Maternity Leave

by Trish Felice Cohen

  Danny is six-three, which is above average among the general population but downright huge for a cyclist. He’s thin, but with muscular legs, which he shaves as all competitive cyclists do. His straight hair is brown, not gelled and usually in need of a trim, so the ends of it poke out of the holes in his helmet and blow in the wind. This, along with his height, makes him easy to locate in a pack of sixty to one hundred cyclists and I usually seek out his wheel for a safe, full draft. I pulled out of his race after completing two of the sixteen-mile loops because I had to drive home, shower, and grab my dog before going to my parents’ house for dinner. Between my race and Danny’s race, I had pedaled nearly ninety miles before heading home.

  * * *

  Sunday night is family dinner night at the Rosen residence. My parents, Michael and Geri, live in North Tampa in the house where I grew up. I live twenty minutes away in South Tampa, as do my older brother John and his wife Julie. The remainder of the family consists of my younger brother Jason, and John and Julie’s four dogs.

  The Sopranos-like family dinner night is part of my dad’s grand scheme to convert from Jewish to Italian. Unfortunately for him, he’s one of the few Jews who can’t pass for Italian, as he is very tall and Aryan-looking, even as his blond hair fades whiter and whiter. He lives his life by the Godfather mantra that the family is everything and you don’t go against it. As he ages, he’s started to take the Godfather thing a little far. I’m pretty sure he’s the only accountant who insists on facing all doors and windows in an Italian restaurant and having his children kiss his ring as a greeting. Still, I enjoy the Sunday night dinners whenever I’m in town and had missed the previous three weeks of dinners because of race conflicts.

  When I got there, dinner was ready but Jason wasn’t there yet. I grabbed a drink and sat in the kitchen to shoot the shit with my parents. They asked me what I did for the weekend and I told them two races, one of which I won. With that, my dad stormed out of the room. My mom, who at the moment preferred to be Switzerland, said nothing. I took my drink and went to my parents’ backyard to play with the dogs.

  Ever since my face-plant, my dad has become staunchly anti-cycling. He refuses to contribute in any way toward my “death-wish” of a hobby. My mom, who is still pissed that I lost the teeth that she and my dad paid a fortune to straighten, takes his side on the issue. In addition to giving me the silent treatment every time I mention the word “race,” my parents have started cutting out newspaper articles citing cycling deaths to convince me to give up the bike. I know cycling is dangerous, but the statistics are very inflated. The census has a loose definition of “cyclist.” It bothers me when my parents find a newspaper article that says that a “cyclist” was killed on Martin Luther King Boulevard at three in the morning. My definition of “cyclist” is very narrow and sure as shit does not include bums on forty dollar bikes at three in the morning without helmets or lights. If I were to keep a “cycling” death tally, it would also exclude people who think ten miles is far. At a minimum, a “cyclist” should own clipless pedals, spandex and detach the spoke protector from behind their cassette. A twelve-year-old riding a bike to his friend’s house is not a cyclist, but rather, a kid with a bike. Likewise, the following people are not cyclists: someone on a bike delivering a pizza, someone who rides because their driving privileges are revoked, or someone who watches television at the gym on a recumbent stationary bike.

  After giving my parents ten minutes to cool down, I walked back into the house just as Jason was walking in the door. Jason is a senior in high school, whereas John and I are twenty-nine and twenty-eight, respectively. John and I believe that the age gap is a strong indicator that Jason was an accident. As my mother was giving Jason a hard time for being late and ruining dinner, my dad walked in and started in on him. “For Christ’s sake Jason.”

  It’s safe to say my dad does not get Jason. John and I quickly took bets on whether he was going to start in on Jason’s baggy jeans and backwards baseball cap, or the fact that he reeked of cigarettes. I bet on the cigarettes and won.

