Tales From the Crib (7 page)

“That’s what mothers are for. I am rather concerned, though, that you seem to be in no hurry to return to New Jersey. God knows I can’t blame you for avoiding suburbia, darling, but seeing how you and Jack chose to make your home there, I’m curious why you’re not there with your husband.”

Now would be a good time to mention that, in addition to being a Manhattan snob, Anjoli was raised in New Jersey. So while she never has a kind word to say about the “other” boroughs, Westchester County, or Long Island, she has a special place in her arsenal for New Jersey. She says she never fit in to the Newark Catholic social scene, but the breaking point was when she was disqualified from a beauty contest for a talent entry of a performance art piece far too radical for the 1950s. “They are all such small-minded bigots in New Jersey,” she says, missing the irony of the fact that she’s made a sweeping generalization about an entire state. “Twenty years later, Yoko Ono did the same damn thing and everyone said she was a genius. That’s why I ran away to the Village. Why bother putting a state so close to New York if everyone’s going to act as though they’re in Iowa?” Mother’s a bit snooty about the Midwest as well. I attended several writing conferences at the University of Iowa and fell in love with the area. Anjoli once looked out from her airplane window and concluded that there was “nothing” in the Midwest. I reminded her that she was above the clouds at 30,000 feet, but she was convinced that it was snow. Two more things. Anjoli loves to talk about her “running away” to Greenwich Village, but she didn’t exactly tie a hobo bag to a stick and hitchhike through the tunnel. She left New Jersey at nineteen to attend NYU and lived in a very cozy apartment paid for by her parents. Anjoli was actually born Margaret Mary DeFelice. When she was thirty-three, she went to a weekend workshop on “finding your true name.” A guru looked deep into her eyes and saw that she really and truly could bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never, ever, ever let you forget you’re a man.

“I still can’t believe you decided to move there,” Anjoli shook her head.

“We live in an excellent school district,” I reminded her for the zillionth time. “It’s a great place for kids, which I’m thrilled to say is exactly what we need right now.”

“Then why aren’t you there?”

“The baby isn’t here yet,” I said.

“The husband is, though. Tell me, darling. You can tell Mommy what’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Darling, I know what a troubled marriage looks like,” she said, reaching over to brush my hair from my eyes. Except there was no hair in my eyes. I think she saw the gesture in a script note once and thought it seemed like a maternal thing to do, so she adopted the move.

I had a dozen bitchy comebacks about how she was familiar with unhappy marriages because she’d caused so many of them, but I refrained. I knew it would be too cruel a lob. I knew she hadn’t really caused any troubled marriages as much as she’d capitalized on them. But most of all I knew I was just being harsh because she was coming so close to finding out that Jack pretty much regarded me as his friend and incubator. Another part of me wanted to tell someone – anyone—what was going on with Jack. Since she was right there, Anjoli was my choice.

“You’re right,” I admitted. I knew if I laid these two words at her feet, she would go easy on me. “Jack’s and my relationship has changed. We’re sort of married in name only. We’ll raise the baby together, but have separate lives.”

“That sounds like a divorce.”

“No, we’ll still live together. We’ll just be friends—and co-parents.”

“There was an article in the
Times
about this!” she said excitedly. Then she gave a moment of thought with knit brows. She rarely knit her brows because of the wrinkle it caused. In fact, every night she walks around the house with a piece of Scotch tape between her eyebrows so she cannot create a “concentration line.” So when she knit her brows, I knew she was in serious contemplation. “Jack is gay, isn’t he?” Anjoli said.

“No, he’s straight as ever.”

“Are you sure? I could see him being gay.”

“Mother, Jack is
not
gay. He’s already dating—women!”

“He may still be in denial.”

“Jack is not gay, Anjoli! Stop saying that.”

“Please don’t tell me they’ve turned you into a homophobe out there in
New Jersey!”

“Mother, stop it! Look, if Jack were gay, I’d say he was gay, but he’s not.”

She seemed disappointed. “Oh. He seems so gay.”

“Mother! What is your problem?!”

“I have no problem, darling. It’s just I know someone I think Jack would really hit it off with, but if you say he’s not gay then it won’t work.” Anjoli continued, “It would be so much easier if he were gay.”

“Why is that? Do you think I’m hoping for a reconciliation?” I accused.

