I Am Multiplying to Cope With Life’s Duplicity
This Week
I am so sorry it took so long to get back to you, this week has been crazy. You would hardly believe this week even if I told you all about it. I will try anyway.
First, on Monday, BOTH the kids were sick. I took the two of them to the pediatrician (like a good mother and a good citizen). The three of us had been waiting in the exam room for some time when the doctor finally came in, looked me dead in the eyes, and told me, “Mrs. Whatsherface, I can see your first problem right here. This is only one child.”
“One child?!” I bellowed this. “This is surely more than one child. Just look at them!”
But when I looked down, he was right enough. Just one kid. A boy, with coarse, wavy brown hair and minnow scale blue-gray eyes. I left the pediatrician’s office with amoxicillin (for the child’s strep) and a head full of questions like:
When had my children merged?
Why hadn’t I noticed?
Why do they make amoxicillin bubblegum flavored, the one candy-thing we teach them not to swallow?
I asked the child walking slowly behind me, “Boy, are you one or two?” He laughed and replied, “I’m four, mommy,” even though I think he knew damn well what I meant.
On the way home, I bought him just one popsicle even though he begged for two. “Nice try, I’m on to you, kid. One popsicle from now on.”
So. That was Monday.
Tuesday I shouldn’t even get into, because I barely got out of it.
But on Tuesday, I learned that my dearest, darlingest husband had parked the car in a spot that was set to be cleaned. When a parking spot is scheduled to be cleaned, you MUST not be parked in that spot or else the street cleaning machine cannot clean that spot. I was supposed to be teaching a class and my husband was scheduled for his bi-weekly bowel cleansing wherein a doctor in midtown gives him twilight sleep, sticks a long, long pipe cleaner down his throat and wipes every tube clean.
We left the car and it was moved by someone else and we’re still trying to figure out who.
Was it you? Thank you, if so, and also where is our car? Wednesday I forgot to eat and fell down two stairs.
On Thursday I wrote a letter to The City about the two stairs:
“TO WHOM IT WILL PROBABLY NOT CONCERN:
Hello, why are there two stairs floating in the middle of nowhere? And why do they only go up? If The City deems it fit to build two stairs in the middle of nowhere, then surely The City (in its infinite wisdom), can see the logic in also building two companion stairs going DOWN as well?”
(My letter started like this, genteel and civic-minded. Then it became increasingly hostile.)
“Surely, THE CITY, you dweebish hodgepodge of crazy-rich oligarchs, you feeble second sons and nitwits, surely you can see the pathological nature of building two stairs which only lead up. You leave me NO CHOICE but to fall down the other side. You are mortals, not gods, and you should be punished as such (summarily executed).
Best (but not really),
A Citizen
P.S. The streets are motherfucking dirty, where is my missing car?”
On Friday I received word, via text, that, though my letter was received and the points well-taken, death threats against public officials were unwelcome in New York City. I texted back “UNSUBSCRIBE” and that seemed to settle the matter.
I then remember that my little, only-one-of-them child needed to be picked up from school. When I arrived he was waiting on a swing.
“You’re the same child from Monday,” I asked as I approached.
“I’m not,” he said with a small sniff. Such a little sniff, like the wing bone of a bird or the thumb of a fairy. “I am your second child, the one you forgot.”
“I haven’t forgotten any of my children,” I told him. “And I have thousands. Just not all here at the same time.”
“No,” he said, “you just have the one.”
I threw my head back to try and catch snowflakes on my tongue but it rarely snows in April so I shut my trap. The school’s yard was right under the flight path to JFK. I watched a plane sail over me. Probably flying to St. Barth’s or Ib-ITH-ah or some other sexy place I’d never been and would never go as a hot person, not now. My son swung lightly back and forth. The chains squeaked.
“You’re right,” I agreed. “I only have one child. You are my son, my only son, the only child I have or ever will have. You look and sound just like me, so sometimes I forget you are you and there is only one of you.”
I took him to the popsicle store and bought a box of popsicles and let him eat the whole thing on the white couch. Now my couch is tie-dyed and smells like Blue Raspberries, a thing that does not exist. My husband was upset about the popsicles and the couch but when I told him about how I only have one son, forever, I think he understood. I think he snuck a popsicle. He is, after all, a son too.
Which brings me to your email. All of the times you proposed for meeting are fine, I can make all of them work.
There are thousands upon thousands of me and I will make sure that one of them shows up for you. Just tell me when.
