The Seven Year Bitch Page 12

  “Oh, I had a locker. Are you kidding me? I had three lockers, the big kind, at three different gyms, and a storage space, and then that little guesthouse I rented on North Bronson and then the office in New York and the factory in LA and it wasn’t enough. What do you have in it?”

  “Nothing yet!” I said. One thing I wasn’t going to put in it was diapers, I thought. No plastic farm animals or sippy cups or wipes. I was happy to have those things in my bed and my handbags and my coat pockets but not in my locker. “I’m just going to enjoy it empty for a little while. Just luxuriate in having the space.”

  “Believe me, once you put your track shoes in there and a mini deodorant you’ll see it doesn’t solve anything.”

  But it would. That padlock protected a whole other world. Even the combination was auspicious—19-21-23—which happened to be when I was at my most beautiful.

  “I better go,” I said. “People are staring at me.”

  “Where are you?”

  “The locker room,” I said.

  When I got home I read to Duncan and put him to bed.

  “Daddy will be home tomorrow,” I told him.

  Things were so much easier without Russell there to fight with. I didn’t have to argue with him about who would do what, who would put him to bed, who would go to him in the night, I’d just do it all happily without thinking too much about it. I brought Duncan warm milk in a sippy cup, and I read him a book called 365 Penguins, about a family whose uncle, in an effort to save the penguins, sends the family one penguin a day for 365 days. Duncan was asleep by the second penguin, but I finished reading the whole book, fascinated by the idea of these penguins arriving and wreaking their havoc. Those penguins represented the problems in marriage, I realized. Every day a problem arrived at the door, a stinking, slippery, black-and-white fish-eating bird. I really loved that book. How long had it been, I thought to myself, since I’d taken the time to just sit down and read a great book? Even if it was just a picture book for kids.

  Our neighbor’s daughter came over so I could walk Humbert, and we walked along Hudson Street, past Chanterelle, where Russell and I had our wedding reception. It was beautiful out and Humbert was so happy peeing on everything I kept going all the way to Broad Street and my old office building. I had gone to that building every day and now I would never go into it again. How had I left Duncan’s huge open-mouthed kisses each morning and walked right through the open doors of what now seemed like the most unimportant place in the world? What the hell had I been thinking?

  I’d done well and it had gotten me nowhere. My first job was covering the package/container industry, which basically meant I studied cardboard boxes, and which made finding an empty one on my desk waiting for me that much more ironic.

  Later, after Humbert and I had walked happily back to Hubert Street and I was enjoying lying alone in bed, Russell called from Jamaica. “How was your day?”

  “Bad,” I said.

  “Anything happen?”

  I smiled, imagining putting my sneakers in my new locker, how they’d just fit, happy as rats. No, not rats, I thought, rats held captive in a locker would eat each other. “It’s just really hard doing everything myself while you’re having a great time in Jamaica.”

  “Well, you have to get used to that if we’re going to get a divorce.”

  Actually since he was away everything was so calm and easy. When Duncan had called out in his sleep a few moments before, instead of giving Russell dirty looks and wondering which of us should be the one to go to him, I had simply rushed into his room without giving it a thought and comforted him.

  “How was it putting Duncan to bed and walking Humbert?”

  “It was hard, but I managed.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Not all of us can have a vacation in Jamaica.”

  “I’m in Kingston, for Christ’s sake, the worst place on earth. You make it sound like I’m lying on the beach at a Sandals or something.”

  “Jamaica is Jamaica,” I said.

  “Did Duncan ask for me?”

  “No,” I said.

  “How’s the water cooler?” he asked, trying to change the subject to something happy.

  “It’s fine.”

  “Did you have any water?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “You should have some,” he said.

  When we got off the phone I had the same thought I always had when he went away. I had no idea what his flight number was or what airport he’d be flying in to. If I saw on the news that a New York–bound plane from Jamaica had crashed, I wouldn’t know if it was his or not. I would have to wait to hear from him. Or not.

