The Things About Jaynie Lamar….

A short story.

*The characters in this story are fictional. Any likeness to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

The first thing that I noticed about Jaynie Lamar was her awkward smile. Initially, I couldn’t tell if she was simply uncomfortable in her own skin or a painfully fake person. The truth, it turned out, was someplace in the middle.

The first time we met, late September of our freshman year, I was perched on the brick wall surrounding Massell Pond. I was pretending to study, occasionally tossing tidbits of bread to the ducks, contemplating some meaningless party, unremarkable interaction from the evening before, or random boy (truth be told, after meeting my husband, every other boy became random, but I digress). Whatever the reason, I was lost in my thoughts, unwinding from the constant drain of constantly being surrounded by new people.

The second thing that I noticed about Jaynie Lamar was that she had an issue with boundaries. She plowed through situations like a mac truck. She either couldn’t take a hint or chose not to take a hint.

Jaynie sat down next to me and started asking questions. “We’re in the same Freshman Seminar. Are you studying for the midterm?” I stared at her, startled and confused. Absent-mindedly. “Oh, yeah. This is just a ruse. I’m trying to clear my head.”

Jaynie smiled, awkwardly, trying to decide what to say next. “I’m Jaynie. I live in Deroy. I think we officially met last night. You were on Moody Street, right? Which building are you in?” Acknowledging that she was putting herself out there, trying to meet someone new, I nodded, said my name, half-smiled, and pointed to a dilapidated building on the other side of the quad. “Oh, do you live on Deena’s floor?” Without waiting for my response, she vomited that she went to the same high school as Deena, talking about her high school boyfriend with whom she was “still trying to make things work long distance.” I continued to offer a half smile.

On some level, I appreciated the distraction as it made me feel less guilty about not studying. But as she continued on, I lost focus. Two minutes later, I couldn’t have identified the salient points – if there were any – of our conversation. Yet, Jaynie assumed my half-smile demonstrated interest. “I have to get to the library,” she said as if I was keeping her there. “Let’s get dinner tomorrow night after Freshman Seminar,” she didn’t ask, she stated, as she got up and walked away.

The third thing that I noticed about Jaynie Lamar was that she was shaped like an upside-down egg. While this seems like an unkind observation, it was not meant as a judgment or a slam. Rather it was in response to the story she told me the next evening over dinner.

“Do you like your roommate?” she asked me. “She’s fine as a roommate,” I lied. In fact, I disliked my roommate. She was quite judgmental about trivialities, things that were none of her business, like the way you danced, or the people whom you considered befriending, or the subjects you wanted to study…the list goes on (and this comes from someone who is admittedly judgmental and was always super self-aware of her tendency to judge). Yet, the thing I disliked most about her was that her best friend from high school lived upstairs from us, and she turned on her. She was downright unkind, telling her not to come around. But I wasn’t prepared to share this perspective with anyone on campus at this point, saving it all as fodder for my home friends.

“I feel the same way about my roommate,” Jaynie said this as if I was suddenly her soulmate, once again flashing me that pained smile. “She’s fine, but I never would have chosen her on my own.” She went into extreme detail when describing her roommate, suggesting that she was her physical and intellectual opposite, a tall young woman, a “Masshole” with dark, frizzy hair, jet black eyes, and an athletic build who wanted to study economics. She used the word “intense.” Jaynie, short, blond, blue-eyed, and, as I noticed at that moment, egg-shaped, wanted to major in romance languages and travel the world. She hoped her life would be one great adventure.

I liked that about Jaynie. She was open and adventurous, not guarded and cautious like me. She led scavenger hunt teams and planned Scorpion Bowling nights in Cambridge, encouraging evenings of laughter.

But my antenna shot up after noticing a fifth thing about Jaynie Lamar. It was something that I started to see more regularly about six months after we first met, as Jaynie was not only unaware of boundaries, she was inconsiderate of them. And this is when Jaynie, the egg-shaped, awkwardly smiling young woman from Deroy, became quite intrusive.

She became a rotten egg.

