Futures and Frosting (28 page)

I refuse a Sopranos
name, but I concede by letting Carter pick an Italian name.

“I love you so
much,” Carter tells me, cupping his hand on my cheek and leaning over my head
to kiss my lips upside down.

I turn my head
to the side and watched the love of my life walk behind the bassinet that holds
our new daughter.

When they are
gone, I close my eyes and try to enjoy the morphine coursing through my veins
and count all of the amazing blessings I have been given.  Unfortunately, I
keep losing count.  As the doctor sews me up, he and the nurses count out loud
and it's very distracting.  I had asked during Gavin’s c-section what the hell
they were doing and I was told that they have to count all of the instruments
and sponges to make sure none are left behind.  At the time, I thought it would
be funny to start saying random numbers out loud to see if it would break their
concentration.  Two, seven, one, fifteen, thirty-five.  But then I had realized
it wasn't as funny if it was
my
body cavity they were losing these
things in.  It’s hilarious when it’s someone else, not so much if I have to go
back to the hospital six months later because there’s a pair of scissors stuck
to my kidney or I’m shitting out sponges.

I block out the
incessant drone of counting and think about just how perfect my life is now.  I
can’t wait for Gavin to meet his new little sister, and I am actually excited
to show her off to Carter’s parents.  It's a toss-up though on whether or not
I'm so happy because I know the next four days will be spent getting waited on
hand and foot with morphine and vicodin to cheer me up should I ever feel like
slitting my own wrists.

The man I love
more than anything wants to marry me, we have an amazing little boy who keeps
us on our toes, a new, healthy baby girl, and the best family and friends. 
Okay, maybe not the best.  Tolerable.  Life is good.  Nothing can take this
feeling away right now unless the anesthesiologist turns off my morphine drip. 
I’ll just take away his manhood if that happens.  I’m sure the doctor can find an
extra scalpel in my intestines for me.

“Wow, would you
take a look at that?” I hear the doctor say.

“Oh my,” one of
the nurses replies.

“Uh, what’s
going on?” I ask.

“Can someone get
me a camera?”

Okay, that’s not
something you need to hear when your stomach is cut open and you’re strapped to
a table.

Someone take
this mother fucking sheet down.  I don’t give a rat’s ass if I can see right
through my stomach and out my vagina.  I’ll even help you stuff shit back in.

I can hear some
whispering, which makes me a little uncomfortable.  I mean, what could they
possibly be whispering about?  Is there another baby in there no one knew
about?  Have they found an extra stomach?  Maybe I'm supposed to be a twin and
I ate her.  Have they found my twin sister?  Is she looking at them right now
like, “What the fuck, people?  Get me the hell out of here.  I’m twenty-five
and I’m the size of a fist.  Do I look like I’m comfortable?”

I have always
wanted a sister.  I can carry her around in my purse like Paris Hilton carries
her dog.  I can perch her up on my shoulder and she can be like the good angel
telling me what decisions I should make.

What if she’s
mean though?  Twenty-five years is a long time to be in someone’s stomach. 
Jesus himself would probably even drop a few F bombs about that nonsense.  She
might sit on my shoulder and just shout insults at everyone.

“You’re tired? 
Fuck you.  I’ve used a uterus as a pillow for twenty five years.”

“I’ve taken
dumps bigger than your penis.  And I had to do it in a stomach with a baby
looking at me.”

“You’re so ugly
I wouldn’t even let you fuck my tiny, fossilized punany.”

 
Mmmmm, this
morphine is delicious.  Like pot cookies and vodka but without all the weird
side effects like hallucinations and crazy talk.  I love morphine.  It’s so
pretty.

“Oh, no
worries,” the doctor finally answers.  “Your uterus is just in a weird shape
right now.  We have a wall of pictures in my office of people’s organs and it’s
kind of like when you look up at the sky and guess what a cloud looks like. 
Except we do it in my office with pictures of afterbirth and uteruses.  I’m
just going to take a quick Polaroid and then finish sewing you up.”

