What I Thought I Knew: A Memoir (14 page)

I was good at this job of slashing through red tape for Eliana. Just like I was good at obediently lying on my left side and drinking Gatorade for three months to protect her from premature birth. Maybe my administrative perseverance and my protective instincts could serve as a placeholder while I learned to love her.

Dan Levin was gentle with Eliana, talking to her about everything he was doing. He talked to me and Michael like friends.

“The hospital record says that Eliana’s asymmetry is a result of Alice’s bicornuate uterus. Does that strike anyone else in the room as, well, absurd? Let’s try to get a reasonable diagnosis. And, Alice, if you don’t feel better in a week, please call me. Postpartum depression shouldn’t go untreated.”

 

 

We saw Dr. Levin every three days. Each time, the diagnosis he noted on the insurance form was “failure to thrive.” Failure to thrive, failure to thrive, failure to thrive.

In Levin’s waiting room twice a week, I watched toddlers perfecting their new walking skills in the play area, and I marveled at their good fortune to have legs the same length. While observing these symmetrical children, I found myself unconsciously straightening and pulling on Eliana’s shorter leg, as if I could lengthen it if only I applied myself to stretching. Symmetry, which I’d previously taken for granted, now seemed miraculous. It was difficult to imagine how Eliana would ever walk, run, play in a playground, ride a bike, without toppling over, without persistent pain. I pondered bicycle mechanics, engineering in my imagination a bike customized for Eliana’s different-length legs. I kept gently tugging Eliana’s tiny right foot, wishing her leg longer.

 

 

Lena, the lactation specialist, came to our apartment for an evaluation session, eighty-five dollars a pop, not covered by bad Oxford. She looked like a hippy—long blond hair and an ankle-length peasant skirt over big sheepskin boots—but her rap was pure Nipple Nazi. “No bottle feeding. Six months of exclusive breastfeeding!”

While Eliana napped, Lena assured me that she would fix my nursing problems in no time. Then Eliana woke up, and she observed our comical lactating attempts. Eliana licked my flat nipple until she got tired of the unrewarded effort. Lena then hooked me up to an electric breast pump, at which I was an utter udder failure, producing less than an ounce of milk. Uncompromising Lena compromised.

On her second visit, Lactation Lena brought props. She set me up on the sofa and arranged my breasts on a lactation pillow, which circled my waist like an inner tube, pastel-colored illustrations of dishes running away with spoons on the cotton cover. She hung a plastic tube around my neck, to which she attached a syringe full of infant formula. The formula flowed through two thin tubes, which she taped, with paper surgical tape, to the top of each nipple.

I looked and felt ridiculous. Lena lay Eliana down on the flat pillow, facing my right nipple and the milk tube. Eliana contentedly sucked formula through the plastic tube. My hands were free. I could read a newspaper, apply makeup, practice clarinet, tear my hair out. Every now and then, perhaps to make me feel better, Eliana found my nipple and took a polite little swig.

“I thought you said no baby formula for six months.”

“In extreme circumstances there’s a need for supplementation.”

“Are we trying to trick Eliana? She’s a very smart baby. She knows these taped-on tubes aren’t my nipples, and this isn’t my breast milk.”

“When there’s a basic incompatibility, we have to implement a compromise solution.”

“What do you mean by basic incompatibility?”

“I thought it was obvious. By incompatibility, I mean your boobs are huge, your nipples are flat, and Eliana’s mouth is tiny. You’re anatomically and functionally incompatible with each other, so there’s no possible way she’s going to get enough nutrition by nursing.”

“Then what’s the point of this charade? Why don’t I just bottle-feed her?”

“Because she’s getting some breast milk this way, and the lifelong benefits to her immune system are incalculable.”

“Okay, if you say so.” I bent over to look at Eliana drinking from the tubes. As I leaned forward, the formula from the tube around my neck spilled on Eliana’s head. Eliana didn’t seem bothered by the white puddle on her head, but I didn’t think we both had to look ridiculous.

“I believe I can speak for Eliana when I say this is very embarrassing for both of us. Are you absolutely sure it’s important for me to continue to breastfeed her?”

“Absolutely sure,” Lena answered.

 

 

Sending out a birth announcement briefly crossed my mind.

Julia loved Eliana totally and unconditionally. At nine, she was past the age of sibling rivalry. She raced home from school to play with Eliana, dressing her like a doll (she especially liked putting her in the purple velvet cape and matching slippers I’d received at the baby shower), putting Eliana in her big bed, and surrounding her with stuffed animals. She wanted to give her bottles, change her diaper, burp her, bathe her, read to her. She couldn’t wait till we moved the bassinet out of our bedroom so she could share a room with her baby sister. At Saturday morning basketball practice, Julia showed Eliana off to her basketball team, and allowed each girl to take a turn holding her.

Michael loved Eliana totally and unconditionally, though he was terrified of breaking her, dropping her from the changing table, rolling on top of her in his sleep after a nighttime feeding. Michael, who had always been a world-class sleeper, able to sleep through the loudest turbulence, now woke up the instant he heard Eliana cry.

Eliana loved all three of us, totally and unconditionally. Even me, though I didn’t deserve it. My feelings for her were dominated by my fear of breaking her, my shame that I’d already broken her in ways I didn’t yet know.

I studied Eliana—her rosebud mouth and blue green eyes, her peaceful demeanor and remarkable patience, her soft, cooing voice like the most sublime music. I kissed her broad forehead and her tiny nose. Her beauty and fragility—which I studied as if from a distance, although she was in my arms—reminded me of my insufficiency.

