by A. R. Hadley
She’d come home with a baby she thought she knew how to care for. But every feeling was new. Each day a surprise. Depression had only taught her acceptance was hard. Being responsible for an infant was climbing a mountain, not a fucking molehill.
Thinking of the labor made her feel strong. And so, unable to sleep, she clung to the thoughts…
“I need to push.” Her teeth were clenched. Her belly was so tight. Her midsection, her lower back and womb and thighs, ached violently.
Cal glanced at the monitor sporting the spiky green lines.
“Get someone,” she screamed.
He went into the hall and started cursing and yelling as Annie rode the wave of the contraction, her eyes closed, her nostrils stretching just to breathe. She had to resist the urge to push with all her might.
He was coming. He was coming. He was coming.
“Cal,” she moaned. Her head fell against the bed. It rolled to the side as she shut her eyes in exhaustion.
In an instant, he was there, wiping sweat from her brow and whispering words of praise and love in her ear. Then a nurse strolled in, attaching gloves to her hands.
Annie hated the smacking sound the latex made when it hit skin. Hated fingers probing inside her body – for the hundredth time — especially when she was about to push a baby through her opening.
“You’re not quite ten centimeters.”
“I need to push.” Annie closed her eyes again, fighting the urge. Another was about to crest. She didn’t think she could hold on.
“Where’s the doctor?” Cal barked.
“He’s coming,” the nurse said, and Annie knew he was coming, but she was beginning to doubt the doctor would. “I’m going to stretch you a little so you can start to push. Okay?”
Annie nodded and winced while Cal stroked her hair and face.
A man in blue scrubs came bursting through the door three contractions later. Annie had already begun to push, Cal and the nurse holding her knees, encouraging her.
“He’s crowning, Doctor.”
Tears were in Cal’s eyes. But Annie couldn’t see anything past the sensation of wanting to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze.
It burned and pinched, and then it felt like something astronomical slipped through the eye of a needle. Sounds of a baby crying filled the room.
They laid him on her chest, his cord still attached to her body. He smelled like he belonged to her, his eyes struggling to open. His mouth wasn’t having any difficulty. It was wide, and he was crying.
His father was too. Quietly, though.
Cal touched his son’s head — a small swath of dark hair covered it — and cupped a hand over his own mouth.
The parents’ eyes met.
So much passed between them in those seconds that her heart practically stopped with the connection she felt fusing the three of them together.
“Benjamin,” Cal whispered, and Annie nodded, smiling, cheeks hurting from the pure joy radiating from her heart. “I love him.”
“I love him too.”
Annie pushed open the door to the study, Benjamin against her chest, his head and neck arching backward, her hand trying to hold him steady while he wailed.
“Hold on a minute, please,” Cal said into the phone from where he sat at the desk, his face toward the wall. He pressed a button on the screen then turned around.
Pools were in his wife’s eyes, ready to overflow at the edges. And the whites looked red, like she’d spent half the morning already consumed by the activity.
“He won’t stop.”
“Annie”—he removed his glasses and pinched fingers into the corners of his eyes—"I’m in the middle of an important call.”
“Sometimes…” she began, her voice quiet as a mouse, her eyes bouncing around, “I need your help.”
As he gripped the back of the chair, his knuckles turned white. She could tell he tried to keep his face from distorting into a scowl.
“I offer plenty of help. You refuse it. You can’t come barging in here in the middle of the day—”
Her nostrils flared. The baby hadn’t stopped fussing. His cries always made her feel helpless and weak, inadequate.
“Annie!” he cried, but she was already on her way out. “Goddammit. Don’t walk away from me.”
“You said you didn’t want to be interrupted.”
“Fuck.” He pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Stop cursing. You’re going to upset him.”
“I’m going to upset him?”
Cal’s phone danced across the desk. The caller must’ve hung up. They both turned to look at it, Annie’s expression a challenge and Cal’s showing he didn’t care if he failed the test.
“You’re in this room all day long.”
“I work, Annie.”
“And I don’t.”
“That’s not what I said. Don’t put words in my mouth. I’m trying to avoid having to leave the house. That’s why I’m in here. I’m avoiding going out of town, meeting clients.”
“I need you.”
“You need things I’m not sure I can give you.” His voice had calmed. He took three tentative steps forward. “You want me to remove a burden … but some hurts never leave us.” The distance was closed between them with two more strides. “And it’s okay if they don’t.”
He placed a palm on his son’s back while he wiped newly formed tears from his wife’s cheeks. Then he whispered, “I love you,” and took Benjamin from her arms.
His phone made noise again, but he ignored it and left the room, patting Ben’s bum and soothing him with sweet humming as they exited.
As Cal walked up the stairs toward their bedroom, he heard Annie in the baby's room crying quietly.
He hesitated in the hall, watching as she closed the shade over the window. He wasn't immune to whatever the fuck was happening. Maybe he had been in denial, though.
