Love and Other Natural Disasters (6 page)

"Well, that's what happens
when you date married guys. You don't get holidays. Booty calls, but not
holidays."

"Did you just say 'booty
calls'?"

"I did."

"Oh, so now it's I992. You're
a teacher. I'd think you'd at least know what they're calling them these
days."

"I'll ask my third
period." Tamara laughed. "You sound like you're holding up a lot
better than I would be. And I'm not pregnant."

That's when the lightness died. I
couldn't speak.

"I'm sorry, Eve. I was getting
punchy there. Like I said, I didn't sleep last night, I was so worried about
you. I thought of calling, but I figured you knew you could call anytime you
needed me. I mean, you
can
call anytime. Really. Day or night. And you
can say anything you want about Jon."

"Thanks."

"So where did he go last
night?"

"To a hotel."

"He's getting a love nest out
of this?"

"No. He and Laney haven't had
sex."

"Oh." She sounded
confused.

"It was an emotional affair.
They've been talking and e-mailing for over a year. He says he never intended
to have sex with her, and I believe him, actually, but I know he wanted
to."

"Oh."

"What?"

"Well, that's not as bad, is
it? I mean, that's easier to work out."

She'd understand just how bad it
was only if I confessed to reading the e-mails. I wasn't prepared to do that,
not even with Tamara. "Not for me, I guess."

"I don't mean that it's okay.
I just meant that it changes things a little. I'd just assumed he was sleeping
with someone else."

"Don't take this the wrong
way, but you've never been married. I'd probably understand him having sex with
someone else before I'd understand him sharing private jokes with another
woman, sending her long e-mails about his day. I mean, sex fades in marriage;
it's the other stuff that's not supposed to." I started to cry. "He's
supposed to be my best friend. How could he do this? Why would he do this to
me?"

"Oh, Eve. I'm so sorry. I'm
really sorry."

Finally I said, "I should get
going. I need to go to Costco."

"It'll be a madhouse. No. I'll
come over. I can bring whatever food you want, and some movies."

"No, I need to shop."

"You hate to shop."

"But I need to keep
moving."

"Well, I'll come with you
then."

"To Costco?"

"Sure. I'll buy stuff I can't
even get through the door of our apartment. I'll just store a giant vat of
pickles in the hallway. For guests."

I laughed. "Are you sure about
this? Don't you and Clayton have plans?"

"I told him last night that I
was going to clear the weekend. Anything you need, I'm at your service."

"You're amazing. Thank
you."

"Don't mention it. Now what
time should I come over? I'm sure Clayton could watch Jacob today, if that'd
help."

"No, my mom's going to spend
the day with him."

"Okay. I'll bring Jacob over,
and then Middle America, here we come."

Costco was a nightmare, as
expected. But somehow, it was just the right kind of nightmare. The massive
labyrinth of consumerism—with shelves as high as Jack's beanstalk, and aisles
clogged with people who somehow seemed more aggrieved and agitated than I
was—suited me.

Tamara hadn't been inside one in
years. "It's like the Astrodome in here!" she said, gaping.
"Nothing is to human scale. If one of those light fixtures fell, it's
goodbye, Cleveland!"

"It'd be a pretty undignified
way to go."

"Crushed under the rubble of a
hundred thousand

potpies. No, no dignity there."
She looked around, pushing her straight blond hair behind her ears. "Where
should we start? Toys for Jacob, or stuff for the baby?"

"I don't know. I don't even
have a list," I said, suddenly feeling helpless. "Jon and I didn't
make a list."

"Spontaneity is great for gift
buying. We'll just walk down the aisle and see what screams Jacob."
"But what about the baby?"

"We'll just go down each aisle
slowly, okay? And if we forget anything, you've still got over a month,
right?"

I focused on my breathing,
childbirth-style. "Over a month," I repeated.

