by Karen Karbo
Audra held the tie-dyed T-shirt on the palm of her hand. “This is for my grandbaby. Is it cute or bizarre? I can’t decide.” She peered at the stitching along the neck. “I seem to have to buy everything I lay eyes on. Was it like that for your mother with this one?”
“My mother’s idea of the perfect baby present was a three-year supply of baby wipes, which, of course, is the perfect baby present, but it’s not very romantic. Then, neither is having a baby, I guess.”
“But I should indulge the urge now, don’t you think? I don’t think Mary Rose appreciates my interest, but this child is my flesh and blood too, isn’t she? My attorney assures me there’s such a thing these days as grandparents’ rights.”
“Of course,” I said, moving to pat her forearm, forgetting I had no hand to pat it with. I wagged my elbow in her direction.
“I don’t imagine she’ll let me help much with the wedding, either. I know she lost her own mother when she was very young. So you’d think …”
“Absolutely …” I said. What wedding? Mary Rose and Ward? Only a week earlier he was lying to her about his ex-wife and hurling patio furniture over the deck railing, and now they were getting married? Of course. The laws of the physics of love dictate that for every unpleasant furniture-hurling argument there is an equal and opposite delirious sheet-twisting, headboard-thumping reconciliation. This one apparently included a marriage proposal as well.
“I think a baby needs two parents,” Audra continued. “I don’t go for all these women in their thirties just deciding to go ahead and have a baby on their own.”
“True. It’s much better to have an audience watch you do all the work,” I said.
Audra looked at me blankly, then laughed. “I forgot you were funny.”
She wound up buying the T-shirt in hot pink, turquoise, yellow, and multi. Tossed in a few board books for good measure. Also, a silver teething ring.
I left without buying anything, had suddenly lost my appetite for the organic gum-stabbing chips, knew it was a waste of money anyway. Stella had snatched a loofah from the bath display and I wrenched it from her grip. She looked shocked, opened her mouth in preparation of a scream.
Getting Stella into her car seat day in, day out was starting to make me feel as if I were part of some army special forces training program. I performed a moderate deep-knee bend—crickle crackle pop—unlocked the car door, ground down into a full deepknee bend in order to release the lever that allowed the front seat to flip forward with a thropp!, then raised myself up just until I felt my thighs quiver—tell me some Olympic alpine ski team could not benefit from this—at the same time bending forward into the backseat while resting my chin on the roof. Only when I felt as if I was in a position that would give Houdini déjà vu did I blindly drop the jitterbugging Stella into her car seat. Of course, I couldn’t see a thing, because Stella had pulled my hood down over my eyes.
It was raining. My feet were soaked. I got in the car, slammed the hem of my jacket in the door. Stella, I could tell from the ripe smell, had a project. I felt, suddenly, like a prisoner on a chain gang. Do they have chain gangs anymore? Or is it considered cruel and unusual punishment? They still have motherhood, and fifteen-pound near-toddlers with dirty diapers who need to be hauled around. No one’s seen fit to call that cruel and unusual, I noticed.
Stella had a cry that sounded like a cross between an opera star in deep mourning and an engine that wouldn’t start. Aaanh-aaanh-aaanh-aaanh-AAANH / Aaanh-aaanh-aaanh- aaanh-AAANH!
“Stella, stop it! Stop it! Shut up!” I covered my ears with my hands. Even then it seemed overdramatic, but there you go.
This wasn’t the worst of it, telling my precious, my dearest, to shut up for no good reason other than my feet were wet and I had lost my patience. I hated to admit it, but I agreed with Audra. How square is that? It does takes two people to raise a child. Actually, I agreed with Hillary Clinton even more. It takes a village, a village of grandmothers willing to use a Gold Card to buy a wardrobe of cheaply made baby T-shirts that the child would outgrow after wearing each of them exactly once. It took the village treasury.
