by Ellie Monago
How long has it been—three minutes, an hour?
I hold her high up on my shoulder, supporting her with one arm, groping in the diaper bag with the other. Pay dirt! Her pacifier. I see Melody approaching me, and I think I’ve just got to get this pacifier in Sadie’s mouth and shut her up. I’ve got a few more seconds.
Furious, Sadie spits out the pacifier. It lands on top of the world’s neatest grass, just propped up there like a diamond ring in a velvet box. Sadie is tantruming like a baby twice her age, older, even. She’s precocious. She’s a prodigy.
“You seem very stressed,” Melody says to me.
“I’m stressed because she’s screaming. People are staring.” I don’t really mean the strangers, though a few are. I mean Melody and Scott and Doug, all three of them, conducting their referendum of me. I don’t particularly care that Sadie is disturbing the tranquility of the surroundings. It’s not like I brought her into a movie theater or to a meditation retreat. We’re in nature, sort of. Nature’s loud sometimes.
“I think you’ve been stressed for a while,” Melody says with exaggerated delicacy. “Babies pick up on that.”
It seems like she is implying that Sadie’s tantrum is my fault, that it was brought on by my stress. She’s actually blaming me. And a part of me thinks she’s right.
Melody has her sweet grandmotherly expression on. “This might be a good time for me to hold her.”
“I can comfort my own child.”
She raises an eyebrow. Then she smiles and holds out her arms. I stare at her for a long minute, but she doesn’t drop her arms. It’s a Mexican standoff, and she’s going to win. We both know it.
Doug comes over, goes into the diaper bag, and removes a bottle of milk. Without a word, he snatches Sadie out of my arms, as if to say I’ve had my time, my chance, and I’ve failed. How easily he takes her from me. It shouldn’t be that easy.
He pops the bottle in Sadie’s mouth, and she sucks gratefully. “She’s not hungry yet,” I say, despite the evidence to the contrary. “It hasn’t been long enough.”
“Tell that to her,” he says frostily.
He knows how I feel in front of his parents, how I worry about their scrutiny. I can’t believe he’d show me up like this. He’s punishing me. For what he overheard me saying about his mother? Or for something else?
Scott is standing by the rhododendron bush, like he’s not with us. He hates a scene. Melody moves over to Doug and begins to stroke Sadie’s hair. I’ve been blocked out, displaced.
Before I can even think, I find myself fleeing across the lawn, back to the path. I hear Melody calling to me, a note of bewilderment in her voice. I’m making it too easy for her, too easy for all of them. I look like a mother who fails to comfort her own child and then abandons her. But if I stay there, I will absolutely lose it. What would Melody say about me weeping in front of my baby?
I fly past the heathers and the succulents and flowers flowers flowers, and the end of the path is like the end of everything. I’m high above the Pacific Ocean, overlooking the craggy bluffs, the sky gray and the water grayer. Its swirls are beautiful and menacing. Other visitors with their perfect children look at me with alarm or concern. A few seem like they’re about to approach, because an obviously distraught woman on top of a bluff isn’t to be taken lightly. I should step back.
Then there’s a hand on my arm, and at the surprise, I feel myself stumble forward. Just a little, but enough to be frightening, and then that hand is yanking me back from the edge.
It’s Doug. I look at his face, and I don’t see any anger there, only my own fear mirrored back to me.
Then I’m sobbing, and his arms are around me. “I’m so sorry,” I say, “for everything.”
Please know what everything means. “Please, Doug. Just forgive me.”
When he speaks, his voice is clogged with tears. “I’ll try.”
CHAPTER 21
YOU’RE GOING TO SNAP ONE OF THESE DAYS. ANYONE CAN SEE THAT.
I wish I could say I was even a little surprised to see the latest welcome mat when Doug and I arrive home.
Doug says, “Let me take that,” and he goes to put the cardboard into the recycling. “Don’t even dignify it.”
“We can’t just ignore this.”
“Wyatt said—”
“Wyatt doesn’t even know who’s doing it!”
