Kiss Mommy Goodbye Page 9

  A woman in one of the other labor rooms let out a piercing, agonizing cry, followed by an enviable string of four-letter words. “My sentiments exactly,” Donna said. “Look, I’ve given it my best shot, but I’ve had enough. It’s your turn. I’m going home.” Donna tried to pull herself off the bed.

  “Donna, for God’s sake—”

  “Call me when it’s over,” she said, disconnecting the machine.

  “Donna, please—” Victor urged helplessly.

  “Call me a taxi, Victor.”

  Victor called the nurses.

  “Spoilsport,” she said.

  Two hours later she was delirious.

  “Twentieth-Century Fox!” she exclaimed.

  “I beg your pardon?” Victor said.

  “Dr. Harris asked me a question,” Donna said impatiently. Dr. Harris had by this time joined them and was sitting at the foot of her bed. “He asked me what movie studio made The Seven Year Itch and I told him.”

  “Jesus.”

  “That’s my line.” Suddenly she was crying. “Victor, please, could they give me a shot of something?” She knew he had hoped she could do without any drugs.

  “Sure,” he responded immediately. “Dr. Harris?”

  Dr. Harris administered a shot of demerol, which Donna was disappointed to discover did nothing to ease the ever intensifying pain of the contractions. It only made her groggy.

  “I don’t think the baby’s going to drop anymore,” she heard Dr. Harris say from afar. “We better operate. We’ve waited long enough.”

  After that everything happened very quickly. She was wheeled into the operating room and placed on the table. The I.V. unit to which she had been hooked up since she entered the hospital stayed right with her, as did Victor, two lifelines of support. They told her to lie on her side in a fetal position and not to move—not an easy request when one is into hard labor, she realized—and she was given two more shots, the first one a local anesthetic to relieve the subsequent pain of the second one, the epidural, which was to then take away any feeling altogether. She grimaced and gasped loudly as she felt the fluid from the epidural shooting through her spine. It felt as if she were being pounded all along her back with a hammer. Trish, their darling prenatal instructor, had neglected to mention the pain that accompanied an epidural. She had spoken only of the glorifying numbness. The nurse put an oxygen mask over Donna’s nose and she felt herself being strapped down and a green sheet being placed in front of her so that the actual operation would be hidden from her sight. Victor was given a seat beside her head. He held her hand and talked to her reassuringly.

  “I can feel that,” she said suddenly, aware that her flesh was being tampered with though she couldn’t tell just how. “I can’t breathe.”

  The anesthetist assured her that she was breathing just fine.

  “My nose is all stuffed.”

  “That’s a natural reaction,” he told her, then went on to explain why. She didn’t hear a thing he was saying. All she heard was the delicious sound of a healthy nine pound five ounce baby boy crying loudly as he was pulled from her stomach and lifted above the sheet so that they could see him.

  “Hello, Adam,” she said, feeling the tears fill her eyes.

  “He’s a little tank,” Victor said with unmistakable pride.

  “It was all those butter tarts you told me not to eat.”

  He laughed. “I love you,” he said.

  She smiled into his tearing eyes. “I love you too,” she said, feeling a little like the couple in the movie on natural childbirth they had seen at their class. (“Saying I love you at a time like that is so cliché,” they had told each other at its heartwarming conclusion.) And yet it was all she really wanted to say. “I love you,” she repeated, “I love you.”

  Adam cried for the next three months. He cried before feedings, after feedings, between feedings, all day and all night. Donna worried that she didn’t have enough milk; the doctor assured her Adam was putting on weight; Victor told her to persevere. Donna worried that maybe she should put Adam on a bottle. Dr. Wellington, her pediatrician, told her to do whatever made her the most comfortable; Victor told her to persevere.

  Adam cried when he was put in his crib; he cried when he was lifted out. He cried when he was rocked and when he was carried. He cried in the car and in his carriage. His little face turned red and his fists turned white. Sometimes by the time Victor came home from work, Donna’s face was as white as Adam’s hands and her eyes as red as his face. Both would be crying.

  “You’re not holding him right or something,” Victor said.

  “Then you hold him,” Donna stated quickly in return, putting the shrieking infant into Victor’s arms. Adam screamed harder.

  “I wouldn’t have done that,” Victor said. “You’ve just disturbed him worse.” Victor shifted the baby into another position.

  Adam stopped crying. Victor smiled, trying not to look too smug. “There, I told you it’s all in the way you hold him.”

  Adam started screaming again. Donna smiled in spite of herself. Good boy, she found herself thinking.

  “I told you you shouldn’t have moved him,” Victor said angrily, putting the baby back into Donna’s arms. “Is it time to feed him?”

  “I just fed him an hour ago. And two hours before that.”

  “Maybe you’re feeding him too much,” Victor suggested.

  “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “Have you changed his diaper?” he persisted.

  “It doesn’t bother babies to be wet.”

  “That’s not what I asked you.”

  “I changed it an hour ago, after I fed him and he pooped all over me.”

