by Mary F. Pols
“So it’s a boy,” she said flatly.
“Yes,” I sobbed. “Couldn’t I have this one thing go the way I wanted it to?”
Kir would have been justified in saying, “Get over yourself, you jackass,” but she was kind enough not to. So was Wib, who listened quietly at the time. “When I heard you sobbing, I assumed Down syndrome,” she said later. “Boy, was I pissed.” I wish I had a picture of myself, sitting in the hairdresser’s chair. There I was, bloated, my face puffy and red, my hair in need of a trim, with gray roots three inches long, wailing away. I was a pure portrait of misplaced, foolish woe.
BY OCTOBER, when I’d hit the five-month mark, I’d finally made the transition from looking merely fat to being obviously pregnant. This meant I had to do a lot more explaining, mostly to colleagues. “I didn’t know you were dating anyone,” one of the more obnoxious critics said to me as I walked into a screening in a shirt that clung to my belly. “I wasn’t,” I said, trying to sound as cheerful as possible.
But with people who didn’t know me, and therefore didn’t have awkward questions, the pregnancy was a lovely conversation piece. One day, baby bump on proud display, I walked into a pristine, ultra-sleek hotel suite in San Francisco, where Jack Black sat waiting for me on an oversize leopard-skin footstool. He bounced over to shake my hand.
“So sorry, I know I’m a little bit late,” I said. Two minutes to be precise.
“It looks like you’ve got a complicating factor there,” he said, indicating my belly.
“I do, yes,” I said, relieved he was being kind. It was mutually understood that celebrities would keep you waiting. But never vice versa. If he’d been huffy about it, the publicist could have told me to go home without my interview. The fact was I’d been late because I needed to stop in the bathroom to puke. But I didn’t want to have to tell my boss that. Employers, even the most considerate ones, are quick to assume even the most aggressive woman in the office might be headed for the mommy track once she started throwing up on the job.
“I’ve got one of those too,” he said.
“One of what?” I said.
He put his hand on his stomach, and I realized I had been clutching my belly. It was hard not to touch it all the time, because I still couldn’t believe it was real.
“Mine’s bigger,” I said.
“I think mine’s bigger,” he said, wiggling those eyebrows at me. He lifted up his shirt to show off his hairy stomach. It was no contest.
“I win,” I said.
“Mine’s definitely softer, though,” he said.
Celebrity interviews were the thing people always asked about at dinner parties, but I found them silly. If I admired the star in question, I felt particularly bad asking my questions, knowing chances were good they’d heard them all before, most likely that very day. I’d had a mild crush on Jack Black since Shallow Hal, but I’d long since abandoned hope that my interviewing skills would transcend the parameters of a celebrity tour—twenty closely monitored minutes in a hotel room—to net me either a shocking quote or a famous boyfriend. However, as I sat down for my chat with Jack Black, I discovered that this belly hanging in front of me gave me a new sense of freedom. For him, it seemed I was playing the role of the future mother, rather than a female reporter with an agenda. I felt different as well; the me that thought Jack Black was intimidatingly cool seemed a million miles away. It reminded me of the way I felt whenever I walked through Banana Republic these days, the relaxation of the complete outsider. Hmmm, so which kind of chinos will I be missing this season? Cropped? Who cares? Jack and I could talk about anything. We were just a pair of people with big bellies.
THE NEXT WEEKEND, Matt’s mother, Katherine, and his stepfather, Charlie, came to San Francisco on what seemed to be a fact-finding mission. She’d made it clear to Matt that she was excited about a grandson, regardless of the circumstances. But I assumed they wanted to know, was I then, or would I ever be, a mean and nasty skank who would deny them visitation rights and raise the child poorly?
Part of me resented the fact that I was to be put through my paces at all. A small voice inside me said, wickedly, “If you hadn’t told him, you’d never have to deal with quasi-in-laws you might not like.” But I found it easier than I expected to suppress the voice. I was changing. There was not just a baby inside me but also a mother in me, waiting to be born. I’m doing this for my child, I thought as I circled in the Upper Haight, looking for parking. These people would be his family.
