A Bump in the Road (29 page)

“
Wha
-at? What the hell do you want, Diane?”

“Totally listen to Clare speak!” They both stared at me, waiting for me to say something.

I stared back at them, amazed at how similar they looked. They were each dressed in long, tunic-style silky lingerie camisoles with lace trim and wide belts slung around their hips. Shimmery eye shadow, M.A.C. Lipglass, and hair flat-ironed so straight it swished when they walked.

“Um, I guess—,” I began.

“OH MY GOD!” they screamed in unison.

It was all I could take.

“I have to find my husband,” I said. I darted away before they could stop me.

I wandered around the house, past teenagers making out, looking for my departed husband. I finally located him in the basement, playing PS2 with three high school boys.

“Having fun?” I asked him sarcastically.

He didn’t even look away from
Grand Theft Auto
. “Yep. Hey, can you get me another beer?”

I ignored his request and attempted to engage him in conversation, but it became pretty clear he was way more interested in socializing with his video game partners than me. The scary part is if I were a blind person, and if all of their voices were the same level and baritone, I would’ve put money on the fact they were all the same age.

Hmmm . . . will have to do Google research re: when the male brain stops developing
.

I headed back upstairs to find Sam. I located her in the living room, whispering to her best friend Kristen.

“What are you guys doing?” I asked.

“Nothing. This guy we know totally has the clap, but whatever,” Kristen answered.

I sank down into one of my parents’ overstuffed armchairs.

“You’re not expecting any more people, right?” I asked.

Sam and Kristen exchanged glances.

“Right?” I repeated.

“Totally. There may be like, one or two more guys coming but they’re totally cool. You’ll heart them,” Sam said, avoiding my gaze.

“You know the rules, Sam. The second this gets out of hand or I get annoyed, I’m kicking everybody out. I’m pregnant, for chrissakes. This party is a gift,” I said.

No sooner did the words leave my mouth than the doorbell rang and five more guys stood on the front step. Kristen jumped up and let them in as I turned to give Sam a Look, but she was already bounding across the room. She energetically hugged each of the guys.

Two hours later, three of Sam’s friends cornered me again.

“OH MY GOD! WE’VE TOTALLY BEEN LOOKING FOR YOU! Diane, look at her ring. It is so beautiful!” The blond girl screamed—Diane, I assumed.

“Totally Tiffany, isn’t it?” Diane asked and held up my left hand for the other two girls to see. They collectively sighed.

“Your husband is hot!” brunette number one said.

“Totally tight,” brunette number two said.

I wasn’t completely aware of the meaning of “tight” but I assumed it was good, so I said, “Thanks.”

“Sam is so lucky to have you as a sister. My sister would never let me have a party,” brunette number one said as she rolled her eyes and flicked her hair over her shoulder.

“Sam says you have a totally awesome apartment. Do you love it?” Diane asked.

I thought,
Sam? Sam who? She can’t mean my sister Sam—the girl who’d rather show up for school without wearing any makeup than say anything nice to me
.

“Um, yeah. I
totally
love it. Sam said that?”

“Duh! She said you have like the coolest place ever and you guys are always going to parties and bars and stuff and you guys have a ton of friends and you’re going to have the coolest baby,” brunette number two said.

My sister? Said that? No, those girls must’ve inhaled too much nail polish remover and eyelash glue. There’s no way Sam would admit to another human being there’s something about me she actually admires.

“Sam told me that she hates my apartment. She thinks it’s too small.”

The girls looked stunned and then started giggling.

“What
ever
! You’re so funny!” Diane said.

“Oh my God, she said your wedding was the funnest wedding she’d ever been to and that your dress was amazing!”

Sam’s review of my wedding: “It was fine.”

I never thought she told her friends something different.

And she thought my dress was amazing? The first time we went dress shopping, she talked on her cell phone the whole time. The second time she told me the dress I liked was hideous and the third time we left before trying on any dresses because she kept whining about her hunger pains and how much she wanted to go home.

I’m sure at seventeen I would’ve felt the same way, but it still made me feel like crap.

“So, what do you do?” Diane asked.

“I’m an event planner and I also have a Web site on the side,” I said, suddenly uncomfortable.

“Event planning! How AMAZING! And a WEB SITE? That is so freaking cool! What’s the address?”

“It’s just clarefinnegan-dot-com.”

“Is it popular?”

“Yep, it was featured in a story in
The Daily Tribune
a few months ago.”

“OH MY GOD! So you’re like, FAMOUS!”

Before I could respond, I heard the sound of someone throwing up. I pushed past a bunch of people and found Kristen getting sick in the kitchen sink. Sam was standing next to her, flirting with some guy.

I grabbed her arm. “Aren’t you going to help her?”

She jerked her arm away. “NO! It’s totally gross and she’ll be fine.”

“Nice friend. It’s your responsibility to clean this up.”

She rolled her eyes at me and turned back to the guy.

So much for any warm fuzzy sister-to-sister moments.

