Elizabeth McCracken - An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination - A Memoir

This perturbed Edward. “I thought I knew,” he said. “Why’d Ann have to say that?”

At the hardware store a woman behind the counter said, “So do you know for sure you’re having a boy?” but a pedicurist the same day shook her head and said, Girl, and wasn’t a pedicurist almost a medical professional? It amused me to spend so much time pondering a question that could be at any time answered with reasonable certainty. By the last month of pregnancy I had my amniotic fluid checked by ultrasound twice weekly, not to mention plenty of other diagnostic tools. But I never bent.

Maybe I had just acquired new superstitions, and given them disguises.

We’d planned for Pudding in stories, plane tickets to see family, and tiny French outfits. Then I was pregnant again and we counted on nothing, and so we prepared for the future by taking classes. We signed up for four:

1. A four-week childbirth class through my ob-gyn practice, taught by one of my favorite people there, the nurse coordinator. Of course I already knew what to expect of such a class. I watched TV, didn’t I? We’d sit on the floor in the bobsled position, surrounded by other couples, and Edward would be told to tell me to breathe.

We never left our chairs, and in fact we knew most of what was taught, having been through childbirth before. I wanted to raise my hand and interrupt the lovely nurse every other sentence to say: “You mean if, not when.”

2. An infant car seat installation class. We were the only ones who showed up. The instructor was a thin blond woman, I think in her late forties, who had four sons, aged four, seven, seventeen, and twenty-five. I was dying to know her story, but I didn’t ask. Her teaching style appealed to us, because like auto safety professionals everywhere her message was: YOU COULD EASILY GET DECAPITATED OR DECAPITATE SOMEONE ELSE! But! DECAPITATION IS EASY TO PREVENT IF YOU AREN’T DUMB AND CARELESS LIKE THE REST OF THE WORLD. The worst could happen, here’s how to minimize it. That’s what we wanted.

We started the class with a short test, which included the question “What is an accident?”

The answer she was looking for: an accident is force times mass. That is, she wanted to impress upon us that in an accident, loose objects in the car — water bottles, spare change, and so forth — could become imbedded in, or pass through, your child. Everything should be locked in the trunk, though purses were fine as long as they were zipped shut and seat-belted in.

We’d already had our seat installed at the local firehouse by two policemen who’d struggled with the job. One had the sort of authoritative, well-tended mustache that only police or firemen can carry off; the other was tall and curly-haired. Together they crawled into the backseat of our car and frowned. “This is a hard car,” one had said, and I theorized that the Cadillac Catera — my parents had given it to us when they’d bought a new Subaru — had not been designed for the childbearing demographic. The policemen pushed and pulled and used a wedge of foam noodles duct-taped together, and then, as they showed us how to buckle a baby doll into the removable seat, told us not to move the base if we could avoid it. We told them we were taking a class in a few days, but we wouldn’t let the teacher move it. “You’re taking a class with Cindy?” one of the policemen said. He looked frankly a little frightened.

Cindy, it turned out, had taught the policemen how to install seats, and she was skeptical about the foam noodles. “Right,” she said. “Let’s see what one woman can accomplish compared to two men.” In three minutes she’d reinstalled the seat without the noodles, and then she taught Edward.

“Can I keep this?” she asked, slapping her palm with the noodle wedge like an old-fashioned movie policeman with his nightstick. “I’m going to see those guys next week at a safety event, and I’d like to give them this as a present.”

3. An infant care class at the local hospital. In truth, neither Edward nor I knew anything about babies. Surely most of it was on-the-job training, but some advice on, say, diaper changing and bathing would help. For the first three hours of this session, the labor and delivery nurse who taught it explained the various things that could make your newborn baby look unsightly — stork bites; tarry black stool; rashes of all kinds; thick, greasy, channel-swimming fat; back hair; lumps from vacuum deliveries; dents from forceps deliveries.

Then we got on the issue of circumcision.

Perhaps the only real conversation Edward and I have ever had on the subject of religion came after our wedding. We’d been married with dueling officiants, now the village priest and his sonorous voice and official vows, now the American rabbi and the smashed glass and cries of mazel tov. I had been late to the service. To fill time, the church organist played first “If I Were a Rich Man” and then “Jesus Christ Superstar.” In other words, it had taken some work to appeal to both of our families.

“My mother says the next thing to worry about is christenings and circumcisions,” I said to him.

“No to both,” he said, and we solemnly shook hands on it.

So I didn’t say anything at all about it when the topic came up: we knew what we’d do. The nurse, who’d already distinguished herself by saying that the administration of eye salve was mandated in “all forty-eight states,” was clearly completely and totally against circumcision but knew that she couldn’t say so. Well, not in so many words. “The United States,” she said, “is the only so-called civilized country that regularly circumcises. So think about that.”

“It seems,” said one thoughtful young husband, “like a lot of people say that you should circumcise a boy so he’ll look like his father.”

“Yes!” said the nurse. “And you know what? How many men are homophobic? Let’s face it: all of them! So what are the chances you’ll be hanging around naked with your kid anyhow?”

Apparently I made a noise that was translatable as: lady, that is eighteen kinds of batshit.

“You don’t agree?” she asked me.

Now I should say I’d already gotten in trouble because she’d earlier heard me making fun of the swaddled infant she’d drawn on the whiteboard. Also, when she’d said the thing about forty-eight states, I’d turned to Edward, and said, “That’s not right,” just so that he, a foreigner, would not be confused, I swear that’s the only reason.

What I’m saying is I was already not Nurse Batshit’s favorite student.

“Well,” I stuttered, “I mean, I don’t know, it’s not, it’s just, I don’t think — listen, you don’t need to convince me anyhow: I’m married to a European.”

“I have a European parent,” she said, in a voice that suggested that I meant European to be a euphemism for nudist: she understood, but this really wasn’t the place to discuss it.

I’m glad I wasn’t being graded.

4. An infant CPR class. This took place in the basement of the public library and was the most oversubscribed class of all, as well as the most motley: there were two other heavily pregnant women, a bunch of day care workers, a few other couples, and some EMTs brushing up on their skills. The teacher was a pepper pot of a woman with six kids. She’d brought two of them with her, a pair of mismatched nine-year-old fraternal twin boys.

The rescue mannequins were the usual beige objects that looked as though they’d died of heroin overdoses, even the two infant dummies. There weren’t enough to go around, so to make up for the lack, the teacher had brought a variety of dolls. For instance, Elmo. And Kermit the Frog. And the green Teletubby, the Cat in the Hat, a Rugrat, a character I’d never heard of called Doug, Raggedy Ann, and a Cabbage Patch doll. The history of beloved commercial dolls. She gave us pieces of plastic to lay over the mouths — or muzzles, or whatever you call the thing through which a Teletubby takes its nourishment — dental dams, essentially, to make safe the practice of artificial respiration on toys. The man next to us had the green Teletubby. He was the only person there who was learning for a specific, already earthbound person: his son, he said happily in a Chinese accent as thick as his crew cut, was five days old. You would have easily picked him out as the new father, he was so tender with the Teletubby, so cautious as he supported its head and adjusted the bit of plastic wrap.