Maternity Leave (16 page)

Filling out the FMLA packet was oddly anti-climactic. For six months I had been paranoid that the paperwork was going to reveal my secret. In reality, the paperwork was barely anything. I’d filled out more paperwork for a teeth cleaning. Surely someone had abused this system before.

* * *

Since becoming a full-fledged fat pregnant woman at month six, I had completely bifurcated my life to avoid being caught pregnant by my friends, or not pregnant by my coworkers. This had made training on the open roads of Tampa difficult, so I started riding my bike in St. Petersburg instead. Danny usually accompanied me on these rides, as he did today. As we rode across the Gandy Bridge, I asked Danny how his overdue thirty year checkup went.

Last weekend, Danny had mentioned that he’d set up the appointment to keep his insurance rate low and I’d been scaring the bejesus out of him about the possibility of being anally raped ever since. In truth, I had no idea when men had to get prostate exams nor did I know what they entail. Nevertheless, I spent yesterday at work feeding Danny’s fear of the prostate exam by sending him emails regarding prostate exam horror stories, videos of fisting, and the like.

“So,” I said.

“So what?” Danny replied.

“How did it go?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he repeated. Then said, “Let’s just ride.”

As we started pedaling, I said, “Come on, you have to tell me.”

“I can’t. You’ll laugh.”

“I can’t promise anything,” I said, “but tell me anyway.”

“Okay, you can laugh, but you can’t tell anyone. And don’t judge me.”

“Okay, I can promise that,” I said.

“Well,” Danny started, “The doctor was a young man from the Philippines with small hands.”

“This is going to be good,” I said.

“Do you want to hear this or not?”

“Yes please.”

“He put gloves on and when he stuck his hands up my ass, I just came.”

“I’m calling bullshit on that one,” I said.

“Seriously, I just came on my gown. I couldn’t help it. His hands were so small and delicate.”

“Get the fuck outta here,” I said.

“I’m not kidding,” Danny insisted.

“Okay. Then what happened after you came?”

“A nurse came in and wiped it up. She said it happens all the time.”

“No way.”

“It does, just like in that movie
Road Trip
. I wasn’t even hard. I just came.”

My childhood consisted of being continually lied to by my parents to test the boundaries of my gullibility, so I seldom believe anything I hear until I confirm it on Google. Still, Danny seemed pretty sincere and why would anyone make up such a story?

After I finished laughing I said, “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.”

“I’m just kidding,” Danny said. “They didn’t even do the test.”

“What? I thought it was standard. Why didn’t you ask for one?”

“I’m not asking a doctor to stick his fingers up my ass.”

“Was he at least a small man from the Philippines man?” I asked.

“No. Old guy,” Danny said.

“You should really ask for the test, you could have cancer.”

“If the doctor was concerned, he’d have done the test. I’m going to rely on his judgment and not request to be violated.”

“It’s your life,” I said as we rode past a patch of Florida swamp land dried up by drought.

After our ride, I drove to the Spanish section of Tampa to go grocery shopping. As the only English-speaking gringo in the store, I felt no fear of recognition. I hate grocery shopping and only subject myself to it a few times a year. When I go to the store, I buy in bulk. Five of all of my toiletries, ten bags of bagels and ten cases of beer. Bagels are six to a bag. I generally repeat my shopping trip every sixty days, when I run out of bagels. I go to the liquor store or drug store in between as needed.

I don’t buy anything perishable, as expiration dates make me nervous. I also hate cooking and cleaning dishes. The obvious solution is to eat out for every meal other than my morning bagel, which requires no preparation other than defrosting on my way to work. Generally, I order a large lunch and eat the leftovers for dinner. If I have no leftovers, I order dinner and eat the leftovers for lunch the next day.

Prior to this system, I used to have a burger for lunch and pasta for dinner. I’d probably still have this system today if my friends and family didn’t insist otherwise. For lunch, my specialty was buying several pounds of meat, then grilling sixty or so hamburgers on the Foreman Grill, which I would then freeze, along with numerous bags of hamburger buns. Then, every morning before law school I’d grab a frozen patty and bun and put them in Saran Wrap, along with a slice of individually wrapped Kraft cheese, the fake kind that needs no refrigeration. At lunch, I’d eat a burger under an oak tree with my law school friends. One day the topic veered towards the discovery that the burgers I was eating on a daily basis were barely defrosted. After that, my friends averted their eyes during lunch time until I caved into peer pressure and began buying my lunch. My pasta for dinner tradition ended similarly. My strategy for pasta was to make a box of pasta and mix it with a jar of tomato sauce, then eat it for dinner for a week or so out of the big pot I cooked it in. My mom came over once when I was eating out of my vat of cold pasta like a trough, and it made her so ill that I promised never to do it again.