An hour later nearly everyone left except for the people spending the night. Sam helped Kristen to bed and cleaned out the sink and Jake was still playing video games in the basement. I’m still thinking about what Sam’s friends told me. If she really thought those things about me, why wouldn’t she just tell me? Why was it so hard for her to just say something nice to me? I figured these were questions I’d never fully figure out the answers to, like why men feel it’s appropriate to adjust their balls in public. Or, I may get an answer, but it wouldn’t be a good one. If nothing else, at least now I have a little hope my sister and I can have a normal relationship. Like when people say friends are “close enough to be sisters” or “she’s like a sister to me.” Because right now, the word “sister” in my family stands for “Person Who Annoys the Living Shit out of You.”

We survived. An entire week with Sam and no one murdered each other, nor did they kill themselves.

Yesterday, I casually said to Sam, “Your friends told me some nice things you said about me.”

She shrugged her shoulders and opened the fridge without making eye contact. She grabbed a water bottle and took a big swig. Noticing me still watching her, she threw up her hands in exasperation as she slammed the water bottle down on the counter.

“
What?
”

“Nothing. It was just nice to hear you said those things.”

“whatever.” She turned on her heel and walked out of the kitchen.

I almost followed her and pushed the issue, but her cell phone rang and she bounded upstairs, chattering in staccato about someone named Jane Jankowski and her bad highlights.

Score: Sam 1, sisterhood bonding 0.

After our week spent as babysitters, Jake and I decided it was time to figure out arrangements for our own child. We got about two feet into the discussion before we realized we’d stepped into a minefield.

Day care. Nanny. Never once had I realized the intense debate/emotion/discomfort these words cause some people. Until this past week.

This week Jake and I began the dreaded search for acceptable child care for Mr. Skeletor. After I busted out the smelling salts and revived Jake from a dead faint when I told him the approximate cost, we began furiously researching options as to the best choice, a.k.a. the place least likely to kill our child.

We were able to quickly rule out one option: nanny. This would have been the most convenient option, but also the most expensive, like several hundred dollars a month more expensive. And while I don’t mind giving up my
InStyle
magazine subscription for child care costs, I’m thinking having no heat, electricity, or running water would put a damper on our lifestyle. So, we moved on.

The next option: a yuppie day care center. I saw an article about this place in the newspaper and read about how they teach your kid a foreign language and how there’s like a whole waterpark inside and everything. Of course, Mr. Skeletor won’t be able to speak in English yet, let alone Latin, and he probably won’t be going through a lazy river on an inner tube anytime soon, but I figure if they constructed stuff for older kids, they probably would be pretty good about changing the newborns’ diapers and feeding them and shit, right?

We toured the center and liked what we saw. It was pretty cool—an outdoor play area with swing set, basketball court, volleyball net, and some pretty awesome toys I think Jake would’ve played with if the center’s director wasn’t with us. The infants have their own room full of cribs to nap in and a separate room where they could play or run around or stare at the walls or do complex geometric algorithms in their heads or whatever infants do when they’re not sleeping.

All in all, we could actually see dropping Mr. Skeletor off there without a shred of guilt. Which means—how much and do you take American Express?

But alas, we wanted to check another place out: the home day care. We heard about this place from one of Jake’s coworkers who brought her kid there. We wanted to look at it because it is much, much cheaper than the yuppie day care place. And, being that we are never ones to make a major decision without researching our options, we drove over to check it out.

As we pulled up, the wheels in my head started turning:
It’s only five minutes from work, I could totally do this. And look at how cute this street is, it’s like a little neighborhood. And how adorable are those neighbor kids next door? Mr. Skeletor would totally have like a million friends
. And then we committed our first error—we got out of the car. As we were walking up to the cute white house with pretty marigolds in the front, the mom/babysitter/whoever of the kids next door opened the front door, leaned out, and yelled, “KIDS! I told you it was time to come inside. Get the
fuck
back in the house!” Jake and I stopped dead in our tracks, whirled around so quickly we nearly got whiplash, and drove our car away from that horrible, horrible place where people use the F word. (I know. Am hypocrite.) I reasoned at the yuppie day care, at least they would be saying the curse words in Spanish. So, we’re pretty sure Mr. Skeletor will be entering yuppie-ville in a few short months.

While the decision of where to send Mr. Skeletor was a pretty easy one, the fact that we’re sending him anywhere at all has not been well received by Jake’s family. Apparently, every time we mentioned the words “day care” or “maternity leave,” they thought we really

weren’t serious and I’d stop being a crazy feminist and just make the decision to stay home already. Marianne reasoned, “Kids in day care are usually much less well behaved than ones whose mothers stay at home since they aren’t disciplined well.” That argument might’ve worked if I hadn’t heard the story about Jake and Doug setting their neighbor’s garage on fire when they were in grade school. Sorry, I don’t buy that one.

I’ve also heard, “I think children should be raised by their parents and not a day care worker or nanny,” from Natalie.

So I asked her, “OK, that’s fine. Are you planning to homeschool your children, too?”

“No,” she said tersely.

“No? Oh, well, I don’t want my kids to be ‘raised’ by a schoolteacher so I’m keeping them home all day, every day, only with me.”

I don’t think she understood the sarcasm.

Plus, let’s get serious. When they all said they think one parent should stay home to take care of Skeletor, they weren’t really talking about Jake, were they?