  I turned off the light and looked at the shadows the window guards cast around the room. Black bars slid along the ceiling and all four walls, like a cage. The morning we’d had the bars put up, I’d felt proud. “Put them all the way up,” I’d told the man. We had enormous windows that opened like doors and I wanted the baby to be completely safe. The man soldered metal to metal, and the dangerous burning construction smell filled the rooms. We’d bought the loft before Duncan, and now, somehow, as if by Grimm’s magic, it had rumbled and swelled to hold a child. I felt like the apartment was smiling and the window guards were braces in its gaping happy mouth. The day the window guards went up, I thought they were the most beautiful things I had ever seen. Then night fell, and the shadows were cast, and Russell and I had stood looking at each other in the center of what was now a cage, wondering what we had gone and done.

  15

  In the morning the doorman buzzed up that I had a messenger. “It’s probably for Russell,” I said. “Just hold it at the desk.”

  “No, Izzy, it’s for you,” Terry said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  I waited at the door in my nightgown after making sure my breasts weren’t hanging out as usual. When I was nursing I was constantly accepting deliveries topless without realizing it. Every neighborhood delivery man had seen me at least once.

  A UPS man wheeled a carton toward me.

  “You gonna be here for a few minutes? ’Cause I’ve gotta get the rest of the boxes out of the truck.”

  He hoisted the box into the entryway of my apartment. I examined the label: Claire Contest Co. Box 1 of 12. Twelve boxes would block the entryway! Russell already had so many stacked in front of the bookshelves there was no room for even one more box. I slit the packing tape with a kitchen knife and found the box to be filled with nothing but essays, thousands of pages of tiny essays, each taking up only a small portion of each page. When I’d called the name my mother’s shrink had given me, they’d told me I would make a quarter for every essay I read, and it had sounded like nothing. I’d agreed to do it and signed something they’d faxed to me agreeing to be impartial and providing my Social Security number but I’d had no idea it would amount to anything.

  Floating on top of the essays was an instruction sheet.

  Informilk Baby Formula: In 100 Words or Less Give Us Your Best Job Description for Being a Mom.

  Grand Prize: $25,000.

  First Prize: $500 and a case of Informilk.

  (10) Second Prizes: $250 (awarded as a check) and a case of Informilk.

  (50) Third Prizes: one case of Informilk.

  Coupon offers: A one-dollar ($1.00) downloadable coupon redeemable toward the purchase of any Ree Corporation product will be awarded to the first 50,000 completed entries received.

  JUDGING: All entries will be preliminarily judged by Claire Contests, Inc., an independent judging organization whose decisions are final, to determine the top seventy (70) entries. The seventy (70) entries will then be judged by a panel of experts from Ling Products Division of Lee Corporation, under Claire Contest, Inc.’s supervision, to determine the winners. All judging will be based on the following criteria: (1) originality & creativity of essay—50%; (2) appropriateness of essay to theme—35%; (3) sincerity of essay—15%. In the event of a tie, the tied entries
will be rejudged based on the criteria listed above.

  I scanned the rest of the rules and lifted the first essay out of the box.

  Jeanne Mae Johnson

  Mechanicsburg, PA

  I wake up at five and heat a bottle of Informilk Plus

  Iron and feed and change the little one. I get the big one dressed and get him to the bus for school. I feed the dog. Then I do the dishes and strip/make beds, do grocery shopping, put away groceries and laundry, iron my husband’s shirts. I dust and vacume and empty the dishwasher. I sort and put away toys, wash kitchen and bathroom floors, and Windex bathroom mirrors. I start dinner, meet the big one at the bus, give him a snack. Then I scrub the toilet.

  There, I thought, twenty-five whole cents earned. That was twenty-five cents more than I’d had three seconds ago. I paid Shasthi twelve dollars an hour, which was forty-eight quarters. I just had to read forty-eight of these essays to cover a whole hour of her pay and eight times that to cover a whole day. My mother’s shrink was right once again. While I stared down at the essay, the UPS man carried in eleven more boxes. When Russell returned from Jamaica he would think I was moving out.

