Sleepwalking in Daylight

We both laugh and maybe it’s because we both realize it’s been a long time since we laughed together that Bob reaches across for my hand and gives it a squeeze before placing it back at the two-o’clock position on the wheel. Ten and two … he rarely drives with one hand.

I’d thought Dave and Susan Strong would be different. Secretly I’m kind of sick of our group of couple-friends. Except for Lynn and Mike, of course. I feel bad saying this especially because I used to be just like this, but to most, if not all, of the people I know, raising children is the greatest gift in the whole wide world. Leanne. Kerry Kendricks. Sally. If you ask how someone’s doing they’ll answer with something their kid’s just said or done. Nothing about themselves. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of myself and realize I’m just like them. I hate that. Hate. I’m sick of my brain going to mush, of lying in bed wondering what I’ll make for their school lunches the next day. Or whether I need to pick up another case of juice boxes at Costco. I’m sick of car pool. I’m sick of being the devoted mom. I’m tired of shuffling the kids to piano, guitar (Andrew just started weekly lessons), soccer, tutoring. The homework they bring home takes an ungodly amount of time and effort. Now that the time has changed we leave in the dark and we get home in the dark. I’ve tried making good square homemade meals but lately I’ve been throwing in frozen chicken nuggets and heating up canned peas. The kids seem fine with it (Chicken nuggets! Wow! Thanks! only makes me feel guilty for feeding them crap). But there’s not enough time. This is what we all talk about. Everyone I know. This is it. This is what our lives are.

We talk about those women who leave their kids in day care or with nannies while they work full-time. Why have kids? someone will say. And we all nod like it’s so true, it’s so selfish of them.

They’ll regret going back to work when their kids grow up to be delinquents.

Having coffee and pie at a tacky café with sticky plastic tablecloths, someone will mention Dale Harmon who was left alone a lot and ended up accidentally shooting himself with his father’s gun. Someone always mentions Dale Harmon. No one ever let their kids play over at the Harmons’ house because everyone knew Evers, Dale’s father, had guns. So there you go: if his parents hadn’t been working all the time Dale would still be alive. That was the prevailing thought. But I’m not quite sure Dale’s mother, Tally Harmon, was working at the time. I think she might have gone back to work after Dale died. To get out of the house. The Harmons’ house stayed on the market for ten months before they had a buyer from out of town who wasn’t familiar with the family. No one in town wanted to move into a house a child died in. But the thinking was, If Tally had been a good mother she would’ve been there. Once she went back to work no one really saw her anymore. I was convinced that secretly she was relieved to have an excuse to go back to work.

I used to be a pharmaceutical rep. Right out of college I got a job with a company that’d just introduced an antidepressant TIME Magazine called “The Pill That Changed Our Minds.” I was part of a massive hiring and nearly every one of my clients placed huge orders. I was voted sales rep of the month for a straight six months. I didn’t particularly like my job but I loved the money, and my dad would exaggerate to all his friends that I was in line to take over the company. I remember limping home in high heels to Bob and our shitty three-room apartment uptown, off Wilson. I’d soak my feet in Epsom salts at night, talking to Bob from the edge of the tub about how the paycheck was worth it. I ended up hating all the walking and talking and schmoozing and handing out samples or free ballpoint pens with drug names on them. Most of the doctors hit on me and it grossed me out but I couldn’t do anything about it. They were good clients. I ended up quitting just after Bob and I got engaged. It was a pain-in-the-ass kind of job, I thought. Until about a year later, I really didn’t miss it at all.

It was the late ‘80s and every place we went it felt like I was looked down on because I didn’t work and didn’t have kids. We’d go out for beer with Bob’s friends from work and they’d all ask what I did for a living. I’d say something stupid like, “oh, volunteer work and stuff,” but it was a lie. I didn’t volunteer. I sat around our suffocating apartment doing nothing in particular, wondering why I quit selling antidepressants. Wondering if I needed antidepressants. I was relieved to start house hunting. It gave us spark. Purpose. It was fun imagining what our lives would be in this or that house. Then we moved and I threw myself into unpacking. Feathering the nest. I felt—we both felt—grown-up. We’d lie in bed with our new roof over our heads, listening to the unfamiliar sounds of an unfamiliar house. We had so much to talk about back then. We chattered on and on about light fixtures and hardware-store runs and door handles and leaky faucets and catch basins and finished basements and crown molding. I knew where to find the nails at Home Depot (aisle five) and Manuel in the paint department (halfway down aisle seven, to the right) asked how the green was working out in the bedroom. Bob and I came to know which steps were the squeaky ones and we’d politely avoid them if one of us was sleeping.

I started wanting kids because I was bored. I was twenty-eight when we went to our first fertility clinic. The doctor sent us away with a laugh, saying we were young and still had plenty of time to try the natural way.

