by Anna Monardo
“I guess I did,” he said. “Really stupid. I’m sorry, Denise. I’ll buy you a new—”
“It’s not mine. It’s somebody else’s. We’ll have to replace it. Just make me a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. Make it quick. Please. I’m starving.”
Eighth Step: think of those you have harmed and become willing to make amends to them all.
“Christopher?” No answer. “Chris?” He walked into the living room. She was surprised, a bit disappointed, to find him still smiling at her. “I’m sorry I snapped at you. Everybody cracks a Pyrex now and then.”
“Me? I’ve never done it before. Now the boy thinks his dad’s a dud.”
“You’re not a dud.”
“Yeah, I am. Sometimes.” He was walking back to the kitchen.
“You’re not a dud, and I don’t want to bug you, but I’m starving and I really need to eat something soon.”
A LITTLE WHILE LATER, the baby cried himself to sleep (he wasn’t feeding half as well as he had been in the hospital), and Denise decided this was her opportunity to try going to the bathroom. Christopher, with his endlessly patient hands, helped her sit up, then stand up, then walk across the living room.
“You dizzy?” he asked.
“A little bit.”
Holding her arm, he walked into the bathroom with her, lifted the toilet lid. “You can leave me now,” she told him.
“No, I want to wait until you’re sitting down. I don’t want you falling.”
What the hell. By now he’d seen everything. So had doctors, nurses, student nurses, interns, lab technicians. Her pubic area had become a public area, a badly repaired crossroads. As soon as she was sitting, Christopher left and closed the door. With her pants lowered, her upper thighs rubbed against the rough scrape of her growing-back-in pubic hair, which felt like a crop of nail heads. There was a quick trill of pain with the first drops of urine, then a dull burn in the bladder, a meanness. Still, three days after surgery, the odor of anesthesia wafted up from her hot urine. A reminder of the foreign substances that had been run through her. Metal, industrial. Her groin reminded her of Newark.
And then, at the end of a long rush of urine—This can’t be happening! Not now!—a rope of pain pulled down inside her from just behind her navel, tugging so hard and fast, wringing her insides out, reminding her of everything she’d ever done wrong.
Bladder infection.
Denise knew what would happen next. As soon as her urine flow stopped, she’d feel a cruel pressure of needing to pee some more but there’d be nothing there, just burning pain. She could picture the pain, a thin, sharp wrinkle folding down slowly from the bottom of her gut, then the next roll of pain would increase, big heavy sheets and blankets slapped and folding in a big spill from abdomen to the edge of her vaginal lips, where the fear of the burn would precede the burn, which, when it came, felt like asphalt assaulted by sun.
CHRISTOPHER KNOCKED on the door. “You okay? You’ve been in there a long time.”
“No.” She was crying, which made Christopher open the door a crack.
“Denise, what?”
Still sitting on the toilet, her elbows on her knees, she was weeping into her hands. “I have a bladder infection. How did this happen? I’m going to kill myself.”
“No, Denise, no.”
“What did I do wrong? Why is this happening?”
He helped her stand so she could pull up her sweatpants. He waited, steadying her, while she tied the tie around her sore waist. Walking her back to the couch, he said, “Bladder infection. Isn’t there that medicine that turns the urine orange and takes the pain away really fast?”
“Yes,” Denise said, grudgingly. If he knew all this, probably his gorgeous babe of a wife had had it once. Probably, Denise thought, I should just give them the baby, let them raise him. Probably that’s what he’d had in mind all along. That’s why he’s being so nice to me. “But you keep forgetting that I’m breastfeeding a baby. How can I take the medicine if I’m breastfeeding?”
“Oh, man, that’s right, you don’t want meds if you’re—”
“No, I do want them. I want the meds. But they’d never give me a prescription. Even though I’ll probably never manage to nurse this baby again.”
“Let’s take this one step at a time. Let’s get you lying down.”
One day at a time. Lord, grant me the serenity…
Christopher’s hands lifting her feet were like God’s immediate answer to her prayer. “Okay. Now,” he said, “do you have any cranberry juice?”
