“I agree,” Mia said and smiled in return. Such a good boy, she added to herself, that I’m going to do you a favor by avoiding him completely. “Have a nice night, Gerry.” She lifted her shopping bag onto one shoulder and headed into the bustling foot traffic of early dusk.
Fifteen minutes later she stood at her front door and listened. Charlotte Church drifted out to the hallway, which could only mean her mother had trespassed again. Mia sighed as she dug her keys out of her bag. First off, Charlotte Church gave her hives. She had specifically forbidden her mother from playing the girl’s music in her presence and had agreed, as a form of reciprocity, to keep her Dido collection to herself. Second and even more disturbing, Mia mused as she pushed open the door with her foot, was the fact that Babs was simply not grasping the concept of boundaries. She moves to my city, my apartment building, and still it’s not close enough for her. Mia fumed as she removed her shoes and coat. In her crazy relational framework, letting herself into my apartment is not only permissible but expected mother-daughter interaction. She made a mental note again to call Dr. Finkelstein for an appointment. It had been months since she’d been to Finkelstein Health but Babs’s immediate presence was cause for insta-regression.
“Mother!” Mia called. She sounded surly and not a day over seventeen in her tone of voice. “I’m home. In my apartment, in my building, looking forward to some solitude—”
Mia stopped at the threshold of her living room. She stared and then swallowed hard.
“Honey, I’m so sorry to have to let myself in again. I know how much that bothers you, even though I opened my own home to you for the first eighteen years of your life, no questions asked.” She lowered her voice to accommodate the foolishness of the situation. “Adam, you should know my daughter is very touchy when it comes to personal space.”
Adam stifled a grin and nodded gravely. “I understand. I can be a bit of a bear about it myself, Mrs. Rathbun. Must be something about the parent-child bond, the need to be close and yet to distance oneself and strike out on one’s own.”
Babs gasped and put one hand on her heart. “Why, what a beautiful way of putting that! Adam, you are very wise for such a young man.” Babs raised her eyebrows at Mia and bulged her eyes enough to suggest a thyroid issue.
“I studied psychology in college,” Adam said, shrugging. “I’ve forgotten a lot of it, but you’d be surprised how much I use that stuff even at a grocery store.” He grinned at Mia. “One never knows when his education might be called upon, especially near the rotisserie.”
Mia blushed for the second time that afternoon, both incidences sparked by the man before her. She felt herself getting annoyed at his smugness. “Hello, Adam. What prompted you to break and enter my apartment with my mother?” Mia let the bag on her shoulder slip to the floor and she sat down wearily on her couch.
“This boy,” Babs said, shaking her head in disbelief. “He’s the one who gave us those delicious fillets a few weeks ago, remember, Mia?” She didn’t wait for an acknowledgement from her daughter. “And now, he’s been such a dear as to bring by some lovely pork tenderloin, already marinated in his father’s famous sauce!” Babs beamed at Adam as if he’d just offered her the use of his yacht.
“I’m a vegetarian,” Mia said dryly. She recoiled inwardly at the harsh response to Adam’s kindness, but he seemed unbothered.
“Right. I also brought a meatless lasagna in case you were averse to the pork.” His eyes danced when he watched her face. “But I have heard pregnancy can bring out cravings one might not normally have, even for vegetarians.”
Mia stood abruptly. “Thanks for coming by, Adam. It was very thoughtful of you.” She looked at Babs, who was throwing eye daggers in Mia’s direction. “You two feel free to lock the door on your way out. I’m going to slip to the bathroom for a long, hot soak.” She stepped around the two of them and headed down the hall. With the bathroom door shut behind her and the tap turned on, she sat on the edge of the tub with her head in her hands and waited for water hot enough to wash away the tangle of knots in her gut.
17
Home Improvement
“You were rude. There’s no other way to say it.” Babs had pale green paint splattered through her short crop of blonde hair. “He is a sweet boy who brings you meat and you were nothing but nasty to him.”
