“Oh, please. Last night your mother and I saw a woman wearing pink Juicy Couture sweats low enough to see the words DADDY’S LITTLE GIRL tattooed right above her butt. I complimented her on her costume and she almost punched me.”
“Dad, lower-back tattoos are pretty common these days.”
“Charliebear, the only man a girl will ever catch with that tattoo lives in a trailer park, has a beer gut and bad teeth, and wears a trucker cap with the word SKOAL emblazoned on the front.”
“Probably true,” I concede. “Though that’s not the worst thing a tattoo could say on the lower back. Drew dated a hula dancer with the word MAHALO tattooed right above the back of her hula skirt.”
“What does Mahalo mean?” Dad asks.
“It’s Hawaiian for Thank you.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Dad mutters. “Anyway, what does this e-mail you sent me yesterday mean?”
He reads to me from his computer:
All women think they can utter the following phrase: “If I had a dime for every sane member of my family, I’d have a dime.”
I cringe. “I’m sorry. That was just something I typed into my iPhone yesterday. I want to put it in my book of advice. I didn’t mean to send that to you. I meant to send you Jordan’s e-mail, so you can translate for me.”
“Don’t forward me the boy’s e-mail,” Dad nearly whines. “I thought you broke up with him.”
“I did, but—”
“What is it about women that when they break up, what they really mean is, ‘I want you to start acting like I want you to act.’ When a man says he wants to break up, do you know what he means?”
“That he never wants to see you again, unless it’s two in the morning, and he’s drunk and horny,” I answer authoritatively.
There’s a pause on the other end of the line. Then Dad deadpans, “Seriously, you talk to your father with that mouth?”
“Sorry,” I say. “It means he really wants to break up.”
“Exactly. And, in response to your first e-mail: What makes you think you’d have a dime?”
“I’d have a dime!” I answer defensively.
“Really?” Dad responds dubiously. “So, who in our family is sane?”
“Well . . . ,” I begin, stalling for time as I go through the members of my family.
Let’s see, there’s my mother, the fifty-five-year-old party girl who sleeps until noon, tends to date men half her age, still smokes pot every day, and makes her living as a writer.
And I’ve yet to meet a sane writer.
My dad, who’s living with her. That doesn’t exactly make him the poster boy for sane.
My sister Andrea (Andy), a recent newlywed whose wedding showed me that no woman should spend more than twelve hours preparing for a party that lasts a day.
Jamie . . . God no. I mean, he’s the sweetest little brother ever. But when he filled out his job application at Metro a few years ago, and the questionnaire asked him to list his flaws, he wrote a list of twelve things. Followed by the phrase, “See attached Pages 2–17.”
Then he attached pages two through seventeen.
“Jenn,” I finally say, referring to my cousin Jenn.
“A full-time surgeon who’s having a third kid? What kind of weirdo wants three kids?” my dad mutters back to me.
“You have three kids!”
“Hey, I never said you were getting a dime from me.”
True enough. I try to remember some more relatives. “Mawv,” I say confidently, referring to my great-grandmother, a ninety-five-year-old spitfire of a woman, and one of my favorite people in the world.
“Met her husband at a speakeasy at the age of sixteen,” Dad reminds me.
“People got married much younger then.”
“While she was dancing on a table.”
Oh.
I think about that. “That means she’s colorful, not insane,” I point out.
“You know perfectly well that when I insist we have to call our family members colorful, what we really mean is that they’re insane.”
Fair enough. “Okay, what about me then?” I ask, the idea suddenly popping into my head. “Don’t I get a dime for myself?”
“Need I remind you, you just tried to send your father an e-mail from your boyfriend-slash-ex-boyfriend so he can translate?”
“I’ll admit, this is not my sanest moment . . .”
“And, by the way, I think this Jordan is an idiot.”
What?? He can’t say that about my boyf . . . about my current . . . uh, sort of . . . my . . .
