My mother calls to tell me she cannot get on the plane. She has had a premonition.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re going to crash?\u201d I sit upright in bed, sheet clutched to my chest. When she says stuff like this, my skin gets crawly.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cNot exactly a premonition.\u201d She sighs. \u201cI can\u2019t say what will happen. A foreboding. Emmy, I\u2019m not thinking straight. I can\u2019t zip up my suitcase. And I wanted to get out of here so badly.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you sure it\u2019s the plane?\u201d I look to my left where the baby is sleeping in her bassinet. I look to the right where my husband is sleeping in our bed. \u201cCould you be foreboding something else?\u201d I say as I tiptoe out of the room, which is not actually a room. We put up a wall in the studio after the baby was born.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
No, says my mother, she\u2019s sure it\u2019s the plane, and of course, I could try to reason with her. I could tell her to go ahead and pack that suitcase, get in a taxi, buy a tea and sit at the airport, see if the foreboding recedes. Until she\u2019s actually on the plane, she has not committed to anything. Instead, I say, \u201cI don\u2019t know what to tell you.\u201d Because really, what should I tell her to do? Get on the plane and then the plane crashes and then she\u2019s gone and then it\u2019s my fault? Because planes do crash. They do.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the background, at my mother\u2019s house, radio voices are murmuring. \u201cI have to think,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ll call you back.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
As soon as I hang up the phone, the baby is up. By up, I mean that she\u2019s screaming. She\u2019s always screaming and we don\u2019t know why. I <\/em>don\u2019t know why. My husband comes out of the bedroom and hands her to me. \u201cI have to go,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s six thirty in the morning.\u201d I follow him into the bathroom. He\u2019s a real estate broker, which means that he works on commission, which means that the more he works the more money he makes, at least in theory. I\u2019m no longer sure I buy this direct correlation. He works seven days a week. Before we had a baby, this wasn\u2019t a problem. But now we do <\/em>have a baby.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I sit on the toilet, bouncing the baby in my lap, while my husband brushes his teeth. \u201cMy mother might not be coming,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n He spits into the sink. \u201cIs she sick?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cSick in the head!\u201d I say. \u201cYou\u2019d think she\u2019d want to see Eva. Who wouldn\u2019t want to spend time with this delightful creature?\u201d I kiss the top of Eva\u2019s head, which is covered in the silkiest hair, soft and ticklish on my lips. She smells like a baby, like white soap and milk. She likes to be bounced, likes the sound of the water and the echo of our voices in the tiny chamber of the bathroom. She and I spend a lot of time in this bathroom. On the rare occasions when she is content and awake, I adore her so much I want to stuff her whole hand in my mouth. Both hands at once.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My husband is sliding the stroller out of the way to get to the door when my mother calls me back. \u201cI\u2019m in line at security,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWhat changed your mind?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a fifty-four-year-old woman. I cannot live my life in fear.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2014<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I spy her on my building\u2019s doorstep, from four stories up. She is covered chin to foot in a camel-colored, fur-trimmed coat. Her bright blond hair spills over the collar. Since the divorce, she has made herself thin and sort of glamorous.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n She is also late. More than two hours late. Thirty minutes ago she called from a taxi to say she was on her way but couldn\u2019t talk. Before that, I was very worried. Fear gnawed my stomach from the inside out. I called the airline. The plane had landed safely, on time. So if something had happened, it had happened only to my mother. Baby in my arms, growing heavier by the minute, I paced the apartment. What <\/em>had she been foreboding? A car accident? A fainting spell?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI met the pilot,\u201d she says, over coffee, at the cafe around the corner, Broadway and 100, where we have settled ourselves at a cozy table. The baby is asleep in her stroller and I am actually drinking my coffee, my guard down, more relaxed than I\u2019ve felt in weeks. If I need to use the bathroom, my mother can stay with the baby. If the baby wakes unexpectedly, perhaps she can even hold<\/em> the baby.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s a very nice pilot.\u201d She pauses. \u201cHe\u2019s not actually a pilot.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWhat is he?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s a flight attendant.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cHow did you meet a flight attendant?\u201d I say, pleased by the inanity, the frivolity of this conversation. Really, I am pleased to be having any conversation. I am so happy my mother is here and I am not sitting alone.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a long story,\u201d she says. \u201cBut when I called you from a taxi, it wasn\u2019t really a taxi.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWhat was it?