All the Good Parts (16 page)

CHAPTER 19

The Carver-Wittelsteins’ couples baby shower had valet parking.

“Bet they didn’t expect anyone to show up on bikes,” Carly said, waving at someone in the house. She made a show of dismounting, obviously getting off on how ridiculous we looked. I hadn’t changed after my visit with Jerry, and Carly, dressed in a stretchy red wrap dress and gray high-heeled boots, had halted the valets in their tracks as she pedaled hard up the Carver-Wittelsteins’ gravel driveway. She’d insisted we leave the car at home because, according to her, their wine cellar was legendary, and we were both due to get “absolutely stinking pissed drunk.”

I didn’t quite know why she thought I deserved a good boozing, but I understood why she felt entitled. Her argument with Maura—loud, teary, and vicious in that cutting, take-no-prisoners way mothers can spar with their daughters—jolted me from a comatose sleep around midnight. Carly screamed that Maura had missed curfew, and Maura screamed right back, insisting Carly hadn’t set one. It went on for too long, both of them repeating words like “trust” and “common sense” over and over, as if the other person weren’t listening. Which could have been the truth.

Carly needed to make a new set of rules going forward, but she didn’t know how to write them, and Maura sensed her confusion. It wouldn’t take long before she exploited it, and Carly knew it.

We passed our bikes to the eager valets. “We’ll take good care of these, ladies,” said the older one as he glanced at Carly appreciatively.

She beamed at him and retrieved a brightly wrapped box from her basket before he wheeled her bike into an achingly clean three-car garage. I felt self-conscious as I followed her up a column of massive stone steps, then doubly so as the heavily pregnant Mrs. Sophia Carver-Wittelstein opened her door and looked at me with questioning eyes.

“Donal couldn’t come,” Carly explained. “This is my sister.”

Sophia smiled weakly. “What happened to Donal?”

“He couldn’t make it,” Carly explained. “You didn’t specify what kind of couple on the invitation, so I thought Leona would be a good substitute. She’s willing to participate fully.”

Participate?

Looking troubled, Sophia took the gift from Carly’s hands and balanced it on her enormous belly. “I guess that’s okay,” she said while stepping back to let us in. “Welcome to my home, Leona.”

Built of marble, granite, and metal, the Carver-Wittelsteins’ home was an Italianate homage to suburban architectural overreach. They believed in largesse as a general decorating philosophy, and this extended to the shower decorations—official-looking banners and flags, all in pink. Soft pink, moneyed pink, good-mannered pink, the kind that didn’t hurt the eye or call attention to its girlishness. The banners hanging from the fireplace bore flags scripted with the letter
F
or
K
.

“What’s that all about?” I whispered.

“They’re naming her either Faith or Karma,” Carly said while taking in the decor. “What a choice. One’s a crapshoot, the other’s a bitch.”

“Karma is nice, but I kind of like Faith,” I told her, feeling that someone should defend the girl destined to crawl around on all that cold marble. “It sounds hopeful.”

Carly shuffled me quickly over to the bar. She pointed to a bottle of red wine and held up two fingers at the bartender. “Faith will ultimately disappoint you,” she said as she took her first blissful sip of wine. “I’m partial to Karma. At least when she takes a hit, she comes back stronger.”

Carly’s cell phone rang, and she smiled faintly as she dug into her purse. “Maybe it’s Maura, though I don’t think she’s ever placed an actual phone call. Her thumbs must be broken.”

“Do you think you’ll get an apology?”

“Wouldn’t that be a kick?” The ringtone went silent as Carly pulled her phone from the depths of her bag, the case covered in the sticky pieces of a crushed hard candy and the remnants of a neon-bright Post-it note. She frowned at the screen. “Don’t recognize the number, but whoever it was left a message. I’m going to sneak off to one of Sophie’s other living rooms to listen. You’ll be okay without me? I’ll only be a few.”

She was gone way longer than a few minutes. I nervously sipped my not-from-a-box wine while I watched the well-dressed couples congregate around small high tables in groups of four or six, chatting animatedly. The women were staunch believers in gold-toned highlights, Botox, and statement jewelry. The men were partial to checkered dress shirts and ironed jeans. Oddly, a number of them sported prominent beer bellies, Homer Simpson style. They seemed inordinately proud of them, smiling broadly as the women patted and rubbed their tummies.

“Your turn,” said a voice from behind me. I whirled, nearly spilling cabernet down the rounded front of Sophia Carver-Wittelstein. She held up a contraption that chillingly reminded me of Jerry’s prosthesis. “It’s a fake baby belly,” she explained, hooking it over my shoulder. “Gretchen works at Marigold Maternity, and they keep these lying around so newly pregnant women can buy clothes for the later months.”

“And you want me to put it on?”

“All the guys do it,” she said, attempting to pout. Was Botox even allowed during pregnancy? “It’s so much fun. And we can’t start the games until you do.”

Games?
What the hell? I began to shove my arms into the straps.

“Oh, no, you need to put it under your clothes so it looks realistic. The bathroom is down the second hallway to your right.”

I downed the rest of my wine and made my way. The arched hallway led to a bathroom the Romans would have fought a hundred armies to secure, complete with pillars and a placid pool of azure water I guessed was the bathtub. The only thing stopping me from hiding there until the party was over was the thought of Carly crashing into the room and dragging me out by the hair.

I undressed my top half and shrugged on the belly like a backpack in reverse. My sweater barely fit when I tugged it back on, and I hoped it wouldn’t stretch the knit fabric beyond recognition. One wall held a bank of floor-length mirrors. I took in my profile and gasped.

