Baking and Babies by Tara Sivec
Molly leans in close to me and sniffs. “And why do you kind of smell like pee?”
I groan and throw my hands in the air, shooting an annoyed look at the three men now giggling like little girls. Little asshole girls. “You guys said the smell was gone!”
“It’s not our fault you couldn’t handle the low pressure hot wax,” Drew says through a mouthful of food. “If I can handle a little candle wax on my balls every third Friday, you can handle a hot wax treatment on your undercarriage.”
“I really don’t want to know what you’re talking about, but I’d still like to know why Marco is all wet,” Molly informs him, wisely choosing not to comment on the candle wax on the balls subject. I learned much more about Drew’s balls tonight than I ever needed to know, thank you very much.
“You can’t get clean going through a car wash if you’re in the trunk. Obviously riding on the hood made more sense,” Jim smirks.
“Jim Gilmore!” Liz scolds.
“What? We had to get the pee smell off of him somehow.”
So much for thinking this night couldn’t get any more uncomfortable after Drew felt the need to show me the scars on his balls from when he let Jenny shave them.
“Do you want to talk about the pee smell?” Molly asks me.
“Do you want to talk about the meat sweats?” I fire back.
“So, what else did you guys do?” she asks, looking away from me and back to the guys.
“Marco, why don’t you take her and the rest of these lovely ladies outside and show them what else we did?” Carter suggests.
I forget about my embarrassment over the whole pee situation and get excited all over again about what we did. Grabbing Molly’s hand, I pull her towards the front door while the rest of the women follow behind, leaving the men in the kitchen to stuff their faces.
“Wait until you see it, Molly. It’s the coolest thing in the world!”
“It sounds like you had a good time. And there aren’t any noticeable bruises on your face, so that’s a plus,” she tells me.
“Aside from the incident in the trunk that we are never to speak of, and the scalding hot water from the car wash, I had a good time. Although you could’ve warned me that your Uncle Drew likes to whip his balls out in public.”
She shrugs. “He only shows them to people he likes, so that’s a good sign.”
I press my hand to the small of her back, guiding her outside and down the steps of the front porch, stopping in the yard and pointing proudly to the curb.
“Well, what do you think?”
Molly stares out at the street, my new beauty perfectly spotlighted under one of the blazing street lamps right in front of it.
“What do I think about what?” Molly asks, looking everywhere but at the lovely little lady in front of her house.
“Do you not see what’s parked right in front of you?” I ask with a laugh.
“I see a mom van. Where’s your Mustang?”
Claire walks around us to check out my new set of wheels with Liz, Jenny, and Charlotte following right behind her. “Oh, my God, did you buy a minivan?”
I scoff and put my hands on my hips.
“It’s not a mom van OR a minivan. That is a state-of-the-art, safest thing with four wheels, family car,” I announce proudly as the four other women walk around the brand new red, Chrysler Town and Country.
“I repeat, where is your Mustang?” Molly asks, not sounding anywhere near as excited as I thought she’d be.
“The guys told me it wasn’t safe or practical for a family man,” I explain. “It didn’t even have the proper hook-up in the backseat for the six-point harness system car seat or side airbags, and we can’t have our baby riding around in a death trap like that.”
I realize as soon as the words leave my mouth that I sound crazier than anyone in Molly’s family. I’m a twenty-four-year-old single dude helping the woman I want to sleep with fake a pregnancy. It does not require trading in my chick-magnet Mustang for a mom-magnet van, but it was peer-pressure, dammit! I couldn’t exactly refuse to trade in the Mustang for a family car with Molly’s dad and uncles cracking their knuckles and staring me down. Besides, this thing has plenty of room, and I didn’t have to ride in the trunk on the way home.
“Wow, it has built-in DVD players in the seat backs!” Claire shouts to us as she slides open the side passenger door and sticks her head inside.
“Marco, how much alcohol did my dad and uncles give you? Do you feel strange or lightheaded? Is there a tingling in your arms and legs? They could have roofied you,” Molly tells me nervously. “Never leave your drink unattended around them, wasn’t that one of my warnings on our way over here earlier?”
