Love, Carry My Bags

by Everett, C. R.

  “I can’t get that picture out of my head,” Reese said after I asked how his father died. “He was just lying there in a heap. I’m surprised it hadn’t happened sooner.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, choking down soft tears as I leaned against the window, my gaze fixed on nothing, my hand rubbing my tummy of its own accord. “Did he ever tell you he loved you?” I asked, suddenly feeling it was important to know.

  “No. Well, he did once, but it didn’t feel like he meant it.” Reese said. “I think my mom made him.”

  “Lots of people love you, Reese,” I said, hoping to make the sad go away. “He’s the one who lost out.”

  “And then the worst part,” Reese said, carrying on his earlier train of thought, “was when I flew his ashes home and airport security gave me shit for having the urn in my carry-on.” Reese recounted his tale, funny only after the fact.

  “Oh, no,” I said, leading him on to finish the story.

  “Yeah, I told them the bomb already blew my life to bits and this was the spent ordnance. They finally let me through.”

  “You poor thing,” I said, meaning it, but glad to see he hadn’t lost his sense of humor.

  “Actually, that wasn’t the worst part. Cleaning up all his shit was the worst part . . . stuff everywhere . . . filled a dumpster. But everything’s on track. It’s my turn now,” he said. “Thanks for calling, Camryn.”

  He said my name with the same tender care with which he wrote—as if I was the one being comforted. A tear broke through as I said, “Goodbye, take care of yourself.” When I finished staring out the window, half noticing a lizard start and stop across the gravel, the tear was dry.

  A month later I could not get my own father’s image out of my head when his lifeless body lay there, not in a heap, but stretched out on a hospital bed like a warm mannequin, cooling.

  “Grandpa,” Sydney said as she plopped her rag doll onto his hospital bed, “do you want to play dolls?” While she waited for Grandpa to answer, Sydney kissed my bulging middle. “I can’t wait ‘til I have a real baby to play with.” She turned back toward the hospital bed. “Grandpa?” When she looked back at me she said, “Why isn’t Grandpa answering? Why are you crying Mommy?”

  “Grandpa’s dead, honey.”

  “He’ll wake up,” she said, sure there was no harm done.

  Not ten minutes before, Pastor Lingard, the last of a flurry of ministers who had come to call, had asked, “How are you doing, Grant?” in the same calm voice used on trauma victims.

  “Oh fair,” he said closing his eyes, voice faltering. Ten seconds later with alert, open eyes he said, as if there was nothing more important on his mind, “How have you been?”

  Before Pastor Lingard could say, “Fine,” Father dozed again. We conversed in hushed tones regarding his prognosis as a piped-in rendition of “To Where You Are” played softly from above.

  Father opened his eyes, seeing Pastor Lingard first and said, “Thanks for coming,” as he reached across with weakened limbs taking his colleague’s hand in both of his, shaking it a final goodbye.

  Glenn and Jo led Sydney out of the room, leaving me to dampen the soft wrinkled skin of his hand with tears for the last time. I remembered our family reunion, one year ago when Mother made us all share a happy memory from the pre-divorce years, Jo taking it in stride. Unable to think of one, I said, “I remember going to Mark and Chloe’s after school because no one was home,” then broke into wistful, melancholy tears, feeling stupid, falling apart in front of everyone just for remembering . . . . It spoke volumes and Father had heard. Brad rescued me, redirecting attention to another remembrance. Glenn put his arm around my shoulder. Later, Father said he’d only then realized how hard those times had been for me. My load had been lightened.

  Father’s headstone, with descending family tree engraved on the back, marked his remains planted in The Middle of Nowhere, Breadbasket, USA—a return to his farm-country roots. Standing sentinel over the land, it offered no protection as I watched a handsome owl seize a grain-robbing field mouse. Father had no favorites, but I had more of his time than the others, a gift—only because by the time I came around, they were grown and he’d learned a few things about balancing family and work.

  I let Reese know of Father’s passing, thinking he’d like to know, or perhaps more so that I wanted him to know.

  “I always liked him,” Reese had said.

