by Teresa Hill
She’d been happy before the baby came. He knew that. And she was happy with the baby, but with him she was… Not unhappy. Just not herself. Reserved, he supposed. Like she was already pulling away from him little by little each day. He’d told himself to get ready, then tried not to imagine this empty house without her and the baby. What was he going to do then?
He’d get by, he supposed. He wouldn’t be afraid anymore. He wouldn’t worry. Okay, he’d worry about her and the baby and if they were all right and if they needed anything. But he wouldn’t be afraid, would he? Not once they were gone?
He must have dozed off, because the next thing he knew, the baby was crying. She was a voracious little thing, but checking his watch, he saw that it hadn’t been that long since she’d eaten. Maybe she just wanted to explain some things to him, lay down the law, as she tended to do.
He slipped out of bed quickly, pulling on his pants and shirt, then he picked her up. “What is it this time?” he asked her. “The economy? Politics? World peace? What?”
She looked up at him with those big blue eyes that slayed him. One hand was clenched in a fist, and she was either trying to get it into her mouth to suck on it or trying to make noise. He couldn’t tell which. But she just kept making her “Ahhhhh” sound and running her fist back and forth across her mouth. So she ended up making a noise kind of like a kid playing cowboys and Indians. She was the Indian girl, and she liked it.
“Okay,” Matt said. “I’ll play. But Mommy’s asleep, and we should let her stay that way.”
Emma very happily kept up her racket. It seemed to be enough that he was listening to her and holding her. He took her downstairs and outside. The sun had gone down, and it was the beginning of September, so the evenings were turning pleasant, and the baby liked to be outside, especially at night.
Matt stretched out in one of the big padded lounge chairs and tucked her into the crook of his arm, so she could look up at the sky. She liked that, too. Sometimes when she woke up at night and didn’t want to go back to sleep, he brought her out here and let her babble on. The crickets would hum, and he’d ask her a question every now and then, so she knew he was here and listening, and she was usually content.
She was sucking on the sleeve of her sleeper now.
“Yum,” he said, leaning over and kissing her toes through her footie pajamas, then making a noise like he was going to eat her up.
She gurgled and grinned and kicked for all she was worth. Honestly, the silliest things amused her. She wasn’t as scrawny or red as she used to be. Now her cheeks were chubby and so soft. She had tiny, tiny eyelashes and the thinnest layer of fuzz-hair all over her pretty head. Her eyes were huge, her cheeks tinged with pink, and her mouth was so cute when she puckered up and started yakking.
Okay, he’d miss her like crazy.
There. He’d admitted it.
The thought of her leaving reminded him of how he’d felt sitting on the floor outside Cathie’s hospital room when he didn’t know if either one of them was going to make it. It was that kind of awful feeling he was trying desperately to avoid.
“Look, you need to know some things,” he told the baby when she finally quieted and his conscience wouldn’t let him leave it all unsaid. “There’s going to come a day when I’m not around anymore. Not like I am now. And you don’t need to worry or anything, because you’ll always have your mom, and I told you, she’s the best, baby girl. The best. And you’ll have your grandparents, who are pretty special, too, and four of the biggest, toughest uncles a girl could ever have. Trust me, they will do anything in the world for you. They’ll turn to mush when you so much as grin at them. So you’ll be fine.”
She’d stopped babbling and stopped kicking her feet. She just laid there and looked at him, so seriously all of a sudden.
“And I may not be around every day, but I won’t be that far away, and if you need anything, all you have to do is call. Or get somebody to call. They all know the number. Whatever the problem is, I’ll come and take care of it, okay? I’ll snarl at little boys who pull your pigtails or are mean to you on the bus. I’ll come watch you in the school play or your piano recital. I’ll bring you outrageously expensive presents on your birthdays, and your mom won’t like it at all, but she won’t be able to stop me, and I already took care of school for you. College, I mean. It’s done. So, we’ve got that out of the way. Not that you need to mention that to your mother, because she won’t like that, either, but she’ll get over it. Like I said, everything’s going to be fine. Nothing for you to worry about, little girl. You’re always going to have people around you who love you.”
And hell, if she had that, she’d be just fine.
No need to worry about her. No need to panic or feel bad or anything like that.
He held back tears as he said, “I’ll make sure somebody knows you like to go outside and see the stars at night, okay?”
Matt sat there fighting the urge to swear, something he was trying to give up, because of the baby. But if she was going to be gone…
He sat there, hurting like hell, and then had the oddest feeling that…
He turned around. Yeah. There she was. Cathie in her nightgown and a robe, something in her right hand. She had tears on her cheek.
“Does that mean you’re going somewhere?” she asked.
“No, I thought you would be.”
“Oh.” She stiffened, and the knot in his throat clenched tighter. God, this hurt. “I don’t know what I’m doing. But, I told my mother and father everything.”
“I know, Cath.” Her gaze locked on his, surprise and then confusion registering in her expression. So, he hadn’t told her. “Your father talked to me the day you told them.”