“No, darling. It seems such better PR to have him gay, though. If he’s gay, no one will say the breakup was because you were difficult, or because of another woman. Oh come now, Lucy, be sensible. Let’s tell people he’s gay. I have a friend, Marlies, in California who lives with her gay husband and she came out of the whole thing beautifully. Who could blame the wife if it turned out the husband was just gay?”

“Mother, is that what you think?! That unless my husband is gay, the breakup is my fault?”

“Of course not, darling, but you know what imbeciles people can be.”

“I certainly do,” I shot. “Might I remind you that you and Daddy divorced when I was six months old? Did anyone say it was your fault? Or did you just tell everyone he was gay?”

“Lucy,” she said with overdone sympathy. “Your father was a drug addict.”

“Mother, frankly, I can see why.”

I hated when my mother called my father a “drug addict.” Yes, he smoked pot daily, and did more than his fair share of LSD, cocaine, and heroin, but he did other things too. Admittedly, they were not necessarily performed as coherently as they may have otherwise been, but to call Sammy a drug addict seemed to detract from all his other qualities. Drug addicts were useless losers who pissed on themselves in alleyways. Guys who simply did drugs on a daily basis were something different.  They were musicians. He never missed a visiting Sunday, a school play, a horse show, or a parent-teacher conference. He had an IQ of 146 and could debate just about any issue with anyone. So to call him a drug addict really gave a very one-dimensional picture of my father. I’ll admit, he wasn’t Pa Ingalls, but we didn’t live in a little house on the prairie either, so I don’t know why Anjoli always needed to use that tired old characterization with me. The man was dead. Hadn’t she already won Parental Survivor?

Anjoli burst into laughter. “I must say, darling, you certainly did inherit his comedic delivery.” Every time I am convinced she is nonmaternal, she does something incredibly warm and nurturing. Just as I’m convinced she’s trying to body slam a dead man, she acknowledges that Sammy was quite funny. This woman was so infuriatingly inconsistent I wanted to scream. She smiled, and I adored her again.

“How long do you intend to live this way?” Anjoli asked, again brushing the hair from my eyes.

“Will you stop with the hair?!” I snapped.

“I want to see your eyes.”

“Then look at them. There’s no hair blocking your view. Why do you keep brushing my hair away? What do you want, to just pet me like a cat?”

“Maybe I do. Is that such a crime?”

I moved next to her on the couch and put a pillow on her lap. I was about to rest my head on it when Anjoli protested. “You’re not planning to put your head on my legs, are you?”

“Problem?”

“Darling, my circulation. Please, rest your head next to my legs, not on top of them. I’ll get varicose veins.”

The doorbell rang. My mother glided to the front door to greet the traveling waiter from Zen Palate. I overheard that his audition went well, but that he wasn’t sure he looked Russian enough to play one of the Cossacks in
Fiddler on the Roof.
With that, I glanced around the corner to see the most beautiful Puerto Rican young man I’d ever seen. His brown eyes were so wide and piercing, I almost floated from my seat toward him. I think Anjoli’s apartment has some weird effect on guys because every man who passed through those doors in the last three weeks was quiver-worthy.

I heard Anjoli tell the guy that
West Side Story
was coming back to Broadway next season and that she knew the director. Of course she could get him an audition, she assured. “You
are
coming to my New Year’s Eve party, aren’t you? You’ll meet Tommy then.”

New Year’s Eve party? What New Year’s Eve party?

Chapter 9

Never let a comfortable environment fool you. It’s those times when you think you’re in the absolute safest place when disaster strikes. I’d claimed a favorite spot in Anjoli’s living room—the far end of the sectional facing the fireplace and Christmas tree. A bright light craned over my seat so I could always read, even when Anjoli decided to dim the main lights so the tiny white holiday lights would sparkle. And just off to my left was a wooden table just big enough to hold my mug, book, and cell phone.