I was on the phone with Danny while I was shopping. He was at my house waiting to give me a massage.

“Sorry I’m late, I’ll be right there.”

“I would have grabbed bagels for you if you had asked.”

“I know, but I needed shampoo too.”

“I probably could have swung that.”

“Then I’d be making you a list and I didn’t want that to be my favor for today. There’s a dead roach in my house I need you to pick up.”

“Already done. Were you just going to live with that until I came over?”

“You or one of my brothers,” I said.

“You’re a terrible feminist,” Danny pointed out.

“I can’t find any bagels. Do Latinos eat bagels?” I asked.

“Not sure,” Danny said. “Jewbans do. Just drive home and I’ll get you bagels.”

“That’s okay, I’ll get Cuban bread instead. How many loaves of Cuban bread are equal to sixty bagels?”

“Thirty.”

“Shut up, I’m not buying thirty loaves of Cuban bread. I’ll get two and cut them up. That will get me through the week and you can get me bagels on a day when you’re not picking up a roach.”

I moved to the shampoo section. “So many choices. Do I want my hair silky and smooth, full of volume, or do I want the color enhanced?”

“All good hair qualities, you should mix them.”

“Sure, just get me an Erlenmeyer flask,” I said.

“I don’t mean create your own silky volume shampoo. I mean get silky and smooth shampoo and extra volume conditioner and alternate days. Then your hair will have both qualities.”

“I don’t have room in the corner of my shower. Plus, I don’t need conditioner yet. For some reason, my shampoo always runs out before my conditioner. The bottles are the same size, I start them at the same time, and use the same amount of each, but the shampoo always disappears more quickly. It’s a mystery.”

“Good luck getting to the bottom of that one. Go smooth and silky, your color and volume are fine.”

“Are you saying my hair isn’t silky and smooth?”

“Not when it’s humid outside. Then you look like Sideshow Bob.”

“Thanks.” I said, “It’s humid in Florida nine months of the year.”

“You look like him in a good way. What else are you getting?”

“Tampons. Do you have any opinions about this product?” I asked.

“Not really. I think I’ll sign off now. See you in a few minutes. I’ll be in the backyard playing with Sonny.”

“Okay, see you in a little bit.”

“Holy shit, your dog has a dildo,” Danny said, obviously alarmed.

“Long story,” I replied. “I’ll explain when I get home. Bye.”

A Danny-massage is not a relaxing affair. My leg muscles become horribly knotted from riding and Danny digs into them with the pressure of a torturer. As a result, I have created a safe word. If I say, “Ouch,” Danny ignores me. If I scream “Mother Fucker!” he backs off.

“So,” Danny said, “getting nervous about the pregnancy?”

“Not really. The prospect of losing my job and going to jail is somewhat nerve-racking, but preferable to childbirth.”

“What exactly is your plan?”

“I’m just not going to show up for work someday. I’ll send an email that I gave birth to an eleven-pound boy.”

“Eleven pounds? Isn’t that big?”

“Yes, but I want to have the biggest baby.”

“You’re not even having a baby, let alone the biggest baby. Maybe you shouldn’t get competitive about this.”

“I’d make him bigger, but I don’t want to have the Guinness Book of World Records checking up on the veracity of my story.”

“What is the biggest baby?”

“Not sure, but I read an article that said endurance athletes have big babies. My track coach in high school had a ten-pound baby. I want to edge her out.”

“How about ten pounds, one ounce.”

“I’ll go ten pounds, six ounces. Sounds more believable. Mother Fucker!”

“Sorry,” Danny said. “You have a knot. It hurts me more than it hurts you when I have to do this to you.”

“You are so full of shit. Baby steps on getting that knot out, you’re killing me.”

“Once again, your dog has a nine-inch cock in his mouth,” Danny said, more nonchalantly this time.

