I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression (2 page)

Despite the fact that I had studied up on how many flares I would need to light up my tandem axle truck on an interstate highway at dusk, I was posed instead with the following questions:

“An elderly lady is crossing at an intersection against the light. Does the driver of the vehicle (a) stop suddenly to allow her to cross the street, thus snarling traffic behind him; (b) honk his horn and proceed with caution; (c) swerve and try to miss her.”

I must have read that question fifty times. If I stopped, I might cause eight rear collisions behind me. Legally, I had an obligation to keep traffic moving. But if I honked
the horn, the pedestrian might have a heart attack, and I would have to live with that the rest of my life. On the other hand, if I swerved, I might just pull into another line of traffic, causing an accident.

I pondered the question a full ten minutes before I asked the officer, “How old is the lady?”

“That’s irrelevant,” he said.

“I don’t suppose you want to tell me where she is going?”

“That’s also immaterial,” he said.

“Does she have a son in Kansas who hasn’t written her in three months?”

“What’s that got to do with the question?” he asked irritably.

“Because I’ve just decided to run the old lady down and keep traffic moving!” I said.

The woman in the pantyhose leaned forward painfully and said, “Me too, honey.”

There is absolutely nothing more horrifying to me than to go to a banquet and be separated from my husband and become a victim of the Long Banquet table. You’ve seen them. They’re long, cold tables with 150 chairs lined on either side. Your instructions are to be seated in man-woman, man-woman style. Had I known this was going to be the case, I would have developed the body for it. Too often I have turned to the man on my left only to find him engaged in conversation with a cleavage on
his
left. As I turn to the man on my right, he too is terribly busy talking with a cleavage on
his
right. Looking across the table, I find an empty chair.

For some unexplained reason, it’s always the other end of the table that’s wild and raucous, with screaming laughter and a fella who plays “Holiday for Strings” on water glasses.

It’s not easy having a good time by yourself. Especially if you’re boring to begin with. After you eat the four
salads around you, clean your silverware, count your fillings with your tongue, clear your throat, correct the spelling of your name on your place card and clean your glasses, it’s downhill all the way.

Occasionally, someone about six people down on the same side of your table will wave and you will lean forward dragging your necklace through a mound of mushrooms to wave back.

“How’s Sully?” she will pantomime.

You cup your hand over your ear and shrug your shoulders to express deafness.

“How’s Sully?” she repeats slowly.

“Wonderful,” you shout back.

It is only after you are looking down your bra and wondering how you are going to get the mushrooms out delicately that you realize you have never heard of Sully
and besides she was talking to the man sitting next to you.

Any real conversation at a long banquet table is impossible. I have discovered I can say to my dinner partner, “Did you know Ho Chi Minh wore Supp-hose?” and he will look over your head and answer, “Tell Mary. She’s perfectly marvelous at faking. Never had a lesson in her life.”

I cannot think of anything clever to help stamp out the long banquet table. Yet, I do not want to simplify the problem. If we are ever to survive as a nation, ever to laugh and walk free in the sun once more and help conquer mental health in this country, we must find a way.

I always wish I were one of those women who could let the phone ring and say sorta flip-like, “If it’s important, they’ll call back.”

A friend of mine (?) actually convinced me one day that I could save hours by not answering the phone when it rang. “Try it once,” she said, “And you’ll never break your neck to answer the phone again.” The phone rang … and rang … and rang … (I began to perspire) and rang … and rang… (I paced the floor) and rang … and rang … and then, there was silence.

“You see?” she said. “There’s nothing to it. And look at all the time you saved.”

As soon as she left, I called Mother. “I’m sorry I didn’t answer the phone when you called, but … What do you mean you didn’t call?”

I dialed my husband’s number. “What do you want? I know I called you, but I am only returning your call, which I didn’t answer when it rang. Oh, you didn’t?”

Mayva’s cleaning woman said Mayva had gone to town with her mother-in-law and couldn’t possibly have called me.

My mother-in-law in Florida said it was sweet of me to check in, but she had not placed a call to me.

My publishers in New York said they were fine and it was always nice hearing from me but no one had contacted me that morning.

The program director of “Happy Bucks for Homemakers” said that a call to my number that morning had not been made and that the jackpot still stood at forty dollars.

The principal at the school said they had been meaning to call me, as my son had been playing in the Johns again, but did not get around to it.

I called my sister to ask if she wanted me and she said … never mind. I phrased the question badly.

I called watch repair only to get a curt, “Madam, we did not place a call to you, nor will we until your watch is ready to be picked up.”

Through conscientious dialing, I discovered my bank hadn’t called, nor had my insurance man, my Avon lady, any member of the baseball car pool, or my friendly magazine salesman.

Nor did Sylvia Porter … the Governor of Ohio … Pauline Frederick, Roy Rogers, or Dinah Shore. Finally, as I was dialing in the darkness, my husband sat up in bed and shouted, “For crying out loud. Put that phone down. What would the President want with you?”

I guess what I’m saying is I fear change of any kind. Like there was always some comfort in the fact that although murder, rape, robbery, and prostitution have been on the rise in this country for some time, I could always depend on one law remaining, the tags on pillows that read,
DO NOT REMOVE THIS TAG UNDER PENALTY OF LAW
.