  My parents, especially my dad, are very anti-cigarette. By comparison, even marijuana is somewhat acceptable. Every time my brother walks into a room, he reeks of smoke, no matter how much he tries to cover it up with mints and cologne. I only swing by my parents’ house a few times a month, but I’d memorized the ritual that was about to begin. First, my dad will accuse Jason of smoking and Jason will deny it. Jason’s defense is always unique: that he was in a car or house where someone, but not him, was smoking. After the arguing comes the test, which involves my dad smelling Jason’s left hand. Jason is notoriously anti-hygiene. He never washes his hands, brushes his teeth or wears deodorant. As a result, he never washes away the cigarette smell from his hands, which seems like the obvious solution to me. Another escape for Jason would be for him to smoke with his right hand, as my dad only smells his left hand. Jason has never tried either of these options. He is a smart kid, so I attribute this to the fact that he doesn’t give a shit. Every time my dad smells Jason’s left hand, it inevitably reeks of cigarettes. This causes my dad to become doubly pissed at Jason, for lying on top of smoking.

  This initial conversation typically lasts five minutes, with the argument spilling over into the first ten minutes or so of dinner. I took a seat to watch the show yet again.

  “Jason, did you smoke?” My dad asked.

  “No, I was in a room with smokers.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “I swear to God, Dad. I did not smoke.”

  “Left hand?” Dad said, holding out his arm to grab Jason’s left hand for a sniff.

  “Why don’t you trust me?”

  “Because you’re a liar. Now turn that goddamn hat around and get over here. Why the hell do you wear that hat backwards? When I was a kid, you didn’t wear your hat backwards unless you were a fucking baseball catcher. Your dungarees are eight sizes too big so be careful not to trip on your way over here.” Jason walked over to my dad and gave him his left hand. My dad sniffed it, looked up, smiled, and said, “PUSSY!”

  Dad, Jason and John started cracking up and patting Jason on the back. I threw up in my mouth a little, as Jason said with a smile, “Wanna smell my breath for smoke?” In addition to grossing me out, this shocked me. It’s not that I think Jason doesn’t like women, but simply that he has a rather limited palate so cunnilingus was surprising. Jason’s taste buds had stopped evolving when he turned three years old. His diet consists of cookies, peanut butter and jelly with the crusts cut off, and cheese pizza. He will literally not try any new foods, claiming that everything else is gross and of a bad consistency. So it surprised me to find Jason ventured out and actually tasted pussy.

  Jason’s pussy fingers really lightened the mood after the cycling and smoking snafus, and dinner became fun. That is, until Jason fucked up the mood by punching my dad in the arm and telling him to “stop crunching.” My dad looked stunned even though he should have known it was coming, as Jason wasn’t wearing his headphones.

  Jason has a very severe case of Attention Deficit Disorder. His ADD manifests itself in all the normal ways in that he watches a lot of television, gets easily bored with activities, and can’t sit still. When Jason arrives somewhere, the first thing he wants to know is how long he’s going to be stuck there. Yet, he can watch television like it’s his job and often sits in front of it for hours at a time, foregoing food and sleep. Though these ADD quirks are bound to interfere with Jason’s ability to find a job and wife, I’m quite entertained by them, save one aspect of ADD that is quite obnoxious for friends and family alike.

  Jason doesn’t like the sound of breathing, crunching, chewing gum, sucking a lollipop, a spoon hitting the bottom of a bowl, clocks ticking or any other repetitive noise. I know a lot of people who say, “Oh, I’m like that too,” but that’s just when they’re trying to concentrate. Jason’s condition is constant. I can always tell when Jason has been to my house when I’m not there be
cause he puts my clock in the refrigerator. Evidently, the refrigerator’s seal muffles the ticking. This was his solution after I told him I was sick of resetting my clock each time he stopped by my house and removed the batteries.

  I have learned a lot about ADD eating etiquette from Jason. For instance, the proper way to eat a chip, next to not eating one at all, is to put the entire chip in your mouth before biting down. This way, the initial crunch is muffled. Chewing gum or sucking a lollipop around an ADD person is also taboo, especially in close proximity, such as in a car. These rules are the Constitution of ADD. Amendments can be added and quite frequently are. When I was in high school, I had some friends over for dinner. Jason picked this occasion as the perfect time to inform me that I should blow my nose because he could tell by the squeaking of my breathing pattern that I had a dry booger in the back of my nostril. I took that embarrassment better than my dad did the punch now from Jason.

