Is This All There Is?

by Mann, Patricia

  “But Mom, I had all these plans. Shopping for pretty dresses and sparkly pink hair clips and helping her when she got her period and secrets about boyfriends and…”

  “I know, Beth. I know. But you’re going to love this new baby as much as you love Sam. You’ll see.”

  “That’s impossible. Sam was my first, my sweet little boy. How can I love another boy the way I love him? I just don’t get it. I always knew I would have two kids: a boy and a girl. I mean I know I shouldn’t care, and it seems so selfish, but I can’t help it. I wanted a girl, Mom. And now I’ll never have one. All the things I imagined, they’ll never happen.”

  She sympathized but continued to argue that I would feel different when I met this new little man. She was the only person I confessed my true feelings to, putting on a show for the world for the remainder of my pregnancy. And even though I allowed her to comfort me, inside I believed she could never understand because she only had one child. But when the doctor laid Jack on my chest and I watched him struggle to turn his head and look at me through his murky newborn baby eyes, I knew my mother had been right all along. I was only reminded of that longing for a little girl on rare occasions, like my dalliance with Isabella. I pulled Jack onto my lap, kissed the top of his head, and wrapped my arms around him. He tolerated this for a moment and then squirmed away to get back to trying to force a cow shaped puzzle piece into a horse shaped space on a wood puzzle board.

  Finally, at the very end of question time, with visible reluctance, Mandy called on the mom with black-rimmed glasses, hair the exact same color, and a UCLA sweatshirt. Her hand had been raised the entire time.

  “I read on the internet that disposable diapers can cause infertility in boys. I’m really worried about this but I can’t afford a cloth diaper service.”

  Mandy rolled her eyes and laughed. “Well that’s just ridiculous. I’ve never heard anything about that.”

  “No, really, a number of scientists claim that the plastic in the diapers heats up boys’ testicles to such a high degree that the cells supporting sperm production don’t develop properly.”

  Mandy waved a chiseled arm in the air and shook her head back and forth.

  “What will they come up with next? I tell you, those scientists should be focusing on something important, like curing cancer.”

  I tried to make eye contact with the UCLA mom, wanting her to know that someone did understand her concerns. But she didn’t see me. She was focused on Mandy, who had turned away from her to look at the giant clown clock on the wall.

  “Well that’s all the time we have for questions today, is everybody ready for the bye-bye song? Bye bye Harrington, bye bye Serenity, bye bye Precious, we’ll see you again next week. Bye bye Jack, bye bye… ”

  When the class was over and all the mothers stood in line to sign up for the next month, I quietly slipped out the back door.

  Jack fell asleep on the way home and I knew I had to buckle down and grade a few papers before he woke up. This was my least favorite part of teaching. Being in front of the class was the high for me. I ran my fingertip along the smooth edges of the stack as I read the first title page. “Corporate Culture and The Glass Ceiling: A Postmodern Feminist Critique By Victoria Glasten.” I slid that one aside and read the next title. “Nonverbal Communication and the Culture of Baseball Teams By Luke Connor.” I pictured Luke’s strong forearms and cocky grin. I wondered what he’d think if he could see me at home. Would he even recognize me without my Ann Taylor Loft attire? It gave me a sick pleasure to imagine my students watching me in bed nursing Jack in the same breastmilk stained tee shirt I slept in every night. Even better, to think of them watching me having sex or giving birth. They saw such a small part of my humanity that it felt dishonest.

  My husband and kids seemed even more incapable of conjuring an image of me engaging fifty precocious twenty-somethings in a discussion about how cognitive constructs shape human communication and relationships. Rick had never even seen me teach. Like an academy award winning actress married to a man who had never seen one of her films, I thought. Then I laughed out loud. No academy awards for me. Just a few plastic framed golden apple certificates and a shoebox full of poorly written mushy thank you notes from students.

  The phone rang. I checked the caller ID. It was Dana. I didn’t answer, but listened to the message right away. “Hey Beth, it’s me.” A long silence. A heavy sigh. “Okay, well just call me when you can. I haven’t heard from Steve in three days.” Another long sigh, then a click.

  I did miss her, but the thought of calling Dana back to analyze the details of her latest failed romance made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I couldn’t do it again. Couldn’t sit and listen to a replay of every second of the three weeks they spent together. How they really connected and she thought he could be the one. Then the drawn out description of how he suddenly became distant and finally just dropped off the face of the earth. It was different when we were young. But now, she couldn’t fathom the things that were important to me nor could I imagine having the luxury of spending so much time thinking and talking about myself. It was hard to hear about how lonely she was with no man when I had three ever-present men sucking the life out of me. And it was months earlier that I had sent her the book He’s Just Not That Into You feeling hopeful that it would help her the way it had helped the women I saw on Oprah. But all I got was a polite thank you and another earful about the most recent heartbreak. I planned to call her back when Jack was awake and fussing in the background so she’d have to let me off the hook quickly.

