Momfriends (2 page)

“Well, she would happily do it again and so would my sister. And there is always Amanda. ”

I sat up in bed, pulling Naomi up as gently as I could. “Your niece is seventeen, she’s not going to be able to babysit during school days, which is when I work. Need I remind you that your mom told me that your father thought I was turning Sage into a sissy.”

“Take it easy, I just think we could use the extra dough.” He looked down at his hands. Speaking of dough, his fingernails were caked with it. I loved the smell of him since he started working for the bakery. He smelled warm and comforting like the rolls. But I knew that part of him hated everything about it. He had rejected the family business all his life, but he started working there when I had Julissa to help make ends meet. It was supposed to be temporary. We thought he was going to be able to quit when my photo business took off and then I got pregnant with Naomi.

I touched his back with my foot. “You look tired, D.”

“I am tired.” He rubbed his eyes for a minute and scratched his dark beard. It reminded me of the first night we slept together back in art school. We had spent the night walking around campus and talking about what we wanted to do, who we wanted to be. That night when I asked him if he was tired he rubbed his eyes, but smiled a wicked smile, scratched his beard and said no he wasn’t tired. He had a lot more life in him, he said. He sure did.

Now at the foot of our bed, he straightened up and arched his back, stretching. “Speaking of Sage, though, do we think this gay thing should be encouraged?”

Sometimes, I hear the wrong thing when someone isn’t looking directly at me, so I have this habit of pausing before I respond while I try to make sure I have figured out any potential words they might have uttered. It’s saved me a ton of embarrassment. I couldn’t believe that David would refer to our son as having a gay thing.

“Excuse me, David, I didn’t hear you. Look at me, so I can hear better.”

David turned and I could see him backtrack a little. “I’m not sure how I feel about the baby doll or the nail polish.”

“It’s a phase,” I said. Lately Sage had been gravitating to more feminine things, like Julissa’s old bathing suit. He wanted to play with the toys Julissa had. He wanted to wear her dresses. I thought it was the result of spending time with two sisters and me. “You always said that what’s good for Jules would be good for him. Should I start buying him trucks and guns to make our three-year-old more of a boy?”

“Kirsten, don’t get pissy. You know, he isn’t a baby anymore; we don’t need to baby him. Look, I’m not saying anything except keep in mind that he’s going to go to a public school soon enough—”

“In two years.”

“—and we don’t want kids to make fun of him.”

“Kids always make fun of something. We were made fun of.”

“True, but it hurt. I don’t want that for him.”

“Are we so afraid of difference all the sudden? Have you been hanging out with the macho bakers a bit too much? Have you been talking to your dad?”

David stood up from the bed. I could see he was angry.

“Kirsten, sometimes you are impossible to talk to. You just don’t listen, even when I know you can hear me. I don’t want Sage to be the example of how relaxed we are.”

He looked at himself in the mirror over the dresser. He twisted his neck from side to side and seemed disappointed with his reflection.

“Honestly, Kirsten,” he said, looking right at me to make sure I heard him. “You need to investigate getting some more work. I can’t do it alone. This is not what I wanted.”

I didn’t say anything. I had heard him all right, but I couldn’t tell if he meant
this
as his job or
this
as the whole thing, the kids, this life, us. I wasn’t sure I wanted him to clarify.

“Also, I think we should move him into the studio when we get Naomi out of our room. I don’t know if it’s a good idea that he and Jules share a room.” He was full of ideas this morning.

“Into the studio? But where are we supposed to have a studio? Where do we work?”

“I was thinking we would put a desk for your computer in the living room and stash your gear in the hall closet.”

“I don’t want to be battling children when I am trying to get stuff done. Especially if I am going to be doing the business again. I don’t want all my hundreds of dollars of lenses to get mixed up with the diaper bags,” I said. I couldn’t believe he was so disturbed by Sage that he was going to take my studio, my safe haven away. “And what about all your stuff? Where are all your sculptures going to go? Where are you going to do them?”

“I could stash some things at my dad’s. I could also stand to purge. And in case you haven’t noticed I haven’t been making much lately.”

