Kiss Mommy Goodbye (8 page)

She repeated it over in her mind—
but, but, but, but—
until, like the word middle, its meaning was reduced to an absurdity.

——

“Tell me a story.”

Donna looked over at her young son, just four years old, who sat less than an arm’s reach away, rubbing his nose with the bright blue blanket that covered his bed. “Adam, I’ve already read you three stories. I said that one was the last. We agreed that when it was over, you would get under the covers and go to sleep.”

“I am under the covers,” he said, crawling swiftly inside his bed.

“Good.” Donna stood up, feeling tired and drained, yet reluctant to leave his side. Immediately, Adam sensed her indecision.

“Please—” he said, his face already a huge grin of anticipation.

Donna sat back down on the bed next to his pillow. Adam immediately propped himself up beside her. “All right, which story do you want me to read?”

“Not read. Tell.”

“Oh, honey, I’m so tired. I can’t think of—”

“Tell me a story about a little boy named Roger and a little girl named Bethanny—”

Donna smiled at the mention of the two names—Adam’s latest friends from nursery school. “Okay,” she said. “Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Roger and a little girl named Bethanny, and one day they went to the park—”

“No!”

“No?”

“No. They went to the zoo to see the giraffes!”

“Who’s telling this story? You or me?”

Adam took a second to recollect his thoughts. “Tell me a story,” he persisted, “about a little boy named Roger and
a little girl named Bethanny and they went to the zoo to see the giraffes. Would you tell me that one?”

“Okay,” Donna said, chuckling to herself. “So they went to the zoo—”

“No! From the beginning. Once upon a time!”

“You’re pressing your luck, kiddo!”

“Tell me a story about a little boy named Roger and a little girl named Bethanny, and they went to the zoo to see the giraffes. And they took some peanuts with them. But the sign said ‘Do Not Feed The Amiuls.’”

“The what?”

“The amiuls,” he replied impatiently.

“You mean, the animals?”

“Yeah.” Of course, what’s the matter with you, lady? Can’t you hear good? “Would you tell me that one?”

Donna took a deep breath. “Once upon a time there was a little boy named Roger and a little girl named Bethanny, and they went to the zoo to see the giraffes. And they took some peanuts with them. But the sign said ‘Do Not Feed The Animals.’ Okay?” Adam nodded. “And so—”

“And so?”

“And so they ate up all the peanuts by themselves,” Donna said quickly, “and had a wonderful time and went home to their mommies and lived happily ever after.” Donna kissed him gently on the forehead, stood up again and switched off the light.

“Where’s your mommy?” the small voice asked, catching Donna off guard.

She stumbled for several seconds. It was the first time he had asked her that particular question, and she wasn’t sure how to answer him. As simply as possible, she decided,
hearing her voice soft against the semidarkness. “She’s dead, honey. She died a long time ago.”

“Oh.” Long pause. Donna turned to go, feeling she had said the right thing. That wasn’t so hard, she thought. “What’s
died?”
he asked suddenly. Donna stopped. Did they really have to get into this now? She looked at Adam’s face. Yes, they obviously had to go into it now. She sat back down on the bed, her mind searching to recall what Benjamin Spock had advised in this regard.

“Uh—let me see.” You certainly couldn’t tell a child who was about to go to sleep that death was like going to sleep, and somehow she choked on the thought of the word Heaven. Damn, she thought, can’t you wait a few days and ask then. That way, if Victor wins his suit he can deal with this little matter. “No,
I
will tell you,” she said aloud, Adam looking at her with sudden surprise. Victor would not win his case. He would not take her children away.

“Why are you yelling?”

“Oh, sorry.” She suddenly recalled Dr. Spock’s advice. “Everybody dies, sweetie,” she explained. “It happens to everything that lives—flowers, people—amiuls. It’s very natural and it doesn’t hurt or anything. We just stop living. But it usually doesn’t happen to people until they’re very old.” Adam was staring at her. “Do you understand? Is that okay?”

He nodded, wordlessly, crawling deep inside his covers. Again, Donna kissed his forehead. “I love you, sweetie-pie.”

“Good night, Mommy.”

