Mommies Who Drink Page 6

  Lana says, “I was just thinking that if something happens like a man with a bomb, you’ll be relaxed.”

  “If there’s someone with a bomb on the plane,” says Michelle, “she’s going to need all of her mental faculties to outwit him.”

  “If there’s a bomb on the plane, she’s going to be dead like that,” says Katherine, snapping her fingers. “She might as well be stoned.”

  I put the Baggie in my pocket.

  “Nothing’s going to happen on the plane,” I say, feeling the knob of the pill through my jeans.

  I call my agent, who never calls me, to tell her not to bother calling me because I’ll be in London.

  “London, huh?” she says. “Make sure you get to the airport early. With the country on Orange Alert, things are going to take more time. Orange Alert is one step below war, you know. Frankly, I think it’s a bad time to travel safetywise. Businesswise, I’ve got no problem. Stars are so desperate they’re taking up all the work that would normally filter down to actors like you.”

  I start packing two days ahead of time, mulling over what outfits to wear on “holiday,” as the Brits say. What should I wear while lounging around the mansion? What kicky accessory can I bring to the pub after seeing a marvelous show at the Old Vic?

  Pat watches me pack and repack.

  I hand him a Post-it reminder of things I’ve already reminded him about.

  “Don’t let your mother mess with Spence’s nap schedule too much,” I say.

  “Brett, it’s all going to be fine.”

  “I know. I’m just thinking there’s some big thing I’m forgetting to mention.”

  “Mom’s going to love being with Spence.”

  “Don’t let her love it too much,” I say. “What if Spence forgets who I am and starts thinking she’s his mommy?”

  As silly as this sounds, it’s been a nagging thought ever since I asked her to come out. Spence adores her because she has nothing but time for him. In comparison, I feel like a depressed sack of mommy.

  “He’s not going to forget you,” says Pat. “I’ll show him your picture every day.”

  I can’t figure out how I can both long for and dread being away from my son. Although I suspect this condition will never change. Won’t I shine with pride on his graduation day only to feel like he’s been stolen from me as he drives to college with his U-Haul?

  Pat walks over to his computer, where he’ll stick the Post-it on top of the other Post-its I’ve given him.

  “Do you think I should fly to London during an Orange Alert?” I ask. Pat pauses, the hand holding the latest Post-it reaching toward the other Post-its. “I mean, it is an Orange Alert. Maybe it’s too dangerous. Maybe I should stay. Nah. I should go, right?”

  The Post-it falls onto the desk. I look at Pat to see him holding his pose like a modern-day Pompeian fossilized in midactivity. I watch, knowing that he is considering his answer very, very carefully. The refrigerator drones as the air becomes electric with the possibility of true domestic drama. What happens next depends on Pat’s ability to organize and weigh years of intricate couple politics.

  It is, after all, a test. He knows there’s a single right answer, and he knows that only I know the answer. If he shows too much concern, I will become hysterical, swallow the Vicodin still buried in the pocket of my jeans, and scream at him that he’s never been supportive of anything I do. Then again, if he doesn’t show enough concern, I will storm out of the apartment, swallow the Vicodin, walk around the block, and return with a list of times he’s let me down—starting with the now infamous evening he left me all alone with his born-again mother so that he could play poker with the boys. I ended up drinking a bottle of gin and telling his teetotaling mother that her son likes sex. He really, really likes it.

  Pat slowly sinks into his chair at the computer.

  “I think,” he says, drifting off as he looks out the window, searching for something written in the sky.

  “I think . . .”

  “Yes,” I say. “I want to know what you really think. I mean it’s an Orange Alert. Should I be concerned? Should you be concerned?”

  “I think . . .”

  “Are you worried about me?”

  “Well, I’m always . . . ,” he says, picking through the possibilities in his mind. “I’m always concerned . . . I’m always interested in what . . . I always know that you can . . .”

  He looks back at me. His eyes search my face. The naked desperation in his expression softens me.

  “Because I think it’s going to be fine,” I say, letting him off the hook. “And I can’t make a decision just based on fear. If I did that, I’d never go anywhere, right?”

  Pat looks like a condemned man who just got a call from the governor in his final hour.

  “Absolutely,” he says, his voice loud with relief.

  The night before I leave, there is a message on my machine from a friend in Philadelphia.

  “Just wanted to say bon voyage. I think it’s great what you’re doing. I just . . . I guess I just wanted to hear your voice in case anything . . . We argued a little the last time we talked and I just didn’t want that to be the last thing . . .” Her voice catches. “You know, the last thing . . . in case. Silly. Nothing’s going to happen. You’re going to be fine! It’s all going to be fine!”

  Another pause.

  “Brett, I love you. And I will always love you.”

  Another pause.

  And in a much deeper register, “Good-bye.” Her voice is soft and wet.

  I decide not to take the Vicodin with me on the plane, figuring that a couple of drinks will relax me enough.

  I put it in its clean Baggie in the corner of my desk drawer. It sits there—a small white promise of relief.

  I kiss Spence good-bye, feeling a pull so strong I almost can’t walk out the door. My mother-in-law takes him and I run to the elevator like I’m fleeing the scene of a crime.