I scrunch my head to the left, wedging the phone between my shoulder and left ear, and quickly jot down into a notebook:
When lending support to a friend during a breakup, always follow the one-month rule: Don’t start trashing the ex until the breakup has taken for one month. Otherwise, if they get back together, you become the bad guy.
“Why would you say he’s an idiot?” I ask.
“Because if the boy had any sense, he would have married you immediately, before you had time to realize that you were too good for him.”
I sigh. “Thanks, Dad.”
“Seriously. You’re worth at least three goats. And a mule.”
Mom picks up on another extension. “Charlie, darling, is that you?”
“Good morning, Mother.”
“Darling, we’re so sorry we missed you at Robert Hazan’s party. We didn’t get there until after two.”
Oh God, I’m now so old my parents can crash my parties. “You went to Robert Hazan’s party?”
“Oh, it was a hoot! We went as a cheerleader and a football player. Your father’s legs were so cute in the skirt, and I haven’t worn shoulder pads since the eighties! Anyway, I wanted to give you my two cents on Jordan’s e-mail.”
“You think he’s an idiot,” I say, sighing and ready for a maternal lecture. “Or, alternately, you think I’m an idiot for breaking up with him.”
“No!” Mom says, verbally brushing me off. “I think he’s lovely. He’s clearly in love with you, and just wants what’s best for you while he’s away working.”
“Really?” I ask, my voice bursting with hope.
“Absolutely!” Mom assures me.
Finally—vindication! My face lights up. All is well with the world again.
“Now, have you thought about taking a lover while he’s out of the country?” Mom then asks.
And my face falls.
“That’s what I used to do when your father was out of town, and it worked wonders.”
It’s then that I begin smacking my head slowly into my hand over and over again.
“You know, I am still on the phone,” Dad points out to Mom.
“Oh please, like I don’t know about your mistress of twenty-five years,” Mom says offhandedly. “I only took lovers when you were out of town seeing her.”
“Touché,” Dad concedes.
“And, on that happy note,” I say, wondering what a stroke feels like, “I think I need to hang up now . . . .”
“Oh, what, you’re shocked I had a mistress?” Dad says, sounding a bit perplexed by my lack of open-mindedness.
“How could I be?” I say dryly. “She was my babysitter.”
“And a damn good one, too!” Mom says, in a tone of voice like she’s lifting a glass for a toast. “I don’t know how I would have made it through those first six weeks after having your brother without her. Ed, get off the phone. I need to talk to your daughter about the thing.”
“What thing?” Dad asks.
“You know, the thing . . .” Mom answers back.
No response from Dad.
“My news,” Mom clarifies.
“Oh, that,” Dad says. “Bear, be nice to your mother.”
He means me. “Uh . . . okay.”
“Love you.”
“Um . . . love you, too,” I say.
When Dad hangs up, I say to Mom, “Okay, Mom, what’s up?”
“I slept with
your father,” Mom begins.
I open my mouth a few times, trying to force words to come out, but it’s no use. My mother has managed to render me speechless.
I am shocked. Shocked and appalled.
Yes, I’m shocked that my parents slept together. And, no, not because I’m some weirdo who thinks her parents have only had sex three times (to conceive me, my sister Andy, and my brother Jamie). But because they’ve been divorced for . . . gosh, I’m not even sure how long. And my father has been married and separated since then, and my mother is sleeping with a thirty-year-old “yummy little snack cake of a thing” (her words, not mine). So the parents-sleeping-together thing—that is kind of news.
I mean, not big news—this is my family. They could announce I had a half-sister in Paris, and all I’d ask is, “Can she get me a discount at the fashion houses?”
I sit up in bed, and, out of habit, reach for my pack of Marlboro Lights again. “What? When?” I ask.
“After your sister’s wedding,” Mom says definitively, as though the sentence ends there.
I sigh heavily, while looking over at my nightstand to see that I have replaced my cigarettes with a fresh pack of nicotine gum. “Well, I guess that’s understandable,” I finally say. “I’m sure you guys were just emotional after—”
“And then the next day . . .”
