“Six times around his neck,” the nurse answered, referring to the umbilical cord, as the baby continued to scream and his face went from purple to bright red and his mother never knew how close she’d come to losing him. They weighed him, and he was ten pounds four ounces.
“A big guy,” the doctor said as he stitched Julie up. “This is her fourth. She’ll be back again in a year or two,” he said confidently. “We love repeat business,” he said and they all laughed. Everyone was in good humor once the baby was safe and the pediatrician put him in an incubator which they did with all big babies. They sent him to the nursery to be cleaned up and dressed and have his vitals checked again. And after they cleaned Julie up, she was on the way to the recovery room, half an hour later. She was shaking violently from the delivery when she woke up and threw up from the anesthesia and the nurse gave her a shot of Demerol for the pain from her incision. Julie felt like a soldier who’d been sent into battle too many times.
“Oh God, I feel awful,” she said to no one in particular.
“I’ll bet you do, honey. The shot will kick in in a minute,” the recovery room nurse told her. And when it did, she went back to sleep. When she woke up, they told her about the cord around the baby’s neck and how lucky it was that she was in the hospital and they could get him out quickly, and she lay there wondering how she would have felt if something had happened to him. Terrible, probably. And guilty. But he was fine.
“Would you like to hold your big boy?” the nurse asked her and she shook her head.
“No, I hurt too much.”
“Where’s his daddy? Is he downstairs in your room?”
“No, he’s in Chicago or Houston or someplace, I can’t remember where. He’ll be back sometime.” The nurse didn’t comment, and Julie drifted back to sleep again and woke up in a private room. She remembered she had Richard’s number in her purse then, and had the nurse get it for her. She wanted to talk to him. She had told him she’d call him. She tried to focus on the numbers but the call wouldn’t go through. The operator told her you couldn’t dial internationally from the room phones, so she couldn’t talk to him. And she called Max instead. He answered immediately.
“Anything happening?” He sounded excited and hopeful.
“I had him a few hours ago. Ten pounds four ounces. He had the cord around his neck six times but he’s fine now. Simon Jakob Stein is waiting to meet you.” She tried to sound happy about it, but she didn’t, because she wasn’t. She didn’t love his father, and the poor innocent baby was just another noose around her own neck.
“I’ll be home in a few hours, and, baby, you’re fantastic and I love you.”
“I love you too,” she said, and hung up as rivers of tears flowed down her cheeks. She felt like she was in jail again.
Chapter 18
Max walked into the hospital as though he owned it and his wife had just given birth to Jesus Christ. He walked into Julie’s room, found her sound asleep, and went straight to the nursery to see the baby. A nurse held him up and Max gestured to take him to the room, and he and the baby arrived simultaneously and woke Julie up. The nurse tried to hand him to her but she couldn’t sit up. She was in too much pain from the incision, and Max took him instead.
“He looks like a sumo wrestler,” she said from a prone position, and Max looked like he was about to burst and tears of joy ran down his cheeks.
“I wish my parents could have seen him. My dad wanted a grandson so much. But he loved the girls too.” He settled into a chair holding the baby, and Simon looked around and seemed satisfied with his surroundings and went back to sleep in his father’s arms, while Julie stared at him trying to figure out how a baby that size could have fit inside her and was grateful she hadn’t had to push him out. He was the biggest newborn she’d ever seen, and the biggest in the nursery at the moment.
Max set him down gently in the bassinet in the room then, without waking him. He took a small square box out of his pocket, and helped her open it. She was still groggy from pain medication and she stared at the enormous emerald ring Max slipped on her finger.
“I don’t deserve it,” she said, feeling guilty.
“Of course you do,” he said and kissed her. She turned her face away from him then and closed her eyes. All she could think of was Richard.
* * *
—
They let them go home four days later. She could still hardly walk or stand up straight, but she wanted to go home to her own bed and she was dying to talk to Richard. She hadn’t talked to him for five days.
The nannies helped her into the house, got her undressed, and eased her into bed. The incision felt worse this time, and Max took Simon to meet his sisters. They were happy to see him, and Hélène fussed over him like a little mother. She had all the instincts her mother didn’t. But Julie hurt too much to deal with the baby, and he cried a lot. He was hungry and guzzled his formula every two hours.