"Exactly. Let's tackle Jacob
first." She steered me toward the toy section, pushing the cart slowly. I
walked beside her, docile as a child. Not my child, but somebody's. "Jon
thinks we're having a girl," I said. "What do you think?"

"I don't know. I'd like a
girl." I'd never said it out loud before. "I'm like everyone else. If
I had my choice, it'd be one of each. I like the idea of Jacob having a little
sister. Maybe he'd feel more protective than competitive." "Was that
how it was for you and Charlie?" "I felt like I had to take care of
him. I mean, I did actually have to take care of him." I stopped, looking
at the toys for young girls: pink tea sets, pink grooming sets with a brush,
comb and hand mirror, pink fairy princess dress-up kits, tiaras. "Ugh. How
sexist is this stuff?"

Tamara had picked up a jewelry box
with a pink ballerina on it. "Five years old, and they're already
accessorizing?" My cell phone rang. "It's Jon," I said, glancing
at the ID window. After a few
seconds of internal debate, I answered the call. "Hello."

"Hi," Jon said, his voice
subdued. "I wanted to see how you are."

"I'm at Costco."

"Oh. I'm sorry." When I
didn't say anything, he went on, "I just wanted to tell you how bad I feel
about everything, and how truly, truly sorry I am. I'm willing—"

I asked him for space, and he
couldn't even give me that much. "I don't need you calling every day to
tell me the same things. You should feel bad. You got caught having an affair
and you got kicked out of your house." My voice was rising, and the
throngs of people closest to me glanced over furtively. Costco performance art,
that's what I'd become.

"What am I supposed to do
here?" he asked. "How do I make this right if you won't talk to
me?"

"I'm taking care of myself
right now. It's all I can do. Look, I've got to go." I disconnected the
call. With deep concentration, Tamara was pretending to study a children's
fudge-making kit. "Do you think I was too hard on him?"

"I'm not stupid enough to
answer that."

"Shit!" I said. I wasn't
supposed to be here, not like this. When people turned to look again, I fought
the urge to shout, "What are you looking at?" But whatever I was, I
wasn't the "Crazy What-Are-You-Looking-At Lady." She was the worst.

"We don't have to do this
today. We can sit down and make a list first. Then I'll come back with you next
weekend, or by then, maybe things will be different."

I shook my head. "No, I have
to do it now." I started pushing the cart resolutely down the aisle.

Two hours later, we were in line,
the cart piled high with presents for Jacob and baby paraphernalia (
onesies
, crib sheets, car seat, ointments, that blue bulb
that sucks the snot from those improbably tiny nostrils). I was congratulating
myself on not having broken down even once when I had one horrifying clarion
thought: Sylvia. This was all supposed to go to Sylvia's house.

When I was pregnant with Jacob,
Sylvia told me about the Jewish tradition of not bringing anything for the baby
into the home until after the birth—to do otherwise would be to tempt fate. Jon
said it was superstition, not tradition, and what were we, Romanian peasants
from the I600s? Should we boil some sheep's dung to ward off the evil spirits,
too? Besides, he argued, I wasn't even Jewish. But Sylvia knew what she was
doing, telling a nervous first-time mom something like that. And there was a
loophole: we could buy everything and store it at her house and then bring it home
after the baby was born; we could even preorder the furniture for the baby's
room so long as it was delivered later. Sylvia had it all worked out for us.

I'd decided during my last
pregnancy that there was no harm in following the tradition, and Jon eventually
went along. This time around, I'd planned to do it again. But now, a trip to
Sylvia's house was fraught on multiple counts: having to see Sylvia, and
possibly having to see Jon. (I'd gotten off the phone too quickly to find out
if he had already checked out of the hotel and gone to stay with her.) Maybe
Jon was right the first time and it was a stupid tradition. We had a garage.
Maybe the demonic forces would only search the house.