I didn’t say anything. Of course I had noticed. I thought he was going through a dry spell. I kept waiting for him to talk to me about it, but he wasn’t.

“You know, I got to get to work,” he said. He kissed the top of my head and I smiled, out of habit.

I heard him stop in the kids’ room to kiss them on his way out. Usually, I found that endearing, but today was going to be one of those days where everything he did pissed me off. He was probably going to wake up the kids with his scraggly beard and then everyone would be in my bed.

Naomi was done nursing and let my nipple out of her mouth.

I rolled onto my side, making a little more space between us, but not completely letting go of her. I thought back to that first night with David in art school and how perfect he had seemed. I thought of how he made me laugh when I was nine centimeters dilated with Julissa and how calm and composed he had been when we had Sage at home. My family had learned to stop asking when we were going to make it official, but to us marriage didn’t matter. I knew he loved me and I loved him. And the way we defined love was something I didn’t think a lot of people experienced. I didn’t need to have a piece of paper. It was deeper with David.

In the beginning of our relationship we were together all the time, working on our art, scrimping by, dining by candlelight to save on electricity and occasionally exploring the cheap restaurants in all corners of the city. We lived in a giant illegal loft in Williamsburg, Brooklyn,
before
everyone decided it was cool. It was our space, our haven. All we did was talk and when we were silent it was because we were creating something. For him it was sculpture and for me it was photography and photo illustration. Whenever I was around him there was this crazy frenetic creativity that inspired me, that challenged me.

And then along came Jules and we loved her. She completed our little family. We kept doing all the things we were doing. We kept creating. We had a couple of shows that went well. We sold a few pieces. We talked about buying a barn upstate so David could have more room to use bigger materials for his sculpture. I don’t know why we didn’t do it. Eventually our building got condemned and we had to move to Boerum Hill in Brooklyn. Most of our friends moved out west or up north. David started occasionally working for his dad here and there. I hated being away from him. It was ridiculous how much I missed him when we weren’t together. The nights he came back from work, the three of us lay in bed together breathing in the scent of the bakery.

“I have to do this,” he said. “I hate it, but it’s worth it for the family.”

“It’s a sacrifice,” I agreed, “We are sacrificing our time together. But I appreciate it.”

“The most important thing to me is that
we
raise these kids.”

“We will.” I vowed. I believed we could keep it up, our creativity, our way of being without needing anyone but us. We were a family and we defined that.

And then Sage came along. He fit right in to our family too. We didn’t have the space we had in Williamsburg and it was a lot smaller with two kids, but we managed. David accepted a part-time position from his father. I still hated when he left the apartment, but with two I had less time to be sad about it.

David was sad, though. More than anything he wanted to be there. Throughout our whole history David and I had always been equals. Now one of us was the child rearer and one of us was literally the bread maker. So I had an idea, just for fun I went up to moms in Prospect Park and The Botanic Gardens and told them I would love to photograph their kids. I designed cards to make it seem legit and believe it or not, I got jobs. Women come to Brooklyn like salmon to spawn. And they need proof. They loved my work and passed the word along. I was popular with all the new moms. My photos were on birth announcements and first birthday invites. It was perfect.

David could work less and be a part of the kids’ lives. And to me, it seemed like easy money. I loved kids and photography and the job was a good one. I felt so lucky. I was contributing and sacrificing for the family.

And then I got pregnant again. We always said we wanted to fill up a van with kids, but we didn’t expect it all to happen so fast.

Now it was time to start again. I had taken time off with Naomi, but David was right, enough was enough. Seven months. But this time I dreaded the thought of working; going to other people’s houses and making their kids laugh. It was such easy money. It was much easier for me to do than it was for David to go and work for his dad. So why was I dreading it?

I wanted to believe that it was because I was selfish, that I wanted to spend time with my own children. And that was it, but only partly.

