“Mom? Does this place have a bathroom? I’m just asking.”
Because it can never be a quick run to Target.
My personal Greek chorus I call daughters follow behind me pawing, commenting, and as per usual, requesting water or a bathroom break. Today, it is the bathroom detour that derails our "quick trip".
After a few minutes of standing outside of the bathroom, I set down my red basket of goods and go in to investigate or accelerate the situation.
“How are you doing?” I call.
“Fine!” calls one from her stall.
“Fine! repeats the other, their voices echoing and loud, bouncing off the red and white tiled bathroom.
The stink, soap and artificial vanilla, sprayed at frequent intervals, wafts. Voices bounce and overlap, careen into each other and amplify. I hear a mother behind a closed stall door, talking to her charge. I know all too well how cramped and small these stalls are with another little person and feel sympathy for this nameless, faceless stranger.
I call to the daughters, ” How are we doing? Need help?”
Two teenagers similar in denim and slouch, exit. The bathroom is slightly quieter now, less crowded. I hear that audible mother still talking, her stream of chatter an octave below my calls into the stalls.
I exchange a smile and nod with another woman as she heads for the door, a blue overall-wearing boy resting on her hip, his fat fist holding tight in her hair.
Mothers in bathrooms, we have camaraderie. We spend a lot of time in these trenches.
“How we doing now?” I call. “Youngest Daughter, almost done?”
There is fluttering and thumping behind the door, a flush, and Eldest Daughter emerges.
“Done!” she announces.
We commence our dance of hand washing in a public bathroom. Finally, a paper towel levered, a flourish of ripping the towel off the roll and drying, then Youngest Daughter joins the dance, which involves a lift because of her short stature.
The door behind me swings open and the woman who has been presumably talking to her child non-stop stands behind me.
There is no child.
There is a black shoulder bag, a neat and current haircut shaped to her jawline and a cell phone held to her ear.
A cell phone.
This woman I had assumed was my comrade, for whom I felt sympathy and sisterhood, is not who I thought she was. Instead of being someone trapped in a tiny bathroom stall with a little, dependent person, she is someone who has been talking her way through a most intimate act, in the most intimate of spaces.
Without a pause or eye contact, she continues talking ( Who is she talking to?). Her long strides on fashionable shoes clickity-clack her swiftly out of the bathroom. She does not stop to wash her hands.
Eldest Daughter starts to comment, “Mom, why did that lady…”
I give my daughter the small but firm head shake. She receives the message and stops. I know we will probably rehash this scene later, in the car or at dinner, somewhere else but not in this red and white tiled, echoing bathroom. I don’t want to do it here. I don’t want the woman or anybody else to hear us talk about her.
Because that would be rude.
For a different take on bathroom interruptus and cell phone usage, read
this piece by Bruce Feiler in The New York Times. I don't know where I will have to move to if talking on the cell phone while in the loo becomes an acceptable form of multi-tasking.