He really did know about this infection. “No, of course not. I just—”
“Okay. I’ll get juice when I go to Target to get the medicine. Let’s call the doctor.”
“She won’t give you the prescriptions.”
“Let’s try. Where’s the number?”
“Christopher! I need an antibiotic and the orange-pee medicine, and they won’t let me take them, I’m telling you. Just bring me the phone. I need the phone to call Carole. I need to go to a meeting.”
“First things first. I’m dialing the doctor.”
“Stop! Just stop. I just remembered. I have spare prescriptions for Bactrim and Pyridium. My friend who’s a PA gave them to me.”
“A production assistant?”
“Physician’s assistant. If you’re really going to Target, try to get a new Pyrex. I don’t like owing people things.”
“Yeah, I’ll go, but what about taking this stuff while you’re breastfeeding? I really would like to talk to the doctor first.”
“If you don’t go, I’ll drive to Target myself. If I can take morphine, I can take a little orange-pee medicine.”
“But what about the antibiotic? Can’t we just call—”
“Are you going?”
“All right. All right.”
Lord, grant me the serenity. If you can, grant it now.
CHAPTER 24 :
DECEMBER
1989
Christopher was at Target, sitting in a plastic chair at the pharmacy waiting for the Bactrim and the Pyridium for Denise’s bladder infection. He didn’t like this one bit. She wouldn’t take the painkillers the doctor had told her it was okay to take, but she was going to take this other shit without asking anyone. Holding a shopping basket on his lap, Christopher went over his list to make sure he had everything: three giant-sized bottles of cranberry juice, paper towels (Bounty, Denise’s one splurge), an eight-by-twelve Pyrex, three bottles of antibacterial soap.
He wasn’t feeling as happy as he would have liked, and the truth was that, after the first-day high, he’d been…troubled. Maybe because of the cesarean?
Shit, he had so much to be glad about, he’d been so lucky. Denise had picked him, in spite of his bad history, to be the father. Then he’d been lucky again when she called him last summer and let him get involved in the pregnancy. Then—more—the baby was born healthy, everything had gone pretty well. Nora still hadn’t found out; they were still married. Everything was going great. Pretty smooth.
Not enough. If only he could call someone to talk, but he had told no one. Not even Piper, who had started this whole baby caper.
It was too hot inside Target, and they were taking too long with the damn prescriptions. There were people everywhere—tired, nervous young mothers like his sisters—making desperate, ugly purchases just because Christmas was a few weeks away.
In part, Christopher blamed himself for the cesarean. Maybe if he’d arrived in Nyack sooner, if he hadn’t spent the night in Manhattan, if he’d got Denise to the hospital sooner. Denise kept saying she didn’t mind that she’d had to have the surgery. She never for a minute showed any regret. She was so healthy, so unequivocally grateful. She’s an alcoholic widow single mother, and here’s me, feeling sorry for myself. Why was this pharmacist taking so long? Why wasn’t Christopher happier? For months now, it had been so easy to be good to Denise. He still had no problem helping her out, but he couldn’t stop thinking, What’s
in this for me?
What an asshole. What a greedy, selfish asshole I am.
If he didn’t lose his greediness, Nora would never have a baby with him. If they didn’t have a baby, probably their marriage would be over. A few days had passed since he’d seen Nora, but it seemed like so much longer.
“Denise Woj…Woji…?”
“Here. Here I am.”
“You’re Denise?” the pharmacist asked.
“I’m picking them up for her.”
“How do you pronounce this name?”
“Never mind.” Christopher heard his own rudeness, smelled his own stale breath. “It’s an impossible name.”
The pharmacist was a woman, young. African American, tall, a looker actually, and she was smiling at him. “Your wife?” Why did they always do that? Her question was full of suggestion. Christopher ignored her, didn’t look up. She’s rude, he told himself, which made it easier not to ask the question he knew he should ask, about whether or not it was all right for a breastfeeding woman to take these medications. He said nothing for a second, so then the pharmacist got back on track. “Anyway, she needs to take these a full seven days. Don’t let her stop before she’s been through the whole prescription.”
