She, Myself & I (19 page)

“Sophie, stop,” Mom said, catching the screen door before it could bump shut behind me.

“What? I really need to get going,” I said, shifting Ben to my right hip.

“Why are you and your sisters being so unsupportive of your father and me?” Mom asked, folding her arms in front of her.

“That’s exactly the same thing you said during the divorce. That we weren’t being supportive enough. As though we were supposed to cheer you on while you dismantled our family,” I said.

“So then why would it upset you that we’re becoming close again?”

“Because it would mean that you put us through all of the pain and trouble for nothing. It’s like you want just one big do-over, where everyone’s supposed to forget that the two of you have hated one another for the past ten years. That we had to have separate Christmases and birthdays and graduation dinners, all because you guys couldn’t stand to be in the same room. And now you want to say ‘Oops, our mistake, let’s take a mulligan,’ ” I said.

Ben frowned at the shrill, angry tone of my voice, and he reached out a chubby little finger to touch the side of my cheek with his hand. I grabbed his hand and kissed the palm to reassure him.

“Can’t you understand that being apart has caused us both to change? It wasn’t until recently that we’ve both been able to accept our individual responsibility in the failure of our marriage.”

That was rich. Ever since the day my dad moved out, my mother never shrank from the opportunity to delineate to anyone who cared to listen just how my father was singularly responsible for the collapse of their marriage. And according to my father, my mother’s personality was so shrewish, no man could ever make her happy. Now they were suddenly ready to accept joint responsibility for their actions? What was next, acknowledging a higher power and asking for forgiveness from the people that they’d hurt?

“And what happens when you break up again? You’re just going to drag us into another big messy fight. We don’t deserve that. And do you really think Mickey can handle it? She gets flipped out when characters on a television show break up,” I said.

“We’d never do anything to hurt any of you,” Mom said.

“And yet you’re both so good at it,” I said. And then I banged down the wooden front steps and stomped over to my Tahoe.

Having a baby does make it harder to storm off, since I had to wrestle him into his car seat. But my mom didn’t approach me again. She just stood on the front porch, her arms wrapped around her, watching me. I climbed into my vehicle, waved once, and then backed out of the driveway.

Chapter Twenty-one

Cora looked awful. Her eyes were ringed with dark circles, and her hair was flat and oily. Her clothes—dark-rinse jeans and a white T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Rock Star” in purple glitter—were as skintight as ever, but her face was bare, making her look younger and more vulnerable than she had when she was dolled up with sparkly green eye shadow and mascara so thick her eyelashes looked like asparagus stalks. I hated to admit it, but seeing her like this made me like her even more. Women who can tend to a baby and look perfect are so unnatural they’re almost creepy. Give me a real, milk-stained, belly-pouched, bedraggled mama any day.

“I haven’t slept in forty-eight. Beatrice has her days and nights mixed up,” Cora said, glaring at her daughter, who was napping peacefully in the car seat carrier, despite the din in the Starbucks where we were meeting for coffee. Cora took a long draw on her fully caffeinated double espresso.

“The nurse at the hospital told me to sleep when Ben sleeps. Maybe you should go home and lie down,” I suggested.

“Ha. I wish. I’m drinking so much coffee to stay awake that when she finally does drift off, I’m too hopped up to get any sleep,” Cora complained.

I nodded sympathetically. “The other night, Ben woke up four times. By the fourth time, I just wanted to hide under the covers when Aidan brought him in,” I said.

“Your husband gets up with the baby? Jason is a shitbag. He hasn’t gotten up with Beatrice once. Not once! And then he had the nerve to try to touch my tit last night. I nearly broke his wrist twisting his hand off of me,” she said, still glowering at the memory.

“Oh God, boobs are off-limits. The first few weeks, my nipples were so sore from nursing, I could barely stand to have my bra touch them. Now I just have no sensation there at all,” I said.

“The other day, Beatrice clamped down so hard while she was nursing, I nearly dropped her. And then Jason had the fucking gall to tell me to be careful,” Cora said.

I glanced at Ben, who was happily sucking away on his pacifier. We had a policy of not swearing—and not allowing others to swear—in front of the baby, but I’d feel like a drip asking Cora to watch her language. And while I knew that I shouldn’t back down on this—after all, if it were my in-laws, I’d be ripping into Aidan to keep them in line—I didn’t want to alienate Cora. She was the one person in my life who understood why I counted it a good day when I managed to change out of my pajamas into real clothes.

Besides, Ben wasn’t old enough to understand what Cora was saying. And if his first word was “fuck,” I’d just blame it on Eileen. Whenever she has too much wine, her language gets salty.

“I read somewhere that breastfeeding suppresses your sex drive. But Aidan’s getting frustrated with me. He doesn’t seem to understand that after being on call all day for Ben, and the endless diaper changes and nursing sessions, that I just want to relax and have some time to myself. Not that I don’t love taking care of Ben—I do, of course I do—but I need some time to myself, too,” I admitted.

“I know. And after holding Beatrice all day, I’m all touched out. I just want to be left alone. And besides, how am I supposed to feel romantic with a man who refuses to change a shitty diaper?”

“He won’t? And I thought Aidan was bad.”

“Jason has been annoying the crap out of me lately. Everything he does and says makes me want to scream,” Cora said.

“I’m so glad to hear you say that. I’ve been feeling the same way. I thought it was just me,” I said.

“No, it’s normal. My mother said that for the first year after my older brother was born, she announced about once a week that she was leaving my dad. She’d even pack a bag for her and the baby, and would stand in the kitchen, saying, ‘I’m going, I mean it, I’m really leaving this time.’ ”

“But they were okay in the end?”

