What the hell is wrong with her?
Lesbian
, some charge.
You'd think people like me would get a pat on the back for possessing the self-awareness not to enter motherhood lightly. But instead, I get pitiful looks, thinly guised as respect.
“To choice,” said Cindy raising her wineglass. Every year or so I get the “I really feel sorry for you so I'm going to toast what I pity to show how comfortable I am with your choice” routine.
The last time I got this was at a client party where a woman, who assured me she “loves being a mother and would never wish my kids weren't born,” told me it was nonetheless “very cool” that I was doing my own thing. Mothers are a funny lot. They preface their complaints by telling you how much they love their kids and couldn't imagine life without them. As if they admit that they're sometimes ambivalent about parenting, the furious hand of God almighty would reach from the sky and yank their children by the necks up to the heavens. Another guy said it was “just great” that I was “willing to go against nature.” Like I was some sort of knight suited in Styrofoam armor jousting at bluebirds.
Most days when I'm thinking straight, I feel very comfortable with my decision not to have children. Of course I sometimes wonder if I'm missing out on something. I wonder if parents are really right and life without a child really is incomplete. Then, honestly, all I need to do is spend a little time with a kid, and I remember my reasons. When I'm with Sophie's five-year-old twins I find them to be delightfulâas long as it's in thrifty little spoonfuls of two hours. Everyone insists that I'd feel differently about my own. I doubt it, but sometimes I still wonder.
I waited for Cindy and Eve to tell me that they sometimes imagined what living my life would be like, but neither did. The wrath of God thing.
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In the morning, the three of us went to breakfast and ordered the two-dollar bacon-and-eggs special before heading over to the Mud Bowl to watch the fraternities and sororities play messy touch football before the big game. When we went to college, Matt's fraternity was one of the houses that participated in the game every year. I loved watching his transformation from clean-cut jock to the Loch Ness monster after he spent several downs in the mud. In either state, he looked beautiful. He started out in his light blue fraternity jersey and gray sweatpants cut off at the knees. The deal-clinchers for me were the backward baseball cap and, don't ask me why, the mouth guard he wore.
I have never matched the level of chemistry I had with Matt. I don't know what it was about him, aside from his athletic good looks and charming sense of humor. Perhaps it was the way he squinted his blue eyes and flashed a cocky smile when he saw me. Maybe it was how he was never totally available to me, but something about Matt penetrated my memory so clearly that my heart raced just knowing I was standing across the street from where he lived fourteen years ago.
I was disappointed to see that Matt's fraternity house now bore different Greek letters. The team wore green shirts with Delta Something Something on the front.
“Nothing like young boys in mud,” said Cindy, creating a visor with her hands. As the teams ran into the mud bowl, the smile dropped from her face. Neither Eve nor I had to ask what the problem was. “Are these? Are these?” Cindy asked, knowing that the combination of alcohol and horror could likely make her sick if she finished the sentence. “Students?” she managed to complete. Eve nodded. “
Here?
Are they students here? They're in college?!” she asked, panicked and nauseated. Eve nodded again, pursing her lips apologetically. “Lord have mercy, I can't watch this,” Cindy said, holding one hand over her eyes.
“What's the problem, Cindy?” I asked. “You were flirting with two little ones at Rick's last night. You just now noticed that we're twice their age?”
She nodded her head, panicked. “I don't know, I don't know. Maybe it's the daylight, but they look so pudgy-cheeked now. Like fucking cherubs or something. Let's get out of here.”
“Here, here,” I seconded. “Eve, let's go. I feel like some sort of pervert ogling little boys.”
Eve insisted we were insane, but left anyway. As we walked away, we heard the sororities begin their house cheers.
“If they look that young to us,” Cindy realized, “we must look . . .”
“Old,” I finished for her.
“Old,” she repeated, not noticing herself clutch the bottom of her hair as if to check that it was still there.
