Thoughts on Celebration, Choice, and Red Sauce
Jessica Anne
Nonfiction
It was the leg cramps and the thirst that confirmed my pregnancy before my pregnancy was confirmed.
The rain of bullets ravaging the space between my knees and ankles. First thing in the morning, before I even reached for my partner or looked at the clock; there I was dry heaving, screaming gulps of air. It felt like my calves were pissing out kidney stones and my mouth stuffed with sand and broken balloons.
I knew.
Are you okay, he said. I didn’t even know I was walking sideways. Bent over in abominable pain. Yes, my period’s coming. The cramps are really bad for some reason. That must have been the implantation. Because it wasn’t a cramp at all. It was a knife, the sharpest knife in the world making one long slit low and deep inside of me and my wildest dreams.
Monica Lewinsky says in her Ted Talk that shame is an emotion stronger than pain or happiness.
I had no idea.
But I write it out now, as a confession. A release. I love you, I love you, I love you. I’ll never name you or have you or keep you. But I do love and love and love you. And shame on me. Shame on every breath I take. An emotion stronger than pain or happiness. I wanted you so bad, desperately, but I chose my family instead. My partner, his twelve year old daughter, his ex-wife, his ex-wife’s partner, his ex-wife’s partner’s adult son. I want them all so bad. They’re all I ever wanted. And I know that you, baby, sweetheart, would disrupt them. Interrupt them. Especially the twelve year old. The twelve year old is alive, born and thriving. And I would never forgive myself if we, baby and I, pushed her out of her sturdy, wall mounted frame. Baby, you were nobody’s plan. You were a stunning blessed miracle. I can see all your thick auburn dark hair. Your cheeks smell like clean socks. Your full pouty lips knock me to the floor every time. You look like the twelve year old. Very pretty. Confident. Curious. I want you so bad I have to keep reminding myself I’ll never see you. I’m so grateful for the shame, it is so great, and full. On my knees, bearing down deep in the hot cavern of pain, I am led, blindly, to great amazing shame.
What are you writing about?
My ex-wife’s lasagna–
My ex-wife’s lasagna?
Yes. Technically. Your ex-wife’s lasagna. But I think My Ex-Wife’s Lasagna is a great line. Title, even.
It’s a great title.
She would be so happy.
That I keep eating it?
Umhmm. Yeah. You’ve eaten a square of my ex-wife’s lasagna for breakfast every morning this week.
It seems to improve with age.
I agree.
It’s funny, for whatever reason, she feels comfortable around you.
Yeah, we get along, it’s nice.
My partner and his ex-wife are on great terms. They co-parent like needle point. Sharp and direct, routine and bright. I don’t know, maybe there’s tension and conflict sometimes. Sometimes he looks up from his phone and snaps, out loud to nothing, to no one, why am I just now hearing about this?!
Are you okay?
I’m fine, it’s not really a big deal.
I’m sure, like most things, it was very hard at first. I say silently, (like a prayer) to my partner, I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been to share a Google calendar with the love that left you.
My ex-husband and I were never able to get pregnant. We had cats.
The last time I saw my ex-husband was the morning of our Zoom divorce, years ago. When the judge asked him if he would like to say anything to his wife, he said no, your honor.
A breath. And he was gone. What a waste. Not him, but, the time.
How nice that my partner and his ex-wife have something to show of their union. I like it when they smile at each other, wave at each other from across the playground, sit with each other.
It’s a privilege to witness. And it’s amazing that I don’t get jealous. If anything, I’m envious of the twelve year old. I want a mom. If anything, I wish I had a reason to call the person I was married to for 12 years, even if just to say, she left her jacket at your place.
If anything, I’m happy, honored to have a seat at the table. Nobody’s perfect, it’s none of my business, what do I know–but–I do know my partner and his ex-wife are co-parenting infinitely better than my parents ever did. And that’s all we can ever hope for; some sort of improvement on the state of love, the rights of children, the safety of women in this cold bleak world.
