Mommies Who Drink

by Brett Paesel

  The parents settle to a reluctant hush.

  “It is true,” says Marie, “that the kids squeeze their own juice on Wednesdays, if and only if their parents have remembered to send oranges with their kid that day. I can’t tell you how many parents forget. Then the kids without oranges have to watch all the other kids squeeze. Parent participation at Neighborhood School is vital. This is not a school that you pack your kid off to and forget about till they fall in the door that afternoon.”

  I stare at my notes. See, Marie has just described the school I’m looking for. The one where you drop your kid off and assume that he’s got a pretty groovy teacher who’s going to teach him the basics in a way that’s fun and engaging. I can see myself going on a few field trips and attending PTA meetings. But that’s about it. I certainly don’t want my kid being penalized because I forgot the oranges. I am the sort of parent who forgets oranges.

  Marie goes on. “The twins did make quilts this year out of family photos. That’s true. We have two of them hanging in our entryway.”

  “I want one of thosh,” slurs Jerri, who’s on her fourth glass of wine by my count.

  Papers flutter from her lap to the floor.

  “And the twins can name most foods in four languages, including ‘sign,’” says Marie.

  “But you can’t even get in the door of Neighborhood School without points!” a voice from the back yells.

  “Yes,” says Marie, her voice triumphant. “You need points and you need to convince the school that you’re the kind of parent who’s going to be there every day, one hundred percent.”

  I slide my notes to the center of the table and reach for my wine. Having caught kindergarten fever for two minutes, I have made a full recovery. I’m not getting wrapped up in this point hysteria. I simply don’t have room in my life for that kind of anxiety. I’m the sort of person who tenses when I see a list for a potluck event at the school. If I start going crazy for these points, Spence may get into a child-centric school, but his mommy will become one of those characters who never leave their bed, making him mix martinis for her, demanding that he rub her back while she calls her girlfriends and cries.

  I flip through the rest of the papers, occasionally looking up, while questions about points and magnets fly.

  I think of the chunks of eyeliner at my feet. Although I am tempted, I can’t quite leave them there, waiting to become streaks of black at the first touch of someone’s shoe. As the conversation rages, I drop to the floor and crawl under the table.

  This is how I come to find myself picking specks of black out of a carpet, under a table, avoiding the dance of Marie’s feet, at the Carter Preschool kindergarten strategy meeting.

  And while I’ve got plenty of stories that end with me under a table, this is the first that doesn’t involve a man, a vial, or olives.

  Friday

  Everything sounds better on a Friday. A plan, a thought, an idea that might lie untended and shriveled in a corner, can spring to life under the careful consideration of friends. Throw in a few drinks and the shriveled idea expands and acquires brilliance. This is the only reason, I think later, that we spent a chunk of time discussing Lana’s marriage to Enrico.

  “It’s fucking perfect,” Katherine says to Lana. “He gets his green card and you get some cash, plus a guy who loves kids and will babysit for free.”

  Babysitting is becoming a huge issue for Lana, as Tony is often MIA. He sometimes sleeps at the house. But since separating from Lana, he often disappears for days like an errant cat.

  “What more do you need?” I say, pushing my empty glass to the edge where Mack will see I need another. “It’s an awesome idea. An award-winning idea. A solution so stunningly easy that we will marvel, for years to come, that we came up with it in just one afternoon.”

  “You’re forgetting that we’ve had other truly brilliant ideas,” says Michelle, pushing her empty Amstel bottle next to mine. “This is only one of several remarkable ideas we’ve had on Fridays. Really. We’re a think tank. An informal symposium of problem solvers.”

  “Remember our idea of starting a line of truly hip pants called Stretch-When-You-Sit?” says Katherine.

  “Why didn’t we do anything with that idea?” I ask, turning to Michelle. “Weren’t you supposed to start the Web site?”

  Michelle shrugs as Mack removes the empties.

  “Yeah,” Lana says to Michelle. “Didn’t your dad have Stretch-When-You-Sit pants in the sixties?”

  “Only we decided that these would be based on my dad’s pants. But made for the woman who usually wears DKNY.”