Mia dipped her roller into the pan for a reload of Summer Sage. “I don’t see how this is a productive conversation. Adam is a very nice guy but I barely know him. I’m not looking for new friends, certainly not male ones, as they seem to be less than faithful in times of need.” She slapped on another set of Ws, working her roller across the middle of one wall.
“But that’s just it,” Babs said. She stood with one hip cocked, paint dripping from her brush into the pail she held in one hand. “He is being faithful. Much more faithful than others I can bring to mind.”
Mia closed her eyes and tried not to count the number of days it had been since Lars had called. “Well, I think Adam sees himself as some sort of savior, or a superhero trying to right the world for unwed mothers. I don’t need his pity.”
Babs huffed. She stepped up onto the ladder and continued cutting in near the ceiling. “You make it sound like he has designs on getting involved with pregnant women. Honestly, Mia. I raised you to have more confidence in human nature than that.”
They worked in silence for a few moments. The extra bedroom in Mia’s apartment was really a glorified closet. When Lars had lived there, he’d used the space for his office, whiling away impassioned and profanity-filled hours of writing, emerging only for refills on coffee or trips to the restroom. Mia planted both feet in front of the south wall and carefully covered the surface he’d painted a glaring white (it cleared the canvas of his mind, he’d insisted). She watched as the roller erased the blank walls and coated them with a soft green for the baby. Mr. Lamberti had helped remove Lars’s IKEA desk from the space and was happy to take it as a donation from Mia. Watching him lug the thing out into the hallway, she’d felt only the slightest tinge of missing her former lover. The desk had fit easily into the elevator and Mia had waved to Mr. Lamberti as the doors closed.
Now, though, as she finished the south wall and began to mask out the trim around the window, Mia’s heart sank to a deep cavern inside her. The phone call at Ebenezer had billowed oxygen all over the cinders of her feelings for Lars. She’d thought herself done, beyond, moving onward and upward from their relationship. But the sound of his voice, even when hearing words she didn’t like all that much, had pulled out of her all the years she’d spent with him, all the time he’d known her and that she’d been known by him. The knowing felt bigger and sturdier than any sensible dismissal of him. There, in his former haunt, she could easily picture Lars surfacing from a late-night deadline, his thick blond hair standing straight on the top of his head after hours of his hands making passages through it. It’s only a coat of paint, she reminded herself as the image of Lars at work in this room threatened to stop her project in its tracks, so palpable was the missing of him.
The baby moved as she lowered herself to the floor and Mia put one hand to her womb. As always the movement stopped and Mia smiled. She would have liked to let the baby know that she enjoyed the kicks and was simply saying hello when she placed a warm hand on her own belly. But each time she tried to communicate in this way, the baby stopped as if mystified that it was not alone, that someone or something was applying a heating pad to the spa he or she inhabited. Mia taped the underside of the window sill and ached for Lars to be there to put his hand on her belly, to look at her amazed as they shared the awe that should come with the promise of a child. She was starting to believe that these washes of regret were simply a part of her at that point, that try as she might to rid her mind and body of remembering Lars and watching for his return, she was stuck in a holding pattern. Pining for the disappearanc
e of all heartache wasn’t going to speed up its resolution one minute. Treading water might not be the most glamorous way to live, but it did allow one to keep breathing through treacherous tides.
She cleared her throat in an effort to erase her thoughts and start over. “Mother, what color did you paint the nursery before I was born?”
“Nursery?” Babs chortled. “If you mean the dinette area of our trailer with a foldaway kitchen table that made a space big enough for a portable crib, then I did what any caring trailer-park mom would do in the late seventies: I sewed orange- and yellow-flowered crib sheets and bought two matching pacifiers.” She laughed at the memory. “We were poorer than church mice at that point. Your father was working double shifts and going to school full-time and I’d gotten sucked into selling knockoff Tupperware.”
Mia stopped painting and watched her mother’s back as she painted. “I didn’t know you and Dad lived in a trailer.”
