Dear Mom,
I’ve been in bed for two weeks. It’s awful, but some small part of me enjoys it, the punishment of it. The first five or so days I read a lot. I read three books. I even read a parenting book, as atonement for being such a messed up failure of a pregnant girl. The book emphasized the importance of having a “birth plan,” which really makes me laugh. My plan is to birth this baby without killing anyone. I’m not even going to pretend I know the right way to do that. That there even are choices seems absurd. The baby is in. The baby will need to come out. I sort of don’t want to be present for any of it, and this book seemed to enjoy accentuating “being present.”
I’ve been writing letters in my head. To the baby. (Ha, like I need another pen pal who doesn’t write me back!)
For example:
Dear Baby,
Do you have any thoughts yet? Just because your thoughts are untranslatable doesn’t mean they’re not happening.
I wish I could know your language. Like the first thing I’d want to say is sorry. Sorry for being a clueless, unprepared host. Sorry for your lack of father, for the many other inevitable lacks included therein.
Sorry that I didn’t want you, didn’t plan you, sorry that I routinely fear your arrival.
Love from your mother.
It feels sort of good to write it.
Dad has been really nice. He got to the hospital just as I was starting to worry I’d have to go home with Nancy. He looked terrified, and through his terror, I felt him seeing me. It was as though his fear made me real, created me.
His eyes were two puddles of worry. “Eating a lousy, overpriced chef salad with clients, of all things,” he muttered, disgusted with himself. “It’s okay, Dad. Nancy was there and she’s been so”—Nancy appeared on the other side of me with her purse and put mine on the foot of the bed—“great, really great. Thank you, Nancy.” Dad thanked her too. Nancy smiled that too-bright smile and said. “See you tomorrow—well, one of you, anyway!” before leaving the room.
There are three possibilities, Mom, no matter how I try to narrow them down: Nancy is insane, or I am, or we both are.
Dad and I stopped twice on the way home from the hospital, once to pick up my medication and then again to pick up dinner. From that point up till now, Dad has remained very solicitous. He doesn’t express any concern about the baby—still doesn’t acknowledge it, really, and he doesn’t quite dote—but it’s like he has suddenly become acutely responsible, like a kid whose dad has told him they’re getting rid of the dog if he doesn’t take better care of it. I guess I’m the dog in that scenario.
He brought the small TV that was in the basement into my room. He brings me breakfast every morning and comes home most days to fix me lunch. Sometimes we eat dinner together here in my room, while watching TV. I think I’ve gained ten pounds in the last two weeks. I was up four last week at my checkup. Honestly, I’m not terribly hungry for most meals but I don’t have the heart to turn down his efforts. What does it matter? I’m fat anyway.
What I’m getting at here is something that might altogether surprise you: Dad has been sort of amazing.
Agnes
Saturday morning, it’s a relief to open my eyes to my cool, dappled bedroom. A beautiful day for a baby shower, I think to myself, and I honestly can’t tell if it’s a sarcastic thought or not. Mostly I am just happy to get out of bed, to have somewhere else to be. I shower and get dressed. I fix my hair and try to put some extra care into my appearance—tweezing a few straggly eyebrow hairs plus a bonus one on my chin. I put on eye makeup and lip gloss. I consider perfume but most strong smells still make me feel nauseous. When I go downstairs, Dad is sitting at the table, eating a bowl of cereal.
“Good morning,” he says. “How do you feel? Maybe you should stay in bed until it’s time for you to go…?”
I pour some cereal and join him at the table. “I’m good. It feels good to be up. I think I was on the verge of muscle atrophy.”
“Well,” he says, “you look nice. I just wanted to ask—do you have a gift? For your friend? Don’t you have to bring a gift to these things?”
Shit. “Shit,” I say. A weird fear fishtails through me. Somehow I have forgotten that a shower is a type of party, and a party means presents. A party also means people, other people, whom I’ll presumably be obliged to talk to. I think about lying. About using my amnesty to just take a drive, or go to a casino, or find a beach. But then I think about Alicia, how much all of this means to her, how devotedly she has studied her new fate.
