Maternity Leave (9781466871533) by Halpern Julie

Author:Halpern, Julie
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466871533
Publisher: Macmillan

94 Days Old

I made plans to get together with Louise because she seems like she needs to get out even more than I do. We meet up at a park near her home in the city.

“I swear I’m going to pack up and move without telling Terry.” Lou’s been threatening, to me, at least, to move out of Chicago for years. “Another house on our block foreclosed, and don’t tell me that wasn’t a crack pipe we passed while coming to this park. Of course we bought the house before the market went to shit, and now it’s worth half what we paid for it, even though we put a buttmunch of money into it.” She takes a deep breath, lets it out, and slowly smiles at me. “I’m sorry. It’s just so nice to get to bitch to an actual person, and not a computer screen.”

“I don’t mind. It makes me feel better to hear someone who hates their life more than I do,” I admit.

“Does it sound like I hate my life?” she asks guiltily. “Because I don’t. Not all the time. I just don’t feel like I’m doing anything right. It’s hard enough with a baby you can’t communicate with, but wait until Sam’s an actual kid and you really fuck him up. My guilt cup runneth over.”

“I can’t wait until Sam can talk. Right now he’s this roly-poly ball of poo. I don’t know what he wants. I don’t know what to do with him. He has the attention span of a donut.” I pause.

In unison, Lou and I ask, “Do you want to get some donuts?” We giggle.

“Watch me, Mommy!” Jupiter yells from the monkey bars.

“I’m watching, honey! She can’t do anything without someone watching,” Louise asides to me.

“It’s more interesting than watching a baby try to lift his head up. Why is this so hard? Why do people love being moms so much? I’m terrible at it. I hate being terrible at things. Give me the days when I was acing tests and job interviews and traveling the world on ten dollars a day. Now I’m spending hundreds of dollars on crap from QVC just so that I have someone to talk to.”

“Watch me, Mommy!”

“Seriously. We’re eating lunch, and every bite she takes she’s like, Watch me eat this spoonful of cereal. And I’m like, Why? Why the fuck do I need to watch the way you eat every single bite of food? Once is cute, and that is it. I have no patience for this shit.” Louise takes a sip of water from a Nalgene. “How exactly do you talk to QVC?”

“I call in. Order over the phone. Once I was even in a queue to give an on-air testimonial, but they ran out of time.” I sigh dejectedly.

“You know there’s this little thing called the internet. Makes spending shitloads of money really easy.”

“It’s not about the shopping. It’s about the human interaction,” I counter.

“Okay, so there’s this place called a mall…,” Lou starts.

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