Millicent Glenn's Last Wish: A Novel

by Tori Whitaker

  A week was a long time to me. Jane’s hand had gone clammy in mine. My eyes were fully adjusted to the shadows and light of the room, so much so that I could see her face had blanched white.

  Jane called Kelsey’s cell phone the minute we climbed into the car. Everything had taken longer than expected, she’d said. “Now I wait another six days, then go get the biopsy. But Dr. Patel emphasized that this too could be nothing.”

  Kelsey wanted to see her mom after work. Aaron was out of town on business. And I really didn’t want to be alone. It had nothing to do with it being my birthday. Jane and I had experienced moments of closeness today, and I wasn’t ready to let go of those. I wanted to remember these more than what she’d said about my love for her. In your own way.

  Perhaps she needed togetherness, too, but would never ask. I invited the girls to spend the night. We could have hot cocoa and tuck in early.

  It was after six when Kelsey arrived with two sacks of Chinese carryout. Shrimp spring rolls for herself, General Tso chicken for me, and vegetable fried rice for Jane.

  “It’s not the swankiest dinner,” Kelsey said. “But it is your birthday. Besides, I’ve got a craving.”

  “Thanks for getting the food,” Jane said.

  “I want to hear every tedious detail of your appointment,” Kelsey said, refusing to let her tone be a downer. She tore open a tiny pouch of hot Chinese mustard with her teeth.

  “Fine,” Jane said. “But once we get through that, we’re done. I’m not going to sit around all evening moping. There’s not a damn thing I can do but wait.”

  We ate with chopsticks, and Jane told Kelsey everything. “And the last thing the doctor said was that, no matter what, I’d caught it early.”

  “Mom,” Kelsey said, “I have to think it’s all going to work out in the end. Just like with the cyst.”

  “I agree,” I said.

  Kelsey jumped out of her chair and bowed to me. “In lieu of birthday cake—which we will have at a fancy restaurant of your choice whenever you’re ready for a real celebratory dinner—we have three fortune cookies.” She held up three fingers. “Birthday girl, you pick first.”

  I scrambled the cellophane-wrapped cookies around and picked one. Jane unwrapped it for me and removed its tiny white slip of paper without peeking at the fortune. When Kelsey had been in college, her friends had insisted that everyone read their fortunes aloud—and that they add the statement in bed at the end. Kelsey had prodded her mother and me into playing the same game some years later. Somehow it stuck.

  I adjusted my eyeglasses, previewed my message, and then read, “You will soon reveal your soul to someone close, in bed.”

  When the girls picked themselves up off the floor from laughing, Kelsey said, “My turn.”

  She cleared her throat. “A surprise awaits you within the year, in bed.”

  Jane’s hearty Midwestern laugh filled the room, and it was the most melodious sound I’d heard in days.

  “So what this really means,” Kelsey said, “is I’ll deliver my baby at home and be surprised by its gender.” She preened.

  “My turn.” Jane ripped the wrapper off the last cookie. “Those who swim the farthest hold the highest hope, in bed.” She grinned.

  Her fortune boosted me. She could swim far.

  “I swear this silly game never gets old,” she said.

  Kelsey applauded.

  As dusk turned to night, we drank chamomile tea instead of hot cocoa and burned essential oils that Kelsey had brought. The scent of eucalyptus gave the illusion that we were relaxing at a four-star spa. We wore crushed-velour robes from my closet with thick, fuzzy socks and snuggled up in the den before a flaming gas log.

  “This is so fun,” Kelsey said. “We haven’t done this since, I don’t know, since I was a sophomore in college and Mom was home for a visit?”

  “Sounds about right,” I said. Kelsey had slept over numerous times while Jane lived in Georgia, but we wouldn’t mention that. Besides, I had come to appreciate how it truly was better with the three of us.

  “What names do you have picked out?” Jane asked.

  “That’s a big question,” Kelsey said. “All we know for sure is, if it’s a boy, he won’t be Aaron Junior.”

  “I almost named you Summer Star,” Jane said, making a funny face. A spur of old resentment poked at me. I’d been left out of Jane’s life at that time.

