Maternity Leave

by Trish Felice Cohen

  When we got to Jackie’s, Paul and I retired to the room that was my bedroom four years ago when Jackie and I were roommates. We lay on the dog-hair-covered futon and started making out. Paul seemed to be very involved and passionate even though five minutes or so had already passed and he had yet to put his hands anywhere but my face. I wanted to be into the prolonged romantic kissing, but it wasn’t doing it for me and I really wanted him to move things along.

  Ten minutes later, we were still making out like teenagers, minus the passion and dry humping. My mission to get laid and thereby feel normal was not going well. I didn’t know what to do. I had never had to initiate sex before. I was beginning to think I was dating a gay guy. I knocked my leg into his crotch for research. He was hard, but he recoiled away from my leg. I was truly puzzled. He was picking up checks and getting hard-ons, then stopping at first base. I was so bored that I abruptly called it a night.

  The next day, we drove back to Tampa. After dropping Paul off, I headed over to Sunday night dinner at my parents’ house. I was tired and didn’t feel like going, but they were watching Sonny and I had to pick him up. As I was getting out of my car, David jogged past their house in his nut-hugging jogging shorts. It was like seeing a teacher out of school and I was not happy, though I gave a very excited, “Hi David, I didn’t know you jog.”

  “I run every day at four a.m.”

  Technically, he was not even jogging let alone running. He was putzing around at a ten-minute-mile pace. Still, I decided only to react to the 4:00 a.m. bullshit. I looked at my watch. “It’s seven p.m.”

  “I mean during the week. I might have to choose a new exercise temporarily, I’m having neck surgery.”

  “Why? Are you okay?” Please be out of work a long time. Please be out of work a long time. Please be out of work a long time.

  “When I was a child, my mom dropped me and damaged my neck. I’ve been able to push through the pain my entire life.”

  Everything was starting to make sense. I decided to fuck with him. “Why are you getting the surgery now then? You can’t take the pain anymore?”

  “I’m a partner now, I can afford to take time off. You on the other hand, this pregnancy will really set you back. You’ll never make partner now.”

  I could not believe a lawyer could know so little about the law. I could sue him just for saying that. Too bad I wasn’t actually pregnant. I decided to switch gears. “Why don’t you try riding a bike? That’s low impact and shouldn’t hurt your neck.”

  “I can’t ride a bike, it hurts my balls.”

  I did not need to know that. I debated whether to engage and opted to do so. “You could get a more comfortable saddle and wear padded bike shorts.”

  “Nothing can help me. My balls are really sensitive, my wife will back me up on this.”

  I officially had way too much information about David’s nut sac. “Good to know. I’m late for dinner, I have to go.”

  But David replied, “So do your parents know yet?”

  “Know what?” I asked.

  “About the baby.”

  How the hell did I forget about that whopper? “Not yet. I’m only a month pregnant and I’d like to enjoy a few more months of peace before I tell them.”

  “Well, if you need someone, you know I’m always here.”

  “Thanks,” I said, pondering ways to confide in David and freak him out.

  I was barely in the door before my mom started quizzing me about Paul. I told her we went to Gainesville, rode bikes and had a good time, but there was no need to start designing her mother-of-the-bride gown.

  A few minutes later, John and Julie arrived. John is a funeral director and embalmer. In spite of their thirty-year age gap, John and my dad are clones. Both of them are workaholics who pride themselves on long hours and lack of sleep. Thank God I didn’t get that gene. To make matters worse, they both practice in areas in which I would rather drink acid than work: accounting and funeral directing. While they are both very fun and personable, you couldn’t help thinking about the inevitability of death and taxes whenever the two of them are together.

