Mommies Who Drink

by Brett Paesel

  I have to think about that.

  “I’m a genius,” says Lana, putting down her tall glass of bourbon and something.

  We look at her.

  “We’re talking about geniuses with sperm,” says Michelle.

  “I thought we were moving on.”

  “To you being a genius?” Michelle asks.

  “To geniuses that we know. Katherine asked if Brett knew any geniuses. And she does. I’m a genius.”

  “Your IQ is over 150?” I ask.

  Lana’s brought up being a genius before. But I wonder what that actually means. Is it simply her own assessment? Or a solid IQ number?

  “Oh, sure, I’m like 160 or something,” says Lana. “It’s no big deal. I’m not saying it like ‘Hey, you guys, check me out. I’m a fucking genius.’ I’m saying it like ‘Your garden-variety geniuses are out there. We’re your neighbors, your teachers, your garbage collectors. More people are geniuses than you think.’”

  “So your point is,” I say, trying to get back on track, “that genius sperm is less rare than we think, and therefore shouldn’t have to cost so much?”

  “No,” says Lana, picking up her drink and smiling, “I’m just saying that I’m a genius.”

  Something in me rankles. I know that Lana is just playing around. But she’s hit something in me—probably intellectual insecurity. Something I rarely experience, except around her and a handful of other friends.

  I take a sip of wine. “I’m amazed at how often you can work your genius status into a conversation.”

  “When have I talked about it before?”

  “When we were talking about schools and you said you hated school as a kid because you were a genius and you were bored.”

  “Okay,” she says, her voice hard. “But the fact that I am a genius was particularly relevant to that conversation. Which I don’t remember having, by the way.”

  Yes, you do, I want to scream. You always say you don’t remember when it’s something you don’t want to cop to. I feel my neck tighten.

  Lana pulls up in her barstool.

  Michelle breaks in. “All right. All right. I don’t know how we got onto this. But can we get back to my sperm?”

  Lana and I glare at each other. My eyes sting.

  Glare.

  Then Lana switches. Just like that. Her face goes soft and she turns to Michelle.

  “Sure,” she says. “I think your best bet is the southern trucker dude.”

  “But he smoked for ten years . . .”

  I hear the conversation, my face flush with feeling.

  That’s the thing about Lana. She’ll take you everywhere—laughter, frustration, pride, anger, compassion, envy.

  And even though I’m still hot from the ride, I figure it’s better than going nowhere at all.

  Faking It

  I stand in front of a bulletin board at the preschool staring at handwritten signs that say “DON’T FORGET to dress your kid in red for Red Day” and “Parents—Please Please Please sign your last name too when signing your kid out—IT’S THE LAW.” Next to the cleanup schedule, I spot a new sign that says “IMPORTANT!! BY FRIDAY PLEASE BRING WASHED 1/2 gallon container of juice or milk.”

  My pulse quickens as I reread the sign about the half-gallon container. I don’t know what a half-gallon container of juice looks like and I’m too embarrassed to ask. I get juice, but I don’t look at the amount or at the kind of container it comes in. There’s the thin kind, the middle kind, and the big one. Obviously, I could just check out the labels at the grocery store. But I could still bring the wrong kind of container. The sign doesn’t specify what kind. And washed? How?

  The casual scrawl on the sign, the dashed-off crayon note, seems to indicate that, of course, we all know what we’re talking about here. “We”—the parents. “We”—who are familiar with children’s crafts.

  Jesus, I think, getting the information I need is going to take some finessing. I’m going to have to fake it again.

  Like all shy people, I am a relatively deft “faker.” Faking being worlds away from actual lying—something I’m not that good at. Faking is implication. It’s a subtle inference. It’s manipulation. Lying takes bravery. Lying takes cunning. I am neither brave nor cunning.

  Coming right out and admitting my ignorance is not an option. First, because it might require a longer conversation. But more profoundly, because I am a survivor of childhood ridicule for my naïveté.

