“Give me another one of those forms,” I said suddenly.
“You gonna go for it?” Adrian asked.
“Oh, my God, Aunt…. I mean, Mom. Are you really?” asked Siobhan.
“Happens all the time,” Adrian assured her. “Who first?”
“Age before beauty,” I said. Nobody argued.
It was cold and tickly, but not unpleasant, to have the area around my navel swabbed with Betadine solution. Siobhan and I lay side by side on orange vinyl recliners. I hoped her eyes were closed so she wouldn’t chicken out when her turn came. I felt brave and brazen and deliciously wild, and more than a little sexy, and I realized that a pierced navel could symbolize all sorts of new growth for me. This might well be the first truly spontaneous decision I’d ever made. I opened my eyes just a little and lifted my head to peer at the expanse of skin below my rolled-up sweatshirt. Forty was young when you looked as good as I did. There were probably lots of women who’d trade places with me in a second.
I shut my eyes fast when Adrian attached a clamp just above my navel. The pain wasn’t much, so I opened them again, just a little, thinking I shouldn’t miss any of this moment or any other. Life was just too damn short not to live every bit of it. I looked over at Siobhan to see how she was holding up.
Adrian leaned over me and I felt an amazing, burning pain, truly the mother of all burning pain, immediately accompanied by nausea, and looked down to see Adrian shoving what looked like a barbecue skewer into my stomach. I opened my eyes only once more during the removal of the piercer and the endless painful threading of the hoop. I saw that my belly button had become a little wading pool of blood.
Stop
, I wanted to say.
Oh, please stop. I’m really not very brave at all.
A half hour later, Siobhan leaned over me with a sterile cloth to put pressure on my navel. With her other hand, she angled a small mirror to get a front view of her own pierced and hooped belly button. I assumed Adrian was in the front room looking up clotting under blood in the medical book.
As we age
, I imagined it saying,
blood clots less readily.
By the time I was ready to leave, Siobhan had called her mother to let her know we’d be a little late. She’d also finished off half of her homework. “You are just the coolest aunt in the world,” she said as I lowered myself painfully into the passenger seat of my Civic and replaced my ice pack. “I can’t wait to tell everybody.”
I had just explained to June why I’d be needing a chair during circle time for the foreseeable future. I simply couldn’t face the searing pain of lowering myself to the floor and maintaining a seated position. “Don’t worry,” June said. “It’s just the first couple of days that are bad.”
“That’s encouraging,” I said, thinking June and I might finally have something in common. “How do you know? Is yours pierced, too?”
She placed her hand over her own stomach, which I had no doubt would rival the abdominal splendor of the poster Siobhan and I had seen at Pins and Needles. “Some of my friends have had it done. I’m way too chicken, though. I would, like, never have the nerve. Wow, Sarah, you are so amazing. I always think how I wish I were more like you.”
I looked at June, with her wide-set spacey eyes and her veil of long, silky hair. She looked like a doll that my sisters and I might have had as a child, one of the “good” dolls we were only allowed to take out on special occasions. “But what am I like?” I asked.
“Well, you’re so strong and you’re, like, such a good teacher and you know what you want and you’re, um, like not afraid to go after it.”
“Why, thanks, June,” I said. “You’re very kind.” Perhaps I had been underestimating June’s intelligence. I lifted the loose sweater I was wearing out of the way, and moved my ice pack around on my belly. I figured I’d keep it on for another minute or so before I put it away in the little classroom refrigerator and got ready for the kids to arrive.
“My, my, my,” said Bob Connor from the doorway. “What have we here?”
“Hi, Bobby,” June said, as Austin ran by us and over to the aquarium to feed the fish. “Sarah got her navel pierced. Isn’t that the coolest thing?”
“Having a bit of a midlife crisis, are we, Ms. Hurlihy? Would you like to go out some night and pursue it further?” Bob Connor’s shirt was the color of cranberries today. I tried to decide whether it would be worse to continue standing with my hand underneath my sweater or to casually remove the ice pack. His green eyes watched me. “After the swelling goes down, of course.”
I replayed June’s assessment of me in my mind. “You know, Mr. Connor,” I said firmly. “You’ll simply have to come up with a better offer than that.”
