by Alana Terry
But I didn’t want to hold her that night. I’m not into New Agey mumbo jumbo kind of stuff, but I was fuming mad, and I was worried that somehow I could transfer all that negativity to my baby if I held her in that state of mind. Honestly, with me being so ticked off at Jake, I just didn’t feel very warm and squishy toward his daughter, know what I mean?
So there wasn’t much for me to do except wait around for the night shift to show up so I could hear the reports from the nurse. Maybe I was more upset about Jake taking off than I realized. All I knew was I was sick and tired of the NICU. Natalie had recovered from her surgery. She still couldn’t swallow, but that might never improve. I couldn’t see any reason for her to stay there. I’d watched the nurses taking care of the suctioning and tube feeds and was sure I could figure it out.
That’s what got me so upset about the whole thing with Jake. He could leave any time he wanted. But what was I supposed to do? It’s not like I could go back with him to Orchard Grove and mail Natalie my breastmilk from there. I was trapped. Four weeks of bedrest during the torture of a central Washington summer. After that Seattle for a month, and all this for a daughter who might never know or care who I am.
I don’t mean to sound like an ingrate, but come on. How much junk is one woman supposed to put up with?
Jake could up and quit any time he wanted. He could hide behind his stupid minimum-wage job as a lousy store clerk. Well, what about me? When would I get a break? When would I get to leave?
The whole Charlene thing was just a convenient focal point for my rage. What I hated most was the fact that he was free to walk away. Would I ever see him again? There’s no chance the Orchard Grove hospital could care for someone like Natalie. Would it even be safe for me to take her back there? Maybe I’d stay in Seattle. Except without Jake, that would mean I’d have to find a job, pay my own rent, foot all the bills. How was I supposed to do any of that when Natalie would need round-the-clock care?
Why is it always the mothers who get tethered to the kids and not the other way around? I earned more at the Winter Grove assisted living home than Jake made slaving for Roberto. Maybe I should go back to work at Winter Grove and let him stay home with Natalie. At least then I wouldn’t have to worry about his path crossing with Charlene’s anymore.
Charlene. We were friends once, in a casual sort of way. She had a thing for Jake from the beginning, but seriously, I always assumed he was too much of a good guy to do anything other than a little harmless flirting.
Learn something new every day, right?
I know I shouldn’t be so self-righteous about it all. Jake doesn’t know the half of what I’ve done.
Thank God.
CHAPTER 32
Jake wasn’t at the Ronald McDonald house when I got back. I wasn’t surprised, and I was too exhausted to waste any energy wondering where he went. He could have been at a bar getting drunk with Charlene for all I cared.
I needed to think. Ask myself if it was right for me to stay mad at him. He shouldn’t have cheated on me. That was stupid. But he felt bad about it, and he came clean. Which is more than I’ve done. I’ve got my secrets, and I plan to keep it that way. What Jake doesn’t know won’t hurt him.
Except there’s the guilt, too. Part of me thinks that Elder Tom’s right. God’s punishing me for my sins by making Natalie suffer.
I can’t change what I’ve already done. That’s why we call it the past. But after our fight, I started wondering if I should tell Jake about what happened. Maybe it would give Natalie a better chance at survival. I would have done anything to leave the NICU. I would have confessed to murder if it could have gotten me and my daughter out of there an hour earlier.
People say a mother will do anything for her kid. Well, I honestly didn’t feel all that maternal toward Natalie back then. It was sort of nice cuddling when we did our skin-to-skin time, but she still didn’t know who I was or act like I was any different than the dozens of nurses who took care of her.
Maybe I did have that protective instinct but just didn’t know it. That’s the only way I can explain what I did next.
I wrote Jake a letter. I knew if I had to do it face to face, I’d wimp out. So I got it all out on paper. I didn’t even type it. Wrote it all by hand. Gave my wrist a pretty bad cramp, too.