  “Thank you for coming to your senses,” Kelsey said dryly. “You guys. How did it feel to push a baby out? Isn’t it, like, the most incredible human experience ever?”

  My experience had not been the most incredible human experience ever. I had been put under. The whole thing was beyond my control. Then there was the awakening—

  “It was,” Jane said. “I can still feel it when I think back. And that instant majestic love I was filled with.”

  Kelsey blew her mother kisses. “Grandma? Do you remember delivering, or were you under the legendary twilight sleep?”

  “I actually had a cesarean.”

  “No way.” That was Kelsey. “You had a C-section?”

  “Yes way,” I said, adjusting my hearing aid. “Janie couldn’t fit through my birth canal.”

  “I can’t believe I never knew that,” Jane said.

  I hesitated. “You and I didn’t have all those mother-daughter talks about pregnancy and heartburn and babies kicking.” Looking back, that was a true shame. Jane had deprived me of that. But she’d missed out, too.

  Jane said, “I should’ve told you and Daddy I was pregnant with Kelsey the minute I found out. I thought I had my reasons for withholding that news at the time.” Her eyes shifted low, not meeting mine. “I’m sorry.”

  I had waited more than thirty years to hear those words, and they were sweeter to my ears than I could’ve imagined.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I remember you walking up to our front door, carrying that rosy-cheeked Kelsey, who was three months old with the most chubby, squeezable little legs. I remember it as if it were yesterday.”

  I had never understood Jane’s reasons for withholding Kelsey. I would ask her again one day. But I was waiting to tell her things, too. Personal things that weighed heavily on my heart. So in this moment it didn’t matter that Jane had rebelled and tried to punish us back then—or perhaps to be more precise, had tried to punish me. While it had crushed Dennis and me both, I wouldn’t throw all that in her face. Not now. Not ever. Jane and I were together. That’s all that mattered.

  Then she looked back at me and said, “I’m sorry I denied you the shower, the announcement, the pictures, the gifts.” Only now did my daughter understand part of the impact of what she’d done to me. She was soon to be a grandma herself. Jane continued, “And I’m sorry for taking away your chance to hold Kelsey right after she was born.”

  Her words touched me. “Not holding Kelsey was the hardest part. But it means the world that you’re seeing it clearly now. The good news is,” I said with a warm smile, “we’re all together.”

  “Pure love, here, ladies,” said Kelsey, her voice high like a child’s. “Pure love.”

  I hoped so. I hoped Jane was beginning to see my love was pure.

  “And remember, Kels, my birth canal was obviously fine,” Jane said. I was glad she said that. I didn’t want Kelsey to worry about herself or her delivery. I’d do that enough for both of us.

  “I’m really glad my legs aren’t chubby and squeezable anymore, too,” Kelsey said, and we chuckled. “But, Grandma, I’m still shocked that you had a cesarean. That was pretty rare in those days.”

  “True. I was the one in fifty. Yippee for me.” I didn’t care to continue this part of the conversation. I couldn’t control what might be asked next.

  Kelsey fell silent again.

  Jane said, “Kels? What’s up?”

  “Nothing, really. I just want to deliver vaginally, that’s all.”

  “You probably will,” Jane said. “No need to worry about it, at least n
ot at this point.”

  Kelsey scoffed. “You guys, it’s not the seventies or eighties anymore, the age of natural childbirth. One in three hospital births is a C-section now. What do you think of that?”

  One in three? That sounded high.

  Jane sat up straighter. She said, “You’re telling me that out of every three women who walk in a hospital in labor, one of them walks out having needed surgery?”

  “Needed? I don’t think so,” Kelsey said. “Don’t get me wrong. The operation can save mothers’ and babies’ lives. Grandma’s experience is living proof. But that many cesareans? That. Is. Craziness.” She swirled her tea with her spoon. “Giving birth is the most natural thing in the world, isn’t it? Some experts say surgery makes it easy on the doctors. OBs go home sooner to little wifey or little hubby and eat din-din with the kiddies.”

  My mantel clock chimed nine. I had grown weary. How long would this talk of surgery go on?

  “Hospitals have their way with women these days,” Kelsey said, and my weary eyes snapped open. “Despite the baby boom being over, some things haven’t changed.”