Chapter 3
T
he walk to Michigan stadium was somewhat comforting as we saw clusters of sixty-year-old men wearing maize-and-blue checkered pants, with sweater vests bearing the name of our alma mater. They sat on lawn chairs next to minivans with spare tires covered in blue vinyl jackets with a maize letter M on them. The older the men were, the louder their outfits became. Many wore knit hats with blue pompoms at the top. They grilled bratwurst while equally decked-out wives scooped chili into plastic bowls. The sight of anyone older than us was a welcome one.
Autumn is the most beautiful time of the year in Ann Arbor because hundreds of different types of trees are filled with crisp orange and yellow leaves. Of course, some had fallen to the ground, but most desperately cling to the branches as if they know letting go means their death.
On the grass outside the stadium, three-year-old boys wore mini football uniforms and baby girls sported infant-sized cheerleader outfits. A half dozen young drunken boys came shirtless, each with a blue letter painted on his chest. When unscrambled, they would spell “Go Blue.” As they were, it simply implored, “BeG lou.”
“Beg Lou for what?” tailgaters shouted at the six pack.
You could see they were confused by the question, yet “G” managed to come back with a retort. “Beer!” he shouted. “Who the fuck is Lou?” he muttered to his friends.
As the band finished playing its warm-up music, the football team ran out of the tunnel, and took the field as more than a hundred thousand fans cheered uproariously. There was something about a blank scoreboard that always lifted my spirits. Uniforms were clean. No one had been tackled yet. No yellow penalty flags had been thrown by men in stripes. It was like anything could happen; and we got to watch the whole thing from start to finish.
Late in the first quarter someone started the human wave. An entire section of fans stood, raised its arms, then sat down. Then the next section would do the same. And on and on it went until everyone in the stadium was waiting for their one silly moment to stand and shout “whoaaa,” then sit down again. The stadium was our fountain of youth and we all splashed around gleefully waiting for the wave to come our way.
Right before halftime, I had an odd sense that Matt was somewhere in the stadium. I scanned the section to the left of us, but no sight of him.
This is ridiculous. There are thousands of people here. There's no way you'd see him even if he were here,
I thought.
No, he's here. Keep looking,
said another part of me.
I looked to the section on the right and had two false Matt sightings before giving up.
Look now.
So I did. Two sections over was a guy who was about my age and looked an awful lot like Matt.
There's no way that's him,
Common Sense told me.
It could be. Why is it impossible for him to be here?
The goofy, hopeful Teenage Optimist in me couldn't help wonder.
I squinted to see if it could be him. “Can I borrow your binoculars?” I asked an older man behind me. He handed them to me without a word, and looked surprised when I turned his lenses to the crowd instead of the football field.
I focused on my suspect and tried to decide whether it was him or not. Just the thought that it could be him sent a thrilling nausea through me. You'd think that love-at-first-sight giddiness would lessen over so many years, but my reaction to just the possibility of seeing him showed me that my feelings for him had actually intensified.
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I met Matt during spring break in Fort Lauderdale during our senior year in college. Cindy, Eve and I went with our other friends, Libby and Olivia. Olivia knew a group of guys we saw entering The Bahama, a hotel bar that we found on our first night of vacation. She motioned to the group of them and pointed to the extra seats at our table.
The Miami Sound Machine was blasting “The Conga” as we sipped blended pink drinks with umbrellas. Teens in Hawaiian shirts and island beads overtook the town, shouting pearls of wisdom like “Spring Break!” and “Party!” at the tops of their lungs. A few of them crushed beer cans on their heads and passed out in the gutter.
Cindy and I both spotted Matt among the group at the same time.
“I call the guy with the brown hair in the white shirt,” she informed our table. The policy was that the first person to call a guy was the only one allowed to pursue him. The rationale was that the girl who was most interested would naturally spot him first. A logical assumption that helped create harmony in our overcrowded hotel room. There was one exception to this rule.
“Jump shot,” I said as the guys came closer.
And that was the jump shot. This simply meant that the guy would be a fair toss-up between the two and no matter who he chose, there would be no hard feelings.
“Bitch,” joked Cindy.
“No, my friend.
You
are the bitch if you stand between me and the magnificent specimen of masculinity. Bow out, I beg of you.”
“I'll do no such thing. The genetic possibilities are phenomenal with this man.”