Nope, that’s
not at all weird.  Doc, can you supersize that morphine for me?

“So, what does
it look like?” I asked.

I don’t really
want to know the answer to this do I?  The drugs say yes but the brain says no.

“It actually
looks like a face.  And it’s smiling at us.”

OH MY GOD,
SISSY!  I’m coming for you sissy!

“HOLY SHIT!”

“I think this
will be the first bubble bath I’ve taken alone in three years,” I tell Carter
as he sets a glass of wine on the edge of the tub and bends down for a kiss.

I wrap a wet
hand around the back of his neck and hold his face to mine.  He sweeps his
tongue through my mouth and I taste the wine he had taken a sip of before he
gave the glass to me.  Even after all these years I can never get enough of
kissing this man.  It's our third wedding anniversary and a few months after
Sophie’s third birthday.  For the past three years, we've spent our anniversary
the same way – at home with the kids.  And I wouldn’t have it any other way. 
We don’t need a fancy restaurant or a night out with friends. We have all we
need right here.

Our wedding had
been just a simple ceremony on the beach with our family and friends.  After
all the drama about getting engaged, both of us realized we didn’t care about
anything but becoming husband and wife.  It didn’t matter where it happened,
just as long as it
did
happen.  For an early wedding gift that year,
Carter had given me all four seasons of “My Fair Wedding” and a box of porn. 
He still holds out hope my porn addiction would become a reality.

Carter slides
his hand down into the water and lets it rest on the inside of my thigh.  As
the kiss became more intense, his hand inches further and further down.  I
groan into his kiss as his fingers graze between my legs and make goose bumps
break out on my skin.

“Happy
anniversary, Mrs. Ellis,” Carter whispers.

The wet,
smoothness of his fingers slide through my slit and I thrust against his hand
as he slowly pushes one finger deep inside me.

A commotion from
outside the bathroom door ceases all activity and we pause, my lips brushing
against Carter’s and his hand resting between my legs.

“What was that?”
I whisper.

“It’s nothing. 
The kids are in Gavin’s room playing.  I gave them a piggy bank full of pennies
to count,” Carter reassures me as he begins kissing his way down my damp neck
and goes back to gliding his finger in and out of me.

“Ohhhhh fuck,” I
moan, tilting my head back until it rests against the tile wall.  “You should
probably check on them.  The penny thing worked when Gavin was four. I don’t
think it’s going to work now.  He’s almost nine, knows how to use the internet
and is tall enough to reach the matches and lighter fluid in the laundry room.”

A crash and a
yell sound down the hall and I sit up quickly, splashing water over the side of
the tub, forcing Carter to fall back onto the floor on his ass.

“Shit.  I’ll go
check it out,” he says with a sigh as he stands up and opens the bathroom
door.  “We’ll continue this after I’ve duct taped them to the wall.”

He closes the
door behind him and I lean back into the warm, soapy water with a smile on my
face.

The past few
years have been hectic, but I wouldn’t change them for the world.  A year after
Sophia was born, we had moved into a new home.  The small, ranch house was
perfect when it was just the three of us, but once you had a baby, it came with
a lot of shit.  We had quickly outgrown that house and moved into a two-story
colonial a few streets away from Liz and Jim.

Business at
Seduction and Snacks is still booming.  I've added more items to my menu so
people can have breakfast or lunch there, and I've hired five additional people
to the staff.  Liz and Jim had just gave birth to their second baby girl last
month and Jenny and Drew are planning a weekend wedding in Vegas in a few
months.  I’m pretty sure that plan includes being married by Elvis and spending
time in a lot of strip clubs.  Jenny had finally found another job in marketing
but still works for me on the side.  She refuses to take any money from me
though so I pay her in chocolate.  Drew still begs me to pay her in sexual
favors and is sadly disappointed every time I refuse.

