Love and Other Natural Disasters (17 page)

"So you're saying I can date?
I'd get my nights and weekends off?"

"I'll come right home from
work every day. And you don't need to do any cooking or cleaning or
anything."

"Gee, thanks."

"Come on," I wheedled.
"It'll be fun.
Liv's
absurdly cute. We can just
try it for a while, and if you don't like it, no harm done. I'll just get her
set up in day care."

"I need to think about
it."

"Since when?"

"Is this going to be one of
those times when you're completely sure you're right, and you won't give up
until you get what you want?" He was smiling, I know he was.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

What's your problem with this,
Jon?" I said, cradling the phone between my chin and ear. Olivia was
against the opposite shoulder. "We don't even have to pay him."

"That's not the point. He's
never taken care of a newborn."

"She's three months old."
I patted her back and she lei out an obliging burp. "Good girl," I
told her.

"That's still pretty newly
born." I could hear him take a deep breath. "I thought we were going
to look at day cares together."

"No. I was going to look at
them first, and then when I'd narrowed it down, I'd tell you to go look at
them."

"Are you planning to just cut
me out of major decisions from here on out? I mean, I only made it into the
delivery room by the barest of margins—"

"Hey," I said. "You
can't do that. You can't just use that against me forever."

There was a tense pause on the
line; then he said, "Sorry. You're right. That's a separate issue."

"Well, what's the issue here?
Charlie's going to do a great job with Olivia. He's reading baby-development
books, he's taking this really seriously. Frankly, I
think this is going to be good for him. And the fact that he won't let me pay
him is a godsend. I mean, we could really use that money for your
apartment."

The conversation skidded to a halt.
We'd avoided mentioning the apartment outright for the past few weeks. "I
know we could use the money," Jon said. He sounded tired. "I just
wish we'd had a conversation about this sooner. I mean, he's moving in
tomorrow."

"He's not moving in, exactly.
It's a trial arrangement. If it doesn't work out, he leaves and she goes into
day care. I didn't think there was really a downside. You saw how he was with
Jacob on the last visit. He's really taken to this child-rearing thing."

"I just feel a million miles
away."

"Well, when are you moving
back to the city? Did you find an apartment yet?" I asked, choosing to
take him literally.

"That's not the kind of
distance I was—" He stopped himself. "The funny thing is, I've been
dragging my feet because I wanted you to come see the places with me, as if
you're going to spend any time there. The whole point is for you not to spend
time there."

"I'm sure Tamara or Clayton
could give you a second opinion."

"I'm sure they could. Look,
it's fine about Charlie. But in the future, if you're going to make any big
plans for the kids, could you discuss it with me first?"

"Yes. I'm sorry I didn't tell
you sooner."

"Okay. Good night."

"Good night."

In the ensuing moment of silence, I
realized we were both waiting for the other to hang up first. It held a strange
intimacy; then I heard the click.

"So this is how you treat
guests," Charlie said, staring down at a crying, squirming, naked Olivia
on the changing table.

"You're not a guest, you're
family," I said. I proffered the box of baby wipes. "Now clean your
hands with one of these."

"You mean you're not going to
demo it first? You just want me to dive into the deep end of the pool like
that?"

"It's not that bad.
Really." I shook the box, and he tentatively reached for one. "Now
you just need to grab her by the ankles and lift her up."

"Are you serious?"

"If you don't lift her up, how
are you going to clean her off?" I gave him an encouraging smile.
"Come on. Think how strong you'll feel, lifting her up with just one
mighty hand."

"Should I use my left hand or
my right?"

I considered. "Since you're
left-handed, use your right."

He did as told.

"Now, with your left hand,
fold the used diaper underneath her so we don't have to look at the crap
anymore."

"Hallelujah," he said as
he followed my instructions.

"Next, take another baby wipe
and wipe her from front to back. Always from front to back. Don't be shy,
there's plenty. We want to get her really clean down there."

He eyed me. "What am I, a
frigging au pair?"

"Uncle," I said with a
laugh. "We call it being an uncle." I handed him a fresh diaper.
Olivia was still dangling by her ankles, but she'd stopped crying and was
instead looking up at Charlie with curiosity. "Swap out that dirty one for
this, lay her back down, and fasten the tabs."

I watched the careful way he put on
the new diaper, and how gently he set Olivia back down on the changing table.
"Hello," he said in a soft—though still adult—voice. (
Babyese
was outlawed in my house.) "Look at you, all
clean there."

I wanted to tell him I loved who he
was becoming when he was around Jacob on the last visit, and now Olivia, but I
thought it might sound condescending. Instead, I said, "Now just put the
old diaper in this plastic bag, and then it goes in the trash. And she's all
set."

"You're all set," he told
Olivia, still just above a whisper. He smiled at her, and she smiled back.
"She's smiling!" he announced to me.

Olivia wasn't quick to smile, and
especially not with new people. Maybe that was why when she did, it felt so
wondrous. Olivia's smiles were a sun shower. You felt you'd never seen anything
so perfect; surely, never felt anything so perfect.

"It's one of the best parts of
being her mom," I said. "And her uncle."

Charlie and I were still mirroring
her smile when her face shifted into a familiar configuration. I laughed. She
had timing, my kid. "Looks like you're going to get a chance to practice
this again soon. See that face? That's her crapping face. You'll get used to it."

I'd thought I was ready to go back
to work, but when I saw Charlie standing in the doorway with Olivia, his hand
lifting hers in a wave, my eyes welled up. She'd survive without me, I knew
that. Charlie would take great care of her. But no one could love her the
precise way that I could, the way that I did.