I met Matt on the street outside his step-aunt’s house. The idea that he had an aunt in town should have been cheering—family, a potential babysitter, someone to bring over fruitcake at the holidays—except she was two years younger than I. On the other hand, it was true that she had all the trappings of maturity. She had a good job, was financially settled, and owned her own flat in a beautiful building. Her neighbors were Benjamin Bratt and Talisa Soto. I lived next door to a 7–Eleven. Sometimes I looked at her and thought, Now you, you could be a single mother.
Matt and I walked up the steps together. As I’d parked, I’d seen his mother standing in the doorway. She was tall and had short hair, dyed platinum blond. I tried to put myself in her shoes. How nervous she must be. How nervous I would be if my son pulled this kind of stunt on me someday. I knew I’d be extremely skeptical of whoever the mother was. I extended my hand over my protruding belly—I felt so pregnant at that moment—and smiled.
“Mom,” Matt stammered from behind me. “This is, this is…the mother.”
He’d forgotten my name. In my moment of empathy for his mother, I’d overlooked Matt, who was suffering his own case of nerves.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Mary.” I felt far sorrier for him than I did for myself.
Like Matt, his mother seemed sweet, nice, and passive. We had wine and cheese while a football game blared from the television set. Please don’t let me die in childbirth, I thought. I don’t want my son growing up in a house where life-changing encounters are conducted in front of the television. Then we set out for a noisy Italian restaurant in North Beach, one that, appropriately enough, served family-style dinners. I took one bite from the enormous platter of garlicky pasta and reached for my Phenergan.
Matt had warned me his stepfather would probably grill me. “That’s just how he is,” he said. “And my mom is probably going to want to talk about the name.”
I’d already decided on the baby’s names. All three of them, including his surname, which would be mine. Every time the subject came up with Matt, I’d made it clear that it was not up for negotiation. Clean my cat litter once a week and I might listen. If I was going to be in charge of the bills, the rent, the health insurance, all of it, there was no way I’d be embracing the patriarchal naming system.
“So,” I said. “Katherine, Matt tells me you have some questions about the baby’s name?”
She blinked. Her eyes were big behind her glasses. Maybe shaped like Matt’s, but brown. I kept going. Better to just get the controversial stuff on the table right away.
“I chose Dolan Edward Pols for a couple of reasons,” I said. “My father’s name is Edward, and so far, none of the grandchildren has his name. Dolan was his mother’s maiden name, and I always liked the sound of it. She came from a big family, thirteen kids I think. Or maybe fifteen.” I should have had my facts down, damn it. Every good salesman ought to. “Anyway, the Dolans were bookies.”
“Irish bookies?” Charlie asked. He came from a big Irish family himself.
“Yes,” I said, as enthusiastically as if he’d just won a prize. I was well aware I was displaying the subtlety of a freight train. But I was so anxious to establish the protective boundaries I thought I needed that I wasn’t going to stop and reflect on any impression I was making beyond the most important: strength. “Irish bookies from New Jersey. They were a naughty bunch, apparently, and had very regular dealings with the Newark police, which embarrassed my father. But they were always very kind to him. He
was the first person in his family to be accepted to college, and it was Harvard, so that meant a lot to them. They bought him a couple of nice suits, and one of them escorted him to Cambridge on an airplane, which in those days wasn’t exactly common. Flying from New Jersey to Boston, that is. Plus, I like Dolan. It’s different. I’m a little worried he’ll go through school being called Dylan, but what can you do?”
Katherine was still steadily blinking at me. “That’s a nice story,” she said. Her voice was soft and sweet, almost southern-sounding. I wondered if there was something more she wanted to say. If there was, she didn’t say it. Given my own mother’s situation, I was acutely aware that I was meeting the only grandmother Dolan would ever know. Even though I wanted things to be on my terms, I wanted us to get along. When we parted on the street, there were good-bye kisses all around, vows to keep in touch, and offers to help in any way they could.
“That’s my grandson you have in there,” Katherine said, nodding toward my belly. “Take good care of him.”
There was just one ominous note. Charlie, shaking my hand, said it had been a pleasure to meet me. Again there was an offer of help. “And later on, send that boy to us and I’ll whip him into shape,” he said. “We don’t want him turning out like Matt.”
