Mommies Who Drink Read online

  Doris smiles at Spence when I bring him in the next day. He toddles by her to a plastic kiddie car.

  “Where do I sign?” I ask.

  Doris hands me the notebook. I sign Spence in. My pen hovers over the workout section. I think, then write, “Weight room.” It seems as good as anything. In small print I add, “Afterward: steam room, whirlpool, possible sauna.” In the “Comments” section I write, “Recovering from back surgery,” thinking that this will justify all the steaming and soaking.

  Doris glances at the notebook.

  “Spencer has had back surgery?”

  “Oh, no,” I say, hoping I won’t have to elaborate on my lie. “Me. I’ve had back surgery.”

  “‘Comments’ is for the children,” she says. “Is he allergic to anything?”

  “Spence? No.”

  “Okay,” she says. “We’ll come and find you if there’s a problem.”

  “Great,” I say, remembering that with my faux bad back I’ll have to move a bit slower.

  I shuffle over to Spence and blow him a kiss before leaving.

  In the changing room it’s the old bodies and the young ones that fascinate me the most. Ones like mine, I now understand. They still have shape, but have gotten thicker out of the need, I think, for quite literally a broader base. Our bodies do seem to manifest function. We are biological architecture. Older bodies get smaller, occupying less space—seeming to disappear, before the owner does altogether. Younger bodies are not a mystery to anyone, since everyone once had one. They are the worker bodies. They demand attention.

  A group of women who look to be in their seventies has come in from a swim class. They sit on their bare bums in front of a long mirror, flesh of their arms jiggling as they dry their hair and gab. One of them catches my eye in the mirror.

  I quickly lean over to tie my shoes.

  I wander around the weight room for a bit, my towel draped over my shoulders, before deciding to do some free weights in front of the mirror. I had a roommate, once, who lifted weights in the living room and I think I can imitate her moves enough to look like I know what I’m doing.

  I walk over to a row of weights on a rack, under a sign that says “Please rerack your weights.” A sign next to it says “Do not drop weights.” Simple enough, I think, looking at the weights.

  I reach down and pick up one that looks small. I straighten my knees, managing to lift it up a couple of inches off the ground—but find that I can’t pull it further up, nor can I straighten my back. I hunch with the weight dangling in my fist like I’m an elephant preparing to pull one of those huge slabs used to build the pyramids. Though, in my case, this is no preparation. I can’t proceed any more than I can put the weight down. Putting it down would require bending my knees, which would release my whole body, sending it crashing to the floor. My towel slips down from my shoulders and covers my head. I sway a bit under the towel, thinking that if I get a little swing in my arm, I can possibly throw the weight out, away from my foot, which I would like to save. I remember the sign admonishing not to throw the weights and am grateful for the flapping terry cloth obscuring my identity.

  I get enough swing going to release the weight, which thuds a scant few inches from my toes. Standing up, my back clutches as my towel slips to the floor. I eyeball the sign “Please rerack your weights” and hook my foot under the towel, kicking it over the weight.

  I decide to walk my back out by taking a couple of slow turns around the room. As I amble, I glance at the clock, which shows that I’ve been here three minutes. I really should kill more time before I go to the steam room. What if the Childwatch folk come looking for me and discover that I skipped working out altogether? Is that some kind of rule that I would be breaking? Would the membership guy come up to me and say, “Excuse me, ma’am, the poverty membership is strictly intended for poor women who want to get into shape so that they can bear the burden of raising their families with the very few resources they have. The poverty membership does not exist so that artists, who choose to live on limited means, the ‘nouveaux poor,’ if you will, can drop off their kids and fuck around in the whirlpool.”

  Pat says that I have an exaggerated sense of being monitored by the world at large. He says that most people don’t care if I take an extra helping of something I didn’t pay for. No one cares that Spence walked out of school with a toy car that didn’t belong to him. Pat says that I don’t have to offer corroboration when I call in sick to the dentist by telling the receptionist that she can ask my husband if I really do have such a dangerously high fever. He says that everyone takes the cute tiny bottles of shampoo and conditioner from hotels.