  On the way to the airport Pat drives while I do a verbal checklist.

  “Passport—yes. Money—yes. Ticket—in my backpack.”

  Pat turns on the radio.

  “Four hundred troops have been stationed at Heathrow Airport. Blair’s support of the United States has made London a top target for terrorist cells sympathetic with Al Qaeda.”

  I look over to Pat.

  “Four hundred troops,” I say.

  He looks fine. Relaxed even.

  “What do you think?” I ask.

  “I think,” he says, “I think, Wow, four hundred troops.”

  “Is that four hundred guys with guns? Or is a troop like a hundred guys, meaning there’s four thousand guys with guns?”

  Pat seems to consider this.

  “I think it’s just four hundred guys with guns,” he says.

  We turn our attention to the radio again.

  “Scotland Yard has uncovered four separate plots to bomb Heathrow in the next week. All threats are being treated as serious.”

  “Do you still think I should go?” I ask Pat.

  We change lanes. Pat’s face settles and he reaches over to turn off the radio. There is a quiet surety in his manner.

  “Brett,” he says, “if I really thought that anything was going to happen to you, I wouldn’t let you go. I think this is all about fear. And fear makes fear. It’s one big fear fest. You’re going to be safe. Spence and I are going to be fine. Spence will remember you. And you will have fun.”

  We see the sign “Airport.” Pat drives under it.

  “So, obviously, I think you should go. It’s more important what you think,” he says.

  “I think,” I say, “I think I should have brought the Vicodin.”

  When I get on the plane, I look for faces of possible bombers. I look for dark men with just-about-to-enter-the-kingdom-of-heaven expressions on their faces. Although by now I think that the terrorists must be getting smarter, and I should really be looking for an old lady with depleted uranium in her bun.
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br />   I waggle my puffy coat into a ball and stuff it in the overhead compartment.

  My seat’s a good one. An aisle.

  I take a People magazine out of my backpack and put it in the pocket in front of me. Doing this calms me down because I love reading cheapo magazines on planes. Things I would rarely do on the ground are delicious pleasures miles up in the air. Like reading bad magazines, drinking five of those little bottles of wine, and having sex in the bathroom. With or without a partner.

  I feel my seat rigid against my back and try to focus on the pleasures that await me, rather than the nervous guy in front of me who keeps glancing around.

  It’s a packed flight, and as the flight attendant swivels her arms around demonstrating safety features that are laughably useless against a terrorist attack, I concentrate on breathing slowly.

  In/out. In/out.

  The takeoff is smooth.

  In/out. In/out.

  I think about the pill in a Baggie in my drawer at home.

  In/out. In/out. Four thousand troops at Heathrow.

  We climb higher. The nervous guy in front of me looks back at a dark woman and waves a bit. Is it a signal?

  In/out. In/out. The pill. The pill in the Baggie. Why didn’t I stay at home?

  The loudspeaker comes on. There is a pause. Oh my God, this is fucking it!!! Some guy is going to come on and say that he’s been living in this oppressive American regime for twenty-three years masquerading as a United Airlines pilot, only to choose this day to fly this packed plane into Paramount Studios.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” a calm voice says, “this is your pilot and I wanted to tell you . . .”

  He goes on about the trip we’re going to take and the temperature in London. My body gets loose and I begin to think about the five minis of wine I’ll be ordering from the flight attendants, when I hear . . .

  “We expect a great deal of turbulence leaving Los Angeles. So we ask that you keep your seat belts fastened until further notice. The flight crew will stay seated and beverage service will be delayed until the turbulence is over.”

  Beverage service delayed?!

  In/out. In/out. Out, out, out. Orange Alert Orange Alert.

  Blood rushes through my body like it’s sending fuel. My throat contracts. I begin to choke. I cough. The plane lurches like the deck of the Starship Enterprise under attack.

  I cough and spew phlegm onto the tray table in front of me.

  I look around for someone to grab onto.

  My vision is foggy but I can make out: the man across the aisle reading a paper, the woman behind me perusing the duty-free catalog, the kid, sitting kitty-corner, picking her nose.

  Are they all drugged? Out, out, out.

  “Are you all right?” asks the woman behind me. She lowers the catalog and reaches for my arm.

  “Um . . . no,” I say, my voice wobbly.

  Suddenly, my throat opens up and a sob comes out. Tears gush down my cheeks.

  “Oh dear,” says the woman in an English accent.

  “I just . . .”

  I start to heave giant sobs. The plane bounces like crazy, then drops like someone simply let it go.

  “Oh my God. Help!” I scream to the God of my youth—the old man in the sky.

  The man across from me smiles.

  “It’ll be over soon,” he says.

  I sob huge waves of tears and mucus and sound.

  Between waves I manage to say, “It feels like . . . we’re going . . . we’re all going . . . to fall out of the sky.”

  The man reaches over and holds my wrist just below the Englishwoman’s hand that holds on tight like she’s done this before.

  “I know it feels like that,” the man says. “But we won’t fall out of the sky.”

