Excerpt of Who Makes up These Rules, Anyway? by Stevi Mittman

My name is Teddi Bayer. Not as bad as, say, Candi Kane, but still...

No biggie, you think? Then picture this: a newspaper ad for Bayer Furniture the Sunday after I was born. There I am, naked except for a big bow around my neck, superimposed on a bed of teddy bears. Below me are the words IN CELEBRATION OF THE BIRTH OF OUR LITTLE TEDDI, BUY A COUCH THIS WEEK AND GET A FREE TEDDY BEAR! BETTER STILL, BUY A BED

AND MAKE ONE OF YOUR OWN!

Fast forward twelve years and imagine a raucous bunch of adolescent boys trying to cop a feel of my mosquito-bite- breasts to see if I'm "stuffed."

And my parents expected me to turn out normal? Somehow, despite my name and my genes, for thirty-six years I've managed to defy the odds. That is, until today, when, to show that they are team players and can embrace a common goal, my entire family — and that includes my too-good- looking-for-his-own -good husband, Rio — came together to make sure that I go smack, stark-raving, way-over-the-edge mad.

You think I'm exaggerating, right? Well then, let's take them one by one, shall we? First there's my mother, who called me in every aisle of Waldbaum's this morning to tell me what food I should not buy for our big family dinner tonight. Every single aisle, where she somehow knew exactly what item I was putting into my cart just as I was reaching for it. My best guess is that it's all the shock treatments she's had. They've no doubt given her this incredible psychic power. And is she saving the world with it?

No, she's just driving me nuts.

Witness: "How much chopped liver are you buying for your father?" she asked the moment I was at the deli counter ordering it. "You always buy too much."

I might have been a tad snippy when I told her, "Only half a pound," and added, "Is that all right with you?"

Of course, she was snippy right back. "Half a pound? That'll never be enough. Not that I would ever tell you what to buy." She said this as if she hadn't told me to get the challah, not the Italian bread in the bread aisle, not to buy the plums because knowing me they were bound to be too soft, and to resist the cheap mints in the bulk- food aisle I always get instead of the exact-same-for-a- higher-price ones in the gourmet section. "You're a grown woman. You have a mind of your own. You should do what you want."

She pauses, maybe to take a drag of her cigarette, and then continues. "Of course, I haven't lived with your father for more years than you've been alive without learning something. I thought I could help, but I see I was wrong. I'll never make another suggestion."

Yeah, if only. "Mom, you've helped," I told her, searching the glass cases for some arsenic in cream sauce, which, if I'd had it for lunch, might have spared me the dinner party from the dark side I knew was to come. "You're always a help."

"Well," she said, "all I've ever wanted is for you and David to be happy."

I told her we are happy. My older brother, David, is, anyway. Of course, he is a thousand miles south of New York, basking in the Caribbean sun and enjoying life without a phone, or so he tells us. Not that it matters. I know the drill. "David and I are both happy."

"Happy? Of course you're happy. Did you lose a child?" This is why we cut my mother plenty of slack. Yes, it was almost thirty-five years ago, and yes, the rest of the family thinks that little Markie's death has become a weapon with which she bludgeons us regularly. Still, I don't know that I'd be any better. Gives me the chills just thinking about it.

I told her I was thankful I hadn't, which satisfied her, and she moved on to critiquing my wardrobe until I crinkled a package of rice crackers near the phone and shouted that I was losing her. Before you feel too sorry for her, know that she called me back once I was in the car and asked if I'd gotten her favorite French vanilla creamer — which amazingly I had actually remembered — and told me now she uses the low-fat kind. Zipped my rain slicker back up, grabbed Alyssa out of the safety seat and ran back through the puddles. But, not being a dummy, didn't return the regular so that when she hated the low- fat I'd have the right one on hand.

Of course, that's not nearly enough to drive anyone over the edge, so throw in my three kids. Today Dana, my oldest at eleven, had to stay after school, only she forgot to tell me so I wasn't home for Jesse when he got there. And Jesse, who's nine-going-on-six when he isn't nine-going-on- forty, forgot to tell me he was supposed to bring cupcakes for some bake sale at school and brought home a rather nasty note from his teacher about responsibility — presumably his. And post food-shop-from-hell, Alyssa, our little Princess Cupcake at nearly five, announced she couldn't hold it in until we got home. My car will probably never smell quite the same.

But you're still skeptical. You don't believe it's a plot, do you? Then add my neighbor's husband, who, while not technically related to me, is like a brother-in-law, since Bobbie and I are as close as sisters could be. Tonight he up and left her and their twin girls, Kristin and Kimmie. I am fully aware that this is not my tragedy, but hers. And I swear that I was there for her. I held her, I cried with her. In fact, I think I took it worse than she did because it was more of a surprise to me. But I'm claiming it as part of the plot to speed me over the edge because it opened a box of fears that I have managed to keep locked since the day that Rio and I got married — that someday, somewhere down the line, Rio would realize he didn't love me and climb into the candy-apple-red Corvette I brought to the marriage and drive off into the sunset without me.

Anyway, back to Bobbie, who showed me a drawerful of sex toys which didn't save her marriage, and told me, "Mike's screwing a hypnotherapist. In fact, they've been screwing around for centuries — in other lives, or so he says."

