Motherhood Made a Man Out of Me

by Karen Karbo

  “Where is the Sensitive Photocopier Repairman anyway?” Audra made her blue eyes twinkle. I felt my jaw clench.

  The Sensitive Photocopier Repairman was Lyle. Or what I used to call Lyle behind his back, when my love for him felt as sturdy as one of the bottom members of a human pyramid. It was cute then, cute and teasingly half accurate. Drunken tiffs, flirtations bordering on infidelity, my backing his new truck into a phone pole, anything was a match for our love. We’d met just after Audra brought me the rights to the story that eventually became Romeo’s Dagger. My life was insane with possibility. My first feature and true love, all in the same month. That my new man was fastidious to the point of pathology mattered not. It was adorable. Then, as now, every morning he went to work in a bright white button-down broadcloth dress shirt and returned home after a day of messing around the insides of copiers with nary a smudge of toner or streak of grease anywhere on him. How the sensitive part got in there, I couldn’t remember. But I didn’t like Audra using it now; it wasn’t her joke to make.

  “Lyle had to host a plague,” I said. “He’s one of the gamemasters on an online computer game and tonight they’re having a plague. The idea was to keep people off the game over the holiday, so they thought if they had an epidemic, people would spend time with their families instead of subjecting their characters to festering pustules and dementia. But the gamemasters still have to work.”

  “Well, I hope he feels better,” said Audra.

  I cut a glance at Mary Rose, who looked uncharacteristically meek. I had never seen her in a dress; this one was burgundy rayon that had “special occasion” written all over it. She tucked her hair behind her ears with the tips of her fingers over and over. What she does when she’s ready to tackle a big problem, like pulling out a hedge. This was not like her. This was not like her at all.

  Somewhere around on the other side of the house, male voices could be heard, and a slapping sound, like someone beating out a wet carpet hung on the line.

  “That game!” said Audra. “A Baron tradition. Every year the kids drink too much of their father’s single malt and play basketball in the rain.”

  The kids were Little Hank, age forty-two, Ward, thirty-nine, and Dicky, thirty-three. My cousins. I think.

  If Mary Rose and I were other women, or still ourselves at a different time in our lives, we would have been out there with them: playing, pretending to play as a way of aligning ourselves with the good-times-having men (instead of the marshmallow yams-baking women), or standing under the eaves sipping imported beer. But I was happy to sit and hold Stella on my lap, and Mary Rose wanted to talk. We allowed Audra to park us in the study while she hustled back to the kitchen. The study was a grand, clammy room where the green marble fireplace gave off charm but no heat, and the heavy green velvet swag curtains hung like dried seaweed from their gold rods. The woodsy smell of the fire couldn’t compete with lonely odor of dampness. It didn’t seem as if anyone else was home. There was certainly no party.

  “Brooke,” spluttered Mary Rose. “I have something to tell you. Ward and I. We’re … ack! … I don’t want to jinx it.” She put her big hands to her face.

  “You’re what. Not … that?”

  “Not what?” said Mary Rose.

  “There’s only one what that’s that,” I said. I felt suddenly as if I was channeling Dr. Seuss.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “No!” I said.

  I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t wait to tell Lyle. Lyle once said Mary Rose was the last living valkyrie. I enthusiastically agreed, then went and looked up valkyrie in the dictionary. Mary Rose, with her own business, vacation time-share, financial portfolio. She even had a .25 Colt automatic slung in a tiny hammock behind her nightstand, which she’d learned to shoot for self-protection.

  Mary Rose was too level-headed to fall for Ward. But this is how it is, isn’t it? Simpering fools conquer men and nations, strong-headed women in seven-league boots, unused to being the love object, swoon and are lost.

  Then I heard about it all. How they met (she was transplanting some perennials; he was bored and trying to find someone to play croquet with him). How Ward liked to chase Mary Rose around the fringes of the Baron property, tackling her and biting the insides of her elbows, the backs of her knees. How Ward composed love poems about Mary Rose’s mastery of the sickly rhododendrons by the driveway that no one had ever coaxed into bloom.