  My rolling sobs soften into sniffles as the plane continues to bounce. The Englishwoman’s hand disappears only to appear again with a brown pill.

  “It’s an herbal sedative,” she says. “A woman in the back sent it down.”

  “Thank you,” I say, my voice small and babyish.

  And I take the pill. My cheeks are wet, my jeans damp between my legs. In moments my breathing returns to its natural rhythm. It can’t be the little brown pill that I’ve taken only seconds before. It can’t be the wine I haven’t had yet. But this feeling of soft grace feels like a pill or wine swimming through my system. It’s as if I’ve been released from my fear like magic. No, not magic. I know that. It’s the old man in the sky. It’s deliverance given, simply because I asked for it.

  The Englishwoman’s hand settles on my elbow again, and it stays there until the plane stops shuddering and goes in a straight line.

  What to Expect

  So what do you think?” I ask Michelle as we sip tea in my living room, watching Spence take a couple of steps, fall, then crawl to a ball he’s been rolling. Michelle’s daughter sits at a table, neatly coloring. Her legs dangle, crossed at the ankles. Faith’s now a serious three-year-old who has no time for Spence’s less academic interests.

  “I think he’s figuring it out,” says Michelle.

  “But all the other kids are walking like pros by now.”

  “He’s an Aries,” she says. “He’s taking his own sweet time.”

  I know nothing about astrology, but I like that Michelle seems so sure.

  “See here,” I say, picking up a dog-eared paperback, “are these columns: What your toddler should be able to do by the end of the month, What your toddler will probably be able to do by the end of the month, What your toddler may possibly be able to do by the end of the month, and What your toddler may even be able to do by the end of the month. According to this, Spence is probably supposed to be running by now.”

  “Probably supposed?”

  “That’s my wording,” I say.

  “There’s no such thing as ‘probably supposed.’”

  “What I mean is that it’s in the ‘probably’ column and he’s not even walking yet. Let alone running. Although how they determine the difference between ‘will probably’ and ‘may possibly’ is anyone’s guess. It’s a very thin line.”

  “It’s just a bunch of editors figuring out some neat columns that give parents some gauge of . . . I don’t know . . . what to expect, I guess,” Michelle says.

  “Still, I’d be more comfortable if walking was in the ‘may possibly’ column. That leaves it more open,” I say.

  “I don’t see where all this worrying is getting you,” says Michelle. “Spence is a normal little boy.”

  “He hasn’t said a word yet,” I say.

  “You said that he said ‘car.’”

  “Yeah, but he was pointing to the toilet.”

  I lie in bed next to Pat.

  “The book says Spence should be able to build a tower of two blocks,” I say.

  Pat lays his magazine on his chest.

  “He can’t build a tower?” he asks.

  “I show him how to do it and he just grabs a block and throws it.”

  “Babies throw things.”

  “Thing is,” I say, “if he can’t build a tower of two blocks, how’s he going to move on to the next stage?”

  “The next stage?”

  “Building a tower out of three blocks.”

  I become obsessed with stages, mentally checking things off as Spence achieves them.

  Good, good, I think when he puts a triangle block in a triangle hole. That’s in the “may even be able to” column. He’s way ahead of the pack on shapes.

  I start to think about what the stages for early motherhood are. In fact, I get very excited about pitching a book to the what-to-expect folks:

  What to Expect the First Two Years of Motherhood

  Sample Chapter

  By the time your child is eighteen months old:

  You should be able to:

  * Build a tower of two blocks by yourself without weeping

  *Babble

  You will probably be able to:

  * Sh
ow your baby how to build a tower of two blocks without saying, “How simple is this? It’s just two blocks on top of each other. See? One. Two.”

  * Sleep through the night without having a nightmare about your child losing limbs or shrinking to the size of a grain of sand

  * End a full day alone with your child without screaming at your husband as soon as he comes home, “What about me? Am I a fucking zero here? When do I get to have some goddamned fun?”

  You may possibly be able to:

  * Build a tower of two blocks while your child is napping, without thinking, How can he not get this? All the other kids can do this. Should I take him to some kind of “tower specialist”?

  * Go to bed without having that glass of wine you refer to as “Mommy’s magic medicine”

  * Use a spoon and fork without thinking about how bloody it would get if you stabbed your own hand right now

  You may even be able to:

  * Put the blocks away and not think about them for a week

  * Ask for what you want without whining

  * Look at your child and think, I could do this again

  Friday

  When does the show air?” asks Lana, lifting a glass of something bronze on the rocks.

  “Have no idea,” I say. “I’m just relieved I survived the whole thing without killing myself or anyone else.”

  We’re talking about the second acting job I’ve had since Spencer was born. The first having been a bit on Six Feet Under. This one involved a couple of improvised scenes for HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, which stars Larry David, the professionally cranky creator of Seinfeld.

  “Couldn’t have been that bad,” says Michelle, reaching up to smooth my hair.

  “Not the acting part,” I say. Mack comes over and pours more wine into my glass. “Just the part where they made me drive a car in the scene with Larry.”

  “Oh my God,” says Katherine. “Whose car? Didn’t you tell them you don’t drive? Jesus. What did you do?”