“Mom . . .”
“And three times the day after that. Then last night, I guess I nailed a cheerleader . . .”
“All right, Mom. Stop!” I command. “That’s a visual I’m gonna need at least three drinks to get rid of . . . .”
“The point is, I needed a sperm donor . . . ,” Mom tells me.
What a lovely way to put it. “Mom—”
“And now I think I’m pregnant.”
“Mom, I—”
Whoa. Wait a fucking minute.
“What do you mean pregnant?” I ask, alarm permeating my voice.
“Pregnant. As in the nine-month period of time when a woman is carrying a child . . .”
My call waiting beeps.
“Can you hold on a sec?” I ask.
“But I—”
“Just hold on for one second. I have another call,” I say to Mom.
I click over. “Hello.”
“I just want you to know that I had nothing to do with this,” Dad insists.
“Dad, where are you?”
“I’m in the backyard, calling from my cell. It occurred to me that I should give you my side of the story.”
“Uh-huh,” I say, ripping open the new box of gum, and quickly popping a piece out of its foil, and into my mouth. “So, in what twisted world do you live in that you think sleeping with Mom is somehow ‘having nothing to do with it’?”
“Oh, not that,” Dad says dismissively. “I had sex with her. I take full responsibility for that. I just meant I have nothing to do with the pregnancy. Well, I mean, other than going to a sperm bank for her. But that was just a favor between old friends.”
I pull the phone away from my ear to stare at it.
After a few moments, I put the phone back to my ear, and sternly say to Dad, “Don’t even think about hanging up on me!” I click back to Mom. “Three words, Mom: What. The. Fuck.”
“I think I might be pregnant,” Mom repeats.
It’s nine in the morning in the Twilight Zone when our heroine must say to her mother with complete authority . . .
“Mom, you’re not pregnant.”
“How do you know?” Mom asks defensively.
“Uh . . . because you’re fifty-five years old?” I say, dragging out the sentence and phrasing it in the form of a question, so she knows my answer is obvious.
“My friend Susan’s grandmother had her mother when she was fifty-seven years old,” Mom tells me smugly.
Uh, yeah.
“Explain to me why it is that people now understand that back in the nineteen hundreds, a ‘premature baby’ who came out weighing nine pounds should have been called a ‘shotgun wedding baby,’ yet we still cling to the myth that a fifty-something woman could have a baby, rather than a ‘non–shotgun wedding’ grandbaby?”
“Helen Fielding had a baby at forty-eight. Geena Davis had twins at forty-eight.”
“And you think that happened naturally,” I say, crossing my arms despite the fact that she can’t see me, and giving her my best roll your eyes like a teenager voice.
“Don’t you take that tone with me, young lady,” Mom warns. “You shouldn’t upset a woman in my condition.”
What condition would that be? Mentally deranged?
“What do you think of the name Claire?” Mom asks.
Mom goes on to explain to me that she and her young boyfriend Chris have decided to have a baby, that she has been taking fertility drugs for months in preparation for this latest project, and that she went to the fertility clinic to be transferred with donor eggs yesterday. It turns out young Chris, all of thirty years old, had too low of a sperm count to conceive, so she asked my fifty-five-year-old dad to—and I’m quoting her verbatim—“help us out here.”
“Hold on,” I say to Mom. I click back to Dad. “And in what twisted world do you live in that you’re giving Mom sperm?”
“Please, she’s fifty-five years old,” Dad says. “It’s like giving apples to a dead horse. This isn’t going to take. Plus, I think Chris and her are breaking up.”
“What was your first clue?!” I blurt out. “That she’s cheating on him with you or that she wants another baby with you?”
“Sleeping with exes doesn’t count as cheating,” Dad says offhandedly. “Don’t be such a Puritan. Anyway, she talked about shopping at a sperm bank, and I didn’t want her wasting a lot of money and doing anything stupid.”
Yeah, we wouldn’t want her doing anything stupid, I think to myself.
