by Jancee Dunn
“I can’t,” I said out loud to the empty room. “I’ll call you back.”
“—Wait, your father is saying something. What? Jay, I can’t hear you, you’re mumbling. Your father says that maybe you’re out getting that caulking that he talked to you about. Well, we’re on our way to the spring flower show in Morristown and I thought I’d give you a call.” My folks had recently retired, and they hit every craft expo, antique fair, and flower show in New Jersey with a vengeance. Without a job, my father reached new levels of preparedness, so their car contained bottled water, energy bars, hand wipes, a roadside emergency kit with flares, books on tape, a coin dispenser, and two hand towels to use as makeshift bibs so that they could drive and eat without making a mess. And a handheld recording device so that he could speak into it when lightning struck about fixing the garage door. “Jay, you turn left here,” my mother was still saying. “I’m telling you. Look at the sign. Fine, do what you want. Well, honestly, I think I know how to read a map, and it says Route Eighty, right here.”
I sighed.
“So anyway, after this your father and I are going to see that movie about the detective. I forget the title. But it stars…who is that actress?” My father’s disembodied voice, faint in the background. “Jay. Jay. It is not Sally Field. No, it is not. We just saw the pre—”
Beep. End of message.
I had just started scrubbing when I heard another message, this time from Dinah. “I’ve got something important to tell you,” she said. “Call me, call me. I’m at the office.”
My curiosity got to me and I climbed unsteadily down from the ladder. I took the phone into the bathroom so I could pluck my eyebrows at the same time.
I called her at the office and she picked up on the first ring.
“Dine,” I said. I could hear some of her coworkers talking in the background.
“Oh, hi,” she said hurriedly. “Listen, can I call you right back? I have people in my office and I have to run into a meeting in ten minutes.”
I inspected my left eyebrow and plucked out a particularly stubborn hair. “Nope,” I said. I loved to do that to her.
“But—”
“Now’s really the best time for me,” I said. I always said that. Then I would wait for her to demand why, exactly, my time was so important, but she never did.
“What? Well, okay.” I heard her apologetically shoo some coworkers out of her office. (“It’s an important call…right…I’ll come and get you in a few minutes.”)
“So,” she said, a little thrill in her voice. “I’m pregnant. It’s early, and I might lose it, but at least I know I can get pregnant. I’m due in February. I kind of hope it’s a girl, but Patrick will take either.”
“As opposed to you? What are you going to do if it’s a boy? Leave it in a vacant lot?”
Dinah laughed. “No, no! I’ll take anything, too.”
My eyes brimmed with surprise tears. “Oh, Dine. That is the best news in the world.” Dinah was the most traditional of all of us, and she had always hoped for a life filled with family birthday parties and vacations at the beach, just as we’d had.
“This weekend we’re going to paint the baby room,” she said. “It’s too soon, but I want to do it anyway. Maybe in a green.”
“Green’s good,” I said. The tears kept coming. Fortunately, she was called into her meeting and she had to go.
Dinah always left in a flurry of good-byes. “Okay, then!” she said. “Talk to you soon! Good to hear from you! Keep in touch! Miss you!”
I heaved myself off the bed and grabbed a tissue. Why was I feeling so melancholy? I had long told her that I wasn’t a kid person, so it couldn’t be envy. Maybe it was that Dinah’s life had suddenly formed into a clear path. The whole family, including my folks, had their romantic lives locked up before they were of legal drinking age. I, meanwhile, didn’t know what the weekend held, but wasn’t that how I liked it? I had recently begun dating a p.r. hotshot who was witty and charming but wanted to keep things “loose,” which meant a lot of last-minute plans. I could never call him right now.
Sniffling, I searched for one of the takeout menus that the last tenant had left, and ordered a grilled cheese from the kids’ menu (it always had the best food) and a piece of chocolate cake. I was just splashing water on my face when the doorbell rang.
“How are you today?” the deliveryman said brightly. “Good! That will be ten dollars!” I handed him some cash and he bustled out. “Thank you, ma’am!” he called.
Ma’am? “I think you meant ‘miss,’” I called back, but he was already gone.
