Motherhood Made a Man Out of Me (16 page)

“Do what? What are we talking about here?”

“Then when Mary Rose and I got pregnant, there was no way I could tell Lynne. You knew she had a baby. It died.”

“Oh, God, Ward, I'm so so sorry.” Why hadn't I heard of this before? Audra, information specialist, certainly would have told me. Death of a child trumps everything, explains everything. Now Ward was not simply misunderstood, but tragic. Homeric. I thought I might have to fall in love with him myself. He was my third cousin, give or take. That could work.

“Not my kid, no. It was with her first husband. Elroy, I think his name was. The husband, not the baby. He was in the film business too, come to think of it. Something below the line—sound, maybe? I think it was SIDS. Can't remember.”

Ward suddenly shrunk back into his pre-Homeric self. Old dissembling Ward. Not that the situation wasn't terrible, it was, but it wasn't his situation. Wasn't his baby, wasn't even his step-baby. Couldn't even remember the poor thing's name. He'd just remembered it recently, I could tell.

“I don't mean to be rude, here, but what's your point, Ward?”

“Lynne obviously wondered who Mary Rose was—”

“You hadn't told her
anything
?”

“
Dug
,” said Stella, pointing over Ward's shoulder at a Jack Russell being tethered by its owner, a woman in bicycle shorts and Gore-Tex windbreaker, to the bicycle rack just outside.

“Dog, sweetie,” I said. “Dog.” I adjusted her blue felt beret and sighed. It was probably the last time in her life she'd look good in a hat.

“Well, she knows now. She knows, and she wants a divorce.”

“That's convenient.”

“I don't think Mary Rose will have me, is the point.”

“Ward, I gotta tell ya. This is none of my business. As Lyle has told me about a thousand times. But what in the fuck do you think you're doing? You're taking a woman you allegedly love, or want to marry, or whatever, to court for custody of her baby, a baby that isn't even born yet. That's hardly being a supportive birth partner.”

“Mary Rose has been acting bizarre, Brooke. You have to grant me that. And I was worried. For the health of the baby. Don't I have to do what's right for the child? Isn't that what all the courts are always going on about? Doing what's best for the kid? Anyway, the suit was Big Hank's idea.”

“How old are you, Ward, forty?”

“Brooke, it's Big Hank. It's my father.”

“So wait, you want to patch things up with Mary Rose and sue her at the same time? I'm not following.”

“I don't know,” said Ward. “I thought maybe you'd have some ideas.”

“Ideas? Like what? Like, don't be such a jerk? That would be a good one for starters.”

“
Dug-dug. Dug-dug
.” Stella laughed at her linguistic discovery, which made her laugh some more, which made me laugh, which made Ward smile, which made Stella's eyebrows shoot up, surprised. “
Duggie
.” She pointed at Ward.

“You're probably right, Stella-girl.” He took her pointing hand, her thumb shiny from sucking, smoothed it out flat, then turned her wrist so it was facing skyward. She stared at him, fascinated. He tiptoed his first two fingers around her cushiony little palm.

“All around the garden walked the little bear. One step”—he took one giant tiptoe to the inside of her elbow—“two step”—he took another tiptoe to the top of her arm—“tickle under there!”—then swooped his fingers around and tickled her in the armpit. Stella shrieked with glee. People turned and looked; those
in the mood to, smiled. I wonder if they thought we were a family. I felt that weird pang: Ward was a schmuck, but Ward was good with kids. He wanted to be a father.

Stella offered him half of her gummed biscotti.

AT
8:00
A.M.
a week after the game, Mary Rose and I went to the Vivian Clair School for Girls annual rummage sale.

The Vivian Clair rummage sale is hugely popular in our city. In other cities with less rain, the wealthy put their five-thousand-dollar damask sofas out on the street with the garbage. Here they donate it to the Vivian Clair rummage sale. Mary Rose was hoping to find a solid wooden crib for under a hundred dollars. I was hoping to find a van Gogh that someone had inadvertently given away with their daughter's Spice Girls poster.

Mary Rose was in a quiet, crabby mood, almost as if she was hungover. She sat in my car, her callused hands upturned on her thighs. Her china-blue leggings were now halfway up her calves. Her socks were mismatched, her shoelaces untied. The sight of her untied laces made me suddenly sad. When you live alone there is no one to tie your shoes.

Mary Rose leaned her head against the window, then drew hatch marks in the oval of grease left by her forehead.

Apropos of nothing she said, “Do you think Dicky is dangerous?”

“Other than dangerously dull, you mean?”

“I opened the door the other day and he was standing there, right on my front mat, just standing there. Didn't look like he was about to knock or anything. I had been on the phone with Dr. Vertamini, telling her about what Dr. Deluski said. I'd say he was eavesdropping, but why should he care?”

