How to Party with an Infant Read online

  I was in so much pain. I almost told her to stop, but it was too late because then I’d look like I had mange.

  “Should I keep a strip, make a triangle, or take it all off?” she asked.

  “Take it all,” I whimpered, not because I’m stoic or anything, but because I don’t get the little landing strip thing. Can you imagine if we shaved our armpits but left a strip of hair? Or shaved our legs but left a hairy triangle?

  Before I went in, I asked the moms in my playgroup, “Why do people get this done?”

  “Who knows?” Barrett said. “To feel clean? Gary’s lucky if I bathe. He doesn’t care.”

  “Maybe it’s like getting a haircut or highlights,” Georgia said. “You’re taking care of yourself. But I guess you can’t really show everyone the results as you would with highlights.”

  “It’s not like a haircut,” Annie said. “My hairdresser doesn’t tell me to hold my butt cheek while she waxes my asshole. You do it for the guys. They like it for the same reason they like you to swallow. It’s porno. It’s that special thing.”

  “I don’t know,” Georgia said. “I go to Supercuts.”

  The waxer took another pull from the top. Tears welled in my eyes. I was writing my will in my head and wondering why I ever agreed to let this stranger touch and hurt me so. Bobby was engaged. It was over. The last time he had seen my vagina a head was coming out of it and I had pooed on the table. I’m sure these images could not be superseded. I began to really tear up then, but of course my “stylist” thought this was in reaction to her yanking out my pubic hair.

  “You’re doing real good,” she said, even though I wasn’t doing anything, just lying there, my legs in second position. She told me about her last two clients. One yelled “motherfucker” after each tug. One prayed. I could just hear it: “Please, Lord, give me the strength to withstand the pain of hair being pulled off of my privates so that I can go forth into this day with a clean, porno va-jj. Amen. Oh yes, and bless those in Darfur.”

  Finally, she was done. I took a quick peek and was horrified. It looked like that hairless cat, Mr. Bigglesworth. It looked cold and lonely. I hated it! I hated my privates! I hated Bobby. I didn’t have a witness—no one to commiserate with, no one to love my daughter with. Not having a dad around was such an unfair strike against her. I didn’t want to raise a hitter, a biter, or a child so scarred by abandonment she’d shake on the sidelines while other kids laughed and lobbed balls at one another. And then she’d get older and sleep with everyone and experiment with tons of drugs, like me. On the waxer’s table I thought, How could he bear to be without her? She has a fantastic sense of humor. She can be dramatically sour and fiery, then moments later gooey warm and sweet. She’s like Thai food. She’s my little Eggplant Pad Ma Coeur.

  I came home and cooked that very dish, feeling good, like a mother, a single, determined, capable mother with a sexy pelvis and a beautiful daughter, and I thought: These feelings equal Eggplant Pad Ma Coeur. And this dish came from a story about vaginal waxing.

  What else? What are some more of life’s little word problems? Because this—the eggplant was yielding and vibrant—this I could do. This I could solve. This was making a shitty thing into something damn right delicious.

  I’ve decided to come up with recipes inspired by my friends in my playgroup. My angle: What kinds of culinary creations do they inspire? Barrett, Annie, Georgia, and Henry. I’ll take moments from their everyday lives—moments that define their issues somehow, and come up with the food equivalents. I will make a difficult moment in their lives a little more palatable.

  What are your contributions to SFMC and our motherhood community? What have you “brought to the table”?

  I don’t know what you’re talking about . . .

  * * *

  Mele looks up to find her daughter. Ellie’s still on the slide, climbing to the top. Another mother is telling her boy, “Excuse me, Branson, we go down the slide, we don’t climb up,” but Mele couldn’t give a fuck if Ellie goes up. Who cares? The more rules you have, the more you have to enforce them, and Mele likes the option of sitting on her ass sometimes.

