Maternity Leave

by Trish Felice Cohen

  “Plus three years of law school and four years of experience,” I said.

  “I’m not giving you a hundred dollars.”

  “I know. You’re giving me one hundred and sixteen dollars and sixty-six cents.”

  “You’re out of your mind,” she spat at me.

  “Okay, tell you what,” I said. “Just introduce me to your director sportif.”

  “Why?” she said, calmer now.

  “Because I haven’t been cycling for the past twenty years like some people and I could use a little help making contacts.”

  “Win a few races, you’ll get to know people,” Brenda said. Her tone had reverted to pure bitchy.

  “Great, in the meantime give me the one hundred sixteen dollars and sixty-six cents,” I said.

  “Fine. I’ll introduce you. Follow me,” she said.

  “Can you build me up a bit? Sound enthusiastic? Pretend you don’t hate me?”

  “Hi, Erica. This is Jenna Rosen, a lawyer from Tampa.” Brenda stomped off after that grand introduction.

  Erica was about fifty and fit, but with the obvious sun damage of a lifelong cyclist. “Hi Erica,” I said, thrusting my hand out. “I’m actually a cyclist, as well. I came in eighth place on Stage Four of the Tour of Pennsylvania and I’ve had a few other top five finishes over the past few weeks.”

  “I saw that,” she replied with an Australian accent. “Nice to meet you, I’m Erica Murphy, team director,” she said as she held out her hand.

  “So, does Sunshine Cycling need any more racers from the Sunshine State?” I asked.

  “We’re still playing around with our roster until the Tour de West. Send me your race resume,” Erica replied.

  “Will do, but I’m relatively new to racing, so keep an eye out for me at the Tour of Vermont, too.”

  “Okay, I will,” she said. “Nice to meet you.”

  After Erica left, I walked back toward Brenda, who was filling her water bottle nearby. “Hey Brenda,” I called.

  Brenda walked back toward me. “What now?”

  “Don’t talk shit about me now. If I race well and don’t get the spot, I’ll take that hundred and sixteen bucks plus interest.”

  “You can’t do that,” she said without much confidence.

  “I’ll sue you for it. Breach of contract. I’ll spend every last dime of mine getting back your money, plus interest and punitive damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress. I’ll also sue you for slander because whatever you say to Erica probably won’t be true. I’ll get her on the stand, too. You’ll be out thousands.”

  “Don’t threaten me,” she said.

  “I’m not threatening you. My hope is that you talk me up and I get on Sunshine Cycling for the Tour de West. Then we can be teammates, who knows, maybe even friends,” I said, flashing my most charming grin.

  Brenda walked away again, but I could tell she believed me. I grinned. If I could turn a one hundred and sixteen dollar unpaid legal fee that we never agreed on and some run-of-the-mill shit-talking into a windfall, I’d already be rich and retired.

  As I was walking back to my car, a teammate of Brenda’s approached me. She was five-ten with long thick black hair that must have weighed a ton when she started sweating on the bike. I could tell by looking at her that she was a sprinter, as no climbers could be as tall and built like her. She’d overheard our conversation and said, “She’s been talking shit about you all week, so Erica already knows who you are.”

  I had noticed this teammate over the past few weeks, along with the rest of Sunshine Cycling, because I’d been trying to get “in” with them since the Tour of Pennsylvania. When we were face to face, I realized that I had seen her before, beating Brenda in several sprints over the past few weeks. That, plus the fact that she was confiding in me, led me to believe she and Brenda were not friends. “What did she say about me?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said, “I generally tune her out.”

  “Does Erica tune her out as well?”

  “Pretty much. I’m Alyssa, I’ll re-introduce you to Erica after tomorrow’s race if you want.”

  “Great, thanks.” Then I added, “I’m Jenna Rosen.”

  “Yeah, I know. Brenda seems to hate you as much as me, so I’ve been meaning to introduce myself to you.”

  “Why does she hate you?” I asked.

  “Because we’re both sprinters and I’m competition. Same reason she hates you I presume?”