  “And we had our own ashes fiasco,” I relayed. “When we got to the graveyard, the caretakers hadn’t dug a hole, so Glenn and the others dug one with a shovel—reminded me of burying my dead gerbils in the backyard.” I laughed at my irreverence, and so did Reese.

  “Camryn,” he said in a mock, chuckling scold, just as he had always done when I didn’t toe the line. I smiled.

  “What?” I said, defending my innocence. “I was sad when my gerbils died.”

  * * *

  “I’ll have the epidural now,” I said, experiencing pain, pain just a quarter the intensity I had with Sydney, no idea how I had endured her delivery. I knew better than to do it twice.

  Two hours later, I remained happy, didn’t even know I had a lower body. Was it still there?

  “Glenn, I think you should get the doctor,” I said.

  “Why?” he asked, munching popcorn in front of the television.

  “Because I feel some pressure.”

  “Just some pressure? No rush,” he said, flipping channels. I wanted to throttle him. If I could not feel that I even owned legs and a torso, but felt pressure, something significant was happening.

  He got the doctor.

  Elizabeth made her appearance thirty seconds later.

  * * *

  “I don’t know about you,” I said to Glenn when he relinquished cat box duty as soon as we got home from the hospital, me no longer pregnant.

  “I know you don’t. If you did, you wouldn’t have married me, would you?” he teased.

  I gave Glenn a blank look.

  “Wait a minute; you’re taking too long to answer that,” he said.

  “Hardly anybody would get married if they knew about each other,” I said, restraining myself from saying ‘duh’ at the end, but clearly inferring it.

  I had come to think of marriage as an institution. During the commitment, you learned a thing or two, kind of like the military. You learned things you should have known before the avowal, yet never would have known without it. The quintessential predicament. Early discharge not taken lightly.

  After cleaning the litter box, I sat, reading on the couch. Kitty hopped into my lap, getting comfy. Glenn started petting the cat with his foot, disturbing David.

  “Stop that. He doesn’t like it,” I said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because he doesn’t like it.” David’s turned-back ears and pissed-off expression made it obvious he detested smelly feet petting him.

  “Since when did you start mind melding with the cat?”

  “Since years ago.”

  “About the time you stopped mind melding with me,” Glenn said.

  * * *

  Elizabeth sat in her swing-o-matic, nearly lulled to sleep, when David got up, sniffing her direction, then backed off when the upturned volcano erupted. It looked like Winnie the Pooh exploded all over the Pooh Bear onesie she was wearing, effectively camouflaging himself. Diaper containment failed. A disaster of Biblical proportions. Baby-shit mustard oozed out the legs and over the waist, seeping into the swing cushion and wicking up her clothes to her armpits. There was no undressing her without getting it into her hair. No way to pull her out without spreading the mess, and no way to carry her without getting it on me.

  Glenn sat on the couch.

  I looked at him wondering how he could be so oblivious to the catastrophe in the corner. “Can you help me here?” Baby pooh mushed farther up Elizabeth’s chest with each wave of her arms and kick of her feet. She smiled and cooed, unbothered by the unscheduled, warm dermal treatme
nt.

  “I don’t do diapers,” he said, switching the remote.

  “Well it’s time you start.”

  “I’m no good at that. What am I supposed to do?” he replied, still sitting.

  “Just help me!” I didn’t know where to start either, except I knew I needed a hand. “Hold the swing while I pull her out, then you clean the seat. Pull the cushion off and throw it in the washer.”

  I held Elizabeth with outstretched arms as if she were a sacred offering and carried her to the tub. She babbled.

  “You think you are so funny, don’t you?” I said, giving her an Eskimo kiss and then a peck on her cute little forehead.

  I put Elizabeth in the tub and started to rinse her with warm water before she was even undressed, cleaning as much of the mess as I could before polluting her bath water with it. I rinsed the onesie, setting it aside, wondering if the stain would ever come out.

  “Ma . . .” Elizabeth splashed, then said it again. “Ma. Ma.”

  Her word, her laugh, her smile, carried me miles along the journey of happiness. I enjoyed giving her care, even the dirty work.

