“They must’ve been in a fight,” Bob says. In the glow of the brake lights ahead of us, I can see Bob’s tongue sucking food particles out of his teeth. I look away when he nibbles at something he worked loose.
“Yeah, but to have it in front of people they barely know? I wanted to die. So did everyone else. You know that was a red light, right,” I say.
“It was yellow when I went through it. You want to drive?”
“I’m just saying.”
“Did you hear him when he said, ‘Oh God, not this again,’ with that sneer when she said she had a great story about the principal at their last school?” Bob says.
“He’s a jerk,” I say. “I can’t stand either one of them. She’s racist, by the way. I don’t know if you caught that, but she might as well’ve had a white sheet over her head.”
“We’re done with them, right?” Bob asks. He’s at a green light but he’s sitting there as if it’s red.
“You can go, it’s green. Yeah, we’re done with them. Boy oh boy, they bicker bicker bicker. Let’s call them the Bickersons.”
We both laugh and maybe it’s because we both realize it’s been a long time since we laughed together that Bob reaches across for my hand and gives it a squeeze before placing it back at the two-o’clock position on the wheel. Ten and two … he rarely drives with one hand.
I’d thought Dave and Susan Strong would be different. Secretly I’m kind of sick of our group of couple-friends. Except for Lynn and Mike, of course. I feel bad saying this especially because I used to be just like this, but to most, if not all, of the people I know, raising children is the greatest gift in the whole wide world. Leanne. Kerry Kendricks. Sally. If you ask how someone’s doing they’ll answer with something their kid’s just said or done. Nothing about themselves. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of myself and realize I’m just like them. I hate that. Hate. I’m sick of my brain going to mush, of lying in bed wondering what I’ll make for their school lunches the next day. Or whether I need to pick up another case of juice boxes at Costco. I’m sick of car pool. I’m sick of being the devoted mom. I’m tired of shuffling the kids to piano, guitar (Andrew just started weekly lessons), soccer, tutoring. The homework they bring home takes an ungodly amount of time and effort. Now that the time has changed we leave in the dark and we get home in the dark. I’ve tried making good square homemade meals but lately I’ve been throwing in frozen chicken nuggets and heating up canned peas. The kids seem fine with it (Chicken nuggets! Wow! Thanks! only makes me feel guilty for feeding them crap). But there’s not enough time. This is what we all talk about. Everyone I know. This is it. This is what our lives are.
We talk about those women who leave their kids in day care or with nannies while they work full-time. Why have kids? someone will say. And we all nod like it’s so true, it’s so selfish of them.
They’ll regret going back to work when their kids grow up to be delinquents.
Having coffee and pie at a tacky café with sticky plastic tablecloths, someone will mention Dale Harmon who was left alone a lot and ended up accidentally shooting himself with his father’s gun. Someone always mentions Dale Harmon. No one ever let their kids play over at the Harmons’ house because everyone knew Evers, Dale’s father, had guns. So there you go: if his parents hadn’t been working all the time Dale would still be alive. That was the prevailing thought. But I’m not quite sure Dale’s mother, Tally Harmon, was working at the time. I think she might have gone back to work after Dale died. To get out of the house. The Harmons’ house stayed on the market for ten months before they had a buyer from out of town who wasn’t familiar with the family. No one in town wanted to move into a house a child died in. But the thinking was, If Tally had been a good mother she would’ve been there. Once she went back to work no one really saw her anymore. I was convinced that secretly she was relieved to have an excuse to go back to work.
I used to be a pharmaceutical rep. Right out of college I got a job with a company that’d just introduced an antidepressant TIME Magazine called “The Pill That Changed Our Minds.” I was part of a massive hiring and nearly every one of my clients placed huge orders. I was voted sales rep of the month for a straight six months. I didn’t particularly like my job but I loved the money, and my dad would exaggerate to all his friends that I was in line to take over the company. I remember limping home in high heels to Bob and our shitty three-room apartment uptown, off Wilson. I’d soak my feet in Epsom salts at night, talking to Bob from the edge of the tub about how the paycheck was worth it. I ended up hating all the walking and talking and schmoozing and handing out samples or free ballpoint pens with drug names on them. Most of the doctors hit on me and it grossed me out but I couldn’t do anything about it. They were good clients. I ended up quitting just after Bob and I got engaged. It was a pain-in-the-ass kind of job, I thought. Until about a year later, I really didn’t miss it at all.
It was the late ‘80s and every place we went it felt like I was looked down on because I didn’t work and didn’t have kids. We’d go out for beer with Bob’s friends from work and they’d all ask what I did for a living. I’d say something stupid like, “oh, volunteer work and stuff,” but it was a lie. I didn’t volunteer. I sat around our suffocating apartment doing nothing in particular, wondering why I quit selling antidepressants. Wondering if I needed antidepressants. I was relieved to start house hunting. It gave us spark. Purpose. It was fun imagining what our lives would be in this or that house. Then we moved and I threw myself into unpacking. Feathering the nest. I felt—we both felt—grown-up. We’d lie in bed with our new roof over our heads, listening to the unfamiliar sounds of an unfamiliar house. We had so much to talk about back then. We chattered on and on about light fixtures and hardware-store runs and door handles and leaky faucets and catch basins and finished basements and crown molding. I knew where to find the nails at Home Depot (aisle five) and Manuel in the paint department (halfway down aisle seven, to the right) asked how the green was working out in the bedroom. Bob and I came to know which steps were the squeaky ones and we’d politely avoid them if one of us was sleeping.
I started wanting kids because I was bored. I was twenty-eight when we went to our first fertility clinic. The doctor sent us away with a laugh, saying we were young and still had plenty of time to try the natural way.
“You look like it’s a death sentence, Pam,” he said. “You’re newlyweds, for goodness’ sake! That’s all you’re doing anyway, right?”
He took a sip of his coffee and got up to show us the door. I never corrected him on my name.
Then it was 1991. Month after month I held my breath as my period approached. If I missed a day I’d pull another stick out of my economy pack of pregnancy tests. I’d gone through over a dozen by the time we were in front of another doctor asking about shots to stimulate egg follicles. In early 1992, we were talking in vitro. By then it had become a full-time job. Bob was exhausted from the emotional and physical roller coaster but I was focused and determined and a little crazed. Bottoming out every time I saw those telltale stains on my panties. Bob called this time “the door in the floor.” It got worse when people asked when we were going to start a family. No one knows the pain of that question when you’ve just had the ultrasound that shows your third in vitro has failed. By then Bob had checked out. Our fights got louder and meaner and always ended with him storming out and me crying like we were in a country-music video. He started staying away longer and longer and when he rolled back in he’d reek of cigarettes and beer. A double whammy since the doctors all said smoking and drinking decreases sperm count and motility. I’ve always suspected he was trying to sabotage the whole thing even though in the beginning he seemed happy about the idea of us being parents. Back when he’d whisper, I’m gonna make you pregnant right now, in the middle of sex and it would turn us both on. That lasted about two months.
In mid-1992 I gripped the arms on the chair next to Bob’s across from our third fertility doctor who cleared his throat, looked up from my chart and said, “You might want to start considering adoption.”