Some Assembly Required (9 page)

Yes, this was true. I’m the enforcer, the matriarch, the bank. And Neshama said Amy wants, like most mothers, for the circuit to be her and Jax. Sam gets to be a part of their circuit, but all mothers need to protect their babies from their mothers-in-law. I sighed, and told her that this oldest of all jokes filled me with self-loathing.

“Well,” said Neshama, “almost everything does, at first. So you call your friends. Amy may have some reason why she doesn’t want to release him to St. Andrew. Maybe she is currying favor with her family, with her grandmother and relatives who live in Chicago. She identifies with being Catholic, even though she loves St. Andrew. Didn’t you tell me she names her religion on Facebook as Catholicism?” I grudgingly admitted this was true. “Yet maybe,” Neshama continued, “it’s not that at all. Maybe she’s simply groping in the dark for a place where she can make her stand.”

My religious faith is based almost entirely on having brilliant, tenderhearted friends, and I had faith in life again when I hung up, aside from enormous sadness, anger, resentment, derision, and need for revenge. I have just enough wellness to know that the baptism is a symbolic act—it’s not what will forge Jax’s spiritual and religious character. And that for me to express my disapproval backs Amy into a corner, and sets up a negative interface with me.

I could call Amy and bring it up—bring it out of the closet—gently, by saying, “I was really hoping you would do it at the church where Sam and I were baptized, so our family could be there.”

Nah.

The aikido move would be to get out of her way, and not confront her.

If I did, it would give us both space, and breathing room.

But I didn’t want breathing space. I wanted Jax baptized at St. Andrew.

Amy was saying, I’m a grown-up and I get to decide what’s right for my son.

I didn’t know if Sam knew yet. Maybe he was in on it, too. The two of them sat around thinking, “What would hurt Annie the most? I know! We could refuse to get Jax baptized at her church.” Then they laughed demonically.

I hate to be the person whom people have to protect themselves from, as Sam had to do all those years, as all kids have to do to some degree.

I took the dogs for another walk. I couldn’t give it up, convinced that I could steer it correctly, and help everyone see the absurdity of it, and game it this way, and veer away from that. It’s like I think I’m so good at pinball—whereas the only victory is to walk away from the entire machine after one more defeat.

An obtrusive radical thought entered my mind: Jax is being baptized through his eyes and ears every time he comes to
St. Andrew, by the people there, their love and warmth—to consecrate. Then another thought, even more radical: Amy’s higher power is working through her, and with her, and I’m not it.

I called Bonnie at ten, and told her the story of the plans for the baptism, and when I was done, there was a silence, and I knew it was going to be bad.

After a moment, she said, “Annie? Isn’t this really between Amy and Sam?”

That literally had not occurred to me.

Then Tom happened to call after I got off the phone with Bonnie. I caught him up on the latest.

“Tom,” I asked, “don’t you think Jesus would be on
my
side in this?”

“No,” he said. “Jesus is busy with his own stuff, and is not going to get involved in your little tug-of-war. Plus, don’t forget, he has his own mother to deal with. She’s all he can handle, as far as mothers go. Also, she is completely dressed like a Muslim all the time, and he doesn’t
ever
know what she’s thinking.”

I did not call Amy or Sam today, because I was too mental and angry. I tried to tend to my own emotional acre for a change, with a long hike in the hills with the dogs, three hours at the desk, twenty minutes of
Baba nam,
lunch with Millard at our favorite Thai place, and an afternoon binge of cable news, Reese’s Pieces, and a nap on the couch with the kitty. Also,
People
magazine,
Us
, and the
National Enquirer
. I bought some gourds and marigolds for my table, inspired by my framed photo of the guffawing woman and her wheel barrow full of marigolds on the Day of the Dead in the hills of southern Mexico. I bought orange gourds because they are symbols of fertility, but also because they are dry. I feel very much like both these qualities—a big juicy grandma, a writer, and old and dry from crying yesterday during the worst of it. Gourds look like lights, warm and lovely, but they are filled with husks and seeds and they rattle when you shake them. I bought marigolds at Safeway that had been grown in a greenhouse. There’s such molten sun in marigolds, such bitter fragrance, it gives you a little nose twist—I think their peculiar smell repels mosquitoes and other pests. They are very tough; it seems you could stomp on them and they would survive.