There is no universe that exists in which my parents, or my step parents, sit next to each other at a piano recital, flanked on either side by their respective (newly) committed life partners, like it’s nothing at all.
My parents divorced when I was five.
They were both at my high school graduation, but sat on opposite ends of the auditorium. Weeks before the ceremony, my mom extended an olive branch to my dad asking him if he’d like to join us downtown after graduation, us; my mom, my three half sisters and I for dinner at The Italian Village. She must have called him and invited him with her voice, it was before the text message was invented.
(I wonder if more advanced technology would have changed anything. Co-parents seem to communicate very effectively over text. From what I can see. But again, I imagine it was very painful at first.)
Riding shotgun to the train station, my dad told me all this as he adjusted the volume on the radio. And then he said, I absolutely do not want to go. But, I will go for you, if you want me there.
18 years old, hugging my ripped denim knees to my chest, I said, no, that’s okay. I’m good.
Why would I want my dad to eat meatballs, to dip soft white bread into pools of olive oil and grated parmesan cheese with the person he hates most in the world. That would be an awful lot to ask of him.
To lighten the mood I said, I might win an award.
Oh yeah?
Yeah, every department awards one exceptional student at graduation. I might win the theatre award.
Smacking his lips he said, well, that would be great–
Yeah, it’s either me or Joe Binder. But Joe comes to class high and I don’t. So there’s a chance I’m a better student than him. Even though he’s more talented. You know?
Hmm.
Here, let me help you, my partner’s ex-wife said to me as I struggled to portion a piece of her lasagna onto my plate. The holidays tend to trigger my old habits of disordered eating; secretive, competitive, repetitive.
She invited us. Us, her ex-husband and I, over to her house for Christmas Eve dinner. Her partner and his adult son were also present, of course. Plus, naturally, the 12 year old we all share. The table is round and has just enough room for all the members of our modern family.
I imagined a pink baby swaddled in hand me down blankets asleep in a carrier on the floor. She looked so sweet with her long wet eyelashes fluttering in time to the rising of her chest. But then the dog licked her face and she freaked out, it was a whole scene. It didn’t work. It was too much.
My internal food noise swelled to full volume.
First I thought, you know, I could just keep eating these beets and no one would notice whether or not I ever tried the lasagna. But then I thought, I like lasagna, and someone made it, a human being. I’m going to eat the lasagna.
No thanks, I’m good, my partner said to the obgyn asking him if he wanted to see.
And sir, would you like to see?, the obgyn slow to understand we (he) did not want this baby.
Ummmm. Okay! My partner said to his ex-wife as she offered the leftover lasagna.
I don’t know what got into him. He’s very fit and usually doesn’t keep carbs in the house.
But I’ll do it for you.
When my friend Daniel lost his father, suddenly. He wrote in a short piece for The Millions that he had asked all his writer friends to please recommend stories and poems of grief. He wanted to grieve in community, in letters. Don’t we all? But despite the strong recommendations of contemporaries and critics, nothing seemed to move the needle on his sadness until one writer recommended Gilgamesh.
Tablet VIII, where Gilgamesh cries for the death of Enkidu:
“May the heights of highland and mountain weep for you,
may the lowlands wail like your mother,
may the forest of cypress and cedar weep for you…
May the holy Euphrates weep for you,
whose waters we libated from waterskins…”
*There was no question, no doubt, I had to have an abortion. But it was still the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I stuffed the pills up my vagina on my partner’s bed on a pile of towels while he was away on a ten day cruise with his daughter, the twelve year old. I was afraid, if I called a friend, told a soul, I wouldn’t go through with it. I didn’t think it was possible to bleed that much. And the clots really are the size of lemons.
I don’t know if I was ashamed to be having an abortion, or ashamed that I got pregnant. I don’t even know if the feeling was organic, acute, reflexive shame. Or something else. Something I can’t find in any of my books, but that I call shame because I can’t think of a better word. A stronger word.