"Other lives?" I am sure my eyes were like saucers, but this stuff was really hard to believe. I mean, yes, Mike's into all sorts of natural supplements and he thinks that ginkgo biloba actually staves off Alzheimer's, but the man's a chiropractor. They all believe in that stuff. But they don't all go off to find alternative universes. "Since when does Mike believe in past lives?" I asked her.

"Since he needs an excuse for screwing around in this one."

She claims she's less upset about his infidelity than the problem of who will adjust her. "I mean," she said as she cried in my arms, "that man knows how to stop my migraines. He knows how to get rid of the pain that runs down my leg. Who's going to get rid of the pain in my ass?"

All I could do was hug my very best friend tightly and tell her the honest truth — that it looked like he was already gone.

I know, I know. You're thinking that I'm taking all this too personally. But then, you don't know about my father, who has been leading my husband to believe that one day he'll be running Bayer Furniture, and who chose tonight to tell him that at seventy, he still has no plans to retire. I think he takes a perverse pleasure in screwing Rio because, in addition to Rio screwing his daughter, he feels that Rio screwed him by not converting to Judaism, as he promised he would.

Which brings us, finally, to my husband, Rio, who actually believed that tonight's dinner was going to change everything and that my father was suddenly going to see the light and bankroll a Bayer Furniture Clearance Center for Rio to run. And now that that boat has sailed, he is standing in the doorway to our bedroom on the fence about whether to blame me or have sex with me. This despite the black negligee I've got on — a nightgown, I might add, which my mother gave me two years ago, telling me it would stop Rio from even thinking about cheating.

You'll remember I locked that fear in a box before today. Now I'll worry about it every night for the rest of my life, along with the greatest of my fears — that some day, just like Mom, I'll have a second home at the South Winds Psychiatric Center. And that I'll have a phone set aside exclusively for me there just like the one reserved for her, which is preprogrammed with dial-direct connections to her favorite florist and the local Chinese restaurant, which delivers moo shu pork at the touch of a button. And that I will have sheets stored for me just like the three- hundred-count ones kept in a locked hospital closet for my mother. (Only mine, of course, will be seconds from T.J. Maxx.)

And then, like me, my poor sweet children will be done for — left to manage without consistent and unconditional love, needing always to walk that thin line, showing love without demanding it in return — or risk pushing their fragile mother over the edge.

And as long as I'm being morbid, I may as well go the final step and acknowledge that worse still, they'll have to live out their lives with the Sword of Psychosis hanging over their heads, always wondering when the men in the little white coats will be coming for them.

Boy, your mood sure can change when you think about being institutionalized or abandoned. Now I'm not any surer than Rio that I'm up for making love. Still, there he is, standing in the doorway, framed by the light like some kind of god. His hair is black, full. It still curls down onto his forehead the way it did the first time I saw him. His chest and shoulders still dwarf his waist and hips. He's the kind of man who walks with his shoulders — a lion's gait, always on the prowl. There's a rhythm to it, and it mesmerized me from the start. It is too dark to do more than imagine the small tuft of dark curls that escapes the vee of his shirt, but if I close my eyes I have no trouble seeing it clear as day. Unfortunately when I open them, he is still standing in the same spot, still unable to decide if he's interested in what I'm offering.

Finally he speaks: "I take it Bobbie's still alive?" Translated this means: how could you leave me to deal with your parents on the most important night of my life to gab with your girlfriend?

I remind him that my girlfriend's husband just left her and that she was really upset. We both were. I don't go into the thing about how divorce is one of the three most traumatic things that can happen in your life, because I'm not sure it's three and because he wouldn't care, anyway. "What was I supposed to do?"

In the dark I can barely make out a grimace. The last thing I want to do is fight with him, but he isn't being fair.

"Didn't she come running when my mother tried to commit suicide?" I ask.

He crosses his arms across his chest, unmoved. "Which time?"

Several, I suppose, but while it means the world to me, I realize it would be wise to remind him of something he cares about more. "How about when Alyssa had that fever and you were off hunting little defenseless deer and I had to rush her to the hospital and Bobbie was here for the whole weekend watching Dana and Jess?" I should have left out the dig about the defenseless deer. I'm not sure he even heard the rest. Anyway, I make a stab at another time Bobbie saved the day. "How about when she climbed on the roof to adjust the DirecTV thingy so you wouldn't have to miss the Indy 5000 or whatever it is?" Surely he cared about that.

Only he says she didn't do that. "You did, Teddi. You don't remember that?" Me? I hate heights. Maybe I blocked the memory. When I hesitate, he throws up his hands. "You got brain damage or something? You remember anything anymore?"

His words hang in the air as if we've had this conversation a hundred times before. Maybe we did once or twice. Or a couple dozen. Who's counting?

"Sorry," he says after a while, sitting down on the bed and slipping out of his Italian loafers. "I didn't mean anything by that. At least I saw that you picked up my good suit at the cleaners, finally."

"Your suit?" I guess I don't hear exactly what he's saying, because I'm thinking that I've forgotten it yet again, despite how many times he's reminded me. "I —"

"What? They couldn't get the freakin' stain out?" He's halfway off the bed, running to check.