“My father.” When I told Daddy I was flying in to Logan instead of Hartford, I said I didn’t mind renting a car and driving out to the Cape. But I was relieved when he insisted on picking me up. . . . Andrew says he thinks Daddy’s taking Mama’s remarrying hard, but Marissa says he’s fine with it. Now I’ll be able to see for myself how he’s doing. Sometimes he seems okay when I call him, and sometimes he seems, I don’t know, distracted or something. “Actually, my parents are divorced,” I tell Dolly. “I’m spending some time with my father first. Then I’ll visit my mom.” And meet her wife, I think.
“Well, I’m sure they’ll both be tickled pink to see you. This their first grandchild?” I nod, smile. “I bet they’re excited.”
“Oh, yes. Very.” Will they be?
Dolly asks me how much time I’m taking off after the baby’s born. “Six weeks,” I say. “I could take more time than that, but it would be without pay and I can’t afford it. I’m just making ends meet as it is.”
“What about your hubby? Doesn’t he work?”
Oh, shit. My husband. I borrow Axel. “He, uh . . . he teaches at a community college, but only part-time. He’s looking for a full-time position, but no luck yet. The job situation’s pretty tight right now.”
“So what’ll you do once your maternity leave’s up? Use day care?”
“No, I can’t . . . we can’t afford that, either. I’m planning to bring the baby to work with me.” Dolly wrinkles her nose and tells me that will be difficult. “Well, if the bus stop near my apartment is any indication, half the new moms in Berkeley are toting their infants to their jobs. And I’m sure my volunteers will be glad to help out when I get busy with other things. . . . Berkeley’s expensive, and we could probably get a cheaper apartment in Oakland. But it’s not as safe there, and I’ve heard that the schools aren’t very good. Besides, raising a baby is going to be a big enough change without worrying about moving, too.”
“Right,” Dolly says. “Well, you’ll figure it out.” And with that, she takes her newspaper from the seat pocket, puts on her glasses, and starts to read.
Rather than sitting there feeling guilty about lying to her, I pick up Home from the Hospital. Fish around in my purse for the yellow highlighter. I’m in the middle of the chapter on nursing—what to do about breast infections—but I just keep reading the same paragraph without absorbing anything. Dolly’s got a point about overpreparing. Why read about some infection I might not even get? . . . Her daughter’s lucky that Dolly’s coming to help her with the baby. I wish Mama wasn’t going to be so far away when my baby comes. Maybe she could fly out and stay with me for a few weeks. I won’t ask her, though. She has her work, and she’ll still be a newlywed. But if she volunteers . . .
Mama: a newlywed and a grandmother, all in the same six months. And me: an unwed mother. When my friend Cindy Soucy and I were in middle school, we would sit at lunch and plan our futures: how we’d meet our boyfriends at college, get married after graduation, and start our careers. Then we’d have kids; she wanted two and I wanted three. We were in fifth grade, I remember, and both of us had just started menstruating. . . .
“Mama, something’s the matter with me. I think I better go see the doctor.” I point to the evidence: the bloodstained crotch of my pajama bottoms. She frowns, says nothing’s wrong. “Go down to my studio and wait for me. I’ll be right down. I just need to get something.”
While I wait for her, I look around at her artwork. It’s weird, kind of scary-looking. I don’t like it, but I would never tell her that. It would hurt her feelings. Sometimes when it’s my turn to do the laundry and I go down here while she’s working on some new piece, she’s concentrating so hard that she doesn’t even seem to realize I’m there. And I try to be as quiet as I can because she’s concentrating and has this angry face. It’s the same face she gets when Andrew’s done something to make her mad and she goes off on him. Goes mental, kind of. It’s scary when she gets like that. But yeah, she makes that same face when she’s working on her art. No wonder it comes out like this. Mama’s art is . . . angry.
When she comes back down to the basement, she hands me the “something” she had to go get—that awful booklet with the cartoon drawings, “From Girl to Woman.” “The most important thing you have to remember now that you’ve started ovulating,” Mama says, “is that from now on, you should never, ever put yourself in a situation where you’re alone with a boy or a man. Because you just can’t trust them.”