  Glenn came in as I wrapped her in a clean towel. I kissed her cheek.

  “All clean.” I said more to her than to him. “Tell Daddy you are all clean.”

  “Ma.”

  “Did you hear that? She said Mommy.” I radiated bliss.

  “She didn’t say Mommy. She just made a noise. How could you even think that was ‘Mommy’?”

  “Well if you’d spend more time with her, you might know.” I turned to Elizabeth. “Isn’t that right?” I murmured, gently tickling her neck. She giggled back.

  He rolled his eyes at me.

  “Can you throw that in the wash too?” I pointed to the pooh-stained onesie. He grimaced. “Come on, it’s not going to kill you. Look what I did.”

  “But that’s your job,” he said as if there was nothing wrong with the statement.

  “It’s your job too. You’re her dad.”

  He pinched the clean shoulder and held it at a distance, carrying it to the laundry room. I wondered if Reese would have acted the same way. How was I supposed to know that, when Glenn said he wanted three kids it meant three kids to play with when he felt like it, take for walks in a stroller just to show them off, and return them to me when they cried? How was I supposed to know he meant he wanted three kids’ worth of fun, and none of the work?

  “Elizabeth, don’t let it happen to you,” I said, getting her dressed. “When you grow up, make sure the division of labor is understood before you get married. Make sure he loves you to pieces and puts you first, because you deserve it.” I hugged and kissed her again.

  “Ma,” she said while gumming a plastic key. A drool strand dropped from her lower lip, slimed her clean foot.

  While staring at my beautiful girl, I thought that so often taking the marriage leap was more like a death plunge. No wonder white was the color of funerals in Asia. As stunning as my gown had been, I came to hate it. Wished I’d never wasted the money. They said I looked like a Barbie doll that day. Some dead look better in the casket than in real life. I’d dressed for my own funeral.

  I hated the wedding pictures too. Didn’t care if I never saw them again, but knew from experience not to throw them away. I’d regretted more than once throwing sentiment out. Besides, Glenn wouldn’t like it if I got rid of the wedding photos. The girls might like to see them. I might change my mind, I thought, but doubted it.

  Elizabeth reached for a ball, falling over in the process. She lay there kicking, entranced with the shadow of David’s tail slowly flicking back and forth. She wriggled, trying to reach him.

  “You rolled over!” I squealed. “You rolled over.” I picked her up. Feeding time. As she nursed, I thought, if it wasn’t for the dead, new life wouldn’t grow. I wouldn’t have Elizabeth. I wouldn’t have Sydney.

  After I patted her back, Elizabeth spit up into a burp cloth. “You burrrrppped,” I said, teasing, then touched her nose. She laughed again. “Better there than on my shirt. You’ve done that. Yes you have.” I hugged her again. “But I still love you. Don’t you worry about that.”

  Maybe it wasn’t so bad, but I hoped that when my girls took the leap, they would not plunge to the depths, but instead be raised up on soaring windswept wings. I wished them something as beautiful as they were.

  I hoped they would be evolved enough to make better choices, to take their place in the circle of life at a higher level than I did, and not have to grow from the compost of someone else. Not mine, not their dad’s, not a spouse’s.

  “You’re such a good mom.” Glenn made me jump.

  “Thank you.” I wasn’t sure it was true. Just the day before, I lost my temper and yelled at Sydney, frustration getting the best of me. “How long have you been standing there?”

  “Long enough.” He sat next to us on the floor and held a rattle up for Elizabeth. She gibbered at him.

  “I wish I could be half the mom you are.”

  “That might be pretty hard,” I said, making light of it.

  “You know what I mean,” Glenn said, kissing me on the head.

  CHAPTER 29

  “There is nothing more terrifying than the real and immediate possibility that you may lose a child, leaving a wound so severe that it would never heal, a hole so deep that the void would never be filled.”

  —Tamara S. Burns

  After my life was shaken once more, I began to wield a poison pen, killing off my frustrations in a novel death chamber, the same chamber that had little substance in high school when Sarah first encouraged me to write.

