Tart (23 page)

M
ay Day, Em gets impatient and decides to have Baby Rock Star nine days before it's due. Well, to be fair, I guess Baby Rock Star does the deciding. My mother calls me in a panic and insists I meet them at the hospital in Mill Valley as soon as I can. It's a Saturday, and all I had planned was an afternoon matinee at the Nickelodeon with Rose and Tim, so I readily agree. I'm excited both by the prospect of seeing Em in excruciating pain and by the novel idea that my mother, the great Mira Ravenwing, needs me.

But when I get there and hurry into the birthing room, guided by a mousy nurse and the sound of Emily's shrieking, my desire to see her in pain instantly evaporates. She looks so young and vulnerable in her little paper gown, with her sweaty hair plastered to her forehead and her feet clamped into those medieval stirrups. I feel a tremor of anxiety when I spot my mother hovering at her side, looking pale and sweaty herself, shouting, “You're okay, just breathe.”

The rest of the evening is a blur. At one point, the baby's heart slows down on the monitor, and I have to pull my
mother away, shove her into the corner with a Dixie cup of water and mumble trite, soothing things while the doctors and nurses rush around in a quiet, efficient panic. Pretty quickly, though, they get the heart rate back up and the C-section crew disappears.

Amazingly, Emily goes completely au natural from beginning to end. I'd be screaming licentious threats at anyone with the power to knock me out then and there. But little Em is a lot tougher than I could have guessed.

What can you say about watching one human being give birth to another? It lasts for hours—so much longer than I ever thought possible—and it's the most barbaric, beautiful thing I've witnessed in my life. Nothing in movies or books or baby shower anecdotes prepares me for it. Emily is alternately a little, whimpering girl and a powerful, raging beast. She's so caught up in the struggle, nobody else exists in the world, and we have to call out instructions as if she's very far away. Outside the din of her own thundering pain, though, beyond the chaos of the nurses and the monitors and our feeble encouragements, I can see this strange, determined peace in her face, something that can't be touched by anything around her.

Molly May Snyder is born at 9:20 p.m.; she's an ugly, primordial little shriveled-up thing and at the same time she's exquisite. Her toes are like pink, barely unfurled fiddleheads, and her head smells so sweet I want to press my face against it for hours, hording that strange, intoxicating scent like a fiend sniffing glue. In a word, she's mesmerizing.

When an exhausted Emily holds the tiny, wailing Molly in her arms, both of them damp and still glistening, I find it hard to speak.

“You,” Emily says, touching her baby's nose with one finger, and just like that both Mira and I are crying uncontrollably. It's moving in a way that transcends even art; standing so close to something so ancient and powerful humbles even cynical me and my jaded, maternally disinclined mother.

 

The next day around noon, when Emily and Molly are both sleeping, my mother and I drive to a Mill Valley café and try coming back to the earth plane. Our ticket back: double lattes and huge, beautiful salads heaped high with avocado, roasted chicken and sunflower seeds. For a while we don't say anything, we just dig into the mound of greens in busy silence, chewing with great zeal. Eventually, when my hunger's not so fierce anymore, I sit back in my chair, nursing my latte and looking around at the Mill Valley fashion show; understated, impeccably tasteful women in linen and cashmere tote around men they obviously dressed themselves in manly earth tones and expensive sandals. Normally it would all seem nauseatingly bourgeois, but today I'm filled with an unexpected generosity toward the human race.

I watch a pretty brunette in red pedal pushers and a white tank top wipe a crumb from her lover's mouth; I think of Clay, and for the first time in a month, I don't feel sick with jealousy. Instead, I just miss him, and wish violently that I could sit with him right now, study his eyes, reach across a table and touch his mouth.

“You okay?” Mira asks.

This is highly unusual—my mother rarely inquires about how I am, and I'm so shocked I don't take full advantage. I just shrug and mumble, “Fine. You?”

“Sure.”

“So, what's the story with Molly's father?” I ask. “Is he going to be involved?”

Mira shakes her head. “No. Em says she didn't want him in the picture.”