“Didn’t you?” Babs didn’t sound as surprised as the question implied. “Your father wasn’t too keen on bringing up that period of our marriage. He told me once he was ashamed to have brought children into the world with such humble circumstances. We did have some rough neighbors who made the park feel unsafe at times. Drinking, fighting, late-night arguing and such.” She shook her head and dipped her brush into the pail. “But it always made me sad your dad felt uncomfortable talking about it because I remember those years as a happy time. We ate more tuna-fish hotdish than I care to recall, but we did just fine. No money for movies or dining out or fancy trips, but there were later years for that kind of thing. There’s something sweet about having only each other for company and distraction.”
Mia sat beside the window. She sipped on a bottle of water and waited for her mom to continue. Afraid Babs would backtrack to her usual moratorium on meaningful communication, Mia spoke carefully. “It doesn’t sound like Dad to be so worried about money and superficial things.”
Babs smiled at her daughter and Mia caught her breath at the sudden sadness in her mother’s face. “No one knows what’s really going on in a marriage other than the two people living inside it.” As soon as the words escaped her, Babs’s face adjusted again to its normal levity. “But this isn’t a time to talk about things like that. Today we’re transforming this space into the bedroom for my first grandchild. And she’s going to love it.”
“Or he.” Mia rose slowly to her feet, using the windowsill as a help up. “Today I think it’s a boy.”
“Why’s that?”
“I have a zit on my eyelid, Mother. My eyelid. Only a boy who’s dumping copious amounts of testosterone into my blood could cause something so disastrous on the face of a woman.”
Babs hooted with such gusto, she snorted on the intake of breath. “It starts from the beginning, don’t you know? The stress those boys stir up in our lives and our poor bodies starts from the very stinking beginning.”
They laughed together then, and Mia felt the ache in her heart lift nearly to its prepartum weight.
He called that evening.
Mia and Babs were sitting on the floor of the nursery, letting a cool breeze drift in the open window and over their tired limbs and necks. They were laughing the loopy laughter of the overtired, reminiscing about Mia’s bad hair and fashion choices in junior high while sharing a deep dish from Lou’s—half Green Goddess, half Sausage Deluxe.
“No, no, wait,” Babs said, breathless with laughter. “I’ve got it—Dippity-do bangs with wings on either side of your cheeks. Cheeks, I might add, to which you had liberally applied streaks of Pepto-pink blusher.”
Mia was gasping. “Listen, before you get too self-congratulatory, I can bring out some ringers from your dark past.” She started to describe a pink and red polka-dot skort ensemble Babs preferred to wear with gold hoop earrings and a matching fabric headband.
“I still wear that!”
Mia groaned.
“I’m serious! Skorts make my legs look long.”
Mia was washing down the horror of the image with a gulp of chilled chai when her cell phone rang.
Babs reached behind her and retrieved the phone from under a mound of paint-splashed tarp. She tossed it to Mia.
Mia closed her eyes when she saw the caller ID. “Hi,” she said. Despite her efforts otherwise, she could hear a note of eagerness in her voice.
“Hey,” Lars said over an undercurrent of traffic noise. “What are you doing right now?”
“Sitting in your office, which morphed today into the beginnings of a baby room.” She let her head rest against the closet door and watched Babs start to pick up the debris from their project. Mia stifled a smile, knowing it was far too much to ask for Babs to leave the room and give her privacy for this conversation. Her mother would just as soon jump out onto the fire escape and serenade the moon.
“Cool,” he said. Then, clearing his throat, he asked, “Would it be all right if I came for a visit?”
Her heart jumped. “Of course,” she said, concentrating on not screaming into the phone. Babs glanced at her daughter but kept at her slow work of rolling up used masking tape. “When were you thinking?”
“Soon. Like this weekend.” His voice became muffled, directed toward someone else. “Sorry about that. I’m out with some friends and had to tell them I’d meet up with them when we were done talking.”
He has friends? she thought. Nearly three months had passed since Lars had left, so she probably shouldn’t have felt the betrayal that was seeping into her veins. But he had friends, friends to go out with, friends who would see him later, friends she’d never even met.