  A sudden feeling overcame me—maybe I should interrupt Kelsey. Now was the perfect time to let them know my story of a long-ago day. If I had but one year left with my daughter—say, if she were to face the worst with her health, or if I were to not be long for this earth—I was determined to be the best mother a woman could be. I would be there for her. I would be there for Kelsey, too. And for my great-grandchild.

  To be the best mother surely started with the truth. Now was the time. I moved my mouth to form words, but I couldn’t get my vocal cords to work. I swallowed, licked my lips, cleared my throat. But nothing came out.

  Why was I still afraid?

  I’d always been afraid. When Janie was a young girl, I feared she was too immature, too impressionable to handle the truth. She might have nightmares. When she became a teenager, I feared that if we opened up about our second baby, the Glenns—Abbie in particular—would suggest to Jane that everything was my fault. I shouldn’t have “spread myself so thin.” I was concerned that Jane would resent me. Years later I did try to tell her, several times. But circumstance prevented me—or so I convinced myself. I was afraid. I feared Jane would reject me for having kept the secret for so long. I was afraid I’d wind up alone: I had no father, no mother, no grandfather, no siblings, no husband. I was afraid there’d be no Jane. And if I had no Jane, I’d have no Kelsey.

  Yes, I was afraid of being alone.

  No, that was the kind of thinking that Papa Glenn would call bullshit.

  There was something else that scared me, something worse than being alone.

  I was afraid that if the truth of my tragedy came out, the world would know I wasn’t the perfect mother. They’d have to know of the guilt I’d dragged around my entire life—guilt sunken inside of me, an anchor overgrown with seaweed. Hidden, but there. Tangled and lurking. But that guilt had less to do with Janie than with . . .

  I had to trust that these two women, both strong women—Jane and me feeling the closest we had in years—would accept my truth. Would accept me, too. I had to tell them while there was still time for us to heal.

  I swallowed hard. This time I’d get the words out.

  “Girls,” I began softly. “I—”

  “They were inducing women and holding them back in your day,” Kelsey said. She was still on her roll. “Grandma, you know it. I’ve seen YouTube videos and have read the books. I will not be induced. The Pit is prohibited in my birthing plan. That is, I mean, Pitocin. And, you guys, if I happen to land in a hospital where a caregiver says I have ‘failure to progress,’ just know that’s code for sending a woman to get sectioned off. To keep on their own schedules, not my baby’s. I won’t consent to surgical intervention—not without a warranted medical emergency.”

  “Whoa, down, girl.” That was Jane. “I’m beginning to see why you want a home birth.”

  I blew air out of my mouth, my thin cheeks ballooning. Kelsey knew her stuff. Yet could any of us ever be prepared for everything?

  “Girls,” I tried again, louder this time.

  “Mom, I’m sorry to say I’m zapped,” Jane said. Of course she was. It had been a difficult day. “I have to call it a night.”

  Kelsey yawned. Then Jane actually gave me a hug and a kiss and said, “Night-night, Mommy. Love you.” That tickled me. I was buoyed beyond measure.

  The girls were returning in a few days so they could store some boxes downstairs. I’d tell them everything then.

  No going back.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  March 1951

  I still hadn’t seen Dr. Collins. Hadn’t his nurse on the phone said he’d check in with me when I arrived?

  An hour or forty-five minutes from the time I got off the hospital elevator—I didn’t know how long, for they’d removed my watch and rings—I was settled into a stark white surgical room with a large, round metal light hanging above my bed. Presumably Dennis had completed the admissions forms and was hovering in the waiting room with green vinyl chairs, smoking Lucky Strikes with the rest of the dads. Ohhh, another contraction came.

  “Mrs. Glenn, I’m Nurse Tibbers.”

  The nurse’s entrance startled me. No “hello,” no “how are you doing” after all my waiting.

  “What’s taking so long for Dr. Collins to see me?” I asked.

  She looked at me blank-faced. “It’s best that you keep quiet.”

  Was this the nurse who’d referred to new mothers’ precious infants as misfits? Her back was now turned. She wasn’t fixing a needle for me, was she? Maybe I would stay quiet. I wrapped my arms around my baby who’d yet to be born.