Donna walked the few steps down the hall to Sharon’s room and peeked inside. Sharon immediately sat up in her crib.

“What are you doing up?” Donna asked her.

The little girl said nothing, pulling herself up in the darkness and holding her hands out toward her mother. Donna walked over and pulled Sharon out of the crib, holding her warm little body against her own. “You’re supposed to be asleep, you know.”

Sharon stared deeply into her mother’s eyes. Gently, slowly, with almost deliberate precision, Sharon lifted her right hand and brought it down in a gentle caress across Donna’s cheek. Donna hugged the little girl tightly against her. “Go to sleep, little one. I love you, my angel. Go to sleep, baby.”

Sharon laid her head on Donna’s shoulder and quickly drifted off to sleep.

“Mommy!” Adam’s voice penetrated the stillness.

“I’ll kill him,” Donna said aloud, moving Sharon back to her crib and lowering her gently inside.

“Mommy!”

Donna stepped out into the hall, moving quickly back to Adam’s room. “What is it, Adam?” she asked, a hint of annoyance in her voice. Adam was once again sitting up in his bed.

“I want to ask you a question.”

Please don’t ask me what happens when you die, she pleaded silently. I’ll buy you a copy of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in the morning! “What is it, honey?”

“Who made me?” he asked.

Oh no! Donna thought. Not now. Not life and death both in the same night. Not after a day full of divorce. She sank back onto his bed. “Mommy and Daddy made you, honey.”

He looked at her with great curiosity in his eyes. “Out of—?” he asked, waiting for her to complete the sentence.

“Out of a lot of love,” Donna answered after a silence of several minutes, hoping, even as the words fell out of her mouth, that Sharon would never ask her the same question.

“Y
ou’re not breathing properly.”

“I am so.”

“No, you’re not. You’re supposed to be doing level A breathing. That’s supposed to come from down low in your stomach. You’re doing level B.”

“I’m supposed to be smelling a flower.”

“No, you’re not. Smelling the flower is level B. We’re practicing level A right now.”

“I’m tired,” Donna said testily, pulling herself slowly and with some difficulty into a sitting position. “Let’s call it a night.”

Victor was adamant. “If we don’t practice the breathing every day, there’s no point in going through with this.” His face was dangerously close to a pout.

“Now
you decide there’s no point?” Donna questioned, trying not to laugh, “now that I’ve already put on twenty-five pounds and I only have two more months to go.” She struggled to her feet. “Not fair, Victor, not fair.”

“You’re the one who’s not being fair,” he chastised. “To the baby.”

“Oh, Victor, lighten up. What’s happened to your sense of humor? You’re so funny when we’re in class.” She waddled over to the wet bar and poured herself a glass of ginger ale. “They should see you when you get home.”

He looked stricken.

“We’ll practice tomorrow, Victor. One day isn’t going to kill us—or the baby … if we miss doing the breathing one day.”

“Suit yourself,” he said in a tone he adopted for all unsuitable occasions. “It’s you who’ll regret—”

“Oh, spare me, Victor.” She shook her head, trying to keep from getting angry. She felt a fight approaching and she wanted to avoid it, sidestep it before it became too large to get around. “I wonder what women did before they had prenatal classes.”

“They suffered,” he said simply. “A lot,” he added for emphasis.

“But they survived,” she reminded him.

“Some.”

His smugness was starting to rile her. Her patience, she was discovering, was decreasing in direct proportion to the increase in her belly. The larger the load, the shorter the fuse.

“Victor, my survival will have nothing to do with whether or not I tune-tap during transition.” (Two terms they had learned the previous week.)

Victor shrugged his shoulders and leaned his head to the side. Then he turned silently and walked out of the room. Donna watched the seat of his pants as he moved away
from her. Despite the anger she was feeling—out of proportion to the situation, she recognized—she still wanted him, would offer no resistance if he were to turn around, drop his pants and move toward her, lower her to the floor and—sure, she thought, looking down at her exorbitant girth. Sure thing.