  This was great! At work we’d always joked about how nice it would be to have a job that was shoes optional and now I had one.

  I lifted the second essay out of the first box.

  Darla Jackson

  Marietta, GA

  Master chef,

  One woman cleaning staff and ATM

  Machine

  Since originality and creativity accounted for fifty percent of the score, I started a “maybe” pile because I had to hand it to her for the acrostic form. Unfortunately, of the next seventy essays I read, at least two dozen of them used the equally creative and original acrostic form.

  Sue Gustavo

  Elizabeth, NJ

  As a mother of three boys, my job is to teach them about birth control and work hard to keep the bathrooms clean.

  Paula Lawe

  Buchannan, NY

  Help Wanted: Full-time mom. Must cook three meals a day, do laundry, dishes, grocery shopping, vacuuming, make beds, and scrub stinky toilets. Must have experience as a chauffeur, psychologist, CEO, accountant, stylist, hairdresser, doctor, soccer coach, milking cow and slave.

  Hours: 24/7.

  Vacation days, sick days, personal days: none. Salary: hah hah you thought there was a salary?

  I used that to start a “yes” pile because she was trying to be funny, and so many of them had been so bad I didn’t know if in all these boxes another one might be this good. I was supposed to give the company my top choices, ranked one through seventy.

  Mary Pestorini

  Amelia Island, FL

  My best job description as a mom is to be in a good marriage with my husband. Go to the gym every day to keep myself skinny and attractive, and make time for dates for dinner/dancing/movies and alone time in the bedroom. Also take regular resort vacations without the kids so I can remember why I wanted to be a mother in the first place.

  This person sounded completely out of her mind.

  Karen Ravenhurst

  Rhonert Park, CA

  I don’t need 100 words to write my job description as a mom. I’m breast-feeding my beautiful daughter Calen, so I just need one word: COW.

  I loved this one, but the contest was for a formula company.

  Erin Henry

  Portland, ME

  I hate going to the playground, but I do it every day and I always put a big smile on my face when my daughter looks over at me. I want her to have high selfesteem and know that she is loved.

  “No” pile.

  Julie Longstreet

  Topeka, KS

  Job available! Get covered in every bodily fluid imaginable, never wear a shirt that doesn’t have spit-up on it, have your body permanently ruined by a c-section, never get a single night’s sleep, watch your husband cheat on you. Your Reward: a teenager!

  Yes.

  Colleen Coburn

  Middle Village, NY

  Breastfeed the baby, cry, breastfeed the baby, cry,

  breastfeed the baby, cry, breastfeed the baby, cry,

  breastfeed the baby, cry, breastfeed the baby, cry,

  breastfeed the baby, cry, breastfeed the baby, cry,

  breastfeed the baby, laugh, pump.

  I loved this one too, and I thought in a way it could be used as an advertisement for giving formula, but I put it with the noes.

  Barbara Knee

  Flint, MI

  One hundred words is not enough to describe what I do as a mother of a child with autism. Imagine cooking and cleaning and working and holding my child when he has his fits and getting nothing but dirty looks from the whole world.

  I put this one in “maybe” in case there weren’t any more like it. But in the next hundred I read, there were at least fifty like it. Autism, cancer, leukemia, GERD, allergies, Down’s, wheelchairs and nebulizers and hospitals. And all these mothers—cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. I had never once associated scrubbing the toilet with having a son. I couldn’t stop reading them. All these women who thought of themselves as a “mom” and knew what that meant. I studied each name and hometown for clues, the way I had stared at the missing posters after 9/11.

  Mia Lamm

  State College, PA

  Go to the hospital every day and hold his hand while he has chemo, play his favorite card games with him, bring his favorite foods when he can eat, enjoy every second that I have with him because I have never met anyone braver, wiser, or more beautiful. Job description? I don’t need 100 words, I just need one: gratitude.