I laugh, patting her softly on the back. “I’m not drunk and I haven’t been roofied. I traded in the Mustang for safety reasons.”
“Are you forgetting the one little fact that you aren’t going to be a family man?” she whispers. “You don’t need a mom-mobile with a six-point whatever or extra air bags. Did they hypnotize you? What’s your name? What year is it?”
She leans up on her tip toes and uses the pad of her fingers to pry my eyes open wide so she can stare into them.
Even after the pretend meat sweats or whatever the hell happened to her while I was gone, she still smells like apple pie and I smell like I pissed my pants. Which I will neither confirm nor deny happened after Drew drove to an abandoned parking lot, did a hundred donuts at roughly ninety miles an hour, and then from my fetal position in the trunk, I heard the guys screaming about Drew playing chicken with an oncoming semi and how he’d never be able to jump the gap in the bridge at such a slow speed. How was I supposed to know they were fucking with me when I was trapped in a dark trunk?
“It’s not my fault and it happens to everyone!” I shout, realizing I said that out loud by mistake.
“You’ve definitely been hypnotized,” Molly says with a slow shake of her head. “I know it sounds weird, but my Uncle Drew learned how to do it on the Internet. No one believed it until Aunt Jenny volunteered to let him do it to her. Whenever he said the word moist she’d bark like a dog and try to shit on the carpet. It wasn’t pretty.”
She drops her hands from my face and I’m surprised I’m not even shocked by the things I continue to find out about her family at this point. Claire, Jenny, Charlotte, and Liz are all busy looking in the front seat and talking about the GPS and other bells and whistles and luckily can’t hear us.
“Is that a car seat in the back?” Molly asks in shock.
“We went to Babies R Us after the dealership and the guys all chipped in. Wasn’t that nice of them?” I tell her excitedly as I push the sliding back door open wider. “We went to the fire station after so one of the firemen could properly install it. I had no idea you couldn’t just buckle one of those things in and call it a day.”
Molly grabs both of my arms and turns me around to face her. “I knew it. My family made you lose your mind. I thought you’d be able to make it out unscathed in four weeks, but I was wrong.”
I laugh and shake my head at her. “I know it’s crazy, but I didn’t lose my mind. That Mustang really was impractical.”
“It was not impractical for a single, twenty-four-year-old guy who is NOT going to be a father,” she whispers, echoing my earlier thoughts.
“Well, maybe I am going to be a father. I’ve been thinking about getting a puppy for a while now and I’m going to need something safe to transport him in,” I explain.
“I don’t think a puppy needs a mom-van,” Molly laughs with a shake of her head.
The puppy thing was a stupid, spur-of-the moment answer to try and explain away how crazy I’m behaving just because I’m afraid of a few guys twice my age and twice my size, but hearing her laugh makes me go with it.
“You can’t be too safe with puppies, Molly, and stop calling it a mom-van. It’s a Town and Country which sounds much more manly,” I inform her. “The puppy can be nice and safe while we cruise a
Molly stares at me with a smile and I’m not sure if it’s because she still thinks I’m crazy or because I did something so decent and dependable to try and score more points for that dipshit Alfanso D. I know trading in my Mustang is the most insane thing in the world and I probably have started losing my mind after only a few hours with the men in Molly’s family, but after the first half hour of torture when they finally let me out of the trunk, they taught me a hell of a lot.
Like how having a child is the most important thing you will ever do in your life. And how it makes you grow up fast and changes your entire view on life. How it’s scary and nerve wracking and the hardest job you’ll ever have, but it’s also the most rewarding. I had to grow up a lot after my father died, but I’ve still spent the last few years refusing to settle down and jumping from one girl to the next because I thought that’s what I needed to do to be happy. Spending one day with Molly and her family has made me see there is a lot more to life than that and it makes me want more.
Jesus, maybe I really have gone insane.
