“Nope. We don’t do that here,” he said, as if people come in all the time searching for long-lost aunts, daughters, mothers. He’d turned to wipe down the bar, not even glancing at Daisy’s photo. He tucked the dank rag into the back of his Dickies. I noticed how fine he was. Nordic features. Stubble that framed a jaw like a refrigerator. Biceps out of a CrossFit catalog. He was not my type. I did not gravitate to man buns. But I could hardly speak to him. He was that hot.
“It’s just…I just thought maybe—”
“Look, you seem like a nice lady and I’m trying to be polite,” the bartender said, giving me a little grin, a little scar below his lip. Why was this man working the bar at the Peppermint Elephant? Why wasn’t he seducing wealthy widows at mahjong, wrestling their fortunes away from estranged children? Or modeling for Karl Lagerfeld? “But I can’t help you.”
“Right. I get it. Thanks anyway.” I swiveled to watch Roxy’s big finish. Then, an idea. I leaned my swollen boobs over the bar. “Hey, but when you get a break, do you think you could follow me outside to the alley and penetrate me so hard that I feel alive again?”
Or at least that was what flashed briefly in my mind. In reality, I just smiled and left him a five-dollar tip.
—
When I was ten weeks pregnant, Dr. Weatherstone detected a blotchy spot on the ultrasound that she diagnosed as a “vanishing twin.” At the next checkup, it was gone. She wasn’t sure if the “dominant embryo” had “absorbed” the twin or if it had just been a glitch on the monitor. I went through the rest of my pregnancy wondering if my child ate his sibling or somebody just forgot to Windex. He’d kicked like Pelé and positioned himself so low on my diaphragm that it rendered subway stairs and burritos almost impossible. But I mostly wanted to give birth as soon as possible so that people would stop commenting on my body. Yes, I was sure there was just one in there. Or was I?
Holden had weighed six pounds, five ounces, and had been a vaginal birth. I thought you either had a cesarean or you popped out a baby. To be clear, I never thought childbirth would be enjoyable. I never dreamed of birthing my baby at home in an inflatable pool with a midwife and patchouli burning. But nobody told me that the baby can end up getting stuck and the doctor on call won’t know what to do, so she calls a semiretired ob-gyn who used to do “assisted vaginal deliveries” in the nineties. He arrives with forceps that look medieval and you are rushed to the operating room and your husband is holding your hand as another half dozen doctors explain that by the time they get this kid out, you could die or need a blood transfusion. It is so bright under the white lights of the OR—sonotthe sunny delivery room with the yellow lion wallpaper—and they have to cut the epidural so you can feel yourself pushing the baby. You feel everything. You pass out from the pain, but they give you oxygen and bring you back because you need to keep pushing. They can see the baby’s head, but his neck is wrapped up in the umbilicalcord. It is too late to do a cesarean, but you are losing too much blood. Until finally, they rip him out and it is violent and bloody and so, so painful.
You hold your baby boy and look at your husband, and it is all so beautiful. It’s so beautiful that you hardly feel the pain as they put thirty-five stitches in you to sew you back together. “Fourth-degree tearing with a six-pound baby?! How’d you do that!” the nurse said when I screamed trying to pee that night. You tell me, lady.
I couldn’t walk for three weeks. I had to sit in these warm Epsom salts baths and wear Holden’s diapers, stuffing them with ice every time I attempted to stand to get him a bottle. Roman would hear my cries in the bathroom, the stitches stinging. He’d gently knock on the door. “Get ya anything, babe?” He meant well, but what could he get me? Tylenol? A new body? He’d gone to almost every ob-gyn appointment with me when I was pregnant, but nobody goes to the urologist’s office. Nobody holds your hand through the afterbirth. Thirty-three, sitting in a urologist’s waiting room, surrounded by patients at least twice my age. Dr. Weatherstone said I’d need years of pelvic-floor therapy. This would be out-of-pocket with my insurance plan. Why did they call it that? As if I could just dig into my pocket and slap several thousand dollars into the physical therapist’s rubber glove? And, yes, like theJuju Beanmoms said, pelvic-floor therapy is basically like getting finger fucked by a PT named Carleigh who is planning her wedding on Long Island and doesn’t know why she has to ask her fiancé’s sister to be maid of honor. I would always pee when I laughed, possibly have to use an at-home catheter in my thirties, and hopefully, after a lot of fighting with my insurance reps in a call center in India and years of doing Kegels (whatever those are), be able to attempt—never mind enjoy—sex again.
So, no, I did not ask the bartender at the Peppermint Elephant to railroad me in an alley near Cape May, but now you can maybeunderstand why some small part of me wanted to be the kind of woman who could do that type of thing.
—
The bouncer at the next spot, Club Crush, adjacent to the Claridge Hotel, which boasted “twentieth-century-style décor,” took one look at me and said, “Nah.” He waved in a man behind me wearing all denim and white sneakers that screeched on the concrete. I showed the bouncer Daisy’s photo again.
“Please. I’m looking for this woman.”
He didn’t even have the urge to peek. “I’m gonna need you to leave.”
In fairness, I wouldn’t have let me in either. I reached into my bag. As much as it pained me, I gave him a twenty. He shook his head, the “nah” implied. Another twenty. Fine, another. He gestured with his head, as if to say,Show me the girl.
“This photo is old. I think she has longer hair now, maybe brownish auburn? Her name is Daisy. Or she might go by Jacki now…”
He looked at the photo and then looked at me. “Man, what is this? Because if Jersey finds out that you come by, asking questions…”
He must have assumed I was a journalist. Was it myNew YorkerFestival tote bag? “Ohhh. No. No. I’m not a journalist. I used to want to be a journalist. But no, I write grants for nonprofits, do some freelance copyediting, fact-checking, it doesn’t matter. I’m on maternity leave.” His eyes narrowed. “You know what? Just forget it. But you can tell Jersey…Is he the manager?” He doesn’t answer. “I amnota journalist. I’m just a mom.”
I sit on the sidewalk, still talking, to this bouncer, to myself, to everyone. “But I don’t even know that I’m much of that. I take off to Atlantic City because some random mom on a message board catfished me. I put my baby in front of YouTube. I just had a very closecall with a NogginStik, and I heat his oatmeal in the microwave. Do you know what radiation can do to a child?”
“Nah.”
“Well, neither do I, but myJuju Beanmom app says it is very bad.”
His tone shifted from irritated to concerned. “You okay, lady? You on drugs or somethin’?”
“What? No. I’m not on drugs. I hadn’t even had soft cheese until tonight. Look, this girl, Daisy, she was my best friend in college and I’m trying to find her. Somebody—possibly a scammer on this mom app…”
“Juju Bean?”
“Yes. Yes. Thank you for listening. Anyway, this NJ Mom person said she saw a girl who looks like her in the area, so I reported it out and took a bus here and booked a room at the Borgata…”
“Swanky.”
“Why does everyone keep saying that? Look, the point is she’s still a dancer. Or at least I think she is. I don’t know. I don’t know anything.” I looked up at him, conceding. “It sounds like more of a long shot when I say it aloud.” His tough expression turned pitying. “I have no idea why Roman—that’s my husband—didn’t try to talk me out of coming down. He’s the sensible one, ya know?”
The bouncer nodded. “That’s me with my wife.”
“I can see that. You seem really by the book.” I collapse my head into my hands. “I’m sorry. This was dumb. Daisy’s probably dead and I let it happen.”