  I put this in the “maybe” pile even though I preferred the one whose one word was cow. I forced myself to get up and walk around the apartment.

  “The boxes are filled with essays,” I told Shasthi. “I’m judging a contest.” She had come in a little while before and was kneeling, bent over the tub, her knees resting on a folded towel, and swabbing the baby with a washcloth. He loved the bath and he looked up at me with his hair all slicked back. I felt terrible that I wasn’t the one giving him the bath, but I was also relieved. It was hard bending over like that and slightly terrifying.

  Of course I would never step away from the tub while he was in it, but what if some unknown psychosis overtook me and I did? For just a moment. And returned to find him drowned.

  “You are going to read all that?” she said.

  Russell came home from Jamaica a hero because he brought Duncan a rubber ducky with dreadlocks painted on it to look like a Rastafarian and a clam shell with a marijuana leaf painted on it. He didn’t kiss me hello.

  “Don’t forget we have Corinne today,” I said.

  “Shit,” Russell said.

  I waited for Russell outside Corinne’s office for twenty minutes and then, thinking that he might already be up there and that he had not even had the courtesy to wait for me, I buzzed and walked up the stairs. I took off my shoes and sat on my end of the couch. Russell’s side was empty.

  “Do you want to get started without him?” Corinne asked.

  “Are we allowed to do that?”

  “We can fill him in when he gets here.”

  She was wearing a hunter-green sweatshirt, her cat curled on her lap, and her neatly made bed in the sleeping loft behind her.

  “I’m the judge of an essay contest for Informilk baby formula,” I said. “I’m reading essays from women all over the country about what it means to be a mom.”

  “Last week you were thinking about what it means to be a man. Now it’s what it means to be a mom. It seems you’re dealing with a lot of labels.”

  What did it mean to be a shrink? I wondered. It certainly didn’t mean getting dressed and leaving your apartment.

  “And what does it mean to be a mom?” she asked.

  “Most of the essays are about scrubbing the toilet,” I said.

  “Is that what it means to you?”

  I started to cry. “It means not rui
ning your son’s life by getting a divorce.”

  “And is that what you would be doing?” she asked, handing me a box of tissues that I hoped she hadn’t found on the street. “Ruining Daniel’s life?”

  “Duncan,” I said.

  “Sorry, Duncan,” she said.

  “I just can’t stand it anymore,” I said. “He’s so defensive. If I say, ‘Pass the salt,’ he says, ʽI, I, I, I, I, I didn’t take the salt, I didn’t touch the salt. I, I, I don’t know anything about the salt.’ He was so ridiculous here last week. I couldn’t even understand what he was saying and then he started burping.”

  “He did seem quite flexible,” Corinne said.

  “Flexible?” I asked.

  “Yes, he seemed much more flexible than other men.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, feeling hopeful that Russell was flexible and might be able to change.

  “The way he was able to sit Indian-style with his knees flush against the couch.” She did an awkward, ugly imitation of him, and I suddenly thought I was going to throw up. She made it sound like I was married to some kind of circus sideshow freak, a grotesque contortionist, a rubber man, a rubber band.

  “Is there anything about Russell that you like?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” I wept into the tissues. This was terrible. My marriage was terrible. And I wasn’t sure how it had gotten this way.

  “When I was in my first year of business school, I did a bad thing,” I said, not sure why I was bringing this up now. “It was a public policy class, and I had to write about class-action lawsuits—there was a certain statute a whole section of my class had to write on. I was up late in the law library and I had the statute in my carrel on my desk, and I somehow packed it into my book bag with the rest of my books. I didn’t realize I had it until a couple of days later when the professor made a very angry announcement that it had been stolen from the library and whoever had it better bring it back. I was scared. I didn’t want to be seen as cheating or getting some kind of unfair advantage, so I tied it in a garbage bag and threw it into the back of a garbage truck. It’s the stupidest thing. I really don’t know why I did that.”