Chapter 6

At half past noon, things are going exactly to plan.

I’m finishing up with my last clinic patient, and I’ve taken the rest of the day off. That means that I’ll have ample time to finish my notes, drive home, change clothes, and be at the preschool plenty early for Leah’s show. The VA can be frustrating at times, but at least it gives me the flexibility to be around for the special moments in my daughter’s life.

I take an extra forty minutes to finish up my notes and clean up my examining room. I grab my giant coat that rivals Leah’s in puffiness (although not pinkness—it’s a shade of gray, like everything else I wear) and head to the waiting area to let Barbara know that I’m leaving.

Barbara is just getting back from lunch and has the roster out for the afternoon clinic. I notice that there’s an elderly man in the waiting area, but she hasn’t checked off any of the boxes.

I look at the patient with a sinking feeling in my stomach .

“Barbara,” I say.

She finishes what she’s doing on her phone, pats her mullet, then looks up at me. “Yes?”

I gesture at the man sitting patiently in one of the seats. “Who’s that?”

Barbara looks at the man. She looks down at the roster of patients for the afternoon, then back at the patient. She reaches under her desk for the recycle bin and pulls out the list of patients from the morning (which really should have been shredded). She runs her finger down the list to the name of a patient that I thought had no-showed. Louis Hirsch. “Oh,” she finally says, “I think he might have been one of your morning patients.”

I stare at her. “Are you serious? How long has he been sitting out there?”

She looks down at the list again. “Since ten in the morning.”

“He’s been sitting there for three hours ?”

Barbara shrugs. “I guess so.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “Why didn’t you tell me he was waiting?”

“I thought you knew.”

I want to throttle Barbara. How could she think I’d knowingly leave a patient sitting in the waiting room for three hours? And now, of course, I need to leave, and this poor man has been waiting patiently for me. What the hell am I supposed to do ?

I need to see him. I’ve got two hours until Leah’s show. I’ll just go straight there instead of making a stop at home. And maybe this guy will be quick.

Except he’s clearly not going to be quick. I can tell that the second he grabs his walker when he stands up. He takes these tiny, shuffling steps when he walks, to the point where I just want to pick him up and carry him to the examining room. He’s here for a complaint of back pain, although it’s hard to believe that everything doesn’t hurt this man. His chart said he was eighty-three, but he looks a million years old.

I finally get Mr. Hirsh into my examining room. I don’t bother to ask him to change into a gown, because if I do, I will surely be here the rest of my natural life.

“So, Mr. Hirsch,” I say, “I hear your back is hurting you.”

Mr. Hirsch cups his hand around his ear. “Eh?”

And he’s deaf too, despite the fact that he’s got hearing aids in both ears. That explains why I thought he no-showed. Barbara probably called his name once and gave up when he didn’t answer.

“Is your back hurting you?” I say louder.

“What did you say?” he says.

The problem with hard of hearing patients is that they have trouble hearing high-pitched voices—like, say, women’s voices. And when people raise their voice to yell, that raises the pitch of their voices. So by yelling, I’m actually making things worse. The strategy is to yell in a baritone.

I lower my voice, channeling Barry White, “IS YOUR BACK HURTING YOU TODAY?”

Finally, the patient nods. “ Well, I've been constipated for the past six months or so…”

Damn it.

I shake my head. “You made an appointment for your back bothering you. Do you have back pain?”

“Oh.” Mr. Hirsch nods. “Yes.”

My throat is starting to hurt from the way I’m talking. “How bad is your back pain on a scale of one to ten?”

He nods. “The constipation is pretty bad.”

Damn it.

“We’re supposed to be talking about your back pain,” I remind him. Although it’s not clear he’s understood a word I’ve said. “On a scale of one to ten, where ten is the worst pain ever, what is your BACK PAIN?”

Mr. Hirsch thinks for a minute. “Thirty percent.”

I can’t even imagine what he thinks I just asked him.

“Also,” he adds, “this constipation has really been bothering me.”

I clench my teeth. I’m supposed to be addressing this man’s back pain. That’s what he scheduled the appointment for .

Mr. Hirsch reaches into his pocket and pulls out a little bottle of pills. “I’m taking this medication here. It’s for constipation but it hasn’t been working that well.”

Okay, apparently, we are talking about constipation today.