“Not even Daddy? Or Andrew?”
“Of course you can trust them. But otherwise you have to be very careful from now on.” Other men flash in my mind. Mr. Genovese across the street? My English teacher, Mr. Fogel, who told me he thinks I’m a good writer? “What about Uncle Donald?” I ask her.
“Oh, Ariane, don’t be silly. Of course you can trust your uncle.”
Mama’s nervous. I can tell by the way she’s picking away at her finger. While she’s in the middle of explaining why I can expect to bleed once a month from now on, the basement door bangs open and Andrew comes clomping down the stairs. Mama’s mad. “Didn’t I just tell you that your sister and I needed some privacy?”
“Yeah, but Gary just called me. A bunch of us are going to ride our bikes down to the field to play baseball. I need to get my glove.”
“Not now, Andrew!”
“Yeah, but I need it now, or else I’m going to get there after they choose up.”
Shaking her head, she gets up and goes to the big box where he keeps his sports stuff. Instead of tossing him his glove, she hurls it at him. It hits him in the face.
“Ow! Jesus Christ, Mom. You didn’t have to nail me with it.”
“What did I tell you about that ‘Jesus Christ’ stuff? Now go! Get out!”
She glares at him as he takes the stairs. When the door at the top slams, she turns back to me. “Any questions?”
I ask her why I can’t trust men anymore.
“Because males have a kind of built-in instinct that females can trigger once they get their period. A kind of sexual radar. Animals, humans: all males. You remember how we sometimes had to keep Missy in the house before we got her spayed? How all those male dogs would congregate in the yard and wait for her to come out?”
“Yeah, but . . . ?” I don’t get the connection.
“And do you remember what happened that time when Missy got out and that boxer down the street jumped on top of her and started humping her?”
“Yes.”
“Well? You know what rape is, don’t you? . . .”
God, why did she have to put it that way? Scare me like that? Males were horny, dangerous dogs: that was her message. I remember going upstairs to my room with that booklet she gave me, my hands trembling as I turned the pages. I didn’t calm down until Cindy Soucy told me what her mother had said: that once a man and a woman fell in love and got married, sex was a beautiful part of their life together, not just the way that babies got started. . . .
It’s so weird the way life turns out. For me, at least, maybe not for Cindy. Until she tried to “friend” me on Facebook last month, I hadn’t heard from her in years. I’m too busy for social networking, I told myself. Told Marissa, too, when she tried to “friend” me. From what people who are on Facebook say, it’s a colossal waste of time, but what I don’t get is why they’re always on it anyway. . . . You should never put yourself in a situation where you’re alone with a boy or a man. Did Mama decide she was a lesbian after she met Viveca, or was she always one? And if she was, why did she marry Daddy? . . .
I’m nervous about meeting Viveca. I want her to like me, and I really want to like her—to show her that I’m cool now about her and Mama’s marriage. Marissa’s always saying that Viveca’s awesome, but that time when I asked her why, all she talked about was their shopping trips, and how Viveca has taken her to the Plaza Hotel for tea. Last month when Rissa got all spastic because Jimmy Choo was on the guest list for the wedding and I asked her who
he was, she was like, “Oh my god, Ariane, what planet do you live on?” It wasn’t until after we’d hung up that I thought of what I should have said: that I pretty much live on Planet Soup Kitchen, where the needs are a little more basic than the need for designer shoes. I didn’t dare pack my Birkenstocks when I was getting ready for this trip, which was ridiculous now that I think of it. I live in Berkeley, for Christ’s sake! It’s not that I’m intimidated by my little sister, but from everything she’s said, and from the pictures I’ve seen, Viveca seems so chic and glamorous. I guess I just don’t want her to look down on me: Annie’s shlumpy older daughter. The fat one. No one to share her life with, no prospects on the horizon. . . . I wonder what Mama has told Viveca about me. Does she know how angry I was at first when I found out about their affair? Does she know I’m fat? At my last ob-gyn appointment, my weight had gone up to one seventy-seven—my high school weight. And I’m bound to gain a lot more in the upcoming months. God, I just hope I don’t go over two hundred. That would be more than I’ve ever weighed. I think back to that conversation I once heard my mother and father having about me when they thought I was out of earshot. . . .