I left it on the bathroom counter, so if he came back that night he’d see it before he went to bed. I didn’t want to change my mind and tear the paper up or anything, so I sent him a text to let him know I had something important to say to him and there was a letter waiting in our room.
And then I tried to fall asleep. Which obviously wasn’t very easy. I might have ruined everything. If my relationship with Jake had even an ounce of potential to work out, I probably destroyed it in one impulsive note.
Oh, well. I couldn’t take back that text I sent him. It reminded me of my labor, actually. Once the water breaks, it’s not like you can change your mind and decide to wait another week or two. Once it’s all set in motion, there’s not a whole lot more you can do besides hold on and wait for everything to pass.
Unless you’re a chicken like me.
I don’t know what time it was when I finally got out of bed, but I tore up the letter and flushed it down the toilet. Jake didn’t need to know. Who was I kidding? Getting rid of my own shame and guilt wasn’t worth sabotaging everything good between us. It wasn’t fair to him.
Of course, I’d sent him a text that there was a letter waiting for him, so I had to do something. I ended up writing him this really dumb note about how I forgave him. I was feeling so guilty about my own past I think I even apologized for getting mad that night, and I told him the truth. At least the part about me being scared to be alone in Seattle. Stupid of me, I know. But from my text, I knew he’d be expecting something kind of significant, so I had to give him that.
After all the lies I’d told him already, it was the least I could do.
CHAPTER 33
The stupid cooking show is finally over, and Natalie’s tucked in her crib for the night. The rest of us are out here in the living room being lazy. Patricia’s flipping through a Taste of Home magazine, Jake’s playing Candy Zapper, and I’m staring at my phone, scrolling through my friends’ posts, hoping to find something interesting.
“What time do you work tomorrow?” I ask Jake.
“I open tomorrow and Friday. Then I’m back to nights.”
I don’t even want to think about being stuck for the next two days with Patricia in the house. “That’s not going to work,” I tell him. “We’ve got to take Natalie back to Dr. Bell on Friday.”
He shrugs and doesn’t even look up from his screen. “Guess you’ll have to drop me off again.”
I roll my eyes. He could take his bike or something if he wanted. I mean, he’d have to get up earlier and ride in the cold and dark, but it’s either that or he and I both have to get up at the crack of dawn.
I think about Dr. Bell, how kind she was to assume I’m sleep deprived because I’m caring for Natalie all night. How good it felt to talk to someone who doesn’t know I’m living in a trailer park with the mother-in-law from the pit of Hades.
“I thought her appointments were every two weeks now,” Patricia comments, and I grit my teeth. I swear, if the next few words out of her mouth are When I was raising the twins, I’ll go postal all over her smug little face.
I glance at Jake. I’ve spent my day trying to downplay the green secretions without making him all antsy and nervous. Because if he gets antsy and nervous, I’ll get even more antsy and nervous, and it’s going to be a miserable couple of days.
I’m sure Natalie’s fine. Sometimes your snot and drool turn green. Maybe she’s fighting a cold or something simple like that. Her temperature wasn’t that elevated. Not even an official fever. I’m sure we have nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.
“I think a big part of it is Dr. Bell wants to check up again since we’re changing the feeding schedule,” I say. It sound
s so much nicer than admitting the pediatrician thinks something might be wrong.
At the mention of night feeds, Patricia squares her shoulders and straightens her spine. It’s like that woman’s taken it as a personal insult that she no longer has to set her alarm for 2:00 am to pour formula down my daughter’s feeding tube. The less she does around the house and the less she does to take care of Natalie, the less leverage she gets to lord over me. That’s the only reason she’s ticked. If I didn’t know her better, I might hope that Patricia’s sleeping through the night would mean she’d be easier to get along with, but I’m not that naïve anymore.
Jake’s still staring at his phone when he says, “Natalie had a pretty good day today.” I don’t know if he senses the tension and is trying to change the subject or if he’s just filling the silence with drivel. It doesn’t matter as long as it keeps Patricia from bringing up her herculean success raising twins singlehandedly. I’m surprised she didn’t do it barefoot in the snow too.