Doug shuts his mouth, with effort. I know that in Doug’s world, nothing goes too wrong; he has faith that nothing really ever will. That’s why he can be so dismissive of this. But I know how cruel, how downright evil, some people can be.
“I’m saving them,” I say. “In the back of the closet. It might be evidence.”
“OK.” He hands it over and turns away. He wants to say more, but he doesn’t dare. He’s been treating me with kid gloves since that moment on the bluff.
I keep thinking about what he said. When I begged forgiveness, he didn’t say there was nothing to forgive. He said he’d try.
Doug really thought I might have been contemplating a jump. I would disabuse him of the notion, but then he might just go back to his silent fury. So I’m playing along, being his fragile little invalid. I’m not entirely sure it’s an act.
Inside the house, there’s no sign of an intruder. The rooms appear undisturbed. But then, I’m disturbed enough for all of us.
I don’t know what’s worse: having kissed Wyatt or not being able to remember kissing him. Because it means I could have done other things I don’t remember.
What’s strange is that only Yolanda seems outwardly standoffish toward me. At girls’ night, they all emphasized the community of women, how they look after each other. It was a betrayal to kiss Wyatt before I’d opted into the spreadsheet. So is it possible the other women don’t know? Or do they think it’s OK for me to have a trial period, to sample the wares?
Then there’s that conversation with Brandon. He didn’t just talk about the spreadsheet in general; he specifically brought up Yolanda. So Yolanda must have confided in him, even if she didn’t tell the others. I don’t know if she sent him or if he came on his own, but now that I think about it, he was definitely trying to evoke my compassion for her. It makes me think of that song “Jolene,” one woman begging another not to take her man. Brandon might think I really want Wyatt, when honestly, Wyatt had never even crossed my mind before. So why did I kiss him? I recall the next line of the song, about not taking him just because she can. Brandon and Yolanda might think I’m the kind of person who would be with Wyatt just for sport.
It seems crazy that I could take anyone from Yolanda. She’s so much prettier than I am. But from what everyone said at my recruitment, it’s not about pretty; it’s about new. New is the great equalizer. New is how we’re all, as Raquel said, beautiful.
At least Andie has resurfaced. She left a voice mail apologizing. “I really did mean it when I said I’d be your sounding board. I want to be there for you, Kat. It’s just been a truly crazy week.”
Join the club, Andie. I haven’t called her back yet. I don’t know who I can trust right now. I would have said I could trust Andie, but she was the person who talked to Doug alone and then disappeared.
You’re going to snap one of these days. Anyone can see that.
For all I know, Andie wrote the notes. She’s as likely as any of the others. Or as unlikely. I can’t even tell anymore. But someone took that picture with my phone. Who would have done that except the writer of the notes, the person who wants me to snap? That means the writer was there that night, either one of the women or one of their husbands.
But I don’t have a clue which one, and trying to parse a night that’s only half-remembered is exhausting. Not to mention that Doug and I are pretending things are normal. The charade wears on both of us. And, give me strength, we’ve got a barbecue to plan for next weekend. I want to cancel for myriad unspeakable reasons, but when I mentioned that possibility to Doug, he just stared at me, then rolled over and went to
sleep without a word. It wasn’t even eight o’clock.
Now he’s at work, and I’m on my own with Sadie. She’s whining so consistently in my ear that it’s like tinnitus. I have to remind myself that love is sometimes a gauntlet to be run. Plastering a smile on my face, I elevate my voice an octave and declare, “It’s bath time!” I hold her against my shoulder as I fill the blue plastic tub. She usually likes that part, watching the water that will soon submerge her, but not today. She stares at me, eyes wide with recrimination. Is she doubting my credibility, too?
As I remove her onesie and then her diaper, she screws up her face and begins to scream. “See,” I tell her as she writhes on the bathroom floor, “there’s the water. You’re about to have your bath. You love your bath.”
But she knows better. She does not love her bath. She has never loved her bath. I am a fool to believe otherwise.