  “No, she hates me because I killed her cat,” I replied.

  “What?” Alyssa said, horrified.

  “Just kidding,” I said. “You’re right. She hates me because I’m the first person to beat her in Florida in a decade.”

  Alyssa smiled and said, “Well don’t worry. I have your back if she starts talking shit to Erica.”

  “Great, see you in Vermont.” I said.

  * * *

  I hadn’t been to Vermont since I went with my family as a child. Vermont held a special place in my heart because it was the first time in my life that I really enjoyed nature. Until I reached the age of twelve, Rosen family vacations resembled the Bataan Death March. Each year my parents picked a destination where we would hike for two weeks straight then drive home.

  It makes me cringe to think of it now, but I vividly remember that my favorite part about the Smoky Mountains in 1988 was the three hours I spent in the eyesore that is Gatlinburg. Bill Bryson is one of my favorite authors specifically because he dedicated several pages of two separate books describing the extent to which Gatlinburg sucks. It’s clear that someone went out of their way to locate the most beautiful place in Tennessee, and then mowed it down to put up fluorescent lights and hock crap. However, for me at the age of nine, Gatlinburg was a diamond in the rough, especially after two weeks of hiking up and down mountains for no apparent reason. I was equally nonplussed as a youngster by the beauty of Colorado, California, Montana, Oregon and Canada.

  I don’t know what happened the year I went to Vermont. As with the other places we hiked in the past, Vermont was lush and green, with beautiful lakes, waterfalls and mountains. The only difference was that I finally “got” hiking. Instead of dragging my feet and asking “how much further” at four-minute intervals, I ran to the top of each mountain. Once there, I explored until I found the perfect spot to enjoy the view until the rest of the family caught up.

  Vermont hadn’t lost any of its beauty since my last trip. I stopped at several lookouts to admire the views as I drove to the race start. One of the lookouts had a historical sign reciting the history of the Native American tribes that had at one time fought each other to lay claim to the area around Mount Mansfield. I could only assume that all of these tribes were pleased that the white man settled the issue once and for all and provided them the opportunity to become civilized in Oklahoma.

  The landscape and weather in Vermont were made more beautiful by the fact that I kicked some ass there. Not that I won any stages, but I was consistently good in the mountains, placing third, fifth and fourth on the mountain stages. I completed a solid prologue and time trial, placing fifth and fourth, respectively.

  Even more impressive, I came in fourth in a fast, technical criterium, albeit through a stroke of luck. As always, I spent the entire criterium shotgunning off the back of the field. With fourteen minutes plus five laps to go, I got a flat. In a criterium, if a rider has a mechanical such as a flat tire or broken chain, they get a free lap as long as the mechanical occurs during the timed section of the race. Once the race goes to laps, you’re out of luck. After putting my spare wheel on the bike, I was released into the charging peloton as it swarmed towards the wheel pit. There was a sharp turn ten feet after the wheel pit and I knew the peloton would be entering the turn at approximately twenty-eight miles an hour. In anticipation, I accelerated as fast as I could to make sure that the peloton didn’t sweep past me before I could get into the draft.

  I entered the turn in ninth position. As
I rounded the turn, I feathered my brakes like a total pussy, then accelerated so that I didn’t lose the draft of the person in front of me. This took a superhuman effort because whoever was driving the pace into the wind was really drilling it. The lead cyclist pulled over and flicked her arm so the person behind her would know that it was her turn to take a strong pull into the wind. As the new leader began pulling, the woman who had just finished reentered the draft directly behind me. As an unknown rider wearing a generic white kit, I thought it was odd that this obviously seasoned professional chose to sit on my wheel. Because you can easily get gapped from the pack if the person in front of you gets gapped from the pack, riders are particular about whose wheel they choose to draft off of. I turned around to see who she was and noticed that I was the last wheel available. The other eighty-five women were about ten feet behind, well out of our draft.