  Kevin, a career stay-at-home dad, walks up to me as I stand in front of the bulletin board, considering my strategy.

  “Are you all right?” he asks.

  I rearrange my face.

  “Yes, yes,” I say.

  “You look sick,” he says.

  “It’s nothing.”

  I smile and decide to take this head-on.

  “So, Kevin,” I say, “did you see this sign about the juice container?”

  “Mmmm.”

  I cock my head in what I hope is a casual manner. “What kind of container are you going to bring?” I ask, pointing to the sign.

  Kevin shrugs. “I guess whichever one is empty first,” he says.

  “That’s what I was thinking,” I say. “Thing is, Kevin, there are no containers in my refrigerator right now. So I’m going to have to go out and buy one. And I’m just thinking about what to buy.”

  Is Kevin squinting because of the sun? I can’t tell.

  “Are you asking me what to buy?” he asks.

  “Of course not!” I say with what I hope sounds like a friendly scoff. “I’m just thinking out loud here. Should I get the carton container or the plastic one?”

  “It’s not going to work with the plastic one,” he says.

  Aha! It’s a carton. But what’s not going to work?

  I give a thoughtful look.

  “Hmmm. Yes. You have a point there. I guess I’ll get the carton, then.”

  Kevin looks at the ground, then turns to leave.

  I say a little louder, “Carton, yes. But what will I do with all that juice?”

  He turns back. “Drink it?”

  “That’s a lot of juice between now and Friday,” I say.

  “I suppose you could throw out whatever’s left,” he says. “Or keep it in a jar.”

  “But I’m wondering,” I go on, sure that this tack will reveal the answers without tipping my hand. “Let’s say I put the juice in a jar. Then, I’m thinking, do I destroy the integrity of the carton by ripping open the top to clean it? Or do I just pour water in the spout and swish it around? And I’m wondering about whether I should use liquid soap or something stronger.”

  “Stronger?”

  “Something like Lysol?” I say, flipping it off like it just popped into my head.

  Kevin’s face screws up.

  “Brett,” he says in a different, slower voice, “just rip open the top of the carton and rinse it out. They’re going to cut it in half anyway, to make Easter baskets.”

  Aha, I think, that’s what the cartons are for—Easter baskets.

  “See, there you are,” I say. “All along I was thinking that the cartons were going to be birdhouses.”

  “Friday’s the Easter egg hunt,” he says.

  “Right,” I say, waving my hand at him like, “Of course, of course.”

  I have to stop faking. It’s too stressful. Lately, I’ve been faking way over my head. As a fake mom-about-school, I’m not polished. But when it comes to my burgeoning writing career, my faking has been far more effective. I’m going to have to come clean soon, though. As I’m afraid that I’ll fake my way into a position of real authority, ordering around a staff of six people while having no clue about what I’m actually doing.

  Pat says that everyone is faking. He says that no one knows what they’re doing. But I find it difficult to believe that everyone is walking around in as high a state of ignorance as me. Someone must know what they’re doing, because things work. Things get done. The doctors who separated Siam
ese twins a year ago look like they had a good handle on things, since the twins now walk around independently like they never shared a rib cage. I’ve got to assume that the guy who designed the Eiffel Tower was pretty clued in, because I’ve seen it and, guess what, it’s still standing. Even my ant man knows what he’s doing. I know, because I no longer have ants. And I no longer need my ant man.

  I’ve gotten a couple of writing jobs lately. And so far, I haven’t had to actually produce anything. Which makes faking easier, but also makes my modest success all the more mystifying.

  A month before Murph was born, a man named Randy Foster introduced himself to me after seeing a show that I was in. The evening featured a bunch of authors reading true stories about their lives, and I had just read a piece I wrote about my miscarriage.

  Randy shook my hand vigorously and told me that he liked my writing. He was producing made-for-TV movies, he said. I told him that I thought I might want to write a made-for-TV movie.