Dinah’s pregnancy seemed to touch off an epidemic of conception among my friends. The announcements arrived in waves from all over the tristate area. “Come see the baby,” said my high school friend Melissa, calling me one afternoon. Melissa was a fun-loving girl who drank her way through Boston College on a lacrosse scholarship. She did marketing for a hotel chain, commuting into the city from the suburban town of Summit. “Tyler’s so lively now, you’ll love him. I’ll make some lunch. And bring Tracy.”
Tracy was my closest friend from high school, a veteran from the days of Jersey Shore trips and basement parties and long afternoons of watching soap operas at my house while the other girls played sports. Now she was a stay-at-home mother of three daughters who lived in a large, immaculate house in Connecticut and ran a small catering business on the side. She hailed from a venerable old southern family in Augusta, Georgia, and knew how to wear pearls, and host twenty people for brunch, and write beautiful thank-you notes on creamy embossed stationery in her elegant hand. We lived through each other: If I was backstage at Ozzfest and felt myself cracking after my twelfth interview, I would call her to retreat into her genteel world of recipes and books and decorating, while she would phone me for celebrity gossip after a long day of hauling the kids to various lessons.
“Tracy,” I said. “Please come with me to see Melissa’s baby next weekend.”
“He’s four months old now, right?” said Tracy. She always knew the ages of every child. To me, they were small, medium, or large. “I just sent Melissa a selection of my favorite baby books. I love to do that. The second child gets a sterling silver picture frame. Sure, I’ll go with you. Hold on.” A small, reedy voice made a request in the background. “No. Elizabeth, we’re having dinner soon. I’ll be off the phone in two minutes. Stop bugging me. Go eat some M&M’s.”
“What’s for dinner?” I asked eagerly. I had vowed, as a single girl, to make myself balanced dinners, but I usually ended up eating a random collection of unrelated foods: a bowl of cereal, a handful of baked potato chips, five olives.
“One of my favorite menus,” she said. “Indonesian ginger chicken, which is luscious, curried couscous, and steamed haricots verts. And for dessert I’m making an apple galette. It’s fabulous because you can use Pillsbury roll-up pie crust to make the dough, so it’s a wonderful presentation without much effort.” I heard the comforting rattle of pots as she prepared dinner. “I’ve got my book club meeting next week and I haven’t even read the book because my parents are coming in from Augusta and I haven’t had time,” she said. “They’re so worried about the snow here in Connecticut. My father wonders how the plane is going to land in the bad weather, while my mother is dragging out a pair of heavy boots that she, quote, ‘once wore to Russia.’ How about you? Whom have you talked to lately?”
I told her about my encounter with a serene, relentlessly positive Tony Bennett, which took place in the home office of his New York apartment. I owned fifteen of his albums and had applauded wildly at many of his shows, so I was apprehensive. I would have been crushed if he had been brusque, or phony, or distant, or creepy, or depressed.
“Come in, come in,” he said, welcoming me with a beatific smile. He was drying a paintbrush with a cloth. “I was just painting. I usually wear a painting outfit and nice, cozy slippers.” I immediately lowered and softened my voice to match his. He bid me to have
a seat and I sank into a cream-colored wraparound couch. I relaxed instantly. He put a drink in my hand as music played softly in the background and the late-winter sky darkened to a lavender gray. A fluffy white dog jumped into my lap as snow began to fall, softly, gently, outside.
I petted the snoozing dog as Tony reminisced warmly about Irving Berlin and “the great Jimmy Durante” and his admiration for the crisp professionalism of Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin, who always wore ties and had great house bands on their shows. Tony’s every other word was “terrific” or “fantastic.” I wanted to spend the weekend drowsing on his couch. We could rent movies and play Scrabble, a bottle of Drambuie between us. After our interview, I told her, he sent me a bouquet of flowers, which I lovingly photographed.
“Well, he certainly sounds better than some of the hideous monsters that you interview,” said Tracy. “All those bad-mannered men.”
A week later, I met Tracy at the train station for our excursion to Melissa’s house. Despite her long trip from Connecticut, her white shirt was free of wrinkles. Tracy always reminded me of a camellia: fresh and coolly pale. “I signed the card from the both of us,” she said, carrying a large present decorated with ribbons the color of sugar almonds.