  Dinner was fairly uneventful. John started telling us about his work week. The highlights were picking up a dead bum who wasn’t found for three weeks and was decayed and covered in maggots; embalming an 800-pound woman whose arteries were so blocked that John had to run embalming fluid through her from six different points to get the fluid completely circulated, only to find out later that she was too big for her pre-ordered casket and had to be cremated; working on a kid whose forehead had to removed from a dashboard and re-formed prior to a viewing; and a guy with a Nazi tattoo that John got to cremate. Typical day at the office.

  * * *

  A week later, I went into David’s office after he returned from his surgery. He had been out for the week and it seemed like I had been on vacation for two. This meeting was going to suck. I would have to hear about his neck surgery, then give him a detailed update of every single one of my cases. When David was in the office, I often went for months without dissecting each case with him. But every time he missed a day of work he insisted on discussing each case ad nauseam.

  “How did the neck surgery go?” I asked, thankful he was wearing a neck brace which reminded me to offer sympathy.

  “Excellent. The doctor said he’s never seen anyone recover as well as me. It’s because I’m so fit. It was funny actually, one of the tests the doctor gave me to make sure the strength returned to my arms was that he asked me to push against his chest. So I did it, and accidentally shoved the doctor across the room. I couldn’t help it, I’m just so strong that he flew in the other direction when I touched him.”

  I involuntarily rolled my eyes and hoped David didn’t see it.

  He continued, saying, “I told the doctor he was lucky that I just underwent surgery because I was likely to kill him if he asked me to do that before I endured surgery. I told him I bench two hundred and twenty pounds and he couldn’t believe it. Can you?”

  “I have no frame of reference, I’m not a gym rat.”

  “It’s a lot. Sometimes I see your dad at the gym and he only benches one hundred and fifty. Then again, he’s not big like me.”

  I had no doubt that David actually checked out how much my dad benches, so I just gave the answer that every first grader gives and said, “My dad is bigger than you.”

  “No he’s not.”

  “Well I don’t know about chest and biceps measurements, but he’s taller than you.”

  “No he’s not, I’m six feet.”

  “He’s six-two.”

  “No he’s not.”

  I almost said, “Really, did you measure him while checking out how much he benches?” but refrained. I was not surprised that David had an irrational self-body image; just surprised I had never realized it. He’s forty-four years old and in average shape; not skinny or muscular, just medium. My dad is sixty-one years old, also average, but apparently he benches less than David. Still, my money would be on my dad if the two of them fought since he was from South Philly instead of South Tampa. I suddenly had the urge to set up a fight between my dad and my boss. Dad vs. Boss could be a new reality TV series.

  “So you agree, he’s not six-two?”

  “I haven’t measured him lately, but the mark on the wall when we were kids said six-two.”

  “I think he shrunk, he’s at least four inches shorter than me.”

  “You think he’s five-nine? There’s no way.” How did I get involved in this conversation? I was defending my dad’s height.

  “I’ll check it out next time I see him at the gym, but I don’t want to measure until I’m completely healed.”

  “You should measure now, that brace has to be making you look taller,” I said, smiling uncontrollably as I pictured David and my dad standing back to back for an official measurement.

  David thought about that for a second, then said, “Let’s go over your case list.”

  I nev
er thought I’d be so happy to talk about subrogation.

  After I left David’s office, I told my co-worker Kimberly about David’s insane height comparison to my father. She told me that when she was in his office hearing the story about his amazing strength and recovery from neck surgery, David had compared himself to Warren Sapp, once a multiple all-pro defensive tackle for the Bucs and retired for several years, but David wasn’t exactly up to date in the realm of sports. Apparently, “pound for pound” David was stronger than that “fat ass” Sapp. What the hell else had David’s mother done to him to make him so delusional? Dropping him as an infant could not have done all of the damage.

  Later in the day, I met my dad for lunch. His office is a few miles away from mine, so we meet once a week. Dad picked up sandwiches and salads and met me at my house to eat them. We sat on the back deck, which was started by Jason during his last summer vacation. Jason is big on starting projects, but not finishing them. He built me a deck that fit one chair on it, then quit. Fortunately, Danny finished the deck and accepted payment in the form of a steady supply of cold beer.