Shut up, shut up, shut up, I implore her. No, I order her. You will appreciate that I spend my entire life catering to your needs, real and imagined. You will recognize that I have placed my life on hold for you, that I have given up all vestiges of the woman I have known myself to be in order to invest in your present and future happiness. But she is enraged with me. It’s bewildering and galling. I’m trying to both wash her hair and keep her head from banging into the tub through her spasms of anger. I swear, I hear her telling me that she hates the bath; in fact, she hates me. “You’re a phony,” she tells me. “You try and try, but you never get it right. You’ll never be right. You’ll always be tainted.”
I find myself actually screaming, “Shut up!” She’s yelling too loud herself to hear me. It’s taking on operatic proportions, both of us unglued, each infuriated by the other, inflamed by our private injustices. I snatch her out of the tub, half-sudsed, half-washed, soaking the front of my T-shirt. I stomp down the hall and lay her on the changing table, dripping. She stopped crying somewhere along the way, and her eyes are full of something unfamiliar. Fear. She’s afraid of me. I wish I could say that stops me, that my own anger whooshes out like the air from a popped balloon, but no.
I put a diaper on Sadie’s wet ass and lay her in her crib. Then I go to my own room and close the door. I need a time-out.
Her protests start immediately. She wants me back. She says, “I don’t care how you treat me, just don’t leave me,” and that’s when all my anger dissipates. I start shaking and crying. We’re twins, Sadie and me. No, we’re two molecules who act on each other. Sometimes we make a beautiful compound; today, we’re spontaneously combusting.
I’m so sorry, so mortified. I know that my movements were brusque, but they couldn’t have hurt her. The damage is occurring now, making her think she was bad and that she’ll be left. These seconds are hours to her. They might not be memories, but somewhere inside her, they’re imprints.
Sadie’s cries are desperately plaintive. She needs her mommy, pathetically so. I needed my mommy just that way, and she let me down. I remember my mother’s emotional absence, the vacuum where a person should have been, the shell; I don’t recall an angry presence. I didn’t even register that much. I had no molecular influence on my mother.
I rush to Sadie’s room and lift her from the crib. I’ll have to change her sheet. There’s a damp, Sadie-shaped spot in the middle, which makes me cry harder. I’m a terrible mother, despite all my efforts, or maybe because of them. Because I stretch myself like a rubber band until I snap, just like that note said.
I keep apologizing, but it doesn’t matter. Sadie’s body feels boneless as she falls against me. She covers me, from my shoulder to my pelvis. I rub her back. Why does her skin feel so hot when she’s in just a diaper?
I put my lips to her forehead, and I’m filled with terror. I’m the worst mother in the world, tragically stupid. All the time she’s been fussing, somehow it never occurred to me that she could be sick. I ran through the list of possibilities (hungry, tired, bored . . .) and never once thought “sick.” She’s been remarkably, staggeringly healthy since the day she was born. I’ve never heard a real cough, even, only the occasional sneeze.
Now her body is an inferno, and I never even suspected. Where was my maternal instinct? Melody’s right about me.
I go to the bathroom to grab the never-before-used rectal thermometer. Shit, I realize we don’t have Vaseline. I look around frantically, and my eyes fall on Doug’s nightstand, on the optimistically placed Astroglide.
I undo the tape on the sides of Sadie’s diaper and lay her across my knee, as illustrated in the diagram. “It’s OK, pretty girl,” I tell her. She doesn’t make a sound, not even when I slide the thermometer in. I can’t believe how much I want to hear her cry. She’s turned lumpish so quickly.
I reattach her diaper and place her on my shoulder, patting her as I call the pediatrician. She’s barely conscious. “Her temperature is 104.7, but I don’t know how long she’s had a fever,” I say. I field all the doctor’s questions, and at the end, he says to take her to the ER at the children’s hospital. “I’ll call ahead,” he adds. “They’ll be ready for you.”
We’re an emergency. I call Doug. “You need to meet us at the ER,” I say. I’m crying again.
“I’ll be there soon,” Doug answers. “Don’t panic, OK? She’ll be fine. Kids get sick.”
I’d swear Sadie’s getting hotter by the second, and not just her forehead. It’s her whole body. I find myself talking loudly to keep her awake, like they do in movies when someone has a concussion. “Don’t fall asleep!” I sing out through my tears.
