Motherhood Made a Man Out of Me by Karen Karbo Page B

these.”
    Mary Rose clapped her hands over her heart and sighed, “Oh.” Ward’s hair curled over his collar. She reached up, almost shyly, and combed it with her fingers. He closed his eyes, let his head drop back into the palm of her hand. I watched this out of the corner of my eye—it was really very sweet—when suddenly Mary Rose yanked her hand out from under Ward’s head, which snapped forward like that of a crash test dummy. The Styrofoam container slid to the floor and popped open.
    â€œOh, come on!” yelled Mary Rose. She gestured at the TV. “Where I come from, getting your mouth guard knocked halfway across the floor is a foul.”
    â€œBaby, franchise players never foul,” said Ward.
    â€œWhat are you talking about, sweetheart? Pippen’s got two,” said Mary Rose. “Everyone else has four. Guys coming in off the bench get called for tucking in their shirts.”
    â€œMy point exactly, sweetie.”
    Then Mary Rose spied the container on the floor, inside the square white clam was a handful of pale brown cookies. She leaned forward, peered closer. “What are those?”
    â€œPeanut-butter cookies. Left over from the shoot. I remembered they were your favorite.”
    Mary Rose cupped one long hand over the other, continued to peer down at the cookies as if they were some poisonous animal devouring its prey, interesting to watch but lethal to touch. “Not my favorite.”
    â€œSince when? Is this some kind of pregnancy food thing?” Ward looked at me and rolled his eyes.
    â€œShe’s allergic to peanuts,” I said.
    â€œYou are? You never told me that. Why didn’t you ever tellme that? I would never have brought these, if …” He leaned over and snapped the Styrofoam case shut, as if the mere sight of them might cause Mary Rose to go into anaphylactic shock. “I must be thinking of the ex-wife.”
    â€œYou have an ex-wife?”
    Ward was silent. He popped the container open again, then snapped it shut. Open, shut, open, shut. “How can you tell your husband is dead? The sex is the same, but you get the remote.”
    â€œYou never told me you have an ex-wife.”
    â€œYou never told me you were allergic to peanuts.”
    We all turned our attention to a free-throw shot. We watched, rapt, as the ball twirled around the rim. Lynne Baron! I’d forgotten about her. She and Ward were just separated when he and I had our acrimonious overcooked swordfish dinner. She did something in the movies. I remember, because he told me she was getting out of the film business and into training Seeing Eye dogs. “She wanted to get out of the blind leading the blind and into Labrador retrievers leading the blind,” he’d said. Then I remembered: She’d been a Frederick’s of Hollywood lingerie model who threw in the thong to become a food designer. She was well-known in food-design circles. She did for a plate of deep-fried Cajun jumbo shrimp what the makeup artist, hair stylist, and wardrobe consultant did for the actress eating it.
    I must confess, I then did something very unfriendlike. I gloated. This, Mary Rose, this is why you don’t get pregnant with someone you’ve just met. If you want a joint project, build a gazebo, learn to swing dance, but don’t, don’t have a baby. I felt wise, suddenly, instead of like the judgmental curmudgeon I knew myself to be.
    When Ward excused himself to use the bathroom, I told Mary Rose, “Ask to talk to him outside. Don’t let him get away with this. You deserve some answers. You deserve them now. Don’t give him a chance to put together a good story. That’s what men do, you know, say nothing until they have a chance to put together a story.”
    â€œI know,” said Mary Rose. “I know about men.”
    â€œWell, clearly you don’t,” I said, “or not about this one, anyway.”
    Mary