I’d seen pregnancy stretch and mold Carly’s body four times. Each child affected her differently—Maura preferred to sit just under her rib cage, Patrick hung low, Kevin held himself back and widened Carly’s ass like a long-distance truck driver, and Josie, the heaviest baby at almost ten pounds, was the only one to give her stretch marks, like a tiger had attempted to claw off her belly button. I suspected Carly was secretly proud of the way her body announced her impending motherhood to the world, and looking at myself, false belly jutting out like I’d swallowed a basketball, I felt an odd sense of pride, of presentation.
Here it is—look what’s happening! Here is an everyday miracle, right under your nose!
I suddenly understood why Sophia would consider naming her child Faith. Looking at that belly every day was an exercise in it.

I snapped a quick photo of myself in the mirror. Maybe it would be the only time I’d see myself like that. Then again, maybe it was a portent of things to come. Flush with an unfamiliar kind of excitement, I rejoined the party.

“Ladies, grab your jars!” Sophia screeched. “Men, choose your spoons!”

The women dashed for the table holding jars of baby food, elbowing each other to snag the smashed peas or beef stew. Carly, who had reemerged, chose neon-orange pureed carrots, dipping her finger daintily into the soupy mess and tasting it.

She hadn’t approached me since returning to the party, making a beeline for Sophia Carver-Wittelstein and pulling her to the cavern between the bar and stone fireplace for an intensely private conversation. Jealousy spiked quick and hot. Why couldn’t she discuss Maura’s latest drama with me? Was I really that useless when it came to understanding kids?

Feeling suddenly low, I drifted over to where the men stood. One large-bellied man shoved a spoon in my hand, a long-handled number with a large, shallow tip.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

He gave me an odd look. “You ever play that game where you balance the egg on a spoon and walk across the room? This is the same thing, but you use your biceps to balance the open jar of baby food on your belly until you get to the fireplace, where you’ll try to keep it in place while your—er—
wife
feeds you. First one to polish it off wins.”

“Are you serious?”

“We’re all serious. Have you ever seen these women play? They’re brutally competitive.”

I glanced at the expensive Persian rug covering most of the floor, and the blood sank from my face. “It’s impossible to keep it balanced for that long.”

“Why are you complaining? You’ve got an unfair advantage,” he said, gesturing to my boobs.

Okay, asshole, game on.
“Where do we line up?”

The men ordered themselves vaguely by height, each woman wedging the open jars of baby food between the fake belly and her man’s chest and upper arms. Carly nestled the jar into my cleavage. “Get it in there,” she said, tugging hard on the underwire in my bra.

“How am I supposed to keep it upright?”

“Try not breathing for a while,” Carly said acidly, and again I wondered what Maura had done. She snatched the spoon from my hand and strode over to where the other women waited, their willowy bodies drifting forward in anticipation.

Two Hispanic women brought out a roll of plastic sheeting and unspooled it over the carpet, while Sophia Carver-Wittelstein took her place in front of the massive stone fireplace, holding a scarf. “On my word,” she said, and then, “Go!” the scarf wafting through the air.

The men and I scuttled slowly across the floor like drunken crabs, bent awkwardly, knees creaking. I pushed my arms together, and the jar stayed firmly lodged between my boobs and belly, my eyes focused on the pink banner waving above Carly’s head. I outmaneuvered, I dodged, I jostled. The second my toe hit the finish line, Carly lifted the spoon and began shoveling pureed carrots into my mouth. It dripped down the corners, plopping onto my nice sweater. “Thhhtop,” I said, trying to get her to slow down, but her eyes gleamed.

“Suck it up, buttercup. We’re winning.” The jar shifted, and I hunched over, desperate to keep it upright. The baby food tasted disgusting—slightly metallic and sour—and I fought a dry heave. “Don’t even think it,” Carly murmured, spooning more into my mouth. A cold glob fell onto my chest, and I tried to ignore my desperate need to wipe it away. She shoved the spoon in again. And again.

And then I did the worst thing I could have possibly done.

I sneezed.

The average sneeze can move at up to one hundred miles an hour and has a radius of ten feet. Unlike most other areas of my life, I was apparently above average in this arena. Droplets of bright orange goo splattered the creamy silk blouse of Sophia Carver-Wittelstein, the smooth ivory stone fireplace, and the shocked faces of the well-groomed women standing frozen before their husbands, spoons aloft.

Carly grabbed the baby-food jar from the floor where it had fallen. “It’s empty!” she crowed. “We win.”

“Disqualified,” Sophia Carver-Wittelstein said as she used a cloth napkin to dab frantically at her face. “She didn’t eat all of it.”

The other women nodded in agreement.

“Sneezing is an act of God,” Carly argued. “That jar was empty. The food was in her mouth. No one said she had to swallow it.”

Sophia began her counterattack, the other women jumping in until the Carver-Wittelsteins’ living room vibrated with the sound of increasingly raised female voices. Then silence fell, suddenly, as if someone had kicked the party’s cord out of its socket.

“Did I miss the good part?” Dr. Bridget stood in the doorway, naturally blonde hair resplendent in a sea of fakery. It was as if one of the big stones had been pushed to the side, and she appeared, golden and angelic, the patron saint of epidurals.

“She’s here,” Sophia Carver-Wittelstein said in a fierce whisper. The women parted, clearing a path for Dr. Bridge, which she took, straight to the bar.

The whispers and murmuring reached a fever pitch, a room full of buzzing bees.

Dr. Bridge swirled her red wine in its glass and took a healthy sip. “I’m not on call this weekend,” she said, grinning. “Dr. Warner is.”