“You knew I’d forget to bring a gift,” I said.
“Well…,” she said, waving her hand in a tactful way. “I know you’re busy.”
Melissa’s husband, Daniel, picked us up at the station in his maroon minivan. Daniel was a good-natured banker with a flat Chicago accent and a propensity to sling his arm around whoever was near, a large, eager-to-please golden retriever, right down to the shedding.
“How is Melissa feeling?” asked Tracy. Melissa had apparently been in labor for thirty hours.
“Oh, she’s holding up great.” He laughed. “Tell you what, though, she was cursing me out in the delivery room. Tyler is a monster. A monster! He nearly split my wife in half!”
The traffic wasn’t moving. “Let’s go!” hollered Dan, pounding on his car horn, and the other cars jerked forward. Sometimes I love being with a giant, red-faced man.
I heard Tyler screaming as we pulled into the driveway. “Listen to the lungs on my little guy,” Daniel said happily.
“Melissa’s in the living room,” he said, guiding us inside the house. “Wait until you see his hands,” he announced. “Huge hands, huge feet. You’ve got to feel his grip.” Every single new father in the Western world feels compelled to talk about his newborn’s mighty grip and, if it’s a male, his giant feet.
Melissa’s sister, Sarah, grabbed my arm as I walked in the door. “Please don’t freak out when you see her eyes,” she murmured. “I know you get queasy.” While Daniel disappeared to fire up the grill for barbecue, Sarah led me over to Melissa, who was wearing one of Daniel’s tablecloth-sized T-shirts and smiling peacefully. The whites of her eyes were completely red. “I know, it’s bad,” she said cheerfully. “I was straining so hard that I guess I burst some blood vessels in my eyes.”
The volume of Tyler’s hollering increased. “You got here right in time for Tyler’s lunch,” she said, peeling back the baby blanket. “You can’t believe how often he wants to nurse.” Oh yes I could. He was enormous and rubbery-looking.
“It’s okay,” Melissa crooned, lifting up her T-shirt.
I watched as her boobs flopped out of her nursing bra. They had enormous brown nipples. I had seen her breasts many a time in high school as she changed outfits before parties, and they looked nothing like that. These nipples looked like molasses spice cookies. My hand involuntarily headed to my mouth before Tracy shot me a warning look. I caught myself and forced it back down to my side.
Melissa caught me gaping. “Funny, isn’t it?” she said, smiling wryly. “Some people think that the dark color is so that the baby can find your breast more easily, because they can’t see so well.”
I guess it is pretty funny when one of your body parts suddenly turns brown. Ha, ha!
She clamped Tyler onto one bosom and he began to gulp greedily, his translucent fingers pulsing softly like sea anemones.
Melissa’s voice turned high and singsongy. “You’re a hungry boy! Aren’t ya! Aren’t you a hungry, hungry boy! Yes, you are! Yes, you are! Sometimes you make my nipples bleed!” She grinned. “I can’t tell you how your heart opens up when you have a child.” Her eyes moistened with hormonal tears. “I just—I just can’t explain it.”
At that moment, Tyler’s eyes swiveled toward me as he guzzled away. Then they narrowed. I tried for levity. “Don’t worry,” I said to him, waving my can of diet soda that Daniel had given me. “I’ve got plenty to drink.” He continued to glare at me. Shouldn’t he be tenderly gazing at his mother?
“Was it scary, being in labor so long?” I ventured.
Melissa smirked at me. “Look, you don’t have to pretend like this is your thing. I know it isn’t. But yes, by the end of it, I was begging the doctor to end my life.” She shifted in her seat. “Ouch,” she said. “You know, they cut me. Down there. I have eighteen stitches.”
“And you have hemorrhoids,” her sister prompted.
“Oh, yes,” said Melissa, nodding vigorously. “Look out. Sometimes they don’t go away for a year. It feels like you’re constantly sitting on a pebble.”
“Mine took six months to go away,” said Sarah. They both looked at me expectantly. Was I supposed to share my own hemorrhoidal story?
Melissa brightened. “Hey, do you want to hold him?”
I must have looked alarmed because they both laughed. “Here,” she said, detaching Tyler and handing him over.
