not buying any of it,
then retreats
into her bedroom.
And when she closes the door,
the sound of it
echoes through the house
like the sharp crack of a gavel.
OUR BABY’S BEEN IN THERE FOR TEN MINUTES
Alone
with her computer.
Michael and I
have been out here
for
ten eons.
Alone
with each other.
WHEN SAM FINALLY EMERGES
Her face is as blank
as an un-carved pumpkin’s.
My heart
stops.
But then she beams
a thousand-watt grin
and says she got in
to the school of her dreams.
We hug! We scream!
We dance! We cheer!
We shout hoorah
for our darlingest dear!
But when she’s not looking,
I dab at a tear—
she’ll be
three thousand miles away
from here.
MY FLOODGATES ARE GETTING READY TO BURST
But the last thing I want to do
is rain on Samantha’s parade.
So I slip out into the backyard
to compose myself.
I close my eyes,
take a few deep breaths,
and when I open them again,
my gaze falls upon our pepper tree…
When Samantha was a toddler,
Michael and I
read picture books to her for hours,
cuddling in the shade of that tree.
We promised her
we’d build her a tree house someday,
when the branches grew strong enough
to hold it…
The three of us
whiled away summer afternoons
chasing each other
around the tree’s thickening trunk,
weaving wreaths
from its feathery leaves,
watching the doves
build their nests…
When the tree
was tall enough,
Michael made a hand-painted swing
for Samantha.
He hung it
from a sturdy branch
and we took turns pushing her on it
till she learned how to pump…
When Sam was six, we taught her
how to climb into the tree’s lap.
She often brought Monkey there with her
and sang him little songs she made up.
But on Samantha’s seventh birthday,
when we told her that the tree was finally
big enough for a tree house, she began to cry
and begged us not to build it.
She’d gotten it into her head somehow
that the tree would be in agony
when the nails were hammered into it.
And no one could convince her otherwise.
So we never did build
that tree house for Samantha.
But, together, the three of us
built something better.
WRITUS INTERRUPTUS
I can’t seem to write
for more than five minutes at a stretch
without someone phoning
from the Firemen’s Association
to ask me for a donation.
Or someone will ring the bell
and say they’re sorry to bother me
but they saw the FOR SALE sign next door
and were wondering
what the asking price is.
Or my mother, who’s been
in the hospital for two weeks already,
will call to tell me I’d better
get over there right now
to spring her from “this hellhole.”
I’ll explain that I can’t come over,
because I’m at home—in California.
But she’ll just hiss,
“Don’t give me that stupidity…”
Even if I somehow manage to calm her down,
then field a call from her pissed-off nurse,
and succeed in convincing her
that my mother couldn’t possibly
have bitten her on purpose,
something else will inevitably happen—
Alice will stop by
to ask me if I can snap
a new photo of her for Match.com;
maybe something a tad more glam.
Or Samantha will call me from school,
begging me to rush over there
with the Great Gatsby essay
she somehow managed
to forget at home.
Or Roxie will text me
from her freaking iPhone,
or her iPad,
or whatever the hell she’s using these days,
to ask, “WHEN CAN I C UR BUK? ”
Honestly.
I don’t know how I will ever
finish this manuscript
if I keep on getting
interup—”
I MEAN, FOR CRYIN’ OUT LOUD
Even while
I was writing that last poem
(about why I can never
get any writing done)
Michael strolled past my office window
and paused to press his face to the glass,
cupping his paint-spattered hands
around his eyes.
He stood there staring into my office,
his eyes fixed on me
like a puppy begging scraps
from the table.
(Michael’s always doing this—to try to see
if I’m writing or not—because I guess he figures
if I’m not writing, then he can ask me whatever
pressing question it is that he wants to ask.
He does this, even though I’ve told him
that when he does this, it’s just as distracting—
more distracting, even—than if he had
knocked on my door in the first place.)
I forced myself not to glance over at him,
trying to look engrossed in my work,
but he peered and peered and peered at me
till I finally turned and barked, “What is it?”
At which point, he barged into my office
like a bull charging a matador’s cape,
to inquire if there was anything
in the house for lunch.
As if he couldn’t have
walked into the kitchen,
pulled open the fridge door,
and found out that answer
all by himself.
THEN, OF COURSE, THINGS SPIRALED OUT OF CONTROL
With me asking him
why he just did that staring-at-me-
through-the-window thing again,
even though he knows how much I hate it?
And him saying he wasn’t staring at me,
he was only trying to see
if I was writing or not,
so he could ask me about lunch.
And me saying
I’ll never get any work
done if he keeps on bugging me
about every little thing.
And him clearing his throat
and saying do I really think it’s fair
to get so pissed at him when his only crime
was that he was trying not to disturb me?
And me saying
I really don’t have the time
to keep fighting with him about this
because I have to get back to work.
And him saying,
“Of course you want to stop now.
I’ve just said something you know is true
and you don’t want to concede the point.”
And me saying—
Well, you don’t want
to know
what I said then.
AFTER AN ARGUMENT WITH HUBBY
Which of
us hasn’t passed
a vengeful hour thinking
of ways to spend the insurance
money?
IS IT A BAD SIGN?
Is it a bad sign if instead of working
on your manuscript
(the one you were supposed to turn in
nearly a year ago)
you find yourself
spending the entire afternoon
looking up all your old boyfriends
on Facebook?
