Chapter 17 Shrill Sergeant #2
Naya emerged from the kitchen a few minutes later with a tray of what she called chocolate cookies.
They were charcoal-black and shriveled, and the dough must have been too liquidy, because they’d run together into two giant perforated blobs.
They barely looked edible, but with Naya acting like a madwoman lately, we knew it was better to feign enthusiasm.
“It’s my first try,” Naya said. “I’m working on some recipes for when the baby’s born. I want it to really love me.”
“Sugar is the way to a kid’s heart,” Sue said. In the meantime, Mike had managed to peel away one of the cookies and was eyeing it up cautiously, trying and failing to find a spot that wasn’t burned to a crisp.
“Mike, just eat it!” Naya said.
“I’d better not,” he responded, setting it carefully back on the tray. Right away, he knew he’d made a mistake.
Tears instantly formed in Naya’s eyes. “I know! They’re horrible!”
“No!” Mike corrected himself, biting off a teeny corner, which he chewed up and swallowed reluctantly. “They’re not that bad.” He ran to the kitchen for a butter knife and started scraping off the charred part. “See? They’re still OK inside.”
“I’m a horrible cook,” Naya said. “If Will had made them, they’d have turned out perfect. I’m going to be a horrible mom, too.” She sat beside me, leaned back, and began to whimper, her bottom lip quivering.
“You’re going to be a great mother!” I told her.
“It’s not true. I’m not built to take care of another person!”
From the kitchen, where he was still scraping a cookie down to nothing, Mike called, “I think you’re taking this a little too far over one failed cooking experiment. I can barely turn an oven on, and you don’t see me whining about it.”
“It’s not about the food!!!” Naya shouted.
“The burnt cookies are a metaphor for her future as a mother,” Sue noted with raised eyebrows.
Naya stormed off to her room, and I followed after her.
Over the summer, Will had bought a bunch of stuff for the kid, and most of it was still in boxes.
There were toys, a crib, and a high chair.
He was clearly excited about the big day.
I couldn’t help but smile, even if Naya was crying on the bed rubbing her belly.
“Naya, honey, what’s up?” I asked. “Do you need to talk?”
Looking down at her stomach, she replied, “I just don’t think I can do this.”
“Why?”
“It’s not like everyone says, Jen. I’m not excited, I’m not happy, I don’t feel some maternal instinct welling up inside me…
I thought it would be like a Lifetime movie, but the excitement just isn’t there.
Every time I see one of those happy mothers hugging her kid at the park or something, I can’t stop telling myself, that just isn’t me. ”
“Being a mom isn’t something you feel, Naya. It’s something you learn, something you grow into.”
“You think?” I saw something like grief in her eyes.
“I don’t think, I know. Do you really believe all the mothers out there were just born with the knowledge of how all this works?
Give yourself a chance, Naya. You’re making a lot of progress, and uh…
you’re getting better! You didn’t burn the cookies as bad as you burned the pizza you made that one time. ”
“I just wish there was a webpage with some halfway decent advice.”
“Naya, there are a million webpages with more information about parenting than you could ever possibly need.”
I pulled out my phone and opened my browser.
Google, save me now, I thought. I didn’t know what I’d do if I had to deal with Naya’s whining for the next three months.
Of course, everything I found was stupid.
Eventually, I settled on a list of questionable-looking Mommy Hacks.
It was better than nothing. Or so I hoped.
“Here’s some stuff,” I said. “One, aromatherapy.”
“Pass.”
“Yoga?”
“Pass. My feet are so swollen, I can hardly stand. How am I supposed to do yoga?”
“OK, here’s one,” I said. “Scream therapy. Promises to relieve all the tension in your body. They say it’s best to do it into a pillow to keep your neighbors from worrying.”
This seemed to interest her. “I’ll skip the pillow, though,” she told me.
We stood, and she began to limber up as if for a workout. It was ludicrous, but I was in it to win it. The disciplinarian in me was coming out. Naya was no longer my friend, she was a grunt than needed to be whipped into shape.