That was the way their fights had usually ended in the past. Not precisely the scenario, of course. The only time Victor had ever actually dropped his pants after a fight, he had ended up hopping the entire distance of the room over toward her, and by the time he had reached her they were both laughing so hard his erection was gone and she had cramps in her stomach. Still, when they were finally able to struggle free of their clothes, their lovemaking was as good as it always was, their soaked bodies melting into each other on the living room floor.

Maybe that was the trouble now, the reason their fights seemed to be increasing. They hadn’t made love in almost a month. Despite the fact that the books said you could, and their doctor said they could, Victor was increasingly concerned he might hurt the baby, and the simple fact of it was that it wasn’t very comfortable, no matter what anybody said. She smiled with the image of Victor above her, his body perpendicular to hers, his arms twitching frantically in an effort to keep as much weight off her as possible. “You get on top,” he had said, trying to roll them both over. “I think I’m getting a hernia,” he muttered a minute later, still trying with no success to reverse their positions. Finally, both laughing and exhausted, she had landed with a thud on his belly. “The Americans have landed!” he shouted.

Donna found herself standing alone in her living room laughing. No matter how vicious the argument, if he wanted to, Victor could always joke her away from her anger. Unless, of course,
he
was still angry. Then it was a different story altogether.

It had been like this almost from the beginning. After a brief honeymoon in Key West, which he loathed and she loved (“too tacky, too many queers,” he had said; “lots of character; they’re artists,” she had responded; the truth, they both concurred later, lying somewhere in the middle, a truth that existed regardless of their opinions), they returned to Palm Beach and a series of dilemmas that were not so easily resolved. Donna was never quite sure where the source of the arguments began. She knew only that something that would begin as an ordinary discussion, perhaps a mild disagreement, would minutes later erupt in a series of violent explosions, building in intensity, until each word was a potential mine and stepping even near it meant possible death, certain wounding.

She: “What’s the matter?”

He: “Nothing.”

“Something is obviously bothering you. Why don’t you tell me what it is?”

“There’s nothing bothering me.”

“Then why haven’t you spoken to me since dinner?” she asked.

He looked peeved. “All right, there
is
something bothering me. But it’s no big thing. Just leave it alone and it will go away.”

“You just don’t want to talk about it?”

“No. Just drop it. Please.”

And so it, whatever it was, would be dropped. But not quite.

“What did you do to your hair?” Victor asked.

“What do you mean, what did I do? Nothing. I just combed it differently.”

“Then why did you just say ‘nothing’?”

“Because I didn’t do anything to it. Just ran a comb through it,” Donna answered, defenses raised.

“Differently,” he said flatly.

“So what?”

“So, just yesterday I told you I liked your hair the way you had it.”

“So?”

“So you felt compelled to change it. Naturally. Every time I tell you I like something, you change it. Heaven forbid we do something that Victor likes.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about how I shouldn’t tell you if I like something around here because that’s the last I’ll see of it.” His voice was rising.

“I don’t believe this,” Donna found herself uttering. “Come on, Victor, we can’t be arguing about the fact I combed my hair differently.”

“Why can’t we?”

“Because—because it’s so trivial!”

“Trivial to you, maybe. Maybe it’s not so trivial to me. Did that ever occur to you? The fact that something that might be insignificant to you might have some importance to me. That I might have feelings that are different to those of Donna Cressy.”

“You’re seriously upset because I combed my hair with a part in the middle instead of off to one side?” she asked in total disbelief.

“You’re not listening to me.”

“What did I miss?”

“Forget it. There’s no point.”

“You seem to feel there is. Tell me. What did I miss? What didn’t I hear?”

“The hair is just one thing. It’s everything.
Anything
I like around here gets changed.”

“Everything? Anything?” Donna questioned angrily. “You’re the one who’s always telling me not to use words like ‘always’ when we’re having an argument.”

“I didn’t say always.”

“You said everything. It’s the same thing. A complete generalization.”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“Why are there always two sets of rules—one for you and one for me?”

“Now who’s generalizing?”

She shook her head. “I can’t win.”

He was quick to pounce. “That’s precisely your problem. You always think in terms of winning and losing. Not how to solve something. Just how to win.”

“That’s not fair.”

“True enough.”