Tales From the Crib (3 page)

My mother owns the Drama Queen bookstore in the theatre district and has the Midas touch when it comes to producing off-Broadway gay theatre. Her most recent success was with the all-male musical
Oklahomo!
The entire cast was clad in tight leather overalls or fringed chaps.

Jack and I rented an apartment in my mother’s building for the first eleven years of our marriage, but then he insisted that we make a “real” home for JJ. My mother hardly comes to see us because she claims she’s allergic to the suburbs. She also is lactose intolerant, and sneezes uncontrollably in the presence of flowers that aren’t for her. We visit her every month or so, enjoy a slice of Ray’s Pizza from the corner, then drive back to the house in the suburbs we bought for our ghost baby.

The night I announced my pregnancy, Jack offered what he called a radical idea. I called it insanity. “It’s not like we hate each other, Lucy. Look, the marriage has ended, but we get along well enough to be around each other.”

For the most part,
I didn’t say.

“Let’s stay married, live together as friends, you know, do our own thing, and raise the baby together.”

“Do what?”

“Look, I said it was a radical idea,” he shot back. “Didn’t you see the article in the
Times
a few months ago about how couples couldn’t afford to divorce anymore because running two households was cost-prohibitive? Plus they had children they didn’t want to upset, so they hung out together till the kids went to college. Co-parenting, they called it. Everyone seemed pretty happy with the deal.”

“Jack, have you lost your mind?!”

“Lucy, I don’t want to be a Sunday father.” I knew his father left Jack’s family when he was eight, visited every other Sunday for three years, then remarried and disappeared into his new life. Jack hears from his father once every few years when something major happens, like a wedding or a funeral. I knew Jack’s greatest fear in becoming a father was becoming his father, too busy with other things to care about his children’s lives.

“Jack, you can visit the baby any time you want. We can share custody.”

“I don’t want to share custody. I want to be there every day. Seriously, Lucy, be practical. Where are you going to live? Anjoli has three-year leases on all those apartments. What about health insurance?”

This pissed me off! Where was I supposed to live when I wasn’t carrying his child? Didn’t he care about my dependence on his health insurance when it was just me?

“Come on, Lucy! It’s the perfect solution and you know it. We each have a built-in babysitter for when we go out. We’ve got a friend in the house to help. You’ll do the child care. I’ll pay three-quarters of the bills. Hey, you can finally write your novel with all your spare time.”

“Jack, you can’t bribe me like this!”

“How can I bribe you, then?”

“You said you wanted a divorce. Now you suddenly want to be my husband again?!”

“No,” he answered too quickly. “I don’t want to be your husband. I want to be a full-time father to our baby, and want to make you an offer that will suit your needs as well as mine. I think it’s a fair deal.”

Why couldn’t he see that being asked for a divorce is an unsteadying event? I needed time to absorb the rejection I felt. All he wanted to do was close the deal.

“I don’t want a divorce,” he said.

“You did ten minutes ago.”

“Things are different now.”

“Because of the baby?”

“Well, yes, because of the baby. If everything . . .” he trailed off.

“Go ahead, you can say
it.”

“Say what?”

“Jack, you were about to say that if everything goes well this time.”

“No, I wasn’t. Come on, Luce, let’s stay married as friends,” Jack said.

“Could I date other people?” I asked.

“Absolutely!” he answered, again too quickly.

“I’m not sure.”

“Lucy, let me run this article off the Internet for you. We aren’t entering uncharted territory. Other couples are living separately ever after, and it’s working well for them. Ask any single parent whether they’d like an extra set of hands around the house and they’d take it.”

They’d take it if it weren’t the set of hands belonging to the rat bastard who asked for a divorce the same day the pregnancy test read positive.

“I’m not sure,” I said.

“What do you need to make you sure?”

“Time to think about it.”

“How much time?” Jack pushed.

“I will need exactly as much time as I need, Jack. That’s my answer. If you don’t like it, I can help you pack a bag, call a realtor tomorrow to sell the house, move back into Anjoli’s apartment, and apply for public prenatal care. Back off and I’ll have an answer for you in a reasonable amount of time, okay?”

