Chapter 6 Liz #2
“It’s a tool to heal blockages.” Angela addressed Preston, like it was clear that Liz was a lost cause. “It can also cleanse your energy and bring in balance and harmony.”
Liz didn’t trust herself to respond. An awkward silence stretched out between them.
“You know what? We are going to have a nonbinary baby shower,” Preston said, looking hopefully at Angela to see if he had successfully fluffed her spirits. Liz’s head whipped over again. Preston flashed her a look like Just go with it.
“A baby shower?” Angela said, her face souring.
“I know,” Preston said. “But I’m sure Liz’s friends will want to do something for her.”
Liz sat silently as Preston reframed Liz’s hypothetical gender-neutral baby shower as a nonbinary celebration of life and the infinite diversity of the human experience. She wondered if Preston was placating Angela or if he knew the difference.
The conversation went downhill from there.
Angela warned Preston that Liz had been a colicky baby and hoped their child would inherit Preston’s disposition.
This led into an announcement about how brutal the first six months were.
“No one talks about it,” Angela declared, “but babies are miserable. All that crying, screaming, and spitting up, while they suck the life force out of you? Plus, they’re ugly.
Anyone who calls one of those bald, shriveled-up things cute is lying!
” She glanced over at Liz. “Seriously. You looked like Bernie Sanders fucked a hamster with alopecia.”
Liz suggested that since some parents seemed to love their infants, maybe Angela wasn’t a baby person.
(Or a toddler person, or a kid person, or a tween person, or…) Angela’s eyes narrowed but she didn’t deny this.
“We’ll see,” she said smugly, taking another sip of wine.
“At least you didn’t destroy my body,” she told Liz.
“I’ve always had an exceptional metabolism,” Angela gloated to Preston. “Part of my divine goddess energy.”
Liz shifted uncomfortably and forbade herself from looking down at the spread of her thighs on the couch cushion. She would not let her mother get under her skin. “You were also really young when you had me,” Liz reminded the room. “That must’ve helped.”
“No. Some things are sacred gifts from the divine.” Angela gave her buoyant breasts an appreciative pat.
Liz curled her fingers and dug her nails into her palms. All she’d wanted, her whole life, was a mother who did Zumba instead of ketamine; instead she got an identity-hopping narcissist who protested the middle school’s antidrug program.
Yes, I dare to go up against DARE! Angela had shouted up and down the front steps during homeroom.
“What time do you need to get going?” Liz asked Angela, checking her watch and trying to steer the visit to an end. “Didn’t you say you had a moon gathering later?”
“A moon circle, Liz. A moon circle.” Angela tossed a look in Preston’s direction. “Considering how many I brought her to when she was little, you’d think she would remember.”
“I’m guessing I was asleep since they were probably past my bedtime.”
Angela scoffed. “You know you didn’t have a bedtime!” Liz stayed quiet and Angela interpreted it as a damning silence. “Here we go again,” she said. “You didn’t have a chore chart—someone call Child Protective Services!”
Someone had, when Liz was in fourth grade, but Angela packed their things into their ancient station wagon and crossed state lines before anything came of it. Liz didn’t point this out.
“I wish my mom was as cool as you,” Preston told Angela.
Liz almost snorted, thinking about how different Angela was from Preston’s mother.
Angela considered a pile of towels a perfectly acceptable substitute for a crib and usually neglected to mention Liz’s existence, especially when it conflicted with Angela’s persona as an artistic muse, grassroots political activist, dedicated Burner, or middle-aged modern urban witch.
Then there was Preston’s mother Cricket Lancaster, an Episcopalian blonde from Connecticut who had sought refuge in the country clubs of Orange County after she bravely made the trail west to California as a condition of her married life.
Cricket never encountered a toile pattern she didn’t like and loved being a mother as long as she could outsource childcare to a team of nannies, housekeepers, and tutors.
“I guess we’ll be meeting soon,” Angela said. The thought of these two women in the same room sent a chill down Liz’s spine.
“Definitely before the baby shower,” Preston agreed.
“You’ll have to let me know when that is,” Angela said, twisting her lips with disapproval. “Rain and I are going to Esalen next week to decompress and then I’ll be working on new pieces for the art fair in Taos.”