  The answers felt good to write, and read. She’s surprised by the emotions the process produced: anger, jealousy, but also, a moving appreciation for the life she has. Sometimes you have to trudge through the muck to experience one of the best things in the world: gratitude. She knows this feeling could pass so she holds on to it like it’s a coin, something small and hard and pocketable. She is a single mom. She’s not dead. This is good. Ellie is healthy and happy and almost worn out, and in a few hours Mele will bathe her and feed her and read to her and tell her about the sand crab and tell her she loves her more, and then she’ll sit on the couch and watch The Real Housewives of Wherever. Soon her friends will be here and she’ll begin her new venture. Georgia, Henry, Barrett, and Annie will each have a turn to tell her a story.

  Renee—I am very sympathetic to your desires to keep your child safe. Safety is nonnegotiable. I understand that you are outraged, but your insinuations are inappropriate, bigoted, insensitive, and racist. Please don’t mistake concern for your child for bigotry against other ethnic groups. If you believe calling USCIS will “solve” your problem, then the real problem is much larger than this discussion forum. Best of luck.

  —Beth Nelson

  I can’t imagine having an affair. That would mean having to have sex with two people!

  —Overheard at Quince restaurant

  CARVING A WIFE

  Her friends have taken over the back corner table at the Panhandle playground. They’re all drinking a cheap Shiraz from red plastic cups and watching Gabe, Georgia’s almost three-year-old son, sitting in the sandbox, swatting his tongue, and screaming. Today Georgia looks like one of those women in Theraflu commercials, yet without the luxury of being in bed under clean, cool sheets. Zoë, her newborn mistake, is sucking on her left boob.

  “You better win this thing,” Annie says. “It better not be that woman who’s always posting links to her cupcakes. Aren’t people sick of crazy cupcakes? Red Velvet Pudding Pop with Grenache, Quinoa, and Pop Rocks.”

  It’s funny being sandwiched by these ladies: Annie on her right, the ends of her blond hair dyed blue, a Batman tattoo on her left shoulder; Barrett on her left, her blond hair in a stringent bob. As a parent you’re friends with people you never thought you’d be friends with.

  “What is it you’re doing again?” Henry asks.

  He’s the only man in the group. He’s a forty-five-year-old retiree (he sold his company to Microsoft) who owns a beautiful home in Pacific Heights but avoids playgrounds in that area because he sees those people enough as it is and he likes to slum it whenever possible.

  “The moms only talk about fund-raisers and redecorating, the men all talk about investments and who’s ‘killing it,’ ” he has said to Mele.

  His wife is the daughter of a prominent family, who actually refer to themselves as scions of San Francisco.

  “Old money,” he told her. “They’re even weirder. Her mom has a wall made out of peacocks.”

  Mele doesn’t think he’s very happy.

  Sometimes Henry meets the group here without his four-year-old even though there’s a sign on the front gate that says, ADULTS MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY CHILDREN.

  “I’m entering the cookbook competition,” Mele says with a flourish to disguise embarrassment. It’s always a tad humiliating to admit you’re trying to accomplish something, and a mother’s club competition sounds like such hogwash. What is hogwash anyway? She imagines little piggies getting scrubbed down with a loofah, their tiny tails in erect spirals.

  “What you’ll do is tell me some kind of anecdote, something personal.” She says in a lowered voice to the ladies: “Remember when I told you I turned my Brazilian wax into Thai food?”

  “Has it grown back yet?” Barrett asks.

  Mele wiggles on the bench as her answer.

  Barrett gets up, m
ost likely to tell her daughter, who’s in a face-off by the tire swing, that hands are not for hitting.

  “What are you guys talking about?” Henry asks, moving down the bench toward Mele.

  “Nothing,” Georgia says.

  “Mele’s going to take your despair and turn it into cupcakes,” Annie says.

  He glances at Mele, and she looks down. She’s always a little shy around him. They have this innocent flirtation going on, but now that he’s having marital problems, the innocence isn’t stained necessarily, but is taking on a different hue.

  “Despair into cupcakes,” he says.