“Okay,” he said, upbeat. “Great meal, by the way. Absolutely superb!”

Shut the fuck up.

After a month of lobbying, Jack convinced me to try this new arrangement for one year. I would have a friend and co-parent in the house, medical coverage, and complete freedom. Plus, we’d get to keep our house and not sell it in a down real estate market. Jack put together a graph that showed our separation of duties and responsibilities, and even drafted a mission statement for our family. It wasn’t exactly how I’d envisioned bringing a baby into the world, but it seemed more practical than going it alone. And Jack was a good guy. I understood his motives were pure. He wanted to be a part of our baby’s daily life. How could I begrudge him that? It was just for a year.

Chapter 4

In my seventh month of pregnancy, my friend Zoe insisted on throwing a baby shower, and I reluctantly agreed. Given my history, everyone had an opinion as to whether or not this was a wise move. My two aunts, my father’s sisters, reminded me that in the Jewish faith we weren’t supposed to accept gifts until after the baby was born. My mother was born Catholic and is currently a convenient practitioner of New Age philosophy. That means whenever her minister advises her to do something she doesn’t want to, Anjoli notes that it is merely a suggestion. When it is something she agrees with, she insists everyone follow the advice religiously. She said that having a baby shower was a positive affirmation to my baby that I believed he would be born. “Act as if,” Anjoli said, “and so it is.” Kimmy said whatever I decided she would completely support me.

Kimberly Fawn is my cousin who’s one year younger than me, six inches taller, twenty pounds lighter, and three shades blonder. There is no measure that can really capture the difference in our overall appearance. I’m not altogether horrible-looking. In fact, when I put on makeup and do a little something with my hair, I can look quite attractive. But mere mortals like me can’t compete with Kimmy, a former model who currently sells corporate jets. When Kimmy and I were thirteen and fourteen, we sneaked into Studio 54 with fake identification that we probably didn’t even need since they gave out free passes to the club in front of our prep school. It was fabulous getting out of the taxi and watching the velvet rope drop, along with the jaws of every guy in the snaking line for admission. We were in the ladies’ room when Kimmy was discovered. “Do you have an agent?” an anorexic flapper asked Kimmy, then handed her a business card.

“Do you need a towel?” an overweight bathroom attendant asked me, then handed me a square of Bounty.

About the baby shower, Kimmy said she would “support” my decision, which is pretty much her standard answer when she’s asked to weigh in on an issue. She’s a recovering alcoholic and cocaine addict who’s been clean for twenty years but still attends meetings every night. She and Anjoli get along famously because there are so many similarities between the language of recovery and New Age. Kind of like Spanish and Portuguese. They take healing workshops together; they chant for inner peace together; they even get French manicures at the same salon.

Between my mother, a platinum blond, pale version of Sophia Loren, and Kimmy, I’ve always felt a bit like a garnish.

Zoe wanted to have a baby shower for me I think partially to redeem herself for the last one. Again, it’s one of those things that doesn’t make any sense, but was clearly the case. “Let me throw you a proper shower this time,” she said. Her last shower was quite proper. It’s the pregnancy that wasn’t.

Her parties at college were far beyond the standard kegger. We had a Super Bowl party where Zoe went all out to create the ultimate football party. She put white tape all over our kelly-green carpet to mark the yard lines. We served Denver fans Bronco Brew, a mixture of Everclear and orange Kool-Aid. Redskins fans drank Bronco Blood, which was the same drink in red. She wanted to give our guests a party favor, so she designed a pigskin purse that was the size and shape of an actual football. As luck would have it, our pal, Dan Alcott’s girlfriend, went mad for the purse and showed it to her father who happened to sit on the board of directors at a trendy clothing manufacturer. So, if you ever wonder who designed those adorable leather purses in football, bowling ball, soccer ball, and basketball shapes, it’s my friend Zoe.

Zoe wanted to throw a baby shower because she loves me. I have no doubt about it. My mother wanted me to affirm that the baby would make it because she believed that would bring me good fortune. I am certain of her pure intentions. My aunts, Bernice and Rita, cared about me and didn’t want me to piss off God by being presumptuous. And Kimmy supported whatever decision I made because she is a kind, decent, and genuinely supportive person. But everyone had her own baggage around my baby shower.

