Anxious People(77)
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Julia was thinking about how her mom, when she told her she was pregnant, looked first at Julia’s stomach, then at Ro’s, then asked: “How did you decide which of you was going to… get knocked up?” Julia got annoyed, of course, and replied sarcastically: “We played rock-paper-scissors, Mom!” Her mom looked at them both again with deadly seriousness and asked: “So who won?”
That still made Julia laugh. She said to the women in the closet: “Ro’s going to be a brilliant mom. She can make any child laugh, just like my mom, because their sense of humor hasn’t developed at all since they were nine.”
“You’re going to be a brilliant mom, too,” Estelle assured her.
The bags under Julia’s eyes moved softly as she blinked.
“I don’t know. Everything feels such a big deal, and other parents all seem so… funny the whole time. They laugh and joke and everyone says you should play with children, and I don’t like playing, I didn’t like it even when I was a child. So I’m worried the child’s going to be disappointed. Everyone said it would be different when I got pregnant, but I don’t actually like all children. I thought that would change, but I meet my friends’ children now and I still think they’re annoying and have a lousy sense of humor.”
Anna-Lena spoke up, briefly and to the point:
“You don’t have to like all children. Just one. And children don’t need the world’s best parents, just their own parents. To be perfectly honest with you, what they need most of the time is a chauffeur.”
“Thanks for saying that,” Julia replied honestly. “I’m just worried my child isn’t going to be happy. That it’s going to inherit all my anxiety and uncertainty.”
Estelle gently patted Julia’s hair.
“Your child’s going to be absolutely fine, you’ll see. And absolutely fine can cover any number of peculiarities.”
“That’s encouraging,” Julia smiled.
Estelle went on patting her hair softly.
“Are you going to do all you can, Julia? Are you going to protect the child with your life? Are you going to sing to it and read it stories and promise that everything will feel better tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to raise it so that it doesn’t grow up to be one of those idiots who don’t take their backpack off when they’re on public transport?”
“I’ll do what I can,” Julia promised.
Estelle was thinking about another author now, one who almost a hundred years ago wrote that your children aren’t your children, they’re the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself.
“You’re going to be fine. You don’t have to love being a mother, not all the time.”
Anna-Lena interjected: “I didn’t like the poo, I really didn’t. At first it was okay, but when children are around a year old they’re like Labradors. Fully grown ones, I mean, not puppies, but—”
“Okay,” Julia nodded, to get her to stop.
“There’s something about the consistency at a certain age, it gets like glue, sticks under your fingernails, and if you rub your face on the way to work…”
“Thanks! That’s enough!” Julia assured her, but Anna-Lena couldn’t stop herself.
“The worst thing is when they bring friends home, and suddenly there’s a five-year-old stranger sitting on your toilet demanding to be cleaned up. I mean, you can put up with your own kids’ poo, but other people’s…”
“Thanks!” Julia said emphatically.
Anna-Lena pursed her lips. Estelle giggled.
“You’re going to be a good mom. And you’re a good wife,” Estelle added, even though Julia hadn’t even mentioned that last anxiety. Julia was holding the palms of her hands around her stomach, and stared down at her fingernails.
“Do you think? Sometimes it feels like all I ever do is nag Ro. Even though I love her.”
Estelle smiled.
“She knows. Believe me. Does she still make you laugh?”
“Yes. God, yes.”
“Then she knows.”
“You have no idea, I mean, wow, she makes me laugh all the time. The first time Ro and I were about to… you know…,” Julia smiled, but stopped when she couldn’t think of a word for what she was sure neither of the two older women would actually be horrified to hear.
“What?” Anna-Lena wondered, uncomprehendingly.
Estelle nudged her in the side and winked.
“You know. The first time they were going to go to Stockholm.”
“Oh!” Anna-Lena exclaimed, and blushed from her head to her feet.
But Julia didn’t quite seem to hear. Her eyes lost their footing; there was a joke there somewhere in her memory, one Ro had made in the taxi that first time that Julia had intended to talk about. But instead she found herself stumbling over the words.
“I… it’s so silly, I’d forgotten this. I’d done some laundry, and there were some white sheets hanging over the bedroom door to dry. And when Ro opened the door and they hit her in the face, she started. She tried not to let it show, but I felt her flinch, so I asked what the matter was, and at first she didn’t want to say. Because she didn’t want to burden me with anything, not as early as that, she was worried I’d break up with her before we’d even got together. But I kept on nagging, of course, because I’m good at nagging, and in the end we sat up all night and Ro told me about how her family got to Sweden. They fled across the mountains, in the middle of winter, and the children each had to carry a sheet, and if they heard the sound of helicopters they were supposed to lie down in the snow with the sheet over them, so they couldn’t be seen. And their parents would run in different directions, so that if the men in the helicopter started firing, they’d fire at the moving targets. And not at… and I didn’t know what to…”