Now with summer, and the opening of my in-laws’ pool, my mother has packed my quiver with fresh arrows. Make sure you change his diaper, Make sure you re-apply his sunblock. Some of her knowledge is drawn from Facebook, some from my diligent reportage (I don’t mean to worry her, but my faith in her power to set things right compels me to confess), and still others from the time that she and my father and my in-laws were friends, planning a wedding together and basking by proxy in our bliss. Remember when Sherri served us chicken that had gone bad? Remember when she met us for breakfast and ordered fudge and Coke? My parents had shaken their heads at the time, perplexed yet amused, but the joking had turned stone-cold sober the minute Sam came into the world.
“If I were only included,” Mom often says, “if they were only nice, I’d even cook for them.”
“Their diet is not your concern,” I say.
“Yes, it is! A crap diet means crap immunity, which means my grandson gets sick!”
On Mondays she often slides open my garbage and wrinkles her nose at the Arby’s wrappers, miming a gun to her head so Maria, our housekeeper, has no trouble guessing her feelings.
“Joderosos,” Maria sighs.
My mother examines Sam’s diaper as I tuck the thermometer under his arm. “Cook!” he cries, indignant. “Get Sam down!”
“Just look at these pieces of food,” murmurs Mom, waving the Pampers under my nose. “Oh, God, I’m sorry,” she says, as I turn green. “Of course you have aversions. The baby. Now, what could that be?” she murmurs. “Did he eat something red, yesterday? Cherries, maybe?”
Jordan appears in the door frame, beard neatly trimmed, dressed in his pinstripe gray suit and blue tie. “Tomatoes. My mom gave him lots of tomatoes.”
“Great,” says my mother, behind clenched teeth.
“Babe,” Jordan addresses me, his thick brows furrowed. “Don’t give him any milkshakes today. Dairy can exacerbate diarrhea.”
“Okay, honey,” I say, even as Sam cries: “Bottle! Bottle!”
Jordan ruffles Sam’s sticky hair.
“Oh, man, he is burning up. Rest up today. You too, Mommy.”
My mother waits till she hears the front door slam. “Tomatoes? Tomatoes irritate his stomach! And don’t listen to his mishegos about the dairy.” Jordan abhors all cheese and milk products, and my mother has made it her business to rescue Sam from a similar fate. At our baby’s first Hanukah, my in-laws gleefully predicted that Sam would be a picky eater. “Like father, like son!” said Sherri. My mother winced. “No!” she cried, falling prostrate before the gods of chance. “He won’t! I’ll see to it! I’ll cook for him and he’ll grow healthy, tall and strong! Like my kids!” Sherri’s face crumpled, and my heart ached for her even as it burned with rage.
“You don’t think he could have colitis? Or IBS?” I ask, biting my lip.
“Honey, no. Kids get diarrhea all the time. And I’ll never let him get colitis.”
“It’s genetic.”
“It’s environmental,” she argues, spit pooling at the corners of her mouth, as the digital thermometer beeps.
“One-oh-four,” I say, my heart buckling again.
“Go call the doctor,” my mother orders me as she dials my father’s private practice.
“I know he’s been congested,” I hear her say as I slowly dial the doctor’s office, struggling to channel my mother’s audacity and request Sam be seen immediately. “I know. He needed to swim like he needed a hole in the head.” Dare I confess I loved picking him up, cradling his weightless body in the water? I didn’t plan to mention the pool to my mother, but she found the wet bathing suit in Maria’s laundry pile, and now I feel horribly guilty, ashamed.
After booking an appointment, I walk in to find Mom smearing Cetaphil over Sam’s pudgy legs and holding her iPhone to his face.
“I hate to overdo the cream,” she murmurs. To Sam, she says: “Breathe for Pa.”
“Mom,” I say. “Maybe it’s not safe. The WiFi. I read it’s linked to brain tumors.”
“Let’s get through today first,” she snaps. “Let’s kill these germs that infected Sam before we stress over tumors.”
I picture those germs festooned like sprinkles upon the peaks of whipped cream on Sherri’s plate yesterday at Mykonos diner. For months I refused to let Sam’s lips touch the ratty cups proffered by the diner, preferring to hand Sam’s own sippy cup to the waiter to be filled in the kitchen; until, on vacation in Florida, my mother told me that if she were I, she wouldn’t let the cup out of her sight; and my grandma added that Sam’s water should be lukewarm, without ice, so he shouldn’t get a chill. Every time I make such requests, Jordan squirms and begins to hum. He doesn’t like to break the rules.
As Sherri prepared to clot her bowel with waffles and whipped cream, Sam dropped the PBJ I’d packed. Despite my parents’ assurance that Sam is, thanks to them, abundantly well-adjusted, he always holds my hand in strange places like the diner, with its Tiffany lamps and neon tubes and brusque waitresses rushing past with glass pots of coffee. At least at Mykonos, unlike at my in-laws’ house, the milk was never expired. I stroked his fingers tenderly as he asked, “What’s that, Sherri?” He has never called her “Grandma,” which proves to my mother that real Grandmas take care of their “babies.”
About Melissa Pheterson