_____

By the time I finish up with Mr. Hirsch, sending my back pain patient on his way with a prescription for a laxative and instructions to eat more fiber, I just barely have time to make it to Leah’s preschool. As I expected, I can’t find parking in the small lot in front of the school, so I have to park in the lot of the adjacent supermarket and hoof it. Luckily, I have my puffy coat to keep me warm.

As I walk over, I keep an eye out for Ben’s Prius. I don’t see it anywhere. He better get here soon.

I’m grateful for the whoosh of warm air as I enter the basement that makes up Mila’s preschool. There isn’t an obvious place to leave my coat, so I just stuff it in Leah’s cubby. Mila has all the children lined up adorably in the back of the room. Leah notices me and looks like she’s about to rush over to give me a hug, but Mila keeps her in line with a sharp look and wag of her finger.

Now that the kids are lined up, I can’t help but notice that Leah is the only one not wearing a dress. She wanted to wear a shirt this morning that has Anna and Elsa from Frozen framed in a heart, and we paired it with some warm pink pants. But now it occurs to me that she obviously was supposed to dress in something fancy for this concert. What is wrong with me? Why didn’t I put her in a dress?

I’m the worst mother ever. This will probably be something she’ll be describing in therapy years from now. Everyone else was wearing a dress except me…

Oh well. Nothing I can do about it now.

I look around the room, straining my neck to see if Ben has arrived. So far, there’s no sign of him. He’s got two minutes till the concert is supposed to start and Mila isn’t going to wait.

Damn it, Ben. Where are you?

My phone buzzes with a text message from Ben: Just parked. Walking over.

He’s got sixty seconds.

I’m praying that Mila starts late, but sure enough, at three o’clock on the dot, she stands up to address the parents. “Hello, everyone, and thank you so much for coming,” she says. “I am so glad you all could make it. The children will be singing a few holiday songs for you.”

I glance one more time at the back. Still no Ben.

Mila signals the children, who start singing. I’m pretty sure the song is “Frosty the Snowman,” but I only know because I’ve heard Leah singing it nonstop around the house. At the time, she seemed to be able to belt out the words perfectly, but now she’s standing there with the other kids, mumbling lyrics in a monotone in no particular order. If you told me they were singing “Stairway to Heaven,” I’d have no choice but to believe it because they’re completely unintelligible. The only thing I can make out is Leah mumbling, “Frosty Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy…”

I consider getting out my phone to record this. I probably should. But considering Leah is basically just standing there chanting “Mommy” to herself, I’m not sure it’s worth it. Plus the video quality on my phone is terrible.

After they finish “Frosty the Snowman,” they launch into “Winter Wonderland.” Leah isn’t singing at all at this point. She is, in fact, standing in front of the room, picking her nose. Yeah, I’m definitely not taking a video of this.

The second song concludes with a huge burst of applause. And then… it’s over. How can it be over already? I took off half a day of work to watch my daughter pick her nose for six minutes?

Of course, that’s when Ben bursts in to the daycare, his cheeks pink from the cold. He pulls off his black woolen hat and hurries over to me. “Hey, are they starting soon?”

“It’s over.”

He stares at me. “It’s over ? ”

“I told you to get here early.” I know I’m not supposed to say “I told you so,” but damn it, I did tell him so. Doesn’t he ever get tired of being wrong all the time?

He looks down at his watch and then back at me in astonishment. “I’m five minutes late.”

I shrug. “I don’t know what to tell you. It’s over.”

“Well, great.” Ben lets out a sigh. “Did you get it on video?”

“I forgot,” I say, which is better than telling him that there was absolutely nothing that happened in the last several minutes that was worth videotaping.

I can see Mila glaring at us across the room. We’re quite a couple—I failed to put Leah in a dress and Ben missed the whole concert. We’re not winning the Parents of the Year Award any time soon.

“Well, now what?” Ben asks me.

“I don’t know.” I look over at Leah, who is busy socializing with her friends. “We could take her to that McDonald’s with the play area.”

Ben groans. “McDonald’s? Do we have to?”

Ben is a food snob. He hates fast food with a passion. He doesn’t make a fuss if I take Leah to McDonald’s, but he doesn’t want any part of it. He says one of the things he hates the most about living out on the island is that the food here is universally awful. He insists you can’t get good sushi anywhere within a thirty mile radius. Maybe it’s true, but I don’t care. I actually like Chicken McNuggets. Although Ben gives me a hard time if I call them “McNuggets” instead of just “nuggets.” He hates McBastardization of food names.

“She likes it,” I say.

“It just smells so… disgusting,” he says. “How can you stand it?”