“I mean it, Annie. I want you to get off her about her weight. Half the girls who come into my office are obsessed about it. They were chubby as kids and now they’re anorexic, some of them. I don’t want her to think her value depends on what the scale says. It’s unhealthy.”
“So you want her to keep gaining until she develops diabetes? Because that’s unhealthy, too. And what about her social life?”
“Her social life is fine. She’s got friends.”
“And don’t you think she’d like a boyfriend? You know boys that age. Their eyes slide right past the girls who are overweight.”
“She’s doing just fine, Annie. I mean it. You keep harping on her weight and she’s going to develop a complex about it.”
Too late, Daddy, I think. I already had developed a complex about it, and I fed it daily. And Mama was right. I did want a boyfriend back then. I still do. Sipping the last of my ginger ale, I look past Dolly at the clouds we’re flying over. It looks like a thick covering of snow—as if you could step out onto it and those clouds would hold you. Last week there was another suicide off the Golden Gate Bridge. The third this year, the paper said. When Daddy told me one of his college kids killed himself this past year—a boy he’d been treating for depression—I could tell from the shakiness in his voice how hard he was taking it. Was that why he resigned so abruptly? Maybe. But that doesn’t explain why he wants to sell our house now, too. To get away from the memories, maybe—to pack up and move on. . . .
I think Mama and Daddy will be okay with my decision, once I tell them both. Get that part over with. I’m pretty sure Daddy won’t have a problem with it. He didn’t know his father, but he turned out fine. And yes, I’ll explain to them if I have to, I am younger than most of the women who get pregnant this way. And maybe the right guy could still come along. But I don’t want to keep playing the wait-and-hope game until I’m forty. What if my eggs are too old by then? The chances for birth defects are a lot greater for older moms. And yes, there’s always adoption if you want to gamble on the genetic cocktail of two strangers. At least this way, I was able to read the donors’ histories. Weed out some of the potential for problems. It’s not foolproof; I know that. And they pay these guys to do what they do—about a hundred dollars, I’ve heard. So I guess they could lie on their forms if they needed the money. Well, I’m going to love this child, no matter who he or she turns out to be. But being a single mother is going to be challenging enough without increasing the chances of raising a kid with special needs. . . .
The flight attendant comes by with her plastic bag and we deposit our refuse. The ginger ale must have worked, I guess, because my stomach feels more settled. I give up on Home from the Hospital, and when I slip the book back in my bag, I see the red folder in there. Take it out. I’m not sure why I brought it with me, or for that matter, why I didn’t shred what’s in it once I made my decision. It’s innocuous-looking, though; as long as I hold it close to myself, neither of my seatmates will be able to read what’s in there: the photocopied fact sheets of my prospective donors. For the millionth time, I look over the forms of the two I narrowed it down to. Should I have picked number 251 instead of number 311? Brown hair and eyes, five foot nine, no history of cancer in his family, college educated, no alcohol or drug issues other than “recreational use of marijuana, occasional.” He was the one I thought I was going with. Then at the last minute, I picked number 311 instead: Brazilian ethnicity, two years of college instead of four, a mother who died at forty-six. The reason listed isn’t cancer or heart disease. “Boating accident” it says. I look at the math I did in the margin of his fact sheet; he was only thirteen when he lost her. Why did I change my mind? Was it because I felt sorry for him, this motherless boy who’s now almost thirty? Well, whatever the reason, it’s a done deal. Number 311 has fathered the life that’s growing inside me—this child I already love who will give me a purpose besides feeding the poor, and who will love me no matter how much I weigh. . . .