“Good choice on the leather seats,” Claire says with approval as the women all move out of the front seat and over to us. “Cloth seats are a bitch to get amniotic fluid out of.”
“Amni-what?” I ask in confusion.
“Amniotic fluid,” Liz repeats. “It’s a yellowish liquid that surrounds the baby and gets all over the fucking place when your water breaks. Leather seats will be a plus if it happens while Molly’s in the car. You can just wipe the stuff right off.”
I nod, my eyes glazing over with thoughts of yellow, pee-like liquid pouring out of someone and getting all over my new seats.
“Plenty of leg room too, in case she goes into labor in the car and you have to pull over on the side of the road and deliver the baby yourself,” Claire adds.
Liz nods and it’s a good thing Charlotte is standing behind them and they can’t see the deer-in-the-headlights look in her eyes.
Claire smacks her hand a couple of times against the side of the van. “This baby definitely has enough room for Molly to spread her legs and push that baby out into your hands. You should probably throw a couple of towels in the back to clean up all the blood and the afterbirth.”
“Don’t forget the poop,” Liz adds. “There’s always a chance she’ll shit all over the place pushing that thing out.”
I know none of these things are really going to happen in my new vehicle, and definitely not to Molly, but that doesn’t stop my brain from seeing it all, clear as day and want to run down the street screaming at the top of my lungs.
Charlotte looks like she’s going to start crying and it would appear that I might get to see what these meat sweats are, going by the disgusted look on Molly’s face as her mother and aunt continue talking about bloody placentas and other things I would’ve been able to continue living out the rest of my days knowing nothing about, but I need to get out of here. It would probably be best if I go back inside the house and get away from all this womanly talk before I never want to have sex again.
“I think I hear Drew calling my name,” I suddenly announce, cutting of Claire when she starts talking about people who eat placentas for the nutrients and vitamins.
Dropping a kiss on Molly’s cheek and ignoring the dirty look she shoots me for PDA’ing her, I back away as quickly as I can. She watches me go with a look of annoyance on her face that I’m making an escape while she’s stuck out here listening to her aunt rattle off placenta recipes. I realize she’ll probably kick my ass for the easy and natural way I kissed her cheek in front of her family, like it was something I do all the time in the six months we’ve been fake-dating. Just like trading in my Mustang, I know it’s crazy, but it feels right. I can’t explain how after only spending a few hours with her I feel like I’ve known her forever instead of just fantasizing about her for two years from a distance. I didn’t even think about kissing her cheek, I just did it automatically, her aversion to public displays of affection be damned.
When I’m halfway across the yard and the older women start talking again, I see Molly mutter the words “chicken shit,” and I laugh, giving her a wink before turning around and jogging up the steps and back into the house.
After all the gross childbirth talk and girly feelings I’ve been having all evening, I need some intelligent, manly conversation. I need to talk about something intellectual and macho like politics or war.
“You cannot justify your reasoning because of an article you read online,” I hear Carter complain as I enter the house and head towards the living room where the voices are traveling from.
“The facts are right in front of you, man. You can’t shut down my theory just because you don’t share the same views as I do,” Jim argues.
Perfect! Just what I was looking for. A nice, civilized manly discussion that has nothing to do with the goo that comes out of a woman when she gives birth or anything else that will make me vomit.
“I’m telling you, I’ve seen the stats and maybe I’m in the minority here, but I’m going to have to side with Carter on this one,” Drew says with a sigh as I enter the room and find them seated around the coffee table.
“Perfect timing, Marco Polo,” Drew greets me with a smile. “You can settle this debate once and for all.”
I drop into the remaining empty chair and lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees and clasping my hands together between them.
“Lay it on me. What’s the topic? Presidential candidates? War climate?” I ask.
Drew looks at me like I’ve grown two heads. “Uh, no. We’re talking dicks.”
“Bag of dicks, to be precise,” Jim adds.
I sit up slowly, wondering if I should walk back out of the room and pretend like I was never here.