“Well, why don’t we take her to Eleven Madison Park then?” I suggest. Eleven Madison Park is one of the swankiest restaurants in Manhattan—it’s something like two-hundred bucks for dinner. Ben took me there once, and I don’t think he could afford to eat anything besides ramen noodles for the next two weeks.

Ben rolls his eyes. “I just don’t like McDonald’s, okay?”

“Noted.”

He eyes the door. “Maybe I’ll just go home.”

“You can’t leave yet!” I say. “We have to socialize for a few minutes.”

That’s my least favorite part of these events: socializing with other parents. These are people I would never be friends with under any other circumstances, but because we all have kids at Mila’s preschool, we are forced to make small talk. Usually about the preschool and our kids, since we have absolutely nothing else in common. At least on playdates, we can talk trash about Mila.

Exactly on cue, a woman named Ann approaches me, nibbling on one of the sugar cookies that Mila has provided as the event’s refreshments. Ben and I both hate sugar cookies. Leah apparently does not hate sugar cookies because I can see she’s got one in each hand.

“Wasn’t that great?” Ann says to me.

Was it? Either way, we have to say it was. “Yes,” I lie.

Ann looks at Ben, who also nods with equal earnestness. “Yep.”

“I can’t believe they’re getting so big already,” Ann says.

“Yes,” I agree. “So big.”

I’m not good at small talk.

“Any luck with the toilet training, Jane?” Ann asks me.

I wince. “Not really.”

“The best thing to do,” she tells me, “is just put them in underwear for a weekend. It’s a messy weekend, but by the end of the weekend, it’s done.”

“That’s what I said,” Ben speaks up. Maybe I should have let him leave.

“It’s just a lot of clean up,” I point out.

“True,” Ann says. “But by the end of the weekend, she’ll be trained!”

Or she won’t be trained and my house will smell like urine.

“Maybe when she’s four,” I say.

“She’ll be four in two months,” Ben reminds me.

I glare at him. “Well, maybe when she’s five then. ”

“We are not having a five year old in diapers!”

“Well, I’m not having a house covered in pee!”

I can tell that Ann is sorry she brought it up. “I’m going to get more fruit punch,” she tells me as the two of us glare at each other. Ben’s cheeks are pink and I don’t think it’s from the cold anymore. But I’m certainly not having it out with him at the preschool.

I look around the room. None of the other parents in the room have randomly started yelling at each other. What’s wrong with us? We didn’t used to be this way. There was, believe it or not, a time when Ben and I never fought. At all. Well, there would be a tense moment here or there, like if I wanted Italian food and he wanted Indian, but I could honestly say we’d never had a fight.

That changed after Leah was born. She wasn’t a great sleeper, and almost immediately, the competition over who was going to slip in a few hours of sleep started to wear on us. And then when I returned to work when she was three months old, things just got worse.

Our first blowout fight happened when Leah was about six months old. Ben didn’t have to be at work the next day, so he was staying up late, and I was in bed sleeping. At around two in the morning, I heard Leah start to wail. I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for Ben to soothe her back to sleep. I waited and waited, but it never happened .

Finally, after ten agonizing minutes of listening to my daughter’s escalating screams, I stormed into the living room, where I found Ben casually working on his computer.

“Aren’t you going to get her?” I nearly yelled at him.

“I’m letting her cry it out,” he said casually.

“It’s two in the morning and I’m working all day tomorrow!” I shot back.

“Fine,” he said, although he didn’t make a move off the couch. “Hold on. Just a minute.”

“Seriously?” I yelled. “Go get her now ! I! Have! Work! Tomorrow!”

“Just chill out,” Ben said.

And that’s when I lost it. Let me tell you, if you are a man, never ever tell your wife to “just chill out.” We ended up staying up for most of the rest of the night, alternately yelling at each other and unsuccessfully attempting to soothe Leah back to sleep.

But we made up. Or at least, we both calmed down and we didn’t get divorced or anything. So in that sense, we made up. But after that, the arguments just seemed to happen much easier than they used to.

In any case, I’m certainly not going to have it out with him here and now.

“Listen,” I mutter to Ben, “I’ll take care of Leah. Just… go. ”

It’s the right thing to say to diffuse the situation. He sighs, his shoulders slumping as the fight goes out of him. “Okay, thanks. You know I hate these things, Jane.”

“Right.” I glance at Leah, wondering how fast I can get out of here. If I have to stick around this place for another hour, I might slit my wrists.