by Mary F. Pols
“He’s quite successful,” she continued. “He lives outside of Boston with his wife. I was just at his wedding last summer.”
Well, I thought, at least it had taken him this long to find someone. Nancy could have stopped there, but she didn’t.
“His wife is just lovely,” she said. “He met her at our fifteenth college reunion. She’s pregnant already. And they’re having twins. She’s due this fall.”
I grabbed a roll and began buttering it lavishly. Don’t cry, you silly cow, I told myself. Who gives a shit if he’s happy? Nancy was still talking.
“You were quite devastated when he ended it with you, weren’t you?”
Did I ever like this woman? I picked my way through dinner and then, as soon as the cake was cut, slipped out the door. I’d brought the breast pump so that I could stay late, but all I wanted to do was go home and see Dolan. There were fireworks in downtown San Francisco for an outdoor music festival, and traffic was backed up. For an hour, I sat in the car, creeping along, feeling forlorn. It wasn’t as though I’d expected Peter to still be single. But the confirmation of his traditional married life was something else altogether. I couldn’t stop myself from juxtaposing it with my own situation. I’m sure he’d had hardship. But his life sounded so much closer to that Christmas card vision I’d wanted. Probably there were no trailers in his recent past. My life seemed infinitely less photogenic.
At home, I shed my tight skirt, stripped off my nursing bra, which felt—and looked—like a torture chamber for breasts, and got into my biggest pajamas. Then I peeked in at Dolan, stretched out in the crib with his arms above his head. The night-light bathed him in a soft, lemony glow. He was so gorgeous and so vividly there. I felt better just looking at him. I reached down and gathered him up, putting his head against my collarbone. He stirred, sighed, and relaxed against me. I loved the weight of him, his undeniable substance. I carried him into my room and put him on my bed.
I loved to watch him sleep, although in truth, I fell asleep much more quickly when he was in the crib. My love felt so overwhelming, I couldn’t get myself to quiet down about it; it was as if my heart were up on the roof of my soul, crowing about my beautiful boy, and the rest of me couldn’t relax with all the noise. I just wanted to look at him. If I’d ended up with Peter, maybe I would have had his children, maybe his twins. But I’d never have had this baby. I stroked those wisps of blond hair, remembering my mother stroking my hair under the grape arbor and all the pain I’d felt. Then the bad night and the bad times it had evoked receded. I was back in the present with the boy I was meant to have.
CHAPTER 12
Careers
IN THE MOVIE REVIEWING BUSINESS, you can fall behind in a week. Some of the critics I knew never missed a screening. I wondered when they saw friends, when they cooked themselves a nice dinner, when they read books. We didn’t say hi to one another as much as we checked one another’s agendas and probed for opinions. “Have you seen Super Size Me?” someone might ask. “God, have you seen the new Lars von Trier film?” Or “Are you going to the press conference for the San Francisco International Film Festival?” If you answer no three times in a row, it’s like saying, “I’m a part-timer, a mere dilettante.”
I’d been determined to keep the dilemmas of my personal life separate from my professional life. I feared the perception that I’d become a slacker at work once I became a mother. Or that I’d lose my analytical edge and turn into a gush machine, weeping over any movie that tugged at the heartstrings. The assumption always seemed to be that lactating made you lax. Full-time jobs as movie critics are few and far between, and not only did I not want to lose mine, I wanted to be considered for better jobs at better papers. Dolan and I were going to need the money. As a single mother, I figured I’d look less desirable as a potential employee, with the assumption being that I’d always be running off to pick up the kid from day care, calling in sick when he was sick, and saying no to working late, weekend screenings, and traveling for assignments. Pregnancy had already cost me one Sundance Film Festival, and breast-feeding would likely cost me a second.
New releases were usually screened for critics in San Francisco at one of a handful of theaters, including my favorite, a private screening room on Market Street. But getting there was a half-hour schlep on the train. If I drove I might spend an hour sitting on the Bay Bridge. I’d often go to a movie at night and have to write my review by noon the next day. Matt was willing to babysit when I had evening screenings, but Dolan was such an easy baby that I fantasized about taking him to some movies during the day, at least for the first few months. That could cut back on day care costs. I decided to do a test run while I was still on maternity leave.