  The fire flickered exhaustedly in the green marble fireplace. Stella fingered my car keys, lost interest and dropped them on my foot, waved her hands up at the window frames, and babbled aisle aisle aisle. I nursed her on the right side. I nursed her on the left side. She slept. I heard how Ward invited Mary Rose to the set to watch him direct a commercial for flavored seltzer—Ward was a director of high-profile commercials that garnered fancy prizes—then, during a break, locked them in the greenroom, where they made love on the linoleum. How he sent Mary Rose not flowers, but slim books whose sole purpose in life was to charm. How he looked her in the eyes when she spoke, instead of around the room or at the spot on the wall just behind her head. How he made her laugh.

  “What did the hurricane say to the palm tree? Hold on to your nuts, this is going to be one hell of a blow job.” Mary Rose slapped her thighs, wept with delight.

  Oh no.

  “In the poem about the rhododendron?” She knuckled the tears out of her eyes with no regard for the hyper-sensitive skin just beneath. She was in love. “He compared my way with shrubs with how I can mend an empty heart.”

  “Shouldn’t it be fill an empty heart? Or mend a broken heart?” I bounced Stella, even though she was mewing in a way that said, “Cut it out or I’ll shriek.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  I just looked at her. I wanted to say, Mary Rose, it will matter. It will!

  This wasn’t entirely true. It will matter, until you have a child, then it won’t matter again. Look at me. I have eyes for no one but Stella. I am moved to tears by the thought of Stella’s feet, those rosy toes as round as marbles, the soles of her feet like the faces of two little eyeless old men. One time I put her entire foot in my mouth, just to see what it was like. The foot tasted like Stella smelled: Downey, Desitin, and clean baby. I was planning for a day in the future when she would be an eye-rolling teen and accuse me of sticking my foot in my mouth and I would say, “No, but I stuck your foot in my mouth—when you were about six months old!” Dumb, dumb, dumb beyond belief. But it’s one of the wonders and powers of motherhood: It pleases me, so who cares?

  “It’s ready!” cried Audra, rushing from the kitchen with mincing steps, the kind meant to represent hurry. “Mary Rose, honey, I hope you can stomach my parsnip and clam stuffing. I’ve had some people complain that the parsnip is too rooty and the clam is too gooey, but I think they complement each other perfectly. Just like you and Ward.”

  I followed Mary Rose into the dining room. To the back of her head I said, “Rooty and Gooey sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.” Maybe I am not simply a terrible mother; I may also be a terrible friend.

  Mary Rose ignored me, sat where Audra told her to. The walls in the vast dining room and breakfast room were painted with gold leaf that had blistered and buckled in the dampness.

  Suddenly, hubbub! Or rather hubbub, Baron style. Little Hank, Ward, and Dicky rolled in, beating their sleeves to warm up, stamping their feet, as if they’d just come in from a dogsled race in a blizzard instead of basketball in the driveway. They behaved like an overzealous amateur theater group given the improvisation hectic! causing Audra to rush back into the kitchen to find a corkscrew. One was found. Much to-do about the wine, opening it and pouring it.

  “Where’s the GD corkscrew?” said Little Hank. “Dad, did you leave the GD corkscrew on the boat?” Little Hank, in a kelly-green polo shirt and madras slacks, always looked like he’d been beamed up straight from a fraternity kegger, circa 1964.

  I got the feeling Little Hank was trying to chang
e the subject, something they’d been talking about before being called in to dinner. Or maybe I was simply projecting, based on what I know about Dicky: Romeo’s Dagger was the high point of his life, The Big Game meets The One That Got Away, and was a topic he could flog to death. Dicky dropped into his chair. He was wearing a huge blue plaid flannel shirt, exercise pants with stripes up the side. Unlike the other Barons, who were of medium height and build, Dicky was tall and curiously wide. He had hips. Next to his brothers and parents, he looked as if he was gestated next to a nuclear power plant. Chernobyl Dicky, I thought, everything about him big and pink.

  “Nowadays a simple life crisis isn’t even good enough,” he was saying. He fiddled with the silverware, hit the prongs of the salad fork with one finger and sent it flying into the middle of the table. “You’ve also got to be training for the Olympics. Your life has to have a hook, is what I’m saying. The crisis itself isn’t even good enough anymore. Do you hear what I’m saying? Who was that little girl in Texas who got stuck in the well and had to have that guy with no collarbone rescue her? That story would never have been made today. Not even for TV.”