“Really?” This surprises me. I never would have pegged Emily, with her platform shoes and her sexy little hip-huggers, as the do-it-yourself single-mom type. Then I remember that deeply calm look on her face between the contractions—maybe I've just got her all wrong.

“She says he's a crackhead, and she doesn't want her baby growing up around that.”

“What do you think?” I ask.

“I support her decision. Who needs some high-rolling druggie for a dad? Molly will be better off without him. Besides, Em is so young and pretty—she'll find someone when she's ready. In the meantime, Gary's lawyer has ensured she'll get more than enough child support.”

There's something weird about Mira today. Her eyes are glassy and distant. I can understand, in a way; ever since yesterday, I've been feeling like I'm under the influence of a powerful hallucinogen. My theory is that contact with birth jolts you out of pedestrian mode for a while, into the realm of acid trips. But what I sense from Mira isn't just a disconnection from gravity. I get the feeling there's something she wants to tell me; it's on the tip of her tongue every time there's a lull in the conversation, only she keeps changing her mind and opting for banal small talk, or silence.

“What was it like when you had me?” I ask, beating her to the punch this time with a silence-breaker of my own. I never ask her stuff like this; I guess I'm still altered. After you see someone grunting and sweating a new life into existence, discussing the merits of buying versus renting is just too jarring.

I'm not prepared for the look she gives me. Her jaw is clenched as if she's furious, but her brown eyes mist over instantly.

“That bad, huh?” I say, trying to make my tone light.

She stares at the ruins of her salad and says in a sorrowful, thick voice, “I can't talk about this right now.”

A tiny shoot of niggling anger springs up in the pit of my stomach, then grows and unfurls, until I'm sitting there in the silence she's resumed, studying her pained face, thinking, “Why was it so terrible being my mom? What did I do to make you regret that day so bitterly?”

I don't even realize I've said anything aloud until I see the
shock on her face and hear her stammer, “Claudia—it's not like that.”

But I'm off and running now, since the unspeakable has been said. I hear my own voice pressing on with a force and determination that can only be attributed to the latte hitting my system. “You just left when I was thirteen.
Thirteen.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to be swimming in hormones and have your mom decide she's no longer Mom, she's Mira Ravenwing? Do you know how it hurt when you said you'd never been happier? You were so busy unblocking your chakras, marrying every Tom, Dick and Harry, you barely even noticed that
you left me.
” Without any consent from me, my face crumples into tears—not silent, pretty tears, but full-on hyperventilating sobs. The coiffed Mill Valley crowd is politely trying to absorb themselves in their meals, but a few of the less refined ones gawk. I hear a toddler say loudly, “Mommy, why is that lady crying?”

“Listen, I do know,” Mira says. “I probably seemed oblivious, but I do realize that I hurt you. I just—I had to do some things for myself. It's so complicated, Claudia.”

“It's not that complicated. You hated being a mom. I just wonder why you even had me.” I brush the sunflower seeds off my napkin and use it to mop up my tears, which are thankfully no longer making me gasp for breath.

“I didn't—” She stops herself.

“You didn't
what?
” I ask coldly.

She hesitates. “I didn't know what was involved. But I didn't
hate
it. Just—as it turns out—I was never that good at it.”

“Then why are you so devoted to Emily? If you're so bad at being a mom, why take it up now?”

“Em is…” She hesitates again.

“Oh, I see. Em is different. You didn't hate being a mom. You hated being
my
mom.”

She looks so helpless there, opening and closing her mouth in mute, listless protest. A fresh round of sobs rises
from within me and I dart toward the door in a panic. Just as I'm making my escape, I hear from somewhere behind me, “But
why
is she so mad, Mommy?”

 

Why
am
I so mad? The entire drive home, I grip the steering wheel so tightly, my knuckles look ready to burst through the skin. When I hit traffic just before the Golden Gate Bridge, I lay on my horn and yell obscenities at my fellow Sunday drivers; their puzzled, California-mellow expressions only enrage me more. When I learn it's an accident holding us up, I curse the inconsiderate motorist who had the poor taste to flirt with death right in the middle of my route home. Tonight of all nights.