Of course Axel would have been my first choice. Okay, stop it, I tell myself. Don’t go there again. But I do. After we passed the first anniversary of our being together, I began to think—hope—that everything was finally going to work out for me. For us. We’d get married, have kids; it wasn’t the perfect life I’d planned with Cindy way back in middle school, but it was close enough. So I didn’t see it coming the night he took me to that Thai restaurant and started talking about how it wasn’t me; it was him. How he still cared about me and hoped we could stay friends. How many times had I heard that line? I’d started sobbing, humiliating myself in front of the other diners. Humiliated myself a second time when I went to him three months later and asked if he’d please just impregnate me, no strings, no obligations. I’d begged him not to answer me right then and there, to just think about giving me his sperm if he couldn’t give me anything more than that. I can still see him sitting there, shaking his head and probably thinking how glad he was to have gotten himself out of his relationship with this desperate, pathetic woman. . . .
Then Desmond, the group home supervisor, said no, too. He and his Prader-Willi clients with their big, cumbersome bodies and almond-shaped eyes had been volunteering at Hope’s Table for a few years, and we’d become friends. Had gone out for coffee a few times. Desmond was divorced, no kids—his ex-wife’s decision more than his, he said. Because of their food issues, he would bring his Prader-Willi guys in after all the meals had been served and the guests had left. They’d wipe off the tables, sweep and mop the floor. I liked Desmond’s dry sense of humor, and the way he interacted with the guys he supervised. His “kids,” he called them, although some of them were in their thirties and forties. He always seemed so fatherly toward them—so unflappable, even the time he caught that one guy eating soap in the men’s room. He sure didn’t look unflappable at that Starbucks we went to when I asked him if he’d father my child. He looked shaken. Then, right after that, he stopped coming. He had called Cicely, not me, and told her they’d started volunteering someplace else. “I wonder why,” I said, even though I knew. . . .
I can’t predict how my brother and sister are going to take my news. Marissa will either think it’s cool or that it’s weird. No one in the family but me knows about the abortion she had last year. I don’t judge her for making that decision. She wasn’t ready to have a child and, frankly, I’m not so sure she would have been a very good mother. But I will be. I want this baby as much as I’ve ever wanted anything in my life, and as sick as I’ve been, I haven’t regretted my decision for one second. I wonder if Marissa ever wishes she hadn’t terminated her pregnancy. Does she ever even think about what her life might be like now if she hadn’t? . . .
I just hope Andrew’s not going to give me grief, now that he’s become Mr. Born Again. It’s weird how he’s done this turnaround. And
rew was always the rebellious one in the family. Who knows? Maybe he still is. Maybe all this “Lord and Savior” stuff he’s into now is his way of rebelling against growing up in a liberal household. The last time I talked to him, he was saying how great it is that he and Casey-Lee go to church with her family. Then he started complaining about how our parents put us at a disadvantage because they didn’t give us a religious foundation. I had to remind him that Mama used to bring us to Mass when we were little, and that it was he who raised such a stink about going to church that she finally gave up and let us stay home with Daddy on Sunday mornings. “Exactly,” he said. “She went to church and we got to stay home with the atheist. What kind of role-modeling was that?” I didn’t argue with him. I just changed the subject so I wouldn’t have to listen to his proselytizing. I still can’t tell if this Christian soapbox of his is his own idea, or his fiancée’s. Those couple of times they Skyped me, she hardly said a word, except to note that my brother and I look nothing alike. . . . And if Daddy didn’t believe there was a god, what was he supposed to do? Fake it? I wonder if Mama’s stopped going to Mass. Probably. Why would she keep going when the Catholic Church is so dead set against same-sex marriage? . . .
I put away the red folder and pull the in-flight magazine out of the seat pocket. Sky Mall: it’s ridiculous. Who in the world would ever buy luggage and “wireless talking barbecue thermometers” while they’re on a plane? Well, somebody must, I guess. God, I’m so tired. I didn’t sleep for shit last night, and then I had to get up so early to catch my flight. I’m just going to close my eyes and rest. . . .
I’m in the studio audience watching Mama. She’s a contestant on a game show—she and some other new brides. They’re sitting beside their husbands. For some reason, Mama’s gotten married to that detective on Law & Order: SVU—the one with the anger management issues. The host asks him what’s the one thing in Mama’s purse that people would be surprised to find in there. “A baby?” he says. Then Mama reaches into her purse and takes out a little pink plastic baby. And when she puts it in the palm of her hand, it starts moving, coming alive. . . .