The Seven Year Bitch (30 page)

Even Humbert was a boy.

But no one was more disappointed than Russell's parents.

“Oh well,” his mother said. “I wouldn't have been happy without a girl. We had two children, a boy and a girl, to replace ourselves.”

Oh God, I thought, what a concept.

“But if Leslie had been a boy, I would have kept trying until I got a girl. I would have died trying! Maybe the doctor was wrong,” was his mother's brilliant idea. “Ya never know—it just might come out a girl!”

But Dr. Lichter wasn't wrong, and one day, in the middle of a spirited sword fight with Duncan, I had an amazing realization. I loved sword fighting! And I loved talking like a pirate.
Arrrrrgh
, matey! Batten down the hatches, scalawag! I loved making Duncan walk the plank, and I loved when he made me walk the plank. And I loved sharks. Their crooked terrifying teeth and hideous nostrils and dorsal fins. And I loved roaring and screaming and running and discussing which was scarier, a fox or a wolf, or a witch or a dragon.

I walked to the boys' side of the Kidini clothing sale filled with excitement, proudly examining little plaid flannel shirts and tiny down jackets with the stoic determination of the mother of a boy. Pajamas that made him look like a little Hugh Hefner and striped socks just like his father's.

I loved when he wrapped his arms around me and mashed his hard skull into mine and said, “I love you, Isolde Pearl Brilliant.”

Since Dr. Lichter had
bailed out on me, I had no choice but to choose a new ob-gyn. Dr. Sitbon was nothing like Dr. Lichter. He was French and young, no more than forty, and for nine and a half long months no matter how many times I asked him to call me Izzy, he called me madame.

It seemed absurd that I would wait for him, half naked on his table, pregnancy hormones coursing through my body, imagining him fucking me from behind against the dangerous wastes bin, and then he would enter and say, “Bonjour, madame.”

The fact that I hadn't exactly had a bikini wax and had an enormous pregnant stomach and sometimes a rashy complexion didn't stop me from thinking that we really would fuck, long and hard, leaving all those other women to languish in the waiting room with their water bottles and swollen ankles and brochures for cord blood cell banks and doulas.

“You still haven't heard anything about Dr. Lichter?” I would ask in my disappointment with his professionalism.

“Ah, you still miss your Dr. Lichter. I am not good enough for you?”

Prove you're good enough, I thought, thrusting my huge stomach at him even more seductively.

“You're good,” I said. But he never spent more than five minutes with me. We never had long philosophical discussions about what it meant to be a mother.

“What's that?” I asked, during one appointment, pointing to the Cartier ring that had suddenly appeared on his wedding finger.

“I got married two weeks ago,” he said.

“Congratulations!” I said, my heart plunging. It was getting harder and harder to fantasize about him. Dr. Lichter had a tired old labor-and-delivery nurse for a wife, so riding him on the tiny round stool at the foot of the examining table was always a likely possibility. But Dr. Sitbon was a newlywed, just back from a honeymoon. “Where did you go?” I asked.

“China.”

I hated people who took adventurous honeymoons. “Did you marry a nurse?” I asked.

“No, a doctor,” he said.

“Are you going to have children?”

“I hope.”

I had seen him once walking with a beautiful woman doctor up the circular driveway, talking heatedly in their respective lab coats, and I had burned with jealousy at the time.

“Ah, what is zis?” he said.

“The sex?” I asked.

“
Oui
, yes. Do you want to know?”

“Tell me,” I said. “Do you see a wee-wee?”

“A what?”

“A wee-wee. That's what Dr. Lichter said.”

“Ah yes, your precious Dr. Lichter. No, I do not see a wee-wee.”

My heart soared with happiness. It was a girl. I was having a girl.

“However, I do see a penis!”

“Maybe you're wrong,” I said, sounding like Russell's mother.

He circled something invisible with his finger on the sonogram screen. “I'm not wrong, madame,” he said. “Do you see that?”

“No.”

“Well I'm afraid it's undeniable.”

I tried to smile.

“Not what you were hoping for?” he asked.

I couldn't speak.

“My mother had two boys,” he said. “I was her second son.”

I let out an uncontrollable sob. And once that happened I couldn't stop crying.

“And then she tried one more time and had a girl. So it all could have a happy ending.”

Crying, I told him that I loved boys, that I'd always dreamed about a little black boy, that I loved having a son. That I loved pirates and sharks and dinosaurs. Either way, I thought, I would probably have had some disappointment, mourned the one I wasn't having and would never have.

“Well the baby looks wonderful,” Dr. Sitbon said. “He's totally healthy and perfect in there. It looks like he's having a very good time. So, are you okay?”

I was crying hysterically on the table.

“Aye, matey,” I said.

“Aye, matey,” he said back in his French accent. He held out his hand, which meant I was supposed to use it to hoist my enormous body up to a sitting position and also that my appointment was over.

“Thank you, ye old scalawag,” I said.

“A pleasure as always, madame,” he said and walked out the door.

 

 

Going home in the
cab I called my mother, sobbing.

“What's wrong?” she said.

“There's another wee-wee in me.”

“It's okay,” she said sadly. “It's great. A brother. A brother for Duncan!”

“But I'll never know now what it's like to have a daughter. No one will ever take care of me.”