WHEN I FINALLY RUN OUT OF OLD BOYFRIENDS
And I’m just about
to start writing (honest!),
my eyes happen to drift over to my bookcase
and land on a photo of Sam—
blowing out the candles
on her seventh birthday.
She was unbelievably cute at that age.
And unbelievably exhausting…
I’d be sitting at my computer,
in the middle of writing a poem
so ununderstandable that The New Yorker
would surely beg to publish it,
when my seven-year-old would burst in
like an adorable tornado.
“Look at me, Mommy!
See how good I can cross my eyes?”
I’d be watching it dawn on Cary Grant
why Deborah Kerr had stood him up,
when my seven-year-old,
resplendent in a pink chiffon tutu,
would prance in
and position herself
between me and the TV.
“Look, Mommy! Watch me do the hula!”
I’d be trying to snatch a quick conversation
with one of the other frazzled mothers in the park,
but my darling sugar-buzzed seven-year-old
had other plans for me:
“Mommy! Look at me go down the slide!”
“Mommy! Watch me do a cartwheel!”
“Mommy! See how high I can go on the swing?”
“Look, Mommy! Look at me!”
Now…my seven-year-old is seventeen.
I pass by her bedroom door and pause
to watch her in the soft lamplight,
murmuring into her cell phone.
Sensing my presence, she looks over
at me sharply and snarls, “Could you be
any more annoying if you possibly tried?
Why are you always looking at me?”
I DON’T ANSWER MY DAUGHTER’S RHETORICAL QUESTION
I just stand there,
well…looking at her.
And then, feeling strangely giddy,
I decide to try something:
“Achoo!” I say.
“Ah…choo!
Ahh…choooo!
Ahhh…CHOOOOO!”
But,
apparently,
the spell has lost
its magic.
SHIFT HAPPENS
On what day,
at what hour,
at which tell-me-it-ain’t-so moment
did you finally come
to the blow-to-the-solar-plexus realization
that your daughter had switched over
from being so proud of you
that she actually wanted to bring you in
for show-and-tell,
to being so humiliated
by everything you say or do
or even think about doing
that she is
no longer willing
to be seen in public with you?
(Unless,
of course,
you offer to take her shopping.)
THE LEANING TOWER OF ME
Samantha and I are cruising
the Neiman Marcus Last Call Sale—
because who can afford
to shop at Neiman’s
when it’s not having a sale?
I’m admiring my daughter
as she glides through the racks—
her back so straight
she looks as if she’s balancing
a rare book on her head.
I glance in a mirror at my own posture
and am appalled at how
my head’s jutting forward,
as if it’s trying to win a race
with the rest of my body.
I’m stunned by the gorilla-esque curve
my spine seems to have taken on,
as though determined to prove
once and for all
that evolution really did happen.
I snap my shoulders back
and pull myself up,
arrow straight, like a child being measured
against a wall.
Then, a few minutes later,
while we’re browsing through
a mountain range of marked-down panties,
I see an old woman sifting through
the thongs on the other side of the table—
the hump
on her back
so enormous
she resembles
a camel.
She looks up suddenly
and catches me staring.
I avert my eyes
and am confronted with my reflection
in yet another mirror—
which is when
I notice that my
frighteningly King-Kongish posture
has snuck right back up
on me…
Oh no!
Is this how
it all began for her?
Twenty years from now, am I going to be
the hunchback of Neiman Marcus?
CHAMBER OF HORRORS
Samantha won’t allow me
into dressing rooms with her anymore.
So, as usual, it’s my fate to wait
in an empty one across the hall.
She tries on a long-sleeved
form-fitting chocolate-brown T-shirt,
and models it for me—
she looks gorgeous.
Then she retreats
back into her dressing room
and tosses the shirt over the top of the door
for me to put into the “maybe” pile.
As I reach out to catch it,
I find myself musing
that brown’s a good color for me,
and that I wear a size medium, too,
and that those nice long sleeves
would go a long way
toward hiding
my flabby upper arms…
On impulse, I slip off my baggy tee
and pull the brown shirt on over my head.
But when I catch sight of myself in the mirror,
I gasp—
how is it possible
that the very same shirt
that made my daughter look
so curvy, smooth, and sexy,
makes me
look like two scoops
of half-melted
Rocky Road?
A BRIEF HISTORY OF MY BOOBS
They came out.
They stood up.
They fell
ON THE WAY OUT OF NEIMAN’S
Samantha and I run into Tess
and her mother, Brandy.
The girls squeal and hug each other,
then dash off to sample lipsticks,
leaving me to chat with Brandy
about the animal shelter she runs.
Brandy is a total sweetheart.
Really. She is.
But she’s one of those moms
who looks so young
that you think she must have given birth
when she was twelve…
one of those moms whose butt is so tight
and arms are so toned
and legs are so long
and hair is
so sleek
and waist is so slim
and clothes are so chic
that when I’m around her
I feel like a freak—
like I should put on a burka
and never take it off.
Brandy is one of those moms,
who will never, ever
look like two scoops
of half-melted Rocky Road.
COUSIN ALICE CALLS
She says she’s worried about my mother.
She says that she just got off the phone with her
and she sounded nuttier than a jar of Skippy
(that’s Alice’s simile, not mine).
So I hang up
and call my mother,
who does, indeed, sound nuttier
than a jar of Skippy.
She also sounds really pissed off—
pissed off at the nurses for trying to poison her,
pissed off at me for not calling the police,
pissed off at the planet for spinning.
So I hang up
and call Dr. Hack.