Off we went to a press screening of De-Lovely, the Cole Porter story with Kevin Kline and Ashley Judd. For my first trip back to my former and future stomping grounds, I’d worn white jeans, a pair of hand-me-downs from Sara that fit fairly well. I knew most of the critics in the room. Some of them came to ooh and aah over Dolan before the movie began. He was about nine weeks old and doing a lot of smiling. I sat down next to an older woman I’d seen a lot, but didn’t know by name. She walked with a cane, which she had a habit of thrusting out with no regard for who might be standing in front of her. She was also a heavy breather. I figured anyone as physically irritating as she was couldn’t complain about having a baby next to her.
Twenty minutes into the movie, Dolan stirred and the big woman harrumphed in disapproval. I put him on the breast and he started to suckle, noisily, more noisily than he had ever done before. I put a blanket up around his head, trying to muffle the sound. He pushed it away. Then, three minutes into the feeding, his bowels emptied. Loudly. The big woman shifted in her seat. I decided to ignore the full diaper, but then I felt a telltale wetness on my jeans. I picked the baby up and scooted out into the lobby. I was slathered in poop.
I cleaned him up as best I could, going through most of my package of travel wipes. I was hopeless myself, the white jeans now marred with a yellowish brown on both legs. “Fuck,” I said. “Fuck fuck fuck.” I put him back on the breast and headed back into the theater. The big woman rumbled as we sat down again, but I wasn’t about to give up so easily. Yes, Matt had said he’d stay with Dolan while I was at night screenings. But what if he backed out? I didn’t have a choice between a career and motherhood; they had to work together. And selfishly? I just really wanted to see a movie.
Dolan kept eating. Then he paused, nipple in his mouth, and gave me a conspiratorial grin so wide I could see it in the dark, a Hey, whatcha doing? It was hard to be annoyed with him. I smiled back and stroked his cheek. Then he pooped again.
I whisked him back out to the lobby. As I changed his diaper, he started to cry. I knew how poorly the theater doors blocked out sound. I’d stalked out into the lobby myself on many an occasion to tell chitchatters to keep it down. I didn’t want to piss off the entire jury of my peers. I tried to silence Dolan with my pinkie. He twisted his head away, wise to that old trick. I looked around frantically. I had to go back for my coat. I hadn’t brought the stroller or car seat in with me from the parking garage, hoping to have less baggage to drag around for once. I could either carry him back in with me to the screening room or leave him wailing on the lobby floor. Then I remembered David’s office. David was the projectionist. I saw him three times a week and I knew he usually left his door open. It was ajar. I gave a soft knock. It was empty. Perfect. I put Dolan down on the floor and pulled the door shut and ran back into the theater for my stuff.
When I came back, I put my hand on the knob. It didn’t budge. I had locked my baby in an office I’d never even seen a key for. My crying baby. I ran back into the theater and leaped up the steps into the projectionist’s booth. The reel was flickering away in front of the light, making its old-fashioned racket. I loved that noise. It usually made my brain launch into a silent chorus of “Hooray for Hollywood.” This time I just scanned the room in a panic. No sign of D
avid. He might be out front smoking a cigarette. I ran out of the building. Not there. What if he was at lunch? What if the baby had rolled over and put his face in some electric socket? I raced back into the theater and up the steps of the projectionist’s booth. I opened the door again, letting out the click-clack, click-clack sound for all the other critics to hear. Behind me, there was a chorus of squeaks as people turned in their chairs to see what the fuss was.
Inside the booth, I saw a movement: David, the stealth projectionist, sitting in a corner.
“David,” I hissed. “I’ve locked my baby in your office. Can you please come open the door?”
He looked bemused when he walked out into the light of the lobby.
“How did your baby end up in my office?” he asked, reaching in his pocket for the key.
