Momfriends (9 page)

Life was bliss for a woman in this fairy-tale world. Sure at any time she could find out that her boyfriend was sleeping with her best friend or her love interest could be her brother or her baby wasn’t necessarily her husband’s offspring and might not even be hers. But what they did have going for them was random romantic dates planned by their incredibly muscular and often shirtless paramours.

My husband’s idea of a romantic date to celebrate my birthday did not involve a single soap opera trapping. When he finally realized at close to midnight what day it was, it didn’t matter. He said that we would celebrate the following evening and I immediately explained that there was no way of getting a sitter. So he determined that we could celebrate at home. How thoughtful. Maybe that is why I always made the plans.

There were no flowers, no jewelry, and no scrumptious meal revealed under the shiny lid of silver serving tray. Yes, he came home earlier than usual. For him that meant 8:00 P.M. And he got Indian takeout. He knew that was my favorite even though lately spicy food had been giving me heartburn. I can’t believe he couldn’t remember that.

And throughout dinner, perhaps because this was a special occasion, he didn’t check his PDA. Usually, it sat right there on the table with us, our dinner guest. It was Peter who used to joke that he wanted to change his name to Blackberry so he got more attention from me. These days, he had become more focused on work. When once I might have found this admirable, lately I resented it.

Even though he wasn’t checking his PDA, he didn’t bother to turn it off. It sat in the pocket of his jacket on the bar stool behind the kitchen counter. It kept making it’s little stupid sound, which was supposed to be unobtrusive but actually caused Peter to glance anxiously over at the counter, his lips pressed into a concerned grimace.

“Do you need to check that, honey?” I asked after the tenth time.

“No, not during dinner. We’re celebrating.”

Sure we were.

But the kicker, the real gem of it all, was my present. What I got was a fleece jacket. Yes, it was a nice warm fleece in a passable color. It was the kind of thing I might throw on if I was apple picking in upstate New York or going for a run on a winter’s day. But it was June. It was finally summer. Sure, I guess I would wear it, but what it really reminded me of was something a soccer mom would wear. It was a Mom Fleece. I absolutely hated it.

But I smiled and said thank you to Peter.

“I have the receipt if you want to exchange it.”

“No, it’s great thanks.” I surreptitiously glanced around to see if this was a decoy gift. It wasn’t.

“It seemed like it would be such a pretty color on you,” Peter said smiling. He was genuine. I couldn’t remember the last time he used the word pretty. I guess he was trying. I looked down into the box. My eyes spotted the receipt and what perturbed me the most was that it wasn’t even a gift receipt. He hadn’t thought to hide the amount the fleece cost from me. True we shared credit cards and I would have seen it on the statement, but a gift receipt would have been a little more of a surprise. There it was the price, $34.50. It was so incredibly unromantic.

“Well, I guess I’ll clean up,” he said.

“Thanks.’ I said. “Cleaning up” involved throwing a bunch of take-out containers into the garbage. I had already done “cleaning up” several times during the twins’ dinner. But I didn’t say that because we were “celebrating”.

I went to the living room to watch the Food Network. Usually, on the rare times we did watch TV, I let Peter have the remote while I looked over work budgets. Tonight it was Alton Brown, and I was not surrendering.

“Are you watching this,” Peter asked.

“I am.”

“Okay,” Peter said. He came and sat down next to me. The feel of his leg next to mine slightly annoyed me. It was a relief when he said that he was going to turn in.

After Alton, I sat there flipping the channels, looking for something that would satisfy me. I could hear him in our room typing something on his laptop, returning work emails no doubt. Maybe he was online cheating. I doubted it. I started to wish that Peter had tried to seduce me. I knew that if he had, I probably would have made up an excuse not to. It was depressing that he didn’t even consider it.

I sighed and turned the TV off. And then I cleaned both bathrooms in the apartment until two in the morning.

That was celebrating.

The next day, I could barely keep myself from yawning at work. My mother called first thing. I glanced at the clock. It was my cappuccino time, but I had been dodging her phone calls for almost a week.