  I’m sure Pat is right. No one cares what I do with my precious two hours at the gym. But I’m not taking any chances.

  I walk over to a machine that looks pretty straightforward. I can see that one sits on the padded seat and lifts weights by pushing up on the bars above. I sit down and face the weights I will be lifting, grasp the bars, and push up.

  Nothing moves. Not the bars, not the weights.

  I stop, filling with resolve. I breathe in again, hold my breath, and push, straining against the bars with everything I’ve got.

  Nothing moves.

  My breath releases with a loud “Pahhhhh.”

  I can’t believe that I can’t lift this load even once.

  “You need to move the pin,” a voice from behind me says.

  I turn to see a girl no bigger than Barbie. She leans over and moves a pin from low down on the stack of weights, to just below the first weight.

  “You were trying to lift two hundred pounds,” she says.

  “Jesus,” I gasp.

  “I moved it up to five pounds,” she says before she bounces off.

  I wonder if she’s an angel or a spy.

  I adjust, back straight, fists around the bars. I’ll do ten lifts, then rest, I think. Then I’ll do ten more. I’ll do five rounds of ten, with breaks in between, and then go steam.

  I push against the bars and lift the weight.

  Not bad, I think as I bring the weight down carefully.

  I lift again, remembering to breathe.

  And down. Up again.

  How many is that? Five, I think.

  Up and down.

  Okay, so seven. I’ll do seven, then rest.

  I push up the bars, this last time an effort—and rest.

  So that’s seven. Seven’s not bad for a first day. I mean, I’ve never lifted weights in my life. This is the sort of thing you have to work up to gradually. If I overdo it, I could really hurt myself. Give myself a stroke or something. Seven is good. I feel a little burn in my upper arms. But I’m still breathing. That’s good. Tomorrow I’ll do eight.

  I get off the machine and do a little shake, to calm my muscles down. I twist my upper body around a couple of times, like I’ve seen on TV, and head for some well-deserved relaxation.

  Taking a steam is more interesting before you do it than as you do it. I can really stand only a few minutes before I start to feel like I’m in a Cambodian prison camp.

  The whirlpool, however, is a week in the country. Not an impoverished mom in sight; just me, and two old men, having an extended conversation about the necessity of wearing flip-flops in the showers to avoid fungus, which one of them got here, he says. I don’t care that the conversation is dull. I don’t care that there’s no champagne. I drop my head back and feel the water pound every bit of tension out of me. I let my mind drift and I think that I really am very lucky to have two child-free hours a day to waste away at the YMCA.

  “Brett Paesel,” says a voice.

  I come to.

  “Your son’s diaper needs changing.”

  Shit, how did they find me?

  I pull myself out of the watery embrace of the whirlpool, the cold air shocking my skin as I grab my towel and follow the Childwatch woman into the dressing room.

  “It’ll take me a minute to dry off,” I say.

  At Chi
ldwatch I change Spence quickly and he’s happy to run and play again when I leave to claim the hour and a half I have left of my time. I return to the dressing room dry and dressed.

  Getting back into my wet bathing suit is unappealing. Undressing to take a shower seems silly. I look around. The old ladies at the mirror are gone. But curled up in an armchair is a woman reading a book. I figure she’s an impoverished mom. Who else would come to the YMCA to read a book in the changing room?

  How is she getting away with this? Did she write in the notebook that after her workout she could be found finishing that novel that had lain by her bed, unread, at home? Or is she just taking the chance that she won’t be discovered sloughing off? Is she the sort of woman I’ve always longed to be—thumbing her nose at authority, lounging around the changing room, not giving a flying fuck what anyone thinks of her?

  Her audacity thrills and terrifies me.

  I walk over to my locker and unlock it. My backpack yields nothing more interesting than a schedule of aerobics classes. I have nothing to read.

  The mom lifts her head.

  “There’s old magazines near the StairMasters,” she says.

  I want to say, “You never saw me.” But I know it’s understood.