On the Day of the Dead, we go into the dark knowing that we are part of something huge, magnificent, and ancient.
I have five or six Mexican
retablos
, small devotional paintings and hammered-tin reliefs, on my bookshelves, next to photos of my father, Sam, Jax, Clara. I love the playfulness and courage of skulls that grin, sunbathing skeletons,
mamacitas
making tortillas, little shards of professions—teachers, hookers, pianists—chalkboards, ermine wraps and beads, top hats.

This morning after prayers, and fifteen minutes of
Baba nam kevalam
, feeling very spiritually strong, I called Amy, and in this baby-doll Tweety Bird voice, I said I had heard that she was going to have the baby baptized in Chicago. She said that this was not true—that she and Sam wanted to have Jax baptized at St. Andrew, but not for a while, and then a second time at her grandmother’s church in Chicago. She promised. She swore. “Of course we want to get him baptized where Sam got baptized.” I started to splutter, “But but but, what about the date that’s been set in Chicago—that you and your parents set, that our friend—” Then I dropped it. “Oh, I’m so glad,” I said. “I wish I’d come to you right away.” Then we laughed at my adorable foibles, and talked about what Jax was up to these days.

The thing is, I’m not sure I believe her. Or maybe my trust in her isn’t deep enough to comfort me when it comes to something so vital.

But I
had
gotten the courage to release the scary secret
to Amy out loud. Doing so felt huge and brave because of my terror that she might take the baby away again, or move away with him. Now there was one less ricochet factor, because I had come clean. I’ve always thought I could use my brain and my heart to jockey everyone around to the good. But life is not jockeyable. When you try, you make people infinitely crazier than they already were, including or especially yourself.

Amy came over for a marvelously uninteresting visit with Jax, which, after my mental turmoil yesterday, is more than welcomed.

Jax is over three and a half months old now, and is developing major mastery with his hands. He reaches for yours, and draws them to himself. Very industrious, a hardworking baby, gets your knuckles into his mouth so he can teethe on them, shoves his own hands and fingers into his mouth, copious Newfoundland drool, bubbles.

Why does he spend most of his time shoving his hands into his mouth?

Because he can. It must feel fabulous, and his work is to practice coordination skills and aim, by putting stuff—i.e., you—into his mouth, and he doesn’t hurt himself, doesn’t jam his fingers into his eyes. He aims for the mouth, and the hand goes in. He has a system.

Jax has gone bad. Now instead of just reaching for your hands to shove into his mouth or to study, he reaches for your rings. He holds on to them! You can see the little wheels in his mind turning! He also does bracelets and watches; he’s in gypsy mode. Watch your wallet.

I invited Millard over to celebrate Jax’s four-month birthday a few days early, and then decided to make a party of it, because Jax has so many cousins in Chicago, and in a kind of Kim Jong Il gesture, I wanted a display of West Coast cousinly grandeur. I invited my first cousin Ricky, Millard’s son; Ricky’s teenage son, Oliver, who is Jax’s second cousin, or first cousin twice removed, or something; my brother Stevo and his six-year-old, Clara, who is Sam’s cousin, so Jax’s cousin once removed; and then cousin Neshama. I got one-bite cupcakes, vanilla with confetti sprinkles; chips and guaca mole; and big, fat red grapes.

Millard came first, somehow both handsome and spectral, and Amy arrived not long after. She is really looking regal these days, bearing the gift of Jax to Millard, like the Magi. She has finally introduced Jax to food, rice cereal and banana, which is a big step, and I am proud of her.

Jax is becoming part of the world now, noticing an area with a much bigger periphery than before; and he seems to feel that this world is a safe place. Ha.

Stevo and Clara arrived, and fought for possession of Jax, like he was a football. She is such a piece of sunshine, tall for her age, impish, stylish.

The dogs lick and lick Jax, because he is a horizontal animal, too; they think he’s theirs. We call them the granddogs. They are giving him a great immune system, with those big tongues and heavy breath. It’s got to be good for him—we are not in the slums of Rio, and I don’t think we have hookworm here. Although maybe I should call the CDC in the morning.