Matt stood mutely by my side. He didn’t seem fazed by what I saw as a pointed criticism. I had the sickening sense that Matt’s family, who knew him so much better than I did, had their own set of reservations about him as a parent. But was he so used to being considered problematic that he didn’t even react? Later, when I brought it up, he wouldn’t even remember the comment. Maybe he dismissed it as a bad joke from a relentless kidder. But Charlie’s words rang in my head. The mind always latches on to what it fears the most. Mine was a steel trap when it came to nuggets of negativity.
CHAPTER 7
Trailer Life
I NEEDED TO MOVE. I’d been in the same one-bedroom apartment in Oakland for six years. It was cute, with hardwood floors, pretty windows, and a tile fireplace, and the $1,000 rent wasn’t too bad, compared with other Bay Area rentals. But every year, the landlord raised it as much as the law allowed. He was the sleaziest man I’d ever met. Every time the plumbing backed up, which was frequently, he threatened to have the plumber use “the special camera” that would reveal whether that was my tampon that had clogged the pipes or something equally offensive from one of the other tenants in the building. He was a chauvinist. He double-talked with such dexterity that even when I’d steeled myself to stand up to him, he’d wear me down just by repeating the same lies. He was the Karl Rove of landlords. I despised him.
As a woman on her own, I had loved my little home and my funky neighborhood, but I couldn’t imagine bringing the baby home to either. The street was edgy. I’d come home one night to find a homeless woman sleeping on the landing next to my front door. I wasn’t thrilled with her encampment but I didn’t want to tell her to leave. She was there the next night as well, and I peeked out at her feeling all the requisite yuppie guilt. The third night, I came home around 2 A.M. to find her astride a man, in the full throes of ecstasy. I stepped over them, flew up the steps, and called the police. The bounds of my hospitality were not that broad.
I was on the ground floor, and the apartment above me had been home to many tenants during the six years I’d lived there. The people with soft treads and cats never stayed long. The people with heavy boots and little dogs that barked and televisions that droned all night—they stayed forever. The last group were drug dealers with a pit bull and a set of grow lights in the attic.
The stasis that had kept me there seemed representative of this whole uncertain period in my life. I kept waiting for something to come along to spur me out of there: a boyfriend, a marriage, a new job, moving back to Maine. At long last, here it was. Only it wasn’t someone who would alleviate the financial burden or invite me to share a mortgage. The baby simply needed a better home, and I was going to have to find him one. Buying was out of the question. Two-bedroom homes in the Bay Area were at least $700,000. Even if my father gave me some money and I cashed out my 401(k), the mortgage payments on the smallest of condos, a studio apartment even, would leave me with no wiggle room for day care. Or food.
I wasn’t frugal by nature and I’d only finished paying off my graduate school loans the year before. I lived paycheck to paycheck and didn’t even have the savings for a security deposit on a new rental. No single mother had surfaced from the ads I’d posted on Web sites for shared housing, at least not anyone I felt compatible with. What I needed was someone who would take me in for a month or two so that I could save some money for a security deposit. Plenty of my friends had houses, but they also had children and not that much square footage. Nor would they want to host my two middle-aged cats. Liza could have offered shelter, if John didn’t already have squatter’s rights on her spare room.
“And I don’t know if he’s ever going to leave,” she hissed as we opened his door one day that fall. We were looking for a bottle of wine—John was a wine salesman and he always had samples—but it was so dark, smelly, and crowded with clutter, we both drew back at the entryway. “Good God,” I said. “That’s my brother,” Liza said as she forged the sea of discarded clothing, rarely used photographic equipment, and stacks of cardboard boxes. “The messiest of my children. But I know there’s half a case of that Sancerre in here.”
She emerged triumphant a few minutes later, one bottle in hand, another tucked under her arm. “I’m calling these this month’s rent,” she said. “Are you going to have a glass? That’s allowed, right?”
“I allow it on principle,” I said. “I’m with the French on this. But I’d probably just throw it up.” Between worrying and nausea, I hadn’t been sleeping well, and the thought of anything that might knock me out was appealing. “On second thought, maybe just half a glass.”
