how much worse off she was at my age. In grad school, I was rejected from a summer writing workshop in London, and Aunt Rita immediately started in with a story about how she was rejected three times from the Brooklyn College Masters in Education program before she was accepted. I think her point was that persistence pays, but the message I got was that my disappointments were so small compared to hers, they didn’t count. And if they didn’t count, how could I indulge in nurturing them? Anjoli, on the other hand, always seemed to choose my lowest points to tell me how charmed her life was. When the exchange program didn’t work out, Anjoli chimed, “London is beautiful in the summer! When I was with the Joffrey, we toured London, Paris, and Rome and it was the most culturally awakening and exhilarating summer of my life.” Gee, good to hear.

  Zoe said she met someone else, and was thinking about leaving Paul. They’d been together four years, so their relationship was as significant as many marriages. When I pressed for details, Zoe said that she was sad to see the relationship with Paul peter out, but what really bothered her was her cheating on him. “I know we’
re not married or anything, but I feel like shit, sneaking around behind his back,” she said. “God knows I can’t stand him these days, but I can’t stand to hurt him either,” Zoe continued. “I’m not even sure I love Tommy. I think I just love the way he makes me feel.” I wondered what the difference was between loving someone and loving the way he made you feel. “Or, God, I hate to admit this, but sometimes I think I just like the attention from someone new. Is that awful?”

  “Please,” I shooed my hand. “A dog sniffed my crotch in the park this morning and I was flattered.”

  Zoe burst into laughter. Encouraged, I added that sometimes I bought things on eBay and paid quickly in order to get good feedback from the seller. My mother regularly showed up on Page Six. I was thrilled that there was a buzz about my quickie with PayPal.

  “I’m so glad I have a friend I can be honest with, and not worry about being judged,” Zoe said. Gulp.

  “Zoe,” I said meekly. “When we finish talking about you and Paul . . . or you and Tommy ... I mean, when we get done talking about you, there’s something I need to come clean with you on.”

  With that, Adam began screaming, demanding to be fed. When I lifted him from his crib, Adam looked like a drunk recovering from a bender. Half of his red face was covered with drool and the left side of his hair was standing up. And like a drunk, he was disoriented, confused, and wailing. But also like a typical intoxicated male, his cranky tirade was nothing a little C cup couldn’t fix.

  “So dish,” Zoe said as I returned to the table with Adam latched onto my breast. “Are you cheating on Jack?”

  “No,” I said, inhaling to gain the courage to tell Zoe about my pseudomarriage. “Jack and I aren’t really married anymore. I mean, technically we are, but we’ve emotionally divorced.”

  “Emotionally divorced? “ Zoe repeated. I could see the wheels turning. She thought it might make a good title for her next reality TV show.

  “We’re living together as friends,” I explained. “We’re going to raise Adam together, but have separate lives.”

  Zoe was rough to read. Finally she spoke. “Didn’t they do a piece on this in the Times?”