He used to think this kind of bullshit didn't just sprout wings overnight and soar. But fuck him if the two of them hadn’t up and decided to run and jump off a cliff together. Days had turned to weeks and weeks to months. Nights had become a reason to roll toward the edge of the bed and ache for the comfort only one woman could provide but refused to give.
She didn't want what he offered.
Touching and kissing had morphed from hardly ever, to almost nonexistent. Talking usually meant arguing, nagging, or resentment. Sometimes all three. So, he’d kept himself busy with work and Benjamin, and he pretended to have plenty to do … even if he didn’t.
But he couldn't carry the weight of Annie's sadness much longer.
His back was about to break.
Annie shook a little once she noticed him, and then she wiped tears from under her lids and straightened her spine.
Cal stared, glaring really.
The pity and sympathy in his eyes spoke to the shame in her gut. The confusion over her struggle filled the kettle of her mind with a quiet anger always about to spill.
Eyes red and full of puddles, Annie covered her mouth to keep from spewing out any gargled, gunky sobs. Cal moved toward her, but the second he stepped a couple of paces forward, she stopped crying and tried to maintain the same ramrod posture.
Ignoring her obstinate position, he wrapped an arm around her waist and cradled her head. Surprising him, she released some anxiety for a quick second, blowing hot air toward his chest.
But then she inched away.
He wants something, she thought. And the baby took up all that space: the needs, the contact, the skin. She was burned out on giving things to Benjamin. There was nothing left for Cal.
Maybe her mind had deceived her into driving him away. The feelings, the thoughts… Which had come first — the thought or the motherfucking feeling? She was back to square one. Still trying to figure it out.
After taking one last quick glance at Benjamin, she exited the room.
Staring toward his son, Cal had a blank look in his eye, a hollow in his heart. No matter how
much time had passed, he hadn't adjusted to any of it: her moods, the restlessness, the way she shut him out.
How much longer would she continue to push him away?
After pulling the blanket to Ben's chin, he turned and followed his wife into their bedroom. He found her standing at the window, peeking through the blinds into the yard.
"It's been five months," Cal said without any inflection. But his tongue felt heavy. His throat starved. "What do I need to do? Just tell me, anything, and I'll do it."
Annie’s eyes blurred over the deciduous trees — the red, orange, and yellow leaves. What did she need? Red leaves. Anything. Orange leaves. He wanted sex. Yellow leaves. Sex.
Sex. Sex. Sex.
They still weren't having it.
And it was the big, fat elephant in the room, following her around wherever she went. Upstairs, down, to bed, in her dreams. And now she wasn’t sure which had come first: the depression or this crack in their marriage. The egg or the chicken. The thought or the motherfucking feeling.
Her chin dropped, and her bottom lip trembled. Why didn't she want him?
Because she was different.
Her body had changed.
Her mind played tricks.
Would she ever want Cal again?
The guilt made it ten times worse — chicken or egg — knowing she couldn't satisfy him.
"Just find someone else," Annie mumbled, lips barely moving. Her eyes remained glued to the landscape of her grief and no longer on the backyard. "Just"—she dropped her eyes—"meet your needs. It's fine. I know you need to have sex." She swallowed and looked over at him. "I want you to have that. Even if it's not with me."
The light crept through the blinds, hitting Annie's face, and Cal could see the exhaustion in her eyes. The blank stare. The numbness in her voice scraped down the chalkboard of his mind.
"Do you actually think I would do that? Fuck." He pinched his nose, biting his tongue. He wanted to tell her she was fucking crazy. "Do you think that’s what I want to do?" He stepped closer. "Look at me."
"Don't order me. I'm not a child." Fuck him and his look at me. And she couldn't look because the energy emanating from him was stronger than the sun bouncing off the yard and peeking through the blinds.
"Christ, Annie, you know this isn’t just about sex. It's you."
It was enough she’d literally denied him access to her body in the simplest of ways, but now to tell him such a thing was absolutely fucking unacceptable. This fucking quagmire they were in was about much more than just the absence of sex.
But she liked to make their relationship about sex. The things they hadn’t fully worked through when dating were coming back to haunt them.
"I need you. I want to just be able to touch you without you thinking I want more. I want to just hold you in my arms. Don't keep pushing me away."
She crossed to the other side of the room, passing him without a glance, then said, "Then don't keep pressuring me to give you something I can't."
Cal took two big strides, pulled her hands to her sides — because she had them in her hair, twirling and twirling and twirling — and laced his fingers through hers.
"I don't understand. What’s different? Help me understand you, baby. Is it me?" His eyes shrunk into his head in anticipation of her response.
"No," her voice squeaked. "It's not you." She met his gaze.
The connection between them was still strong. Not a cord — the way it had been on Maggie’s staircase, during the kiss in the rain, their son on her chest in the hospital bed. Maybe it was only a piece of yarn or string. But it was still holding them together, and it was electric.
"I think you should talk to someone. I'm not capable enough anymore, and I'm … I'm too close to the situation. I’m biased."
He waited several seconds for her to speak, then he let go of her hands because she’d grown cold.
After sitting on the bed, she put her hands on her lap and began playing with her fingers mindlessly.