“At last, you answer,” she said when I picked up. What must have started as a desire to wish me a happy birthday was now turning into another way of putting me down. I was never good enough for my mother.

“Work has been extremely busy.”

“I keep telling you that you need to take a job that doesn’t have offices in so many different time zones,” she said. “I keep telling you" was my mother’s favorite way to start a reproach. In grade school she kept telling me I had to get good grades, so I skipped a grade. In high school, she kept telling me I had to have a well-rounded resume, so I played the violin, joined the newspaper, studied ballet, and played volleyball and I got a full ride to Duke. During college she kept telling me I had to always be thinking about what was next so I double majored in business and accounting.

I got ten job offers out of college and I took the one farthest away from my mother in Florida. It was the first time I disobeyed her. I knew she was lonely - she and my father had divorced right after I started junior high - but I needed out. At some point I realized that no matter how much I surpassed her expectations, there was always something more that she wanted. There was always something she kept telling me that I wasn’t hearing.

And she still called me constantly, always with something she “kept telling me” that I wasn’t doing. It never seemed to matter that on paper I was doing it all: work, kids, marriage, and homeownership. My mother was still disappointed. I would never be good enough for her to stop telling and start listening.

“Mother, I have a meeting in fifteen minutes. What’s going on?”

“Oh, ok,” she paused. I felt bad about rushing her. She really didn’t have anyone else. “I just wanted to wish you a happy birthday. I’m sorry we didn’t get to talk on the day.”

“I know,” I said, feeling guilty. In a way I was sorry, especially because she was the only one that remembered.

“The day you were born was the happiest day of my life.” That hurt my chest and made me feel lousy.

“Thanks, Mom.”

“You are welcome. I also wanted to talk to you about when I should come up for a visit. I really want to see my grandchildren.”

My mother always wanted to come. I preferred to go visit her. When she was up here, she was constantly judging my life. Plus, I didn’t know what I was going to do with her while she was here. I hated taking vacation especially because I needed to save days for when the kids got sick. And Peter and I always took a week at the end of the summer. For some reason, I was dreading that this year, too. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be alone with Peter and my kids for a whole week. All the things that were meant to be rituals in my life were beginning to seem like a punishment for something I didn’t know I had done.

“I’m not sure what the summer is going to be like. Things are pretty busy here and I’m not sure I can get the time off work.” Maybe if I wanted things to get really intense I could invite her away with us.

“I see,” my mother said. I decided to change the subject before I actually asked her.

“So I think I found the preschool I want Emily and Jacob to go to next year.”

“I keep telling you that the 92nd Street Y is where to send them.” My mother made it her business to be informed about anything that might pertain to my lifestyle. She had nothing but time to read and inform me of all the potential hazards that might affect my kids. She also seemed to want to mastermind their education from birth through death. She sent me constant packages of educational toys and articles on how to make my kids better.

“The 92nd Street Y is impossible to get into, Mom, and it is in Manhattan, nowhere near my office. It’s not practical.”

“Its practicality is overshadowed by the connections they can make. I keep telling you that if you are going to live in New York you have to send them to the best place.” This was a common refrain. Raising my family in New York never sank in for her as a permanent choice. As if I had ever done anything flighty in my life. I knew what story was coming next.

“As I keep telling you we can’t always do the easy thing.” Here we go. “When I took you to preschool, you cried and cried. You wanted to give up and come home and hang out with your mother all day. Imagine that. But you had to get started. It was the best, possible school you could go to. You learned more than colors and sharing, you learned to read. That gave you every advantage. You wouldn’t be going to all these meetings and living this way if I hadn’t persevered.” She was on a roll now. She continued, reminding me of how she had pushed me, how she gone without so I could experience and be exposed to everything. She went on for quite sometime, while I quietly checked email, trying to half listen, but really hearing every word. I glanced at the clock. I really did have a meeting. At her next pause, I jumped in.