\u201d I say, stupidly, my brain dulled by motherhood, perhaps, which is what happens to you, they say.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cHe keeps his car at the airport. He was kind enough to give me a ride.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIf he gave you a ride, you should have been early. Or at least, not two hours late.\u201d I pause, comprehension forming. \u201cWhat did you do in his car? Mom?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cOh my goodness, nothing like that!\u201d My mother flushes. \u201cBut he was very nice. We had a wonderful conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s great,\u201d I say and I mean it and I would ask for more details, such as whether she\u2019s planning to see him again, but the baby is starting to stir. I watch her like I\u2019m watching a bomb about to explode. Except, if a bomb were about to explode, I\u2019d run. My mother is distracted. She hasn\u2019t noticed yet. I stand from the table. \u201cI\u2019ll be right back. Could you watch her?\u201d I don\u2019t look back.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2014<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The last time my mother came to visit, I was very pregnant and my mother was the thinnest I\u2019d ever seen her. She was on a mission. According to her surgeon, you were not supposed to touch your face until you had achieved your ideal weight. This was the reason she hadn\u2019t gotten a mini-facelift years ago. For years, she was a slave to her daily pint of pecan ice cream, until, one day, she wasn\u2019t. One day she realized she could live and thrive on little more than lettuce.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t lose any more weight,\u201d I told her. \u201cYou\u2019re thin enough.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My mother patted my shoulder. \u201cDon\u2019t take this personally, honey, but your perspective might be a little skewed.\u201d She was very concerned for me and how unwieldy I must feel, how uncomfortable I must be in my swollen body. But I thought I looked fine, maybe better than I\u2019d ever looked. I\u2019d asked her to wait a month before visiting so she could be in town for the birth, but she said she could not push off her trip because she needed to schedule her surgery before the doctor\u2019s schedule was full and she really wanted to get my feedback before she made her final decision. There were so many options, she said\u2014facelift, brow lift, botox. \u201cWe could Skype,\u201d I said but she shot that down quickly. She needed me to see her in person, the texture of her skin, the full 360 degrees.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n She had not been to the city in a while, since before the divorce. Like a flower, you could see her drinking in the energy; you could see her bloom. Smohio, Ohio, she said, she loved everything about the city, the noise and the streets and the interesting little apartments.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWhen you were a baby,\u201d she said, \u201cwe lived in an apartment like this.\u201d I knew this story. Living in that apartment as a hopeful young wife was a shining time for her. Dad was gone all day, a low-level administrator, not yet the boss. The days were just us, playing in the complex playground, walking to the mall next door. She loved to tell how there was a hole in the fence between the mall and the complex, two missing boards. The shortcut saved ten minutes walking, a lot in the winter. The geometry of it was tricky, but after many attempts, she figured out how to take me out and angle the stroller through just right.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n On that trip, we were both waiting, preparing for a big change. In the mornings, I put on my one pair of dress pants with the stretchy panel and took the train to my boss\u2019s office in midtown East, where I worked as an executive assistant. In the afternoons my mother and I wandered the city in the late September heat, shifting from one caf\u00e9 to the next, where I would sit back with my hands on my belly, under which I could feel the baby moving, poking and pushing from inside of my body, and my mind was overtaken with the strangeness of this, I couldn\u2019t really think about anything else, but my mother\u2019s mind was somewhere else. When the waiters came to ask us if we wanted something to drink, she\u2019d be pulling at her face, lifting the skin with her fingers, asking if this was too tight or not tight enough. I wanted to be able to tell her that she looked fine how she was, but the truth was, she looked so much better, younger and fresher, when she lifted up her face.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A week after the baby was born, she backed out of her facelift, paying a steep penalty for the cancellation. She spent her deposit on a peel and fillers instead. \u201cI\u2019d love to come see how you look,\u201d I told her. \u201cBut I really can\u2019t leave this baby.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Now, in the bathroom mirror, I look at my own face, which would look better with a little makeup. I luxuriate in the ease of washing my hands and smoothing out my hair without a baby tucked under my arm. I feel so light and unencumbered I could fly straight up to the sky.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2014<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When I get back, the baby is screaming. I hear her before I see her. The sound of her cry is the sound of pure uncomprehending terror. She always sounds like this when she cries. Are these her authentic emotions, I wonder, or is she the girl who cries wolf all day long?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWhere were you?