What Came First (5 page)

“How’s your son, Mrs. Ghazarian?” Pammy says in the examining room closest to me. “He’s in, what, fifth grade now?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Still playing soccer?”

“Aah-ih-all.”

“He is?”

“Uh-uh. Aah-ih-all.”

“Baseball?”

The mouth vacuum whirs for a while. Mrs. Ghazarian speaks. “Basketball.”

“Oh. Right.”

Pammy goes back to picking at Mrs. Ghazarian’s teeth. “Why did he quit soccer?”

Since it’s nobody’s birthday and not the last Thursday of the month (also known as Pizza Day), Pammy, Melva, and I have lunch without Dr. Sanchez, who usually runs some errands and then eats a sandwich at his desk, which is covered with pictures of his kids and his dead wife. Since we’re paying for ourselves (and Pammy needs toilet paper), we eat at Target, where it doesn’t matter that we look dumpy in our scrubs. Well, Melva and I look dumpy, anyway. And according to more than one patient, we look like sisters. I don’t see it. Melva is Filipina. I’m half white, half Mexican. But we both have curly black hair and plenty of curves, so I guess that’s kind of sister-ish. Red-haired Pammy is superskinny. No boobs. No butt. Her scrubs are so short that her white gym socks show above her pink Crocs.

“You want to talk about it?” Pammy asks me.

“Of course she wants to talk about it,” Melva says. “Right?”

“I dunno.” I take the bun and a couple of iceberg lettuce leaves off my grilled chicken sandwich, rip open a package of mayonnaise, pile on the fat.

“You should talk about it,” Pammy says. She wears a simple gold band on her left hand.

I put the lettuce and bun back on the sandwich.

“There’s not much to tell. Eric said he loves me.” (Had he said that? I couldn’t remember, but he must have.) “And he doesn’t want to break up. But he doesn’t want children. So I guess—that’s it.” My voice cracks. I put down the sandwich. I can’t eat.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Melva says. “That’s what all guys say. They’re all about freedom and getting drunk with the boys and shit. But then the minute they become dads, it’s like, ohmigod, this is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

She pauses for a moment. “I never told you guys this before, but me and Brent got married because I was pregnant.”

She’s already told us this, like, three times before, but Pammy and I look all shocked because that’s the reaction Melva wants. Last time we just nodded and she was all, “You act like it’s no big deal!”

“That must have been really hard for you, Mel,” Pammy says.

I squeeze her hand.

“It was hard,” Melva says. “But look at me and Brent now! Having our third kid.” She pats her tummy. “And we have a house and everything.”

Pammy puts down her plastic soup spoon and leans toward me. “What if you had, you know. An accident.” Pammy has been married for over twenty years to a high school science teacher named Dave, but they don’t have any kids.

“I can’t do that. It’s not honest.” It’s not like I’ve never considered “forgetting” to take my birth control pills. But it would be asking for trouble. And it would be wrong.

“Screw honesty,” Melva says, her mouth full of grilled cheese.

There’s something that’s been bugging me since last night—actually, it’s bugged me for as long as Eric and I have been together.

“You know what really makes me crazy? Eric had this girlfriend before me. Paige.”

I try to say her name without sneering, but I can’t. Paige was a vegetarian, like Eric. Paige did yoga. Paige was getting her master’s in child psychology. When Paige stopped by Eric’s apartment one day, a couple of months after we’d started going out, I answered the door and she said, “Oh. Are you Eric’s new housekeeper?”

“They went out for like two years, maybe longer,” I say. “And Paige had a kid, a daughter, four years old. And Eric was
fine
with it. When I asked if that’s why they broke up, he was like, no, I liked Ophelia. He even told her he would’ve broken up with Paige sooner because she cheated on him, but he gave her a second chance because he felt so sad about losing Ophelia.”

Pammy stops drinking her Diet Coke. “She named her kid Ophelia?”

“Holy shit,” Melva says between chews.

“So he’d be fine with a kid if it wasn’t his?” Pammy says.

I nod and take a bite of my sandwich. It’s not great, but not terrible. Kind of like my life, these days.