With Jacob, I'd stayed home the
whole first year. He'd gotten both of his parents, in one house, loving each
other. But what about Liv?

On the drive to work, I thought
about going to Melinda and asking her to extend my leave. She was a little
younger than me, a type A workaholic who didn't have kids, didn't want any, but
I suspected whether she understood it or not, she'd do it. If she resisted,
Dyan would convince her for me.

I wasn't sure if that really was
the best thing for mo or for Liv, but knowing it was possible soothed me. My
eyes were dry as I pushed open the Student Services door and saw a welcome back
banner taped to the wall behind Chad's desk. Dyan, Melinda, and Chad were in a
conversation that stopped abruptly as they noticed me. "Surprise!"
they shouted, with even more vigor for having been a few beats late.

"Thanks, guys," I said,
going to hug each of them in turn. They were so sweetly, entirely predictable.
I knew

they'd do something to celebrate my
return. I'd call Charlie to check on Olivia just as soon as I got in my office,
but for now, I was glad to be there in the company of adults.

"How great does she
look?" Dyan asked the group. "Three months after giving birth!"
While Chad and Melinda had no choice but to nod in agreement, Dyan really
believed there was nothing wrong with some "extra junk in the trunk,"
as she put it; after all, she carried her own. She liked to cite studies about
the difference in body image between African-American teenagers and white
teenagers—the former being much more comfortable with their bodies no matter
what the size—not to mention the statistics on how much more prevalent eating
disorders were in the white population. At fifty, married since she was twenty,
Dyan was fully comfortable in her skin.

There was a brief discussion about
whether there should be singing. Dyan was for it, Melinda was preoccupied with
what song would fit the occasion, Chad was willing to go along with whatever
decision was made, and finally I took a stand against singing and for immediate
eating. It was nine in the morning, and chocolate cake couldn't have sounded
better.

I wasn't going to lose the
pregnancy weight anytime soon with the way I was going: late-night ice-cream
binges that I persisted in calling snacks and round-the-clock snacks that I was
calling bites. The funny thing about my doublespeak was that it was occurring
exclusively in my own head—no one was asking me to justify my eating. Charlie
had always had a sweet tooth and a high metabolism and he wasn't keeping an eye
on my waistline. Last night, while watching a movie, we each ate through an
entire bowl of peanut butter drizzled with hot fudge sauce, and it was just
like the childhood I was denying Jacob.

But Dyan was right about white
girls and their weight, or at least this white girl and her weight. Most of my
life, I'd been thin and self-critical. My eyes had always gone right to my
flaws. When I wore a tank top, I noticed the loose flesh just outside my armpit
that pushed against my bra straps, the slight saddle bagging of my thighs, or
the fact that my belly wasn't an entirely flat plane. I spent much of my life
hiding behind oversized clothes. I remember when Jon first took off my shirt, I
averted my eyes and he said, softly and with evident pleasure, "So that's
what's under there." Gradually, as the years passed and I saw myself more
through Jon's eyes, my clothes started to fit.

After I had Jacob, I went from my
lifelong size 6 to between an 8 and I0. My mother sent me magazine clippings
with various cockamamie diets. Jonathon hated those clippings. He thought I
should just accept the weight gain as a sign of what my body could do:
"You pushed out a person! What are a few pounds compared to that?" I
figured I'd just try a few more diets, and if they failed, then I'd work on
acceptance. It was while I was on the cabbage diet—cabbage soup for breakfast,
lunch, and dinner—that I snapped. I was having mood swings, and one night, I
woke up at three am practically
in tears. I'd
purged the house of all junk food a week before, and now all I wanted was
Twinkies. No, I wanted Twinkies, Ho
Hos
, ice cream,
maple syrup, doughnuts, and a big bowl of Apple Jacks. At first, Jon thought I
was being hyperbolic, but I truly wanted all of those things, as passionately
as I imagine some women want babies.

Jon didn't want me leaving the
house in that state of delirium, so I wrote out a list and he trudged out into
the night. When he came back, we laid everything out on the table. He had a doughnut,
and I had everything else. I remember that as I binged, Jon just sat there and
smiled at me. There I was, sometimes doing a two-fisted stuffing into my mouth,
powdered sugar on my chin and on my nightgown, and he was smiling at me. He
told me later that I seemed so joyful—there was such relief and pleasure in my
every gesture—that I struck him as tremendously beautiful. He said there wasn't
a trace of selfconsciousness about me, and it was something I wouldn't have
shown anyone else in the world.

Between that ice pick of a memory
and being away from Olivia, I knew this was going to be one long day.

After the party ended, I kept my
door closed, not sure I was fit for human interaction. At two-thirty, Dyan
knocked and pushed it open, a wide smile on her face. "Can I sit with you
awhile?" she asked.

"Sure," I said.

She sat across from me in the ugly
gray armchair that looked like it was upholstered with cast-off felt from a
children's art class. "You've been cooped up in here all day. What's that
about?"

Only Dyan could jump in like that
and seem inviting rather than meddling. The kids loved her. They used up boxes
of Kleenex every week talking to her. I didn't have any Kleenex on my desk, so
I considered my answer carefully. "Just catching up on all the work I
missed."

"With your door closed?"

"I wanted to stay
focused."

At that, she actually snorted.
"Eve, let's be straight with each other. If you don't want to talk about
it, tell me that. But don't sit here spinning silliness."

I looked up at her with a rueful
smile. "I don't know if I want to talk about it. I feel like I've already
tried that. A lot."

"Well, you haven't tried
talking to me. I'm a trained professional. Really, I've got the moves and
everything." She shifted her position in the chair so that she was leaning
forward just slightly, her eyes limpid and subtly inquiring.