Icky Dicky. I was happy to gossip about poor Dicky. It distracted me from worrying whether I should tell Mary Rose I'd seen Ward. I opted for a one-woman show, instead. I told her about the time Dicky got caught stealing a tape at a local video store.

The store was a one-time Tastee Freeze with
black wrought-iron bars on the windows. Dicky had stopped to see if they had any copies of
Romeo's Dagger.
This was apparently a regular practice. The few seconds of joy he felt at seeing three copies of the film in stock were dampened by the fact that none was rented out. The clerk, a blond girl with greasy plum-colored lipstick, was talking on the phone. He slipped one of the tapes from behind the box and put it in the pocket of his raincoat, thinking that when they did their next inventory they would say, “Wow! Someone thought this movie was so fantastic it was worth stealing!”

“He went through the metal detector and the alarm went off. The rent-a-cop on duty came over and expected Dicky to have a copy of
May the Breast Man Win
in his pocket or something sleazy, but there was
Romeo's Dagger.
The rent-a-cop laughed,
laughed.
Dicky told him he was just trying to further his career. Is that pathetic or what?”

That was how you always ended a Dicky story. Is that pathetic? Pathetic!

Mary Rose sighed and rubbed her eyes with the knuckles of her index fingers. “Boy, I could use a cigarette.”

At the Vivian Clair rummage sale, Mary Rose and I went our separate ways. I found a plastic giraffe rocking horse for Stella, and Mary Rose found her crib.

It was painted white with spool-turned slats. It had been taken apart down to washers, bolts, and unidentifiable parts destined to be left over when the crib was reassembled. It leaned against the end of a long table of baby and toddler clothes. A ripped cellophane bag with all the hardware was taped to the headboard. I found Mary Rose kneeling beside it on the concrete floor. On either side of her, women pawed through stacks of beautiful dresses, barely worn, dresses they would buy for their girls, who would also never wear them. Mary Rose was carefully counting out all the screws and springs. Suddenly, I felt bad. She should buy Patricia a new crib. Ward should buy Patricia a new crib.

“You'll need an instruction manual to put that thing back together!” I said.

12.

WHEN MARY ROSE REALIZED PATRICIA WAS GOING TO BE
born in three weeks, not seven, she got quiet. I thought it was the shock. The Mother of All Pain would be upon her much sooner than she had expected. She wasn't ready, but she had no choice.

Month Ten. It's not nine months we're with child, but ten. Forty weeks.

Force ten from Chromosome.
I want someone to make a movie.

Month Ten, when, like a prisoner of war being driven berserk by the most subtle of tortures, you are afforded no comfortable position.

When standing is worse than sitting is worse than lying down.

When sleep, so desperately needed, is out of the question, tormented as you are by the need to pee and the twisting and rolling of the baby, who wants to party the instant you are still.

When the Braxton-Hicks contractions, the alarming and painful warm-up exercises performed by your uterus day and night, no less enthusiastic for its upcoming task than a linebacker in a Nike commercial, strike terror in your heart, convincing you This Is It (it isn't; far from it).

When you can no longer fit behind the wheel of a car.

When, after the baby drops, your belly button is dragged from sight, staring eyeless down at your newly splayed toes. When the baby's heels sometimes kick between your breasts to a degree that put you in mind of water brought to a full boil. When, during
increasingly frequent trips to the loo, tearful with the urge to go, you are able to squeeze out three drops (your bladder, wedged into a teeny corner of your torso, has also gone into shock).

When you realize once and for all that you did not sign up for this, and could you please return to your old self as soon as possible? You refuse to believe it is a one-way turnstile; or if it is one-way, that you can't simply turn around and hop back over. Your old self is of course just that: your old self. You are at the brink. You are at the shores of motherhood. You are about to hit the beach. You think you will die. And you will. You will never be yourself again. Motherhood is for women what war is for men. When they had more wars, more men knew what it was like to be a woman on the verge of being a mother, to be at an absolute point of no return.

Mary Rose, who supposed she was only in Month Nine, would now go into labor without the psychological advantage of arriving at the brink. She would imagine there was still perhaps some way she could finagle her way out of what lay ahead.

She must have been terrified.

Then, of course, May 2, Mary Rose's revised due date came and went, and still Mary Rose did not go into labor. She was going to be early; now she was late. This opened her up to advice from mothers and involved fathers from far and wide.

Eat spicy food, then run up a flight of stairs.

Go dancing.

Drink olive oil.

Drink castor oil.

Fleabo, in an uncharacteristically frisky moment, leered beside her as they stood in a drizzle pinching the spent flowers from Mrs. Lemann's prize pink azaleas. He said he heard that intercourse did the trick. He tried to tickle her.

“Another male fantasy bites the dust,” she said.

May 3. Nothing.

Once, she was awakened in the night by a serpentine cramp that surfaced in her lower back, wrapped itself around her abdomen, then squeezed down her thighs. That was all.