Max took the girls out for ice cream that afternoon, and Julie called Richard on the boat. She had taken a pain pill but she was coherent enough to call him. It took him a long time to come to the phone, he’d been having dinner on deck with friends but hurried to the phone when they told him she was on the line.
“Julie? Are you okay?” He sounded worried.
“No, I feel like shit and I miss you. I had the baby, I just wanted to tell you I’m okay.”
“Oh, sweetheart, I’m sorry. Did everything go all right?” She sounded awful, but she had come through it.
“Ten pounds four ounces.”
“I thought so. My second son was that size. I think that’s why she divorced me, aside from the fact that I was a crap husband and father,” he said, and she groaned.
“Don’t make me laugh! The incision is killing me. I miss you so much.”
“I miss you too. Now rest and get better, and give me good news when you’re not stoned on pain pills.”
“I love you,” she said weakly.
“I love you too. Call me whenever you want. And I’m so glad you’re okay. You’ll feel better in a few days.” She started to cry as he said it, she was on a roller coaster of emotions, between her hormones, the pain pills, and the residual anesthesia, she was a mess. He could hear it and knew what it was like. “It’s all right, sweetheart, you’re going to be fine soon. It’s over now. You can get on with your life, and mine, I hope,” he said and she smiled through her tears.
“Thank you.”
“Get some sleep.”
He went back to dinner, and there was no way he could tell the people he was dining with that he’d just had a call from the woman he loved, who had just given birth to her husband’s baby, and he was hoping she would abandon her husband and children for him. It was too sordid for words, or sounded that way. And more than a little decadent.
And in Greenwich, Julie was lying in bed crying and she wasn’t sure why. All she knew was that she loved Richard and she wasn’t sure what to do. Max was so happy with the baby, she didn’t want to spoil it for him. It was all so confusing, and Hélène kept coming in to check on her and brought her little treats. She was worried about everyone, her mother, her father, the baby, and Simon meant the most to her since she was convinced her prayers had kept them from killing him, and she was glad they hadn’t. She kept holding him and looking at him and kissing him. He was her baby now too.
Max stayed home for a week after she got out of the hospital, and he had a mohel come to do a circumcision with a rabbi. Hélène had a long talk with the rabbi, and he said afterward what a bright girl she was with a strong interest in Judaism, and he told Max that she should be taking Hebrew lessons to prepare for her bat mitzvah one day. Max nodded and thanked him and gave him a check for him and the mohel. He was not about to send his daughters to Hebrew classes just because he got his son circumcised. Max’s involvement in his religion, like his pa
rents’ and his own upbringing, was cultural and minimal, not profound, and if Hélène had a deep religious calling she could pursue it later, not at the age of nine. He considered himself a Jew in name only. He was proud of being Jewish, and honored what his parents had suffered, but he had no interest in the temple, and what went on there, and wasn’t sure what, if anything, he believed in.
* * *
—
He went in to check on Julie several times, and she was asleep. He noticed that she seemed to feel worse this time. She was in a lot of pain and taking strong medication. Five days later, the depression set in, and she started to cry all the time. He left the next day for a two-week trip, and he wouldn’t have admitted it, but he was relieved. The baby was beautiful but all the fuss that went with it, with the nannies and Julie and his daughters, was more than he wanted to deal with right now. He sat back in his seat on the plane and was delighted to have left it all behind to get back to business again, in the world where he felt the most at ease.
For Julie, the worst was just beginning. She was depressed all the time. The children came to visit in her bedroom and annoyed her. Kendra bounced on the bed, and Daisy wanted her mother to hold her, and cried every time she couldn’t. Simon was colicky or hungry or all of the above and screamed constantly, she could hear it all the way down the hall from the nursery, and Hélène looked mournful and worried as soon as her father left on his trip. The nannies got them out of her room as soon as they could, but it was never soon enough for Julie. Invariably, they broke something or messed something up, or took something they weren’t supposed to, and Hélène always lingered, with an anxious expression.
Julie was still in pain from the incision so she stayed in bed and felt trapped in her room. She felt like she was in jail with the nannies and children, and Max didn’t bother to call for four days and claimed it was because of the time difference which she knew was bullshit. She felt like her life would forever be a constant merry-go-round of children and nannies and the same husband who was never there. She felt overwhelmed, as though someone were drowning her, but walking out on them seemed selfish and cruel. And staying was torture for her. When Richard called her, she told him she was trying to do it right and think about it and be fair to the children, and maybe her job as a mother was to sacrifice her life for their well-being.