  “Dr. Collins,” Nurse Tibbers said in a submissive voice when my physician stepped in. “Meet Mrs. Glenn.”

  Thank goodness he was here.

  “Of course, Mrs. Glenn and I know each other well,” he said. I longed in that moment to be back in his practical office with the pea-green walls and speckled floor tiles. And with Dennis beside me.

  Dr. Collins glanced at his watch and turned to my medical chart. Tension squeezed my groin and reverberated through the trunk of my body and killed my back halfway up my spine. The brunt of the pressure was at my tailbone: the baby’s weight was crushing it.

  “What about a rupture?” I asked between my gritted teeth. “Am I in danger?” I breathed, I breathed.

  “You’re a star patient, Mrs. Glenn. You won’t have long to wait,” the doctor said. “You’re scheduled for your operation at 6:15 p.m. Today is your little one’s birthday.”

  Today, March 23, two days after the first day of spring. It sounded lovely. And he’d again called me a star.

  So why was Dr. Collins checking his watch again? Was there a problem?

  “I’ve already spoken to Mr. Glenn—”

  “What about?” I asked, pressing my lips together. Dennis first? Not me?

  “The paperwork,” the doctor said. “The maternity ward is overcrowded. I’ve called in my colleague, Dr. Reynolds, who will perform your operation.”

  My eyes were wide with surprise, and my limbs began to tremble. “Why a different doctor?”

  “I’m caring for eighteen other mothers who came in before you. Don’t worry. Dr. Reynolds delivered my own son. He’s performed as many cesareans as I, maybe more.”

  Who could ask for a better referral than that? I turned my head on the cool, crisp case of the pillow.

  “Mrs. Glenn?” A woman’s voice.

  My eyes fluttered open, just a crack, for looking into the overhead light was like glaring into an eclipse of the sun. I was groggy, but the noxious scent of antiseptic or medicine assaulted my nostrils. There was a faint smell of something soft, too. Sterilized cotton? Somewhere close by, metal clanged as if servers at a restaurant were clearing away cutlery. I rotated my head from one side to the other on the pillow and back. Where was I? But I couldn’t speak.

  “Mrs. Glenn, you’re
still in the maternity surgical suite.”

  I lifted my right hand, but it stalled. I didn’t have the strength. No, it wasn’t that. My wrists were bound. I lifted my head up from the neck, my eyes adjusting to the glare, my chin almost tapping my chest, and I saw that my baby was gone.

  Good, my child had been born while I slept. Boy or girl? How long had it been?

  “Mrs. Glenn,” the woman said again with compassion. “I’m Nurse Breck.” Not Nurse Tibbers. I could tell that much from her tone.

  I tilted my head toward her face. She was young. Pretty. A caring warmth exuded from her smile, the first genuine smile I’d seen since my arrival. Above one end of her top lip was a dark, round beauty mark.

  Her moist hand rested on one of mine contained by its strap. Her touch was gentle.

  “When can I see my baby?”

  “Mrs. Glenn . . .”

  Fear surged in my empty womb.

  “Mrs. Glenn, lie still,” she said kindly. “The doctor will—”

  “Where is my baby? Please, tell me.” My voice rose, since my body could not. “Where’s my baby?”

  My eyes caught a shift in the light by the door behind her. Was it the doctor? Then the door opened wide and a shadowy figure came into view. It was Dennis.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  April 1951

  Dennis and his mother looked from me to each other and then to Janie and then back at me. We all stood in the entry of the house that my husband had pushed everything else to the side for, the second new Gunnison home he’d built just for us. He’d constructed it while I’d been hospitalized for three and a half weeks in recovery. Today was my homecoming. The house smelled of fresh plywood, carpeting, and varnish. There’d been no carrying me across the threshold this time—the incision that ran up six inches of my stomach was far too tender for that. Mother Glenn and Dennis didn’t utter a peep, didn’t know what to say. So I repeated myself.

  “It’s got to go. I can’t take a womb chair under my roof anymore.” The sound of the word womb made me want to retch. That chair was a big red reminder of our loss, of my failure to birth a healthy baby. The operation had been timely; there had been no problems per se, no rupture; and my lengthy physical recovery, though difficult, had progressed normally.