Excerpt from What Came First

What Came First

Chapter Three: Wendy

Tuesday-night scrapbooking is the highlight of my week, which speaks volumes about just how crappy my life has become. There are fourteen of us in the group, all stay-at-home mothers, but typically only five or six women show up on any given evening. I’m always there.

No one ever asks me to host. Scrapbooking involves cutting tools, and my son Harrison’s preschool scissor incident looms large in the collective community memory. I’d like to say that he’s outgrown his aggressive behavior now that he’s in kindergarten, but he hasn’t, any more than his twin sister, Sydney, has moved beyond SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF HER LUNGS EVERY TIME SHE DOESN’T GET WHAT SHE WANTS.

So: scrapbooking. I’ve been at it for just over a year, and I’m on my eighth volume, Bath Time for Babies! Thanks to the water theme, I’m going with blue: blue covers, blue pages, blue stickers. Blue is calming.

Wine is calming, too. It flows by the gallon at these things, Chardonnay, mostly, though we have a handful of Merlot drinkers. We all live in the same North Scottsdale housing development, so home is always a short drive (or stumble) away.

Annalisa Lemberger scored hostess duties tonight. Annalisa lives a street away in a beige stucco house identical to mine, right down to the forest-green front door and the yellow lantana planted along the concrete walkway. Years ago, before the twins, a few months after Darren and I had moved to Arizona from Chicago, I drove my groceries “home” to Annalisa’s house. My garage door opener didn’t work, of course, so I parked in the driveway and lugged my plastic sacks of food and toilet paper to the front door. I spent maybe ten frustrating minutes trying to turn my key in the lock before the woman who lived there (not Annalisa—she’s new) called neighborhood security. The guard assured me that people in our development confuse houses all the time, but I burst into tears anyway and didn’t stop crying till I’d spent a half hour in the darkness of my own garage.

The house mistake pushed me over the edge, but it wasn’t the true source of my unhappiness. Before stopping at the grocery store, I’d had an appointment with a fertility specialist. With no success after three years of what we all referred to as “trying,” I needed to face facts. I might never become pregnant.

The idea of a childless future plunged me into an instant depression. How could I ever lead a full life without a house full of little people to call my own?

Ha! If only I could have seen into the future!

“You’re the first one here!” Annalisa chirps now, opening her green front door. She’s started in on the Chardonnay already, a sparkly wine charm clinking at the base of her heavy, green-rimmed Mexican wineglass. She looks Scottsdale-perfect as always: tall, trim, and frosty blond, wearing a teal sweater set, cream trousers, and silver sandals with delicate heels.

“Actually, I thought this was my house,” I quip. Annalisa loves my wrong-house story. (I never told her that it ended in tears.)

When she laughs, she shows off her superstraight, bright-white teeth. Annalisa always laughs at my jokes, even the predictable ones, so I like her even though I can’t help thinking of her as Scottsdale Barbie.

As much as our houses resemble each other from the street, walking into Annalisa’s is like entering a different world. My house has that “lived in” look: once-white carpet; stain-resistant couches that aren’t; and a mishmash of tables and chairs, all showing the effects of two active five-year-olds. (“Active” sounds so much better than “out of control.”) Everything in Annalisa’s house looks like it was bought in one day at a Southwestern decorating superstore. Which it probably was.

If I were a positive-thinking kind of person, I’d appreciate that my house has more personality than Annalisa’s. But I am not a positive-thinking kind of person. Personality is overrated. I’d switch homes in a minute.

In Annalisa’s combo living/dining room (we use it as a toy room), Colbie Caillet croons all barefoot-folksy-feminine from the stereo while cinnamon-scented candles flicker on the end tables. I wouldn’t dare light candles like that in my house. Even matches hidden on hard-to-reach shelves make me nervous.

In addition to wine, Annalisa has laid out a seven-layer dip, an artichoke spread, a cheese platter, and brownies. Why do the skinniest women always serve the fattiest food? For years, I’ve moaned about my inability to lose my “baby weight.” I put on sixty-five pounds with Sydney and Harrison and lost twenty-three in the year after their birth. The rest has settled quite comfortably onto my stomach, belly, hips, thighs, and—shoot me now—back. Now that the kids are in school, I’ve got to admit that all that padding can no longer be classified as “baby weight.” It is just plain old fat, and it’s not going anywhere. Pass the artichoke spread.

I have just finished affixing a cactus wine charm to my glass when Annalisa’s husband, Roger, comes clomping down the stairs with their two little blond girls, whose names I can never remember. One of the girls is a year older than the twins, and the other is a year younger. Or maybe she’s two years younger. I can never remember that either. It doesn’t matter. As a rule, I get along better with women who don’t have children in the twins’ class.

“Hiya! Good to see you again!” Roger booms, his voice echoing off the too-tall ceiling. He has no idea who I am.

“You, too,” I say. “Taking the girls out?”

“Yup.” He puts a hand on each blond head. “Movie date with Dad.”

Roger is the other reason that I don’t hate Annalisa even though she looks like an unnaturally proportioned plastic doll (I mean that in a good way). Roger is a beast. That’s not to say that he’s not a nice man, because as far as I can tell, he lets Annalisa do pretty much anything she wants. But Annalisa is younger than me, in her early thirties, and Roger has got to be sixty. And not a youthful sixty. I don’t know what’s going on with his face, but the skin is all red and saggy, and he has pores the size of sesame seeds.

“What are Darren and the twins doing tonight?” Annalisa asks.

“Just, you know. Having a quiet evening at home.”

When I left, Darren was at his computer, lost in a Sims trance, while Harrison and Sydney chomped on dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets in front of the Cartoon Network. By now they’ll have finished eating and be engaged in hand-to-hand combat, but whoops! I’ve left my cell phone in the car, so if Darren tries to call me, I won’t even know.

“That’s nice,” Annalisa, says. “Sometimes we moms just need to get out of the way so the dads can have their one-on-one time.”

In Sims, Darren is a childless sports agent with a knack for Cajun voodoo—his powers recently imbued by the Sims Makin’ Magic Expansion Pack, which his mother gave him for Christmas. She never did like me, and not just because she spent so many years blaming her lack of grandchildren on my faulty female plumbing. When Darren’s sluggish sperm were finally identified as a far bigger obstacle to pregnancy than my irregular ovulation, she hardened herself against me even more. Now she sends “the children” (never “Harrison and Sydney,” never “my grandchildren”) ten dollars each for their birthdays and Christmas. I’ve learned not to expect or want any more from her.

The doorbell rings. Annalisa puts down her already-empty wineglass and opens the door to another frosty blonde, slightly shorter and not quite as pretty as herself (Scottsdale Skipper). Two more women arrive shortly after. Annalisa pours them wine and refills her own glass. We pull out our supplies: binders, papers, scissors, stickers, and photographs—so many, many photographs.

We coo and giggle over the images: bath time, beach time, birthdays, and Christmas. Such adorable children. Such dashing husbands.

Thank God they’re not here.

Back to book page