In (acting; Misner) conservatory, in an effort to train our bodies to connect to our brains without thinking, we would repeat the same phrase over and over until a magnificent, usually ugly feeling bubbled up. I’m still bleeding, I’m still bleeding, I’m still bleeding. And then the instructor would say, now, how do you feel? I feel humiliated. I feel vulnerable. I feel ashamed. Okay, now, say your words. Feed your lines.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about! You want to talk about the baby, everybody wants to talk about the baby, but I never saw the baby, so I can’t talk about the baby, because I don’t believe in the baby!….” (John Pielmeier, Agnes of God)
Well, there was one moment when I was definitely irrevocably ashamed. William and Nicole’s wedding. Our first plus one outing, my partner and I. Week five of my (our) bleeding. It wasn’t like a period where you start out day one with a few spots, work your way up to a heavy flow for day three, and then taper off nicely into a panty liner on day five. No, this bleeding was constant, then dry as a bone, then suddenly cramping out clots all in the span of twelve hours. I’m sure you know all this, this experience is not unique to me. Even the baby, if you believe her to be a live baby, I believe, is not unique to me. She has passed through many lands, and many bones in different forms and different cycles of varying lengths, each life carrying a different lesson, a distinct mark. The infertility wasn’t your fault, your body was protecting itself, you are a parent, you’ll see, just wait.
I frolicked at the pool all day, with the wedding party, in a periwinkle string bikini, not a drop of blood. But then there I was, eating gnocchi in a single layer of silk, doubled over, bleeding through everything, and everyone, onto the lily white, ceramic white wedding chair. I tied a dress shirt around my waist and kept going. My partner kept me safe and reassured. But you can feel loved and safe and ashamed all at the same time, I’m learning. It’s too much to process. Nothing to do but dance. Or read.
I wonder what would happen if I put an advertisement out to the internet, a caption under a filtered picture of my King James bible and my high protein breakfast, hey guys, I’m grieving a medication abortion, divorced, and in love, and choosing step parenting over biological parenting. Struggling to see myself reflected in the books on my shelf, any recs?
I’m afraid to do that. Afraid of what they’d say, think. Do. To me.
I made a choice, I made a choice, I made a choice.
“The point of repetition is there is no point. Wait until it soaks into the hardware and then see the way this frees up your head. A whole shitload of head-space you don’t need for the mechanics anymore, after they’ve sunk in. Now the mechanics are wired in. Hardwired in. This frees the head in the remarkablest ways.” (David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest)
I’ve been muscling through the big book. Some men that I care very deeply for, look up to, pedestal, love that book so much. My partner loves that book. My baby brother who died by overdose love(d)s that book.
Like most women I know, I don’t love it and I haven’t finished it. But every once in a while I’ll come across a passage that I have to copy down into my notebook, a beautiful passage that bears repeating.
My partner and I live with the twelve year old every Monday through Wednesday and every other weekend. The routine is exhilarating. The routines of the households, but also the routines within the routines of the child waking up at the same time every morning, going to bed at the same time every night. Teeth, hair, read, lights out. Piano, girl scouts, gymnastics, repeat. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. My mind is so free. My thoughts so expansive. My days so appropriate in length. I’ve never been so prolific.
My parents never did that. I lived with my mom. I saw my dad every once in a while. If I needed to be somewhere I walked or asked a neighbor for a ride. It was a different time.
The glass pointy trees that light up blue, red, and green according to a daily timer; they pass as winter. We can leave them out. The let it snow plastic wreath. The hooks, bare for eleven months. The gifts put away. We roll around like cats in the spot where the tree just was. Every cycle pulls sadness, wonder, new old fashioned ways. I love you, I love you, I love you. The lasagna leaks bright orange grease onto the canvas of my white timeless plate.
February 17th would be your due date, she said, looking at the corner of her screen.