  We belong to the Secret Society of Impoverished Moms at the Hollywood YMCA. It’s a powerful bond.

  Friday

  What the fuck do you think was going through his mind?” asks Katherine, her voice outraged and amused. “Casually showing us pictures of his fiancée, like it’s not the weirdest hookup since Michael Jackson and anybody.”

  She’s talking about our friend Dave, who we saw recently at a drama school reunion. Dave is in the process of bringing his Thai fiancée over to the States. He knew her for five days before giving her an engagement ring, hidden in a jar of cold cream the day he left. Dave has spent the last three months digging through third world paperwork to get her over here.

  “Five days? He knew her for five days?” asks Michelle.

  “This is nowhere near the worst part of the story,” I say. “He brings out the pictures and we’re all still kind of processing the five-day, Thailand, doesn’t-speak-a-word-of-English part when we look and see that the girl looks like she’s twelve!”

  “Dave is forty-seven!” says Katherine, keeping the outrage going. Dave was one of the older students.

  “What’s the big deal?” asks Lana. She slips off her sweater and lays it on the bar.

  “Sounds to me like the big deal is that this guy basically bought a wife,” says Michelle, who is fast establishing herself as the moral core of our little group.

  “But if she gets something out of it and he gets something out of it, who cares?” Lana continues. “Obviously, she’s not twelve.”

  “Dave says she’s twenty-three. But who knows if that’s the truth?” says Katherine.

  “Look,” I say, holding up my empty glass to get Mack’s attention, “I’m not all wound up in the morality of this. Dave’s a decent guy and the girl is poor. What I think needs to be discussed, if we need to discuss it at all, is, what kind of person is happy hooking up with a person whose affection they’re buying, who doesn’t speak English, who they’ve known for five days?”

  “A guy who’s been divorced twice, who’s forty-seven and portly, and whose part in a big movie just got cut down to a shot of the back of his bald head,” says Katherine.

  Mack slides a glass of wine over to me.

  We sit for a bit.

  “Maybe we should give credit to Dave for going out and doing something about his own unhappiness,” says Lana, who doesn’t know Dave. But now he’s everyone’s problem. Something for us to solve.

  We sip and think about that.

  “No, no,” I say, untangling it in my mind. “Because he bought something that isn’t real.”

  “That’s right,” says Michelle.

  “The part that’s scary,” I say, “is the part where Dave thinks she loves him. The part where he shows pictures of this gorgeous girl snuggled up to him like he’s special. He’s not just buying her company, he’s buying the lie that she loves him.”

  “Okay, so suddenly I feel horrible,” says Katherine.

  “I didn’t mean to be a downer,” I say.

  “I mean it. I feel like shit.”

  “Poor Dave,” says Michelle.

  “Poor stupid Dave,” says Lana.

  I wish there were an English word for “schadenfreude”—the state of sorry joy. Surely, we Americans are as acquainted with the feeling as the Germans. It seems to me that this is what we feel for Dave. Sorry that he will most likely be heartbroken when he finds out that the love he bought is not real. And joy that we are not him.

  Witness

  I have come to the conclusion that raising a young child involves long stretches of boredom interrupted by flashes of terror and bursts of supernatural joy—which sounds awfully close to the definition of “psychosis.” And also, I am told, “combat.” One would think that, knowing this, I would send Spence off to boarding school and surgically ensure that I never have another child. But no. For a reason I cannot name, I become obsessed with having a second one.

  I start peeing on all kinds of sticks. Sticks that tell me when I’m ovulating. Sticks that tell me if I’m pregnant. I get crazy about sticks. I buy them in bulk and pee on them even when I’m not ovulating or remotely close to being pregnant. I begin to live by the sticks.

  I circle the best days in my date book for getting it on. I wake Pat in the middle of the night for sex. Because the stick says now. Then I lie on my back with my legs propped against the wall until they lose all feeling and fall onto the bed. I wake Pat again, pounding my paralytic legs with my fists.

  Months of this and no success.

