Motherhood Made a Man Out of Me (12 page)

“It's really a fun biological adventure,” Mary Rose said to a ceramist who inquired when she was due. “Like a unit in high school science. They could have girls that get pregnant use their own pregnancies as a point of departure for the study of human physiology. Did you know, for example, that the uterus is the most
powerful muscle in the entire human body, capable of pushing fifty pounds on its
own
?”

“I, I didn't, actually,” said the ceramist, clearly not a member of the sorority, nor likely to be one in the near future.

“And the placenta? It can weigh up to three pounds! I imagined it looked kind of like a very red beret, or a huge piece of liver, but Brooke here says it's like a hubcap. When it's delivered the doctor has to hold it with two hands it's so huge. Then he drops it in an aluminum pan like you'd cook a roast in.”

“Ugh.” The ceramist moved away with her tiny plate.

“You have to sign a release form for the hospital to dispose of it. Just like it was any other organ. Some people think it has great nutritional value, so they take it home.” Mary Rose was not so socially backward as to presume this was normal cocktail party chat. I don't think she cared. I think she thought maybe she was being outré. These were artists, after all.

What she failed to comprehend was that she was being outré in a manner unacceptable to the hipoisie. You could dine out on a really good butt-fucking joke, but mention cracked nipples in conjunction with breast-feeding and everyone moves to another part of the room.

“No way,” said the girlfriend of an advertising account executive whom Ward had come to the party especially to smarm up. The girlfriend had caught the end of the placenta remark.

“They don't—” she said.

“Eat it,” said Mary Rose. “They do.”

“Mary Rose, Jesus,” said Ward, making a face.

“It's interesting,” said Mary Rose. “What's your problem?”

Ward said nothing, steered clear of the IndoMex buffet for the rest of the evening, preferring to suffer conversation in a corner with a young fan trying to get into commercial directing. I caught part of this conversation and knew it well. The young fan's method was not to ask Ward point-blank whether Ward could help him, but to talk about Ward's work as if it were poetry in motion, and even though Ward secretly thought it
was
poetry in
motion, hearing it from an inexpert young sycophant was torturous.

Ward kept glancing over at Mary Rose, chattering away in her big bright clothes, bumping people with her stupendous belly while simultaneously grossing them out. I wonder, looking back, if this was the moment he gave up on her. Why wouldn't she shut up? Certainly her doctor must see that she wasn't quite right. Her anxiety over the really very routine amniocentesis, her refusal to stay with him on the houseboat, her utter lack of interest in the progress he was making in his divorce, and now this, her yammering so inappropriately.

Mary Rose excused herself and went in search of the bathroom. It was communal, shared with another animator who rented the space next door. The room had originally been used for storage. A toilet had been tucked into the corner, a roll of paper slung on the end of the plunger. The seat was very cold.

As to what happened next, I know only what Mary Rose told me.

The animator's bread and butter was a popular children's show. Piled in the corner of the storage room-cum-bathroom was a collection of interesting junk that might appear together in a Magritte: a snow tire, a five-foot plastic red chili pepper, piles of old telephone receivers, a green snarl of tinsel, a papier-mâché model of Mt. St. Helens.

The volcano was unattached to its base, a slab of plywood covered with small trees made from pipe cleaners. Mary Rose picked it up and looked through the hole at the top. She rested it on the top of her belly, and it put her in mind of the cellist's megaphone from the In Uteroversity.

“Yo, He-bean …” Then she couldn't think of anything to say, which made her giggle. She was in a silly mood, you understand. Just goofing around.

On the shelf above the volcano model, near a pair of high heels covered with red rhinestones, was a gaggle of cleaning supplies.
There was no Bon Ami, but there was Comet, which Mary Rose had yet to try.

“Try this on for size, Bean,” she said into the volcano, the base still propped on her belly. She tipped her head back and sprinkled some on her tongue.

“Hmm.” She slid her teeth back and forth, testing for grittiness.

The next thing that happened is the kind of evidence I use when arguing with my friends about the existence of God. If the world was run by blind fate and simple luck, there would not be the sort of staggering coincidences that befall us, which could only have been delivered by someone of superior intelligence with a taste for the practical joke.

At that moment Ward walked in. Then promptly freaked. He threw himself at Mary Rose, landing on her naked thighs—for she was sitting on the toilet while talking through the volcano to the He-Bean and eating her Comet—grabbed the can of Comet and hurled it away as if it were a grenade.

He had followed her to the bathroom, in hopes of having a word with her. In hopes of convincing her, in the most diplomatic way possible, to find another topic of conversation. Instead, he found her trying to commit suicide, talking loudly to herself through the crater of a papier-mâché volcano. Or so he thought.