“That’s fucked,” Melva says.

I say, “At one point last night, I was actually thinking, What if Eric and I broke up and I went out with some other guy? And I got pregnant? And then I went back to Eric and was like, ‘This baby is all my responsibility, but I want to be with you
.
’”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Pammy says.

Melva agrees. “The other guy could be a psycho. Or Eric might not take you back.”

“At least I’d still have a baby. I’m getting older. I can’t wait forever.”

Something crosses Pammy’s face. “That’s true.”

“Maybe if the guy was really hot . . .” Melva says.

“You could use a sperm bank,” Pammy says. “Pick whatever kind of guy you want, no strings attached.”

Melva and I stare at her, and then Melva starts laughing. “Oh my God. You should! Why settle for Eric when you can pick some hot guy out of a catalog?”

“What’s wrong with Eric?”

“Nothing,” Pammy says.

“He’s kind of short,” Melva says. “And pale. And his nose . . .”

“What’s wrong with his nose?”

“It’s kind of big, don’t you think?”

“I like Eric’s nose.”

“Maybe a sperm bank isn’t a good idea,” Pammy says.

“It’s a great idea,” Melva counters. “Plus, some of those places? I’ve heard they’ve got guys who look like celebrities. So it’s kinda like you’re having George Clooney’s baby or whatever. Though personally, I’ve never been into Clooney. I think I’d pick someone different. Like the Rock, maybe.”

Pammy wrinkles her nose. “Not so great if you have a girl. Clooney’s safer. Or Johnny Depp.”

I say, “Eric’s really smart. He went to college.” I turn to Pammy. “Do you think his nose is big?”

“I’ve never even noticed Eric’s nose,” Pammy says. “I just think you don’t want to wait too long deciding whether or not to get pregnant.”

Melva and I wait for her to continue, to talk about herself and why she never had children. But she goes back to sipping soup with a plastic spoon, and we let it drop.

“The guy from
Twilight,
” I say. “Not the vampire. The other guy.”

“Huh?”

“That’s who I’d pick.”

Back when I was trying to get pregnant, so many people said so many unintentionally offensive things that it’s hard to pick the line that stung the most.

There was the religious camp. “This is all part of God’s master plan.”

There were the fatalists. “If you’re meant to get pregnant, you’ll get pregnant.”

And then there were those who believed that a little red wine and a back massage could solve anything. “Maybe you just need to relax.”

But I’ll never forget the mantra repeated most often, courtesy of my next-door neighbor and then-closest-friend, Sherry Plant. “Motherhood is not a Baby Gap ad.”

What did she know? Pregnancy had come easy to Sherry. She dropped eggs on a monthly basis, while her Cro-Magnon husband, Lane, spewed speedy and abundant sperm. Maybe she was trying to make me feel better, telling me, in her obnoxious way, that having kids was hard, that my life might be nicer without them. But it didn’t feel that way. It felt like she was holding her fertility over me
.

From the beginning, ours was a friendship of convenience. Darren and I were pushing thirty when we traded in Chicago’s subzero weather and two dead-end jobs (his with a small engineering firm, mine in Northwestern’s academic records department) for a new life in Arizona. A large aerospace firm offered him a 50 percent pay raise, potential for advancement, and a cubicle with a view. We could finally afford to buy a home (with a pool, no less!) and get serious about starting a family. Getting away from my pain-in-theass mother-in-law, who still displayed pictures of Darren and his high school girlfriend at their senior prom, was just a bonus.

Sherry and I hit it off right away, though in retrospect I was so lost and lonely that I would have liked anyone. She told me where to get my oil changed, where to find used furniture, where to get my hair cut (a poor recommendation: I looked like a poodle). She sent me to her dentist, her ophthalmologist, and her obstetrician—who would later pass me on to a fertility specialist, but I didn’t know that then.

