by Jill Kargman
There were two things that calmed me down: infomercials and my best friend, Vanessa. From midnight Chinese food Hoover-vac feasts to psycho long walks to endless phonefests into the wee hours, Vanessa was like the sister-slash-shrink I never had. I once saw a needlepoint pillow that said, “True friends are the ones you can call at 3:00 a.m.,” and we all know needlepoint pillows don’t lie. During my loneliest, saddest hours of drop-the-toaster-oven-in-my-bubble-bath despair, I would dial her. I’d cry to her that I wished I could have a time machine, Michael J. Fox–style (minus the being-broken-and-needing-weapons-grade-plutonium part), so I could go back and be with my ex. I missed him, us, our life as a team.
Vanessa told me sternly that it was time to date—a guy wasn’t going to fly through my window while I was watching Law & Order marathons. I had to take control of my life and not whimper. And so began the dates from Hades.
There was one blind date who looked not unlike Danny DeVito. Buh-bye. Another had hands that were all palm—you know, huge palms the size of a slice of Wonder Bread, with short, stubby fingers like five pigs in blankets glued onto the Wonder Bread slice. Then there was a cute but way-too-snobby writer who snapped at me that my fidgeting with the Equal packets on the table was “really aggravating.” Another guy “would never set foot in Europe.”
Then, finally, a dream date with a sexy hipster rock critic—we laughed all night in a little café in the pre-chic Lower East Side and he said he’d had the best time and wanted to hang out the next evening. And then when I said I had tickets to a Billy Joel concert, he asked me if I was joking. And I said no, and then a mysterious headache came on and he said he had to go and I never heard from him again.
Then, about a year later, after a couple of failed mini-relationships, I really hit the nadir. For some reason all my best friends had boyfriends and I bitterly lamented the fact that I was utterly and completely alone. Except I wasn’t. I had roommates. Small, furry gray roommates.
The shrieks began when a pavor nocturnus fit woke me. Then I had that inner battle of do I deal with getting out of bed to pee or not? I tried go back to sleep but once I recognized my bladder, I had to eventually go. I was heading to the bathroom when I first saw a mouse. It darted across your two-by-two-foot kitchenette and I thought I was going to pass out. I tripped and fell, scraping my knee on the Pottery Barn sisal, not caring about the blood gushing out of my knee as much as the fact that I was living among Rodentia.
I called your owner and freaked. Her cold response? “Welcome to New York, kid.” I informed her I was from New York and never had four-legged squatters. She dispatched her exterminating company, Roachbusters, whose logo naturally was the Ghostbusters sign with a cockroach instead of Casper. Nice. Two weeks later, I could hear them still scampering. I called your owner again, saying perhaps if she had sent a company called Mousebusters, we wouldn’t have this problem. Eventually, thanks to mousetraps, which I had the pleasure of hearing snap in the night, the problem was solved.
But the mice forced me, more than anything else, to make plans for every single night. Gone were the dates with Orville Redenbacher and Time Warner cable—I had to leave to avoid other sightings. I literally made a voiced-out-loud pact with the mice that they could hang as long as I never saw or heard them and they shat under the sink.
So I started leaving you and going out. All the fucking time. If I didn’t have plans, I’d put on my earphones and just take crazy walks, I mean for miles and miles, à la Forrest Gump, minus the beard and retardation. And I started going to plays again, even by myself. One theatrical plunge was so therapeutic it began to take over my life. You must have wanted to shoot me for blaring Hedwig and the Angry Inch every second for a year. My friend Trip and I went to see the amazing musical in the West Village, and when we came out, I was singing the songs at the top of my lungs down Jane Street. He stopped and looked in my eyes.
“You’re back,” he said, putting his hands on my shoulders. “We lost you there for a little while, but now you’re back.”
I burst into happy tears because deep down, I knew he was right. I hadn’t been fully myself in my previous relationship and I was finally returning to my kooky uncensored side, saying once-bleeped things like “cunt” or “cock gobbler.”