  “Right,” says Lana.

  “That’s the kind of idea that we’re going to see cropping up a year from now and we’re going to kick ourselves that we didn’t do anything about it,” I say.

  “So let’s not let the Enrico idea die,” says Michelle.

  She’s right. You’ve got to get a jump on these things; otherwise someone else will do it and suddenly you’re at Enrico’s wedding—he’s getting married to some other American woman, not Lana, and everyone there is wearing Stretch-When-You-Sit pants. While you’re still sitting around with your mom pals on Fridays with nothing but memories and broken dreams.

  “Right,” I say. “Let’s get practical. What do we have to do to get Lana married to Enrico?”

  “First we have to ask him if he wants to do it,” says Michelle.

  “Right,” says Katherine. “But that’s pretty much a no-brainer. I mean, she’s hot, she’s smart, funny, and available.”

  “He’s gay,” I say. “He’s not looking for a real wife.”

  Katherine looks down at her foamy black and tan. “Yeah, I guess I get so used to doing the big sell on my single friends.”

  Mack slides a red wine and an Amstel in front of us.

  I straighten up. “So someone asks Enrico if he’s interested in marrying her.”

  “We know he’s looking for a green card,” says Lana.

  “Right,” says Michelle. “I think he’ll go for it. But we do need to ask him. The real question is, what are we looking for in return?”

  “Three solid nights of babysitting and two early mornings,” I say. “Plus a couple of pickups and drop-offs to day care. That would be for the first four years. Then you could go to two nights a week, one early morning, and one pickup/drop-off for the next eight years.”

  “Sounds like you’ve really thought this out,” Michelle says to me.

  “That sounds a bit steep,” says Lana. “How about we go for your plan for the first four years, but trim back to only one night a week the next eight years. And no early morning. I don’t want to get piggy.”

  “Whatever the deal,” says Katherine, “it sounds great to me. It’s almost worth me kicking Slim out and stealing Enrico right from under you.”

  “Slim doesn’t stay with the kids some nights?” asks Michelle.

  “Sure, sometimes. But he’s got all these gigs and rehearsals. What am I supposed to do, stomp all over his dreams? I don’t do voice-over jobs at night. So that leaves me sitting at home watching Law & Order five nights a week. Unless I spring for Enrico—who’s now going to be living with Lana. “

  “Shit, does he have to live with me?” asks Lana. “He never stops talking.”

  “Nah, he lives with Genius,” I say.

  “But they inspect these things. They have people who are like marriage police, who might come by some morning while I’m in bed with someone new. Daisy’s watching toons. And my gay husband is nowhere in sight. How’s that going to look?”

  Michelle starts to peel the label off her Amstel. I tilt my wineglass to see if the house red sticks.

  We think.

  “It’s risky,” says Katherine.

  “I don’t think so,” I say.

  “Now that I think about it, I wonder about all the other stuff you have to negotiate. Like what the guys you’re dating think. Plus, you’re basically living a lie,” says Michelle.


  We stare at ourselves in the mirror behind the bar.

  “I’m just looking for something easy,” Lana says to our reflections.

  We mumble something like “yeah” back.

  Jesus, I bet she’s looking for something to be easy. I can’t imagine being alone in this. If Pat’s home ten minutes late, I start making phone calls to friends, talking in a hyperexcited tone that makes them worry. So they tell me later.

  “I don’t think that anything having to do with Enrico is easy,” says Michelle. “Remember, he got banned from Target for screaming in Customer Service.”

  “Wait, I don’t fault Enrico for that,” I say. “They fucked up his friend’s wedding registry. She got four Mizrahi lamps.”

  “Target messes everything up. It’s Target,” says Michelle. “You start losing it at Target and it’s going to be a long, difficult life.”

  “I lose it at Target,” says Lana. “I wanted to buy this Graco car seat and this salesgirl tells me that I can’t have it because it’s the last one in stock. How insane is that? The car seat is sitting right there. I have my hand on it and she says I can’t buy it!”

