The Seven Year Bitch (34 page)

I got in the shower, turning my stomach away from the water because my scar was swollen and sensitive. I grabbed the bar of Dove and scrubbed at the black surgical tape on my chest and arms and stomach. What was this! I wanted to scream. Why wouldn't it come off?

For fifteen minutes I scrubbed with a washcloth but the residue from the tape wouldn't budge. I laughed and cried at the same time. What a joke! I was going to go to Mumbai with a man with my swollen stomach and black surgical tape and enormous milky tits and a baby. I was so fat, when I got out of the shower the towel wouldn't even go around me.

I was almost forty-one years old. I was married. I had a three-year-old son and a newborn baby. And even all of that couldn't ward off stupid lovesickness and heartache.

I didn't want to be forty-one, but I didn't want to be thirteen again either! I was in pain. Was that how things were going to be for me? I'd be ninety-five years old, on my deathbed with my loving family all around me, and I'd be longing for some hot new eighty-year-old who'd checked into the home the week before. As I looked down at my baby, who Dr. Sitbon had proclaimed “the most gorgeous baby I have ever seen, madame,” I wondered what it would take for me to be happy with my life.

When I talked to Joy about it she just harangued me to leave Russell and told me all the incredible things that were happening to her. She wrote me long, long e-mails describing her nights with Chili under the mango trees, or sometimes it was cashew trees, and her newfound orgasms, and I would shoot back a quick “Africa is Africa so you better use protection!” Frankly I was getting a little fed up with it. She didn't have to send me these long e-mails when, as far as I was concerned, everything there was to say could be said in one hundred words or less.

When I talked to my mother she said, “Go to India.”

“What!” I said, enraged. “I'm nursing!”

I imagined the trousseau I would pack: nursing bras and pads, my jazzy Medela pump with plug adapter for India that was designed in a smart-looking shoulder bag, maternity pants and nursing tops with the unfortunate brand name of Boob that I had gotten at a store that was actually called the Upper Breast Side.

“Just go,” she said. “This might be your chance for love.”

“I have to get off the phone. The baby's crying,” I practically screamed.

I went to the crib and looked down at my son sleeping peacefully on his back in Duncan's old footed pajamas and then I wrote back to Gabe Weinrib, “I'd love to next time,” and hit send.

What would Shasthi have thought, when she came back from her maternity leave, to find me in India? I wondered. Her baby had been born the day after Rhys.

I wanted to call a friend but I couldn't think of anyone else I could confide in. I wished I could call my roommate from the hospital, but I didn't even know her name. I wondered how old Stinky Mama was doing.

There was someone, someone I could tell anything to, but I just couldn't put my finger on who I was trying to think of. How can you forget your best friend? I wondered. And then I remembered who this best friend was. It was Russell. But I couldn't very well tell Russell that I was depressed because I wanted to go to India with another man. Then I thought maybe I could.

I went to him at his desk. “I'm depressed,” I said.

“Why, honey? How can you be depressed with that beautiful baby in there?”

“Because I want to go to India with Gabe Weinrib.”

“What?” Russell said.

“He invited me on a trip of a lifetime.”

“I thought our honeymoon was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime. Aren't we still paying it off on our credit cards?”

“This is a better trip than that in a better lifetime.”

I went back into the bedroom and lay on the bed and Russell actually left his desk and lay on the bed with me.

“Oh honey,” he said. “It's going to be okay.”

“No it's not,” I said. “I can't get this stuff off me.” I showed him the black lines from the surgical tape. “How can I go to India with a man? Look at me!”

“I think you look good enough to go,” he said. “I think you look beautiful. But you just remember one thing. Gabe Weinrib didn't give you those two beautiful boys.”

He held me in his arms and I cried on his chest.

“Maybe you can go another time,” Russell said.

And then I kind of laughed even though I was still crying.

