“Thank you, son,” said Rusty. “Thank you, thank you.”
Henry’s voice was tight. “Pick you up in about thirteen hours,” he said. “Scranton General?”
“Mercy.” Rusty hung up the phone and closed his eyes, feeling in his heart that he might die from joy.
Everybody on Seeley Street went to see Ray’s performance that first weekend in November. Donald and Celeste drove the old woman across the street who nobody had ever met, and they learned her name was Estelle. Donald and Celeste’s children even drove down, though none of them knew what to expect from a performance art show. Their eldest son explained that it was kind of like when Letterman or Jay Leno did a monologue, only it went on longer and was somehow a little different. And everybody nodded and thought that would be really interesting. They even made a pact to wear all black, which for some of them meant they had to go out and buy brand-new outfits. Donald figured this would be kind of like a sports event, only artier, and made signs, which he fastened to wood stakes for people to wave. The signs said, WELCOME TO FORT CLOUD, BABY X.
Judy, hired on to do makeup, rode over to the theater with Carson in a cab. She wore a new black pantsuit to camouflage herself against the stage curtains. Carson had told her he’d put a stool back there for her, and she even went out and bought herself a brand-new pair of good shoes—no heel, just soft soles so she could move around quietly if Ray needed her to help with props.
Rusty rode down in the bus with Henry’s band, with whom he’d become quite chummy. They’d made him an honorary roadie, part of their autograph-support team. He sat proudly in the passenger seat, next to Rex, their driver, talking on and on about engines. He wore a concert T-shirt—it was black with the silhouette of an infant rising out of a coffin—and he could now hum along to a few of the songs on Henry’s latest album. Henry was preparing to launch his Baby in Black tour the following summer. In a surge of inspiration from staying at his parents’ house in the interim, he’d written ten new songs while sitting on his old bed in the basement, watching light from the lava lamps play off the walls.
Sunny and Klaus persuaded the doorman from their condo building to come to the show with them, and on the drive there, they got him to commit to buying a food dehydrator from one of their catalogs in the backseat. After the show, they planned to host a reception, and Sunny was excited that she would able to reuse many of her clever prepartum party props. Tonight, she had on her muumuu. Klaus wore one, too.
Gretchen rode in with Ray, the baby fast asleep in the backseat. On the way, Ray listened to zither music to help him stay calm. Due to some recent press in the Reader, the show was sold out. The box office had even sold tickets for the aisles. Though Hael was still incommunicado among the Franciscan sisters of the forest, the Figgises told Ray they planned to come with their children and document everything. Glyn volunteered to pass out programs.
Instead of paper, the programs were printed on black onesies with white ink. Gretchen and Ray had sewn them all by hand, along with help from other people in their community. On the front of the onesie, it said, “Maybe Baby.” On the back, it read: “A two-man show, by Ray Atwater and Carson Glide, with special help from . . .” There followed a list of names stretching from the neck to the crotch snaps. The last name was “Gray Glide,” and in parentheses, “Baby X.”
An hour before the show, Judy helped Carson with his hair and makeup, while Rusty stood by with the baby in his arms, talking a constant stream of happy babble, his jowly cheek pressed to its forehead. He wasn’t much on the name Gray—even though Gretchen and Ray had explained that it was a combination of their two names—so he called the baby simply “Junior.”
“Git on,” Judy said to Rusty as he shuffled past with Junior, singing under his breath. “You’re breaking my concentration.” She shooed him away from the stool she was sitting on and carefully applied base around Carson’s eyes. “Now close them,” she commanded.
“Mother,” he said, with a little one-note laugh, “I never thought this day would come.”
Judy smiled and went on dabbing about his temples with her little round makeup pad, adding some eye shadow. “A baby changes everything,” she wanted to say, but she held her mouth. She knew it was more than that. It was many things, a swarm of things. She felt a rush of delight as she uncapped some lip liner.
“This is like heaven,” Carson said, more to himself than to her. “You have no idea.”
Out of the blue, a word came to Judy’s mind. “What’s a hermaphrodite?” she asked, picking through her makeup box for a cotton ball.
“An individual with reproductive organs of both sexes,” Carson said.
“Oh,” said Judy politely.
“Where did you hear that?” He cracked a sparkling eyelid.
“Just around,” Judy shrugged.