I felt myself getting teary-eyed, told myself to knock it off, which only made me feel worse. While being with a child may make you young again, allowing you to experience the world through a child’s perceptions—have the burnished, catcher’s mittsized maple leaves of autumn ever seemed so splendid? When was singing ever so much fun? Yawning, belching, the swamp-like gurgles of the empty stomach: has anything ever been so hilarious?—raising a child makes you old old old. By old I mean responsible, and by responsible I mean stodgily concerned with money. Suddenly you need money for everything, none of which is Donna Karan or a day of beauty at a local spa. None of which is even, in my case, a decent pair of underpants, or a trip to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned.
You peer at the tender pink gums of your little one and try to read them as you would tea leaves: Is major orthodontia in your future? You watch him toddle across the living room, pitch a Beanie out of his crib, and find yourself wondering: Is there a God, in the form of a full-ride sports scholarship to some prestigious university?
These are the times that try women’s souls, especially the soul of the enlightened woman, the good, competent woman, who chose her mate because he picked up his socks, put down the seat, could cook a decent piece of fish and wash a wool sweater without shrinking it, laughed at her jokes, appreciated the fact she could do a swan dive and he couldn’t. Nice guys no longer finish last; they are snapped up by women who need a mate and not a meal ticket. Until there’s a baby, who does need a meal ticket, not to mention someone to feed her the meal, then wipe the rest of it off the wall.
I couldn’t follow the line of this reasoning much further than this. All I knew was that I suddenly had the feeling that Mary Rose had—how retro this sounds, but I can’t help it—landed a big fish. Ward was in love with her, wanted this baby, made six figures a year—
Suddenly, there was a knock on the window. I leapt, shrieked, which stopped Stella crying instantly. Audra’s face, dewy, recently facialed, peered in at us. She waggled her eyebrows and blinked her eyes madly at Stella. She had single carat diamond studs in her ears, I noticed. I rolled down the window, which always stuck halfway down. I peered out over the edge of the glass, like a freedom fighter peering out of the bunker.
“We should have lunch sometime.”
“We should?”
“Let me phone you next week. We need to catch up.”
“Those are lovely earrings, Audra,” I said.
“These?” Her hands flew to her earlobes, where she twirled the studs around as if she were adjusting the dials of a ham radio. She leaned closer. “They’re CZ,” she stage whispered. “Don’t tell Hank. He thinks he bought them for me for our fortieth. He did buy diamonds. Then I took them back and bought these instead.”
I didn’t ask why she didn’t want the diamonds, or what she did with the extra cash, but it brought to mind something that, I’m ashamed to say, made me feel much better. I remembered something about Ward, something I’d thought I should tell Mary Rose, then forgot about because it didn’t seem terribly important, something I heard Ward say that night they’d been arguing about Ward’s ex-wife out on the deck. It may have been nothing. It may have been Ward misspeaking. It may have been an honest mistake. Don’t imagine it was me mis-eavesdropping; no one hears better than a new mother. When Mary Rose asked Ward how long he had been married to Lynne, he said fifteen months. It had been closer to fifteen years. I said nothing then, didn’t want Mary Rose, who is so private, to know I’d been listening. I thought, Fifteen months, fifteen years, what’s the difference? Anyway, it’s none of my business.
Maybe Ward wasn’t the Catch-of-the-Day after all. This is the uncharitable thought that perked me right up and made me tell Audra I would love to have lunch with her.
A FEW DAYS later the Blazers played the Spurs, the game carried on network TV. Why a network broa
dcast was so important to the basketball fans of our city is unclear: Our team seemed to enjoy losing before a national audience and the sportscasters inevitably spent most of their time talking about our collective lack of self-esteem. Our feelings were always hurt. The local press would then rail for days about an East Coast bias, even though the Spurs were based in San Antonio.
Before I went to Mary Rose’s for the game, I consulted the back of Lyle’s head. He had washed his hair that morning and it smelled like mint. The basement was cold, mildewy. Itchy Sister slept on the futon in front of the space heater. Lyle refused to watch basketball, claimed his disinterest in professional sports made him less doltish than the average guy, said I should be grateful he wasn’t glued to the TV all weekend long. “You’re just glued to the computer.”
Tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap. He didn’t even hear the insult. I looked over his shoulder, white letters jerkily scrolling up the screen. “Rangor’s ethereal shield shimmers slightly in the setting sun.” Yeccch.
I bit my lips to keep myself from shrieking, “How can you take this stuff seriously?!” I was already five years older than Lyle, and didn’t want to sound like his mother.
“The thing is,” I said, “I keep feeling like I should say something to Mary Rose. It seems like no big deal, but Ward intentionally didn’t tell her about Lynne in the first place, then he tried to minimize the marriage by making it sound as if it was so disastrous it only lasted a little over a year. I know I would think twice before getting involved with someone like that. I mean, yes, I know, she’s already involved, in that she’s going to have his baby, but why compound the problem?”
“Sounds like you’ve already got it figured out.”
“No. I don’t. That’s why I’m asking you.”
“God damn rock trolls,” he said to the screen. “Let me just cast a spell here and I’ll be right with you.” Lyle stared into the screen, tap-tap-tap.
“Knock knock.”
Tap-tap-tap.
“Who’s there?
Stepfather.”
Tap-tap-tap.
“Stepfather who? One step father and I’ll let you have it.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked, irritated.
“Nothing,” I said.
When I finally got to Mary Rose’s apartment the first quarter was half over, Blazers up by three. The same principles governing international air travel apply to going anywhere with an infant: You’ve got to be ready to leave an hour before you actually take off. When I was in a state, I forgot this. Once, ten minutes late to somewhere, I found myself wandering from room to room with Stella perched on one hip, a pink disposable diaper in one hand, a light bulb in the other.
Mary Rose’s apartment was dark, though the Mowers and Rakers truck was parked in its usual place on the street beneath the branches of the ornamental plums. Maybe Mary Rose was napping. Maybe she had popped out to the store to pick up some snacks. This was not like Mary Rose. She was organized in a way that puts those of us who wander around carrying diapers and light bulbs to shame.
I was let in by Frick or Frack, one of Mary Rose’s downstairs neighbors across the staircase from Mrs. Wanamaker. I could hear the game blaring through Mrs. Wanamaker’s door, Mrs. Wanamaker clucking to Elmo, her dog, about the Blazers’ disinclination to take it to the hoop.
Frick and Frack were either Tom and Bob or Greg and Ted. Mary Rose, used to working with high school boys with exotic multisyllabic names, could never remember. They wrote for the local alternative newspaper. Mary Rose always knew when they were under deadline because she’d hear the buzz of their coffee grinder at four in the morning. They volunteered to pound in lawn signs for local political campaigns, held summer solstice parties, and seemed in all ways like good neighbors. Mary Rose said they were looking to move, however, so they didn’t wind up evicted when Mr. D’Addio finally unloaded the place. There was a rumor that someone had made an offer.
Mary Rose threw open her front door before I reached the top of the stairs. Her raspberry V-neck sweater was stretched out at the hem as if she’d squatted and pulled it over her knees. An old trick. How to turn an ordinary cotton sweater into maternity wear.
Mary Rose was just entering her fourth month but was already beginning to show. It is a myth that you never show until your sixth month. You “show” as early as six weeks. You show that a woman can look just like a filing cabinet.
Mary Rose held open her door, pale and silent. Normally, she oohed and cooed over Stella, calling her the Perfect Wonderment and admiring her lavender-and-white-striped all-cotton sleep sack. Instead, Mary Rose stroked Stella’s fat wrist. Stella sucked her thumb and stared back at her.
“What have I done, Stella?” her voice cracked.
In the living room, scattered over the low coffee table, illuminated by a tensor lamp Mary Rose had dragged in from her night table, were dozens of photocopied articles on pregnancy, compulsively annotated in purple ink in a sinewy hand, the corers ferociously stapled a half-dozen times.
They were from Audra, who’d collected them over the years. For future reference, apparently. Mary Rose had come home this afternoon to find the padded envelope propped against the wall beside her mail slot.