 

 

Eliana and I spent New Year’s Eve home alone. Julia was in LA with Brad. Michael was performing at a First Night celebration in New Jersey, filling in for a family show I’d originally been scheduled to perform. The producer was happy to substitute Michael’s solo show
Lagushka: The Russian Frog Princess
for my solo show
The Balinese Frog Prince
.

I nursed Eliana, with our hybrid tube-tape-nipple arrangement, while watching New Year’s Eve coverage, the frenzied TV celebration intensified this year by Y2K fears and dreams. Shortly before midnight, Eliana fell asleep. I was too lonely to ring in the New Millennium alone, so I watched the ball fall at Times Square with sleeping Eliana on my chest. “Happy New Year,” I whispered to her.

Scene 3

My dormant work life awakened in January. Editing, teaching, performing. I was grateful that I didn’t have to lie on my left side to edit the new issue of
Play by Play
, and we needed the money, but it was too much, too soon.

My spring semester solo theater class started. Last semester my Monday night class was the highlight of my week—the time when I felt myself to be professionally most alive, creative, engaged. Now, having to trudge downtown in the slush on a frigid Monday night was a pain in the neck. I printed a copy of last semester’s curriculum and parroted the lecture and workshop I gave at the first class in September. “My goal is to have each of you find the story you want to tell, and the way you want to . . . blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”

My spring semester students were duds. Maybe they were great and I was the dud. My students were twenty-something and all ego, except for Esther Levine, who was eighty-four years old and all ego. The twenty-somethings wanted to create solo works about their sexual coming-of-age. They annoyed and amused me. Half of them were gay guys, and they wrote plays about coming out to their parents, about their first Gay Pride Day. They imitated one another, resulting in a bland sameness to their lewd stories of homoerotic self-discovery. Eighty-four-year-old Esther Levine imitated the young gay guys and produced her own lewd story of erotic self-discovery, circa 1940. None of my students were particularly talented, but they brought a lot of enthusiasm about their sexuality into the classroom, which was convenient, since I couldn’t muster enthusiasm about anything.

 

 

The second Sunday in January, I was scheduled to perform my solo family show
The Balinese Frog Prince
at the Bank Street College auditorium. Barbara, my ob-gyn, warned me that my body would need more time to recover. But I so desperately wanted to get back to the work that might make me feel like myself again. All fall, I’d looked forward to this January performance. But as the date approached, I found any excuse to avoid rehearsing, and ultimately persuaded myself that I knew the show so well I didn’t need to rehearse.

When the performance date arrived I felt only dread. Instead of the intense and somewhat loopy actor and playwright persona I was accustomed to summoning to my children’s shows, I was mired in exhaustion and pessimism. In the dressing room, I discovered that my costume was too tight. I hoped that nobody would show up so the show would be canceled. But there was a full house, children and their parents expecting a poignant and funny performance. The producer had paid me in advance.

 

 

I performed the twelve characters of
The Balinese Frog Prince
while watching and judging myself from a distance. “I’ve always wanted a child,” said the Old Farmer’s Wife after giving birth to a frog. “We will raise you as if you were a regular little boy.” Watching my performance from the ceiling, I derided myself for not being able to love my newborn as fully as the Old Farmer’s Wife loved her baby frog. Making an audience laugh had always been a euphoric experience, but the audience’s laughter seemed to have nothing to do with me. The bright lights were colorless. The lively audience was lifeless.

When it was over I apologized to the producer for my lackluster performance. He looked surprised and claimed he wasn’t aware of a problem. I cabbed home and got in bed, pulling the covers over my head.

I didn’t want to perform again. Neither did I want to write again—writing a children’s novel or play or picture book required a buoyancy and sense of humor I no longer had. I found little joy this winter in teaching my class. I couldn’t imagine ever jogging again—my body was so heavy and stiff, it hurt to move. I was a failure this time around at parenting. I was too depressed to call my friends, and felt too guilty to have intimate conversations with Michael and Julia that might reveal my unforgivable ambivalence.

Our old apartment had impressive water pressure and an illegal showerhead from the pre-water-conservation-law days. The hot rainfall was my five-minute daily escape into torrential forgetfulness.

Late one night, I broached the adoption question. “Since Eliana is quite possibly handicapped, shouldn’t we consider . . .”

The subject didn’t achieve the status of a conversation. Michael was furious that I was still contemplating adoption. His angry clarity was an unexpected relief, finally releasing me from the broken record that kept skipping back to the same agonized uncertainty.

The adoption door closed, I called Sasha the social worker to thank her for all her help. I told her we’d made up our mind to keep the baby, promised to make a tax-deductible contribution to Spence-Chapin, and asked her not to call again.

I hung up the phone, closed my eyes, inhaled and exhaled slowly, silently talking myself into believing the obvious, impossible, astonishing truth: “We are a family of four. . . . I have two daughters.”

 

 

My tiny, emaciated baby Eliana had scoliosis, which made her spine curve to the right like the letter
C
. Her short right leg might prevent her from ever walking. She was having a hard time eating or growing. In my not-knowing, when she was inside me, I neglected her, harmed her. Now she was so quiet. She demanded nothing but needed everything. I wanted to give her everything she needed, but there was so much I didn’t think I could do, so much I used to be able to do, that I hoped I would rediscover someday. What could I do for her? . . . I could . . . I would give my life to protect her. I could do that.