do it, hon,” he crooned. “You can get this baby out. Unless you want me to run out and buy a saw so that we can cut off one of its legs?”
Har de har har, right? Funny guy, that Mike.
Of course, he then found it necessary to make like Jay Leno and regale the nurses, the doctor and a passing orderly with the Couch Monologue. They all had a good laugh at my expense while I writhed and moaned and cursed the epidural that didn’t work and swore that if the baby ever came out I would be a single mother because I was getting a divorce.
As it turned out, I didn’t.
As it turned out, neither did my parents, although they’re such opposites that most people say it’s a miracle they’ve stayed together all these years.
Anyway, as I was saying before I went into my longer than anticipated digression, my father—who is good at many things, including, fortuitously for us, fixing freshly sawn-off couch legs—has never been good at spelling. He likes to tell people that’s because he’s an accountant—as though an accountant requires prowess only with numbers and not with that pesky alphabet.
So when he filled out the paperwork after I was born, he left out the second “a,” and by the time anybody figured it out, it was too late. My mother woke up and I was Barbra and that was that.
My three older brothers used to tease her—and me—that it was a good thing he had left off the second “a” instead of the third one along with the first “r,” in which case, I’d have been named after the large gray elephant in the French children’s story.
My mother wasn’t amused. It isn’t that she has anything against children’s literature; she is, after all, a middle-school English teacher. She is also a fanatic about all things spelling-and grammar-related. From what I hear, she didn’t speak to my father for a few days after she discovered the spelling mistake in my name. But, like I said, they managed to stay married.
Around the same time I came along, Barbra Streisand became a household name and validated the unorthodox spelling of mine. I can barely remember anybody ever calling me Barbra anyway. I was dubbed Beau early on, and I have never since been anything but.
My parents gave me the nickname because it’s short for Beaulieu, as in Priscilla Beaulieu Presley, Elvis’s wife. They thought I looked a lot like her. Which I do. In fact, complete strangers have come up to me and said that over the years.
I never mind when people do that. I mean, it’s not like they’re telling me I look just like Cyndi Lauper or something.
Priscilla was, and still is, beautiful.
Three pregnancies and a lifetime ago, I was also beautiful. Now I’ve got a seven-year-old, a preschooler and a baby. I’ve also got flab, stretch marks, varicose veins, dark circles under my eyes, sagging breasts that have nursed three children, with nipples that hit my belly button, and a childbirth-traumatized crotch that leaks pee if I laugh.
Which I don’t, lately.
That, I suppose, is a blessing. But it doesn’t feel like one.
Damn, it used to feel good to laugh until tears streamed from my eyes instead of my bladder.
Things that used to make me laugh that hard: being tickled by my dad. The scene in Planes, Trains and Automobiles where Steve Martin and John Candy are in the car that catches fire. Seinfeld—even the reruns I’ve seen a dozen times.
Oh, and my husband, Mike.
He really cracked me up back when we were dating. When we were first married, too, even after we moved up here to the suburbs.
He used to do this dead-on imitation of our crotchety old neighbor, Mrs. Rosenkrantz, that was hilarious—and, I suppose, cruel, if anybody but me had ever seen it. But nobody ever did. It was our special thing.
We’d be doing some mundane task—folding laundry or grocery shopping—and I’d say, “Do Mrs. Rosenkrantz for me, please,” and he would. He’d be Mrs. Rosenkrantz folding laundry or Mrs. Rosenkrantz grocery shopping, and I swear I’d be on the floor gasping for air.
Mrs. Rosenkrantz died right before I gave birth to our second son. I was in labor for the wake and in the hospital for the funeral, so we didn’t go. We came home with our tiny blue bundle to find a rented wooden stork on our lawn and a For Sale sign on hers.
Once or twice after that, I asked Mike to “Do Mrs. Rosenkrantz,” and he obliged, but it wasn’t the same.
A lot of things haven’t been the same since then. Some are better, some are worse—but nothing is the same. Lately, I find myself missing the way things used to be.
I don’t miss Mrs. Rosenkrantz, though—I just miss laughing at her. Or, rather, laughing at my husband’s impression of her.
A young family from the city bought her house. Where we live, in the leafy northern suburbs of New York, young families from the city always buy dead old people’s houses. This was a nice family, the Carsons. They have a daughter my older son’s age and a son my second son’s age and twins on the way any second now. The mom, Laura, is a lot of fun when she isn’t eight months pregnant with multiples in the blazing dead of July, and the dad, Kirk, coaches Little League with Mike.
On hot summer days we grill and drink beers on their deck or ours while the kids play in the sprinkler, and on cold winter days we shovel while the kids build snowmen. The Carsons pick up our mail and Journal News when we’re on vacation and we pick up their mail and Journal News when they’re on vacation, and we keep saying that one of these years we should vacation together.
It sounds good, doesn’t it?
Yeah. Suburban bliss.
Three kids, a raised ranch, an SUV and a 401K. We have everything but a dog, but the boys have been begging for one, and sooner or later I know I’m going to give in and we’ll have the dog, too.
They, like I, will have everything they always wanted.
I was born under a lucky star. That’s what my mother always said, shaking her head and laughing. Things came easily to me from day one. Friends…contest prizes…school elections…boyfriends.
If I wanted something, I got it.
This life is what I’ve always wanted. Isn’t it?
Well, isn’t it?
Back when I was young and single and dating my husband—along with the other Mike, the one I didn’t marry—I dreamed of the life I have now. I figured it would be mine for the taking, because most things were.
Be careful what you wish for—or so they say.
They being the same they my grandmother is always quoting; the they who say beauty is only skin deep, and when the cat’s away, the mice will play, and love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage.
Or was that Frank Sinatra?
Not that it matters. Grandma Alice quotes him, too.
The thing is, there’s truth in all clichés—that’s why they’re clichés.
So here I am, a living cliché, on the cusp of