  “Are you fucking crazy, I’m eating a taco. It crunches,” my dad said.

  “Can I go get my headphones?”

  “No, it’s a family dinner, you can’t plug your ears.”

  “It hurts my ears,” Jason responded.

  And here we go again, another conversation I know by heart. I don’t know why my parents get so bent out of shape when I go to a race and miss a Sunday dinner—they’re all reruns.

  After dinner, my mom asked me if I’d met anyone lately. I debated telling her about Paul. On the one hand, it would make her happy. Since my graduation from college, my mother has longed for me to rush into the house to tell her that I’ve found a keeper. This anticipation has become more pronounced lately, as I near my thirties single and not dating while all of her friends’ children are married and having kids. With this in mind, I decided to tell my mom about Paul in spite of the fact that I barely knew him and that doing so would expose me to ninety questions I either didn’t know the answer to or didn’t want to answer.

  I said, “Maybe, we’ll see.”

  With that, my mom filled my wine glass to capacity and started in: What’s his name? What does he do? How old is he? What does he look like? How did you meet? Are you going to see him again? When are you going to see him again? Oh, he’s a cyclist, can you beat him? Where does he live? Where is he from? Do you think it could be serious? What were you wearing when you met him? How did you wear your hair? Tell me you had makeup on? You didn’t drink too much did you? You should invite him over next week.

  “Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” I said. “If he winds up being special I’ll invite him over and you can grill him.”

  My mom is a guidance counselor for seventh graders and it just occurred to me how much she must love the daily drama that transpires at a middle school. I wonder if she tries to get them drunk before digging into their innermost thoughts.

  Chapter Two

  The next morning at work, my morning procrastination ritual was extended because next season’s NRC schedule was released online. NRC stands for National Race Calendar and it is the United States’ professional schedule for the cycling season, which takes place annually between the months of February and September. While I have never participated in a professional race, I planned to hit next season’s race schedule with as much of a vengeance as my fifteen vacation days permitted. Over the past five years, the NRC schedule had been quite predictable because the same race promoters from the same cities put on the same races year after year. However, this morning, women’s racing got the boost of a lifetime.

  Tour de West

  The first ever all-women Grand Tour stage race will take place August 30 through September 23. The route will be from San Diego, California north to Seattle, Washington. The 24 day, 1,855 mile scenic race will zigzag up the west coast, hitting most big cities, as well as the wine country and the Redwood National Forest. There will be two rest days, a prologue and twenty-one stages, including two time trials and a near even distribution of flat stages and mountain stages. The Tour de West, which is being sponsored Lydia Jackson, a popular fashion designer, avid cyclist, and outspoken feminist, is likely to attract the interest of all of the big European and American women’s professional teams. Thirteen teams, with nine women to a team, will take to the start on August 30th.

  I sat stunned and then read the article again. By definition, grand tours are cycling races that last three weeks and are between 1,800 to 2,400 miles in length. While professional men have raced grand tours in Italy, France and Spain every year for over one hundred years, women’s tours of these same countries generally last one week, and never more than two weeks. The distances covered in the women’s version of the Tours of Italy, Spain and France, are always significantly less than the men’s races, in terms of both overall distance and distance per day. Further, just as women’s cycling has always lagged behind men’s cycling, American cycling has always lagged behind European cycling. The longest cycling race in America, for men or women, is two weeks. Most U.S. stage races last only four to eight days. American race promoters have never bothered creating a three-week stage race for men because they know such a race cannot compete with the prestige of the three European grand tours. The Tour de West would be huge for both American and women’s cycling. Figuring out a way to attend the inaugural Tour de West became my project for the day in lieu of both legal work and my other methods of procrastination.