About once a month, Darren and I would have dinner with Sherry, Lane, and their daughters. Nothing fancy: chili or barbecue or pasta. Lane would drink too much, Sherry would yell at her kids, and Darren would shoot me looks that said,
Can we go now?
He even gave me those looks when we were in our own house, which made no sense at all. At first I accused Darren of being antisocial (which he is). Later, after I’d tearfully confessed to Sherry that fertility problems were straining our marriage, only to have her tell me that motherhood wasn’t a Baby Gap ad, I began making excuses for why we couldn’t get together.

Baby Gap. Please. Weird thing was, I never even saw Sherry’s daughters, Ashlyn and Brianne, in anything that even remotely resembled Gap clothes. Ashlyn, the younger one, liked sparkly things: rhinestone-studded jeans, sequined tops, glitter sneakers. If she didn’t get her shiny clothes, she’d whine. Come to think of it, she’d whine even if she did get them.

My children would never be like that.

At last, after a long wait and some serious medical intervention, it happened: the miracle of life. My nausea was mild, my weight gain extreme. I didn’t mind. By the time I was six months pregnant, the babies were so restless you could see my belly moving through my maternity clothes.

“Look!” I told Darren. “Our babies are dancing!” I put extra emphasis on the
our
.

He forced a smile that bordered on polite.

I grabbed Darren’s hand and placed it on my churning belly. Immediately, one of the twins kicked him, straight on the palm. Darren yanked his hand away as if he’d been burned.

“Maybe he’ll be a soccer player,” I said, wishing Darren would put his hand back on my belly, even as I knew he wouldn’t.

“Maybe.”

Sherry Plant kept her distance during the pregnancy. When Harrison and Sydney were born (five weeks early but healthy), Sherry gave them two little outfits . . . from the Children’s Place. She didn’t mention Baby Gap once after I’d finally conceived. I wrote her a hurried thank-you note, which I slipped in her mailbox. By then, our friendship had completely run its course.

Forget about Sherry. Forget about Baby Gap. Almost immediately, it became clear that the twins hadn’t been dancing in utero. They’d been fighting like two pit bulls confined to a very small pen. As infants, they couldn’t bear to be cuddled—yet they’d scream if I put them down. Laid on their backs, they’d kick and claw at the air, their delicate features twisted with red fury. They treated baths as near drownings, diaper changes as attempted disembowelments.

I consoled myself with the pediatrician’s colic diagnosis. It wasn’t anything I had or hadn’t done. It was just a stage. It would pass.

When the twins turned one, they began to hit—first just me and each other, though later they’d whale on pretty much anyone. The tantrums kicked in at one and a half, the biting at two. By the time she was three, Sydney could scream so long and so loud that she’d make herself vomit. Harrison would merely black out—terrifying, yes, but not nearly so repulsive.

It hasn’t gotten any better. I’m starting to lose hope that it ever will. Within a month of starting kindergarten, the twins’ teacher called in a school psychologist to assess their behavior. She said she “didn’t want to put a label” on them—especially since the obvious label, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, had been more or less ruled out the year before. The psychologist said that although Sydney and Harrison clearly displayed “antisocial tendencies” (which sounded like a label to me), we should take comfort in the fact that they had never killed or tortured any animals. Which is kind of like saying that my family should take comfort in the fact that I had never set fire to our house, but whatever. Bottom line, she said there were probably genetic factors at work, but “maybe they’ll grow out of it.”

Until then, I deal with their behavior in the only way I know how: by throwing my own tantrums, screaming, crying, locking myself in my room—and, yes, spending one evening a week wielding wine and glue sticks. But in spite of everything, I love my children with a fierceness I never knew I possessed. My heart lifts every time they draw me a picture and breaks each time they are excluded from a classmate’s birthday party.

I don’t know what Darren feels for the kids. Or for me. He tiptoes around the three of us like a castaway stranded among savages. Harrison and Sydney look nothing like him. They have my coloring—dark brown hair and eyes—but their faces are all their own, their eyes deep-set, their chins dimpled.

Now that they are halfway through kindergarten, the school psychologist doesn’t know what to do with them. Their teacher has suggested private school. When I come to the classroom at the end of each day, the other parents refuse to meet my eyes.

Congratulations, Sherry Plant. You were right. My life most definitely does not resemble a Baby Gap ad.