“Well, actually, I just remembered—I told Alicia that I’d get her whatever she didn’t get from everyone else. Like, she said that usually there are a lot of repeats, so I figured it’d be good to not risk getting her something she’s getting twelve of, you know?” I am, of course, completely making this up.
I drive to Alicia’s with the AC on blast, afraid of sweat showing through my dress in places I can’t see, but then my nipples become a secondary problem. I leave the radio off. I check my face and teeth in the rearview mirror at every red light. This isn’t about you, I keep telling myself. Nobody is going to be looking at you. But it doesn’t stop me from messing with my hair and putting on more lip gloss. For the hundredth time since I learned the words, I try to remember the difference between narcissism and solipsism. Can a narcissist be a mother? Can a solipsist?
Alicia lives about twenty minutes away, on a patchy street behind a gas station. The back of the gas station sign is visible from her driveway, making it feel like the set of a high school play with a sad plastic moon waiting to be wheeled backstage by black-clad, ill-adjusted teens. Mary greets me at the door, her face a mask of pained cheer. “Hello? Thank you for coming? It’s Agnes, right?”
“Yes, hi. Hello.”
“Go ahead if you would and fill out a nametag over there, just inside the kitchen?”
I step inside awkwardly, my dress and shoes feeling too tight. “Thanks so much for having me!” I say to her narrow back. She ushers me to the nametags and Sharpies, all pink for the occasion. I guess it makes sense that Mary would run this shower the way she does her unwed mothers meetings. I scrawl my name on a nametag and slap it on, determined to be a good guest.
A table in the front hall is piled high with gifts, big pink boxes adorned with pink curly bows—like a cartoon drawing of a baby’s hair—pink tissue poking out of pink shiny bags. Alicia, clad in pink, steps through a cluster of guests and hugs me breathlessly. Our bellies press together. It is the oddest sensation.
“Agnes, hi! Thank you for coming! You look great! Gosh I feel about twenty times huger than you!”
She does look bigger than the last I saw her. Her nametag reads MOMMY.
“You look great,” I say. “Um, I have no idea how I did this, but I somehow forgot your gift at home. I’m so sorry. I will get it to you.”
I see Mary frown for a nanosecond before flashing a big smile. “Not to worry? Right, Alicia? They don’t call it ‘pregnancy brain’ for nothing!”
The group of us moves into the living room. In the adjacent dining room is a table of refreshments, all of which are labeled with descriptions: CHAMOMILE PUNCH—SWEET AND SOOTHING, ASSORTED TEA SANDWICHES—SMALL BITES AID IN DIGESTION, CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES—CHOCOLATE IS A NATURAL OXIDANT, FRUIT—DON’T FORGET YOUR FIBER!
“Please help yourselves?” Mary cries out. “Then make yourselves comfortable, if you would, so the program can begin?”
I put a few things quickly on a plate, fill a plastic cup with punch, and sit down on a folding chair. I’m not at all hungry. I take a foamy sip and immediately regret it. The punch is sweet and vegetal and disgusting. Across the small room I recognize Gloria from the meeting at the mothers’ center. A baby is strapped to her in what looks like twelve yards of fabric—I can only see its tiny foot and a fluff of hair from where I’m sitting. I try not to stare, all the while desperately trying to figure out why I feel such shock. She was pregnant when last I saw her. Now the b
aby is here. What possibly could be more unsurprising? And yet.
Our eyes meet and we both smile. She looks as uncomfortable as I feel. I glance around the room, as if to appear busy, or content. There is a lot to look at: the heavy rose-colored drapes, the upright piano covered in crystal knickknacks, the china cabinet filled with tiny porcelain children, the mantel covered in photographs of Mary and Alicia, framed in gold. In none of the pictures do they appear together. The faux-Victorian ornateness reminds me not of some grand, royal drawing room but rather of a sad dollhouse.
“I’m Teeny. Aunt Teeny.” A hand appears near my lap. I shift a bit in my seat. A woman who looks to be in her seventies dressed in a riot of florals has sat down next to me, a plate of four cupcakes on her lap.
“See all those Hummels in there?” She gestures toward the china cabinet. “They’re mine. I never said Mary could have them. I’m not dead yet!”