You could walk in the most elegant homes in the world, sink up to your supporters in carpet, drink coffee from bone china, and have domestics falling all over themselves,
but there was always that one common denominator: a limp tag flapping under the chair like a piece of dirty underwear.

As a bride, I imagined all sorts of things would happen to you if you ripped the tag off your pillows. The IRS would fine you, Senator Joe McCarthy would put your name on a pinko list under the glass on his desk, and you would be blackballed from joining the VFW. There was some rumor that you would not bear children for seven years, but I doubted that.

One night my husband had a few drinks and threatened, “You know what I’m going to do? I’m gonna go in and rip the
DO NOT REMOVE
tags from the pillows on our bed.” He didn’t know what he was saying and a neighbor and I had to physically restrain him.

The other day I read where the Department of Labor, together with the Upholstery and Bedding Advisory Board, have reworded the tag to read,

THIS TAG NOT TO BE REMOVED EXCEPT BY CONSUMER
.

Frankly, I don’t know what the world is coming to. Today the pillow tags. Tomorrow, we’ll be opening asparagus right side up.

Oh, I’m not lily white by any means, mind you. I’ve done some pretty rotten things in my life. Once, I deliberately left the cover of a matchbook open while I lit a match. Another time when I thought no one was looking I sprayed whipped cream on my strawberries without first shaking the can. In moments of anger, I’ve even taken the cellophane off lampshades and purposely screwed on lids in the opposite direction of the arrow.

But ripping the
DO NOT REMOVE
tags from pillows. That’s something else. After I read the story, I went to my room and shut the door. I pulled down the spread of the bed and held the pillow in my arms. Sliding my fingers
along the seam I felt the tag. Gently, I wrapped my fingers around it and ripped it off.

At that precise moment, I heard a bolt of thunder, the cat ran under the bed and I saw small feathers oozing out of the seam where I had ripped the label.

I fell to my knees. “Bless me, Ralph Nader. I have sinned.”

The world seems to be moving so fast. I know you’re not going to believe this, but there has not been a how-to book on sex published in fourteen days. The little fact has made quite a difference in our Wednesday night bridge club. Last night, not one person made mention of the word sex … or for that matter even thought about it.

“How’s your mother?” asked Maxine breaking a thirty-minute silence.

“Fine,” said Mildred, “I finally seduced … rather induced her to go to town and check out the spring passions.”

“You mean fashions,” said Maxine.

“That’s what I said,” said Mildred. “The clothes were a drag, but we did enjoy lunch at a new place on Main Street. If you’re interested, they have wonderful David Reuben sandwiches there.”

We all looked silently at Mildred who stopped talking and rearranged her cards. Another half hour passed.

“An amusing thing happened to me at the supermarket yesterday,” said Maxine. “I was in the express line when I realized I was down to my last sensuous … I mean cent.”

“What did you do?” asked Mildred.

“Wrote a sex, what else?”

“You’re lucky you had your sexbook with you,” I said. Twenty minutes went by.

“I hope no one is on a diet,” said Fern, our hostess. “I’d hate to contribute to anyone’s … what is it they call fat people?”

“Obscene,” said Mildred.

Ten minutes later, the silence was interrupted by Maxine. “Heavens, what time is it?”

“Eight-thirty,” I said dryly.

“Time sure flies when you’re having fun,” she said.

“Well, it certainly is refreshing to sit around and talk about worthwhile things other than sex,” said Mildred. “I have discovered a new dimension to me.”

“Well, are we going to talk or play cards?” asked Fern. “Come on Mildred, it’s your turn to bed.”

“That’s bid,” I corrected.

“Whatya expect in fourteen days,” snarled Fern, “a miracle?”

The sex thing does bug you sometimes. It used to be so simple. Now you have more manuals than a hydraulic
truck. Last year, when I became old enough to buy
Cosmopolitan
without a prescription, I was intrigued by their sexy horoscopes. I would read through Aquarius, Gemini, Taurus, and Capricorn and literally blush at what was in store for them.

However, when I reached my own zodiac sign, it was always the same. “A new hair color could get you a cab. From the 10th to the 15th, it might even get you mugged (on a slow night). Stars born under your sign: Minnie Pearl, Wally Cox and Walter Hickel.”

This month I opened the magazine and was thrown into shock. My sign read, “Mr. Sex and Vitality will come into your life around the second of the month.”

On the morning of the second, I was quivering at what I knew would happen. Arising early, I fixed breakfast, sent the kids off to school and sat down to wait for Mr. Sex and Vitality. At ten, the doorbell rang. It was the garbage man telling me he had a rule about picking up more than five cans. I couldn’t question his vitality, but how sexy can a man be who smells like cantaloupe and wilted lettuce at ten in the morning?

At eleven-thirty, as I was eating lunch, the phone rang. The voice at the other end wanted to make a house call and talk to my husband and see if we would like to spend our retirement managing a motel. He didn’t sound sexy or vital, but then anyone who could get so worked up wrapping all those bathroom glasses in see-through bags …

That evening I stayed dressed just in case Mr. S and V rang my chimes.

“What are you dressed up for?” asked my husband. “You going bowling or something?”

“My horoscope said Mr. Sex and Vitality would enter my life today.”

“That reminds me. Did you take my suit to the cleaners?”