“I’m sure you’ve heard the expression ‘eat a bag of dicks’, correct?” Carter questions seriously.
Drew rolls his eyes when I continue to sit here, planning my escape without answering the question.
“You know, like, ‘Eat a bag of dicks, you piece of shit!’” Drew yells in an angry voice. “Tell me you’ve heard it or I’m going to seriously regret giving you the privilege of seeing my amazing balls.
Not wanting him to mention those bald, wrinkly, scarred pieces of flesh again, I nod in agreement. “Yeah, sure. I’ve heard the phrase. Why?”
“We need you to settle this argument once and for all,” Jim states.
“Okaaaaaay,” I drag the word out cautiously and a little bit in fear.
“I mean, how big of a bag are we talking here? Like, Ziploc baggie or Hefty garbage bag? Because size really does matter when it comes to eating dicks,” Drew states.
“That is false and you know it!” Carter argues. “Eating a bag of dicks is eating a bag of dicks whether you eat ten or a hundred and ten. You’re still eating dicks!”
Jim nods, his face a mask of complete seriousness. “And if size really does matter, is this bag of dicks hot-dog-sized dicks, or cocktail-weenie dicks? Because I think I could handle a bag of cocktail weenies, no problem.”
“Of course you could, cock sucker,” Drew laughs. “We all know how much you like to gobble up those dicks. Nom, nom, nom!”
Carter lifts his hand and silently gives him the finger.
“I think it makes much more sense if people would just say ‘Eat a dick’, rather than an entire bag of dicks,” Jim says with a sigh. “It would cut down on so much confusion, and then we wouldn’t even be having this debate. Marco, what are your thoughts on the situation?”
I think I’d rather be talking about placentas right now.
Chapter 9
– Pee Hand –
Molly
“I’m sorry, minivan means WHAT? And how do you even know this?” Charlotte asks loudly.
A few people in the waiting room look in our direction and mom shushes us. I lean in closer to Charl
“When I walked back into the house the other night, I heard Uncle Drew explaining it to Marco. I can’t even repeat it, just look it up on Urban Dictionary,” I explain.
Of course she immediately pulls her phone out of her purse, goes to that stupid website, and starts reading the definition out loud.
“The act of putting two fingers in the vagina and a fist up the ass. Called the minivan because you can fit two in the front and five in the back.”
I shudder just imagining it, and Charlotte can’t decide between being disgusted along with me or laughing, the noise she makes coming out as some sort of gag-snort-cough that makes everyone look at us again.
“Sorry!” she apologizes loudly. “Just discussing minivans and their amazing rear capacity!”
I smack her in the arm and she tucks her phone back in her purse, still laughing.
“That still doesn’t explain why dad, Uncle Carter, and Uncle Drew keep calling Marco, Mo and then laughing like idiots the rest of the night,” she says in confusion as she turns to face me.
I sigh, thinking about all the abuse Marco took the other night and realizing it’s probably why he hasn’t called since then.
“Not Mo, like the name. M. O. – M period, O period, for Minivan Operator.”
Charlotte giggles and I glance down at my phone instead of punching her for laughing at poor Marco. This is the hundredth time I’ve checked my phone today and I try not to feel like an idiot for doing so when I don’t see any new messages or missed calls. I will not be like one of those stupid girls who powers the phone off and on just to make sure it’s working. And not because I already called Charlotte four times in the last half hour and made her call me twice to confirm I can in fact still receive incoming calls, but because I have more dignity than that, dammit.
It’s bad enough I have that whole minivan fisting image in my head, now I have to deal with anxiety about not hearing from Marco since the text he sent me yesterday morning, the day after the strangest day of my life that ended with my dad and uncles daring Marco to eat a quart-sized Ziploc bag of hot dogs in under a minute to prove some point I didn’t even want to ask about. On top of not hearing from him since he texted me to say he now knew what the meat sweats were and he’d been puking up hot dogs since he got home from my house, I’ve been forced to go to the doctor to confirm my fake pregnancy.