  He seems off today, sullen and pensive, like he’s deciding on whom to fire.

  “You’ll tell me a story,” Mele says, “and I’ll create a suitable recipe. If that makes any sense.”

  “I tell you stories all the time,” he says, and it’s true. It’s something they all do, something Mele has always had a knack for: drawing people out, unraveling them. When she first met Bobby, who was reticent and mysterious, she asked him about his regrets, past girlfriends, his first memory, what he was like in high school. She watched him open up. He was intricate origami, undoing the folds, showing her how he was made. It was so simple. Ask questions, then listen.

  “Tell me why you’re so lost in thought,” Mele says to Henry.

  Observe people. Notice them. Ask what they’re dying to tell you anyway.

  She watches Barrett’s daughter push down on Gabe’s head as if he were a jack-in-the-box. Gabe-in-the-box raises his fleshy fists in anger. Mele squints, pretends she’s watching midget wrestling.

  “You know you’re not supposed to say midget anymore?” she says.

  “What do you win again?” Annie asks, and Mele knows that what she’s really asking is, Why are you wasting your time with a cookbook competition?

  “A trip to Napa,” Mele says. “I don’t know, it’s just something to do. I do it anyway, basically. Maybe it can be a real book one day.” She laughs so they know she isn’t serious, but she is so very serious. She wants to publish a book, to make her dream come true, but she doesn’t want to say she wants this—she just wants it to happen and then say that she wanted it. Her other motivations are too difficult to express. Single motherhood, Bobby, no real career, the love she has for her child, the guilt she has about her impatience, laziness, and sometimes utter boredom with being a mother. She has no interest in seeing Ellie play with blocks. None.

  She needs something tangible to work on, and immersing herself in food and other people’s stories should keep sadness out of sight, simmering. She needs some tiny accomplishment to shove up Bobby’s ass and an excuse to cook, something she didn’t enjoy that much at work, but at home, in her own tiny kitchen, cooking with music and a glass of wine, little Ellie flipping through a book or watching Barney—this is the best part of her day.

  She’s entering the contest because vacancies should be filled, hunger should be satiated, and Bobby called the other day and had the audacity to invite her to his wedding.

  “We’d like Ellie to be the flower girl,” he said.

  We. Meaning him and the big cheese.

  Mele looked out her living room window, dazed. She could hear Ellie behind her pressing the buttons on her musical frog. Five minutes to night-night. And then a song came on, a mournful waltz. Mele’s eyes came to focus on someone trying to parallel-park, holding up a row of cars. She felt united with this driver—different problems but that same feeling of panic and inadequacy. She wanted to put her life in park, lean over the steering wheel, and sob.

  “I’ll call you right back.” She settled into the armchair in the living room, as if a show was about to begin. Ellie had the plush frog in her lap, and its lament filled the living room. Mele felt a deep shame and guilt, wanting her child all to herself. How happy it would make Ellie to be a flower girl, to don a princess dress and walk down the aisle, but at that moment she’d rather Ellie feel rejected or without. There was a new challenge to parenting just then—it was hard to do it on your own, but harder to maintain a generous spirit while parenting with someone who hurt you. A good mother lets go. A good mother hides her sadness.

  She called him back, and yes, Ellie would be the flower girl, but as for Mele coming to the wedding, she would have to think about it.

  She’s been looking for a dress ever since.

  “I could use something to focus on,” she says. She catches Annie rolling her eyes. They all knew about the invitation to the wedding, and some were more supportive than others.

  “Here,” Annie says. “Here’s some inspiration.” She looks at her phone. Mele knows she’s going to read them an email from the SFMC group. They’re all obsessed right now with the posts from a mom threatening to call Immigration for playground roughhousing.

  “She says she understands bullying is a cultural element, but that doesn’t mean her son has to fall victim to hate crimes.”

  Annie starts to type.

  “What are you doing?” Mele asks.

  “I’m posting.” She reads while she types: “I totally agree. The Chinese love mu shu pork and rock throwing, but it doesn’t mean they have to do it at our playgrounds!”