“But remember what my shrink said when you were pregnant with Duncan. She said she was jealous that you'd have all that boy-love. You'll have all that boy-love again.”

“I don't live my life by what your shrink says, in case that comes as a surprise to you,” I said, already starting to feel soothed.

We went on like that for the rest of the ride until I was pretty much all cried out.

 

 

“ I'm having a boy,”
I told Shasthi when I got home.

“I'm having a girl,” she said.

Then we both headed into the kitchen at the same time and bumped into each other because the kitchen was too small for our big stomachs.

 

 

That night I had
dinner at Craft with Joy. “I'm only staying here for one night,” she said. “I have to get back to the shamba.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Things are just better with Chili when I'm there,” she said. “It turned out his wife wasn't fat. She was pregnant. She gave birth to his daughter four months ago. But it's all fine,” she said happily. “He was afraid to tell me because he thought I would leave him. I forgave him and he gave me a donkey which is apparently a very big deal and he sent both his wives away in disgrace.”

“Well, that's good,” I said. “Both wives? I thought he just had one wife.”

“He had another one in Mombasa, but he's done with that.” She seemed thrilled. “I'm so happy, Izzy,” she said. “You should leave Russell and move to Kenya with me.”

“I can't leave Russell,” I said. “In two days I'm having a birthday party for Duncan and then, in case you haven't noticed, I'm having a baby. It's a boy,” I added.

“Oh, Izzy, that's great,” she said. “I love being the mother of boys. I can't believe Duncan's already three.”

We ordered and I ate the entire roll the waiter placed on my plate with his tongs, and then I ate another. Even Joy couldn't stop me from eating bread when I was pregnant.

“I just hope you're not going to do the whole breast-feeding thing again?” she said. “Really, don't come visit me until you're done with all that.”

I laughed. “I'll wait for you to come here.”

“There's nothing here for me anymore,” she said. “With the exception of having my children, leaving Harry was the single best thing I have ever done. I mean, marriage is so distasteful really. Tell me, what is your definition of marriage?”

“Having good seats at the theater,” I said.

“What are you talking about?”

“When I got married the first thing I noticed was that I could order tickets to something months in advance and know I'd still have Russell to go to it with. Before I was married I never felt confident enough to order them so I never had good seats.”

“There's got to be more to marriage than that,” she said. “I have no idea what you see in Russell. Frankly I don't even know what you see in New York anymore.”

“The way you're talking, I'm worried I won't ever see you here again,” I said.

“You probably won't. But you'll come to Africa.”

“You'll have to come back to check on the store,” I said.

“I'm not sure what I'm going to do about that.”

We talked about her freedom and my captivity, but I couldn't help notice she was the one who seemed to be on a leash. She might live on a whole wildlife reserve and I might live in a cage, but at least when I went home at night I was the only wife having the only baby.

“How was your anniversary?” she asked when I hugged her good-bye on the street.

“Great,” I said. “Russell spent the whole day and night at the Brooklyn Book Fair. We had a huge fight and I called him a fool and he called me a bitch.”

“And it was your
seventh
anniversary?” Joy said, slowly nodding her head.

“Yes,” I said.

“And
are
you a bitch?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said sadly.

“You're a
seven year
bitch,” she said knowingly. “But it's not your fault.”

W
hat are you doing tomorrow?” Gabe Weinrib asked when he called me on my cell phone the next morning.

“It's my son's third birthday,” I said.

“I can't believe he's three already,” Gabe said.

“I'm having a party for him.”

“That sounds fun,” he said.

“It's just a kids' party. It's too bad your son isn't in New York,” I said, relieved that he wasn't. The last thing I wanted was for Gabe and Russell to pound the same piñata with the same stick. And I didn't want Gabe to see me that pregnant.

“Mathieu is in New York,” he said.

 

 

The next day Russell
and I tied green streamers around trees in Central Park leading from the West Eighty-first Street entrance to the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theatre, which I had rented out for all the kids in Duncan's preschool class to see a private showing of
Peter Pan
. When we had tied the last streamer on the last tree, a security officer from the Parks Commission came in some kind of cart and made us take them all down. No matter what we did, we were always being approached by security.

Shasthi helped me put down Peter Pan–green tablecloths in the cottage and cover them with pirate and fairy favors. All twenty parties Duncan had been to that year had a pirate-andprincess or pirate-and-fairy or pirate-and-ballerina theme, basically the child equivalent of a college pimps-and-ho's party.

When I finished setting everything up, my eyes filled with tears. Marionettes from past shows watched me from the walls—Pinocchio, the witch from
Jack and the Beanstalk
, the queen from
Snow White
. I was the mother of a three-year-old. According to Dr. Lichter, I had made it to the other side.

“What should I do?” Russell asked, standing dumbly in the doorway like one of the marionettes waiting to go on.

“Let people in and take their coats and give them a treasure map,” I directed. “When the show starts, go with my father to get the hot dogs and the pretzels and start opening bottles of wine. And just please try not to ruin this day for me,” I further instructed. I felt like Jack's mother sending him off to sell the cow. He had ruined Duncan's first and second birthdays, and I couldn't help but wonder bitterly what he had in store for the third.

When the children began to arrive, I got to work tracing each child's shadow on a long roll of butcher paper. I gave the girls fairy wings, and the boys hooks for hands.