The sun had set and it was officially New Year’s Eve, a night filled with the promise that tomorrow was another year. A clean slate. A fresh start. Anjoli and Alfie were at Jefferson Market picking up some last-minute items and I was curled up on the couch finishing the last few pages of a lovely novel. I felt a rare sense of peace. Then I felt a sharp cramp that made me drop my book and shout. I felt warm blood rushing out of me, soaking my underwear and bottoms. Panicked, I reached for my cell phone to call Anjoli before remembering that she doesn’t carry one. She believes they cause ear cancer. I inhaled deeply and tried to fight back the tears while dialing 9-1-1. “Yes, I need help. I’m having a miscarriage and I’m home alone,” I said as calmly as I could. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I continued answering the dispatcher’s questions. “Eight months ... Yes, I’m bleeding and cramping ... Sixteen West Eleventh Street, it’s just west of Sixth Avenue ... Yes, of course I’ll stay on the line.” Was she kidding?! My husband dumped me and my mother was making a prosciutto run. The disembodied voice said she was sending an ambulance that should arrive within minutes. I could tell she was a mother because she kept telling me to breathe deeply and that everything would be fine. But how could it be? My fifth baby had come so close, and now he was leaving too.

Anjoli and Alfie arrived at the same time as the paramedics, so I didn’t have to struggle to answer the door. “What in God’s name is going on, Lucy?” Anjoli cried, rushing in to the apartment. “Why is an ambulance here?”

With that, I burst into tears. “I’m having a miscarriage,” I bawled.

“Oh, Christ!” Alfie rushed over to me.

The paramedics brought a gurney to the couch and pulled back the blanket covering me. “Why do you think you’re miscarrying, ma’am?”

“Because I’m bleeding all over the place, and my stomach is twisting in knots,” I managed to say between sobs.

“Not again! Not again!” Anjoli shouted. “What kind of wretched karmic retribution is this?” she shook her fists at the sky.

“Um, ma’am,” the paramedic said. “You’re not bleeding.”

“Yes, I am!” I insisted. “I’m soaked in blood. Can’t you see the blood all over me?” I looked at my pants, which were soaking wet, but not with blood.

“Ma’am, your water broke. You’re in labor.”

“I am?” I wiped my red nose.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. He nodded. “I am absolutely, positively not having a miscarriage?”

“No, ma’am.”

“But I’m not due till February,” I protested.

“Ma’am, you’ll be delivering in December,” he said. “Or January.”

“Hallelujah!” shouted Alfie. “Can she still take the ambulance or do we need to call a cab?”

“We’ll take her,” said another paramedic.

“The hospital’s just across the street,” I reminded them.

Alfie rubbed his hands with glee. “This baby’s a drama queen already!”

For the first time, I smelled the food from Anjoli’s shopping bags, and remembered her party. “What about your party?” I asked.

“We’ll be back by then,” Anjoli assured. “How long can a simple delivery take?” Anjoli always acts as if extended labor is a matter of laziness. She delivered me in less than two hours and firmly believes that if women just set their minds to it, they could do the same. She had some sort of bizarre fantasy that before the clock struck midnight, the kid would be dressed in a fabulous sequined tuxedo and ready to be serenaded by Alfie.

“Call Jack, please!” I requested of Alfie as I was placed on the gurney.

By the time I got checked into the labor and delivery ward, it was dark and the rest of the world had moved into New Year’s Eve celebration mode. The staffers were watching the New Year being rung in somewhere else in the world.

“Lucy, Lucy, Lucy!” Alfie rushed into my room. “No one’s answering the phone at your house. What’s Jack’s cell number, hon?” I gave it to him, disappointed in the knowledge that, with party traffic, it would be another two hours before he arrived.

Anjoli was generous in spirit. She was genuinely trying to be helpful. It’s just that listening was never her sharpest skill. Despite numerous attempts to convince Anjoli that I was neither hot nor sweating, she insisted on wiping my brow with a cool rag every few minutes. Three times she asked if I was thirsty. Each time I told her I was not, yet she kept slipping ice cubes in my mouth. After a while, she stopped asking, and just kept feeding them to me like coins in a parking meter.

Our nurse, Betsy, came in to check on me every now and again, but basically labor was a bunch of sitting around and waiting, while nurses charted contractions. “Six minutes apart and seven centimeters dilated,” nurse Betsy said, checking a strip of paper from the monitor. “You should be a mommy very soon, Mrs. Klein.”

Should?!

“Should?” I shot.

“Yes,
should,”
nurse Betsy said. “It could take a little longer.” She smiled and shrugged as if to say, “We’ll see.”