  My incompetent cornering had caused the girl behind me to open a gap, which no one closed, resulting in a break in the field. I knew that if the main field caught us and it came down to a mass sprint, I would come in last as always. So, I put all my energy into driving the breakaway to succeed without caring that such efforts would cause my sprint to suffer. It was a nine woman breakaway, so I was guaranteed ninth place as long as the pack, still only ten feet behind, didn’t catch us. I wasn’t going to get greedy and try and save my energy for the win. We held off the main pack and, in the less intimidating sprint of only nine women, I placed fourth.

  In addition to a top five finish in every stage, I placed fourth overall in the Tour of Vermont stage race, a little under two minutes behind the winner.

  After the race, Erica approached me and offered to let me ride for Sunshine Cycling in the Tour of Colorado. The understanding was that if I didn’t blow it, I would be on the roster for the Tour de West. She gave me a Sunshine Cycling kit for the Tour of Colorado and told me to meet the team there next week. I had no idea whose place I would be taking and I didn’t really care.

  I was on cloud nine.

  After the race, I checked back at the race hotel one final time to see if my package from North Carolina had arrived. After five no-show days, I wasn’t really expecting to see it. But it was there and I ripped it open hurriedly. A box full of jump ropes, sidewalk chalk, bubbles and little bouncy balls. What the fuck? As I walked towards the car, I called my mom.

  She answered the phone, “Hi, Jenna, I was just about to call you. Where are you?”

  “My package finally came. What is all that shit?” I asked.

  “It’s for the kids you volunteer with.”

  Wow. She really is just an adorably nice lady. “Thanks Mom, they’ll love it.”

  “Where are you?” Mom asked again.

  “At the hotel.”

  “Where?”

  “The lobby,” I said as I threw her package of kids’ toys into the backseat of my car and started driving in the general direction of Colorado.

  “I didn’t want to ruin the surprise, but we’re here too,” she said.

  “Here where?” I asked nervously.

  “At your hotel. We asked for your room at the front desk, but they said you weren’t a guest. We tried looking it up under the name of your firm, but that didn’t work either. So, we went for a hike and came back. We’re right by the desk. I can’t believe we don’t see you. The lobby is so small.”

  I moved from cloud nine to a lower cloud. “I’m actually at a different hotel,” I said.

  “Then how did you just get the package?” Mom asked.

  “Well,” I said, “it’s a long story, but I’m out of town for a few days.”

  “What? Where? Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “I was going to tell you,” I said as I pulled over to the side of the road and banged my head against the steering wheel.

  “What’s that noise?” asked Mom.

  “My head exploding. Can I call you right back?” I hung up without waiting for her reply and shouted “Fuck!” at the top of my lungs. It didn’t help. I pulled back onto the road and decided to brainstorm while driving. Within seconds, my phone started ringing. It was Mom again.

  “Jenna, what happened?”

  “Not sure, we must have been disconnected.” I said.

  “So, where are you?”

  “Taking a deposition,” I replied.

  “On a Sunday?” Mom asked.

  Shit. Without work I’d lost all concept of time. Every day is Saturday. “I’m taking the depositions this week, I just had to drive out here today.”

  “Where is here?”

  God, I need this interrogation to end. “I am…” Where should I be? Where should I be? Somewhere they won’t want to visit. “I am…”

  “Jenna, use your words. Where are you?”

  “Arkansas.”

  “Where in Arkansas?”

  I knew the name of exactly one city in Arkansas. “Little Rock,” I said. “It’s for one of my cases in Tampa.”

  “Well, we’ll be here until the middle of next week, so at least we’ll still get to see you for a little while.”

  “You’ll still be there next week?” I said in disbelief. “Great, can’t wait to see you. Let me call you back in just a bit.”

  I hung up and called Danny.

  “Hey, Jenna. How did the last stage go?” he asked.

  I had spoken to Danny after most of the stages of the Vermont race, so he knew I’d been doing well. “Fourth in today’s crit and fourth overall,” I said. “Plus, I get to ride with Sunshine Cycling in Colorado and, if I do well, I’m on the team for the Tour de West as well. In other news, the shit hit the fan.” I spent the next few minutes updating him on my parents’ arrival.