Uphill both ways.
“Yeah,” I agree mindlessly.
“I should hope so.” Patricia’s still sitting like there’s a flagpole shoved down the back of her bra, and she’s got her hands folded on her lap like she’s some sort of stinking beauty-queen washout. “She’s getting Tylenol with each of her feedings.”
“She’s getting what?” My voice is seething. I know it must be bad because even Jake glances up.
Patricia tilts her chin up and slightly to the side. It’s her Japanese-American version of a shrug. “I knew she was due for her shots today. I always gave the twins Tylenol when they had theirs.”
I’ve got my hands clenched into fists, and I’m envisioning what it will feel like when that angular, Botoxed jawline connects with my knuckles. “You can’t just give my daughter medicine without telling me.” Did you catch that? Telling me. Not asking me. Two months, and she’s already got me partially trained.
Just not trained enough.
She makes this ugly little laugh, like she’s the witch in her candy house and Hansel and Gretel just accused her of eating helpless children. “I might have asked you to give it to her if I thought you would remember.” She lets out a sigh worthy of an Academy award. “You know me. I don’t mind a little extra work.”
I’m on my feet. It’s not like I’m about to do anything stupid. I just need to engage my leg muscles. This isn’t a fight I can take sitting down. “I didn’t ask for your little extra work.” My vocal cords are sore. Strained. I’m not used to yelling anymore because I’ve walked on eggshells ever since she moved herself into my house.
Patricia pouts as if she has a dozen cameras pointed at her and she wants to give them each her best sympathetic expression. “If I had known it would upset you, I would have let you measure the medicine out before I poured her formula in.” Another shrug. This time it’s both her chin and her shoulder that are involved. “I’m very sorry,” she apologizes, as if I’m mad because I didn’t get to squirt the Tylenol into Natalie’s tube myself. She’s either a stinking genius of deflection or the biggest idiot in the history of mothers-in-law.
I grab my hair. Anything to keep myself from decking her. I’m closer to her now. Close enough to reach if I wanted. “She. Is. My. Daughter.” I’m punctuating every word like they’re each an individual sentence. “You don’t give her anything without my approval.”
She opens her mouth, but I take a step forward and cut her off. The chin lowers a degree or two. I think she finally realizes I’m royally ticked off, and I outweigh her by forty pounds.
I stare down at her. “I don’t care if you’re a nurse. I don’t care if you raised twins. You could have squeezed out eight babies at once like Octo-Mom, and I wouldn’t trust you near my child.”
The almond eyes widen for a split second before narrowing. The skin across her face is completely taut, like she’s tensed every single muscle. I can feel the heat of her wrath, but I’m not intimidated. What’s she going to do? Bleach my bathtub?
“You’re lucky.” Her voice is completely controlled. And in between sentences she’s smiling at me, her lips tight like she’s got them sewn shut. “You’re lucky that raising twins taught me patience and self-sacrifice. It’s a lesson I hope you learn one day. For my granddaughter’s sake, I hope you learn.”
I want a yelling match. Part of me hopes she’ll stand up and confront me. Fine with me if this turns physical. Bring it on, Grandma.
Instead all I get is a sermon from a woman perfectly calm and rigid like she’s taken lessons from Queen Elizabeth herself.
She does stand up, but it’s not to confront me. She doesn’t even look in my direction but goes and faces her son, who’s just sitting on his butt and gaping at the two of us like some kind of braindead vegetable.
“I told you she wasn’t fit to be a mother.” Patricia’s voice is quiet. Subdued. She may as well be reminding him to brush his teeth before going to bed.
I know just what she’s doing. Trying to pit him against me. Two against one. It’s the only way the odds will ever lean in her favor.
“I’m going to bed now,” Patricia says. “I hope that by morning you’ll both realize how much I’ve sacrificed for that child of yours.”