Gavin is now
eight and a half years old and getting ready to start third grade and our baby
Sophie is growing up entirely too fast.  She'll be going to preschool this year
and I want to sob every time I think about it.  Gavin is an amazing big brother
and has spent the past three years teaching his little sister everything he can
about tormenting us.  The other day, Sophie had come into our bedroom and
announced she had a song she wanted to sing us.  It had gone a little something
like this, “I have a vagina, vagina, vagina.  I love my vagina, vagina,
vagina.”  So far I haven’t been able to convince her that this song should
never be sung at the top of her lungs in the middle of the cereal aisle of the
grocery store.

My father had
married his long-time girlfriend Sue a few months ago in a small ceremony in
his backyard.  Gavin, Sophia, and Sue’s granddaughter Sarah made up the wedding
party.  Sarah and Sophia were the same age and Gavin escorted both of them down
the aisle.  And by escorted, I meant kept the two girls separated since they
kept trying to smack each other with their flower girl baskets as they walked
until they eventually took Gavin down with them in a big pile of flailing arms,
legs, screaming, and crying.  Carter and I ran down the aisle and tried to
break up the fight but Jesus, those girls were strong.  Carter got kicked in
the nuts and dropped down to his knees, and I got scratched in the face. 
Regardless, it was a beautiful ceremony and my mother, in her usual fashion,
took control of Tee Time at the small reception.  Jenny almost became “that
person” who puked on the dance floor, but a cousin of my father’s dragged her
into the bathroom and showed her a trick where you drink straight from the
faucet and then make yourself burp three times.  Jenny had wound up making out
with her as a thank you, and Drew passed out cold when he witnessed it.

I sink down
further into the water and let out a big sigh.  We’ve all come a long way since
that frat party nine years ago.  Carter and I still play a round or two of beer
pong on the anniversary of when he asked me to marry him though.  There are
some traditions that you just can’t put a stop to.  Beer pong is how we started
and beer pong is how we will end.  I have a picture of us on our death beds
years from now with a hospital table set up between us as we argue over who
sucks more.  And then that happy picture is ruined by Drew ambling in with a
walker shouting, “Jenny can still suck a golf ball through a garden hose and
she gums my cock like a champ since she misplaced her false teeth!”

I can’t wait to
see what the future will hold for us.  We've had our ups and our downs, and
we've had our fair share of struggles over the years, but we have proven that
we can get through anything.  Our beast of a dog, aptly named Gigantor,
recently became a big brother himself when Carter’s parents dropped off a cat
for Sophie.  Of course it had come with special hoity-toity cat papers that
said it would walk around with a stick up its ass and demand to eat off of our
good china.  Since I nipped the whole Sopranos thing in the bud when we named
our daughter, Carter had adamantly insisted we name the cat Meadow, after Tony
Soprano’s daughter.  Aside from that, Carter has proven a thousand times over
what a wonderful father he is.  I had been a little nervous at first how he
would handle having a little girl, but he was amazing and he was very
protective of his daughter.  So much so that my father had bought him a shirt
that said “Sure you can date my daughter.  In a completely unrelated topic,
have you seen my shotgun?”

And now my
wonderful husband is off taking care of the kids so I can relax in a bubble
bath alone without someone coming in to pee, brush their teeth, or ask me why
monkeys have nipples.  Nothing can ruin this perfect moment or my happy mood
thinking about the future.

“Hold still for
a second.  I need to get it in the right spot,” I hear Gavin say softly on the
other side of the door.

“What’s going on
out there?  Where’s daddy?” I shout out to him.

“He poopin', Mommy!”
Sophie yells back.

Thanks for
letting me know.

“You guys be
good out there, okay?  Mommy will be done in a minute,” I shout to them as I
picked up my wine glass from the edge of the tub and took a healthy sip.

I close my eyes
and let the tension ease from my body until a few minutes later, words are
loudly whispered by Gavin that you never want to hear on the other side of the
door when you’re taking a bath.

“Okay, the
clothes basket is in the ready position at the edge.  All systems go.  Sophie,
hold on tight.  And don’t let go of the cat.”

The End