Early the next morning, my mother called with a new level of urgency in her voice. The Great Annual Mealy Moth Invasion had begun. Like me and my wolf spiders, my mother was plagued with moths and spent a good part of her time methodically plotting their annihilation. She had packed up the entire edible contents of her kitchen—spice rack, peanuts, even canned goods—and jammed them into her refrigerator. You practically had to wear body armor to get to the cheese bin lest an avalanche of lentils, Frosted Flakes, and couscous overcome you.
After much trial and error, my mother had concluded that the best way to exterminate the mealy moths was by weaponizing a Swiffer Wet Jet. With the grace of a trained assassin, she would grab her Swiffer, spin it upside down, and tiptoe over to her victim. Then, with brutal force and stone-cold precision, she would push the dripping mop onto the ceiling to kill the moth, smooshing it with patented Wet Jet technology.
“Mom, I miss you.” I had interrupted her account of her double life as a moth slayer/Jewish mother.
“I can’t come visit right now. I’ve just pulled my whole house apart. Don’t make me feel guilty.”
“I’m lonely in my marriage, Ma. He barely ever comes home.”
“What makes you think I have such good advice? My marriage wasn’t so great.”
“Well, what did you learn from it?”
“I have three boxes of opened matzah meal. I can’t even figure that out.”
“Ma, focus.”
“Okay, well, your father was just like Chris in many ways,” she said.
“What? The man hardly worked.”
“That wasn’t always the case. You just don’t remember. When we were first married, he’d never take a day off. Once, I sprained my ankle and needed him to come pick me up from night classes at the college. As he was helping me into the car, he told me that he had to work the next day. Didn’t matter that I had two little ones at home.”
“Dad hated work. Why wouldn’t he take off?”
“I think he was afraid he’d lose his momentum. Maybe he figured if he stopped working, he’d have a hard time going back.”
“Well, he was right.”
“Trust me, if I had figured all this out back then, the problem would have been addressed somehow.”
“So you think Chris is afraid he’ll lose his momentum?”
“What do I know? I’m just saying, there may be something else driving Chris that you haven’t figured out yet.”
“This conversation has raised a lot more questions than it’s answered.”
“So go find the answers. But don’t be surprised if it takes you thirty years of marriage. I have to go deal with my moths.”
She made loud kissing sounds before she hung up, and I was left wondering if there was something deeper driving Chris to succeed. Though, according to my mother, I wouldn’t figure out the answer for another twenty-nine years.
I heard someone at the door yelling, “It’s Josephine, don’t get up!”
My new housekeeper appeared before me, huffing from the four steps she had just ascended into our kitchen, with Satchie Red’s nose firmly planted in her crotch. The house was still clean from my mother’s previous visit, but this was when Josephine was available to start, so I asked her to do the baseboards and other deep cleaning.
Josephine’s hair was a platinum poof freshly curled with giant rollers, her eyeliner a perfectly drawn cat eye. “She’s pregnant. My daughter’s pregnant. Do you believe that? Eighteen years old.” She threw her hands up. “I’ll start in the bedrooms,” she said, ranting to herself.
It was an unexpected greeting from somebody I hardly knew, but her motherly tone of exasperation was both familiar and comforting.
“Do you want me to do the family room next or the kitchen?” Josephine called from the far end of the house fifteen minutes later. How had she cleaned the bedrooms so quickly? I wanted to hear more about her daughter’s unexpected pregnancy, so I asked her to spend some time in the family room. It felt funny lying in bed while someone worked around me. I didn’t want her to think I was watching her every move, but I also didn’t want to act like she wasn’t there. It was an unnecessary concern, because Josephine launched into how she was too old to take care of a baby and listed her issues with her daughter’s boyfriend.
As she spoke I made some observations about her cleaning methods. She mopped, but with no cleaner. She couldn’t reach overhead because of back pain, so the ceiling fans and the top two shelves of the bookcase were left dusty. She didn’t bend, so the baseboards suffered, and though she did vacuum, it wasn’t her forte and the pushing-and-pulling action made for uncomfortable moans and groans. I couldn’t see much of the floor from the bed, or below my colossal belly when I got up to go to the bathroom, so it didn’t bother me too much. I found her to be great company, and her animated stories were worth her reasonable fee.
Josephine went on about her daughter’s pregnancy, and I could feel an unexpected jealousy rising from the pit of my stomach. I didn’t want to be eighteen and pregnant; I just wanted to have a young body that could support a full-term, healthy gestation. But then, there were people who thought that my position was enviable, too.
“You’re so lucky, I wish I could stay in bed all day.” This usually came from older women who had forgotten what it was like to be pregnant, or how to act in basic social situations. I had been bombarded with opinions and advice, like the helpful, “Rest now! You’ll be up all night once that baby comes.” One relative was offended by the amount of water I was drinking. I was thirsty all the time, and though I told her my body knew what it needed and I’d be okay, her response was, “I never drank that much water while I was pregnant. You’re going to float away.” She didn’t know the half of it. I had to relieve myself so often that if I could have harnessed my pee into sustainable energy, I’d have been able to reverse climate change.