  The weather was a little hot, even in the shade, but it was nice to sit outside. Dad was finishing up a Tootsie Pop when I arrived.

  I said, “Let me guess, cherry.”

  Ten years ago, Tootsie Pops began to celebrate Valentine’s Day by selling bags of special Valentine’s Tootsie Pops, all of which were cherry flavored. This has drastically improved the quality of my father’s life. He calculates that there is an average of fourteen Tootsie Pops per bag. Ideally, he likes to have two per day. Therefore, he buys fifty-two bags of cherry Tootsie Pops every February and squirrels them away in the house, eating a bag a week. It is not uncommon to find him in the big corner office of his CPA firm eating cherry Tootsie Pops like a five-year-old while planning the financial future of large corporations.

  “It is cherry as a matter of fact. How are you, Jenna?”

  “Doing good. How tall are you?”

  “Six-two.”

  “David said you’re five-nine and that he benches eighty more pounds than you, I think you should beat him up.”

  “Excuse me?” Dad said.

  “You going to beat him up?” I asked.

  “I’ll probably let it slide.”

  I give my dad a lot of credit for developing my personality, which may or may not be a good thing. Obviously, there’s the genetics; but mostly he tormented me into having a sense of humor. Looking back, I can fully appreciate how much fun this must have been for my dad, but at the time I cried myself to sleep.

  As a kid, I did not understand that the wailing of the fire alarm did not necessarily mean there was an actual fire. My dad realized this when Mom baked grouper with the oven door ajar. As soon as the smoke alarm went off, I ran out of the house. After this discovery, the fire alarm game became dad’s favorite party trick. Whenever my parents had company, he showed off his little daughter’s intellect by lighting a match next to the fire alarm and laughing his ass off as I ran out of the house screaming. When I finally came back into the house, he said he had to fight the fire all by himself and didn’t appreciate me leaving the rest of the family to burn to death. The next time he did this, I tried to convince him to leave with me but he wouldn’t do it, he had to stay and protect the family. I thought about helping out, but ultimately, I ran out of the house leaving them to die a fiery death without me. The guilt kept me up nights.

  At my first grade birthday party, dad held my cake up to the fire alarm and all of my friends made fun of me when I ran out of the house screaming. My birthday parties were always a time for dad to humiliate me. In second grade I had a sleep-over party with fourteen friends. When we finally went to sleep, Dad played my mom’s Halloween audio cassette of wolves howling and “ghost” noises. Once we were all awake and scared shitless, he and John jumped out from behind the couch dressed up like ghosts, and screamed. My mom really appreciated all of the piss and shit stains on her carpet courtesy of my terrified friends.

  The third grade party wasn’t much better. Dad told me to sniff the flower on my cake. I had seen this trick before and wisely declined. In response, Dad told me I was a smart girl, then lifted the cake to my face and smashed it. It was an ice cream cake and gave me an externally induced ice cream headache which I found surprising, even as I began crying. I kept crying during the thirty-minute shower that I had to take during my birthday party in order to get the icing out of my hair. From fourth grade on I abstained from birthday parties in the presence of Michael Rosen.

  My pregnancy plan was surely an extension of my dad’s old pranks. Granted, his pranks were just jokes, whereas mine served my self-interest. I thought about telling Dad about the invented pregnancy. Even though he hated competitive cycling, he should understand my obsession with competition because I inherited it directly from him.

  He played competitive sports every spare minute of the day from the time he was born until he entered his mid-forties, at which time he still exercised religiously, but his competitive nature was forced to find other outlets. For instance, when Dad got contact lenses for the first time at the age of fifty, he spent an hour perfecting his technique, then asked me to time his performance. His latest competition is as a highly skilled omelet flipper. Each Sunday morning, after my dad’s bike ride, swim and trip to the gym, he makes omelets while my mom reads the paper. Dad lets her read in peace for a time, then calls her name frantically, at which time she must look up from her article and applaud the velocity and precision of “the flip.”