*
I boiled a saucepan full of water, found a box of Annie’s macaroni and cheese in the back of a cabinet. Sniffed the milk, then threw it out while my stomach lurched and I wrestled a strong impulse to gag. Checked unsuccessfully for butter. Poured the pasta shells into the boiling water anyway, which gave me six to eight minutes to problem-solve for ingredients.
An inspired cook, I figured it out with two minutes to spare. I waited out the final boiling time, then drained the pasta, scraped it back into the saucepan, sprinkled on the packet of cheese dust that came in the box. Dug a well in the center with the spoon, poured in half a glass of white wine and stirred briskly.
On the way to the living room, I took a big bite of my new creation. Wow, a keeper. And low-fat to boot. Maybe I’d send the recipe to Annie and she’d print it on the box. I’d call it Sarah’s Winey Macaroni and Cheese.
I propped my ice pack with a pillow on my lap so my hands were free to eat, and made myself as comfortable as my present condition allowed.
The Brady Bunch
was somewhere in the middle of a show. “Come on, Tiger. You’re the only one around here who cares about me,” Bobby Brady was saying to the family dog. “
You
still like me.” I put my feet up on the coffee table, had another bite of my dinner. Bobby Brady’s big blue eyes welled up with tears. “I’ll show ‘em,” he said. “I’m not going to stay where I’m not wanted. I’ll run away. That’s what I’m going to do. Run away.”
I considered this as a possible solution for my situation. I’d have to get a dog first. Michael would probably be thrilled to let me take Mother Teresa. I’d start a brand-new life somewhere where I didn’t know a soul. Maybe I’d go to Paris after all, find an American school to teach at until I learned the language. Maybe that waiter I’d imagined before would be there, still waiting for his big break.
Nah, at my age running away would be far less dramatic. And I’d never find another teaching job midyear, especially without references. Plus, my family would find me in a minute. Damn, I hated it when an episode didn’t speak directly to me. Bobby Brady was adorable though. Kids. That’s another reason I couldn’t run away, the kids at school were just too cute. But, then again, sometimes the cutest kids had the most horrendous parents. When Patrice Greene picked up Molly today, she eyed the hula skirts, which the other parents were certainly oohing and aahing over. Then she turned to me and said, “Really, Ms. Hurlihy, it’s almost Christmas. It would provide far more consistency for the children if you linked your units thematically with the seasons.” I mean, why even tell her that the kids were assaulted by the holidays everywhere they turned, and that I’d long ago toned down our classroom celebrating to compensate. Why bother to try to impress upon someone like Patrice Greene that even when I was hopelessly inadequate everywhere else in my life, I loved my job and really, truly knew what I was doing in my classroom. At least most of the time.
*
I heard the knock at my door while I was brushing my teeth. Carol. Probably stopping by to make sure I had enough ice. When I’d talked to her earlier, she’d thanked me again and said Siobhan was like a new person, laughing and joking. Why, she’d even set the table without being asked.
I was still brushing when I opened the door to Ray Santia. “Hi,” he said while I wiped toothpaste from the corners of my mouth with the back of my hand. “Sorry to just show up like this. But I left you about ten messages first.”
“That’s okay,” I lied. I was wearing the thick kind of gray sweatpants that nobody had worn for years. And Winnie the Pooh slippers that one of the kids had given me for Christmas last year. Most of my face was covered in a slippery moisturizer with retinol and, as if in tribute to a lingering adolescence, I had a dot of Clearasil on my right cheek and another one on my forehead. I shut my eyes to make Ray disappear.
“Can I come in?”
“Okay.”
“Then you’ll have to open the door a little wider.”
I turned quickly, which sent a rush of pain through my abdomen, kind of pushed the door open with my heel, and made a beeline for the bathroom. “Be right back,” I yelled. I grabbed a wet washcloth and scrubbed while I kicked off the slippers. Brushed on mascara with one hand while I used the other to dry my face with a damp towel. “Make yourself at home,” I shouted in the hallway between the bathroom and my bedroom. I locked the bedroom door behind me in case Ray took that literally. Stepped into a pair of loose pants that had landed on the floor earlier in the week, pulled them up carefully over my navel, and grabbed a T-shirt I hoped was a step up from the one I slept in but wouldn’t look like I was trying too hard.
Ray was leaning against my kitchen counter. “You didn’t have to change for me.”