Who would have thought that Amy and I would be cele brating Jax’s four-month birthday together, here, at my house, with Millard, Ricky, Oliver, Stevo, Clara, and Neshama? Maybe it’s better if I don’t call the CDC, and instead savor these sweet afternoons as much as I can, like one-bite cupcakes.

Amy dropped Jax off so she could do some errands. I got to give him a bottle of milk she had pumped, and rock him to sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking about Amy after she left. She has a purposeful chugging quality that I associate with women in Mexico. She is a good mother, with great stubbornness,
playfulness, and total propriety. The meta-message is, Yes, you can hold and play with my baby, but he is MINE. He’s my baby.

She has so grown into this role. She looks less undone, more pulled together, prepared.

Neshama said, after watching Amy and me together at the party, that I was sweet and tender with her, judiciously held back. She said I’m like a cheerful social worker. I’m cautious, because Amy is a fierce bulldozer, and I am Thomas the Tank Engine. Sometimes I push into where her dark places are, and she gets cold and hard—as at the end of her pregnancy, when she casually skipped the meeting with her doctor, and I got so uptight, even though it was her body, her doctor, her health insurance. Oh—and her baby.

I keep opening myself to her, offering to do anything I can to help, or carry the burden, but she says, with her body language, This is where I am, and who I am, and whose baby this is, and how it is going to be. I admire that she faces me with matriarchal authority, but she’s twenty! So I’m experiencing a little cognitive dissonance.

I was forced by the strain of my condition to call Bonnie late last night. She is raising two grandchildren of her own, as her youngest daughter, their mother, sometimes simply disappears and lives on the streets. Bonnie stays up till midnight
so she can have a few hours to herself after the kids are put to bed. I caught her up.

“Dearest, maybe Jax
should
be baptized in Chicago,” she said. “Who knows?

“And besides, the spiritual truth is that Jax is already baptized—he was at the very moment of his birth. He is life, God getting God’s self born again, and the baptism is just to
consecrate
that. I know, honey, I hear you: You want to consecrate that at St. Andrew. So it’s okay for you to ask for what you need and want, and then try to be a good sport if you don’t get your way.

“It’s Sam and Amy’s decision. And it’s very important stuff—between
them
. This exact mess is the very place where God is. Of course it’s much easier to know this in a Zen garden. If they baptize Jax in Chicago, just know that it will work out entirely for the good. Don’t be a big baby—if it is held there, you will go, and you will behave with generosity and elegance. Don’t judge or withhold from Ray or Trudy just because you don’t get your way. These are Jax’s
grand parents
we’re talking about, for God’s sake. This is a sacred contract that Jax made as he came into the world—bless the grandparents and be grateful and full of wonder that this delicious, juicy baby who got himself born is big and stretchy enough to include all three of you. Trudy, you, and Ray. And it is okay if you were pissy. We bless the full expression.

“Amy is trying to express something, about her roots, her other home—and Sam and Amy need to learn this as a
couple. Every story is always about the prodigal son and the prodigal daughter. So welcome Amy back, over and over again. Welcome her home. I know, I know—you’ll never call me again. But I will be up another half-hour if you need me.”

Thanksgiving was perfect, with Millard and his four grown kids; grandson Oliver and granddaughters Freya and Daphne; Stevo and his fiancée, Annette; Annette’s grown daughter, Rachel; Sam and Amy and Jax; assorted riffraff from church and recovery. My cooking, if possible, gets worse with age, but Millard and his kids are excellent cooks. Amy made a great chocolate cake, with a colorful turkey on it, made by tracing the palm of her hand with a tube of frosting, fingers outstretched, which she learned to do when she was ten, and which cannot be improved upon. She and Sam bickered a little, which I don’t mind much right now, because she is such a good mother. Sam fell asleep on my bed, and Jax in my arms after Amy nursed him. He was rosy and undemanding and at full comfort. After I was sure he was sleeping soundly, I touched the flush of his cheeks in that light brown skin and traced those bold eyebrows. Of course, like all babies, he wakes up with a startle, slightly groping and low-level graspy, but with no sense of a time bomb about to go off. The beauty of the curve of his head—how it rests in the crook
of my elbow—almost makes me want to flog myself, out of a desperate, unbearable love. All grandparents I’ve mentioned this to have felt this. He’s a Fibonacci spiral, like a nautilus shell—one of those patterns in mathematical expression with a twisting eternal perfection.