Ouch–
I winced. The wand inside of me, turning, spinning and pushing down hard like those machines in the locker rooms at the water parks, the ones that dry your bathing suit quickly.
My birthday is the 20th, my sister’s is the 2nd. February.
Sometimes not getting to be a mom feels like a degree I didn’t earn, a promotion I didn’t get, three pounds I can’t seem to lose in time for the big day.
If only I’d tried harder.
I didn’t win the theatre award, Joe did. But I did win the headmaster’s medallion. My dad said, through the swarm of caps and chaos, Hey! Joe was really racking ’em up, hugh?, I’m sorry, Jess. And then he left.
Dinner was fine, but it would have been nice to all be together. My dad could have brought his wife and children, he could have done that, arranged that–in the scheme of things–very simple thing without hesitation, despair, or question. It’s amazing what a person can do if they just clear their mind, open their heart, and reach for the spatula.
My lawyer called 15 minutes after I exited the Zoom room. Really, exactly 15. It’s like she knew, she’ll need 10 minutes to ball her eyes out, and 5 minutes to blow her nose.
Hi, Jessica. I just wanted to call and say, you are divorced now. Okay?
Okay, thank you.
I dreamed of girl’s trips. Of funfetti cakes. Of slammed doors. Of disasters. Haircuts. Tulle. Snow boots. Science projects. Hair caught in zippers. Onions wilting in hot oil. Allergies. Go Fund Me’s. College applications. Norovirus. Once in a life times. Board games at the table. Card games on the rug.
And it all (most(ly)) came true. With a 12 year old who is not my 12 year old. With a mom who is (part of) my family. With a man who is also a dad. With a cat, always, by my side.
I took my name, and my cat. The set of dishes my grandmother made for us as a wedding present. And my books.
The twelve year old is so sweet with the cat, letting her sleep in her room all day. Cuddling and snoring all over her stuffies.
Sometimes I feel like I’m asking so much of her.
Sometimes I feel like everything was leading to this moment. All these impossible choices.
It took me 42 years to accept my life as my own. Worthy of choice. Selfish, stunning, stubborn.
Are all choices selfish? When a choice is hard do you have to reduce your self to an ish in order to make it. I’m a self, ish. I have a soul, ish. If I was completely full of my whole self, would I have had the baby? Took the couch? Changed my name back?
My step mom was adopted by her step dad when she was in her twenties. This man, Emmerson, had been in her life her whole life, and then they made it official. A legal adoption. It took me years to figure this out, and it was an act of figuring and piecing, my step family wasn’t big on monologuing. And my stepmom only ever called this man, Emmerson; dad. And only ever referred to him as my father. They were very close. They fought, and linked arms, and spent money, and saved money, and built a summer home, and traveled to Europe, and celebrated birthdays. Pushed each other’s wheelchairs. Talked and talked and talked and talked. She took the role of good dutiful daughter very seriously. She even took care of him at the end of his life. Uprooted her whole life to live with, in service, of him. For years. Through hurricanes and rebuildings. Rehabs and tummy tucks. Sacrificing so much. Perhaps even her relationship with her own children. Step daughter. And career.
This man, Emmerson, was sharp as a tack until 101 until he slipped and hit his chest on the granite countertop one evening when my step mom was away. He told her, cool as a sleeveless vest, so, I fell. And that was that. She took him to the hospital to get him checked out, something had shattered in his ribs and the shards and crumbs of his century old body aspirated into his lungs and he died three days later, holding her hand. He never had children of his own. He was a very successful doctor. He had a boat. He was a big drinker. He liked cheese and pumpkin pie. He hated fat people.
In fact, the last thing he said to my step mom was, don’t get fat.
Through the beeps and the murmurs: did you do zombie (Zumba) today?
Through the tears and the quivers: no dad, not today.
On his final exhale: don’t get fat.