“Ready?” I asked.
“Ready!”
“Set?”
“Set!”
“I can’t hear you, soldier. LOUDER!”
“READY!” Naya shouted.
“READY FOR WHAT?”
“I’M READY TO BE A MOTHER!”
“I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” I repeated.
“I’M READY TO BE A MOTHER!”
“WHAT KIND OF MOTHER?”
“THE BEST MOTHER IN THE WORLD!”
“AND WHAT KIND OF BABY ARE YOU GOING TO HAVE?” I asked.
“A HAPPY BABY!”
“HOW HAPPY?”
“THE HAPPIEST BABY IN THE WORLD!”
“SAY IT LOUDER!” I encouraged her.
“THE HAPPIEST BABY IN THE WORLD!”
We went on like this until Jack opened the door, asking, “What the hell is going…?”
“AAAAAAAAAAAAH!” Naya shrieked, so loud that Jack panicked and ran straight into the bookshelf, knocking several volumes to the floor. Naya shook her arms, letting out the adrenaline, and said with a smile, “Jenna, this really works!”
“See? All you had to do was blow off a little steam!”
“You’re the best!”
Jack was cowering like a frightened animal when Sue walked in, looking livid. “Who the hell’s getting murdered in here?”
“Seriously,” Mike said from behind her. “Our neighbors came downstairs to complain.”
“Naya was just letting out some bad energy,” I explained.
“You guys should try it!” she added enthusiastically.
Sue started to say, “This is bullsh—” but before she could finish, we heard Mike bellowing like a dying buffalo. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Jack stuck his fingers in his ears.
“You dumbass, you scared the shit out of me,” he said.
Mike, enthusiastic, shouted, “It really does work! Jen, you try!”
Jack, trying to make peace, announced that if one more person tried to…
I sucked in a breath and screamed as loud as I could. My throat ached when I was done. Naya and Mike applauded. Jack and Sue shook their heads. That was when Will came around the corner, panting.
“Naya, are you all right?” he said. “I was on the roof smoking and I heard the screams. Did your water break or something?”
“They’re just relieving tension,” Mike said. Will couldn’t believe his ears.
“It works,” Naya told her boyfriend. “I feel a hundred percent better. I’m ready to take on the world! I’m not going to let that dumb stove beat me! I’m going to go make another batch of cookies!”
As she skipped away, everyone else in the room turned and scowled at me.
That night, as I was trying to fall asleep, I wondered if helping Naya had been such a good idea. I could hear her grunting and groaning, telling Will all the nasty things she wanted him to do to her. It had been better when they were fighting and everyone could finally get a good night’s sleep.
“Those two are killing me,” I said.
Jack’s face was half-buried in his pillow. He turned and said, “Please remind me why we didn’t stay in Greece?”
“Because we have responsibilities?”
“That’s the worst reason I’ve ever heard.”
I smiled and reached up, pretending to slap him, but he caught my hand. “Remember that night you got all drunk…?”
“We said we weren’t going to talk about that!”
“And you threw a can of beer at a cop car!”
“Jack, we had a deal!”
“No, Jen, our deal was I wouldn’t tell anyone else about it. We never agreed that I couldn’t bring it up.”
“Cheater.”
He thought it was hilarious. It still embarrassed me every time I thought of it.
I’d remember that night till the end of my life.
But it wasn’t my fault! If a place has an open bar, they should be required by law to tell you how much alcohol is in the cocktails!
The details were blurry, but the things I remembered included: dancing on the bar top, shouting at a policeman, throwing the famous can at his car’s windshield and shouting that my rights weren’t being respected.
If it hadn’t been for Jack and his million-dollar smile, I’d probably be locked up in a Greek prison for the next decade.
I wasn’t proud of any of it, but Jack loved lording it over me.
“Don’t laugh,” I told him. “Remember how you forgot your suntan lotion when we went to the beach, and you played it all cool like oh, I don’t need it, and then you returned to the hotel that night looking like a boiled lobster?