“Who’s Rain?” Preston asked. Liz didn’t know the answer either, but she also didn’t care. Liz was used to an endless parade of her mother’s flings, each one more inappropriate and fleeting than the last.
“My soulmate,” Angela said. The bottle of orange wine was sweating in the ice bucket.
“Another one?” Liz blurted. Oops. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
Angela glared. “Some people are love magnets, Liz. They have an irresistible energy and otherworldly capacity to attract and connect with others.”
Liz took an almond from the cheese board and placed a protective hand on her bloated stomach.
The dairy she had eaten was causing fireworks of gas and she was still at the stage in her relationship where she didn’t want to admit any bodily functions to Preston, which was an issue she was going to have to figure out fast now that they were sharing a living space and, also, if the delivery-room horror stories she had heard weren’t urban legends.
“Anyway,” Liz said, desperately hoping her mother would leave soon, “you’re in love and I’m pregnant. Big day for everyone.”
“We’ll look into that leaf rattle!” Preston chimed in.
“I’ll loan you mine,” Angela offered. “Excellent for unblocking chakras. Speaking of well-being, what about that pharmaceutical poison you’re so fond of?” Angela asked, turning to Liz. “Did you go off your meds?”
“Wait. What meds?” Preston asked, his eyes darting back and forth between Angela and Liz.
“The Effexor,” Angela said. Preston’s eyes narrowed.
“You’re on Effexor? You didn’t tell me that.”
“Can we talk about this later?” Liz said, staring at the cheese.
“Haven’t there been studies about kids born with three hands, or ADHD, or dumb-dumb IQs because their moms kept popping that garbage when they were pregnant?” Angela said.
“I don’t think there’s been one documented case of Prozac causing a three-handed baby,” Liz said, seething.
“Wait, so you’re on Prozac?” Preston asked.
“No. I was making a point.”
“So, you’re not on something?”
Liz had sampled every mood stabilizer on the market, but this was something she’d planned on discussing, along with her choice to stay on Effexor, at another time.
A time when she was prepared, when the tape on her moving boxes wasn’t still sticky, and when, most importantly, her mother was nowhere around.
“Can we please talk about this later?” Liz asked again. “There’s nothing to worry about. I wouldn’t do anything to endanger the baby’s health.”
“How did I not know this?” Preston asked. Liz pushed down the gnawing truth that her antidepressant was the least of it, while Angela seized the opportunity to refresh her wine. She poured herself a full glass, which glowed like a late-harvest sun.
“A lot of people are on antidepressants,” Liz said. “I bet half the people we know are on something, or else they’re microdosing on their lunch breaks.”
“I have an incredible shaman who leads guided ketamine trips,” Angela said. “You should try it, Liz. You might have some real breakthroughs.”
“I’m not going to do ketamine,” Liz said through her teeth. “I’m pregnant.”
“But you’re still taking the Effexor,” Angela said.
Preston leaned back so he could better scrutinize Liz.
“It’s a really low dose, prescribed by a doctor,” Liz said just as the doorbell rang.
“That must be Rain!” Angela said. “Do you mind doing the honors?” she asked Preston like a teenager at prom who wanted to make a grand entrance for her escort. Preston stood up obediently. While mother and daughter waited for the men to return, they marinated in the palpable friction.
Preston walked back into the living room with a diminutive man boasting central casting facial hair—show me a yogi boyfriend without a white feathery plume extending from his chin like a billy goat, Liz thought—and stacks of Tibetan prayer bead bracelets.
Angela sprang up. “My darling. I’ve missed your light.
” They embraced with eyes closed, then Angela turned to Liz and Preston. “This is my lover, Rain.”
“Honored to meet you all,” Rain said, bowing at them over his prayer hands.
“You’re probably picking up on an odd energetic frequency,” Angela told Rain. “You’ve come at a bit of a strange time.”
“I didn’t know Liz is on a mood stabilizer,” Preston muttered under his breath.
“I meant the pregnancy,” Angela said. “I’m going to be a grandma…But we obviously won’t use that word.”