\u201d says my mother, thrusting her into my arms.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n People are looking at us. \u201cLet\u2019s go,\u201d I say, as I bounce the baby up and down, bouncing her into oblivion. She quiets and falls asleep. I put her hat on her head and zip her into my coat, which is about three sizes too large for me, chosen because she and I will fit in it together.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n On the street, I secure the baby to my body with one hand and push the empty stroller with the other. We trudge uphill and duck our heads against the blustery wind. Snowflakes swirl in the air.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI think I\u2019m finally ready,\u201d my mother says, \u201cto go back to work.\u201d Now she is skinny and presentable; she has plans to expand her hypnotherapy business, to move from one-on-one sessions to larger seminars on stopping smoking and losing weight. She\u2019s had to stop seeing most of her personal clients because they were getting too personal with her\u2014they told her too much and made her worry at night, made her feel that she should help them in ways that went beyond the scope of hypnotherapy.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I also want to go back to work, but I am only an assistant. By the time we pay a babysitter, we don\u2019t know if it makes any sense. I have the idea that my mother could do it. She could move to the city, watch the baby. In my mind, this is something she ought to do, should want <\/em>to do, should be asking<\/em> to do. But she hasn\u2019t asked.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A couple blocks from my apartment, we are brought to a halt. Shouting, brakes screeching, a bicycle tipped over in the street, and a man in sleek spandex clothes standing by, helmet on this head, looking dazed. The driver gets out of the car, a young woman who looks terrified. Her blond hair is sleek and perfect. Her makeup is perfect. She is wearing razor-thin heels and short, wide pants that display her pale, delicate ankles. Her ankles must be freezing. Perhaps she is on her way to an interview? I feel certain that the interview was for the girl\u2019s dream job and that she would have gotten it except that now she will not make the interview. Tears run down her face. \u201cDid I actually hit you?\u201d she says.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cYou hit me,\u201d says the man.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We cannot look away. We stay until the police arrive. I bounce to keep the baby asleep. The snow thickens and falls down on our heads and on the scene, obscuring the people and the street and the buildings, obscuring the man on the bicycle and the woman who ran into him, but none of this obscures what my mother and I have seen, by which I mean, the things we have seen in our minds, the more terrible things that could have happened.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2014<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We take the baby home. While I am feeding her, my mother dresses for dinner. She puts on a camel-colored dress and a big gold necklace. She looks wonderful. I\u2019ve decided her face looks wonderful, too. The baby presses her soft skin into my skin. Very gently, she pets my shoulder with her chubby baby hand. When she\u2019s done, I put her down on a blanket. I give my mother a hug, and her body feels strange to me, so thin, not at all like the mother I know, a woman who might eat half a cheesecake for dinner then go power-walking through her Ohio neighborhood, at any time of night, arms pumping away, a bullet in white tennis shoes, Walkman tuned to her motivational tape of the moment. She\u2019d come back red-faced and full of ideas. The world is awakening,<\/em> she might say. Get enlightened or get left behind.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n My husband is supposed to be meeting us but he calls to say that he\u2019s running late and we should go on ahead. I don\u2019t have anything to wear and I mean that very literally. The only clothes that fit me are yoga pants, so I put on my nicest yoga pants, the ones that look the most like real pants. I tuck the baby into her stroller and by the time we\u2019re out on the street she\u2019s fallen asleep. My mother and I walk to dinner. We are shown to a table close to the door, presumably because we are saddled with a baby and might need to make a fast escape. Every time someone exits or leaves, we are hit with a blast of cold air, which makes this a terrible table for a baby.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We order a bottle of wine, something my mother and I have never done together. I can\u2019t drink much because of the baby but I assume my husband will take most of my share. I am drinking wine with my mother, who looks like a glamour girl, and she is talking to me about men, how much she wants to meet a man. She orders a salad without any dressing. She takes one tiny sip of wine. I eat all the bread in the basket. I can\u2019t stop drinking the wine or asking my mother questions. I am having a wonderful time. \u201cWhat about the pilot?\u201d I say. \u201cI mean the flight attendant.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cOh,\u201d she says. \u201cOh, I don\u2019t think so. He\u2019s always traveling all over the place.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no reason why you can\u2019t travel,\u201d I say. \u201cShouldn\u2019t you travel? You\u2019re so free. There\u2019s no reason for you to stay in Ohio. You\u2019re unencumbered. You could travel all the time.\u201d I am getting excited. I keep drinking wine. \u201cYou could do your seminars like that,\u201d I say. \u201cYou could just travel and give your seminars wherever you travel. Doesn\u2019t that sound like a wonderful life? Maybe you should marry<\/em> the pilot.