  “Doesn’t your email show up?” Mele asks.

  “No, I have a fake one just for this purpose. I sign off using A.L., West Portal. Ooh this next one’s good. So this woman needs a stucco consultant, and she had to say, ‘for my three-story, seven-bedroom Gold Coast home.’ These ladies always have to slip in their square footage.”

  Henry sits up on the green bench. “She went behind my back. Again.”

  “Who?” Mele asks, not knowing what he’s talking about.

  “Kate,” he says. “My wife. That’s who wrote that post. I told her we didn’t need a stucco consultant. We don’t need a thing for our house. It’s perfectly fine.”

  Tommy, his four-year-old, jumps onto his lap, and he winces. Mele wonders what he meant by again. She imagines his wife sneaking into a room full of undercover consultants.

  “Ouch,” his son says from his lap.

  “Sorry,” Henry says, and he loosens his grip on Tommy’s thigh.

  “That was your wife’s post?” Annie asks.

  “You have a three-story, seven-bedroom home?” Georgia asks.

  “It’s not what you think,” he says. “It’s way the fuck beyond. Oops. Sorry, son.”

  Tommy squirms off his lap, then runs toward the tire swing. “See you later, fuckers!” he says.

  “Oops,” Henry says, watching his son run off in what seems to be a wistful, desperate way, as if he has an urge to yell: “Good luck out there!” He looks over at Mele and seems to shake himself off after coming up for air.

  “The other night,” he says just for Mele to hear, “I overheard my daughter saying to her brother and his friends, ‘You’ll either cry or laugh your ass off.’ Something like that. I had no idea what she was talking about, but that’s it. That sums everything up right now. I’m ready to tell you what’s on my mind.”

  Mele moves closer to him, her hand near his and the graffiti that’s etched into the bench: MY DICK. Someone came here and took the time to write that. What a poor, lost soul.

  Georgia and Annie walk away to join Barrett by the kids, and it’s nice—witnessing this migration toward their young. A hard light shoots through the fencing. She can hear the guys behind her at the basketball court. One of them yells, “Move off me, son! That’s what I’m talking about!”

  “Ready when you are,” Mele says. She has trouble looking him in the eye. She can speak boldly and candidly, but always looks ahead, a light smile on her face. He sinks down, assuming his usual position on the green bench, his legs far apart so that he looks like he’s in a dugout, waiting to hit it out of the park.

  HENRY AND THE GIRL

  Henry has been drinking, but doesn’t think the boys can tell. Maybe they can. They’re sixteen, after all, and he knows they’re considered good-looking and popular. He isn’t
sure what makes one popular these days—it must vary from place to place, school to school. At his son’s school, he imagines money has something to do with it. Money, yet a cool, false dismissal of it. Trendy tattered clothing, friends on scholarships, going green. He has known these boys from the time they were in preschool together. God. That was a long time ago.

  Henry supposes the kids might be drunk as well. When he and Kate got back from dinner he found them all in the kitchen, devouring chips and cold pizza, quesadillas, the kinds of foods you want after drinking. Maybe they’re stoned. They’ve either stacked their potato chips on top of their pizzas or rolled them into their tortillas. His son has a huge bowl of ice cream with a jar of chocolate sauce in front of him, something he wouldn’t normally eat. He moves a chip toward the ice cream, then changes his mind and puts it in his mouth, plain. He’s so stoned.

  Is Henry supposed to say something? “Are you high?” “Are you drunk?” “Do I care?” He realizes they’re all looking up at him and remembers he’s been telling them a story.

  “Where was I?” He holds the counter and looks at the one, two, three boys. He hears a toilet flush. Four boys. Four boys are waiting for him to tell them about girls.

  Ross comes out of the bathroom, wiping his hands on his pants. Tim Tupper, Tupp, they call him, punches Ross in the leg, and Ross says, “What was that for?” and Tupp shrugs.

  “Where was I?” Henry asks.