“You look like it’s a death sentence, Pam,” he said. “You’re newlyweds, for goodness’ sake! That’s all you’re doing anyway, right?”

He took a sip of his coffee and got up to show us the door. I never corrected him on my name.

Then it was 1991. Month after month I held my breath as my period approached. If I missed a day I’d pull another stick out of my economy pack of pregnancy tests. I’d gone through over a dozen by the time we were in front of another doctor asking about shots to stimulate egg follicles. In early 1992, we were talking in vitro. By then it had become a full-time job. Bob was exhausted from the emotional and physical roller coaster but I was focused and determined and a little crazed. Bottoming out every time I saw those telltale stains on my panties. Bob called this time “the door in the floor.” It got worse when people asked when we were going to start a family. No one knows the pain of that question when you’ve just had the ultrasound that shows your third in vitro has failed. By then Bob had checked out. Our fights got louder and meaner and always ended with him storming out and me crying like we were in a country-music video. He started staying away longer and longer and when he rolled back in he’d reek of cigarettes and beer. A double whammy since the doctors all said smoking and drinking decreases sperm count and motility. I’ve always suspected he was trying to sabotage the whole thing even though in the beginning he seemed happy about the idea of us being parents. Back when he’d whisper, I’m gonna make you pregnant right now, in the middle of sex and it would turn us both on. That lasted about two months.

In mid-1992 I gripped the arms on the chair next to Bob’s across from our third fertility doctor who cleared his throat, looked up from my chart and said, “You might want to start considering adoption.”

Cammy

Every once in a while Q-101 has commercial-free weekends and this was one of them and every single song was good. Not just a few—every single one. Ricky and I looked at each other by the time the Plastic Rabbits came on and it was like we were both thinking the same thing at the same time … like, why isn’t there TiVo for radio stations? If there was, we would’ve maxed it out today.

Someone should invent that, he said. Ricky was lying with his head in my lap and it felt all coupley at first but it’s not like he thinks of me that way so it’s totally fine. I used to have a crush on him but whatever, it went away in like five minutes so it’s all good. It’s not weird or anything. I almost never think anything about it. Anyway, the only bad thing about his head in my lap is whichever leg it’s on ends up falling asleep. We watched this group of old couples doing tai chi in the park and Ricky kept calling it ching dong and I laughed so hard Diet Coke came out my nose. And right then is when Missy Delaney walked by. Fucking Missy Delaney. She’s such a bitch and the worst part is no one knows it yet. I feel like I have X-ray glasses on, like night goggles or something. Like I’m the only one who sees her face when their backs turn and her smile goes right into a frown. Not a fade-out but straight to black, like a scary movie and she’s the killer. She has big boobs so all the guys like her of course. Even Ricky. Normally we agree on everything but when it comes to Missy it’s don’t ask don’t tell.

I’m wiping the Diet Coke off my nose on the shoulder of my shirt, so I don’t see the look he always gets when she walks by. He’s all cool and shit and there she is Miss Priss only she’s a total slut. Thank God I didn’t see his face get all red and blotchy like he’s been slimed at Nickelodeon. I can’t take it anymore.

“I heard she got with some Lane Tech guy on Saturday night,” I said.

I kinda feel bad about saying that because even though I did hear it I know it’s probably not true because we saw her with her family when we went for family dinner at Giordano’s. My mom stopped by their table and tried to get me to stop there too but no way. I just went to the table and waited for her to do her little social-butterfly thing.

“Bullshit, she did not,” Ricky said.

Here’s the thing—if it’d been someone he didn’t have a crush on he’d have laughed and agreed with me or he would’ve blown it off or something but he got all pissy so that’s how I know he’s crushing on her. Big-time. Plus, the minute he saw her he sat bolt upright out of my lap like we’d been caught having sex. Whatever. Of course he sticks up for her.

“Why do you even like her? I mean, seriously?” I asked him.

“I don’t like her like her,” he said.

“Yeah, right.”

“I don’t,” he said. “But I don’t hate her like you do so sorry.”

I wonder if he dreams of her sucking him like I do to Will. I wonder if he’d still be friends with me if I told him how last night Will said “go faster” and pushed himself so far into my mouth I gagged. I wonder if Ricky’d call me a bitch like Will did. I wonder if Ricky even knows about me and Will.

So I said, “I just can’t believe you buy into all her shit. Little Miss My Father’s Been on the Cover of Fortune Magazine and Yours Hasn’t. Jesus, like that’s something to be proud of. He’s like Mr. I Own the Universe and I’m Going to Save the Environment.”

“He knows Bono and shit,” Ricky says.

“Everyone knows Bono.”

