She, Myself & I (18 page)

Eileen smiled at the waitress. “First-time mother,” she said apologetically.

The waitress, who looked like she was about thirteen years old, seemed confused.

“So you don’t want the highchair?” she asked.

“No,” Aidan said. He rested a hand on my thigh—whether this was meant to comfort me or silence me, I didn’t know. “So, Mom, Ben went to the doctor yesterday, and he’s in the ninetieth percentile for height and weight.”

“He’s such a big boy,” Eileen said, holding him up so that my father-in-law could tickle his stomach. “Don’t you want to hold him, Ron?”

“Come to Grandpa,” Ron said, reaching out. He cradled Ben in his arms, holding him horizontally in the traditional “Rock-a-bye Baby” pose. Ben loathes to be held that way, unless he’s nursing. I could tell from the cross look on his face that if Ron didn’t whip out a lactating breast, Ben was about to pitch a fit.

Aidan also noticed the storm clouds gathering on the small round face of our son.

“Dad, you’d better hold him upright,” Aidan warned.

“I know how to hold him. You’re not the first parents in the world to have a baby, you know,” Ron snapped.

Ben immediately burst into tears, sticking his lower lip out as far as it would go in between wails. Ron panicked and held Ben out, pushing him back into Eileen’s arms. He did not, of course, apologize for upsetting the baby in the first place. But then, O’Neill men weren’t known for admitting when they were wrong.

“Maybe he’s just hungry,” Eileen suggested. She tore a piece from her roll and offered it to Ben. He just screwed up his face and screamed louder.

“Don’t give him that. He’ll choke,” I said sharply. “Ben hasn’t had any solids yet.”

“No solids? Why not?”

I plucked Ben out of Eileen’s arms. He immediately stopped crying and snuggled up against my shoulder. I was so warmed by this act of loyalty, I didn’t even mind the quarter-sized dollop of regurgitated milk that he deposited on my black cashmere sweater.

“The doctor said that I could start giving him a little cereal in a few weeks, but I’m supposed to hold off on most solids until he’s six months old,” I said. As irritating as it was that my parenting decisions weren’t simply respected and followed, and had to be reinforced by trotting out the pediatrician’s recommendations, I knew that it was the fastest way to get Eileen to shut up.

“That’s not how we did things in my day. But then, new mothers always think they know best,” she said, shrugging and laughing.

I let this obnoxious comment go and instead focused on the laminated menu, searching for something to eat that wasn’t fattening, and getting increasingly panicked when I saw that every entrée was described as being topped with cheese or swimming in a cream sauce. Or both.

The waitress reappeared, and the Dueling Anorexics each ordered a small dinner salad for their entrée. Allison ordered hers with the vinaigrette on the side, so Melanie one-upped her by ordering hers with no dressing and no tomatoes.

I ordered the veal piccata with a side of pasta and Caesar salad.

“Have you lost weight?” Allison asked as she handed her menu to the waitress.

“No,” I said shortly, feeling even fatter in my stretchy-waist maternity khakis—I still couldn’t fit into my regular clothes, and I refused to buy anything new in my current size—and the black sweater that was straining against the volume of my newly enlarged breasts.

“Don’t worry. I’m sure it will come off eventually. Although my friend Jordan—the one who has two-year-old twin boys—said that she could never get the last ten pounds off. Some women just can’t. In fact, she just had liposuction and a tummy tuck a few weeks ago. I’ll give you her phone number, if you want to talk to her about it,” Allison said.

I stared at her. “Are you suggesting I get plastic surgery?” I asked.

“Allison, back off,” Aidan said.

“I wasn’t saying that, I just meant—” Allison started to protest.

“Just drop it,” Aidan said again, and then he rested his hand on my thigh again, this time giving it a little squeeze.

A few hours later, when we were safely home, my duty to my in-laws discharged for at least a fortnight, I was lying in bed feeling like a beached Orca whale.

“I shouldn’t have eaten so much,” I groaned, holding on to the gelatinous mound of skin and flab that used to be my stomach with both hands. I had meant to eat sparingly, but Allison’s comments pissed me off so much I spitefully ordered a tiramisu for dessert and consumed the whole damned thing.