“Got it,” Christopher said. “Thanks for your help.”
“Merry Christmas!” the woman said.
“Yeah,” he answered.
On his way out of Target, Christopher saw a refrigerator magnet shaped like a cappuccino machine, the kind of thing he’d normally tuck into Nora’s Christmas stocking. He picked it up, ready to go back and buy it, but then he saw the long checkout lines. Denise was desperate for this orange-pee medicine and cranberry juice. Besides, how would he get the magnet to Nora? Who knew where Nora was? It was unimaginable but true: Christopher had no idea where his wife would be this Christmas.
“IT’S A MIRACLE,” Denise said. “It worked.”
Her pee was now orange and painless, and the baby was nursing, feeding better than he had at the hospital.
“See,” Christopher told Denise, who was set up on the couch with pillows, burping Baby Don, “I told you you were a natural.”
She was dressed in a big old nightgown and a horrible brown polyester robe, as she had been since her return from the hospital the day before yesterday, and she looked up from the baby and smiled at Christopher, big. Sometimes the slightest bit of nice talk made her feel so good. With some people it took so little. “You done burping on me, boy?” Denise said softly, then lay back on the couch and rested the baby on her chest.
The past two days and nights had been exhausting, but in the little house in Nyack they were making all kinds of progress. Diapers, feeding, sleep, food. They had their systems down, and now here they were. “I’m glad you feel better,” Christopher said. He was lying on the floor, next to the couch, so he could watch the baby’s face and listen to the purring contentment in his sleepy breathing. “Lady, you got yourself one happy boy. That’s a baby who l-o-o-ves his mama. You should see his face right now.”
“I feel better, and so does my little peeper. Don’t you, my little pumpkin-eater? My little boyo and his mommy are so much happier now than that first day home, when Mommy was the Wicked Stitch of the West. My poor little rabbit.”
Denise was shameless when she cooed at the baby. The goings-on between Denise and Baby Don opened a bit of a door into how her marriage with Big Don might have been. Nice. Maybe even nicer than what Christopher and Nora had, maybe steadier. Denise had the terrible grief of having lost Don, but at least she could live the rest of her life knowing that the person she loved had loved her back completely, and that if he hadn’t died he’d be with her this Christmas.
Christopher, his head heavy on a pillow on the floor, looked at the baby and couldn’t help thinking it was some cruel joke that he and Denise should get along so well and have this dynamite baby, and not be in love with each other. But it was more than sex that was missing. If he could feel for Denise the kind of love he felt for Nora…but he couldn’t. He was in love with Nora.
The day was turning dark, sending in shadows. An electric timer turned on a living-room lamp.
Out of the quiet, Denise said, “What’s wrong, Daddy? You’re not looking happy.”
He yawned, reached back, flipped the pillow under his head. Maybe he was getting a headache. Maybe he should take a nap. He kind of wanted a cup of good coffee. He kind of wanted a beer. “I don’t know. Nothing.”
“Yeah, but what’s wrong?” Denise insisted.
“I don’t want to make you feel bad.”
“You can’t, not now. I’m as content as a pig.”
“It’s just that, well, all along I felt so bad for you, even at the birth, because you have to do all this alone, without your husband.”
“And now here I am with my beautiful baby, and I’m so happy, and you feel completely left out, right? And on top of it, you’re worried about what this says about you. If you’re feeling this, does that mean you’re a terrible egotist?”
They both laughed.
“What on earth,” he teased, “would make you say that?”
“Imagine. What could possibly make me think such a thing, because, of course, I never felt that way myself.”
Now, with the ice broken, he confided, “I feel weird.”
“Don’t you think that’s pretty normal? Postpartum depression. I expected you’d feel weird. Didn’t you? I mean, here you are, taking care of a strange woman who’s breastfeeding your son, who you won’t be living with full-time because you’re married to a woman you’re deeply in love with, whom you’re separated from, and on top of it all, it’s Christmastime.”