“I didn’t.” It was true. I’d changed for me. So that I wouldn’t have to think about how bad he thought I looked.
“Okay. Well, whatever, you look good. Now where were we before you disappeared on me the other night?” Ray smiled. In the harsh light of my kitchen it seemed an arrogant smile, not all that far from a sneer. I noticed he’d taken off his boots, which seemed fairly presumptuous given that we barely knew each other. His hair looked funny, too, maybe a bad case of hat hair he’d tried to fluff up on the way to my door.
“I think we should go sit down in the living room,” I said.
“Your wish is my command.” Kevin used to say that when we were married. I’d found it an irritating phrase. I mean, it’s not like he ever meant it.
Ray sat next to me on the couch, draped his arm across the top of it, inches above my shoulders. If I leaned my head back, we would touch. I stayed where I was. “So, where’s your puppy?” he asked. “Asleep?”
“Well, actually,” I began. He lowered his hand to my shoulder and I jumped, just a little, but enough to feel a jolt of pain from my navel. “Ouch,” I said, my eyes filling with tears.
“Are you okay?” Ray slid over on the coach, as if he might catch something.
“Just a little minor surgery,” I said.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Ray looked at me for more information. “Do you want me to leave?”
“Actually, Ray, there are a couple of things I need to tell you. I don’t have a dog. You know June, the teacher you talked to on the phone? It’s her dog. And, by the way, she liked you a lot, and you know, if you want to call her or anything, it’s fine with me.”
Ray considered this for a minute. “What’s she like?”
“She’s a babe,” I said.
I heard the slamming of drawers in the kitchen, followed by the unmistakable sound of Carol’s voice. “Jesus, Sarah, you’re a total slob. I can’t find anything here.”
*
“Sorry to scare him away. I never would have walked in like that if I knew you had a live one here. I didn’t see an extra car in your driveway. Guess I didn’t factor in a street parker.”
“That’s okay. We’d already decided we weren’t right for each other.”
“Why, is he married?”
“No.”
“Well, then, I don’t know what your problem is.” Carol had taken over Ray’s place on my couch. Her feet were on my coffee table next to a bottle of Merlot she’d brought. I leaned over the bottle with a corkscrew, careful not to disrupt my ice pack, while Carol stirred a bowl of macaroni and cheese. “It’s kind of runny. What’d you do to it?”
“Just try it.”
“Mmm, this is good.” While Carol ate, I poured the Merlot into two glasses. I wondered if I should warn her that she was about to mix red and white wine. Decided I didn’t want to hear her lecture about how I lived like a transient and, if nothing else, I should at least consider making a commitment to groceries. “So, what went wrong?” she asked.
It took me a minute to realize she meant Ray and not the pasta. I sipped my wine, wondered. “I don’t know. We went out the other night and one minute I was enjoying myself and the next minute he was looking for condoms and I was thinking,
I don’t know anything about this guy.”
“You mean like who he’s been with?”
“No. I mean, sure. I bet you always think about that. But it was more like I didn’t even know his middle name or his favorite color.”
“Sarah, Sarah, Sarah.”
“I know, that sounded silly even to me.”
Carol put the empty bowl down and I handed her a glass of wine. She slid over to the far end of the couch, tucked a pillow behind her back, shifted around so she could put her feet on the middle cushion. Her socks smelled like wet wool. “Dennis and I couldn’t find a condom once.” She paused, smiled.
I waited, not particularly wanting to hear Carol’s condom story but knowing there would be no stopping it.
“Wanna know what we used?”
“No, thank you.”
“Saran Wrap.”
I spit my wine back into my glass. “God, Carol. Thank you so much for that vivid image.” I disliked Dennis enough without having to think about his plastic-wrapped penis. I decided to move the story along, just to get it over with. “So, how’d it work?”
“Not very well. Siobhan was born nine months and five days later.”
I tried the wine again. “You think Saran Wrap has improved over the years? Better grip, fewer leaks?”
“Yeah, it comes in colors now, too. I imagine the rose would be the most flattering.”
“You ever try it, just for old times’ sake?”
“Nah, Dennis wouldn’t think it was funny. He can be such an asshole.”
I let that sink in. Carol actually knew that Dennis was an asshole. I thought carefully about how to phrase my next question. “So you actually know that Dennis can be an asshole? I mean, not that he is all the time or anything.”