In the books they say that being late is cause for despair. Such a limp emotion never touched Mary Rose's heart. Murderous, was more like it.

Mary Rose had her usual prenatal appointment on Wednesday, May 6. So far she had gained a total of forty-six pounds. Her blood pressure was 143/86. Patricia was nine pounds, at least, and growing by a pound a week. Mary Rose's belly was no longer balloonlike, but looked more like a piano covered by a blanket; the baby all knees, elbows, heels, and head.

“Let's get this show on the road,” said Dr. Vertamini finally, and scheduled Mary Rose for an induction.

There were risks.

Mary Rose was admitted into the hospital at 12:16 a.m., Thursday, May 14, an hour normally associated with red-eye flights to the other side of the country. The curiously late hour was not for Mary Rose's benefit, a soon-to-be-laboring mother with a top-of-the-line health insurance policy for which she had paid astronomical premiums for many years, but for the benefit of the insurance company. Of course. The hospital charged by the day, as do all American hospitals. Woe to the woman in active labor who asks to be admitted at 11:30 p.m. She will just have to keep her knees together until 12:01.

But Mary Rose was not in active labor when she was admitted at 12:16 a.m. She was grumpy and restless. It was a cool and misty night, raining in fits and starts.

On the third floor, in the labor and delivery wing, there was a board over the nurse's station. It announced how many women were in labor, and how many babies had been born that day. It announced that the Blazers had advanced to the second round of the play-offs, and were up 2–1 against the Suns in the Conference Semifinals. Go Blazers!

At 12:16 a.m., there were eleven women laboring, the number of newborns too long to count at a glance. I tried to count back ten months and concluded that despite the heat, people like to get it on in August. Maybe it's the two-week vacation.

A stocky nurse with an old perm led us to one of the labor/delivery suites and, reporting that an emergency C-section was underway, hurried out.

We stood around. Mary Rose lowered herself onto the chintz-covered love seat. She pointed at a watercolor on the wall, an impressionistic French seaside village, with sailboats, sidewalk cafes, and men in berets.

“That will help my labor go much easier, don't you think?”

“You can pretend you're having a baby in an art museum.”

The actual induction wouldn't begin until the next morning. The purpose of early admission was so that Mary Rose's cervix might be made more “favorable” by a direct application of prostaglandin gel. A favorable cervix was a happy cervix, soft and pliable, ready for the rush of Pitocin that would be administered through an
IV
drip. In normal labor, that is, labor that is not induced, the contractions begin and build gradually, sonata-like. Mary Rose's fuel-injected contractions would start in a manner resembling an Indy racecar roaring away from the starting line. She would scream for the anesthesiologist.

Another nurse appeared waving an enormous plastic syringe that looked suited only for shooting grout around the bathtub. The prostaglandin.

“That's going up me?” said Mary Rose. She had expected a discreet and tasteful suppository.

“Pee now or forever hold your peace.”

I left Mary Rose, returning a little after seven the next morning with the Laboring Mother's Survival Kit: a sack lunch (packed by Lyle, who remembered how hungry he had been, hungry and loath to leave my side); a tennis ball for massaging Mary Rose's back; a paper bag for her to blow into to prevent hyperventilation; a half-dozen sugar-free lollipops for reasons I could never fathom.

Agreeing to an induction is also agreeing to be hooked up to a fetal monitor, which means you are stuck in a bed as soft and inviting as a dining room table for hours, if not days. When I walked in, the nurse was adjusting the straps around Mary Rose's
belly—one tracked the fetal heartbeat, the other Mary Rose's contractions. Mary Rose lay on her side, head cradled in the crook of her arm, her not-fit-for-human-apparel hospital gown hiked up to her ribs, her feet, in turquoise sweat socks, hanging off the end of the bed. In addition to being hard, the beds were also designed for women who were five-foot-six.

“How'd you sleep?”

“I was supposed to sleep? I thought I was supposed to lie here and suffer for being a descendent of Eve,” said Mary Rose.

The prostaglandin had caused enough cramping to prevent Mary Rose from dozing. When the night nurse came at 3:00 a.m. to read the fetal monitor, the faint blue scratches on the paper scroll could only be read in the fluorescent glare of the overhead light. Mary Rose's hips ached. Her back ached. No one had instructed her on how to call a nurse. There was some kind of remote control dangling from the head of the bed, but this was for the TV. Once turned on, it could only be turned off manually.

Another nurse, a mumbler named Laurie or Leslie, came in and told Mary Rose that she was not her labor nurse, but that her labor nurse would arrive first thing in the morning. The doctor on call would then arrive to check Mary Rose. Then, if everything looked good, they would be able to begin the Pitocin drip.

“If everything looks good? I thought it was all set.”

“Provided the prostaglandin worked.”

“And if it didn't?”