I
got to school for pick-up fifteen minutes early so I could slip in quickly and get Duncan all buckled into his stroller before Gerde showed up. She was always the last mother to arrive and my plan was to be blocks from the school already by the time she even showed up. But by the time I had helped Duncan into his sweater and signed out
The Runaway Pickle
from the book basket and signed up for what homemade snack I would be providing for the bake sale—bottled water—Gerde was standing there. “Shall we walk together?” she asked. “Can you wait for us?”

I tried desperately to think of a way to get out of it but I couldn't. If I tried to make up another errand, she'd just find a way to come with me. The only thing I could think to say to her was “No fucking way.”

“Sure!” I said.

I waited while she peeled Minerva from the reading rug, and got her into her sweater, and signed out a book from the book basket, and signed up to bring homemade “cupcakes” to the bake sale, which I knew, from the one I had purchased for three dollars at the Halloween fair, were sugar-free, flavor-free multigrain muffins.

We began our walk home, two strollers side by side, the children in them arguing the whole way about which one of them was the rightful owner of something. “What toy are they fighting over?” I asked Gerde.

“No,” Gerde said. “It is not a toy. They are arguing over the island of Manhattan. Minerva says New York belongs to her and Duncan is under the impression that New York is all for him.” Gerde said something to Minerva in German. “I just told her they can share the city.”

No, they really can't, I thought. “You certainly can,” I told them over their stroller canopies.

Their argument continued, and at University Place and Twelfth Street they both struggled out of their restraints and ran into the lobby of a building.

Gerde and I stood helplessly with grimaced smiles on our faces. What fun! Walking our children home from school! A few minutes later Minerva came running out of the lobby talking wildly in German.

“There is poop,” Gerde said.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“They were playing a bathroom game apparently and Duncan pooped on the floor.”

“What!” I said, totally shocked. Duncan had been pooping in the potty for a year. There had never been an accident. I left Gerde with both strollers and ran into the lobby, where Duncan was standing frozen in a sea of liquid shit. There was shit covering every inch of the white tile floor, from the door to the elevators. I had never seen anything like this. His little chinos had a small wet spot in the front but there wasn't any shit on them. He must have pulled down his pants and then managed to pull them up again.

“Did you do this?” I asked, confused.

“Yes,” he said. He looked like he was going to cry.

“It's okay, everyone has accidents.”

A man got off the elevator and said, “Jesus Christ,” as he hopped on the few stepping-stones of clean white tile to get through the shit storm to the front door. He stood just outside the doorway to see what I was going to do, as did a driver who had been leaning against a limousine but now had come to the door of the lobby. “Oh yeah, he did it all right,” the driver said. “Look at his pants. They're all wet.”

I took Duncan by the hand and we traipsed through the shit and out onto the street. Gerde stood her ground with the smile grimace plastered on her face. “I'll get napkins,” I said and brought Duncan into the Vietnamese restaurant next door.

“We've had an accident,” I said to the woman who greeted us with menus. “May we have some napkins?”

The Vietnamese woman pretended not to understand what I was asking but I persisted until I emerged from the restaurant with a small stack of white napkins that were not much bigger than playing cards.

“Look at his pants, they're soaking wet,” the driver said to the man from the lobby. With Duncan next to me, I walked back into the lobby and sopped up the wet shit with each napkin. Shit got on the tips of my fingers.

“Did you do this?” I asked Duncan again, suddenly realizing this was like no shit that had ever come out of him before. It was slowly dawning on me that if this wasn't his shit, I could at this very moment in my life be mopping up the shit of a homeless person with tiny napkins.

Duncan nodded miserably. “I did it,” he said, like George Washington.

When I had soaked up what I could with the last of the napkins, we left the lobby even though the job wasn't nearly done. It had been nothing more than a token effort.

I carried the yellow napkins for a whole block to deposit them in a garbage can and then walked back to Gerde, Duncan, and Minerva at the strollers.

“Done!” I said brightly. There was shit on the bottom of my skirt.