“He was crying,” I said lamely. “I was trying not to disturb everybody. I didn’t know the door would lock when I closed it.”
“Yeah,” he said, looking at me, deadpan. “It locks.”
When he opened the door, Dolan was lying just where I left him, on his blanket. He looked up, idly pumping his arms and legs. He had stopped crying. He was none the worse for wear.
“That’s your last press screening, Bunny,” I said, scooping him up.
SO I WOULD NOT be toting my child to screenings once I went back to work. Day care remained the most daunting part of this whole single-mother adventure. How would I pay for it? How would I find it? Given the horror stories I’d heard about waiting lists and all the terrible places your child could end up if you weren’t a discriminating day care shopper, I thought I was doomed to months of searching. Instead, I went on a popular East Bay parents’ network, posted a request to share a nanny, and had half a dozen responses by the next day.
This isn’t bad, I thought, reading through an e-mail from a woman named Cindy whose Laotian nanny had been taking care of her little girl Stella for six months, with no ill effects. They already did “share care” with another family, but they had room for a third parent to pick up twenty to twenty-four hours a week. Splitting the nanny’s fees came out to $8 an hour. Even with Matt chipping in (and I practically did a jig when he offered), I could barely cover the twenty to twenty-four hours a week that “share care” arrangement called for. But it was my best alternative. My boss at the paper had agreed to let me work Sunday through Thursday, so that on Sundays, Matt would be with the baby and I would write. I’d miss some Friday screenings, but that would be okay. That left me with ten work hours when I’d have to improvise, either by hoping the baby was napping so I could write, or working at night, after I came home from screenings. I thanked God I didn’t have an office job that required me to be there every day looking smart and professional in pantyhose and heels. I worked at home in yoga pants and old sweaters most of the time. After maternity leave, I would be going into the office only once a week.
Cindy and her husband, Tim, lived on the other side of the island, a little more than a mile away. They had a spacious old house, and the minute I walked through the door I thought, if my baby spends the day hanging out in digs like this, he’s never going to want to come home with me.
My other instantaneous reaction was that slim, pretty Cindy, an obvious type-A personality, would vet any prospective nanny within an inch of her life. I could coast on the coattails of her considerable research. I was learning one of the first rules of motherhood: make it easier on yourself whenever possible.
“I must have interviewed fifteen nannies,” she said with a cheerful grin. “And we had one that I fired because I wasn’t happy with her. So Ken has been great. She’s got four kids of her own, right, Tim? Or is it five?”
“Her English is pretty good,” Tim chimed in. “It’s not perfect, but we can definitely understand each other.”
“Yeah,” Cindy said. “I do get frustrated with her sometimes, but in general, I think she understands. She gets nervous about money, though. So if you meet her and like her, I think you’ll need to give her like a month’s pay in advance.”
Wow. Down payments on nannies. Who knew? I had heard the drill about holidays and vacation pay; just because you were paying in cash and there was no social security involved didn’t mean you could treat your nanny like crap. Ken wanted a week’s paid vacation and six holidays a year, including the Mien New Year.
“When’s that?” I asked.
“Sometime in February, I think,” Cindy said. “I’m not sure I want to agree to that, though. We didn’t do it this year, and since it’s not a holiday I get off from work, I’m not sure I want to give her that day off. Presidents’ Day makes sense.”
I nodded, overwhelmed. So much to negotiate. I was going to have my first employee, a complicated dynamic I did not particularly want to venture into. But if I was going to work, I was going to have to have someone working for me.
WHEN I WASN’T THINKING about my own career, I was fretting about Matt’s. He’d held on to that temp job for nine months now, but he hadn’t sought out anything more permanent, either at the bond trader or elsewhere. Every few weeks he’d mention that he needed to work on his résumé, and I’d offer to edit or proofread it, but nothing would come of it. I couldn’t understand why he was dragging his feet. Even slackers had fantasy jobs, didn’t they? It was almost as though he refused to believe that there was something else out there for him besides temping. Or maybe it was paralysis brought on by fear of failure.