Then, as winter thawed, I continued to leave you; those long walks I was taking became longer walks—to Wall Street and back to Seventy-sixth, even round-trips to Brooklyn. So I thought I’d walk the New York City Marathon; why the hell not get a medal for this shit? So I did. Seeing as how I am the worst athlete ever to roam this earth (think JV volleyball benchwarmer), it was a true miracle that I finished it. I think it was some crazy challenge for myself and I knew I’d never do it again, but I had to do it once just to prove after nights and nights of lonely walks that I could actually leave you and go into the world. All five boroughs, to be exact.
My cute parents were freezing at the finish line, waiting for me complete with go, jill, go! signage, not realizing I’d finished way earlier than planned, so I staggered home alone in my silver cape thingy and, of course, my ribboned medal. I remember walking in and looking around your space. I was exhausted and could barely haul myself to the shower, but I felt so proud because, despite the fact that my body was near collapse, my head was strong.
A few months later, I was offered a blind date with a guy named Harry my grandma Ruth fixed me up with—he was the grandson of her friend Betty. My first thought was one word: Oy. And then: Not again. I had already been set up by my grandmother with another pal’s grandson, who showed up to our date with his boyfriend.
“I’m totally gay and my grandmother would drop dead if she knew,” he said apologetically, noticing I’d clearly spent all afternoon getting a mani-pedi and blowout. “But we’ll have a great dinner anyway.” And we did. But still. Another Nana fix-up?
After relaying this story to Betty, she assured me, “My Harry is straight!” Just what I needed, a dweeb who is such a power nerd he needs his nana for a fix-up with an NJG. But my life was so shtetl, because sure enough it was practically love at first sight for me. He was a beyond-adorable, scruffy nugget in his Harvard ski team pants (double whammy hotness factor of brains and balls), and after dinner we walked and talked and venue-hopped for hours. Finally at four a.m. he put me in a cab and gave me a kiss on the cheek, asking if we could have dinner again two nights later. Natch I said yes, beaming and giddy.
Unlike many nights coming home to you, I was elated. There had been so many evenings of dashed hopes after a supposedly fun party where I was in the back of the cab, hanging it up for the night, my only fun to be with Saturday Night Live upon my return.
But this time, as I put my key in your door, I heard the phone ringing. Huh? I ran up the stairs and saw the clock reading 4:17 as I picked up. “I just wanted to make sure you got home safe,” Harry said.
The next morning at my Sex and the City–style recon brunch with Vanessa, I told her I’d met my husband. And it turned out I was right. Twenty months later we were married and it was your threshold he carried me over when we returned from our honeymoon. Being in love made your ceiling’s peeling paint less of an eyesore, the cacophony of the tenants more muted, and the gray critters less scary. Suddenly you were a palace—well, maybe not quite a palace, but my rose-tinted glasses certainly transformed you from lonely bachelorette pad to love nest, filled with the smells of cooking for two instead of microwave-popcorn-as-dinner in sweatpants.
Apartment no. 5, sometimes I think if only I’d had a crystal ball, I would have enjoyed our time together much more. If I had known I’d fall in love and be settled with work and be happy, I could have relished those years and not stressed so much. But then I realize, knowing the future would have fucked it up, because it was my hard times with you that got me to where I needed to be. It was in the four walls of your living room that I pep-talked myself back from the Debbie Downer days. It was in your bedroom that I chatt
ed with my best friends. Sure, I was lonely, but that time alone helped solidify not only what I wanted but also who I really was. In the end, the fairy-tale ending was not because of Harry; he didn’t save me—you did. You helped me get independent; you returned me to my old self and delivered me to Harry when I was ready. And that is why, despite my nightmare neighbors and cheesy pheasant hallway wallpaper and mice, I am so happy we met. I don’t miss you, but I will always love you.