  If anyone would understand the urge to get the fuck out of an office and enjoy the outdoors six hours a day racing strangers all over the country, it was dear old dad. In the end, I decided not to tell him because there was a good chance that, in addition to understanding, he would become a raving lunatic and disown me.

  * * *

  By the end of November, Paul and I had been dating nearly a month. A record for me I had never even come close to approaching. I wasn’t sure what base we were on, but it wasn’t home. I wasn’t even remotely into him anymore, but I was determined to make it work because I hadn’t found anything wrong with him, and I really needed to date someone longer than a month and get laid, because that streak was extending beyond the two year mark. Accomplishing these two goals before my thirtieth birthday would go a long way toward helping me feel like a normal woman. If ugly people, psychopaths and even Sarah Smith, the wonder paralegal, could handle that, surely I could.

  On a Thursday night, I invited Paul over to cook for me. I wanted it to be romantic, but I don’t cook, so this seemed the best option. Paul brought ingredients to make his family’s recipe for Cincinnati Chili. I was prepared for the evening. I looked great, had clean bed sheets and plenty of empty peanut butter jars. In essence, empty peanut butter jars are my sex toys because my dog licks the peanut butter remnants while I have sex. Without them, or something equally yummy and time consuming, Sonny tends to howl and try to eat his way through my bedroom door, creating quite a ruckus. I had over two years worth of peanut butter jars that I stockpiled just in case I met someone. Unfortunately, they tended to serve less as a distraction for my dog and more as a reminder to me that I’d been celibate for an inordinately long stretch of time.

  Paul cooked his chili, which tasted remarkably similar to spaghetti with cinnamon. We ate on the deck and played fetch with Sonny, who became excited and started humping Paul. It was frustrating that my neutered dog was getting more action than me from Paul. Sonny never humps me when it’s just the two of us. But the second company comes over, Sonny gets really excited and starts humping anything in sight.

  Initially, I tried solving this problem by having my friends tell Sonny that they had a headache. When that didn’t work, I bought Sonny a girlfriend, a stuffed elephant that was slightly larger than him. Whenever Sonny started humping my friends’ legs, I substituted their leg with his elephant. Sonny is not a gentle lover. He grabs his elephant by the trunk, thrashes i
t around, then humps it. My friends found this hugely amusing and it has become such a famous party trick that the elephant has become extremely tattered and worn out. Now, whenever Sonny shakes the elephant, its stuffing falls out of the holes where Sonny ripped out its eyeballs, and I have to clean every time a guest leaves the house.

  Paul was familiar with Sonny’s humping problem from past experience. So, when the humping started, Paul walked into the house dragging Sonny on his leg, and got the elephant. We watched the animal porn for a while, then went into the house. Paul brought a movie over, put it into the DVD player, and sat on the couch. I sat down next to him and initiated a make-out session. We were both fully clothed and on top of each other when I finally called a time out and invited Paul into my bedroom. I littered the floor with peanut butter jars, and shut my bedroom door.

  Ten minutes later, we were still fully clothed. I was bored and absent-mindedly cracked my knuckles while he was kissing me. Then I said, “I have condoms.”

  He said, “That’s not it. You’re going to think this is weird, but I’m saving myself for marriage.”

  “Get the fuck outta here.” I said laughing. Paul wasn’t laughing, so I asked, “Seriously?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t know you were religious.”

  “I’m not, but I went to twelve years of Catholic school and I think it’s important to wait until marriage before having sex.”

  “That rule was invented when people got married at the age of twelve and lived until they were twenty-five. It’s inapplicable today.”

  “Sorry, I know it sounds weird, but it doesn’t mean we can’t still have fun.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you know.”

  “No, I don’t. I have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re a twenty-five-year-old virgin by choice. What is the other way you have fun?”