When his mother came to meet her grandson, I decided to do some emotional reconnaissance.
“More tea, Katherine?” I asked.
She was staying with me. Matt had nowhere to put her up, and though we weren’t technically in-laws, I wanted to pay her at least that much respect. Even if we barely knew each other, conversationally we could always fall back on the two subjects we’d quickly established we agreed upon: the awfulness of the Bush administration and how amazing Dolan was. But first there were things I wanted to know about her mystifying son.
“How about some more toast?”
“Oh thank you no, I’m fine,” she said. She was holding Dolan and she was glowing.
“So,” I began. “I was wondering if Matt had talked to you about his job search?”
“No,” she said. “I’ve been waiting to see if he’d bring it up.”
As Liza was fond of saying, that’ll be the Eleventh of Never. I sipped my own tea. Dolan stirred. “Should I take him?” I said.
She smoothed his blanket. “There he goes,” she said with wonder. “Back to sleep. He’s so sweet.”
“Does he remind you of Matt?” I asked.
“Not really,” she said. “I don’t see much resemblance.”
She’d given me a photo album filled with pictures of Matt from babyhood through the Little League years. Even in the squalling infant, the adult Matt’s strong jawline and expression were visible. I saw none of that in Dolan, who was as round-faced as I was. But their bodies? Long and lean and proportionally identical.
“I can’t figure out what to think about Matt’s career path,” I continued. “Or lack thereof. It seems, since he’s been at this company for nine months, as if he could probably ask for something permanent. I just want him to have health insurance, something that will lead him somewhere.”
“Me too,” she said, reaching out for a piece of toast.
“I’m worried about how long he’s spent not working in the last few years,” I pushed on. “Why is that, do you suppose?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “He keeps saying it’s a bad market, that he moved out to San Francisco at the wrong time, just when the dot-com business was falling apart.”
Nice excuse, Matt. Except that he hadn’t come out to San Francisco seeking the dot-com dream, or any specific dream that I’d heard about. And there were always bartending and waitering jobs to be had while you planned your breakthrough. Finally I asked the question that had been eating away at me for months, the one that I feared was true.
“Do you th
ink he’s…lazy?” I asked.
Katherine answered right away. “No,” she said, pushing her plate away from her. “I don’t. When he was living at home and working at Home Depot, he worked long hours and he didn’t complain, and everyone there was very happy with him.”
She started to cry.
“I know people think I wasn’t tough enough with him,” she said. “But I tried. If I got mad at him about his schoolwork, that didn’t help. And when he was living at home, after college, I told him he was going to have to pay rent. Three hundred dollars or something like that. Just a contribution. Charlie and I agreed. I don’t think we ever actually asked for it, though. He was so insulted, so mad at us for asking.”
I felt guilty for upsetting her. But I also felt some grim despair on my own behalf. He’d been a problem kid, and now he was my problem. Also, there were times when I felt as though he were my kid now, like when he’d show up at BART with a sack of dirty laundry he planned on doing at my place. Or at the grocery store, where I always paid and where he had a habit of disappearing down the wine aisle and then returning with some $28 bottle of wine marked down to $20, a bargain he didn’t think we should pass up. He’d stand there with it, hovering over the basket, looking hopeful, and I’d remember myself at age eight, trying to persuade my mother that this was the day for the biannual purchasing of Frosted Flakes.
Maybe I could live with paying the tab at Safeway if when we got home he’d pop open that wine and then whip those groceries up into a sumptuous meal for me. But I had never met anyone who knew less about food and its preparation than Matt. He refused, entirely, to eat vegetables, although I was fairly certain he’d never tried any. This was the man I’d seen painstakingly pick a lettuce leaf off a cheeseburger, as if even a shred of it would cause him to spontaneously combust. Fruit he claimed to tolerate, but I’d seen evidence to the contrary just the day before when we’d taken Katherine on a picnic to celebrate Mother’s Day. We had deviled eggs, chicken breasts, and potato salad. I’d also dipped strawberries in melted chocolate and let them harden. I had handed one to Matt.