11
It was almost as if the moment I peed on the stick I got fat. Like literally as the plus sign appeared, my ass hit the plus-sized rack. I started to sense the telltale symptoms (tingling boobies, bitchiness) and went to Zitomer’s to buy the test. Holy fucking shit. I had to spread ’em and give birth. It was nine months away, but still. How to tell Harry? I was going to wrap the little urine-y wand in a box with tissue paper and tell my husband that way, but then it occurred to me that maybe it was too gross to hand him my waste products. We have this thing where we never ever have taken a dump with the door open. If someone starts to drop trou and hit the pot, one of us will yell “Romance!” (as in, let’s at least try to keep the romance alive) as a signal for the other to please shut the door. I remember that Sex and the City episode where Miranda’s one-night stand takes a fierce dookie, sending her cat sprinting out of the bathroom, Usain Bolt–style, with a tortured “RRRRREAR!” no doubt from the brown cloud he was just enveloped in.
So ixnay on the eestickpay. Instead, I walked next door to Zitomer’s (cue finger quotes) “Department Store,” i.e., glorified pharmacy. The same place I’d just bought the preggo test, incidentally. In their “department” for kids they had some little socks with lions on them, which were perfect since I call my husband LC, short for Lion Cub, because he in fact resembles a lion with his mane o’ locks. Don’t worry, he’s not, like, in Metallica; he just has a full head of curly brown hair.
I called his cell to see when he’d come out of the train so I could run and meet him on the street—I couldn’t even wait the extra few minutes for him to get home. He unwrapped the teeny socks and his jaw dropped. We hugged and promptly celebrated by hitting an Italian restaurant, where I might as well have duct-taped the plate of gnocchi to my thighs. No matter; I was knocked up!
Almost as quickly as my thigh girth increased, invisible antennae grew out of my scalp and I started to notice every single preggers woman on the street. It seemed like the whole world was in bloom! Suddenly, strollers of every style and color were ubiquitous, tempting me in a buffet of varieties. Little onesies cooed from their store window perches, shrunken Tretorns were purchased for the tadpole within, and every child’s name called out by mothers on the street hung in my brain for consideration like the crisp clash of cymbals; I like Ike! Cute as a little boy, hot as a guy, and cute as an old man again!
This would be fun, this mom thing, yay!
And then . . .
I ran into Patient Zero. No, not the Canadian flight attendant who porked his way into posterity. Her. The woman who would win the gold medal were name-dropping an Olympic sport, who answers, unprompted, “Valentino!” if you say you like her jacket, who weaves her colleges and clubs into every convo. It was like the Tourette’s syndrome of the insecure. “Yeah, in New Haven, you know, at Yale, and then in grad school in Boston, well, outside Boston, in Cambridge at Harvard,” etc. etc. So there I was, bump in blossom, when she spied me.
“What are you having? When are you due? You know my son got a ten on his Apgar test. Ten! And they usually only give nine. But he got ten.”
I’d been reading What to Expect and other tomes, so I was loosely familiar but not 100 percent sure. “Wait . . . aren’t those, like, whether your heart’s beating and shit?” I asked.
“Well, yes, but alertness is key. My son was sooo alert. The nurses said they’d never seen a more alert baby. Never!”
Ah, and so it begins: Apgars now, SATs later. Always a yardstick, ever a measure. Perhaps in Texas it’s cheerleading captain or in Alaska how many fish you spear, but in New York City it’s schools and social stuff and dough. Which many of these women had in the bubble of the Neo–Gilded Age—their husbands all put the “douche” in “fiduciary.” They all threw money at any issue, hiring consultants for walking, talking, peeing, pooing, and violin. No matter! I simply wouldn’t let it get to me. Or so I thought.
The next ambush came at my baby shower, where a whispering group of older moms told me a thing or two about a thing or two.
“Wait, you’re not having a C?” one gasped, incredulous.
“Um, I m-mean, unless it’s an emergency . . . ,” I stammered.
“So you’re doing it, like, natural?” another said, hand to chest in horror, accompanied by a grimace like the passed hors d’oeuvre she’d just sampled was a shit profiterole.