“What are you doing to our daughter!” he shouted.

Mary Rose stared.

“If you want to kill yourself, do me a favor and at least wait until she's born.”

Mary Rose stared.

“I want you to see someone, a psychiatrist. It isn't normal. Your behavior.”

“Ward, where do you get this ‘she's'?”

“Oh God, oh God.” Ward leaned against the wall, slid down the wall so he was sitting on his haunches. He snatched the toilet paper from its perch on the plunger and began hitting his forehead with it.

“You know?” whispered Mary Rose. “How do you know? You don't know.”

“How many lesbians does it take to change a light bulb?”

“Ward,
STOP IT
!”

“Mom called. My mother called, okay? She said she was you, and that you decided you wanted to know after all. Then, once she found out, she couldn't keep it a secret. You weren't supposed to know. She was going to buy you mint green and lavender. She'd hide all the pink shit until after the baby was born.”

“You're insane.”

“You were the one in here eating scouring powder.”

“You should be arrested. All you Barons.”

“What ‘all you Barons'? What's that supposed to mean?”

“You're the kind who conquers indigenous tribes and strips them of their natural resources.”

“You don't know what you're talking about. We're Democrats and always have been.”

“You've been on me since day one and I'm sick of it. If there was a way you could buy me, you would. We should forget pretending we feel anything for each other and I should make you sign a lease on my uterus.”

“That's disgusting.”

“It's true. You Barons are perfect candidates for getting some poor fertile woman to be a surrogate mother, except it would ruin what you like to think of as your reputation as a fine old family. Well, let me tell you, I'm having this baby and I'm having it alone.”

Ward snorted. “It would take more than that to ruin our reputation.”

He was right. It would.

And it did.

8.

MARY ROSE STOOD AT THE RECEPTIONIST'S DESK AT THE
Cascade Women's Clinic, trying not to shout. It was the Monday after the party. She demanded to see her file. She wanted to see the double X's with her own eyes.

The increased circulation of pregnancy had had an odd effect on Mary Rose's normally thick straight hair; it now grew in corrugated waves. In an effort to control the uncontrollable, she'd had it cut chin-length by a hair salon run like a drop-in shelter: open twenty-four hours a day, no appointments necessary, ten bucks a head.

As a result, Mary Rose had spent the past few mornings in front of the mirror trying to fix what she supposed was simply a lousy cut. Her dark blond hair got shorter and shorter. She now looked as if her hair was cut by a peasant mother of the Middle Ages, determined to rid her child of head lice.

The other women in the waiting room were round and serene as wrens.

“I just want to know who gave out this kind of information over the phone,” said Mary Rose. She waved her file in what she supposed was a threatening manner. Several receptionists swam behind the wide desk, darting here and there on their steno chairs. They shrugged their narrow shoulders, avoided Mary Rose's gaze. When Mary Rose asked to see Dr. Vertamini they said she was at the hospital on Mondays, as was her nurse.

“I am not some lunatic trying to get in to see the president,” shouted Mary Rose. “I just want to talk to my doctor.”

If there was one thing worse than a lunatic demanding to see the president, it was a pregnant lunatic demanding anything.

It's impossible to unknow what you already know, impossible to resnag innocence. We have children for this exact reason. To reexperience innocence, albeit vicariously.

Mary Rose wept all the way home. She wanted to pretend the bean was still a He, but she could not. She knew what she knew, she saw what she saw. XX. Crossed snakes. Longer than any other chromosomes.

Mary Rose wanted a boy. All women do. We want boys in order to spare them the misery of being female, even though we know in our hearts that girls are better. We know girls are better, and spoil our boys because, poor them, they are not girls. It is all very complicated.

When Mary Rose got home she sat down at her kitchen table with a cup of chamomile tea and tried to make a list. Mary Rose disliked tea, but sitting down with a cup of it made her feel sane. Every time she leaned forward to write, she hit her belly. When she hit it, she felt her uterus contract slightly, like some helpless sea thing marooned in a tide pool that was the popular site of grammar school field trips.

She let her tea bag drift until the tea was cold.

The list—why she was glad her bean was a girl after all, read as follows:

Stella.

Girls are easier.

If you give a 2-year-old girl a telephone she will pretend to have a conversation. If you give a 2-year-old boy a telephone he'll hit you over the head with it.

Girls are more fun to dress. Like I care.

With boys you worry about prison and AIDS. With girls you only worry about pregnancy (only!) and AIDS.

Mary Rose remained unconvinced. She laid her head on the table.