  “Have another drink, Dick,” said Ward, winking at Little Hank. Little Hank winked back too enthusiastically, grateful to be in on one of Ward’s jokes. I sighed. Other people’s family dynamics.

  Audra brought in a high chair from another room. I assumed it had belonged to her boys, even though it looked too new, with a special nontoxic glaze and padded with a seat cover trimmed with a yellow ruffle. Once Stella was tucked into the chair, she popped a crinkly red thumb into her mouth. When she was unsure of her surroundings she never cried, just became as uninteresting as possible. Maybe she would grow up to be a spy.

  Ward pretended to sit in the air right next to Mary Rose, then scooted her over with his hips so he could share the chair with her. “Not enough chairs, Ma. Guess I’ll have to share with Mary Rose.” He wrapped his arms around her arms, laid a photogenic cheekbone on her shoulder. Ward also has one of those forever-boyish forelocks around which decades-long Hollywood careers have been built. What is it about a man with good hair?

  Big Hank stood at the head of the table, methodically carving the turkey into disks with an electric carving knife. He hummed like a bored dentist. There was something with the turkey. It was white and shiny. All I could think of was a burn victim. Of course. Roasted without its skin. Audra’s devotion to low fat extended even to the calorie-fest of the year. Around the table, bowls were passed: steamed carrots, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, whole-wheat rolls as heavy as billiard balls.

  Only in sitcoms do women usually make quips and asides about the god-awful cooking of their hostess. Mostly, we smile and offer compliments; the worse the meal, the more effusive the compliments. I watched Mary Rose take a dry oval of charred bird and try to disguise it with two ladles of gravy, which turned out to be steamed and whipped rutabagas.

  “Yum! This is a real taste treat!” said Mary Rose. She put the fork in her mouth, then took it out with the food still on it. “Mrs. Baron, meant to tell you, before I leave tonight let me take in the calla lilies for you. It’s getting a little nippy out there.”

  “I’ll nippy you,” said Ward, walking his fingers up Mary Rose’s side in the direction of her breasts.

  “Ward.” Mary Rose squirmed, delirious as a fourteen-year-old on her first date.

  “Ward! Stop it some more, stop it some more,” said Ward in a girly falsetto.

  “For one thing,” continued Dicky, louder, “everyone wants murder. They prefer multiple murder. What was so good about Romeo’s Dagger—and it was good, Brooke, don’t ever forget what a fine job you did there, do you hear what I’m saying?—is that it had meaning. It was about love and courage. It was about more than how twisted people are. Although twisted is what sells. Twisted is money in the bank.”

  “Audra, please, call me Audra,” said Audra to Mary Rose. “I suspect you’re right about the calla lilies, and while we’re on the subject, I don’t think I’ve told you how much I love Paraiso Mexicano. It’s absolutely inspired. I’ve had enough azaleas and rhodies to last me a lifetime. I adore it, and as I recall, not everyone agreed with me.”

  “As I recall, Ma, no one agreed with you,” said Little Hank.

  “Mary Rose did. She’s the only truly creative landscaper in this entire city,” said Audra.

  Paraiso Mexicano was Audra’s name for the subtropical garden Mary Rose had planted behind the four-car garage. Other gardeners had told Audra what Mary Rose should have: “Mrs. Baron, you cannot, I repeat, cannot grow bougainvillea in this climate.”

  But where there was money—not to mention the beloved’s mother—there was always someone to say, “If you want the impossible, I’ll try to give it to you.” Mary Rose built a trellis for the Bougainvillea sanderiana against the south side of the garage, dropped some hibiscus and salmon-colored impatiens in the ground, and told Audra to keep her palms and calla lilies in pots, which could then be transferred to the sunroom in the winter.

  “It was all your idea, Audra.”

  “But you talked me out of the banana tree. That showed determination and vision. Not every landscaper has determination and vision.”

  “I was just following your lead,” said Mary Rose. She was anxious, I think, to be both agreeable while at the same time disavowing responsibility for the collection of exotic plants, some shipped from nurseries in Phoenix, that would no doubt be black and limp with rot come spring.