“We’ll put an ice cube in it,” Liza said. “Don’t tell John. He’d be horrified.” She got out her favorite glasses, the etched ones with the square bases. We’d drunk out of them the night I’d gotten pregnant. That night was so indelibly printed on my mind that I even knew exactly what shoes and underwear I’d had on.
“So what are we going to do with you?” she asked. “You could move in next door. The Hovel always has vacancies. I’d be able to help you all the time. And it’s really quite sweet in there.”
The Hovel was the apartment building two doors down from Liza’s place. Her husband, Hugh, had been living there since they separated. It wasn’t a hovel, but that’s how he referred to it. He wasn’t happy about being banished from their flat.
“I’ve been thinking about the trailer,” I told her. “Kir and Sam’s trailer.”
She stared at me. “Arden’s trailer? Oh, honey. That seems extreme.”
Arden was Kir’s dad. He was a poet, an outdoorsman, and a man who had decided long ago that work was not for him. He was magical, a broad, tall man with a voice so warm it could melt away anyone’s bad mood. He was just the kind of father you wanted along on camping trips, on long car rides, at every holiday. He also had a sort of wanderlust that made him a challenge to house; sometimes he’d live with his former mother-in-law, sometimes he’d be on the road for weeks visiting friends. Kir wanted him to have a base, so she and Sam—the same Sam who had told me I’d be alone in that emotional landscape—bought him an Airstream trailer and installed it in their backyard in northern Marin. They parked it in a shady spot, and he settled right in. Then right around the time Kir was due to have her third child, she realized she hadn’t seen her father since the night before. She went down to the Airstream and found him on the floor, dead of a heart attack.
The trailer had sat mostly empty since then, with only a few weekend visitors making use of it here and there. It would be small, particularly for the cats, but as I resigned myself to my new complicated life, it seemed like the only sensible solution. The romantic part of me liked the idea of living where Arden had lived; h
e was the kind of man who would have absolutely celebrated my having a child out of wedlock. He would have laughed off all the impracticalities. He was a man who knew that love mattered most, and he’d passed that on to Kir.
Liza was superstitious. She thought my habit of taking walks in the graveyard near my house was weird, and here I was, proposing to take up residence in a trailer where a man had died. She looked at me with a combination of dismay and concern.
“It would just be for a couple of months,” I told her. “Until I’ve got some money together for a security deposit. I’ll be looking for an apartment the whole time I’m there.”
“I’ll give you money for a security deposit,” she said.
Kir had made the same offer when I’d asked about the trailer. I’d told her the same thing I told Liza: I didn’t want to start borrowing before I even had the baby. I’d lived so long on the margins of fiscal responsibility that I had big fears about what it would be like once he arrived. I had to get a grip on my finances immediately. Borrowing didn’t seem like the way to do it.
My goal was to spend two months in the trailer and move into my new place by January 1. The baby was due at the end of February. I told myself the two months would fly by, but it seemed like the ultimate lesson in humility: pregnant by a man I’d met in a bar and about to move into a trailer. Maybe there was an element of self-punishment in my decision, some sort of reflexive urge not just to swallow my bitter medicine, but to overdose on it. My father and family, the ones I feared would judge me the most, would have to see, through my willingness to embrace trailer living, that I was not going to become a burden to them.
KIR HAD DISCOVERED a desiccated rat carcass under the stove when she was getting the place ready for me, plus enough rat shit to indicate that this had not been the Airstream’s lone rodent occupant. She’d tried her best to air the place out, but it still held the stale scent of Arden’s Camel cigarettes, now mixed with a touch of dead rat. The day before I moved in, I went to Maiden Lane in San Francisco, where all the fanciest shops were, and walked into the Diptyque store. They sold French candles, the kind Liza always had in her house; she was the only person I knew who indulged in such extravagances. I sniffed candle after candle. They were heavenly. The shopgirl informed me, in her pretty accent, that they would burn for more than twenty heures. That might be enough to counter the eau de rat. I settled on one that smelled like the lilacs in my parents’ backyard and put it on my credit card. It cost $48. The inherent contradiction of the act was insane, but I told myself no one needed to know.