“No, they divorced right after I was born. My dad was turned off by all of the weight my mom gained during her pregnancies, so he had an affair and left her for another woman,” Cora said nonchalantly. She broke off a piece of blueberry muffin and popped it into her mouth.

I’d already eaten half of my peanut butter cookie, and pushed the rest off to the side. I didn’t particularly like Aidan right now, but I also didn’t want him to be so grossed out by my baby fat that he’d end up leaving me.

“That’s depressing,” I said. I picked up my Mocha Frappuccino—made with whole milk and topped with whipped cream, I didn’t want to even think about how many calories I’d just consumed there—and noticed that it was empty. “I’m going to get some herbal tea. Do you want anything?”

“No, I’m all set,” Cora said.

Ben had fallen asleep, his eyelashes curled over his plump round cheeks, so I left him in Cora’s charge while I went to place my order. There was a college-aged girl behind the counter. She was pretty in a grungy sort of way—lots of long straight hair, petite features, a skimpy tank top paired with a cutoff jean skirt. As I handed over my money to pay for the tea, I noticed that she still had bar stamps on the back of her hands, and her baby blue nail polish was chipping away.

“When’s your baby due?” she asked, handing me back a handful of change.

“What?”

“Aren’t you, like, pregnant?”

“No. I just had a baby,” I said. My body went stiff with fury—how dare she!—and my eyes flooded with the hot, stinging tears of mortification. Four months postpartum, and she thought I was pregnant?

“Sorry,” she said, smirking.

“Excuse me?”

“I said I was, like, sorry,” she said, the sneering smile still pasted on her skinny, anemic face.

Who the hell was she? Just some stupid little coed who spent her weekends killing brain cells with bong hits and Jell-O shots, who had probably never contributed anything to the world in her entire insipid little life, and she had the utter gall to judge me?

“Yes, I just had a baby and I still haven’t lost all of the weight. Thank you so much for pointing that out to me. But I’ll have you know, that I am a mother, a . . . a . . .
vessel of life,
and that’s a beautiful thing. So what if my body has changed? The stretch marks and extra weight are badges of honor, not something that I should be ashamed of or ridiculed for,” I informed her.

“Oh yeah, I totally agree. I have a little boy and twin girls,” she said.

“You do?” I asked. I eyed her narrow, boyish hips doubtfully. How was it possible that she had carried three children—twins!—in that tiny little body? Was I the only woman in the world who gave birth and whose body didn’t snap right back? Was I going to retain this gourdlike shape for the rest of my life? I’d seen women like that, women whose bodies softened and spread after having kids, whose stomachs forever stayed pushed out like a Buddha’s. Was that my destiny?

“Try Pilates. It, like, totally flattens your stomach out,” she advised, handing me a paper cup of steaming-hot jasmine tea.

Later that day, I put Ben in his bouncy chair, set it to vibrate, and while he blissed out to repeated choruses of “Three Blind Mice,” I unwrapped the plastic off a Pilates DVD that I’d picked up at Target and stuck it in the DVD player.

The graceful blonde instructor on the video suggested that I watch the entire class first before attempting the exercises on my own, but I decided to disregard this advice. Ben would only tolerate the bouncy chair for so long, and I wanted to squeeze as many ab crunches in as I could in the short time that I had.

“Lie down, keeping your body in a straight line and your core strong and responsive,” the blonde chirped.

I lay down on the carpet, my legs straight in front of me and my arms stretched over my head.

“Now, breathing deeply, pull your body up, using your core to lift you. Don’t arch your back, just lift up through your core and touch your toes, like so,” the Barbie-shaped, leotard-wearing instructor commanded. And then she lifted up in one effortless swoop, leaned forward, and touched her toes.

I tried to engage my core—or what I thought she meant by that, because really, who the hell knows?—and lift up, but nothing happened. I grunted and strained, and still nothing. There was absolutely no way the stretched-out muscles of my “core” were going to lift anything anywhere. In the time that the instructor had bobbed up and down five times, I managed to roll on my side and shove myself up with both hands, sweating with the effort.

Obviously this first exercise was a bit advanced for abdominal muscles stretched out by pregnancy. So I sat and waited patiently for her to move on to the next exercise.

“Now, for position two, we’re going to lean back, raise our legs in the air so that our bodies form the letter V, and then we’re going to flap our hands to the side while breathing deeply. Don’t forget to engage your core and keep breathing,” she chirped. And then she contorted her body into the letter V and began flapping away.

I leaned back, raised my legs in the air, and immediately fell backwards.

“Oof,” I grunted.

I pushed myself back up, raised my legs lower, so that instead of a V, I looked more like a wonky L, and then, resting one hand on the carpet—which I noticed needed vacuuming—I flapped the other hand. I tried to engage my core, but nothing seemed to be happening.

“Now, keeping this same pose, take each leg and make wide circles. First one way and then the other,” the instructor commanded, swooping her legs around in wide, graceful circles.

I collapsed back on the floor, lying with my arms splayed to either side, hyperventilating, while the instructor continued to swoop away.

“That’s just unnatural,” I muttered. “No human can move like that.”

Ben began to hoot with displeasure and kick his feet against the brightly colored circles and squares on his bouncy seat. His round face crumpled into a scowl. I punched the stop button on the remote to switch off the Gumby-esque blonde, heaved myself up off the ground, and then plucked the DVD out of the player and Frisbeed it into the garbage can. And then I swooped Ben out of his seat, and together we wandered into the kitchen to forage for brownies.

Chapter Twenty-two