  At this point I was looking to write anything that people might pay me for. With a second baby coming, Pat and I were more concerned about money than we had ever been.

  Later that week I met Randy for lunch. He talked so fast I thought he might be high. He jabbered about Movies of the Week, his big triumph being The Baby Jessica Story, which had been produced over a decade ago. He said he was proud as hell of how he had made the movie about all the people in the town, not just about the kid in the well.

  Because, he said, “Really, how much can you say about a toddler stuck in a well? That gets boring fast.”

  I nodded through the lunch and left with no deeper understanding of how to get paid for writing Movies of the Week.

  In the days that followed I became preoccupied with complaining about my pregnancy and I pretty much forgot about Randy. Until he called a month after Murph was born. The Movie of the Week business was slowing down for him, he said.

  “I was pretty sure I was going to get the rights to the Andrea Yates story,” he said. “The postpartum chick who drowned her kids? But her husband went with some Christian producer.”

  “Too bad,” I said, laying Murphy in his crib.

  “I had a great take on it too. I was gong to separate each scene with a slo-mo drowning of another kid.”

  “Mmmmm,” I said, closing the door softly.

  “The oldest kid, I guess, saw the whole thing.”

  “I heard,” I say.

  “Great fucking story. Everyone in town wanted it.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Not getting that story was a real blow. So I said to myself, ‘Go back to your roots, Randy. You’re an ad man.’”

  “Great.”

  “Right. So I’m sitting here at this company and I’ve got this whole campaign and I’m thinking, Who will make me look smart? And I remembered you. Have you ever written copy?”

  I wasn’t sure what copy was. Not really. I had a general idea that it was advertising content, but that was about it.

  “I’m familiar,” I said, a faker’s phrase that means nothing.

  “Great. Can you come in here in about an hour? I’ve got some stuff to throw at you.”

  “Ah. Well, my baby.”

  “Right. What’s your rate?”

  “Rate. Um, well. It depends on the job.”

  “How’s three hundred a day sound?”

  Like a slice of heaven, I think. Like Christmas in August. Like a merlot buzz without the hangover.

  “Well, we can start there,” I said.

  Pat, with the boys in the back of the car, dropped me off at a mirrored black high-rise. I walked up the wide stairs to the entrance, already spending all that money I was going to make.

  I found Randy in his glass box of an office.

  “Come on in,” he said, pointing to a yellow bucket chair that looked hard to get out of. “Have a seat.”

  I dropped my backpack on the floor and folded into the chair.

  “How’s the writing going?” he asked.

  “Um. Great,” I faked. I hadn’t written a word since Murphy’s birth.

  We swapped a few sentences about our kids, then fell silent while Randy looked at me like I was a piece of furniture he had yet to place.

  After a skip in time Randy jerked, swiveling around in his chair to pop a videocassette into a TV behind his desk.

  “So here’s how you can make me look brilliant,” he said, rewinding the cassette.

  I shifted as much as I could in the yellow bucket. The tops of my legs felt achy. I couldn’t imagine how I was going to make him look brilliant. But for three hundred dollars a day I was willing to try. I thought of the new rug that I planned on buying for the boys’ room. One that would cover up the apple juice stains on the wall-to-wall carpet.

  He paused the tape at the top and swiveled back to face me.

  “I’m working on this ad campaign for a show called The Insider. It’s a show that’s going to follow Entertainment Tonight.”

  He leaned forward.

  “After Entertainment Tonight does its half hour of celebrity news, The Insider will come on and give you the real scoop about the stars.”

  I was already confused. Didn’t Entertainment Tonight already give you the scoop about the stars? Were we going to get the first scoop and then an even deeper scoop right after it?

  “The idea,” said Randy, swiveling to grab his remote, “is that you—the viewer—are getting the inside information.”

