Don't Wait Up

by Liz Astrof

  My guilt for not spending a quality-time Sunday with my daughter resulted in our making a thirty-minute drive to the crème de la crème of trampoline parks (and there are actually several trampoline parks in Los Angeles, for some godforsaken reason), boasting rope swings, a zip line, seventy trampolines, and a dodgeball court. A ninja warrior course for cherubs—cherubs I desperately needed out of my face.

  When we got there, I filled out nine hundred waivers stating that I was totally cool if my kid broke her neck and ended up being rolled out of there on a stretcher, permanently immobile. Yes, yes. Whatever. I needed to get work done. To just get over this hurdle, so I could relax.

  I paid the ridiculous fee, bought the girls the necessary socks with “grip” on the bottom, and set them free. Then I took the now-freezing coffee I’d had since the morning—more of a security coffee at this point, all but undrinkable—and sat on one of the couches they have set up for parents in places like that. I planted myself between two almost sleeping parents, opened my laptop, and heard—almost immediately: “Mommy . . .?”

  Three other mommies joined me in the slow, dread-filled, “please don’t make me get up” turn toward the voice. I drew the short straw.

  “Can you watch us?” Phoebe was asking with a pout.

  I sighed and told her that I was watching her. Sadly, at nine, she’s old enough now to know that if I’m facing away from her—as I was doing—I couldn’t see her. I agreed to move to a seat where I could look right at her, and she took off.

  For almost exactly a minute.

  “Mommy.”

  I looked up from my computer to see Phoebe hovering two feet in front of me.

  “I’m thirsty,” she moaned. Phoebe’s always thirsty. I’ve never met a kid who needed more water. Kimberly pulled up beside her, and next thing I knew, I was taking the two of them to the vending machine to get waters. Finally, they went back up to the trampolines, and I took my seat once again and opened my laptop . . . just as Phoebe reappeared. She’d lost Kimberly and needed help finding her.

  “Just go find her!” I growled. “Phoebe, I HAVE WORK TO DO!”

  “I’m sorry, Mommy!” she fake-cried.

  So, we searched among the crowded trampolines, and Phoebe quickly spotted her friend, pointing to a blur in the distance flipping pretty high in the air. Great. I told Phoebe I’d see her later, and I was watching everything she did. I made a break for it.

  But before I got far, Phoebe was calling me back. She was standing where I’d left her, refusing to move.

  I stormed over to her, if one can storm while bouncing a little on a trampoline floor surface. Through gritted teeth, I told her in no uncertain terms that I had to work, and that I was working for us, and she’d made a promise to me, and that lying was not nice, which was when Kimberly backflipped into view and asked me to watch her do a handspring.

  I was becoming irate at this point. I hadn’t come there to watch my own daughter do a flip, never mind someone else’s kid. But before I could say anything, Kimberly bounced from the platform we were standing on up onto a square springboard, leaping, twisting, and landing on a crash pad about three feet high. Kimberly’s one lithe little girl. A star athlete, she has two moms, and her father was chosen at a sperm bank. He was a Harvard graduate and competitive swimmer with model-like features and so sought after that they sat on a waitlist for a year just to get a quarter ounce of his DNA.

  Kimberly inherited the best of both parents. She’s half-Jewish, half-projectile. Unlike her mothers, though, I didn’t pick Phoebe’s father from a menu. Instead, I met the other half of Phoebe’s DNA at a bar, where we were both tired from standing and found seats next to each other. Go, Phoebe.

  I oohed and ahhed at Kimberly’s flips and whirls and weightless midair backhand springs, praying I wouldn’t have to call her moms and tell them she snapped her neck. After five Wowww!s, I felt I was free to go. But then it was Phoebe’s turn. I stayed to watch. I was there anyway.

  Phoebe stood at the back of the platform to give herself room to run, her shoulders back, eyes narrowed, focused, in a runner’s starting position. On the count of three, she took off. Slowly. She plodded forward—hesitantly, clumsily plopping onto the trampoline square, barely propelling herself upwards and, with zero momentum, hit the side of the mat. She righted herself and walked away, defeated.