For the past two weeks she had been feeling as if she just might survive pregnancy after all. Silly her, supposing she had a grip on the situation, simply because she had passed the hurdles of the first trimester and the amniocentesis. Even the craving for Bon Ami had mercifully passed.

For no reason at all she suddenly remembered something she had read in a magazine. Studies had shown that fathers of sons were less likely to abandon their families than fathers of daughters; fathers of sons felt more compelled to make an effort to keep a marriage together. That Mary Rose and Ward were not married, and that she had technically done the abandoning—all weekend long she had refused to pick up when Ward called, except once to say, “Don't call me again, you weasel”—did nothing to alleviate what this study implied: Even in this day and age, sons, not daughters, commanded more respect from their fathers.

Mary Rose rubbed the sides of her belly, which was supposed to reassure the fetus. Of what, Mary Rose didn't know. Being a six-month-old fetus in utero was already the cushiest set-up she could imagine.

Suddenly, Mary Rose heard what sounded like popcorn popping in the distance. Outside, it was hailing. She gazed out the window to see what looked like bits of gray beach glass bouncing off the driveway below.

Spring in our part of the country is not lusty but indecisive. All week there had been sleet, hail, freezing rain, sometimes in combination, sometimes mixed with snow. Sleet is rain freezing into pellets of ice as it falls; freezing rain is rain freezing as it hits the ground; hail is precipitation that starts as ice pellets and ends as ice pellets. Mary Rose was the kind of woman who knew such things. What came down now was a confused mix of all three. Then the sun came out, and it was quite warm.

Then Mary Rose heard something she had not heard in weeks: the slam of the front door, followed by footfalls, the rattling
of a key in the lock of Mrs. Wanamaker's apartment, or what she continued to think of as Mrs. Wanamaker's apartment.

She got up and went to her front door, where she pushed aside the batik cloth hanging over the glass panes. For a minute there was nothing, then a small man, middle-aged, in an expensive green field parka came from Mrs. Wanamaker's apartment, leaving the front door ajar behind him.

She flung open her own door and went downstairs …

Where she ran into Dicky Baron. He was wearing red sweatpants and a pair of huge white shoes with the laces unlaced. In his arms was a box of other big shoes, a roll of aluminum foil, and some mail.

“Ward's not here,” said Mary Rose. It was the first thing that came to mind.

“I didn't think he would be. It's the middle of the day and he's got to be out moving and shaking and making his shitty television commercials.”

“What can I help you with?”

“Nothing, M. R. I'm here to help
you.
I'm the new landlord.”

At that moment Martin Baadenbaum, the man in the green parka, trudged up behind Dicky. Remember Martin? The South African gynecologist? In his arms was a box of new pots and pans. White V's of spittle crouched in the corners of his mouth. “This weather is right schizophrenic! And who are you?”

“I live upstairs,” said Mary Rose.

Martin put down the box, wiped his hands on his pockets, and took Mary Rose's hand in both of his. “I'd say you've got about seven more weeks left. Too bad there's not some office pool I could get in on.”

“Seven weeks of what?”

“Before the baby! I've delivered thousands in my time, so I know what I'm talking about. I like the looks of you. Here's some free advice: Do everything you want to do while you still have time to yourself. Especially activities which involve sitting for long periods
of time in quiet places. Go to the library, the movies, church. Your life will never again be the same.”

“It's actually more like twelve weeks,” said Mary Rose.

“This place is really a dump,” said Dicky. “I think we need some new tile in the kitchen. Some of that nice Italian stuff. And the dog smell. That's gotta go. I wonder if you get an exterminator for that, or what.”

Mary Rose still was having trouble accepting that it was not this nice man with the warm hands but Ward's brother, Dicky Baron, moving into the bottom unit. Our city is small, but not that small. This was surely an impossible coincidence.

“Dicky, what are you doing here? I mean, what are you
doing
here?”

“Big Hank bought the building,” said Dicky.

“Big Hank bought
this
building?” Mary Rose couldn't believe it.

“Its grandfather.” Dicky tapped at her belly. His grin was just this side of jeering. They were nearly the same height, Dicky and Mary Rose, and by this time probably close to the same weight. Without thinking Mary Rose gave him a shove.

“Didn't that interfering cunt of a mother of yours ever teach you that pointing is rude? Anyway, it's not an ‘it,' it's a ‘she.'”

Mary Rose, tipping the scales at two-hundred-something stomped back upstairs in her size 11 wooden clogs and hurled her front door shut. The windows in the front hall rattled, and the air that whooshed down the stairwell blew the hair from the foreheads of Dicky and Martin Baadenbaum and blasted through the mail slots, blowing open the metal flaps on the outside, which then slammed shut,
bang bang bang.
Dicky and Martin were alarmed, unnerved. They were then filled with distaste. Mary Rose wasn't a dragon lady, she was just a dragon. And Mary Rose knew they thought this. And it bothered her.