  I pictured Shelly’s face, her shiny smooth blond hair, her intelligent brown eyes and confident voice, her round body. She was one of the few people I could be myself with. My lifelong social apprehension and insistence on finding the perfect words often caused me to remain silent, a mute with limitless thoughts and ideas aching to burst forth. This would explain my choice of human communication as a field of study as well as my rocky relationship with alcohol. But Shelly had a way of forcing me to be authentic. She demanded it, just like Dana.

  I turned to look at the framed picture of Dana and me arm in arm at the top of the Empire State building, so many years ago. How can you ever replace the person you share all your firsts with? From the first taste of beer and cigarettes in the alley behind the gas station to the first time going all the way: me with Todd Richardson in the back seat of his car and her with Dave Linderman in my parents’ bed. I wanted a memory of the days when she practically lived at my house and every birthday meant finding a new item to have “Best Friends” imprinted on. I looked at the stack of papers sitting on the desk and then up at the shelf of journals I had been keeping since I was eleven. I grabbed the pink-checkered one from my twelfth year. It was dated June 18.

  I’m so bored. I hate being home alone while Mom and Dad are at work. I wonder when Mom is gonna buy me another one of those books that were banned from my school library. It only took me two days to read The Catcher in the Rye.

  I put the journal down and gazed at my computer screen, realizing this was not an entry that would bring me back to fond memories of Dana. Still I read on.

  Last night was pretty fun and a little weird too. Aunt Jamie babysat while Mom and Dad went to a play in the city. She’s a model and she used to live in Manhattan but then she couldn’t get enough modeling jobs and had to move back here to Hicksville. As soon as my parents left, we got high. She always has the best weed.

  The familiar “ping” of an instant message pulled my attention back to the present. I set the journal aside and forced my eyes to attend to the person reaching out to me through my computer screen.

  “Are you there Professor Thomas? This is Michelle Vargas from your Wednesday 4-7 class.”

  “Hi Michelle, what’s up?”

  “I need to drop your class.”

  “Well, this far into the semester we’d need to get approval from the Dean. Are you sure this is what you want to do?”

  �
��Yes, I have to.”

  “Okay, well the Dean will need to know the reason.”

  There was no response for a while so I started to read Luke Connor’s paper. Before I even finished the first sentence, my eyes drifted back to the journal. I picked up where I left off.

  Aunt Jamie asked me if I ever kissed a boy. I was so embarrassed but I had to say no. She laughed and told me I’m beautiful. Then oh my God, I can’t believe what happened. I was so wasted. She grabbed me and stuck her tongue in my mouth and moved it all around. It felt kinda gross but I love Jamie so much I would do anything she wanted me to do.

  The instant message bell rang again.

  “My mother is dying of breast cancer in Mexico and I have to go back to take care of my siblings.”

  “Oh Michelle, I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what you must be going through.”

  “It’s too hard for me to talk about. It took me so long to respond because I couldn’t stop crying as I was trying to type.”

  “You don’t have to talk about it, I mean unless you want to. I’ll fill out the form for you and explain your situation to the Dean. We’ll just need you to sign the paperwork as soon as you can.”

  When our instant message conversation ended, I wondered what it would be like to have siblings and if Michelle would ever go back to school. I put the journal back on the shelf and read the first sentence of Luke’s paper about ten times without remembering what it said.

  I headed to the kitchen on automatic pilot and returned to my office with a Costco sized bag of sour cream and chive Ruffles and a Diet Coke. I munched away as I Googled my high school boyfriend Cameron, trying new combinations of his name and line of work, but came up with nothing, as always. No luck with yet another Facebook search either. It wasn’t that I really wanted to reestablish contact with Cameron. It was more that I just wanted to know he was still out there, that there was someone else who held on to the same burning memories. The untainted love of youth, the raging passion, the foolishness of complete trust. Like frolicking puppies at the pound, I imagined, oblivious to the fact that the hands they licked with such affection would be the very ones that would bring their unbridled joy to an abrupt end.

  And maybe if I did find him, Cameron could finally answer the question that haunted me. Was it I who broke his heart or had he broken mine? Or maybe both? We were always so on-again off-again, I couldn’t recall how it finally ended for good. If I were to ask anyone who knew us then, the simple answer would be that the timing was wrong. We were too young, had too much left to learn and do, that’s all. But nothing is ever that simple. After Cameron, something went numb inside me for a long time. Some might use the word promiscuous, but to me that word implies too much conscious intent and too much pleasure. It wasn’t until I met Rick that the spark of what I felt with Cameron was reignited.

  I told myself I would not do anything else until I got through Luke’s paper. After reading the first sentence again, this time with my brain turned on, I was hopeful that the paper might be enjoyable. He started off strong: “Nonverbal communication scholars agree that the majority of meaning in any message is conveyed nonverbally, and the unspoken language of baseball teams serves as a prime example of this.” But things went downhill from there. A few sentences later, Luke actually wrote “ur” instead of “you’re.” I had seen it before, thanks to teaching in the era of text messaging as students’ primary form of interpersonal contact, but I expected more from Luke. After defacing every paragraph of his six-page report with my red pen, I found myself in a daze staring at the remaining ninety-six papers. That’s when Jack woke up from his nap.