She leaned over and worked on his top lip, then sat back to study her handiwork. Behind her was a round mirror encircled in small white lightbulbs, like a movie set, a Christmas tree. She caught sight of herself as she rustled around for some mascara, and was momentarily surprised by the reflection. The lights gave her hair a warm glow. It softened all the lines of her face, made her eyes twinkle. It had been a very long time since she had looked at herself, and she had expected to see something horrific, namely a bushy mustache. But it was nothing, a faint shadow.
She leaned into Carson. “See that?” she asked, pointing to her upper lip.
He squinted. “What? That little mustache? You could have that bleached.”
Judy smiled and shook her head. “Pucker up like you’re going to kiss me,” she said. “Here comes the lipstick.” He screwed up his mouth and closed his eyes, and before she used her little brush to paint on a new pinkish shade called Sugarplex, she closed her eyes and pecked him on the mouth. More than a peck, it was a press, even a prolonged press, as if they were exchanging a breath. And for an instant, the image that came into her head—as she kissed her son in his girlish costume—was that she had become a man and he a woman, and for one quick, bright second, they swapped worlds.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to C. Michael Curtis for his simple but beautiful rejection letter, which set me on fire to write this book. Thanks to André and Melissa for giving me a scrumptious niece, which got me scratching my head about babies, and to my old neighbors at Fair Oaks Cohousing, who introduced me to alternative ways of parenting.
This book could not have been written without the support of my parents, Mahlon and Sonja, and my colleagues at Isthmus Newspaper, who taught me how to find and unravel compelling stories and gave me the space to do so. Many thanks to Amy Williams, the best agent one could wish for, and to Reagan Arthur at Little, Brown and Company, who took a chance on my manuscript. Oh, honey.
For their driving enthusiasm and the regular use of their ears, I am indebted to Dean Bakopoulos, Heather Lee Schroeder, Heather Skyler, Guy Thorvaldsen, Ron Kuka, Andrew McCuaig, and David Ebenbach. Additional thanks goes to Clint McCown, Alyce Miller, Cornelia Nixon, Tony Ardizzone, Beloit College, and the MFA program at Indiana University.
Much of this novel was written in a little hermitage at the Christine Center in Willard, Wisconsin, where the sisters took great care of me and, what’s more, offered terrific specks of insight during our meals together at the great green table. Special thanks to Sister Margaret, Sister Johanna, David, Ingy, John, Mary, Livia, Dexter, and Tom.
Most of all, thanks, Carl.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tenaya Darlington’s fiction has appeared in Scribner’s Best of Fiction Workshops 1998, Mid-American Review, and BOMB. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.
MAYBE
BABY
A NOVEL
Tenaya Darlington
A READING GROUP GUIDE
A CONVERSATION WITH TENAYA DARLINGTON
How did you come up with the idea for Maybe Baby?
In the late ’90s, my husband and I lived in a cohousing community in Madison, Wisconsin. We were one
of five families who shared a garden, childcare, meals, etc. Although we moved out in less than a year to buy our own home, I was really struck by the children who lived there. They played without regard to social roles, they were wildly imaginative, and there was no sense of “boys will be boys and girls will be girls.”
It struck a chord with me because many of my friends were beginning to have their first babies at that time, and there were lots of nature vs. nurture discussions in our living room. We also knew people who were very frustrated by the challenge of raising balanced children. And by “balanced” I mean kids who were willing to cross gender lines—to play baseball as young females, or to take up ballet as young males. I kept hearing from these parents that, despite every effort, their children were growing up in more clearly defined gender roles than ever.
But what I saw in cohousing was that kids are a product of their community, and when a community is open to new ideas, the children really develop their own identities. In cohousing, no one freaked out when the nine-year-old boy wore his long hair back in a headband and performed Irish jigs in the driveway. He went on to become the most popular boy at school despite his long blond locks and his kilt. The key was that the community protected his right to discover who he was, and that empowered him to become a leader.
I wanted to write a book that took the notion of gender-neutral childrearing a step further—a book that would be funny and appealing to a wide audience, but that would have a very serious question at its core: Is it possible to raise a gender-neutral child? At a time when parents are able to determine so many factors about their children in utero, I think it’s important to ask these questions.
What is your opinion of Rusty and Judy Glide? Were they inspired by anyone you know?
Rusty and Judy are really just an amalgam of people I grew up around in the Midwest. Their house is very similar to the houses in the small-town Iowa neighborhood where I was raised, down to the pheasant-print couch in their living room. From the outside, they appear to be very simple folk, but their inner lives are built around secrets and bitter disappointment. What I like about Rusty and Judy is that they are capable of molting. At its heart, this is a book about tolerance, and I wanted the two main characters to grow new skins and to develop compassion—both for their children and for themselves.