“I hate you,” I said through a cemented smile as the guys began to seat themselves at our table.
“Olivia,” said their ambassador to ours. “These are some of my buddies from school. You've met Andy, Pete, Rich and Matt, right?”
They go to
our
school. Our school! Sweet mother of God, thank you for this miracle!
Matt sat next to me. “Hey,” he said.
I love this man.
“Hey,” I returned, hoping not to vomit on him.
After an hour of drinking, everyone at our table was practically singing “Auld Lang Syne” together as if we'd known each other for a thousand lifetimes. Matt's knee touched mine under the table and both of us declined to move them away. My hair follicles had a pulse beat. My pores opened so wide with terror, I swore you could stick a cork in each one.
“So I didn't catch your name?” Matt said to me.
Maybe not, but I just caught a jump shot.
“Prudence,” I said, trying to match his coolness.
“I'm Matt.”
And I'm in loooovvveee with you!
I managed not to blurt.
“So, you go to Michigan?” he asked.
I nodded for fear of something ridiculous escaping from my lips.
“I wonder why I've never seen you around.”
Perhaps it was the other forty thousand students milling about.
“Well, I'm around now,” I said, amazed at my own ability to flirt.
“You want to go take a walk or something?” he asked.
Definitely the “or something.”
I remember reminding myself to drink in this moment where those gorgeous blue eyes were looking straight at me, and that utterly delicious mouth was forming words that were inviting me to walkâor something. Matt was without a doubt one of the best-looking guys I'd ever laid eyes on, and hands-down the sexiest living creature I'd ever seenâunderwear ads included.
I would walk anywhere and do anything with you,
I thought better of saying.
Cindy watched us both get up from the table as her mental game buzzer sounded that it was all over for her.
“Go get him,” she mouthed and winked. She was a good sport. Plus, three guys had practically set up campsites around her at our table, which was always a great consolation to Cindy.
Matt and I both lay on our backs on the beach and played tic-tac-toe on an imaginary board in the black sky. Very drunk couples stumbled by us, oblivious to Matt and me. I, on the other hand, was aware of every grain of sand under my head, the smell of the ocean air and every voice that passed by us.
“When I get you back to my hotel room I am going to fuck your brains out,” a guy told a girl as he draped his arm around her like a wounded soldier.
“I haven't got any brains left, but you can still fuck me,” she laughed as if this were the funniest thing in the world. Then he chased her and tackled her to the sand.
“I can't wait another second. You are so hot,” said Drunk Guy as the couple laughed and rolled in the sand.
Matt looked at me and smiled as we were both simultaneously embarrassed and titillated by the uninhibited, unbridled sexuality.
“Um, X in the number six spot,” he smirked.
The couple got up and continued chasing each other on the sand until we could not see them anymore. Surely, they each woke up the next morning on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean, shook sand from their underpants and muttered, “Who the hell are you?”
“I already put my O in number six,” I said.
“No you didn't.”
“Yes, I did. You're drunk. You just forgot.”
He sat up quickly. “You are a cheater!”
“Am not!”
“Are too!” he laughed. “You are cheating at tic-tac-toe. Do you know what that makes you?”
Absolutely, totally in love with you?
“What?” I said with a smile that connected in the back of my head.
“Pathetic.”
How could a man calling me pathetic sound sweeter than any sonnet or poem or song I've ever heard in my life?
“Lucky for you, pathetic is exactly what I'm looking for in a girl.”
We both gave each other that pre-kiss smile, then stopped. The tic-tac-toe, the banter of pathetic cheating was all completely irrelevant and we both knew it. It was all leading to this. He leaned down slowly as if to ask if it was okay to kiss me. I smiled and did not stop him. Then for the first time our lips touched each other, and arms enveloped the other's bodies. I had to remind myself not to caress every part of his clothed body, desperate to take in every detail of him. It would seem too needy, I thought. But he was just what I needed.
Now, more so than ever, though I hadn't realized it until that moment at the Michigan homecoming. I looked through the binoculars again. It looked so much like Matt. I wondered if Fate had sacked Common Sense.