“Oh,” I say. “Hi, I’m Agnes.”
“Agnes, that’s an old-fashioned name,” she says. She carefully unwraps a cupcake with two fingers that look like they belong on the hand of a much younger woman. “No ring, I see. So clearly you’re not an old-fashioned girl.” She winks at me as she takes an enormous bite of cupcake.
I have no idea what to say. “Ha,” I finally offer. “I guess not.”
“Just a joke, dear.” Teeny winks some more. “Never been too old-fashioned myself.” Her teeth and tongue are black with cupcake and grotesque chewing and sucking noises issue from her mouth. Briefly, she unlatches the top portion of her dentures, curls her mouth around them, and tongues them back into place, either to clean them or in a display of power or both: You think that’s gross, honey, watch this.
“I never liked these things,” she says, waving a hand across the room like a wand. “Though I’ll never turn down a chance to eat cake in the morning.” She starts in on the second cupcake.
I look around. Gloria’s face is turned down toward the baby and she is rocking very subtly in her chair. Mary stands by the food table, cleaning drips and rearranging serving tongs. Alicia sits in a cluster of four girls, her hands proudly on her belly. Her friends’ full attention is on her; they seem riveted by her talk of too-small underwear and waking up three times a night to pee and other such indignities, delivered airily, as though they are legitimate causes of envy, as though we are at a country club and she is waving around a brand-new engagement ring. Attitude is everything, I remember reading once, bold font on a poster in the high school guidance counselor’s office, above the image of a toddler boy wearing a grown man’s suit. What if I’d moved more jauntily through this pregnancy? What if I’d acted more proud of myself? Seems impossible, and far too late.
“So what are you having?” Teeny asks, dabbing at her mouth with a napkin.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I didn’t really want to find out.”
“Good.” Teeny nods approvingly. “Old-fashioned, but smart. Too much technology with these babies. How do we know it isn’t messing up their brains? I think kids used to be smarter. My kids, when they were kids, are smarter than my grandkids are now. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. My daughter wanted all the bells and whistles: sex tests, chromosome tests. All those X-rays. Her sons are dolts. Cute as hell, but definitely not bright.”
I smile politely. “I think sonograms are generally safe—”
“Honey, generally doesn’t cut it. Do you want to drive a car that’s generally safe? Condoms are generally safe, too, right?” She snorts a little as she glances sidelong at my belly.
“Well, I mean, everything has its risks, I guess—”
“That’s true,” she says, the gleeful sarcasm gone from her voice. “But you don’t go begging for risk just so you can pick a paint color for the nursery.” She unwraps cupcake number three. “Alicia’s always been a good girl, and pretty,” she says in a not-very-quiet whisper. “Mary did her best but she had this one coming. Very tightly wound.”
As if on queue, Mary appears at the front of the living room. “Hello? Before we start in on the gift opening, I’d like us all to play a neat little game. I will hand out some index cards and pencils. I’d like everyone to guess the date and time that Alicia’s baby girl will be born.” Her voice stretches toward cracking but somehow never does. “The due date we’ve been given is September twentieth, but obviously it could happen any time now, or after the twentieth, of course? It will be so fun to find out who comes the closest! Alicia?” Alicia smiles and puts a hand up nervously, as if she’s just been called on in class. “You’ll play, too, won’t you?”
“Uh, sure,” Alicia says. Everyone laughs for some reason.
I am handed an index card and a brand-new, sharpened pink pencil. Mary’s face as she hands them to me is exactly the same as it was the last time she handed me paper and a pencil. I feel suddenly depressed, thinking about her life as a series of groupthinks and ballots, a tapestry of index cards scrawled with other people’s handwriting, other people’s gently coerced answers to questions they never wanted to be asked.
Aunt Teeny nudges me with a bony elbow. “What do we win, if we win?” she calls out.
Mary clears her throat. “Oh? Haha? Satisfaction, I guess? No prizes—just for fun, remember? I will personally call the winner to let her know. How does that sound?”