She took a deep breath and let it out silently. “So you’re coming this weekend?”
“If that works for you,” he said. A motorcycle roared by in the background. “I’m supposed to have a meeting with Bryan on Saturday but I thought maybe the trip could serve two purposes.” He paused. “That is, if you’re up to seeing me.”
“I’m up,” she said quickly. “I mean, you should prepare yourself. I look a bit different from the last time we saw each other.” She meant it to be a joke but Lars didn’t laugh.
“Right,” he said. “How far along are you now? Five months?”
“Starting my sixth.” She rubbed her belly. Babs, who had slipped in and out of the room, perhaps to appear less like an auditory voyeur, handed her a fresh glass of water and looked at Mia’s face anxiously.
“Six months? Already? Wow.” Lars sounded genuinely surprised. “Well, listen, I should run. But I’ll plan on getting there after you’re home from work Friday. Maybe we can catch dinner? I’ve been craving a pad thai from Earth and Water.”
“That sounds nice,” Mia said. She looked down and realized she’d needled a hole in her paint-splattered jeans to twice its size. “I’ll see you Friday,” she said and hung up.
“He’s coming?” Babs whispered, though there was no danger of being overheard by any government spies. “This weekend?”
“He is indeed,” Mia said and took the hands Babs offered her. They pulled her to her feet and she shrugged. “Maybe he’s finally getting it. Maybe he’s finally ready to face this whole thing with me.”
Babs smiled and pulled her daughter into a fierce hug. “I think you’re absolutely right. I think he’s showing some real initiative.” She patted Mia’s back as they stood in a moment of silence. Babs pulled away from their embrace and looked Mia in the eye. “He knows he can’t sleep here, right?”
Mia screwed up her face. “Why not?”
Babs nodded, eyes mournful. “Because that would be immoral. No ring on the finger, no enjoying the fruits of marriage, if you know what I’m saying.” She put up one hand to continue when Mia opened her mouth to protest. “I know, I know. You don’t need to say it. It’s clear,” and she swept a hand toward Mia’s belly, “that my daughter
has dabbled. You may see it as provincial, but I hope you’ll respect my opinion. I am still your mother, you know.” She lifted her chin in defiance to the world’s failings.
Mia shook her head in disbelief. “Mother, is this really a battle you want to fight now? I’m six months pregnant and he is the father of the child.”
“Exactamundo, young lady,” Babs said, exasperation filtering through. “If you’d listened to me and all those abstinence tapes I bought for you at that Christian conference, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. There would be no nursery to paint.” Babs stopped short at her words. “Not that I’m not thrilled to be a grandma. I’m just saying that while Lars is visiting, I’ll happily offer him my apartment and I’ll sleep on your couch.” She nodded quickly and bent to pick up the empty pizza box. “At least think about it.”
Mia watched her leave and stood with her mouth slightly open in the middle of the room. The depth of her weariness, both physical and emotional, kept her planted where she was.
Babs turned back with her hand on the light switch, “Are you coming, honey?” she said over a yawn.
Mia nodded, too tired to fight all of them or any of them at this hour. Babs padded down the hall and Mia could hear her struggling to fold the pizza box into the trash can, even though Mia had asked her mother on countless occasions to recycle the top lid. Moving slowly toward the door frame of the nursery, she gathered in the evening’s last look and flipped off the switch.
18
Solidarity
That Thursday, shortly after five, Mia stood on the steps leading to Urban Hope and jiggled the key up and down to make the lock catch. She was the last to leave the office, as Carl had a stamp collectors’ club meeting and their two part-time employees had both worked the morning shift. The key Carl had given her, tattooed with the markings of many years of abuse, had a history of foiling Mia’s attempts at employing its original function. She howled in exasperation and considered throwing them “accidentally” into one of the grates that flanked each side of the door. Snatching the key out of the hole and drawing back in a threat to toss, she heard a throat clear behind her.
Stretch Marks Page 14