  I read adoption books and daydream about flying to India to pick up a little Indian girl. I even talk to someone who has a baby connection in Nigeria. But back out when I realize that we only communicate through his beeper and pay phones.

  I am desperate—driven by a force beyond myself, like Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. So I decide to have my doctor run some tests that will tell me a little more about my chances of getting pregnant.

  The day I go in for the results of the tests, I wait alone in the lobby. Pat and Spence park the car while I sit on a brown leather sectional and start to finger the neatly placed magazines on the square glass table in front of me. I consider reading the article on “ten things men would like us to know.” But I’m not sure I want to know.

  I look up to see bamboo shoots in a glossy green pot on the corner of the table. Behind them is a painting of Buddha done by my doctor, Dr. Sammy. He is a Buddhist, which is and is not a good thing in an OB doctor. At his best he is cool, detached, amused. At his worst he is cool, detached, amused.

  When I was looking for a gynecologist, I asked a couple of friends for their recommendations. The first said that she had a great doctor, thorough, no-nonsense.

  “It’s just . . .”

  “What?” I said.

  “Well, it’s silly really. It’s just that he has no sense of humor.”

  “I don’t know that that would matter,” I said.

  “Well, then, he’s your man,” she said. “It’s just that one time he was doing a Pap. I mean, he was right in the middle of it. My feet are in the stirrups. And the lights go out all over the hospital. And he just . . .”

  “What?”

  “Well, he just waited until they came on again. He didn’t say anything. Nothing to break the tension. I just lay there in the dark, my legs spread, and listened to him breathing, while the greasy speculum slipped out of me.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “The lights came on. And he finished the job. He just went on like nothing had happened.”

  Not sure about that, I thought.

  My next friend said that she had a great guy she had known for years. He was practically a friend.

  “It’s ju
st . . .”

  “What?” I said.

  “Well, his sense of humor is a little strange. It’s okay with me. But you might not like it.”

  “Like what does he say?”

  “Well, the last time I was making an appointment with him, he said, ‘Great, I can’t wait to see that luscious bod. I’ll be waiting, with my tongue hanging out.’”

  “Ewww.”

  “He was just joking.”

  Not my guy, I thought.

  My next friend said that she had met her gynecologist in acting class. He called himself Dr. Sammy. Sammy being his first name. He was a Renaissance man—doctor, painter, actor—and a Buddhist.

  “It’s just . . .”

  “What?” I said, weary.

  “It’s just . . . Well, he’s handsome.”

  “So what?”

  “Well. Some people don’t like that in a gynecologist,” she said.

  “How handsome is he?”

  “Very handsome,” she said. “He played the devil in a scene for acting class. And he was so sexy that the women couldn’t take their eyes off him.”

  “Your gynecologist played the devil?”

  “He was good,” she said.

  Pat and Spence join me in Dr. Sammy’s office. I look out the window and see sky clean as a blue sheet, sunlight bouncing off white squares of concrete in the street below, glinting cars maneuvering in a parking lot. I try to imagine Dr. Sammy as the devil, and my mind skids to a short list of things I’d be willing to trade my soul for.

  “So let me see here,” he says.

  I hear him open a file, but keep my attention on the sheet sky.

  Spence climbs into my lap.

  “He’s three now?” Dr. Sammy asks.

  I think, Get to it, get to it. What does the file say?

  “Almost three,” says Pat.

  “I’ve got some stickers,” says Dr. Sammy. He pops out of his reclining chair and sprints out of the room.

  Spence squirms off my lap and onto Pat’s.

  Is he stalling? I wonder. The stickers a delaying tactic while he gets up nerve to say that while getting routine information about my fertility status, he found out that I’m riddled with cancer. It’s a brain tumor, I’m sure. I’m always sure it’s a brain tumor. Wait a minute, he didn’t go anywhere near my brain. It would have to be ovarian cancer. I see myself six months from now wearing a turban, looking thin and impossibly beautiful, being wheeled into Spence’s preschool graduation ceremony.