Jesus Christ. Cal had to leave the room before he said things he would later regret.
"Cal…"
At the sound of his name, he stopped under the doorframe, turned, and looked at his wife in the dark of the room — gray except for the beam of light shining through the window, streaking across the floor in a pattern of fine, broken lines.
A rainbow of promises.
"Don't be with anyone else," she began, tripping over her words. "Don't. Don't." His hands couldn't be on anyone else. Ever. They belonged to her, knew her, fit her fucked-up puzzle.
As Cal sat beside her, pushing her unruly hair behind her ear, she looked over his face. It was still a structure to be sculpted. Green eyes to swim inside. Dimples to curl up in.
"Annie…" He fingered the tips of her hair. "I only want you."
She dropped her head to his shoulder, and he made circles on her back.
“Baby, when I promised to love you, I meant it. I'm not going anywhere … with anybody else.” He enunciated each word in a whisper near her ear. His tone was so intensely reassuring. “We’ll get through this."
Would she get through it?
Maybe being depressed was an integral part of who she was. Maybe it was intertwined with her like a sickness without a cure. Vines on a tree, slowly climbing and choking the life from her trunk and branches.
Annie stayed seated on the bed, head on Cal’s shoulder, somewhat willingly allowing him to hold her for several minutes.
She didn't push him away.
Cal rested his chin on her head. Everything about Annie’s body felt so good against his skin. A current he didn't want to ever swim away from.
The baby started to cry.
Annie jerked upright.
My God, he thought, she’d actually lost herself for a minute in his embrace. It was one of the most beautiful things he’d experienced with her in weeks.
Before turning to go, she gave him a slight smile, and even though it didn't reach her eyes, it showed promise. A rainbow. It was a beginning. A start.
Hope bloomed fresh in his heart.
Cal was sitting, legs crossed — wearing only blue jeans and holding a washcloth in his hand — in the garden tub in their master bathroom.
Ben was in his own tub — the kind of contraption made for infants — situated in front of his dad. The big tub had no water in it. The little one did. Benjamin didn’t much enjoy getting wet. But he loved his father’s attention.
This was how Annie found them.
She smiled upon entering, then skirted to the walk-in and began to change clothes. She wanted her sweatpants. The things that made her feel comfortable and most like herself.
“How’d it go today?” Cal asked, voice raised. It echoed a little off the tiled walls.
“Fine,” she said when she popped back out.
She was replacing nursing pads while standing in front of the double sinks, swapping wet for dry. Ben was starting to whimper, and soon she would be soiling the fresh ones. The slightest sounds from his lungs could cause her milk to release. Actually, her breasts could tingle and become engorged from merely a thought.
“I know what fine means with you: bullshit.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Did you like her?”
“It’s a him. And no.”
Their eyes met in the mirror, tangling then untangling. His were stern, unyielding.
Case in point.
One reason why she wouldn’t discuss what had happened at the office of the therapist. It had only been the first visit. But Annie had a feeling something was off. Or she couldn’t open up.
How could she share intimacies with a stranger when she could barely talk to Cal?
The girl with the heart on her sleeve resided somewhere else. Or maybe her feelings were obvious, but she wasn’t vocalizing them. She knew she held back with Cal ... with everyone she loved. And the shame of knowing it and being unable to conquer the “bullshit” was debilitating.
But she had her clothes on now.
There was that.
Her hair was still somewhat combed from having gone out. She’d had a shower, and what she wore had been laundered — by someone else.
She resented the help.
Rosa having done it occasionally in the past was one thing, but not being able to perform a basic function for her family like washing the fucking clothes — Cal had taken that away from her — was humiliating.
The only consolation was the scent it bathed her in … Cal’s — coconut, beach, a clean T-shirt.
The baby was swaddled in a brown towel with ears on its hoodie, safe in his dad’s arms. They joined her near the sinks.
“Don’t hold him like that.” Annie eyed her son, his little mouth trying to latch on to Cal, his fingers treading chest hair. “He wants to nurse.”
“I’ll dress him”—Cal lifted Ben upright so he could look over his father’s shoulder—“and then bring him to you. I know he’s hungry.”
Annie waited in the rocking chair, a few buttons of her gown open in anticipation. She couldn’t hear Ben crying. The room was dark because outside the skies were too. Rain started to hit the windows.
“Tell me about the first time you recall feeling depressed,” the therapist had said earlier.
“Are you saying I’m depressed now?”
“You said you feel sad all the time. Sometimes nothing at all.”
“I...” She played with the hem of her skirt. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“But the first time was prior to having a baby?”
“Yes.”
He scribbled things down. The writing made her uncomfortable. He was judging her. And now he wanted to label her. Why had she come here?
For Cal. For Benjamin.
An olive branch to show her commitment to improvement. To make things go backward in the name of moving forward.
“What can you tell me about being a mom?”
“What do you want to know?”
“How has it exceeded your expectations? How has it failed to meet them?”
“I fail if I admit failure.”
“Parents are often surprised to find the reality doesn’t always meet the ideal.”