  I flashed back to myself at her age, in gym class, when I would have to mount the pommel horse during calisthenics. The pommel horse was my biggest enemy. We’d line up in the gymnasium in our green nylon gym suits—mine came in a slightly different shade, of course, because they didn’t make my size in children’s (I still wonder what kind of grown-up wore a gym suit that size and what the hell they did in it).

  Mr. Winslow, our PE teacher, was a short and white-haired ball of a man, with a huge gut, giant calves, and a ton of authority. When he blew his whistle, we were supposed to run, jump onto a spring board (the 1970s version of a trampoline), and propel ourselves up, onto, and over the pommel horse. Quickly.

  All the rest of the girls in my class would mount the horse with ease and trot on to the next piece of apparatus. I had a different experience.

  When my turn came, I would take up position, shoulders back, eyes narrowed, focused, in a runner’s starting stance. On the count of three, I’d take off. Slowly. I’d sort of plop onto the springboard and then fall. Just short of the horse. From there, now at a complete stop, I’d sling my leg over the back and with my arms, try to grab on to the underneath of the other side for leverage, and then heave myself on to the top of the horse. Before I could catch my breath, feeling all eyes on me—the whole class would invariably come to a halt at the spectacle of my exertions—I would slide off the other side and, mortified, slowly turn to face my second worst nightmare, the ropes.

  I’ve never thought Phoebe looked much like me. She has dark brown hair, dark, almond-shaped eyes, and olive skin—all from Todd. I, on the other hand, physically gifted her with little more than my body-shape and athletic prowess. Looking at her in that moment—sweating, trying again and again to clear the top of the mat—I wondered if it was a good time to tell her that she didn’t stand a chance. That she might as well give up, that she took after me, and we don’t “mount” things. Was this the moment, there in the middle of the trampoline park, that I should break the news to my daughter that her mother was eventually put in a special gym class for the athletically challenged—equipped with lower pommel horses and no ropes and balance beams that rested on the floor?

  Kimberly was helping/not helping by coaching Phoebe, telling her it was easy, to just do what she herself was doing—as in, basically, fly.

  I wanted to tell Kimberly to zip it, that Phoebe couldn’t fly. And that Kimberly came from super sperm and that I didn’t get to choose Phoebe’s skills like Kimberly’s mommies did, and no, it’s not fair, but there we were.

  I needed to distract Phoebe from this personal failure. One that would undoubtedly follow her into adulthood, when she’d be at a trampoline park with her daughter—probably on Mars or somewhere—and flash back to this day. So, I told Phoebe all the other things she was good at. How she had an original fashion sense and didn’t care what other people thought of her mismatched outfits (carefully avoiding mention of the Thanksgiving when she wore a polka-dot skirt and butterfly shirt, and her aunt Barb looked at her too long and I’m pretty sure had a seizure). I told Phoebe how she was great at coloring and a fantastic guest at other people’s houses. That she was a kind and loyal friend (except when it came to green string).

  A “referee” was hovering, a scowl on her face, glaring at my illegal feet. I was standing on a surface where shoes were forbidden. I told Phoebe I had to go. They were making me. I told her to try diving into the foam block pit—it was impossible to fail at that.

  But Phoebe refused to give up. She was so determined. Poor thing.

  I really needed to work. I needed an ending to my script. If I could figure out this on
e piece of the story, if I could just warm my coffee up in a microwave . . .

  Walking back to my laptop, this feeling came over me—a mother feeling I’m assuming—that I needed to get back to Phoebe. My work would be there later, though, as the trampoline park had no lockers, my laptop might not.

  I couldn’t un-slide off of a pommel horse onto the floor, un-land on my back, legs in the air like a giant bug. But I could help Phoebe clear her own hurdles. That’s what I was here for. And if Phoebe could do this—if she could get over her hump—she might apply it to other things she might not master on the first try or even the fortieth. How great would it be to take that weight off of my daughter’s shoulders? To make her lighter? To help her fly like her bioengineered friend?