Everyone, that is, except Jack, who had moved into my old home office. He said he didn’t have an opinion about whether or not I had a baby shower. Whatever I decided, he said, was cool with him. The difference between Jack’s response and Kimmy’s was that my sort-of-husband was emotionally checked out. It’s not that he’d support whatever decision I made. He just didn’t care.

The shower was at my mother’s apartment in Greenwich Village because, as she put it, “No one’s going to New Jersey.” She had a point. I didn’t know any of the women in my neighborhood because they were all mothers, so we never connected through playgroups, preschool, or at the playground. Even without friends who had children, I always knew exactly how old JJ would have been. Going to birthday parties for other kids would’ve been too much.

Plus, it wouldn’t be fair to the birthday child to have some psycho grab the piñata stick and beat the rainbow-colored donkey because she was enraged at the injustice of her infertility. Who needs the childhood memory of me swinging a bat, screaming through tears about how any crack whore living in an alley can give birth, but I couldn’t?

Zoe tried to find a no-carbohydrate dessert, and quickly found that there’s no such thing. Oh sure, some diabetes boutiques try to pass off their asparagus torte as a delectable treat, but no one in their right mind would consider it a dessert. I kept telling Zoe that she should cater the party for the guests and not concern herself with the fact that I couldn’t eat anything sweet or with more than a teaspoon of flour.

Gestational diabetes. I got that diagnosis about a week after the sciatica became so severe I needed a cane to walk. I remember the call came through on my cell phone just as the Wendy’s near my house was mounting a thirty-foot inflated chocolate frosty cone on its roof. No cookies or cake. No rice or pasta. No bread. A bite of fruit and maybe three beans were acceptable. The nurse assured me there were foods I was able to eat-cheese, meat, and all the leafy vegetables I could pile on my plate. Oh joy. It was basically the Atkins Diet with the added bonus of needling my finger and analyzing blood three times a day. And let’s not forget that fabulous way of waking up every morning by peeing on a matchstick-sized strip of alkaline paper. I’m not a morning person and the strip was quite small. ‘Nuff said.

At the baby shower three women from the agency where I used to work filled me in on all the post-layoff gossip. Kimmy wore a winter-white leather jumpsuit that looked as if it were tailor-made for her, which it very well may have been. Sometimes I look at her and try silently brokering body-swapping deals. Some may call this prayer. First, I ask if I can look like her, then counter my own proposal by offering to settle for a week with her body. Then I compromise again, and say I could be happy with her legs and face, and pretty soon I’m chopping my lovely cousin into parts and taking the leanest, loveliest cuts for myself. Her arms are quite well defined too, but I’m not greedy. I just want the legs and face. Maybe the ass and tummy too, if I may.

My aunts Rita and Bernice drove in from Long Island for the shower. They are a portrait in opposites. Bernice sees the good in every situation. When her husband died, she said that while she’d miss him very much, she was happy to get a break from his heart-healthy diet. Rita, on the other hand, is in the habit of pretending to spit after any of her negative comments. In other words, every time she speaks, there’s cause to pretend she’s spitting on the ground beside her. Once I was trying to shave off a few pounds and declined her offer for ice cream. “Why no ice cream, big shot?” Rita snapped. “You think you’re too good for ice cream?” I have no idea where this came from, or if, for that matter, there were people who felt too good to eat ice cream. Was there a moral position on ice cream?

Zoe told the group about a new reality television show she was producing called
Real Confessions.
Basically the show would consist of pixilated faces confessing their sins to a hidden camera. At the end of the confession, an Alan Funt-like character would ask through the screen if the congregant had ever heard of
Real Confessions.
In theory, the person would have a knee-slapping great sense of humor about this and exclaim, “Well Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, am I on TV?!”

“Zoe, I was raised Catholic,” my mother chimed in.

“No one wants their confessions aired on national television. Why would anyone agree to this?”

“Complete absolution,” Zoe said. “No contrition. No Hail Mary. No rosaries, no nothing. Let us air your confession and you get off with no penance.”