Within a week, Jaynie befriended a boy I considered dating and started dating one of my male friends. When I suggested that she was making me uncomfortable, she flashed that awkward smile. “We’re just attracted to the same people in different ways,” she told me. I was utterly speechless, unable to find an appropriate retort.

She crossed this line several times with several people whom she tagged as friends, which led to the mass exodus from the Jaynie Lamar Fan Club. Sure, we all enjoyed the Scorpion Bowling nights, but when she notoriously hinted that she knew things about all of us that we didn’t know about ourselves, we started to step away. And, as she played the sympathetic ear on both sides, quietly reveling in the intimate knowledge that gave her a sense of power and the control over her friends’ lives, more people retreated.

Months later, many of her friends would lament that she knew when their relationships were on the rocks before they did. A few people stuck around, unable to decide whether to run in the other direction or stand firm to guard the relationships that she was uncomfortably infiltrating.

At the time, I certainly wasn’t secure enough in myself, my new dynamic, or the new people with whom I was building relationships to wait around for her to hijack these relationships. I went back to my spot by the pond, relieved that I only shared my secrets with my friends from home, and decided to silently distance myself from the scorpion bowls and scavenger hunts, immersing myself in adventures with other people.

The final thing I noticed about Jaynie Lamar was that she was anxious to escape the confines of our college campus. She had done her damage, and she was anxious to spread her wings. The last time I saw her she was packing up her car and preparing for her year abroad in France. Disinterested and disgusted, I could barely muster a half smile for her.

Then I forgot about her; I forgot all of the things about Jaynie Lamar. She was a blip on my college screen, easily erased from the far recesses of my mind. Until about three years later. As I wandered the New York City streets, hopping from bar to bar with friends from college, I ran into one of Jaynie Lamar’s former boyfriends. After laughing and reminiscing at MacLeer’s for hours, we struck up a friendship during which I, only somewhat unintentionally, learned as much about Jaynie Lamar as she must have known about me when she crossed the boundaries I tried so hard to establish with her.

While a rotten egg might retain its oval shape, many other things in life come full circle.

Babies – A Short Story Excerpt

“Three boys,” Kayla said. “It’s my mother-in-law’s revenge for ripping her baby boy from her womb.”

The entire room stared down at the floor. They had asked, so Kayla responded. Honestly. Some jaws dropped, genuinely shocked and dismayed.

So many people with so many serious problems these days. Terrorism, tsunamis, the Pope just passed, and that poor bulimic woman with the feeding tube. And she was complaining about the gender of her children. Know your audience, as her mother always warned. Others were laughing to themselves with all too much empathy, feeling the same way about their boys, girls, or pet goldfish.

But Kayla had the routine down pat. It was her daily shtick. Without missing a beat, she tossed her thick, jet- black hair and added her disclaimer. “Not that I’d trade them in for 10 girls, my diamonds. But, come on.” Dreams of Lilly Pulitzer dresses and Alice in Wonderland were always dancing about in her head.

But she thought her desire was more intense. More meaningful. To whom would she leave her grandmother’s estate jewelry? With whom would she spend holidays and special occasions? With whom would she form the unbreakable bond that you can only really have with a good mother, sister, or daughter? On an even more intimate level, who would comb her hair, take her to the bathroom, and pluck her eyebrows for her when she was past the point of independence?

She always felt as if someone was missing in her life. Her stomach would hurt when she saw mothers and daughters walking the streets, arm in arm, hand in hand. Sisters chatting over lunch made her feel empty. She was desperately seeking that bond. But she was not prepared to voice those concerns out loud yet. So she settled for the basic, shallow route. Receiving the obvious response.

“That’s disgusting,” chimed in an obviously older, grey-haired woman, three months pregnant with a female twinset. “Healthy. That’s all that matters.” Kayla shook her head and rolled her eyes. But to that, most of the room chimed in, agreeing.

“Everyone wants what they want,” said a woman pregnant with triplets, gender undisclosed. Causing the older woman to interrupt.

“You get what you get and you don’t get upset,” she started her diatribe about how obvious it was that Kayla was just myopic and self-absorbed.

“You’re unfit to parent a caterpillar,” she huffed.