Who are your favorite writers? How do they influence your work?
I’m a full-time journalist—a columnist and editor for Isthmus Newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin—so I read a lot of nonfiction. Joan Didion is probably my single greatest influence. I appreciate her attention to detail and mood, but most importantly, I share her thirst for eccentrics. The characters of Gretchen and Ray are very loosely based upon some people I once met while doing a story on a utopian artist village in rural Wisconsin.
I started Maybe Baby the night after I saw The Royal Tenenbaums in the theater. The idea had been roaming around in my head for about a year as an unfinished short story. Something about that movie—the colors, the tone, the deeply idiosyncratic parents—acted as a kind of incubator. The very next night, I sat down and wrote the first chapter, and because I pictured all of the action very cinematically, the book moved and wrote itself very quickly.
It took me less than a year to finish, and I worked on it mostly at night, writing it all in longhand after work. I was tired, yes, very tired usually, but the characters were so sweet and so earnest—all of them—that I looked forward to meeting them every evening at the end of my long walk home. During that time, I was engrossed in a number of different books, in particular The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen and Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. I also reread Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy—two very delicious morsels.
Do you agree with Gretchen and Ray’s choice to raise their baby gender-neutral?
For me, it’s not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing. The fact is, when a child is conceived, the first thing on everyone’s mind is “boy or girl?” and at some point we have to question that question.
What part of Maybe Baby was most difficult to write?
I am a deep lover of beginnings. I could probably sit down and start a new novel every day, so the real challenge for me was breaking out the landing gear. I was terrified by the notion of a final chapter. Luckily, I started the book with the baby’s conception, so I had nine months to splash around, and as those months wore on, I became very eager to bring this kid into the world. Right before Gretchen’s due date, I hit a wall—I had no idea how to keep the story moving forward, and I was petrified of crashing miserably. I took two weeks off from work and rented a little hermitage from some Franciscan sisters who run a retreat center in Willard, Wisconsin. I spent many of those evenings in their wood-fired sauna, where I literally sweated out that ending.
What is your favorite part of the novel?
I love when Judy becomes obsessed with her mustache. To me, it’s the perfect reversal of fortune.
Did you know the ending from the start? Did you ever plan to disclose the baby’s sex?
I knew from the beginning that I could never disclose the baby’s sex—after all, that’s the book’s great secret. I always knew, however, that the baby would be named “Gray.” It seemed appropriate because it’s a neutral shade—a combination of black and white, no less—and also because it incorporates letters from Gretchen’s and Ray’s names.
Do you have an idea of what happens to the Glides after the story ends?
I don’t. I suppose it’s too hopeful to think that they all lope toward the setting Midwestern sun hand in hand, but that is what I would like to imagine. Several people have asked me about a sequel—they want to hear the story of Baby Gray. Somehow, though, that would feel like a breach of confidence. In my mind, Gray will always just be wandering around in a little black diaper.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
1. How does the novel’s title, Maybe Baby, play off its themes?
2. What were your expectations when you first learned that Gretchen and Ray intended to raise a gender-neutral child?
3. Does Gretchen and Ray’s experiment seem realistic? What if a family in your neighborhood dressed their newborn in all-black clothing? How do you think people would react?
4. The novel’s main characters seem to be more comfortable breaking into one another’s homes than they are talking to one another directly. Why is that?
5. How do Rusty and Judy change, both physically and philosophically, in the course of the novel? Is it likely that they will continue to accept Gray once the performance is over?
6. How might the conflicts at the heart of Maybe Baby play out differently in another part of the country—in California, say, as opposed to Wisconsin? How does geography play a role in this story?
7. In what ways are Gretchen and Ray similar to their parents?
8. Recent advances in genetic engineering have made it possible for a baby’s gender and physical traits to be a matter of choice. How might the novel contribute to the debate over the ethics of “designer babies”?
9. How would you classify Maybe Baby? As satire? As humorous fiction? As social commentary?
10. How do Rusty and Judy compare to your parents? How do Gretchen, Henry, and Carson compare to you or your siblings?
TENAYA DARLINGTON’S SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl by John Colapinto
The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
Martin and John by Dale Peck
Housekeeping by Marilynn Robinson
Valencia by Michelle Tea
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Quicksand and Passing, two novellas by Nella Larsen
Judge by Dwight Allen
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Tenaya Darlington, Maybe Baby
Maybe Baby Page 22