See, that's how ridiculous this
whole line of thinking was. Did I really believe there was a search-and-destroy
mission for my baby? Of course I didn't. But what if—God forbid—something
happened to her? I'd forever wonder if it was because I had the hubris to put
the
onesies
in my garage. That was the problem with
adhering to a superstition the first time. Next time around, you think,
If
there's even a one-tenth of a percent chance that that's what kept Jacob safe
and healthy...

"What's wrong?" Tamara
asked.

"Could I store this stuff at
your apartment?"

"It seems like you have more
storage space at your house," she said carefully, as if I'd developed
Alzheimer's.

"No, I have room at my house.
It's just that we can't store it there. It's a tradition."

"What tradition?"

"It's a Jewish tradition, not
bringing any baby stuff into the home until after the birth. Otherwise, it's
bad luck."

"What did you do with
Jacob?"

"Kept everything at
Sylvia's."

"Do you think she's too angry
to keep your stuff?"

I shook my head. "I don't like
the woman, but she wouldn't jeopardize her grandchild's safety. She really
believes in this crap."

"I'm sorry, I don't have that
kind of room."

We moved up a few feet in the line.
Only ten carts ahead of us.

Keep the call brief, to the
point,
I counseled myself. Businesslike.
It's not like Sylvia enjoyed small-talking me Under the best of circumstances.
This wasn't for me, this was for her grandchild.

"Hello." Damn it, it was
Jon. "You've reached 5I0-555-6434." On Sylvia's answering machine.
The widow's home-protection system, having a man record her outgoing message.
"Please leave a message, and we'll call you back at our earliest
convenience. Have a good day."

I felt an involuntary pang for him,
that the fraudulent "we" of Jon and his mother was coming true.

"Hi, Sylvia. It's Eve. I just
bought a batch of things for the baby, so I'm going to come drop them off now.
They'll be stacked by the back door, unless you're home by the time we get
there." I paused. "Well, thanks."

Other daughters-in-law would have
keys. Jon had a key, of course. But Sylvia never let me forget that I was his
choice, not hers.

Still, I had to be grateful for
small gifts, like not having to deal with her directly. "We should head
straight to Sylvia's," I said to Tamara. "Hopefully, she'll still be
out."

A half hour later, we were on our
way in Tamara's overstuffed car. I held a bag in my lap, with another sitting
on top of my feet.

"You're doing really well, you
know," Tamara said, her eyes on the road. "I'd be a wreck."

"I am a wreck."

"You spent three hours in
Costco without a tear. Not even when you held up those little undershirts with
the sailboats on them. I almost cried then."

"You want a baby, don't
you?" I asked. Outward directed conversation, that was the way to go. We
were on the lower deck of the Bay Bridge, headed toward Berkeley, and I could
hear the noise of the city-bound cars overhead. Their direction had the view.

"You know I've always wanted a
baby." Tamara changed lanes carefully, peering over the cargo in the
backseat.

"But it seems like you want it
to be soon."

"Well, not too much later, if
I can help it."

"How does Clayton feel about
it?"

"He wants kids someday. He
loves having Jacob around." She cast a quick glance my way. "Don't
think I'm sick or anything, but watching him with Jacob is incredibly sexy.
They'll be working on one of their little videos, and, I swear, I want to have
him right then." She added, "I wouldn't actually do it in front of
Jacob or anything."

"No, I know what you
mean."

Suddenly I flashed on an image of
the last time Jon and I had sex. No,
don't think about that,
I cautioned
myself. Don't think about the fact that the last time, Jon had an orgasm with
all the intensity of a burp and you didn't have one at all, and then with him
still inside you, the two of you started talking about the Iraq War.
Animatedly. Possibly with greater energy than had been expended in the sex act
itself. Don't think about how you thought nothing of this at the time, how you
didn't think it was the death of romance or a troubling indicator of the state
of your union, but rather, if you'd bothered to think about it, you would have
interpreted it as the height of intimacy, with intimacy defined as comfort,
safety, security, the knowledge that there would be a million other orgasms
that surely would offer ample opportunity for the simultaneous blowing of both
your minds.
No, don't think about that.