  Chapter 5

  “And don’t forget to wash behind his ears,” I said as I flew out the door. Alone on the road in my minivan, I ejected Disney Tunes, popped in a Jack Johnson CD and turned the volume way up.

  I arrived at the restaurant at 5:54 and waited alone on a bench, soaking up the elegant décor of Shelly’s favorite Italian bistro. Burgundy walls, wood framed impressionist paintings from floor to ceiling, pristine white tablecloths. The aroma of garlic and rosemary made my mouth water as servers hurried by with fresh breadbaskets. The hostess offered me a menu but I politely refused. I wanted to linger over the enticing descriptions of gourmet entrees and desserts with Shelly. I thought about the time we polished off an entire carrot cake topped with mounds of sticky sweet cream cheese frosting in her backyard. “We can’t let it go to waste,” she told me, after acting surprised that the children opted for popsicles instead of a piece of the cake with a vegetable in its name.

  At 6:07 she glided through the door and it felt like a swift kick in the stomach.

  “Shelly, wow, you… lost so much weight.”

  She pulled me up from the bench and put her arms around me. I gave her an awkward hug back, missing the squishy round body I had been expecting.

  “Come on it’s no big deal.”

  “But it is a big deal, you look so… different.”

  “We’ll I’m not different. I’m still me.”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me when you called last week.”

  “Look, it was hard enough to get you here, I didn’t want to give you any reason to cancel.”

  I felt ashamed and a bit insulted. But she was right, I might have canceled.

  “How did you… ?”

  “I’ll tell you all about it, but let’s get to our table and get some wine first.”

  As Shelly settled into our corner booth and slipped out of her size small cropped jacket, I took a long hard look at her. I couldn’t continue to be friends with this woman. She was stunning. I felt frumpy and fat. Her long blond hair flowed over her bare shoulders, which led to newly defined arms with biceps and even triceps. Her high cheekbones and perfect little patrician nose stood out more than ever. She barely even had any makeup on. Her milk chocolate eyes looked at me with compassion as I tried to calm myself.

  “Okay, I know, it’s a pretty big change. I’m not really used to it myself yet either.”

  She’s still Shelly, a voice in my head said. She’s the same person, you idiot.

  No, you’re the idiot, a different, harsher voice shot back. This is no longer Shelly, this woman looks like a friggin’ supermodel. What the hell are you doing here with her? Stop it, pull yourself together and talk to her, the first voice demanded.

  “So okay, it all started because I found out I had high cholesterol. My doctor scared the crap out of me. He said I probably wouldn’t make it to see my grandkids if I didn’t get my LDL level under control.”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about this.”

  “It’s not like we talk all the time, Beth. You’re always so busy.”

  I nodded with a look of skepticism, holding back the apology that sat on the tip of my tongue. I wasn’t convinced it was warranted.

  “So you’re saying you did it for health reasons? But you look like a model.”

  “I swear it was all about my health at first. When I realized what I was doing to myself, I just couldn’t do it anymore.”

  Our waiter interrupted. “Well, aren’t I the lucky one tonight?” he said.

  Oh great, I thought, just what we need, Don Juan as our server.

  Shelly grinned and brushed some loose strands of blond hair off her face.

  “Would you lovely ladies like to start with a nice bottle of wine?”

  I wondered how he even knew Shelly was sitting with another lady since he hadn’t so much as glanced in my direction. Shelly finally snapped out of it and cleared her throat as she turned to me.

  “What kind of wine should we have, Beth?”

  She opened the wine menu and tilted it so we could both see the selections.

  “I don’t know, maybe the Clos Du Bois Chardonnay,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes. “Please, how often do we do this?”

  She turned to Don. “We’ll take a bottle of the Kendall Jackson Chardonnay,” she said, making direct eye contact
with him.

  “So back to your health issues… ”

  “Come on Beth, let’s talk about something else. What’s going on with you and Rick? The last time we talked, you were furious with him because he let the kids eat popcorn for dinner while you were teaching.”

  I still couldn’t think rationally. “Wait, first tell me how you did it.”

  “Weight Watchers.”

  “But, you’ve been going to a gym also, haven’t you? I mean, look at your stomach and your arms.”

  “Okay, yes, I’ve been going to a gym. I know. I know. Yuck. I’m one of those gym moms we used to make fun of. But I only go three times a week.”

  “What about Madison?”

  “She goes with me. They have a kids’ club.”

  “She doesn’t mind?”

  “She cried a little the first day, but she got over it.”

  It felt as if the entire foundation of my friendship with Shelly had been ripped away.

  “Well, Jack would never go for it. No way.”