  “Change him again. He’s probably uncomfortable.”

  “Why don’t you change him?”

  Victor looked sheepish. “He’s too little for me to change, Donna. I’ll do it when he’s older.”

  “Sure.”

  “Oh, please don’t start in on me. I’ve had a hard enough day without getting a hard time from you when I get home.”

  Donna changed Adam’s diaper. It was perfectly dry. Adam kept screaming.

  At two in the morning, Donna fed him again. At three he was still screaming. Donna walked into the bedroom.

  “It’s your turn,” she said to Victor, who was pretending sleep.

  “You want me to feed him?” he demanded angrily. “Tell me how and I will.”

  “Is this why you were so anxious that I breastfeed?”

  “Goodnight, Donna,” he said, turning on his side and facing away from her. “The baby’s crying.”

  “Then go hold him. I’ve already held him and I just finished feeding him. You can walk him around for a while.”

  “Donna, I have work tomorrow!”

  “What do you think that I do? Sleep all day? With that racket! I have to listen to it all day, too.”

  “Get Mrs. Adilman to come in. She said she’d love to.”

  “I have. But she’s not exactly a spring chicken. There’s only so much she can take.”

  “Meanwhile the baby’s still crying.”

  “He’s your son, too,” Donna said in a tone which told Victor there would be no further discussion. She crawled into bed. Victor angrily stalked out.

  Three hours later, Adam was still screaming; Victor had not come back. Donna walked into Adam’s bright yellow and white nursery. Adam was screaming in his crib; Victor was asleep beside the crib on the floor.

  The first time that Adam stopped crying and actually slept through the night, Donna was convinced he was dead. Mrs. Adilman peered in through the kitchen window at Donna, who sat at the white round kitchen table slowly savoring her morning cup of coffee. She indicated to Mrs. Adilman that she was welcome to come in.

  “Victor went to work early?” Mrs. Adilman asked. It was just eight A.M.

  “He had to go to Sarasota for a couple of days. Business.”

  “And the baby? Sleeping?” she asked, incredulou
sly.

  Donna put down her cup of coffee. “I think he’s dead. I’m too afraid to look.”

  Mrs. Adilman looked stunned. “What?”

  “He was crying when I went to bed, but he must have stopped sometime in the night when I was asleep. I woke up about half an hour ago. The house is so quiet I can’t believe it.”

  “You haven’t checked him?”

  Donna looked Mrs. Adilman right in the eye. “I know this is probably going to sound awful,” she began, “but I really felt like a cup of coffee this morning, and I knew that if I went in there and he was dead, then I’d never get my cup of coffee, and there’d be nothing I could do anyway so I might as well have my cup of coffee first and then look.”

  Mrs. Adilman stared at her with total disbelief. Victor couldn’t have done it any better himself. He had probably called her from Sarasota and asked her to come over.

  They checked the baby together. He was sound asleep.

  Donna went back into the kitchen and poured herself a second cup of coffee.

  EIGHT

  Donna started making lists. Every morning when she woke up, she made herself a list of the things she had to do that day. Now that she was no longer working and Adam had adjusted comfortably to life in the southern United States, she had much more free time. Time to do the laundry, clean the house, pick up clothes at the cleaners, go grocery shopping (for which she had prepared a separate list), go to the dentist, the doctor, the bank, the hardware store, organize small dinner parties, run some necessary errands for Victor and, of course, be there to feed Adam, who since the night he’d stopped crying had miraculously put himself on a three-feedings a day schedule and given Donna even more time to tend to the things on her various lists.

  One day, she made two lists: the things she had to do and the things she hated to do.

  She hated:

  housework

  cleaning

  taking the dishes out of the automatic dishwasher and putting them away

  doing the bills

  calling the people whom Victor instructed her to complain to about various malfunctions around the house

  “Search for Tomorrow”

  her hair

  her clothes

  the way she looked

  her body, still not back in shape

  exercising

  (Items 6 through 10 she realized, were not things she hated to do, but since they were things she hated and it was, after all, her list, she decided to write them down anyway.)

  Donna made a list of the things that Victor said to her each morning. At the end of each week, she made a separate list of her daily favorites:

  Your mascara’s all over your face. Did you forget to wash it off last night?

  You snored again. That’s a nasty habit you picked up while you were pregnant.

  You feel all right? You don’t look so hot.

  What’s the matter? Are you in a bad mood?

  Should you be giving him that much pablum?

  I think you’re wrong.

  No, I don’t have time for breakfast. If you’d get me out of bed on time—

  Did you burp him properly? I didn’t hear him burp. Are you sure?

  Don’t scratch your hands. That’s why you got the rash in the first place. Honestly, Donna, you’re worse than the baby.

  I don’t always criticize you, for God’s sake. Are you starting again so early in the morning?

  No, go ahead. Finish what you have to say. Make me late.

  What did you do with my keys?

  You threw out that envelope I asked you to save! Oh, no, here it is.

