Read Online The Mothers: A Novel by Jennifer Gilmore - Free Book Online
Authors: Jennifer Gilmore
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God? It is certainly more pleasurable than only pleasure in and of itself, I thought when I got that blood test back with the numbers I would come to covet, high beta numbers, strong, irrefutable digits. And then the doctor, with his arrogant face, some stranger, telling me seven weeks later how that pinprick on the ultrasound was no longer a viable prick of a pin. Nope, he’d said. Nothing happening in there.
One moment unscathed, and the next?
The very opposite, of course. Scarred, damaged, injured, traumatized.
I have tried not to think what life would be like now had my pregnancy not come and gone as quickly as gossip. I tried not to think of this also as the indication of how easy it likely would have been to have children of my own had this illness not undone me. Who, then, would I be now? I would be a woman with a child, perhaps two; one might not even notice me at all. But what I asked myself while choosing the box for the tolerable amount of drug and alcohol abuse was, would we have chosen myself as a birthmother?
I looked at Ramon, who shook his head.
“Let’s start with the best-case scenario and work backward,” he said.
Very quietly I asked, “So many of our friends drank before they knew they were pregnant. Would we not choose them?”
Ramon shook his head again.
“These women are young, Jesse,” he said. “You think they’re having a glass of Chardonnay with their salmon? If they’re drinking, they’re drinking .”
“Ramon,” I started. I couldn’t think about the one chance I might have had to not be sitting here right now. That baby would have been three in August. My friend Michelle, Zoe’s mother, and I had imagined it together; our due dates were ten days apart, and we thought we’d spend long leisurely days at their place on the Hudson, our legs shin-deep in the pool, sighing over all that we were missing, our babies cradled in our arms.
We thought we’d have a double baby shower. We made a list of the friends we shared from the neighborhood, those whom I saw every year at their annual summer party, and others we’d invite separately. And what we would serve. It would be August, and we would be so pregnant, so ickily pregnant and hot and uncomfortable, we’d said, so summer salads, maybe some chilled sesame noodles, shrimp satays.
Now I tried not to think of her face when I told her it would be just her. Alone. I gathered myself up. It is every part of you one assembles, limbs and organs and memories and hopes, every one of your bad choices. Time itself is an imaginary hourglass you carry, lashed to your neck. You straighten yourself against it.
I tried not to think of seeing her in the neighborhood as I walked Harriet, her belly growing rounder. Or at the baby shower, where I had spent most of the afternoon in the bathroom alone with my personal bottle of champagne—listening to the shrieks of Michelle’s friends as they smeared microwaved chocolate bars into diapers and bobbed for nipples.
I knew then that soon Michelle would be one of the neighborhood mothers, so exhausted and overwhelmed and cheered by their children that, no longer working, they all got together, the way we had once done as respite from dating in our twenties, cutting out from our jobs early in the roaring start of our thirties, and now, now?, the mothers sat together along a farmhouse table in someone’s tricked-out kitchen, sharing war stories of croup and incessant crying, night panics, time-outs or no time-outs, the protocol of the playground, as they wondered when they’d ever go back to being the women they once were. Once we were such girls, remember?, the mothers all said as they picked at their kids’ organic chicken nuggets and poured themselves pinots, their children coloring beneath their feet like good dogs, or sucking organic yogurt out of little plastic strips, or playing make-believe in their mother’s dresses and lipsticks and high-heeled shoes, or napping, or watching Bob the
One moment unscathed, and the next?
The very opposite, of course. Scarred, damaged, injured, traumatized.
I have tried not to think what life would be like now had my pregnancy not come and gone as quickly as gossip. I tried not to think of this also as the indication of how easy it likely would have been to have children of my own had this illness not undone me. Who, then, would I be now? I would be a woman with a child, perhaps two; one might not even notice me at all. But what I asked myself while choosing the box for the tolerable amount of drug and alcohol abuse was, would we have chosen myself as a birthmother?
I looked at Ramon, who shook his head.
“Let’s start with the best-case scenario and work backward,” he said.
Very quietly I asked, “So many of our friends drank before they knew they were pregnant. Would we not choose them?”
Ramon shook his head again.
“These women are young, Jesse,” he said. “You think they’re having a glass of Chardonnay with their salmon? If they’re drinking, they’re drinking .”
“Ramon,” I started. I couldn’t think about the one chance I might have had to not be sitting here right now. That baby would have been three in August. My friend Michelle, Zoe’s mother, and I had imagined it together; our due dates were ten days apart, and we thought we’d spend long leisurely days at their place on the Hudson, our legs shin-deep in the pool, sighing over all that we were missing, our babies cradled in our arms.
We thought we’d have a double baby shower. We made a list of the friends we shared from the neighborhood, those whom I saw every year at their annual summer party, and others we’d invite separately. And what we would serve. It would be August, and we would be so pregnant, so ickily pregnant and hot and uncomfortable, we’d said, so summer salads, maybe some chilled sesame noodles, shrimp satays.
Now I tried not to think of her face when I told her it would be just her. Alone. I gathered myself up. It is every part of you one assembles, limbs and organs and memories and hopes, every one of your bad choices. Time itself is an imaginary hourglass you carry, lashed to your neck. You straighten yourself against it.
I tried not to think of seeing her in the neighborhood as I walked Harriet, her belly growing rounder. Or at the baby shower, where I had spent most of the afternoon in the bathroom alone with my personal bottle of champagne—listening to the shrieks of Michelle’s friends as they smeared microwaved chocolate bars into diapers and bobbed for nipples.
I knew then that soon Michelle would be one of the neighborhood mothers, so exhausted and overwhelmed and cheered by their children that, no longer working, they all got together, the way we had once done as respite from dating in our twenties, cutting out from our jobs early in the roaring start of our thirties, and now, now?, the mothers sat together along a farmhouse table in someone’s tricked-out kitchen, sharing war stories of croup and incessant crying, night panics, time-outs or no time-outs, the protocol of the playground, as they wondered when they’d ever go back to being the women they once were. Once we were such girls, remember?, the mothers all said as they picked at their kids’ organic chicken nuggets and poured themselves pinots, their children coloring beneath their feet like good dogs, or sucking organic yogurt out of little plastic strips, or playing make-believe in their mother’s dresses and lipsticks and high-heeled shoes, or napping, or watching Bob the
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