Aidan entered the bedroom, wearing only his light blue boxer shorts. He paused to admire himself in the mirror—I could tell from the way he contracted his abdominal muscles—and then hopped into bed next to me. Unlike most nights, when he immediately switched on the television set and zoned out to the white noise of
SportsCenter,
Aidan rolled over on his side, propped himself up on one elbow, and rested his hand on mine. I jumped and pushed it aside.

“Please don’t touch my stomach,” I said.

Undaunted, Aidan lowered his hand to my upper thigh.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

Oh no. He was in the mood. The last time I was interested in sex was right around my sixth month of pregnancy, when the hormone influx made me hornier than a sixteen-year-old boy, and I’d had to beg Aidan to sleep with me. As I got bigger and bigger, he’d looked increasingly panicked at the idea.

“Um, not very good, actually. I think I’m getting a sinus infection,” I said.

“Are you sure? Maybe if I gave you a back rub, you’d feel better.”

Actually, a back rub sounded nice. But since he’d probably expect at least a blow job in return, I decided not to risk it.

“Thanks, honey, but I think I’m just going to read for a few minutes and then go to sleep,” I said, and I rolled over and pretended to read my book.

Aidan flopped onto his back, gave an exasperated sigh, and then just lay there sulking. I waited patiently, and a few minutes later, as expected, he started to snore softly. I folded the corner of my page down and turned off the light. And then I thought about what it would be like to kiss Dr. Prasad—the soft pressure of his lips against the curve of my throat, his elegant fingers brushing the hair back from my cheeks, the ripples of muscles on his taut stomach—until I drifted off to sleep.

Chapter Twenty

I pulled into my mother’s driveway, right behind my father’s black Volkswagen Passat.

Oh shit, I thought.

I considered putting the car in reverse and getting the hell out of there, but before I could, the front door opened and my mother appeared, dressed in a red cardigan sweater and denim skirt. She’d cut her hair since I’d last seen her, trading in the smooth bob for a short, choppy style that showed off her long neck. Standing behind her was my father, looking exactly the same as he had for the past twenty years—balding, paunch-bellied, and dressed in his traditional dad-wear of a golf shirt and khakis. And, if I wasn’t mistaken, he had his hand firmly planted on my mother’s ass.

I parked my Tahoe and climbed out.

“Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad,” I said, and waved weakly at them before unloading Ben out of his rear-facing Britax car seat. He broke out a gummy grin, which made his round face look like a jack-o’-lantern, and kicked his feet happily.

“Ben, I apologize in advance. Your grandparents—all of them—are insane,” I whispered into his tiny shell-like ear.

“Where’s my Ben baby?” Mom said, walking down the short driveway and reaching out for Ben. I handed him over to her, and she bundled him close against her, resting her cheek on the top of his head. “Mmm, he smells so good. What kind of lotion do you use on him?”

“I don’t know, just the normal stuff,” I said, following her into the house.

“Hi, baby,” my dad said, grabbing one of Ben’s chubby little bare feet. Ben squealed with laughter.

“He’s such a happy baby,” Mom said.

“That’s because of his mom. Happy mother, happy baby,” my dad said proudly.

“Erm, I don’t think it works like that,” I said, flopping down on the cream wing chair. “Aidan’s dad said that he thinks all babies are just born with the personality they have, and nothing the parents do makes any difference.”

“Your father-in-law is a jackass,” Mom sniffed. She looked at me, her eyes narrowing. “You look tired. Are you sleeping?”

Sigh.

“Here, I brought you copies of some pictures I took of Ben,” I said, trying to ignore that my parents had arranged themselves side by side on the green plaid sofa. They were holding Ben between them, smiling down into his round pumpkin face and tickling his feet. He grinned back at them and grabbed for his toes. I handed them the photos, and my mother balanced Ben in her left arm in order to examine the pictures.

“Sophie, these are wonderful! Here, Stephen, will you hold them up for me? I don’t want the baby to bend them,” Mom said.