CHAPTER 34
You would think that in a situation like this, Patricia would storm out of the room. Except she doesn’t. It’s more like gliding, like she’s taking classes at charm school and balancing ten stinking books on her head.
I’m so mad I don’t even look at Jake. Obviously, he wasn’t the one who gave my kid Tylenol without asking me first, but if he wasn’t such a pushover, there’s no way the mother-in-law of Frankenstein would still be living under my roof.
I should have kicked her out that first week she was here. Fish and company both stink after three days, right? Of course I’m mad at her. And it’s not even the Tylenol. That’s just the final blow. No, what gets under my skin is the way she presents herself as so selfless and faultless. Like she’s a stinking martyr. Nobody asked her to put her life on hold to live in a trailer and suction out a sick baby round the clock. Nobody asked her to scrub this place senseless just to prove she works harder than the rest of us. Nobody asked her to make us bland casseroles every night and complain that our regular diet doesn’t give us enough fiber or vitamins.
The thing is, if I were to go to Jake and list all the reasons why he has to kick Patricia out, I wouldn’t have anything to say. That’s why I sometimes think she’s a literal genius. That woman hasn’t done anything but bend over backwards to help us out since she arrived on our doorstep. At least that’s the way she sees it, and that’s the way Jake’s bound to look at it, too.
Man, I wish I could get some settlement money out of the OB. Get a house in my own name. Patricia’s like a vampire. And no, I’m not talking about the sparkling types from those stupid teen romances. I’m talking about the old-school kind of vampire you have to invite into your home or they can’t get in. This is Jake’s trailer, so he did the inviting, but now there’s no way to undo it. Not unless he mans up and confronts her about her behavior.
But like I said, what behavior?
Take the Tylenol, for example. In Patricia’s mind, she was trying to help. And I’ll be honest with you. I never knew about giving your baby Tylenol before her shots. I never read about it in any of the mommy mags, and it never crossed my mind. Heck, Patricia might have even saved Natalie a lot of discomfort today by keeping her drugged up. Who knows?
I can’t hate her for giving Natalie the medicine. But it’s the stinking principle of the thing. Natalie’s my daughter. Mine. If anyone is going to be making decisions about her medical care, it’s going to be me.
Sandy told me once that you don’t just marry a person. You marry their whole family. At the time, she was trying to show me how it probably wouldn’t be in my best interest to marry Lincoln Grant. Talk about messed-up families. His dad was in jail on child porn charges along with Lincoln’s older brother. He had a siste
r who was arrested multiple times for solicitation, and his mom was a raging drunk.
So when Sandy gave me that advice, I thought she just meant you shouldn’t marry someone with that much family drama. Family psychosis might be a better way to put it, at least for the Grants. I should have listened better, and maybe I would have understood that even if your mother-in-law’s not a streetwalker or a druggie, she still has the ability to make your life an absolute nightmare.
Of course, I didn’t realize any of that when Jake proposed to me in the Ronald McDonald house. It was the morning after I wrote him that note where I told him I forgave him for what happened with Charlene.
At least that’s what I intended the message to be, but I spent about one sentence on Charlene and four paragraphs on how scared I felt about him going back to Orchard Grove. I think I was trying to stroke his ego or something. Assuage my guilt over those things Jake never had a clue about. He still doesn’t have a clue, by the way. I’ve never told him what I was going to say in that first letter, and I never intend to. But that’s probably why the second one turned out mushier than I planned.
I woke up at the Ronald McDonald house with Jake kissing me on the eyelid. He had the letter in his hand, and before I could even stretch myself out, he sat down on the side of the bed and started rubbing my arm. “Thank you for your note,” he whispered. For a split second, I thought he was talking about the first one, the one where I confessed everything. There’s nothing to wake you up like having your heart literally stop dead in your chest.
Then I saw the letter in his hand and remembered the original was now swimming with the fishes or slowly dissolving in chemicals at some water treatment facility. I still felt guilty though, so I put on my best behavior and gave him a smile. “You’re welcome, babe.”