“We'll cross that bridge, shall we? In the meantime, you can take a shower.”

“My last cigarette, huh?”

“No. No smoking on account of the oxygen.”

“It was a joke,” she said. “A bad joke, but a joke nonetheless.”

“I'll check your cervix after your shower to see where we are.”

I sat on the love seat and read an article in
Vogue
on the return of the crocheted shoulder bag, while Laurie or Leslie stuck her rubber-gloved index finger up Mary Rose until her hand threatened to disappear. Mary Rose yawned. She was still only
dilated one centimeter, ten being the number to which all laboring women aspire.

This didn't seem very encouraging, considering how severe the prostaglandin-inspired cramps had been. Laurie or Leslie didn't think so either.

The doctor on call was someone named Dr. Madboy, not the most comforting of names. He introduced himself, displaying a ferocious, big-toothed smile, his gums receding and puffy. The obstetrician with gingivitis. As a doctor, you think he'd be hip to the importance of flossing. I felt a haiku coming on.

“Should we give her another six hours with the prostaglandin?” Laurie or Leslie asked Dr. Madboy, his hand resting on Mary Rose's side as if it were a fender. “Her cervix is still unfavorable.”

“What kind of a name is Madboy?” I asked. Everyone ignored me.

“It's all my fault,” said Mary Rose. “I've spent all these months trying to keep her in there, now she won't come out.”

I laughed, since everyone ignored her, too.

Dr. Madboy ordered another round of prostaglandin. I went downstairs for a cup of coffee, and bought a stuffed duggie in the gift shop for Stella.

I returned just in time to watch Mary Rose receive a needle inside her left wrist. Her labor nurse had finally come on and was preparing Mary Rose to receive the IV. The nurse was in her fifties, gum-cracking and weathered, wearing a number of pins on the lapel of her smock. One said:
NEED DRUGS? ASK ME
! I don't think it was hospital-issue. Her name was Betty; her gum, Juicy Fruit.

Betty shuffled out to get the bottle of Pitocin. Mary Rose stared at her wrist, a piece of white paper tape holding the IV in place. “This hurts,” she said. “Is it supposed to?”

“It's because the skin is so tender,” I said.

“Betty said it was because the skin was so tough.”

“That, too.” I said.

At 9:00 a.m. the Pitocin drip began. A bottle of clear fluid hung upside-down in a metal frame posted at Mary Rose's
shoulder. An infusion pump released the drug into the narrow tube connected to her wrist one drip at a time. We watched the drip as though any minute it might say something we might want to write down.

Mary Rose still had no idea that between the excruciating moments, labor could actually be quite boring.

Outside Mary Rose's labor/delivery suite—it must be called a suite because there's a Jacuzzi in the bathroom—people rushed back and forth on soft-soled shoes. Considering the number of women laboring up and down the hallway, there wasn't much groaning and shrieking. Either the acoustics were great or everyone was up on their breathing techniques, which, incidentally, do nothing to ease the pain and do everything to keep you from embarrassing yourself by shrieking at your husband: “Kill me now, asshole!”

While we were waiting for Mary Rose's contractions to start, Ward appeared in the doorway. He'd gotten his hair cut too short, and the movie-star forelock stuck out at an odd angle, dorky, not beguiling. He wore a white T-shirt from a Seattle film-developing company that had a stick drawing of a person holding a movie camera that said, in a child's endearingly lousy print:
Why grow up when you can make movies
? He ducked his head, cowed a little by all the medical technology, the beeping monitors, the IV, the thick straps around Mary Rose's big moon of a belly. If he had had a hat, it'd have been in his hand.

“Knock, knock,” he said. “I hope these are visiting hours.”

“There are no visiting hours in labor, Ward. I thought you'd done all that reading!” I sounded hysterical, even to my own ears.

“Ward,” said Mary Rose flatly. She turned her head on the pillow to look at him, seemed neither happy nor unhappy to see him. It was almost as if she didn't know him, or as if he was simply another intern passing through.

“Dicky called and told me.”

“Told you what?”

“About being early. About the due date being wrong.”

“Dicky? How did Dicky know?”

At that moment, Betty shuffled in to crank up what in labor-nurse parlance is known as the “Pit drip.” “Who's this?” she asked.

“Ward Baron.” He moved to shake her hand, but thought better of it when he saw she was wearing plastic gloves. “It's my baby.”

“Actually,” said Mary Rose, “she's not your baby. She's my baby.”

“We're having some problems,” said Ward. “The mother is angry with me.”

“Well, if she is, I am too,” said Betty. “Skedaddle! Shoo!” She nudged him out of the way with her hip and checked the fetal monitor. “No speaka da English? Get lost.”

Mary Rose said nothing but did something oddly conciliatory, considering the circumstances: She extended her hand to Ward. In three big steps he was beside her. Impulsively, he kissed her knuckles.