I pulled my head out of the massage table, then remembered I’d promised to explain the dildo. “Yeah, it’s Julie’s. I meant to throw that out while Sonny was sleeping, but I haven’t seen it for two weeks and forgot about it.”

“I wish I could forget it.”

“Don’t be so repressed.”

The race this weekend was in Webster, Florida, so I was guaranteed not to see anyone with teeth, let alone anyone from my office. The race is called Webster-Roubaix, and is intended to be modeled after Paris-Roubaix, which travels from Paris to Roubaix, in Northern France, during the middle of April each year. The bitch of Paris-Roubaix is that it is two-hundred and sixty kilometers long and fifty of those kilometers are on roads constructed with large cobblestones called pavé. The pavé, which is sprinkled along the course in approximately thirty different sections, is extremely difficult to ride on in dry weather, because it zaps all of the energy from your legs. When it’s wet, which is hardly unusual, the pavé becomes as slippery as an ice rink and riders crash on nearly every section. Each year, crowds line the entire course in spite of the fact that it is generally freezing cold and rainy for this Spring Classic.

Florida’s Webster-Roubaix bears very little resemblance to Paris-Roubaix, though they are run on the same day. Unlike Northern France, which is practically in Belgium, the weather in Florida is gorgeous, dry and hot in April. Likewise, spectators and cobblestones are nowhere to be found. Instead, the Webster-Roubaix course covers patches of sugar sand, which skinny road tires sink into, making balance difficult and crashes frequent. Essentially, Webster-Roubaix is similar to Paris-Roubaix in that they are both dangerous and deviate from asphalt. My plan for the race was to avoid crashing and work on my technical skills. While the sprint would be more dangerous than usual, I’d at least land on a soft surface. If I avoided crashing on this crazy course, maybe I’d finally conquer my phobia.

The night before the race I went to bed early and fell asleep immediately. I’m a very sound sleeper and generally fall asleep within fifteen seconds of putting my head on the pillow. I’m not sure how long I was sleeping before I heard a loud noise. I was out cold and didn’t know what I heard, but the noise was coming from my guest bedroom. Sonny started howling. I looked at the clock; it was three a.m. Almost immediately, I heard another loud noise, like a window breaking and then a thud. Holy shit! Someone was in my house. Sonny kept howling. I became spontaneously religious and prayed that Sonny’s howling would scare the burglar away, then grabbed my cell phone and dialed 911.

A lady answered, “911, what’s your emergency?”

I whispered very quietly, “Someone’s in my house, please come. I’m alone, I’m going to die.”

“Ma’am, calm down, where are you?”

“Please trace it. I don’t want to talk. I’m a woman and I’m all alone.”

“Your phone is registered to an office building.”

Shit. Who knew a free cell phone through my father’s office would backfire. Sonny stopped howling and came back to bed.

“It’s quiet now, is he gone?” the dispatcher asked.

“I don’t know. It’s quiet because my dog calmed down. Maybe the guy got away. Can you please come anyway, I’m really scared.”

“Ma’am, where do you live?”

I whispered my address as Sonny curled into a ball and fell back to sleep. Some guard dog.

“Stay on the phone ma’am. Officers are on the way.”

“Okay. Thank you so much. Really, I’m so scared.”

All of a sudden, I saw a light in my window. I cupped the phone and began whispering to the dispatcher again. “They’re back and they’re shining a light in my window. Please come. Please, please, please. Please hurry.”

“Ma’am, relax. That’s the cop flashing his light into your house, he’s walking around your house checking all the doors and windows.”

“Oh. Thanks,” I said, attempting to regain some composure.

The dispatcher said, “It’s okay to hang up the phone and open your door now.”

I got up and stood on wobbly legs, very pleased that I didn’t piss myself, and opened the door.

Two young cops walked in, a man and a woman. Sonny started howling again.

“These are the good guys, Sonny. Chill out.”

The female officer said, “All of the windows and doors in your house are secure. Did an alarm go off?”

“No, I just heard two loud noises.”

“In which room?”

“This one.” I led the cops to my spare bedroom and turned on the lights. The bed frame was broken and the metal shoe rack that hung on the back of my door was on the ground, with about forty pairs of shoes littered around the room. My new theory, now that I was sure I wasn’t burglarized, was that the first sound was my bed breaking and the second, my shoe rack collapsing; possibly because the room shook from the bed breaking.