I first picked up a camera when I was twelve at a summer arts camp. I remember walking around the woods, stopping and snapping pictures. I took my time and then I brought the film back to the dark room to be developed. The moment, that first moment where the picture started to appear was magic. That’s where I returned every waking minute I wasn’t shooting pictures. I loved the smell of the dark room chemicals on my hands. It was sensory in a way that, maybe because of my bum ear, nothing ever had been. That year when I returned home I found old pictures of my grandmother and collaged them with new ones I took. I wrote snippets of her life story along the side. I spent weeks on that project until it was perfect. It was hanging up in our living room now. I loved photography, but right out of art school I shirked staff jobs I could have gotten for magazines or advertising. I would freelance when I needed to pay bills, but what I really wanted was to make art.

But when I had kids, I couldn’t afford to be as choosy. Taking pictures of other peoples’ kids wasn’t art. It was survival. I knew that I couldn’t have both, but I didn’t know how to let the dream go. David was apparently happy to let his dream go. It didn’t bother him that we might lose our creative space. And that comment about Sage’s gay thing? It was as if we were speaking two different languages.

“Looks like you got almost a full house,” I heard above me, pulling me out of my concerns and back to the park. I looked up to see Victoria, one my neighborhood clients. I smiled.

“Yeah, we’re picking Julissa up at preschool in a little while. Hi, Zachary,” I said to the toddler in the stroller.

“Zach, say hi,” his mother said. Zach didn’t respond. “You know he won’t always say hi.”

“That’s okay,” I said, lightly. “I don’t take it personally.”

“He can say hi,” she said, defensively. She looked disappointed. She sat down next to me. Here we go. “That’s so great that you can nurse out here. I could never do it in public.”

I got this a lot. In Park Slope women were rumored to walk around topless with children attached to their breast, but here, less than a mile away, my discreet nursing was sometimes met with confusion. I put the dumb smile back on. This was the smile that I liked to call the crunchy one; I pulled it out whenever any of the moms I’ve worked for said something that I found to be a secret dig. I preferred to have them think that I was just the flakey artsy type than actually listening. I was sure more comments would come when she noticed Sage’s bathing suit. Sure enough.

“Wow, Sage, that’s quite an outfit,” she said smiling.

“Thank you,” Sage said sincerely. I felt a pang in my chest. He ran off to the jungle gym.

I felt Victoria looking at me waiting for me to explain. Instead I made cooing faces at Naomi as I burped her. I was trying to decide whether or not I should engage Victoria and Zachary so that I could potentially get some more business and placate David.

“My nephew Jimmy went through this period where he loved Dora,” she said after a minute. “He kept saying that thing she says, you know in Spanish. What does she say?”

“I have no idea.” I really didn’t know. I never got pop culture references.

“Oh, you mean your older daughter never got into Dora’s show?”

“Nope,” I said. On a different day, I might add that we didn’t use TV as a babysitter in our house, but that was something David said when he was gloating and people were a lot easier on things a dad says than a mom.

“That’s great, she’s so super popular. You wouldn’t believe it.”

“I know, I’ve seen the merchandise.”

“Anyhoo, my nephew wanted to have a Dora party for his third birthday, but his dad freaked out. He wound up doing
Cars
.”

“That’s too bad,” I said. I meant it, poor kid. I wanted to get off the topic of dads not supporting their sons. I wanted Victoria to stop talking to me and leave me alone to quietly play with my daughter. I wasn’t sure I was ready to network just yet.

“I think it’s great that you let Sage do his own thing.”

“Thanks,” I said. I wished someone would call my cell phone. Or even Sage could fall and skin his knee. No major injury just a little boo-boo, anything to get out of this silly small talk. I wanted to collect my thoughts quietly. I wanted to slow myself and my mind down.

“What’s Naomi up to these days?” Victoria asked. My daughter was seven months old. On a good day she shat her pants and didn’t spit up.

“Oh, you know, the usual baby stuff. Life is good.”

“Is she crawling yet?”

“Nope, we’re only sitting up.”

“Zachary was a late crawler too.” Too? “He did the backward thing for so long and then one day he finally decided to do it. Now we’re waiting for him to walk, fifteen months and he’s still hanging on.”