“It’s going to be fine,” I said. “You’ll see.”
She didn’t say anything for a minute. Then she stood, ran her hands through her hair, and wiped her eyes. I grabbed a paper towel from the roll and handed it to her; she blew her nose. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes rimmed red. She came back over and moved in close to me.
“I didn’t tell them how late you really came in,” she whispered. “But where were you all that time?”
I couldn’t tell her where I’d been. I couldn’t tell anyone.
10
Dear Diary,
He is an unnatural little boy. But I love him, I really do. He is as pale and beautiful as a doll, with inky hair and eyes. He is quiet, unsmiling, watchful. He doesn’t cuddle really, and I haven’t yet heard him laugh. Still, he belongs to me and I to him. We are rarely apart; he can’t stand to be away from me. And other than my husband and my mother, there is not a babysitter in town who will stay with him. He rages and cries inconsolably until my return, when he goes silent again. Through no choice of my own, he has become my whole world.
After those difficult early months, the rocky road of early parenthood smoothed out some. We normalized, or at least we settled into the new normal of our lives. My mother rented out her house and took an apartment nearer us here. It was clear early on that I could not handle him on my own. With the postpartum depression and his diagnosis as a “high demand” infant, everyone was anxious for us. There had been too many frightening stories in the news that year, women who snap and sink their car into a lake, or drown their babies one by one in the bath. Did they think I was one of those women? I don’t know. But I was rarely unsupported in the first year.
I feel the worst for my mother, who had a lovely life on the beach, and who has given it up for us.
“I’m sorry,” I told her after a particularly challenging afternoon with the baby. Both of us collapsed in a heap after we finally got him down for the night. “I’m sorry we did this to you.”
She put her hand on mine. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “A mother doesn’t stop being a mother when her children are grown.”
“You were so happy,” I said. I thought of her bustling life of tennis clinics and book clubs, days at the beach. “Finally.”
She just shook her head, her blond bob bouncing.
“A mom doesn’t get to be happy when her child is unhappy,” she said. “That’s just the way it is.”
It was the first time she’d ever looked old to me.
But as the baby grew, and I left the pall of depression behind me, things got easier. Was motherhood what I expected? No. Was he the kind of baby I imagined-fat and happy, cooing and nuzzling? No. But that’s life. As parents, we must accept that our children are who they are. We can’t make them into something we want, or be disappointed in them because they don’t meet our artificial expectations. At least that’s what my shrink tells me. Not every child is affectionate, she said. And that’s hard to accept, but accept it you must.
Now my mother lives with us up north in the late spring and summer, and in the winter months near my sister (who, of course, never needs any help because she is perfect in every way). I try not to let her know that every time she leaves, I count the days until she returns. Without her, we are housebound.
When she’s here, my husband and I steal out for secret dates. We go for walks and have romantic dinners where no talk of the baby is permitted. Sometimes we play tennis, or just go to the gym together. And in those stolen hours, we remember how much we love each other, how much fun we’ve always had together. When my mother is away, we have “home dates.” We build fires, and open a bottle of wine. But we talk in whispers, always afraid of waking him. Sometimes it seems like if we enjoy ourselves too much, he wakes up wailing. And then it will be hours of me in his room, walking and rocking until he goes back to sleep.
I know it’s my fault. He is traumatized by his early life, by the fact that it took me a long time to warm to him, to bond with him. And I believe (though my husband disagrees, thinks that I’m being dramatic) it has impacted him in ways that I might never be able to mend. I think about the violence of his entry into this life, a journey that almost killed us both-the drugs, the eventual surgery. It damaged us. But I will try to repair what has been broken; I will spend my life trying to be a better mother than I was the first few months of his life.
My husband wants another baby. He says it’s time. And, of course, that’s all anyone ever says. “Time for another one!” Everyone says this… relatives, friends, grocery-store checkout clerks. It’s like a conspiracy, as though all people who have borne multiple children have had a chip implanted in their brains. Whenever a mother with only one child approaches, this preprogrammed message emits from their open mouths. Have ‘em close, or they’ll never be friends. And I always smile shyly and say, “We’re trying!”
But we are not trying. At least I’m not. I am on the birth control pill and I will stay on it for the rest of my childbearing years. Because there is not enough of me for this child and another one. He wants all of me; I can see that. There is no room inside of me for anyone else.
I am being dishonest with my husband. He doesn’t know about the pills. He thinks I’m tracking my ovulation and that we are both hoping for another child soon. There’s something nice about it, the idea that we might be like normal people, excited and happy to bring another person into the world. That we are making love and hoping that the act is one of creation, and not just pleasure. I can almost feel the tug toward that.
But the thought of another child now only fills me with dread. The day when I see that dark red bloom on my underpants is the happiest day of the month. Isn’t that awful? Everybody hates a woman who doesn’t want another child, as if you’re in some way shirking your biological imperative. I love my child, more than my own life. And more even than that, I love the child I will not bear. I love that child too much to bring him or her into this family with its poisoned gene pool.
I keep this to myself. If my mother sees it, she has not said so. My husband, even while exhausted by our child’s ceaseless demands, seems to think our boy is the sun and the moon. If the baby doesn’t smile, doesn’t cuddle, and has only just a few words-“no,” “mama,” “bunny,” and “more”-my husband always has a ready excuse. He’s the strong and silent type, he’ll quip. Or: Not everyone is a snuggle bunny like you, baby. Or: He’s a serious guy, an old soul.
He doesn’t want to see, I know that. I understand. I don’t want to either. So I go along and pretend it’s all right. Only the baby’s pediatrician seems to register concern. Is he always so watchful? Do you find that he smiles much? If he doesn’t have more words at his next visit, we’ll need to address that with a specialist. I just nod and say that we’ll keep an eye on it.
“So,” the doctor always says before we leave. “Are you thinking about another one?”
Before my son was born, I always believed that love was enough to overcome any obstacle. I believed in nurture over nature. But now I know. When I look at my boy, I see my father. My father who was put to death for the murder of five teenage girls. He is long dead, lives on only as the star of my nightmares, and in my child’s eyes.
11
“Hey! Wait up!” Beck’s voice rang out, bouncing around the night. I kept walking, my head down.
“Come on,” she yelled. “Give me a break.”