  “You’re not eating,” said Audra. “Have you been morning sick?”

  You know that silence.

  Suddenly, the weather, which no one had noticed for hours, seemed to be inside the room. The applause of rain against the Italian-tile roof. The candles sputtering in the heavy silver holders, victims of unseen drafts. Mary Rose slid a glance at Ward, who kept eating his carrots, sliding them between half open lips as if he was feeding a parking meter. She said nothing.

  I thought I didn’t hear this right. I busied myself trying to feed Stella mashed potatoes.

  “You’re right, Dick,” said Ward. “The fact-based movie is in decline. Romeo’s Dagger was great. What did that one review call it? ‘Shapely and ironic’?”

  “That’s what I want on my tombstone,” I said.

  “What was the last good true story you saw? Dad? What about you?”

  Big Hank looked at Ward over his glasses as if he were mad. “The last time I was in a theater they still had ushers.”

  “This is ridiculous,” said Audra. “I know you young people talk about everything. For God’s sake, look what they advertise on television these days. So let’s not stand on ceremony. Yes, Mary Rose, Ward told us the news. And we are thrilled, absolutely thrilled. This is ridiculous. I think we should be honest. I’m beyond thrilled. I thought I was never going to have any grandchildren. And since we’re being honest, I might as well say it. Two healthy kids like you and Ward. I’m not racist. You know that about me. But with all those poor African-American girls having a dozen children or more, why, we have to hold up our end, don’t we? Us poor old middle-class white people?”

  “Speaking of which, who is someone who’s never been mugged?”

  “Ward, quit trying to change the subject,” said Audra. “But there’s one thing. And I hope you hear me on this, Mary Rose. I know you’re kind of the earthy type, and will probably be into all that modern-day homeopathic nonsense, but please, please, I beg of you. I’ve heard of women saving their placentas—good God, how far we’ve come! Talking about placentas at the dinner table—”

  “You’re the only one talking about them,” Ward said into his Brussels sprouts. “And, yes, I would like to change the subject.”

  “You little devil,” said Little Hank, pitching a roll across the table.

  “Don’t interrupt—my point is that I do not, I repeat, do not, want you saving the placenta to fertilize the roses. I’ve heard of that happening. I will absolutely not have your placenta decom
posing, or whatever it does, under my “Billy Graham” or “Melodie Parfumee.” Mrs. Eldon’s daughter-in-law froze her placenta, then when it was time to use it to plant under a tree or something, it wouldn’t come out of the Tupperware—”

  “Mother! You’ve made your point!”

  “And she had to microwave it. Ward, I’m just trying to show you I’m modern, and that I support you.”

  “We understand, Mrs. Baron,” said Mary Rose, tucking her hair behind her ears.

  “Please, call me Audra!”

  Mary Rose looked at Ward, who was busily smearing whipped rutabaga on a pile of curling meat. He smiled a weak, closed-mouth smile, gave his shoulders a little shrug. “The answer is: a liberal. To the question, Who is someone who’s never been mugged?”

  Mary Rose cleared her throat. “I know you’re family and have every right to know, Audra, but we had originally planned on keeping it to ourselves. Until we’ve had time to adjust.”

  Audra giggled, clapped her hands together under her chin. This was easily the most amusing thing she’d heard in ages. “Mary Rose, you are so adorable. There’s no adjusting. Don’t you know that? I still look at these boys and say to myself, ‘I can’t believe you came out of me.’”

  2.

  FOR A WOMAN, THE TRUE ADVANTAGE OF MARRIAGE IS not having regular sex, but having an on-site partner with whom to debrief. In this day and age anyone can get laid; try finding someone who’ll listen to dish at midnight. Before Lyle discovered Realm of the Elf, he was just such a man.

  I was eager to get home after Thanksgiving dinner. Wait until Lyle heard about Ward Baron and The Last Living Valkyrie. Lyle does a great improvisational chromosomal analysis, wherein he imagines both the best baby and the worst baby two people could possibly produce. Of the offspring of a software mogul and a runway model he might say: What if the baby gets his height and her math skills! His lips and hips and her sense of the absurd! We entertained ourselves for hours with this when Stella was gestating, and haven’t laughed so hard since. Then she was born, and was completely herself, and made fools of us both.