  “Well I have more bad news for you,” said Danny. “I got your mail today and you’re getting letters from Tampa General Hospital. You have an ambulance bill.”

  “Well I was really hit by a car. It should be paid by my insurance company and they can get their money back from the insurance company of the douche bag that hit me. Forward the bill to me and I’ll take care of it,” I said.

  “Sure. What are you going to do about your parents?”

  “I don’t know. I’m thinking of just telling them the truth. What’s done is done. They’ll be pissed, but in an effort to avoid getting me arrested, they’ll be forced to cover for me. It will save me from inventing stories about Arkansas all of next week and from inventing stories about North Carolina for the next two months. Plus, it will help me in case they run into David.”

  “Damn,” Danny said, “can you conference me in on that call?”

  “No, but I’ll fill you in. I think I’ll call them now and get it over with during drive time.”

  I dialed my mom and when she answered I gave her the news quickly, like tearing off a Band-Aid. “I’m in Vermont. I just finished a cycling race.”

  “But, you have work in Arkansas tomorrow,” Mom said. “How are you going to get there from Vermont?”

  “Mom, I have some news for you. I’m not working in North Carolina or Arkansas. I’m racing my bike.”

  “Did you quit your job?” Mom asked, confused.

  “Not exactly,” I said.

  “Leave of absence?” she offered as her next guess. Worry was now palpable in her voice.

  “You can do that?” I replied, thinking that probably would have been easier.

  “Yes,” she said, “it’s just not paid.”

  “Well, it’s not a leave of absence. I’m actually on maternity leave.”

  “Jenna, you’re not making sense. I’m going to put you on speaker phone. Dad’s driving me crazy trying to hear what’s going on.”

  “Please don’t put Dad on,” I pleaded. “You can tell him later.”

  “Why don’t you want me on the phone?” Dad asked.

  “Wow, you heard that?”

  “Yes. I finally got hearing aids. That’s part of the surprise. What were you just telling Mom?”

  “Nothing. Just that I’m in Verm
ont and driving to Colorado. I faked a pregnancy so I could get maternity leave and race my bike.”

  On the other end of the line there was dead quiet.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “We’re here,” Dad said. “In North Carolina to visit you that is. How long have you been lying to us?”

  “Well, including the actual gestation period, almost a year, but mostly just over the past month and a half.”

  “Have you been volunteering?” Mom asked.

  “Christ, Geri, who gives a shit,” Dad said, almost shouting now. “She’s going to get fired, disbarred and possibly arrested. Not to mention killed on that goddamn bike if she’s not kidnapped and raped before then, traveling by herself all over the country. Where are you staying, Jenna?”

  “Campgrounds,” I said sheepishly.

  He exploded. “A woman, by herself, sleeping in a canvas tent with a zipper? I’m nervous when you’re in your house in South Tampa with the alarm system. Are you out of your mind?”

  “Just calm down there, Mr. Positive. I’m not going to get fired, disbarred, arrested, maimed, raped or killed. I’m going to race in Colorado and at the Tour de West, then go back to work.”

  The “you’ll get raped and killed” argument had worked on me every time as a kid. I was terrified to go outside of my house alone well into my second year of college, when my goyum friends finally convinced me that sometimes, when you go outside by yourself, you don’t die. My parents first used the “you’ll get raped at gunpoint” scare tactic when I started running track in sixth grade. I went outside to run alone through our deed-restricted neighborhood and my parents freaked out and made John run alongside me. John was not into running five miles a day, so after one run, he rode a bike instead.

  As it turned out, biking five miles a day wasn’t for John either, so he started driving. Through all of the years of this routine, I was never approached by rapists, though I was always on the lookout. My parents told me to be especially afraid of roofers, construction workers and landscapers, but people in general were suspect. To my parents, an old woman gardening in her yard could be a rapist in disguise, waiting to pounce. Thus warned, I grew up sprinting past neighbors and blue-collar workers as fast as I could, just in case my bodyguard wasn’t paying attention.