  I bought a pair of twenty-dollar grip-socks, signed a pile of waivers agreeing to not sue if I got paralyzed, and bounced back over (this time with purpose) to where she was, surprising her, myself, and probably the referee.

  I was Phoebe’s coach now. All business, I told her in a voice slightly deeper than my own to go back farther on the platform, start farther away, then farther still. I told her to jump twice on the trampoline if she had to, to get extra height. She was tired. Honestly, I was, too.

  I know you’re not supposed to lie to your children, but I do it all the time, so I told Phoebe she could do this. “You can do it. Clear the mat,” I said, my voice deeper still. “Do it.”

  She ran and jumped and fell.

  A line was forming behind her. A toddler who had no business being in the “big kid” area and couldn’t possibly handle any of it was waiting impatiently for his turn. He started to cry like a three-year-old, which he was. It was distracting, so I told Phoebe to wait and let him go—though not before shooting him a very, very dirty look. To add insult to insult, the little shit sprung into the air from the trampoline, landing feet first on the mat.

  Phoebe stared at him, her face getting red. Well, redder.

  “Eff him,” I said to Phoebe. “He’s not even cute.”

  But I’d noticed something in the toddler’s form—like coaches do. When he jumped, he kept his gaze forward instead of down, which was where Phoebe looked when she leapt. Looking forward seemed to help him go farther on the trampoline.

  “Look forward,” I told Phoebe, “not down!”

  The scene was out of An Officer and a Gentleman all of a sudden—with my daughter as Casey Seeger and me as whoever Louis Gossett Jr. played. (“Climb that wall, Seeger!” I think I heard myself chant; she didn’t catch the reference.) I was serious. Way too serious for a trampoline park on a Sunday afternoon.

  “It’s all in your head, Phoebe,” I enthused, the irony all but dripping off me. “All in your head. If you think you can do it, you’ll do it. YOU CAN DO IT. Get out of your own way.”

  Shoulders back, sweat dripping from her brow and down the side of her face, she looked at me, to make sure I was there. I was there.

  I told her “On three” and counted her down.

  “One. Two . . .”

  She looked at me again.

  “Three!”

  She took off. Her head up, feet forward this time, she landed on the trampoline with more energy. Her body propelling her up, she pulled her knees into her chest . . .

  . . . and landed on the mat with both feet.

  She lurched forward, gained her balance, and stood up to her full height.

  “YES!” I shouted. “Yes!”

  She turned and looked at me, her wide-eyed expression mirroring mine.

  Silence . . . and then . . .

  A smile spread across her face. A smile filled with breathtakingly beautiful pride. Phoebe, Kimberly, and I cheered and jumped up and down—Kimberly higher than both of us, but that was okay.

  I hadn’t planned on spending time with Phoebe that day. I’d told her that Mommy had to work. And hoped it would count that I was spending time near her, if not exactly with her. Because I had a deadline. My story needed help.

  But the story that really needed help wasn’t the script I had writer’s block on, it was mine and Phoebe’s—and on that score, we’d both come through. She did what I couldn’t. She’d broken the curse. A curse I didn’t even realize I had put on her.

  Isn’t that all we want for our children? For them to do better than we did?

  My kids are growing up. They’re turning into people. Difficult people. Difficult, wonderful people who make me wonder if my dad and Cathy weren’t so wrong. Hardwired by my own childhood, I’m tempted to repeat their patterns. But I hold myself back, and in trying to correct their mistakes, I’m making new, different mistakes of my own. And my kids will make their own in trying to correct mine. And so on, and so on.

  I have no idea what’s to come in our story.

  But one thing is certain: I’ll be looking forward, not down.

  Acknowledgments

  * * *

  I am eternally grateful and indebted to Anne Bobby. Without you, I would still be trying to figure out what an “overview” for a book proposal is—as well as what exactly a book proposal is. Thank you for your brilliance, talent, handholding, and wicked sense of humor. Thank you for living in my brain with me for so long. I know it could not have been easy. And for that, I am also sorry.

  Kristyn Keene at ICM, thank you for taking me on, for your guidance, and for always answering the phone when I called, even while you were on a boat over July fourth weekend.