She had no sooner flipped the deadbolt on her door when she began to feel terrible. It wasn't Dicky's fault his father had
chosen this property, of all the rental properties available in our city, to buy.

And worse, she had called Audra a cunt. Mary Rose didn't think she'd ever used that word aloud in her entire life. She didn't believe in that word. Suddenly, her hands flew to the sides of her belly. She hoped the She-bean was asleep. She wondered if fetuses had the same ears for profanity that children did. Tell a child to eat his peas and he looks at you like you're speaking Farsi. Say
shit
when he hoists the bowl off his tray and that will be the very next word out of his mouth.

Mary Rose called me to commiserate. “They're trying to drive me around the bend,” she said.

“Who?”

“Big Hank bought my building. Dicky's moving in downstairs.”

“Icky Dicky?”

“It gets worse. He touched my belly, that tap like you're public property—”

“I know that tap—”

“And I called Audra an interfering C-U-N-T.”

“Wait, I missed something here. Dicky—”

“I'm still furious that Audra called the clinic about the baby's gender. I took it out on Dicky. He's never done anything to me.”

“I wouldn't worry about it,” I said. “Dicky's the most self-absorbed person I've ever known. It probably didn't even register.”

“I called his mother a
cunt,
Brooke.”

“Just forget it,” I said.

“One day someone will tell my child I'm a C-U-N-T and I would like to think that that someone would have the decency to apologize.”

“I'm telling you, just let it go. Apologize if you feel the need, but don't worry about it.”

“You're always saying that.”

“There's nothing else
to
say, Mary Rose. It's the best advice there is.”

This was not what Mary Rose wanted to hear. She was a woman of action, and letting something go was for her rather excruciating, especially when she felt she was in the wrong.

I have several thoughts as to why the Barons felt the need to buy the house where Mary Rose lived. Setting aside for a moment their natural compulsion to invade, divide, conquer, rule, coerce, and squelch, the building sat smack in the middle of the best street in the hottest neighborhood in our city.

It was close in, artsy but not fartsy; you could buy hand-painted serving bowls from Provence at a number of shops within a two-square-block radius. The house looked dilapidated, but the foundation was sound. The plumbing, hot-water heater, and wiring were all new. A new coat of paint, a new porch light, we're talking double your investment. And Big Hank was all for that.

The question is, had they installed Dicky in the bottom unit in order to keep an eye on Mary Rose? It's the stuff of movies, isn't it?

It's true that Audra Baron had come to think of Mary Rose as a free electron whirring around the otherwise stable molecule of the great clan Baron. The girl was unmarried, unemployed (Mowers and Rakers had never really counted), untrustworthy, an orphan without a mother of her own to see that she took her prenatal vitamins, and bought a matching bumper and dust ruffle for the baby's crib. God and Audra knew Mary Rose could use someone to watch over her. This took nothing away from the fact that Audra was also desperate to get Dicky out of the house.

For despite Mary Rose's baby—a baby girl! Something Audra had longed for her entire reproductive life, but Y after Y after Y, why? after why? after why? had never gotten—some part of Audra had given up on Ward and Little Hank, almost as if, like women, their clocks had wound down and now, save a miracle, children were an impossibility. Her older sons, she was afraid, had become too old to change.

Dicky was only thirty-three, and might be considered good-looking to a woman whose standards weren't too high. He needed a place of his own, but unless he was lured into a situation, in this case managing the new building, he would grow old and enfeebled in the moldy Mediterranean villa on Vista Drive. The job of managing the building also lifted from him the burden of having to find something to do, now that the last of his money from
Romeo's Dagger
was gone.

Naturally no one had told Mary Rose.

She kicked off her clogs and paced. She turned on the TV, but there was no basketball on, not even high school ball on cable. She would have liked to have gone outside and torn out a leggy old clematis that crept up the east side of the house, but she would have to pass Dicky on her way out.

By the time it was dark Mary Rose had settled on a way to make it up to Dicky. She felt he deserved more than an apology. It was not just that she had been rude, the exact accusation she had leveled at him, it was that she had behaved in accordance with the stereotype of the hysterical pregnant woman, the woman at whom the world shakes its head in wonder and disdain. She hated that.

What she would like to do was build him a raised vegetable bed, as she did on Monday afternoons during the spring and early summer for housebound people who received help from one of our city's programs to aid the working poor. But there was already a raised vegetable bed in the small backyard, one which Mrs. Wanamaker had never even used. It would have been ridiculous to build another one just for Dicky.