Shirley, a distant relative, began calling me every day because she was lonely and I was available. It was mutually beneficial until I began to notice a pattern: every conversation revolved around a baby tragedy.
“Did you get tested for Tay-Sachs? I knew a girl about thirty years ago who had a Tay-Sachs baby. Terrible disease,” she said.
“I think I’ve been tested for that. I’m not sure.”
“Well, another girl I knew from my knitting klatch, her granddaughter was born with I forget what it’s called. But no good.” This was the worst possible thing to say to someone with anxiety because I couldn’t even google whatever it was she was talking about; I could just stress out over the endless possibilities.
I didn’t want to know about difficult births, NICU babies, or infants with little chance of survival. I wasn’t close enough to the finish line to wrap my mind around birthing, never mind all the things that could possibly go wrong afterward. I didn’t have a baby yet, and I might never have a baby. With so many tragic stories, it’s a wonder anyone is ever born at all. And if indeed one was lucky enough to make it through the birth canal alive, growing up to adulthood seemed near impossible.
I stopped listening to everyone’s horror stories and unhelpful advice. Bad things happen every single day, but if I was going to obsess over other people’s misfortune, I’d never have the strength to confront my own.
Josephine moved on to the kitchen, mumbling to herself about the cost of diapers. Continuing to sit with my jealousy, I placed a yoga block under my sacrum to take the pressure off my cervix. The general idea was to be inverted as much as possible but not entirely upside down; this was no easy feat. There was so much tension in my lower extremities. I was physically trying to hold this baby inside me with every muscle in my body. As I worked on relaxing my pelvis and quadriceps, I allowed the yoga block to support my weight. I envisioned my baby growing strong, clenched fists, a little jiu-jitsu fighter. I could see the viscous fluid surrounding the baby, enveloping it in layers of protection. I felt raw and exposed, but this child was safe in my womb. I pictured the umbilical cord not only supplying life but flowing between us.
The phone rang.
Trying not to disrupt this elusive state of Zen, I felt around the bed for the handset, peaceful and Buddha-like at first and then, with the unrelenting ring demanding attention, much more frantically. The machine picked up and the generic voice came on stating there was no one available to take the call—as if! Of course I was available! Where else would I be? I finally found the phone buried beneath the sheets.
“I have a little problem with the Pathfinder,” Chris said.
“Little?” If it were little, he wouldn’t have called.
“Well, it doesn’t go backward anymore.”
“Umm, why do you need to go backward?”
“You know, reverse, it doesn’t go in reverse. I was towing tractors and I blew something. Maybe part of the transmission.”
“You were what?”
“I was in a hurry and the diesel was down; I figured it would be fine.”
“Can it be fixed?”
“Well, it’s still drivable. Like you said, who needs to go backward? Also, it would cost a couple grand.”
I fell off my yoga block.
After we hung up, I hugged my knees to my belly. Deep breath in, deep breath out. I tried to regain the energetic connection with the baby, but it was no use. The moment had passed. I wanted to cry. Every day I fought the vicious beast of depression. I was winning, but it lurked just beneath the surface, and it would take only the smallest ripple to rise up and burst through the fragile veneer.
Chris called again toward evening. “I’m going to be late,” he started off innocently enough, but I could feel the bad news coming.
“Okay. Where are you?”
“The post office. I can’t get out of the parking lot. I’ve been maneuvering for a while, but I can’t get the right angle to make the exit.”
“I can’t even begin to process this.” It was damn funny picturing my husband circling the tiny parking lot, notorious for its inaccessibility even with normal, reversible vehicles. “Take your time and God be with you.”
“I’m an atheist.”
“Well maybe it’s time to reconsider, ’cause I don’t know how else you’re going to get home tonight.”
Chris finally walked through the door—three days later. Well, it could’ve been, but he got lucky and was home in just about an hour. The parking lot cleared out enough for him to make an exit without divine intervention. Of course he could have called someone for a ride, but that wasn’t in his nature. He was literally driving in circles, unwilling to ask for help.
I considered offering to let him drive my Honda for a while, if he promised not to tow tractors. There was a problem, though. I didn’t really want him to take my car. What if there was an emergency? What if the phone lines were down, if there was a storm, if my road had to be evacuated because of an unexpected bear migration? Besides, my car was my last vestige of freedom. As long as I had wheels, I could still Thelma-and-Louise it the hell out of here. I wasn’t sure I wanted to share my symbolic lifeline with him.
Reluctantly, I took the keys from my night table, about to hand them over, and then I paused, keychain suspended, dangling by my thumb and forefinger in the air. Chris looked at me, reaching up for them in slow motion as though we were both making a deal with the devil. We had become so delicate, trying to hold on to whatever was ours, not wanting to give up anything, not even to each other.