A final breath in. And then he died. Flat lined. Nothing more; no more breath, no more words. No accountability or rehabilitation. No can we we check in? No did you really mean to say? No I have to say something. No Christmas Eve you never dreamed of; so pleasant, so inspired, so blended.
The last thing my real mom said to me before she died was I love you too, sweetie. She was a mess, my real mom. We were a mess. But she had that in her, those words. She also hated fat people. And commented on my size and waning beauty constantly. But in the end, surrounded by windows and white roses, she must have found an unconditional love. Of me. And then she died alone. Like the man in 2001: A Space Odyssey. In his orange space suit, floating weightless through the complete unknown, dying in a sea of stars; crossed, fired and fated.
I don’t want to die alone. I’d rather die fat than alone.
In my marriage, I wanted to be pregnant so bad. Three rounds of IVF; not one egg was retrieved.
My partner’s ex-wife is a doctor.
I picture my partner’s ex-wife pulling thick lasagna noodles out of steaming hot water, straightening each individual noodle with a flat iron. Stewing fresh tomatoes in a dutch oven. Wilting sage and garlic and basil leaves over an open bonfire. Melting and braiding mozzarella. Cracking black pepper in an heirloom inscribed mortar and pestle. Browning butter and setting the table.
Anne Lamont talks about eating, eating together, at the table, as the most holy and sacred thing we can do. She talks about her own eating disorder and how community, and love, and breaking bread together pulled her out of deprivation, starvation, obsession and addiction.
I loved that glass Pyrex pan of red and orange greasy meat lasagna. I loved the cheesy garlic bread and the beet salad and the glass of champagne. I loved the Hanukkah lights and the spinning dreidel. I love them still. Now, in this new year. God, how I love. My choices.
My ex-husband doesn’t return my calls or texts. It’s like he’s dead. I can’t remember the last thing he said to me. I think it was probably, bye. We were on the phone.
Maybe splitting up but staying tethered is the truest love.
Having a child together, in this new era of co-parenting, seems to help the evolution of the failed marriage.
I have to confess, at the end of the night, balancing our leftovers in one hand as we shimmied into our winter coats; I could sense my partner opening his arms to hug his ex-wife, and I looked away.
Multiple people have made it very clear that I am not the twelve year old’s parent and that it is not my job to parent her. And it never will be.
I get it, I get it. But, I love her if you don’t mind. Can I just love her? Could I please truly love this person? I’m just asking if it’s okay with everyone if I unconditionally, with all that I am and all that I have, love this person for the rest of my natural life. I would like to save my last breath for her, she can take it, or leave it. It’s just there if she wants it. And meanwhile I can help keep her safe, I know there’s nothing I can do that her own parents aren’t perfectly capable of doing themselves. But sometimes we hang out, the child and I, and, so, I’m right there. I won’t parent her, I swear, but I’ll throw myself across the tracks for her if necessary. I’ll keep her secrets. Hold her hand. Play. Pour water and reach for the ketchup. Laugh, and laugh, and laugh, and laugh. I’m really fun, you know. Like, the most fun.
Shopping. Reading. Petting the cat.
I hugged her too, my partner’s ex-wife. I was gentle, careful. But, I meant it.
It’s almost like being in a polyamorous relationship. Or a past life.
Thanks again.
You’re welcome, was it okay without the egg? I didn’t have an egg–
Yes, truly–
Jessica Anne is the author of A Manual for Nothing (Noemi Press) and Sex With My Family (Long Day Press). She is a Neo-Futurist ensemble member, an artistic associate of MAKE Literary Productions, and directs the MFA Creative Writing Program at Roosevelt University.
Photo Credit: Carolyn Adams’ poetry and art have been published in the pages, and on the covers of Defunkt Magazine, Steam Ticket, Change Seven Magazine, The Fictional Cafe, and Red Weather, among others. She has authored five chapbooks, with one being a collection of her collage art, entitled What Do You See?
L'Esprit Literary Review 