  Lana’s face is red. And I think, There you have it. Maybe a marriage between Lana and Enrico would be a perfect matching of personalities and needs.

  I doubt that it will happen, however. I suspect the idea will go the way of Stretch-When-You-Sit pants.

  It simply requires too much effort.

  Christmas in Mooresville

  Pat’s mother lives with her housemate, Eleanor, in a tiny farmhouse that’s so idyllic it’s like living inside a snow globe. When we visit her in Indiana, at Christmas, we can count on snowflakes drifting onto the fields and neighbors dropping by with nuts they caramelized themselves. Out back, Tiny the pig will snort and eat just about anything Spence offers her with his mittened hand.

  At night Pat and I will snuggle under the blankets, listening to our two boys breathing, as they sleep inches away from us. Pat will curl around me, his hand finding my breast. I will brush it aside.

  “The children,” I’ll say.

  “They’re completely out.”

  “Your mother.”

  “She won’t hear,” he’ll say. Even though we could reach the knob of her bedroom door without leaving the pullout sofa.

  “I can’t relax,” I’ll say.

  He’ll pull his hand away and roll onto his back. After a moment of us lying there, I will hear him say in a voice that is both controlled and pouty, “You hate my mother.”

  This is not true and Pat knows it. But it’s Christmastime and this conversation is as much a ritual as opening presents and eating ham.

  Last year we had a reprieve. Murphy was born right before Christmas, so our families came to us. But this year, with Spence excited about Santa and snow, and Murph beginning to walk, we have to remount the Midwest tour of relatives. The tour usually involves picking up my father’s minivan in Madison, Wisconsin, and driving ourselves to visit folks in Chicago and Indiana.

  Pat’s mom loves Mooresville. You can walk right into the candy shop on the square, plop your money on the counter, and help yourself to a bag of sweets, even if no one’s at the register. Folks are hardworking and don’t say much, which seems to be highly regarded. Pat’s mom says things like, “That man doesn’t talk much, but he works from sunup to sundown with no thoughts but the next day’s work ahead of him.” Mom Towne loves the country as much as I love cities. To her the country is a place where folks are honest and life uncomplicated. To me the country is where murderers hole up in shacks, boiling skin off the bones of the last old lady they eviscerated. Behind every farmer’s smile, Mom Towne sees a stoic, private person. I see a man who keeps his family in a locked basement, requiring them to wear purple robes and call him Most High Prophet.

  But every time I visit Mooresville, the murderers and crazies keep pretty much to themselves. Which is a shame. Since that leaves boredom—the silent killer.

  My mother-in-law and Eleanor lie back in their matching La-Z-Boys, watching a rerun of Murder, She Wrote. Eleanor is a large woman who speaks with a strong Indiana twang. “That Jessica is smarter than any of ’em in the room,” she says of Angela Lansbury’s character.

  Pat and I wrap the last of the presents for the boys, who have fallen asleep in Grandma’s bed. It’s late. It’s Christmas Eve. And we are Santa.

  I can tell by the robotlike precision of his wrapping that Pat is not entirely here. He has sunk deep into his own mind, a coping mechanism he employs as soon as we cross from Illinois into Indiana. My guess is that he is replaying a football game, thinking about the next series of coins he’s going to buy for his collection, or having sex with a stranger.

  I’m writing the tags from Santa, careful to misspell Spence’s and Murphy’s names. For some reason my mother characterized Santa as a bad speller and fellow who liked his glass of wine—which she left out for him next to some cookies. My mother created a Santa that was so real to us, so kind and flawed, that we children believed in him way past the age that it was appropriate. Her elaborate ritual of tracking snow through the living room, leaving reindeer hoofprints on the linoleum, and writing long letters from him had me believing until I was easily twelve. One year I found a few long white hairs caught in the nap of the sofa.

  Pat’s head pops up like he’s coming to.

  “I just remembered,” he says, “the glass bottle of soda froze in the van and exploded in that back pocket.”

  “Things are always exploding in the cold,” says Eleanor, rocking.

  “Right,” says Pat. “I’ve got to go out and get the glass out right now.”