“Sounds stupid,” Teeny mutters, before scribbling something illegible and folding her card in half, “but I guess everyone’s entitled to their idea of fun. Mary”—she speaks more loudly now—“you remember what Uncle Bill’s idea of a good time was, don’t you? Bill being my husband,” she addresses the room. “Excuse me, my dead husband. Thirty minutes on the toilet with a Q-tip in each ear. May he rest in peace.”
I write September 20, 12 noon on my card. Alicia is a rule-follower and the daughter of a rule-follower, so it seems at least as possible as not that this baby will carry on the tradition. Following Teeny’s lead, I fold my card in half and drop it into the cut crystal bowl on the coffee table.
The rest of the shower is devoted to the opening of gifts, box after box and bag after bag of pink outfits, three-packs of pacifiers, soft toys, bibs, blankets, and a horrifying-looking contraption that I learn is a breast pump. Recalling kids in high school joking about penis pumps, supposedly used to make a dick bigger, I learn from color graphics on the box that a breast pump does not have the same purpose. Rather, it extracts the milk from your breasts and sluices it into a baby bottle.
“This is perfect, exactly the one I wanted!” Alicia exclaims of the pump. “I’ll be able to build up a supply in the freezer, and Mom can feed her, too, right, Mom?” Mary seems scandalized. “We’ll see how it goes, dear? Remember there’s also formula, which can be a real gift to mothers? But thank you, Darla. What a generous present!”
Alicia passes each gift around, and almost every guest looks genuinely awed, stroking silk-lined fabric and fingering tiny buttons. I find myself looking more at their faces than at the items plunked unceremoniously in my lap by Aunt Teeny, who doesn’t even glance at them but instead tosses them toward me like she’s trying to beat a record in Hot Potato. Mary records each gift and its giver on a pink piece of paper using a pink pen.
After some milling around, I see Teeny over by the china cabinet with another cupcake in her hand. People begin their hugs and goodbyes. I thank Mary and turn to Alicia, who stands by the door with a look on her face of what can only be described as maternal bliss.
“I’ll drop off your gift very soon. Sorry again for forgetting. Thanks for—”
Before I can finish, Alicia is embracing me. “Agnes,” she whispers in my ear, “I really hope you get to feel what I’m feeling at this exact moment.”
Outside, walking to my car, I take big gulps of the hot, humid air. Aunt Teeny walks about ten steps ahead of me, surprisingly fast, and with a rolling, stuttering motion that reminds me of a beetle. I notice she is wearing nylons because of how they are bunched and sagged at her ankles. I notice, too—walking
faster now, as if to catch up to her, though I can think of no reason to do so—two porcelain figurines sticking out of her purse. A boy and girl Hummel, their heads tilted slightly toward one another like coconspirators. Abruptly, Teeny turns around.
“Well, we survived it, eh?”
I laugh a little. “Yeah,” I say, and then feel guilty, thinking about Alicia and her rapturous face. “It was nice, though.”
Teeny snorts a bona fide snort. We fall into step, walking slowly now toward a white Buick parked across the street. “It wasn’t nice. It was a crapshow. You don’t have to pretend with Aunt Teeny.”
“Well, I mean,” I say, still wanting to defend Alicia, her face, “it seemed to mean a lot to Alicia.”
Teeny shrugs. “You know what I think?” She turns toward me, gigantic sunglasses covering her eyes and most of her face. “I think you’re going to have an easier time of this.” She wags a finger toward my belly.
“Really?” I ask. “Why?” I don’t want her to leave.
“Because you’re expecting it to be bad. You’re expecting to fail.”
I don’t say anything. There’s nothing to say.
“Best-case scenario? You’ll be pleasantly surprised. And the worst-case scenario doesn’t matter, because you’re already there.”
“I guess that’s one way to think about it,” I say.
“No,” Teeny says. “It’s the only way to think about it. Poor Alicia doesn’t know what’s in store. All the froufrou outfits and milk vacuums in the world won’t help her. They’ll just make it worse. They’ll just remind her of when she was foolish enough to think they would help her. Let me tell you something, Agnes, in case you haven’t already started to figure it out.” Teeny steps closer, puts a hand on my shoulder. “Motherhood is when you find out exactly what kind of terrible person you are. Enjoy not knowing while you can.”
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