The master of ceremonies removed her thick, oversized, faux-Chanel bifocals and waved them in the air, signaling that each member was obligated to express her honest emotions. “It’s a painful, difficult process for most of us. Every couple, every person has her own reasons for starting this process,” the master noted before even introducing herself at their first meeting. “If you criticize, if you interrupt, you destroy the integrity of this support group.” The twelve steps for the fertility challenged.

Each member was assigned a seat and a number. No names during group, to protect privacy. Some faces were shockingly recognizable. The actress from that popular NBC sitcom. You’d think she’d hire a private therapist rather than exposing herself to a group of potential sycophants. Then there was the News One weatherperson. And the infamous advertising uberchick. The thinner than thin one with the really great highlights. She was always seen on Page Six. All convincing themselves that the numbers made them anonymous. All convincing themselves that they were an everywoman with fertility issues.

For 45 minutes they went around the room, taking turns detailing the trials and tribulations of achieving and maintaining a pregnancy. Number eight, the 40 year old woman in her third trimester who was told, after eight miscarriages and six years of failed in-vitro, that she’d never be able to carry a pregnancy. The slightly calmer woman, number 13, who despite gaining 55 pounds before conception from using clomid, pergonal, and finally succumbing to IVF, was past the critical first 12 weeks. Number four who was in the sixth week of her first non-ectopic pregnancy in three years. The women who were so wound up from hormonal treatments, that they would walk into the room crying and out of the room screaming at their husbands, mothers, friends, and subordinates on their cell phones.

About 30 percent of the room was childless. Many more were suffering from secondary infertility. Kayla’s left eye would twitch as she listened, often trying to block out the noise that was the other group members. The voices in her head constantly replaying her own fertility trauma. First, her doctor diagnosing the cause of her infertility. Stress. “Well you’d be stressed too if you spent the past year trying to get pregnant, and you couldn’t even get your period!” she retorted to her first of many ob/gyns. And then another round of bloods, just to make sure. This time under the watchful eye of Dalia’s super-spouse.

Her WASPiest friend Laura, pronounced Laaraa, single and five months pregnant after missing a single birth control pill, shaking her head in utter frustration and disbelief, “All you nice Jewish girls. Wanting your babies, and you can’t get pregnant to save your life.”

And her Jewish conspiracy friends who blamed the mass levels of infertile Jewish girls in their late 20’s and early 30’s on gases and chemicals released into the air throughout the Holocaust. “You know how things skip a generation,” they argued to a baffled crowd.

Kayla closed her eyes and saw herself. Lying in bed. Lying in puddles of bright red blood. Staring at sonogram machines after nine, ten, eleven weeks of pregnancy, looking at hearts that were not beating. Staring at sonogram machines after 17 weeks of pregnancy with the fetus that was not developing properly. Her doctor’s voice echoing in her head, “The fetus is not viable. The fetus will not survive more than one month outside the womb. The heart has not formed properly. There is something wrong with the lungs.” Echoing as these people were telling their own tales of childlessness.

Now it was her turn to speak, to vent to the room. So Kayla stood her ground. She was not there to pacify or protect the delicate sensibilities of infertile women. No one had done that for her the last five times that she attended these sessions. She was there to listen and to express to people who might have gone through similar experiences. Because her closest friends didn’t get it at all. And her husband just wanted her to appreciate what she had. “Whatever is meant to be will be,” he mandated, like the voice of an 80-year-old rabbi.

So here she sat, attempting to justify her desperate yearning for number four. To justify a fourth round of hormones, needles, and outpatient surgical procedures. She knew that she was amongst the lucky ones. If not the luckiest. Three diamonds. In the rough. How could she complain? How could she still shed tears every time Hall and Oates’s “Sara Smile” came on the radio? Or bitterly rue her friends with girls as they complained about the “incessant whining” they endured. And with a full house now, how could she even contemplate the emptiness of her home after three boys escaped to college in 10, 15 years? Yet she came back to the room one more time. Because someone was still missing. “So why on earth are you here?” the master finally asked, with the emphasis on “are.”