Free Maternity Leave by Trish Felice Cohen Page A

them to die a fiery death without me. The guilt kept me up nights.
    At my first grade birthday party, dad held my cake up to the fire alarm and all of my friends made fun of me when I ran out of the house screaming. My birthday parties were always a time for dad to humiliate me. In second grade I had a sleep-over party with fourteen friends. When we finally went to sleep, Dad played my mom’s Halloween audio cassette of wolves howling and “ghost” noises. Once we were all awake and scared shitless, he and John jumped out from behind the couch dressed up like ghosts, and screamed. My mom really appreciated all of the piss and shit stains on her carpet courtesy of my terrified friends.
    The third grade party wasn’t much better. Dad told me to sniff the flower on my cake. I had seen this trick before and wisely declined. In response, Dad told me I was a smart girl, then lifted the cake to my face and smashed it. It was an ice cream cake and gave me an externally induced ice cream headache which I found surprising, even as I began crying. I kept crying during the thirty-minute shower that I had to take during my birthday party in order to get the icing out of my hair. From fourth grade on I abstained from birthday parties in the presence of Michael Rosen.
    My pregnancy plan was surely an extension of my dad’s old pranks. Granted, his pranks were just jokes, whereas mine served my self-interest. I thought about telling Dad about the invented pregnancy. Even though he hated competitive cycling, he should understand my obsession with competition because I inherited it directly from him.
    He played competitive sports every spare minute of the day from the time he was born until he entered his mid-forties, at which time he still exercised religiously, but his competitive nature was forced to find other outlets. For instance, when Dad got contact lenses for the first time at the age of fifty, he spent an hour perfecting his technique, then asked me to time his performance. His latest competition is as a highly skilled omelet flipper. Each Sunday morning, after my dad’s bike ride, swim and trip to the gym, he makes omelets while my mom reads the paper. Dad lets her read in peace for a time, then calls her name frantically, at which time she must look up from her article and applaud the velocity and precision of “the flip.”
    If anyone would understand the urge to get the fuck out of an office and enjoy the outdoors six hours a day racing strangers all over the country, it was dear old dad. In the end, I decided not to tell him because there was a good chance that, in addition to understanding, he would become a raving lunatic and disown me.
    * * *
     
    By the end of November, Paul and I had been dating nearly a month. A record for me I had never even come close to approaching. I wasn’t sure what base we were on, but it wasn’t home. I wasn’t even remotely into him anymore, but I was determined to make it work because I hadn’t found anything wrong with him, and I really needed to date someone longer than a month and get laid, because that streak was extending beyond the two year mark. Accomplishing these two goals before my thirtieth birthday would go a long way toward helping me feel like a normal woman. If ugly people, psychopaths and even Sarah Smith, the wonder paralegal, could handle that, surely I could.
    On a Thursday night, I invited Paul over to cook for me. I wanted it to be romantic, but I don’t cook, so this seemed the best option. Paul brought ingredients to make his family’s recipe for Cincinnati Chili. I was prepared for the evening. I looked great, had clean bed sheets and plenty of empty peanut butter jars. In essence, empty peanut butter jars are my sex toys because my dog licks the peanut butter remnants while I have sex. Without them, or something equally yummy and time consuming, Sonny tends to howl and try to eat his way through my bedroom door, creating quite a ruckus. I had over two years