  I wouldn’t dress him that warmly. No, you’re the mother. You do it the way you want. You know best, I just don’t think he needs to be, well, no, you decide.

  Do you have anything to do today?

  I don’t know, Donna, I think eight for dinner is more than you can handle.

  Why aren’t you eating a bran muffin? I told you I wanted you to eat a bran muffin every day. That way maybe you won’t get so many colds.

  She made a list of the things they fought about:

  the fact he was always criticizing her driving

  the fact he was always criticizing her appearance

  the fact he was always criticizing the way she ran the house

  the fact he was always criticizing the way she was bringing up Adam (“spoiling” was the word he used most often)

  the fact he was always criticizing her. Period. Which led to fights about:

  the fact she was always generalizing

  the fact that he couldn’t say a word to her without her accusing him of criticizing her

  the fact that she was always starting in at him over something

  the fact that she never gave him enough emotional support

  the fact she was always criticizing him. Period.

  They never fought about: 1.) In-laws (there were none, so to speak); 2.) Money (there was enough); 3.) Sex (there was plenty and it was still always good, although lately Donna was beginning to feel too worn out under the weight of all their other fights to feel much like participating—a relatively new development).

  While Donna sensed that this last area was rife with potential, thus far Victor was either too proud or too much the gentleman to call it to issue. Perhaps because they both sensed it was too major an issue to explore—they only fought over minor things after all, never over anything of real import, sensing possibly that their life together could not tolerate a rift of larger proportions. Besides it was pretty hard to get mad at your wife when she was always sneezing or throwing up, and Donna seemed to have developed a continuing sort of cold-flu bug in the last couple of months which, while seeming to disappear for a week or two, always returned. She attributed it to a low resistance brought on by fatigue. Victor told her that as long as she continued in her poor eating habits, she was bound to catch all sorts of assorted bugs. She told him her eating habits were fine and to bug off, which led to another fight to add to her continually growing list.

  She made two other lists. One of all the things she liked about Victor, one of all the things she didn’t. She put them side by side.

  The Things I Like The Things I Don’t Like

  1. His sense of humor 1. He pouts

  2. His perseverance, drive 2. He never lets up

  3. His take-charge attitude 3. He has to be in total control

  4. His arrogance 4. His arrogance

  5. He wants the best of everything 5. He expects too much

  6. His intelligence 6. He thinks he knows it all

  7. His judgment 7. He has to be right all the time

  8. He does anything he sets his mind to do well 8. He’s a perfectionist

  9. He has great theories 9. He has great theories

  To her list of likes she added three points: he loved Adam (although she wished he’d spend more time doing the things with Adam he was always telling her to do); he loved her (despite his constant criticism of her, it was, strangely, something she never doubted); and he was still the best lover she’d ever had. She took count. The positives still outweighed the negatives.

  “Where are you taking that?” Donna’s voice was sharp, as it often was when she was caught off guard.

  “Don’t get excited. I’ll put it back when everybody leaves,” Victor answered, smiling.

  “But I liked it where it was. Where are you putting it?”

  “In the closet. You know I hate all these little things cluttering up the place.”

  “Victor, my mother gave me that doll. It’s from Mexico.”

  “I know, honey, and I promise I’ll put it back in the living room tomorrow, but can’t we, for one night, put it in the closet? It won’t break.”

  “But I like it.”

  “And I don’t.” Impasse. “Donna, we’ve had this discussion a hundred times at least since we’ve been married. I hate a million little doodads all over every room; you like it—”

  “They make the pl
ace look homey.”

  “According to you. According to me, they make it look messy. Now, I know how much a lot of these pieces mean to you and I usually don’t say anything, now be fair, do I?”

  “No but—”

  “So, I don’t think it’s out of line for me to ask you for one night, just one night, to do things my way.” He walked with the small cloth doll to the hall closet.

  “What else have you moved?”

  “I’ve just straightened things up a bit.”

  Donna walked from the kitchen into the living room. “My, my,” she said, “but you’ve been a busy little boy.”

  “The place was a mess, Donna. I noticed you hadn’t gotten around to doing anything about it yet, and there are two couples coming over for dinner—”

  “I just vacuumed this afternoon.”

  “Please don’t raise your voice.”

  “Where did you put the dry flowers?”

  “They’re in the linen closet. Don’t say it—I know you like them. Just for tonight, Donna. Please?”

  Donna bit down on her lip and walked back into the kitchen. Victor followed close behind.

  “Now please don’t pull one of your moods,” he cautioned.

  “One of my moods?”

  “You know what I mean.” He looked around. “Oh, you made the chicken, huh?”

  “Yes. Something wrong?” Donna asked.

  “No, that’s just fine. I thought I told you I preferred roast.”

  “No. You didn’t.”

  “I did, I’m sure. Oh well, chicken it is.”

  “You like my chicken with cumberland sauce!”

  “I know. Just that I like your roast better. That’s all, honey. The chicken always comes out a little dry, that’s all.”