“The preschool I am going to send them to is highly rated, Mother. And it’s convenient for us. I think they will have as many advantages as the 92nd Street Y. You know, I actually have to run. Sorry to cut you off. Thanks for the call. I will talk to Peter about this summer.”

I hung up the phone and sighed. I wasn’t going to have enough time for my cappuccino
again
. More and more, I couldn’t have a conversation with my mother without her bring up this tale from thirty-five years ago about my first day of preschool. This story bothered me on so many levels. For one thing, it could be applied to just about every occasion in my life. I could have told my mother what I had for breakfast, and she would bring up this story. As if somehow my three-year-old fear of preschool had anything to do with the person I am now. And it was as if my mother wanted to constantly remind me that she was responsible for everything about my successes. Was this story the only one that defined me for her?

My mother was really the only family I had. And I was all she had. My father was a mean alcoholic and once they divorced, I rarely heard from him. I always felt guilty that I had abandoned her in Florida. Sometimes, I suspected that no matter what she said about New York, she wished I would ask her to live with me.

I refreshed my email. Nothing. I still hadn’t received the link from the photographer with the photos that she had promised. It was yet another example of how the world was full of slackers.

The twins would not stop talking about her or “the baby’s mommy.” They didn’t know her name either. After a couple of days I thought they would be over it, but time did not diminish their memories. Every time we walked by the apartment, Emily said, “’Mmlee play lady an baby.” Jacob would join in saying “Wann baby.”

Emily kept saying “superduper” and Jacob was saying “dupeydoo”. Even this other woman’s language had made an impression on my kids.

When I called the photographer about my photos, she asked me if I had been back to see Ruth. I wasn’t even sure who she was talking about. When I realized it was my neighbor, I resented the implication that I was suddenly supposed to be responsible for someone else. I had enough people to take care of and things to eat up my time. I didn’t want more. Frankly, I hadn’t gotten a chance to pay a social call. I wanted to remind the photographer that I was working. Full time, I might add, but didn’t. I barely had time for my own kids.

I reminded myself that I had to be nice to her and patient while she didn’t do her job because I had to get the lowdown from her about how to get my kids into Brookese. Now that I had told my mother about Brookese, it was as if I had written my desire to get in in stone. If I didn’t, my mother would think I was a failure and remind me that she kept telling me to go for the 92nd Street Y. So I couldn’t write a strongly worded email to the photographer reminding her that she had made a commitment. That’s what I would have done if anyone else didn’t hold up their end of a bargain.

She made me feel judged. She was one of those earthy-crunchy types that somehow managed to breast-feed all three of her children at once. I was embarrassed that Jacob insisted on having his pacifier during the shoot. I asked her how old her kids were when they got rid of their binkies and she paused and then said that none of them had ever used one.

“They didn’t like it?” I asked.

“No, I just never offered them one. They have plenty of places on their bodies to suck.”

She had to be lying, I was sure of it.

She also paused whenever I said anything or asked her a question. It was as if she was thinking about the least offensive thing she could say to a bad mother like me, but somehow I was still offended. Peter always said I was too defensive, but I didn’t buy it. I couldn’t stand these sanctimommies who co-slept and fed their kids only organic foods and didn’t immunize and floated above the rest of us with a magic glow that they believed came from natural childbirth and cloth diapers.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about her and how well she handled my kids. Maybe some people were meant to be moms and some people weren’t. Maybe I wasn’t. I didn’t even really enjoy it that much, but part of me wanted to. Part of me thought if I had more time with the twins they might like me more. And then someone like this photographer walks in and wowed them and I was reminded that it probably
was
me. Maybe these kids simply don’t like me.

I should have gone with the photographer Deanna used, but I worried that if I did that she would compare pictures, or packages or call the photographer and find out something embarrassing about me. Sometimes it was impossible for me to make a decision without seeing all the potential possibilities ten steps ahead. It made me a great chess player and an awesome budget planner, but there was little else it helped. I was paralyzed by what could be so much that I often couldn’t make a move.