“You’re smart,” he told Denise. He had decided long ago not to unload on her about his marriage. Denise, either respecting his reticence or not wanting to hear it, never pressed for details. But she sure had summed it up right: he and his wife were separated.
And it was his own fault.
“Why don’t we go out for a while?” Denise suggested. “I need to get out of the house, and so does Baby Don.”
“You can’t take him outside. It’s winter.”
“Ah! You think we’re staying in here all winter? Not my boy, not my tough boy. Right, sweetie?” Denise and the baby were face to face and she was smooching him. “Besides, we have to get Daddy’s Christmas gift.”
“No, Denise. Save your money. You don’t need to get me a gift.”
“Not from me. Baby Don wants to get a gift for his dad. He told me.” She waved the baby’s hand at Christopher and said in a Tweety Bird voice, “Let’s go out, Daddy! The mall! The mall!”
WALKING OUT OF THE HOUSE, Denise needed to hold her belly blanket to support her middle. Christopher first helped her into the car, then went in to get Don, whose face was a pin dot surrounded by a cap and scarf and the white furry trim of his snowsuit hood. At almost one week old, Don was starting to look more like a baby than he had right after birth.
Denise’s Honda was small and beat-up, and when Christopher saw how ridiculously tiny Don looked in the car seat, he almost said, We can’t do this. But Denise really was needing to get out.
“Okay, buster,” Christopher said to the baby. “I’m strapping you in for your maiden voyage into the twentieth century. Your first outing, Nanuet Mall. If you behave, we’ll buy you a hot dog and a Cherry Coke.” Christopher pulled the straps of the infant car seat tight but not too tight, snapped the buckle, unsnapped it and snapped it again, checked the seat belt that held the car seat in place. He checked everything twice. When he finally was in the driver’s seat, he turned and looked. He locked his door, leaned back and locked the back doors, and asked Denise, please, to lock her door, too. “Okay, here we go.”
Denise was looking at him. “What?” he asked.
“Nothing, just—You’re good at being a parent.”
“Thank you, Denise.”
“No problem. It’s the truth.” Down the road, at a red light, she said, “L
isten, how would you feel about staying home alone sometime with Don for about an hour and a half? Carole said she’d pick me up to go to a meeting in a couple days. I could take the baby with me, but I’d rather not. There’d be people smoking and breathing on him and everything.”
“You trust me to stay with him?”
“You’re his father. Why wouldn’t I?”
For the next several days, Christopher wanted more than anything to call Nora and tell her the big news, that there was a woman in Nyack—an intelligent woman—who trusted him with her newborn baby. Then, late one night less than a week before Christmas, after Denise and Baby Don were in bed, Christopher dialed the loft, and he was surprised when Nora answered. “Hey,” he said, “hi, it’s me.”
“Yeah. Hi,” Nora said. “How are you? I’m glad you called.”
“Yeah?”
“Your parents called the other night to thank us for the Christmas gifts I sent, and I realized you didn’t know I’d sent gifts, and I wanted to fill you in before you talk to them.”
Christopher got up out of bed and smiled at the bookcase in Denise’s crowded study. “You’re kidding? You sent them stuff?” That seemed a good sign. “What’d you send? I sent them stuff, too, but just a couple things from the Williams-Sonoma catalogue.”
“Christopher.” Nora was laughing. “I sent from Williams-Sonoma, too. What if we sent the same thing?”
He was beaming, pacing, clutching a handful of hair, pulling it a bit to make sure this phone call was real. “Tell me,” he urged her, “tell me what you sent.”
“I sent carved wooden candlesticks to your parents. And a dried-sage wreath and a set of hand towels to each of your sisters, and a wooden birdhouse to each of the kids.”
Christopher laughed and laughed, and forgot to worry that he might be waking the baby down the hall.
Nora was laughing, too, laughing with him. She was with him. “What’s so funny? Christopher, tell me what you sent.”
“The candlesticks to my parents, and just the wreath to my sisters. No hand towels. You were more generous.”