  He aimed the remote and I turned my attention to the TV. Stamp-sized pictures of famous people popped up on the screen. A red line started to connect one stamp-sized picture to another and then another, while a voice said something like “The stars are all connected. Winona Ryder dated Johnny Depp, who dated Kate Moss, who dated . . .” After a minute of red lines running between the stars, the grid exploded under the voice shouting, “You’ve heard that there are six degrees of separation. Now there’s no degree of sep-o-ration.”

  When the ad ended and Randy turned off the TV, my ears buzzed.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  I had no idea of what to say.

  “Great,” I said, thinking of the pricey haircut I was going to get with the first check.

  “That’s what I think,” he said. “‘Now there’s no degree of separation’ was mine.”

  As he said this, I was grateful that I hadn’t asked what it meant, which had been my first impulse. Did it mean that there were no people between you and these stars? Surely, that made no sense. Everyone knows that the paparazzi, a publicist, and an entire culture of star fuckers stand between you and any particular star. I mean, unless you are Winona Ryder or sleep with Winona Ryder, how can you be no degrees away from her?

  Randy swiveled to pop the cassette out of the TV.

  I started to wonder just how I was going to make him look brilliant. Did he want me to write mini-bios on each star? Maybe he thought that I knew some of these stars personally. That I was a no-degrees person. This was Hollywood, after all. Maybe he thought there was no degree of separation between me and Brad Pitt. Maybe he thought that I could give him information that was more inside than the inside information he currently had. Shit. Why didn’t I know any famous people? I saw three hundred dollars a day turn to sand sifting through my fingers. I saw myself hacking away at my own hair in front of the bathroom mirror while the boys played on the stained, tattered carpet in their bedroom.

  “I call these grids of stars connectivities,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said. “Because of the connectedness of the stars.”

  What? I didn’t understand what I’d just said. Was “connectedness” a word?

  “See,” he said. “I knew you were the right person for the job.”

  What job?

  “Connectivities,” he said.

  “The grids?”

  “Just shoot me a couple of them a day,” he said.

  “I can do that,” I said, thinking of the window fan I’d buy for the living
room.

  For the next couple of weeks I bought tabloid magazines and drew grids over everything—napkins, books, paper towels. Discarded grids littered the house, making it look like I was engaged in some top-secret code-breaking enterprise for the government. I sent Randy my grids at the end of each day. As far as I could tell, it was work any assistant could do. Some of the ways I found to connect stars were ridiculously simple. After I turned in a grid of six stars connected only by the fact that they’d all been to the same Starbucks, I felt sure he’d fire my lame ass. But no. He kept telling me that I was making him look brilliant, and I kept billing him for three hundred dollars a day. Who was I to quibble? The boys had a new rug, the window fan was top-notch, and I looked fantastic.

  It did occur to me that Randy might also be a faker, delighted and terrified that some exec had gone for “no degree of sep-o-ration,” a phrase he’d scrawled on a damp beverage napkin after his sixth apple martini and half a quaalude, slipped to him by a drunk girl who wanted to write ad copy and had always thought that the phrase would fuckin’ sell a whole damn show.

  I never saw The Insider and I doubt that any of my grids ever made it on. Each time Randy went over them with me, he’d make his own adjustments. I didn’t mind. I didn’t feel remotely attached to my work, since I never really understood what I was doing. Were these grids for the actual show? Was Randy running these grids by other people, claiming them as his own? Were these practice grids?

  The checks came with the memo “For writing services.”

  But I hadn’t written a thing.

  Faking leads to more faking. I add to my writing résumé that I’ve written ad copy, because that’s what Randy says my grids are. A magazine accepts one of my stories and upon reviewing my résumé, an editor asks if I would like to do a celebrity interview.

  “Sure” I say, even though all I know about Natalie Maines is that she’s a Dixie Chick and that she said something about Bush and Texas that pissed off her fan base.

  The editor goes on to tell me that I’ll interview her while she’s being prepped for a photo shoot. He says that I’ll have to turn the interview around in five days. So I don’t have to bother writing anything. I can just transcribe my questions and Natalie’s answers.