  “Glenn, meet me at the hospital,” I said, enroute to admissions while Sydney peered at Elizabeth’s nearly vacant eighteen-month-old body burning up with fever in the back seat, too sick to cry. “The doctor said that if we didn’t go right away, she could . . .” I could barely say “die” and as soon as I did, overwhelming dread set my heart racing.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Glenn asked, panicking, unable to understand me. “What do you want me to do? Where do I meet you? What room?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, taking no comfort in Glenn’s nonexistent reassurance. “Just be there.” It felt like I not only had one child on the brink of death, but another child, mentally ill. Why was it so hard for him to know the priority was to just be there, get the details later? I hung up, parked, and opened the door at the same time, rushing to get Elizabeth.

  “Unbuckle, hon,” I said to Sydney, while I hoisted Elizabeth’s hot, unmoving body against my shoulder.

  An unkempt, half-dressed man approached. “Have a dolla for the homeless,” he said.

  Right then, his homeless problem was last on my list. Scared of him and scared for my baby, I said, “No,” grabbing up Sydney’s arm harder than I meant to, hurrying to the entrance.

  My heart pounded louder in my ears when he yelled behind us, “Bitch, you’ll burn in hell,” and then mumbled, “Can’t count on nobody.”

  When Glenn arrived, Elizabeth lay sleeping with tubes stuck in her tied-down arms and oxygen tubing taped under her nose with tape which got into her hair. Her chest rose up and down with shallow breaths, twice as fast as it should, and the oxygen monitor clipped on her toe still read below normal. She was grace incarnate, adding so much to our lives, a mighty, hard-won prize—someone I could not do without.

  “She looks like a pin cushion,” Sydney said, holding Elizabeth’s lifeless hand.

  The things I most cherished and was afraid to lose, family and friends, lingered in my mind. Elizabeth’s heart monitor was the only sound while we watched her sleep until I said quietly to Glenn, “I heard from an old friend a while back . . . a guy I used to date. He e-mailed me.”

  “Yeah,” Glenn said.

  “He wondered how I was . . .” I trailed off, unable to watch Elizabeth and fill the silence.

  “Talk to him if you want,” Glenn said.

  I looked at Glenn as if to a
sk, really?

  “He’s part of your past and part of what makes you, you.” He paused. “I still have a place in my heart for my ex, but the largest part of my heart is yours.”

  I stared at him, moved and stunned by his sentiment.

  “There will never be another one like you,” he said, “If you want to talk to him, go ahead.”

  Glenn’s graciousness softened my heart and it was at those times, I loved him the most.

  “I might, thank you,” I said, knowing I would not. Instead, that night, when Glenn took Sydney home, I sat vigil at Elizabeth’s bedside and started my novel in earnest.

  As soon as the next day, Elizabeth had responded to treatment and by mid-afternoon no longer needed oxygen.

  “I was worried she wouldn’t make it,” Glenn said. The thought of it made me cry. I reached for a tissue.

  “So was I.”

  Elizabeth slept as I rocked her through Glenn and Sydney’s visit and all through the night. By the time doctors released her the next morning, I had completed the first chapter.

  CHAPTER 30

  “Regrets are as personal as fingerprints.”

  —Margaret Culkin Banning

  “Francis passed away last week,” Mother said as soon as she got off the airplane, stopping me cold. “Pneumonia.”

  The same illness Elizabeth had just gotten over. A chill came upon me again as I thought of how close we had come to losing her. “I didn’t know he was sick,” I said.

  “Well, you wouldn’t.” She rummaged through her purse looking for who knows what, pretending her comment wasn’t a subtle jab. “You should have kept in touch with him more,” she scolded, causing me to feel guilty.

  “I went to the funeral,” she jabbed again, then squealed, “It was a nice one, it really was.” A small book she finally located in her tote bag fell from her hand. Pocket Bible. I picked it up, handing it over. She flipped to Psalms, reading passages I missed from the service aloud as we walked to Baggage Claim. Glenn glared at her behind her back, then glared at me, full on.