“How nice of her,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Mary Rose sat on the edge of the table, her long hands between her knees. She told me how this morning she and Fleabo, her right-hand mower, had gone to pick up some zoo doo. Our city is very proud of its zoo. Besides offering jazz concerts in the summer they also give away, by appointment only, magnificent loaves of elephant manure to anyone who’ll come and haul it away. Mary Rose swore by zoo doo. It was cheap, easy on the roots of roses and radishes alike, environmentally correct. She collected a truckload of it once in the spring and once in the fall. Because Mowers and Rakers had been unusually busy since September, she hadn’t yet gotten around to it.
Now, however, she was entering her fourth month of pregnancy. Now, her first thought when she opened her eyes in the morning was, When’s my nap? Day in, day out, she felt like a bumbling sleeping-pill swallower whose friends were forcing her to walk circles in her living room, slapping her cheeks and pouring black coffee down her throat. She raked with the wrong side of the rake, put the milk in the cupboard and the Cheerios in the fridge, mailed bills with no stamps.
Mary Rose had wanted to skip the zoo doo, but Fleabo, dedicated to saving the planet, insisted. Fleabo was Michael Fleabowski, a twenty-nine-year-old Zen Buddhist. She had stolen him from our city’s most popular nursery, where he had been in charge of shrubs. He was a familiar type in our city. An avid recycler, a student of yoga, Fleabo wore his lustrous bark-brown hair in a thick braid.
He was adamant about the zoo doo. If they didn’t fertilize now they would be forced to use some fast-acting chemical stuff in the spring. He promised to drive, shovel, and buy Mary Rose a smoothie when they were done.
Mel, the retired volunteer in charge of zoo doo, let them in the zoo service entrance at 7:00 a.m. The elephant biscuits were piled at the far end of the elephant pen. As you approached you could see them steaming in the cold morning air, mounds of olive-green hassocks studded with bits of straw. Interested in all matters digestive these days, I was naturally fascinated hearing about this.
Mel operated the bright yellow front-loader, scooping and dumping several hundred pounds of manure into the bed of Fleabo’s pick-up.
“I was standing next to the truck and just as Mel was about to let loose I saw my Swiss clippers, that really good pair I hadn’t been able to find for months? They were lying in the back of the truck. I didn’t think. I saw them and I reached for them and there I am, suddenly, up to my armpit in it. Do you think I’ll get toxoplasmosis?”
A disease that can cause blindness, fetal brain damage, and malformation of the head in unborn children. “Isn’t that from eating raw meat and cleaning the cat litter box?” I asked. “But if you can get it from tiny cat turds …”
“Zoo doo probably causes something worse. They just haven’t discovered it yet.”
“Do yourself a favor. Don’t read this stuff.”
“I already have. Twice. It’s important to know these things.” According to the articles, all culled from respectable newspapers and medical journals, Mary Rose had done nearly everything humanly possible outside mainlining powerful recreational drugs to ensure her He-bean would be deformed and brain damaged. Brain damaged and deformed, words no mother-to-be ever utters aloud but thinks about from morning till night.
Mary Rose had had two glasses of red wine before she knew she was pregnant.
She had been stuck in a number of traffic jams, which increased her exposure to carbon monoxide.
Ate on several occasions what she presumed, based on other articles she had read, was a high-protein, low-fat, highly nourishing meal of white fish, thereby exposing herself to pesticides and mercury.
Visited a mutual friend in his darkroom (photographic chemicals; general deformation).
Burned rubber on a few occasions in the Mowers and Rakers truck (cadmium from the tires; retards growth).
Snitched a squirt of someone’s spray deodorant from the medicine cabinet in the Barons’ bathroom on Thanksgiving (aerosol spray; miscarriage).
Got stuck a few times in the smoking section of a restaurant (self-explanatory).
Had a few smokes herself, before quitting once and for all.
Just the day before, feeling a cold coming on, she had taken a hot bath, which can cause fetal brain damage, and an aspirin, which can cause miscarriage. She had taken nose drops, which contract the blood vessels in the nose as well as the placenta, thereby reducing the flow of oxygen to the fetus.