“This one is terrific,” my dad said, holding up a black-and-white shot of Ben lounging in his baby bathtub, a mound of bubbles piled up on his head.

“Look at this one of Aidan holding Ben. The composition is just gorgeous. I love how they’re both wearing white T-shirts against the dark background,” Mom said.

“I like that one, too. I also like the one where he’s asleep in his crib. I love how plump his cheeks look when he’s sleeping,” I said. Warm satisfaction curled within me. They were good photos, far better than the ones I’d had taken of him at the mall last month, where Ben was posed against an ugly yellow backdrop and ended up looking jaundiced in the final prints.

“Why did you ever stop pursuing your photography?” Mom asked.

“I haven’t. Obviously,” I said.

“No, you know what I mean. Those arty photos that you used to take in college. Do you remember, Stephen, that exhibit they had of Sophie’s prints?” Mom said.

“Oh, right. The black-and-white close-ups of the leaves and flowers,” Dad said.

“It wasn’t really an exhibit. They just hung some of my pictures at the Fine Arts Building,” I said.

“Don’t run yourself down, honey, it was a wonderful show. I wish you hadn’t given it up,” Mom said.

I felt a flash of irritation. “I told you, I haven’t. I took the photographs that you’re holding in your hands.”

“I know, honey, and they’re beautiful pictures. Look, isn’t Ben’s smile in this one sweet? All that child does is smile. What I mean is, I wish you’d been able to pursue it professionally,” Mom said.

“Why didn’t you? I can’t remember now,” Dad said.

That’s because you and Mom never asked, since you were going through your divorce and didn’t pay attention to anything other than who was going to get their hands on the ugly avocado-green dishes, I thought. In fact, the photography exibit they were now fondly reminiscing over had been a logistical nightmare for me. There had been a short cheese-and-wine reception on the opening night, and I’d had to hustle Dad and the date he’d insisted on bringing—I could still remember her, she was an associate professor in the English Department, and had a long, horsy face and an annoying yawning laugh—in and out early so that he wouldn’t be there by the time Mom arrived.

“Because I couldn’t find anyone to hire me after I graduated. I ended up having to take that job answering phones at the insurance company. Remember? I quit two months later because my boss was sexually harassing me.”

“But I thought you did get a job working at a gallery downtown. Didn’t you?” Dad asked.

“That was an internship. An unpaid internship. And it was only for one summer, after my junior year,” I reminded him.

“Well, it’s too bad you never pursued it. You have such a good eye,” Mom said.

I shrugged, pretending it was no big deal, but the stab of regret cut deeply. I’d always seen myself running a studio out of a downtown office space—exposed brick walls covered with white-matted black-and-white photographs. I’d do all of the high-end weddings in town and would be known for my stunning and unexpected shots. A stark close-up of the satin-covered buttons running down the back of a wedding gown, a black-and-white of a bride wiping confetti from her new husband’s hair, the bittersweet pride in a father’s eye after he’d completed his duty of giving his daughter away.

But after college graduation, I’d been in the thick of planning my own wedding, and then buying and remodeling a house, and then trying to get pregnant, and over time the idea of starting my own studio had just faded away.

I stood up abruptly. “Well, this trip down memory lane’s been fun, but I have to go. We need to stop by the grocery store on our way home,” I said, retrieving Ben from my mom’s arms.

“You just got here,” Mom protested.

“Yeah, why don’t you forget the store and eat here? We’re going to order a pizza and then watch
Out of Africa,
” Dad said.

He moved his hand to my mother’s knee, and she curled her hand over his, interlacing their fingers together.

“No, sorry, I can’t,” I said, shouldering the ever present diaper bag.

“Wait, I’ll walk you out,” Mom said.

I didn’t wait, wanting to flee the nauseating sight of their newfound lovey-dovey domesticity. How long had it been since I’d seen my parents demonstrate affection toward one another? Fifteen years? Longer? Certainly the end of their marriage had been one long sparring match, and canoodling had been conspicuously absent during those final years.