  “Now?” says his mother. “It’s eleven degrees below with the windchill.”

  She always knows the windchill.

  “Yeah, but I don’t want to forget and have someone cut their hand,” Pat says, grabbing his hat that pulls down over his face, making him look like a rapist.

  Something about his eagerness to get out to the car tells me that it’s not about the exploded glass.

  “I’ll go with you,” I say, pulling on my boots.

  “Sure,” says Pat, turning to the two old women in his rapist mask. “We’ll get that glass out of there in no time.”

  I’ve got weed,” says Pat.

  We sit in the front of the van, the lights off, shivering.

  “How are we going to smoke it?” I ask.

  I’m not much of a smoker, to be honest. But back-to-back episodes of Murder, She Wrote require desperate measures.

  Pat whips a Coke can out of his jacket, grabs a pen from the glove compartment, and punctures the can.

  “Bobber gave it to me,” he says, referring to a high school buddy of his, who we visited the day before.

  “When?” I ask. I’m remembering us opening gifts, listening to Bobber and his wife talk at length about how their fourteen-year-old is driving them senseless dating black boys.

  “When he showed me the garage,” says Pat, flicking the lighter.

  A short flame, then out.

  “Oh, yeah,” I say. Bobber had taken Pat out to the garage to show him how they were stopping up the holes where the squirrels were coming in.

  “It’s Bobber’s homegrown,” Pat says, shaking the lighter.

  The flame catches the loose ball of weed settled in the dent Pat made in the can. Pat inhales and hands it to me.

  “Do you think Mom and Eleanor can see the flame?” I ask, turning around to look at the farmhouse, Christmas-card-quaint in the sparkling snow.

  “They’d have to get out of their La-Z-Boys,” says Pat, taking the can back and firing up again.

  A shift in mood sneaks up on me. I start to feel warm and silly. I inhale a few more times.

  Huddled in the van, Pat and I are like teenagers putting off the end of our date. We giggle and hunch over, hiding from the adults in the house. I am filled with that youthful arrogance that comes from having time and possibilities. An arrogance that has mostly disso
lved since having children.

  “Do you think Eleanor’s hair is a wig?” I ask.

  “It just looks like a wig,” says Pat. He goes on to explain that the wiglike appearance of Eleanor’s hair is an aesthetic cultivated by women over sixty in Indiana. Immovable hair is an ideal that his mother has never attained, try as she might, with the pink rollers she takes out of her hair every morning. When we visit, she hands Spence each roller, which he slips into a bag till it’s full, then Ziplocs shut.

  I take another drag from the Coke can and am filled with love for the little pink rollers and for Eleanor’s wig. I love the farmhouse and my mother-in-law and my sons and Christmas. I love Mooresville. I love Pat’s face. I love the van and the cold and Tiny the pig.

  Angela Lansbury is putting together the pieces of the crime as Pat and I stomp back into the house. Mom Towne and Eleanor are riveted. This is Jessica’s best thing and she never disappoints.

  Pat and I sink to the couch and assess the work ahead of us. Stockings lie only partially stuffed, on the coffee table. A pile of unwrapped toys waits next to the tree. We look at the scissors and tape and tags.

  Pat picks up Spencer’s stocking, reaches in, and pulls out a big plastic M&M, which contains several of the real things. He breaks the seal with his teeth and pops it open.

  “I’ve seen that episode before,” says Eleanor, “but it don’t matter.”

  “It must be about the fourth time I’ve seen it,” says Mom Towne. “And I only realize it when I’m half the way through. That tells you how good a show it is.”

  I pick up Murphy’s stocking and plunge my hand in, hoping to find the other plastic M&M. My hand moves past the tangerine and the super-bouncy ball. Where the hell is that damn plastic M&M?

  Pat crunches happily beside me.

  My hand finds something smooth. I pull it out. It’s a plastic egg of Silly Putty. I throw it into the corner of the couch.

  Where the fuck is my M&M? I dump the contents of Murphy’s stocking on the coffee table. The looked-for green sphere bounces onto the carpet.