  Huge thanks also to Kate Dresser, my editor at Gallery Books, for making this book happen, for trusting me and supporting me, and for your amazing notes and edits (and for extending my deadlines). Thanks also to the art department for your tireless work and for going in so many different directions.

  Dan Norton at ICM and my manager, Robyn Meisinger, thank you for your friendship, but also for understanding how important this book was to me and giving me the time to write it, as well as your support while I did so.

  Deepest thanks to Beth Lapidus at the Un Cabaret in Los Angeles, for allowing me to stand on stage and tell my stories there, so I could see what made people laugh, cry, or walk out. I’m grateful also to my cousins Pam and Jerry, Emily, Wayne, Mara, Shira, and everyone else, for sitting through those stories and not walking out.

  To the staff at the Coral Tree Café in Encino: thank you for allowing me to park myself at the corner table for twelve hours a day and blatantly ignore the “please don’t stay more than 45 minutes” sign, as well as knowing I don’t like the salmon’s tail, and for looking the other way when I adjust the thermostat.

  To Linda, Michelle, Justin, Dina, Betsy, Genna, Stacy, Joanna, Kristin, Bryan, Charlie, Christy, Steph, April, Jonna, Alix, Andrea, Adam, Dana, Catherine, Michele, Laura, Debi, and Ali—thank you for your friendship, love, breathless laughter, endless material, and for allowing me to “run something by you, real quick” always at the most inconvenient times, and never “real quick.”

  (Kristin, thanks for not getting all spiritual when I just couldn’t bear it. Michelle—“I am we.”)

  I love you all. I changed your names. And to Jack, Kevin, and Marsh, for the unforgettable experience we shared. Marsh, you are immensely missed.

  Thanks to Ingrid and Betsy W., for giving me a hard deadline to finish my book proposal, and as promised, rewarding me with cupcakes.

  Gratitude beyond words to Kiki Harris and the Candiffs—Michele, David, Nicole, Carinne, and Monique—for taking such good care of Jesse, Phoebe, the dogs, the turtles, and the gecko(s). You are our family. I’m sorry.

  Samantha Fox, thank you for my sanity and for telling me I’m doing way better than anyone would have expected.

  To my Uncle Marty, Aunt Pearl, Uncle Sam, and Aunt Iris and all of my cousins—thank you for the love, support, my favorite childhood memories, and the extra Cool Whip.

  To my brother, Jeff, thank you for your friendship, love, mentoring, shared memories, and childhood torment—all of which made it into this book. You still make me feel safe-safe—I love you f
or that, and for everything.

  To my sister-in-law, Shawni, thank you for your kindness, lack of judgment, and patience. Basically, thank you for marrying Jeff.

  To my niece, Sasha, and nephew, Caleb, thank you for inspiring me to have my own kids. Without you, there would be no book.

  To my dad and beautiful, kind, clean Cathy: thank you for supporting me and raising me with a rich life, a catalog of experience, and the strength to trust my own voice. For your sense of humor, and your appreciation of a good read and a good laugh, I love you and I am truly grateful.

  To my husband, Todd, thank you for being our rock. For your endless patience. And for allowing me to go to yoga forty-five minutes away, knowing I’ll be gone for at least three hours. Thank you for our children. And our other children—our beloved dogs, Olive, Ellie, and Crash. I am well aware that none of us would be alive without you. Thank you for letting me be me, for letting me tell our stories, exploit you, and tweeze your eyebrows when I’ve over-tweezed my own. Thank you for laughing with me.

  I am forever and ever and ever grateful to Jesse and Phoebe—my children, my muses, my reasons to go home when I eventually do. You have taught me what unconditional love is and that I can be a good mother. I love you more than anything.

  About the Author

  * * *

  LIZ ASTROF is an award-winning executive producer and one of the most successful sitcom writers in television today. She has worked on The King of Queens, Raising Hope, 2 Broke Girls, Whitney, Becker, and many more shows. She lives in California with her family.

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  Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Rachel-DeLoache-Williams

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