“I mean he knows him. Like, personally. They’re friends.”

“Yeah, well, big fucking deal.”

“Goddamn you’re a bitch these days,” he says.

“What’re you talking about? I’m exactly the same as I’ve always been.”

“It’s like you’re in this cult with Monica or something. You, like, copy her.”

“Fuck you, I do not!”

“Yeah? Well, you always swore you wouldn’t pierce your nose.”

“That was when we were in, like, fourth grade,” I say. “Besides, you’re the one who’s all hot for Monica.”

“Whatever.”

“You know what I did last night?” I changed the subject. “I took two Benadryls. It was awesome. Seriously. Get the Severe Cough and Flu ones. It says to take one but whatever. Take two.”

“You’re a freak,” he said.

Then he tried to dummy-wrestle with me ‘cause that’s his way of saying sorry and I knew it was only because Missy was way out of sight so there was no danger of her seeing him being all over me. Then it hits me—I’ve got to go to the friggin’ movies with my mom … the last thing I want to do.

About a month ago my mom and I were in the car trapped like rats in a line at the place where they test how much exhaust your car puts out and the line was like a million cars long so there was pretty much nothing to do. Nothing good on the radio and my iPod was out of juice. I had finished my homework in study hall last period because Ricky was out sick ‘cause his parents wanted him to have a day with his grandfather visiting from Phoenix so there was no one to pass notes to and I pretty much had to do my homework because Mrs. Cummings was staring holes into my head. It was the longest day of my life, swear to God.

Anyway, there’s Mom babbling about how when she was young she and her mother would go to the drive-in movies on Sunday nights, just the two of them. I said that was what they did in like the fifties—like all Grease the movie and she said they still had drive-ins in the seventies. Whatever. She’s all we should have a mother-daughter tradition, too and I used to love Sunday nights with my mom. Then she got all quiet like she was going to lose it and I don’t know how it happened but next thing I knew I was saying yeah, sure, and she was off and running like she won the lottery. I feel bad I’m such a bitch and so hard on her—it doesn’t take that much to make her happy if she’s all freaked up about a Sunday-afternoon movie matinee. She looked at me like it was the best idea anyone had ever come up with since the dawn of friggin’ time. She’s all it means so much to me that you’re suggesting it. I didn’t suggest it but she wanted me to think it was my idea so I couldn’t take it back. Whether she knows it or not, she’s always made a show of overloving me, like she’s keeping me from noticing how her love came so naturally with the boys. She’s not so polite with them. She’s careful with me. I’ve always felt this way. It’s like she thinks I’m temporary. The boys can’t up and leave but I can. I’m not her blood. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t feel this way.

All my life I’ve felt them watching me. Like a rat in a lab experiment. They threw me into their mix of DNA and they’re curious about nature and nurture. We’re talking about that in school now. Nature versus nurture. They’d never in a million years admit it but they treat me differently. I’ve always felt no matter how hard they hug me, when the boys came along they hugged them closer. Their hugs lasted longer with the boys. Like they were relieved. Like they were thinking: phew—for a second there it looked like Cammy was the best we could do.

Out of nowhere, this morning I wanted to tell my mom how pretty she is. She’s so pretty it almost hurts to look at her. She never really wears makeup. She doesn’t need it. She’s naturally pretty. I really wish I looked like her. She must look at me and wonder what she would’ve gotten if she’d had her own daughter.

Samantha

The first time we heard Cammy’s voice she was screaming mo peas over and over, crying so hard she was practically choking. The social worker told us it meant “more please” and wasn’t it great, she yelled over Cammy’s two-year-old voice, wasn’t it terrific she already had manners. She says thank-you, too, the lady told us.

Cammy’s foster mother was bobbing her up and down, wrenching her bottle away so we could get a better look at her face. The more she pulled at the bottle, the harder Cammy cried. Isn’t she beautiful, she yelled over her. Here, now come on, Cammy, let them see those beautiful eyes of yours, she said. She was being patient because we were in the room. No telling what she’d be like alone with Cammy. It was all I could do to keep from grabbing the toddler, but I didn’t want to look crazed. Like a baby-stealer. On our way out of that third fertility clinic I was so hysterical Bob said I was one step away from walking into a hospital and stealing a baby.

“What’s in that bottle?” Bob asked.

I hadn’t noticed it was brown but the crying was so loud I couldn’t think of anything other than please just hand her over to me. For the love of God let me hold her. I’d read all the What to Expect in the Toddler Years books, but somehow it didn’t register that Cammy was still on a bottle. She was already underweight for her age so it was easy to forget this was a two-year-old who should probably be on solid food.

“It’s Coke,” the foster mother said. “Don’t give her the diet kind. She only takes the regular Coke.”