“I don’t know if this is a good idea,” I began, but Melissa had already deposited him into my stiff arms.
“Be sure and support his neck because his head wobbles,” she said. I pictured his head lolling, and then his neck snapping as I watched helplessly.
Tyler stared placidly at me. He was actually very cute, with rosy cheeks and a sweetly protruding upper lip.
“Take a sniff of his head,” Melissa prompted. “It’s the best baby smell.” I stayed locked into position.
“Look at how stilted she is,” she said to Tracy. I studied his face. Shouldn’t I be aflow with tender feelings? And why was he sweating so much? It was as if he had just returned from the gym. Was that normal?
All three women were staring at me, so I felt like I should do something spontaneous to prove that I liked kids and wasn’t a sociopath. I held him up over my head as I had seen people do in ads. He giggled and flapped his arms. It was sort of fun. I swung him up again.
“Blup,” he gurgled, and then a cascade of milk flowed into my face, with a few drips landing in my open, smiling mouth. Human milk. My friend Melissa’s milk. Melissa and Tracy scrambled for a tissue, laughing. “Whoops,” said Melissa, doing what I thought was a very half-baked job of wiping my face.
I was still holding a squirming Tyler. Suddenly he went rigid. “Is everything okay?” I said, startled.
“Oh, sure,” said Melissa. “He probably just has gas. He’s really gassy. Aren’t ya! Aren’t you the gassiest boy!”
Tyler’s eyes focused on a far-off point above my shoulder. Then he vibrated for a good five or six minutes. Pffffffffffft. Then he went slack. I handed him back to Melissa.
Dan came in the kitchen, clutching a barbecue fork, a driving rain of sweat soaking his T-shirt. “Need more marinade,” he muttered.
I ran for their guest bathroom and Tracy followed.
“Forty-five minutes and we’re out of here,” I said, splashing my face with water. “I will never get the taste of that milk out of my mouth. It was sweet, and warm.” I fought back a gag. “Spay me now.”
Tracy passed me a guest towel. “Listen, I know Melissa isn’t the person you know right now,” she said. “But when you have a newborn, everything is just turned upside down.” She put her hands on my shoulders. “I’m still the same. Okay? I had three children. Remember?”
I sighed. “I just
don’t get it. I don’t know why you would want your house to explode with plastic toys. And did you see Melissa’s eye bags?” I shuddered. “And why does every new mother love to tell you about the gory details? What was Sarah saying about a mucous plug? That was a new one to me.”
She hesitated. “Well, it falls out of you before your water breaks,” she said.
I opened Melissa’s medicine cabinet and rummaged around. Hm. Daniel suffered from jock itch, it would seem. And somebody had a buildup of excess earwax. I picked up a long tube. “What do you suppose this is for?”
Tracy calmly took it from my hands and put it back.
I faced her. “Why did you have kids?” I asked. I had never asked her before. I guess I just assumed that she would give me the same answer that my mother did, which went along the lines of I didn’t think about it too much, I just did it.
She smiled. “It sort of fit into my life plan,” she said. “I felt like I was destined to get married, work, and then be a stay-at-home mom. I wasn’t as career minded as you are and I’m very happy with that, settling into suburbia.” She shut the medicine cabinet. “I’ll be honest, you do lose a lot of brain cells, that’s one reason for not having kids.” She paused. “I’ve never considered myself to be one of those completely gushing over-the-top kinds of mothers, but without going all Jerry Maguire on you, there’s a completeness to the picture. It’s not for everyone. As Oprah says, being a stay-at-home mom is one of the hardest jobs in the world. But I really think you would be great at it.”
“No, I would not.”
“I wouldn’t tell you that if I didn’t mean it. You may not want to hear this, but you’re incredibly old-fashioned.” She shrugged. “You believe in your family so strongly, and you generally had a wonderful childhood, which is the cornerstone of being a good parent.” I looked at her fondly. Tracy, whose taste ran to Lilly Pulitzer and Ann Taylor but never batted an eye during my heavy-eyeliner phase, who never drank anything stronger than a cosmopolitan but tried not to judge as I checked various drugs off of my to-do list. We trusted each other implicitly.