Or that night you fell asleep holding onto the bottle of insect repellent like it was your teddy bear? ”
“What did you want me to do? There were mosquitoes everywhere! I can’t help it if they weren’t biting you.”
I laughed, but stopped when I heard Will and Naya slamming against the wall.
“Do they have to make so much noise?” Jack asked.
“I try to let her off the hook because she’s pregnant,” I said. “When I get pregnant, I hope people will cut me some slack, too.”
Wait—had I really just said that? Had he noticed?
I looked over and saw him grinning with narrowed eyes. “What are you getting at, Mushu?”
“Sorry! That just slipped out! Come on now! Obviously, I don’t want kids now!” I corrected myself. “Someday it would be nice, though…right?”
“It could be now for all I care.”
“Uh…” I responded. “I don’t know that we’re in the best place in our lives right now to take care of a baby…”
“It’s never too early to dream,” Jack joked. But it didn’t exactly seem like a joke. I could tell as his face lit up and he added, “Imagine how handsome our kid would be. A mix of the two of us. Definite model material.”
“How humble of you.”
“We couldn’t do it here, though,” he said, looking around.
“It’s too crammed in. One thing is Will and Naya, it’s not like I can kick them out anyway, but could you imagine if there were two kids in this apartment?
Kids need space to run around. They’re like little animals.
When I was small, my parents always had me out in the yard, because I was basically a one-man wrecking crew inside…
No, this place won’t do. But I’ll do another film, make some real money, and we can buy a mansion.
Problem solved. Or you could use those paints I got you to do one of those abstract pieces, like a line across a canvas, and sell it to some idiot for a hundred million dollars. ”
“Jack, why are we talking about this now? Relax a little.”
He blinked with surprise, then looked at me close. I wanted to know what he was thinking, but before I could ask, he continued: “Sorry, I’ve just never been in a position to actually think about something like that before. Having a home, a family.”
Was he blushing? I thought so, and that wasn’t something Jack did often, which meant his words must have been sincere.
Was it painful for him to admit that? Because I didn’t want him stressed, or worried, or tense.
We had all the time in the world, but for some reason, the topic of children had made him frantic.
He almost seemed resistant as I wrapped my arms around him.
“How come?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I always thought I’d end up living alone.
The same way you can just tell Will and Naya are one of those unbearable couples who end up with five kids, two dogs, a cat, a hamster, and a beach house for the summer, I just knew the best I could hope for was to be the cool uncle who travels and brings back presents from exotic countries.
And cool Uncle Jack, you know, part of what makes him cool is his bachelor lifestyle. ”
“You know things aren’t just black-and-white like that, right?
There are many shades of cool and not cool.
And everybody’s life is its own adventure.
Like, imagine if you were cool dad Jack and you took your kids traveling with you and they brought back gifts for Uncle Will and Aunt Naya and their cousins? That could happen.”
I almost got a smile out of him, and I thought I could see him trying to ask himself if that was really possible.
“But you’ll have time to think of all that later,” I said, resting my face near his neck. “The important thing right now is for you to do what you want.”
He grinned malevolently and said, “I’ll get to work on that.” I screeched as he lowered his head into my chest, reached under my shirt, and started reaching upward, tickling me. Just as he touched my breasts, I heard the door open.
“Guys, the neighbor came down, and…oh. Sorry.”
Mike was standing there on the threshold, gawking.
“Has no one ever taught you to knock on the damn door?” Jack asked. “What do you want now?”
Mike seemed to need a second to remember why he was there. “The neighbor’s at the door. The nasty one. He’s bitching about the noise again. I didn’t know what to tell him. I usually sic Sue on him, but she’s out.”
I couldn’t help but laugh as Jack cursed and got out of bed, walking past Mike, who—thank God—didn’t make his usual dumb, pervy comment about how he could step in while Jack was busy. Instead, he just walked off to the living room, looking lonely.