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My mother puts down her fork. She is taking a break though she hasn\u2019t eaten anything. \u201cMark hasn\u2019t called me,\u201d she says. \u201cHe said that he would call me but he hasn\u2019t. So I think that we should forget about that.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s only been a couple of hours,\u201d I say. \u201cMaybe he\u2019ll call you tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI was hoping that he would meet us for dinner. I was hoping to have a date.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWell, I don\u2019t have a date either,\u201d I say. \u201cSo I guess we can be each other\u2019s date.\u201d Really, the baby is my date, and I\u2019m worried that my date might be waking up. I watch her like I can hypnotize her with my will to go back to sleep.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m tired,\u201d my mother says.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cMove here!\u201d I say. \u201cThere are men everywhere! You\u2019ll get a place near me. You can help with the baby.\u201d As soon as I say this out loud, I realize how badly I want it. \u201cWouldn\u2019t you like to spend time with the baby? You can help me, I can help you.\u201d I knock over my glass of wine, I am so overwhelmed with the perfection of this idea. As I mop up the mess, I think how this is what I need. This is what she needs. For the first time in many years, my mother and I will fulfill each other\u2019s needs.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My mother shakes her head. \u201cI can\u2019t move here. I don\u2019t like it here. All the people. That accident. I\u2019d be afraid to cross the street.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI thought you loved it here,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI want to work on my business. I want to work on myself. There are so many years\u2014I really don\u2019t know what I was doing. I need to make up for lost time.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThe baby\u2019s here,\u201d I say. We both look at the baby, who is starting to stir in her stroller. Her face wrinkles and un-wrinkles. I turn to my mother and I can see that she is unmoved.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Before I can reach her, the baby escalates to a full-on scream. As quick as I can, I lift her out of the stroller, but the crying doesn\u2019t stop. Everyone is looking at us. I bounce and bounce. I look for a nook. The bathroom is tiny. There\u2019s nowhere to go. The screaming gets louder. I am starting to panic. The waiter is approaching. I was silly to bring a baby to this place. In a second, I will get kicked out.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going outside,\u201d I say to my mother, zipping myself and the baby into my jacket, pulling our hats onto our heads. \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d I say. \u201cI\u2019ll be back as fast as I can.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Outside, the snow is falling. It lands gently on our heads while the baby screams. \u201cDon\u2019t cry, baby,\u201d I say. \u201cDon\u2019t cry.\u201d I feel a little woozy, my cheeks flushed and warm from the wine. Despite the crying, I am glad to be outside, where the air is bracing and fresh, where the baby can scream to her heart\u2019s content without disturbing anyone\u2014anyone other than me. This is where we belong.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We walk to the end of the block and come back. The baby is starting to quiet but I can\u2019t quite bring her inside. Through the window, I watch my mother, who is eating her salad, one leaf at a time. She does not touch the bread. She looks lonely to me, but maybe I\u2019m wrong. Maybe she wants to be lonely. Maybe being lonely is better than the alternatives.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n After a couple minutes, my husband shows up with a camel scarf around his neck and ear clips on his ears, huffing from the cold. He is finally here. He is my most familiar person, but I feel like I haven\u2019t seen him in weeks.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cHey,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat are you doing out here?\u201d He puts an arm around my shoulder, kisses the top of my head. The baby lets out a sigh and relaxes her body into my body. I relax my body into his body. The snow falls and falls on all of our heads.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cGo in there,\u201d I say. \u201cI\u2019ll be in in a minute. Just sit with her at table, okay?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cOkay,\u201d says my husband. He opens the door. Warm air rushes out. Cold air rushes in. He greets my mother. He gives her a hug. He takes off his coat and sits in the chair across from her, the chair where I was sitting before. The snow is melting in his dark hair. I can make out the faint sheen of wet. He talks to her, she shows him something in her notebook, and I feel calm, the baby\u2019s body against my body makes me calm, but underneath I am bereft. She starts to smile. He takes a sip of my wine. She takes a bite of her salad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My mother calls to tell me she cannot get on the plane. She has had a premonition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":5674,"template":"","categories":[9,48,49],"tags":[889,143,1672,208,1673],"class_list":["post-5669","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-fiction","category-literary-features","tag-aquifer","tag-fiction","tag-freebirds","tag-motherhood","tag-shira-elmalich"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n