All eyes were on me.
“Well, no, not natural, I plan on having drugs, obviously,” I replied.
“No, but, like, you’re going to . . . give birth?” the first asked, face contorted. “No, no, no, no. Schedule a C. You get a blowout, you get your nails done, you go in, you get the private room, and you remain intact down there. Trust me, your husband will thank you for it.”
I left considering these whispered warnings. Was I so out of it? Did people think I was like some hippie mama going into the woods and shitting out my baby? Was my vagina going to resemble the Holland Tunnel?
Cut to: obstetrician’s office.
Me: I’d like a C-section. My husband will thank me for it.
Her: You’re insane. I don’t do that.
Me: But all these other doctors do it! Like Dr. S!
Her: Yeah, well, he slices around the Duke basketball schedule. I’m different. I let nature decide your baby’s birthday.
Unfortunately for me, and my vagina, my daughter arrived a week late, tearing through me like a bowling ball on its way to a strike. Except for instead of a flying-pin cacophony, it was my ear-piercing shrieks from hell. Because I was obeying the nurse who told us not to come to the hospital before the contractions were five minutes apart or we’d be sent home, I sat at home for hours like an asshole with a stopwatch timing my spazzing ute. At five minutes, I gathered my shit. By the time we got to our lobby, they were four minutes apart. By the time we scored a cab, three.
Wails. From the whale.
We stormed up to the delivery ward to find that there was a wait for the anesthesiologist so there was no epidural to be had. And get this! No birthing room available. My doctor was mortified and apologizing profusely as they wheeled my IV-harpooned ass into . . . wait for it . . . a supply closet. Yes. Stacked with boxes upon boxes of latex gloves.
“Um, I’m sorry, but am I in Ecuador?” I asked my husband.
I was later given morphine mid-pushes but I felt everything and was unpleased (read: RIPSHIT).
Oh, and by the way, my doc took such pity on me that for the next two kids I got my epidural in the fucking parking lot.
They took Sadie, demucused her, put her under that French fry warmer thing, and handed her to me in a blankie, pronouncing her Apgar a nine. (Boo! There goes Princeton!)
We brought her home in the “going-home outfit” soon to be splattered with doody, so why I didn’t just go with Old Navy I have no idea. The first four months I was underwater. Like Brooke Shields before me, down came the rain. Except I literally sobbed at fucking commercials. There was one for Volvo where the daughter is at ice-skating class and keeps falling on her tuches and then comes out and Mom has the Volvo running outside with the ass warmer on. Now that’s maternal love! Niagara Falls. I personally raised the stock of the parent company of Kleenex those first months. Especially because of the incessant pressure to nurse when the truth was, I didn’t like it. People adore the symbiosis of mother and child and the bonding, but the truth was I wasn’t breast-fed, and moms and daughters couldn’t be more bonded than I
am with my mom. My nips bled, the pumping made me feel like I was hooked up to a Frankenstein machine or, worse, that fat albino’s below-tree-root death machine in The Princess Bride. I hated thinking of my baby as the Six-Fingered Man torturing me, so I bagged after six weeks. “Shame on you!” one beeyotch literally said to me, complete with pointer finger in my face. “You know it makes them smarter.”
I knew right then and there I had to block out all the sudden advisers. My kid was only two months old and already a battery of people had given me their lists of things I “must do,” from buy special toys we all somehow survived without to use $40 baby moisturizer. It was in this next year that my friends aligned in two camps—the ones who didn’t have kids (my real friends) and the new breed of Supermom whom I met through my daughter. It was from this element that I learned the countless ins and outs of parenting.
Comment: “You give her food from a jar? Oh. We only serve all organic; we boil down a butternut squash from the farmer’s market and puree it, and Allegra and Tabitha devour it!”
Accompanying look: As if I’m filling my kid’s bottle with Coke and feeding her fried dough.
Comment: “You cannot use a pacifier at eighteen months. No, no, no, no, no, too old. That’s lazy parenting. It causes speech delays.”