  There were a number of obstacles to my entering the Tour de West. First, assuming I was even talented enough to turn pro, I would have to be discovered by a professional team. Only professional teams, not individuals, would be welcome to race the Tour de West. There were no scouts at the Florida women’s races where I competed on the weekends. As a result, I could only be discovered if I traveled to other professional women’s races on the NRC schedule and did well. I needed to find a way to attend the five- or six-stage races leading up to the Tour de West so that I could try to get some results and increase my visibility to professional teams.

  The second major challenge was my job, or more specifically, avoiding my job. My three weeks of vacation time for the entire work year began on July 1 of each year. Even if the firm allowed me to take my entire three-week break at one time, which was unheard of, I would only be able to attend the actual Tour de West. I couldn’t even squeeze in travel days to and from the Tour, let alone other races in the months leading up to the event. It was a catch-22. I could use my vacation time to try and qualify for the Tour, but that wouldn’t leave any vacation time to actually race the Tour. If I saved my vacation days for the Tour, I would not be able to qualify for it. Ideally, I would need time off from work in July, August and September, which was nine months from now.

  The only way to do this was to quit my job, which would solve the time problem but create a money problem. I didn’t have savings to support a week of racing let alone three months of racing. I could sell my house, but the market was in the shitter and I hear buying high and selling low is not the best financial move. Besides, I couldn’t even imagine the hassle of moving all of my stuff into storage for three months, then moving it to an apartment during the off-season.

  David walked by my office as I was pondering my dilemma.

  “Hi Jennifer. Can you come by my office? I have a conference call on the Zimmerman file. I know it’s not yours, but I need someone on it for about three months until Sandra comes back from maternity leave.”

  “Sure, be right there,” I said as the most obvious idea in the world dawned on me.

  I would pretend to be pregnant starting today, and in nine months I’d take a three month maternity leave. This would allow me to keep my job and salary, while I raced before and during the big event. Pregnancy is the ultimate perk if you can do it and avoid the inconvenience of gaining fifty pounds, stretching your vagina and raising a kid for eighteen years. I’d say I was a genius, except for the fact that I’d worked at my office for three years now and had not created three fake kids already. I walked toward David’s office and clicked my h
eels together for the first time in my life because it just seemed like the right thing to do under the circumstances. The heel clicking did nothing for me.

  I sat down in David’s office and he said, “Jennifer, before I place this phone call, are you familiar with this case?”

  “You mean the case you just assigned to me forty-five seconds ago?”

  “Yes, did you have a chance to go over it?”

  By virtue of the case arising in the subrogation department, I gathered that it was a subrogation case. Other than that, I was at a loss. “Yeah David, I’ve gone over it pretty thoroughly.”

  “Great, let’s call Ralph.”

  “Ralph?” I said hesitantly.

  “Yeah, Ralph Walker, the personal attorney of our client’s insured. What’s funny is that Ralph has been pursuing this case for over a year. But now that Ralph’s client’s insurance company completed its adjustment of the claim, it hired us to pursue payment. So now Ralph will be our co-counsel. I have to schmooze him so he’s not upset that we’re taking over.”

  David spent the first fifteen minutes of the conversation introducing himself and explaining why Ralph’s firm and our firm should join forces. Then, David really turned on the charm and said, “Of course, Johnson Smith Jones Greene Taylor should be lead counsel. You know, the reason the defendant hasn’t settled already is because he doesn’t respect your firm. Now that Johnson Smith Jones Greene Taylor is involved, the defendants will get scared and settle immediately.”

  I sat in my chair turning darker and darker shades of red as David continued to insult Ralph and beat his own chest. I stared at his familiar features, hating him. He is middle-age with a receding hairline and average in every way, including height, weight and appearance. However, his face irks me because he has skin tags of some sort all over his right eyelid and below his right eye. His thick glasses magnify the tiny bumps so that they’re the only things I can see on his face. I literally cannot avoid them and often sit in his office distracted, ignoring his babbling, wondering how many millions he has to earn before he pays a twenty-five dollar deductible to have them removed.