“Okay, good!” Gerde said even more brightly.

“Wait. What's that?” I asked, seeing a beige smudge on Minerva's leg. “How did Duncan's poop get on Minerva's leg?”

“I don't know!” Gerde said.

Minerva was wearing an angelic Bu and the Duck dress in sage and white.

“Shall we go?” Gerde said.

“Wait. What happened exactly?” I said, more to Minerva than to Gerde. Minerva just looked at her mother. “A bathroom game?” I persisted.

“I don't even want to know,” Gerde said. “Best not to even ask.”

A piece of newspaper blew by and I spread it on the stroller seat so Duncan could sit on it. We walked to our building silently, no longer fighting over whose New York this was.

As soon as we got upstairs I brought Duncan into the bathroom and carefully peeled off his pants, afraid of what I would find in his Claesen's pirate underpants. But what I found was nothing. Just the little damp spot and nothing else. It wasn't his shit.

“Duncan, you weren't the one who pooped in the lobby,” I said.

“Yes, I was,” he said. “Minerva said we should both do it.”

That night I checked repeatedly for an e-mail from Gerde apologizing—
Oh my goodness, it wasn't Duncan. It was Minerva. I'm so sorry you cleaned it up!
—but none came. I imagined her getting Minerva to the bathroom and discovering the mess.

In bed, I told Russell what had happened.

“You cleaned her shit! You cleaned her shit!” Russell kept repeating, almost screaming. “That's it, Duncan is not to see that girl again!”

The next morning when Shasthi showed up with Louisa Isolde in her own Baby Bjorn I told her what had happened. “She always does that,” Shasthi said. “She did it all over a swing in the playground and Gerde didn't even clean it up. Gerde knew Minerva was the one who did it.”

“She couldn't have,” I said. “She wouldn't have let me clean it up by myself.”

“She knew,” Shasthi said. “It's happened so many times. She poops all over the playground. Believe it. It's not normal.”

That afternoon, standing outside the school waiting to pick Duncan up, I watched her approaching, her long German stride bringing her closer and closer.

“Hi!” she said brightly.

“Hi,” I said. I waited.

“Shall we walk together? Can you wait for us?” she asked.

“You know, that wasn't Duncan's shit,” I said.

She paused for a moment as if she were trying to figure out if she could get away with a lie.

“I know!” she said, her voice going up an octave.

“You must have seen when you took off Minerva's underpants. They must have been completely filled with shit.” There was a long silence between us as she continued to smile down at me. “Duncan's still upset about it,” I said. “Why did you let him take the blame?” Her mouth widened and tightened and the sides of her eyes crinkled in a way I had never seen.

And then she said the only thing she was going to say by way of an apology: “Sorry about the shit,
ja
?”

The school doors opened and she dashed inside as
sorry about the shit, ja
played itself in my head over and over and over.

“Sorry about the shit,
ja
? Sorry about the shit,
ja
?” Russell ranted that night at dinner. “I'll show her who's sorry about the shit,
ja
!”

We were sitting at the table eating Indian takeout and seemed to be making an evening of talking about the shit.

“I know,” I said.

“I mean you cleaned her shit, touched her shit, wiped up her daughter's shit with your own hands. Would you ever stand there and let someone else clean Duncan's shit?”

“Never,” I said.

“Of course you wouldn't!”

I suddenly remembered another incident and swallowed my food too quickly in my excitement to tell Russell. “There's another thing.”

“What?” Russell asked, rapt with interest.

“I remember Gerde told me that Minerva pissed on the floor at Moss in SoHo and the sales staff was really angry about it.”

“In Moss! They must have loved that. Unbelievable! What did she do?”

“She just left without cleaning it up.”

“Of course she left, because you weren't there to clean it up for her. They're lucky it was just piss. I just can't believe it. Sorry about the shit,
ja
? Sorry about the shit,
ja
?”