Motherhood

We leave work early yesterday and sit on barstools by the door with fifty-five minutes before we have to go pick up the kids. Hit me, we say to the not-so-young woman behind the bar—who is only too glad to do so. Her tip jar hungry and waiting on a hot afternoon in July. Plus, we are no threat to her in our also not-so-youngness. She puts two tall drinks down on the polished wood of the bar and immediately they both begin to perspire. I edge round the ice with my straw and settle in.

I tell the bartender I’m on vacation. She smoothes on one of her smiles from a basket of expressions she keeps under the bar. She’s heard it all—everyone making all kinds of excuses to drink—and this is one of the easier ones to respond to. Then there’s me and my vacation—this woman who’s been on her feet her whole life.

Good for you, honey, she says colorlessly.

Another drink and it’s thirty-five minutes before we have to pick up the kids. And I waste eight of those minutes in the ladies room. By the time I take care of business and put a shine on my lips, the big hand has headed into the homestretch.

When I return to the bar, my friend is chatting up a robust man sitting two stools down. He tells us about a brewery in Pleasantville, a winery next door. The clock behind the bar ticks. Do they have childcare, I ask? And everyone laughs. But our laugh—the two mothers at the bar—rings a little hollow around the cold hard nugget of truth it shields.

I don’t want to go home, one of us says—and it doesn’t matter who because we both feel it. Home to chicken nuggets, SpongeBob and fights—when here in this air-conditioned bar there’s a juke box, beer nuts, and glass shelves behind the bar filled with possibilities. Or so it seems, of course.

We sigh, shake our heads, and look at the clock.

Hit me, we tell the bartender again, and we laugh—a bit ruefully this time. After the two new glistening drinks stand at attention on the bar, the cocktail straw an indefinite salute, she says, almost whispering:

My period is late.

I widen my eyes as if to say what the fuck.

Yes, she says, and begins to laugh. Knocked up at forty-four. Can you imagine?

No. I. Can’t. The two of us with our shared infertility and all those invasive tests. My infertility finally untangling itself just before the clock ran out. And she with her two children and a husband who left.

Years ago, I drove my friend Amal to the abortion clinic, first thing on a muggy summer morning. Her third abortion, with another one coming that neither of us knew about yet. She sat nonchalantly in the passenger side of her Ford Pinto, while I made small talk all the way to the corner until we ran out of gas. Then me pushing the car with the door open and one hand on the steering wheel down the long quiet decline of James Street, to the gas station five blocks away. Out of patience with her for getting pregnant again and for not putting gas in her car...

But back at the bar, my friend and I have ten more minutes before we have to go pick up the kids. And suddenly we both break into the words from that old Paul Anka song, “Having my baby…” And we laugh—heartily—because three vodka tonics can make things like this seem terrifically funny. We are still laughing as the robust man two stools down settles his tab and leaves.
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