“Oh. I didn’t know. I… You didn’t say anything?”
“You didn’t, either,” he said. “I figured you’d tell me when you were ready.”
“I’m not ready. But I’m afraid if I don’t say it all now, I never will. Because it would be too easy just to stay here and let things go on the way they are.”
Summoning all his courage, he asked, “And you don’t want to do that?”
“No…” she stammered. “I mean, I think I have to be honest with you about everything, and then you’re the one who has to decide whether you want us to stay or go.”
“Stay,” he said right away, no questioning it, no reasoning it out, no trying to figure out how he’d manage to protect himself if they did. He just knew he wanted them to stay.
“Just listen to me first,” she said. “You have to listen, and you have to know why I married you in the first place.”
“I know why you married me.”
“No, you don’t,” she said. “I let you think it was for the baby, and that was part of the reason, but it’s not the real one. I wasn’t honest with you, Matt. Just like I wasn’t honest with Mom and Dad and everybody. After the doctor talked to me that day in the hospital about how scary things were at one point, my mother was trying to help me feel better. She kept talking about everything I had to be grateful for. The baby and you and how much we loved each other, and I just couldn’t keep living that lie, and I promised myself I wouldn’t live one with you, either. It just took me this long to find the strength to say what I have to say.”
“What is it you think you have to say?”
“I was going to turn down your offer. I was going to say I couldn’t lie to everyone that way and that what you were offering was too much and that you didn’t owe me or my family anything. That thinking you did was like saying we didn’t really care about you, when we all did. You made it about favors and money and insisted on measuring it in time. We all cared about you, as much as you’d let us,” she said. “I know how hard it was for you to let us in at all, and I know you care about us in your own way, and I’m grateful for that.”
“I don’t want your gratitude,” he said tightly.
“And I don’t want any more favors from you. I don’t want to have anything to do wi
th you repaying a debt. Not for me and not for my baby, either. I want something completely different.”
“What do you want, Cathie?”
“I want you to love us.”
Oh, that. Why did it have to be that?
“Matt, I think you know I’ve always loved you,” she said. “I tried so hard to forget about you and to love someone else, anyone. But it just didn’t work. I love you. That’s why I married you. I thought maybe one day, you could love me, too, and the baby. And I’m sorry I lied to you. I’m sorry I let this go on so long. I was so scared when I found out I was pregnant. I had no idea what I was going to do, and then there you were. It was like you were the answer to my prayers—”
“Cathie, I am not the answer to anyone’s prayers.”
“You were to mine,” she insisted. “Which reminds me…”
She held something out to him.
A box.
He recognized it. Her God Box. He had one just like it, given to him by the people of her father’s church. He probably still had the thing somewhere upstairs. He’d never been able to bring himself to throw it away.
“What do you want me to do with this?” he asked.
“I want you to see what’s inside.” She sat down on the side of his chaise and pulled out tiny scraps of paper, all folded up in tiny triangles, the way she used to fold bits of paper when she was a kid. She unfolded them one by one and handed them to him.
Thank you for sending Matt to us, printed carefully in block letters, and then, in careful schoolgirl script, Please let Matt stay.
The writing was much prettier, but still obviously a girl’s when she’d written, Please bring Matt back to me. When he’d gone away to college, he supposed.
Please let Matt love me. When she was sixteen, maybe?
Please let Matt be happy. That was no longer a young girl’s writing. Had she thought he was so unhappy? He tried so hard to hide it, to not even admit it to himself.
Please let me keep my baby. Let me find a way.
There were thank-you notes, from when she had the baby and the baby was okay.
And one last plea. Please let Matt love us and ask us to stay.
“There’s no reason for you to go,” he said.
“I need a reason to stay. Not just for me, but for Emma. She needs a father who’ll love her completely, without any reservations or doubts, Matt. And most of the time, I think you do, but it scares you to death and you don’t want to admit it. Like you’re so sure it’s going to get snatched away from you, the way everything was when you were a kid. I’m afraid we’ll come to mean too much to you, and you’ll get scared and—”
“I would never ask you to go,” he said.
“I know you wouldn’t. But that’s not enough.”
“What is this, some kind of test?” he asked. “If I figure out the right thing to say, you’ll stay?”
“I just want to know how you feel.”
“I feel like I always knew this would turn out badly, and that I’d hurt you. Which it looks like I’ve done.”
“What else, Matt?”
“Like I really shouldn’t have tried to steal your mother’s car that day.”
“So you’d never even have known me or my family?”
“I wouldn’t have had a chance to hurt you this way.”
“And I wouldn’t have had a chance to love you. When you love someone, sometimes it hurts.”
“It always hurts,” he claimed, frustration and anger driving him on.
“Not always. Sometimes, it’s the best feeling in the world. The only real reason to be alive. You think you’re really going to get through life without loving anyone?”
“If I’m lucky, I will,” he shouted. She recoiled as if he’d slapped her across the face. Dammit. “Cathie, if it was going to happen with anyone, it would be you. That’s the truest thing I could say to you right now.”