I get to Santa Cruz and drive straight to Clay's house. It's like moving in a dream. My rage has made me untouchable, incandescent. I slam my car door and kick at a piece of newspaper that wraps itself around my ankle in the wild May wind. Goddamn stupid fucking newspaper. I stomp down the garden path and up the stairs to the garage apartment he's rented. Then I bang on the door with furious, balled-up fists. Clay answers in a pair of board shorts and a ragged hoodie. I want to scream at him for being so juvenile and beautiful.

“Just what do you think you're doing?” I spit at him, my fists clenched.

“Claudia—”

“Why would you fuck with me like that?”

“What are you talking about? You're the one who broke up with me.”

“Ha!” I force the syllable out, but it's more like a karate chop than a laugh. “You never gave a shit about me. Why bother to keep up the pretense? You think I'd just fall for it, like your stupid little teenybopper girlfriend?”

At this, Clay looks utterly mystified; he literally scratches his head. “Teenybopper? What are you…?”

“Ohh,” I growl. “Lies, lies, more lies. When is anyone
ever
going to be honest with me? Huh? Is that so much to ask? First my mother, who doesn't even
like
me, let alone love me, and now you.” For the third time in the last twenty-four hours, my words dissolve into a series of hiccupping sobs. Even in my fury, it's mortifying for Clay to see me like this, gasping for breath and wiggie-haired, splotchy face convulsing. Jesus, why did I come here?

But now he's folding me into his arms—love those arms—and he's lifting my face to his and kissing my tears. A part of me still wants to spit and hiss like an indignant cat, but now that his lips are branding hot little scars on my cheeks, I find I'm immobile. When his mouth finds mine I moan a little under my breath at the taste of him. His hands pull gently, then harder at my hair, tilting my head until my neck is exposed. I can feel the edge of his teeth as he kisses my neck. My whole body throbs in response, and when he pushes me against the wall of the entryway, pressing himself forcefully against me, I can feel the outline of his cock against the fly of my jeans.

“I missed you,” he sighs. “I've been missing you so much.”

“I miss you, too.”

“Come inside,” he says, looking into my eyes and smoothing my hair from my face. “We need to talk.”

Though he says it in a tone of tenderness and, under that, innuendo, those words make my mouth dry with fear. I see Jonathan sucking at one of his hand-rolled cigarettes, pale and wan with nerves. I'm standing on the balcony; behind me, two stories down, is Rain waiting in a taxi. Even her shadow is luminous. “Come inside,” he'd said, his voice cold and resigned. “We need to talk.”

I pry myself out of Clay's arms, the light of my fury burning white-hot again, more searing and explosive than ever now that the gasoline of lust has been added. “You…” I say, my eyes narrowing into slits.

“Claudia, get a grip. What's going on?”

“You,” I repeat, this time forty decibels louder. “Fucking child molester!”

“Is this what happens with you?” He's yelling now, too, rearing up to meet my tantrum halfway. “Everything's great—everything's fantastic—then one day you wake up, decide your man's a perv, steal his rig and drive cross-country?”

“You were never my man, okay? And you are a perv, and I'm nobody's little Lolita substitute. You got that? Not now, not ever.”

He folds his arms. “Fine.” He spins away from me and kicks the wall so hard I suspect his toe is not recovering well. “You've got a royally fucked-up way of letting a guy off the hook.”

“Yeah? Well, you're off. No obligations here.”

“Fine,” he says, tears glistening in his eyes. He turns, stalks into his apartment and slams the door.

“Fine!” I yell, just as it bangs shut, and start to stomp back down the steps.

When I'm halfway to my car, he opens the door again and yells at my back, “I just want you to know, Claudia, I have no idea what any of this is supposed to be about.”

“Yeah, right,” I scream over my shoulder.

“And you need help. Serious psychological help.”

I want to douse his smug little motorcycle with gasoline and light a match as it mocks me from the driveway. Instead, I fold myself into my car, clinging to the paltry vestiges of dignity I'm left with, and start the motor with a shaking hand. I can't resist the wild-animal instinct to make noise, though—the last noise in this last exchange with Clay Parker. I pull away from the curb in a mad rev and try to peel out, but the effect is more like a lurching teen with a learner's permit trying desperately not to stall.