“Dad, she took hormones,” I begin. “She isn’t using her own eggs . . .”
“Fifty-five,” he answers back. “Now get back to your mother. I’m due at the Four Seasons in half an hour for brunch. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” I tell him through an exhausted sigh, then click back to Mom. “Mom, I—”
“I’m sorry, dear, but I must go. I’m interviewing designers for the new nursery. I’ll call you later. Bye.”
“I love you, too,” I say, sighing. “Bye.”
I hang up the phone, and look over at my book of advice on the nightstand. I open the book, and jot down in blue pen:
You don’t get to choose the chimney the stork drops you down, so get over it.
I say this, even though right now I really wish I had been born to a couple of professors teaching at a college in Iowa who didn’t divorce to improve their sex life. Not sure why I choose Iowa. It just seems so normal.
My home phone rings again, and I check the caller ID. It’s my sister Andy.
This call I’m actually happy to take. I pick up immediately.
“Well, good morning, Mrs. Masters!” I say cheerfully. “So what’s your news?”
“I think I might be pregnant,” my sister Andy tells me quickly.
I don’t mean to, but I wince. “Have you talked to Mom?” I ask.
“No. You’re the first one I’ve told. Don’t tell Mom, or anyone else yet, because it’s not definite. Okay?”
“Not a problem,” I say quickly, relieved not to be put in the middle of a pregnancy war. “So, why do you think you might be pregnant?”
Andy sighs. “Well, my period’s late. And my breasts are hurting so much, I want to rip them off my body. Plus, I’m staring at my third pregnancy test, and there are two pink lines on it.”
“Mazel tov!” I scream, even though we’re not Jewish. “How far along do you think you are?”
“Oh, I’m gonna go with eight weeks,” Andy says, and I’m just starting to notice a distinct tension in her voice. “But before you start doing the math, I want to remind you that pregnancy really only lasts thirty-eight weeks, not forty weeks. The first
two weeks don’t count. The first two weeks of your cycle, you’re not pregnant. You’re having your period, and then you’re waiting to ovulate. Those weeks are only tacked on so women can be one day late, but still tell everyone they’re four weeks along. So, really, I’ve only been pregnant for six weeks, which is exactly how long I’ve been married.”
“Thank you for the biology lesson,” I say dryly. “And what exactly are you afraid of, that people are going to do the math and declare you a slut?”
“That’s what Grandma did with Mom,” Andy reminds me.
“Mom was five months pregnant when she got married,” I remind Andy. “Besides, the first baby always comes out late anyway, so the point is moot. Have you thought of names? I personally like the name Charlie if it’s a girl. . . .”
I hear Andy let out a tense breath.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Well . . . ,” Andy squeaks out, her voice catching a little.
“You planned this, right?”
“Not exactly. I mean, technically we were trying. But whoever heard of getting pregnant the first month you try?”
“Need I remind you, Mom and Dad got pregnant three times without trying at all.”
“Actually, I’m kind of freaked. Hunter went out last night and bought me this book about pregnancy. I know this doesn’t make any logical sense, but I keep trying to figure out a way to not have that big head go through this tiny space.”
“Women have been having babies for thousands and thousands of years,” I say reassuringly. “If labor were really awful, we’d all be only children.”
“What about all those women who have only had C-sections?” Andy counters. Before I can answer, Andy asks me in a slightly panicked voice, “Did you know there’s such a thing as age-appropriate nipples?”
I rack my brain. “I can’t say as I did.”
Andy continues, “After the labor book freaked me out, I decided to get online and start looking at cute baby stuff to buy. You know, to sort of get myself in the mood. Find things like cute cribs from Bellini. Cute sheets from Pottery Barn Kids. Fun stuff. But then I got this checklist from a registry at Target. And there were things on it like age-appropriate nipples. I mean, I have no idea how to even shop for those, much less how to use them. And then there are, like, fifty different types of infant car seats, and they all look like you need a PhD in physics to figure them out. . . .”
Misery Loves Cabernet Page 7