She’s not going to die. Kids get sick, that’s all. Very few of them die.
I strap Sadie into her car seat. She is still frighteningly inactive. “Get mad,” I instruct her. “Just really let me have it.” Her eyes are uncomprehending. They flicker shut.
When we reach a stop sign, I push back the canopy of the car seat. She stares up at me. I’ve never before seen eyes that are truly glassy, like a doll’s.
In front of the ER, there’s a circular drive, and I leave the car parked there. I don’t care if it’s ticketed or towed; I need to get Sadie inside ASAP.
I’m panting, holding Sadie against me, feeling her terrible heat. There’s a line in front of the check-in window and a ton of people sitting around with their children, but everyone parts for me. “It’s a baby,” says one little girl excitedly.
The woman behind the window is in scrubs, and I say that our doctor called ahead. She didn’t get any call, but she immediately lets me into a fluorescent-lit room with a gurney in the center, wreathed by machines on standby. I must look that frantic, or Sadie looks that dire, or that’s the protocol with a baby this small. She’s just so small.
Suddenly, everything is moving very fast. Once Sadie’s temperature is taken, the hospital personnel seem to multiply. I think I hear “105.6,” and I assume that’s her temperature, the reason why Sadie is surrounded and I’m shunted aside. They need access to her veins, to her blood. Tests. They’re going to run tests. And cultures. They need to figure out what’s made Sadie so sick so fast.
That’s what a nurse has just explained to me. I nod convulsively. “Can I get you a chair?” she asks. “Can I get you tissues?” There’s liquid all over my face. I don’t know if it’s from my eyes or my nose. Sadie is in just her diaper, and she’s no longer inert. She’s screaming. I step in closer and see her head rolling from side to side. She’s looking for me.
“I’m here,” I say, surging forward, into a gap behind the gurney, near the beeping machines.
The nurse pursues me. She’s pretty, Indian, with a soothing accent. Her scrubs have some sort of cartoon character on them that I don’t recognize. “You can touch her. You can give her the pacifier.” She hands it to me.
“Sadie doesn’t like this kind.” I stare down at my baby girl helplessly. Wires snake through her nose, providing oxygen. Her head lolls; her screams continue. She wasn’t looking for me after all. She needs someone who can make all this stop. That’s not
me.
“This will help,” the nurse says. She hands me small plastic tubes and shows me how to open them. “Sugar water. Squeeze it into her mouth.”
I do, and Sadie calms for a few seconds. She’s able to see me through her tears. I stroke her hair. She’s still so hot.
“We’ve given her Tylenol,” the nurse says, as if she could hear my thoughts. Or did I speak out loud? I suppose they’d be anyone’s thoughts with a baby in this situation. She must see this all the time. She sees worse. “She’ll start to respond soon.”
What if she doesn’t?
“We’ve also started antibiotics,” the nurse continues. “They’re taking cultures, some of which won’t come back until tomorrow. It might turn out to be viral. But we can’t take any chances, so we start the antibiotics immediately. Just in case it’s a bacterial infection.”
“Why are there so many people?” I choke out. “Is that normal?”
“They’re taking good care of her. The doctor will talk to you soon.”
The doctor—an older woman wearing a lab coat over a blouse and slacks—is on the phone in the corner. I assume she’s talking about Sadie.
“Give me a hint,” I say. “Please.”
The nurse casts a glance around. Everyone else is occupied by Sadie’s tiny body and even tinier veins. She whispers, “Her blood pressure was unstable at first.” She points to one of the monitors. I can’t look.
“What does that mean?” I whisper back.
“They don’t know yet. But she won’t be going home for a little while.”
I burst into noisy tears. “She has to stay here?”
The nurse nods. I lean down and sing into Sadie’s ear. I stroke her hair madly. I squirt more sugar into her mouth, and it runs out the corners. She chases it with her tongue. Her eyes droop. I think the crying has exhausted her. I don’t know what to hope for, crying or no crying. Which will mean she’s getting better?