“But you still don’t want to let yourself love me or Emma?”
“No.”
“Because you’re afraid,” she claimed.
He preferred to think of it as being smart, as protecting himself. “Look, it’s just me. There’s something wrong with me. I don’t connect with people the way you do. The way your family does. I don’t open myself up, and I don’t let myself depend on people. I never learned how. If anything, I learned not to. I learned that lesson very well. But it’s okay.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Cathie, it’s my life, and this is how I’m going to live it.”
“So, this thing between the two of us was just…I don’t know. A fun time? Paybacks and all that? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“I wanted to help you. I wanted you to be able to keep your baby.”
“That’s it? Because it felt like more to me. It’s hard to imagine a man going so far as to offer to marry a woman, just as a favor or to pay back an old debt. That’s really why you did it?”
“Not entirely.” He didn’t say anything for a moment, couldn’t. Had he really promised to always be honest to her? Because this would likely hurt. But it was a time for honesty. He owed her that. “I did it because I wanted you. And I didn’t think I’d ever have you.”
“You were the one who was ready to have a platonic marriage.”
“And that’s the way it would have been—”
“If I hadn’t thrown myself at you?”
He just looked at her. Finally, he said, “I wanted you, too. Very much.”
“Okay.” She nodded, crying. “So, it was sex and paying back a debt. That’s it? Because I thought you were happy. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen you truly happy, but I thought you were. With me.”
Happy? He tried to take a true measure of the word. He knew all about fear and anger and frustration. He knew about yearning for something more, about emptiness. About the challenge of wanting to accomplish something and getting it, the satisfaction that came from hard work and success. About wanting respect. About being able to buy anything he needed or wanted. About craving order and predictability. It was the closest thing to feeling safe that he knew. He didn’t know a lot about happiness.
He remembered making Cathie laugh when she was a little girl and the joy that flowed in and out of her so easily, so freely. Like she had a never-ending supply. He remembered watching her and wondering where that came from, how it would have felt inside of him.
He thought of her face when she looked down into her baby’s eyes for the first time, and how it felt to sit out here under the stars with Emma babbling on about some nonsense and reaching her little hand up toward the stars, like she thought it was absolutely within her power to reach out and grab them.
He wanted her to believe she could just reach out and grab them. That she could get anything she wanted.
“You’ve been happy?” he asked her instead, because he thought he’d made them happy. Couldn’t that be enough?
“When I forget to be scared that it might not last, yes, I’ve been happy.”
Which was pretty much what he’d say about himself. When he forgot to be scared, it felt good. “But that’s not enough for you?”
“Oh, Matt. Is it enough for you?”
“It’s more than I ever thought I’d have.”
“Well, you have to want more for yourself.”
“No,” he snapped, fear and frustration getting the better of him. “Don’t tell me what I need or what I have to have. You don’t know what’s inside of me. Or what’s best for me. I’m fine with this. Just fine.”
Cathie winced at the hard tone of his voice or maybe his words, and the baby started to cry. He’d scared her, too, dammit. He closed his eyes and turned away from the heartbroken-looking woman standing in front of him, and pulled the baby closer.
“Shh,” he crooned and kissed her forehead. “It’s okay, Emma. I’m sorry. Don’t be scared.” He never, ever wanted her to be scared. Particularly because of anything he did.
Cathie walked around to face him. “I
think I need to take the baby and go.”
He stared at her for a long moment, unable to do or say anything. Like he’d fallen into a time warp and everything slowed to a complete stop. It was like her words absolutely knocked the breath out of him. They hurt. He couldn’t breathe, was surprised he wasn’t lying flat on his back on the ground from the way he felt.
“No,” he said.
Cathie nodded and cried harder. “I have to.”
He thought this might be as bad as the day his father walked away for the last time or the day he walked out of his mother’s house when he was thirteen and decided he’d be better off on the streets than with her.
“Don’t go,” he said, tightening his hold on the baby.
“No more favors, Matt. The debt’s paid in full. If that’s all it was, it shouldn’t hurt at all for you to see us go.”
She reached out for the baby. He sat there with his mouth open in disbelief. Her hands closed around her daughter, who had nearly cried herself out and was hiccuping and burrowing her face into Matt’s chest. He hung on for dear life, and then Emma started crying again, and he thought maybe he was hurting her, which he would never, ever let himself do. So he let go.
Cathie pulled the baby to her. “I’m sorry,” she said.
Then she turned around and walked away.
He looked down at his own body, honestly surprised not to see some gaping hole where a piece of him had been. It felt like she’d taken something that was a part of him, something he needed to survive. And yet, here he was still standing, breathing, kind of. Hurting. God, it hurt.
He went inside, thinking this couldn’t be happening, that it had to be a nightmare. She couldn’t go. But she was in the bedroom packing the baby’s things.
“I’m going to Mom and Dad’s,” she said, working quickly and quietly, putting little soft pink things in the baby’s diaper bag. “I’ll call and leave you a message when we get there, so you’ll know we arrived safely.”