“You’re not going to do anyone any good as miserable as you are,” he said sensibly, “you’re going to resent them for everything you gave up for them. But you also need to wait for your hormones to settle down. You’re not thinking straight right now. Just give it time. The offer still stands, and will stand for a long time. We’ll talk when you feel better. It sounds like you need to get out of the house.”
“I feel like I’m in prison,” she said, sobbing, and as he listened, he thanked God he was out of the baby business. He had forgotten how emotional it could be, and how unpleasant.
She felt even worse when Max came home from his trip, and she flinched every time he came near her. She saw how happy he was about the baby, and she felt nothing for him or the baby. It was like there was a piece of her missing and always had been. She was a mess of emotions, and every time someone screamed “Mommy” and ran down the hall to her, she winced and wanted to lock the door to her room. It was as though there was something profoundly wrong with her and she knew it.
She was up and dressed by the time Max came back. She couldn’t drive yet, so she had various members of the household drive her, and she found every excuse she could to get out, just to leave the house and get away from them all for a while. She had stopped calling Richard, which made her feel even worse, but she wanted to try to feel something for Max and the children, if there was anything there, but there wasn’t, just a giant void where her feelings should have been. Everyone kept telling her how beautiful the baby was, but each time she tried to pick him up, he threw up on her and they both smelled disgusting.
There wasn’t a single part of the whole experience she was enjoying, except for the spectacular emerald ring Max had given her after she gave birth to Simon, but she felt too guilty to wear it. She was in love with another man. She couldn’t take a big piece of jewelry from Max just because she’d had his baby. And she knew he was saving his mother’s big diamond ring to give her one of these days, and she didn’t want that either. She didn’t want anything from him. She just wanted to be left alone, and spent most of her time in her room, crying every time she told herself that this was her life forever and she had to stand by Max and their children. All it did was make her want to run away.
“How are you doing?” Max asked her one night when they went to bed. He could tell that she was depressed again and had been since the hospital, and he wasn’t sure what it was about, other than hormones, and the “baby blues.”
“I don’t know. It’s just all so overwhelming. We have so many kids now and they need so much attention.” There were two in diapers who cried constantly, and two who talked incessantly, and the nannies wanted her attention too. She felt as though everyone was bleeding her dry.
“Well, we can’t send them back,” Max said unsympathetically. “You’ll get used to it,” and as he looked at her, he remembered what his mother had said, that Julie didn’t seem like the kind of girl to have a lot of children, or even be a serious wife to him, and for the first time in his life he wondered if he had married the wrong woman.
He remembered the strength his parents had given each other, the wisdom they had shared, the faith they had in each other’s abilities, the encouragement, the support. They had even given each other hope in a death camp, and Julie couldn’t handle having four children with four nannies to help her. She was drowning in a teacup, as his mother would say. He needed a woman with guts, like his mother, but he’d been so in love with Julie when he met her, he hadn’t wanted to see it. Julie was a woman to have fun with, she was decorative, but she wasn’t sturdy, and she was exactly what his mother had said, she wasn’t made to be the mother of many children or stand by her man while he built an empire for her. For the first time he felt despair lying next to her. It was a terrible feeling, and he turned over so she wouldn’t see the tears in his eyes. On her side of the bed, she was crying too, and he knew it, and he didn’t even want to reach out to comfort her. They had little compassion left for each other. They were two totally different people, two puzzle parts that no longer fit and never had, living under one roof.
He turned back to her for a minute. “I forgot to tell you. I’m leaving for Seattle in the morning. There are some great opportunities there, and then I have meetings in Southern California.” She didn’t say a word for a minute, and then she nodded.
“Have a good trip.” He couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or sincere, and he wasn’t even sure he cared which anymore. He hated to admit it, but he felt nothing for her.
* * *
—
Six weeks after he’d left, and a month after the baby was born, Richard called her from the boat. They were at the dock in Monte Carlo and had just come back from Sardinia, and he sounded serious on the phone.
“I can’t stand it anymore, Julie. I know I said take all the time you wanted, but I’m going crazy. I miss you. I don’t want to pressure you, but I have to see you. I’m flying to New York tonight from Nice. I get in around midnight, and I want to see you tomorrow. I just want to touch you and hold you and see your face.” He sounded desperate and she was touched. She felt the same way, but she didn’t know if seeing him was the right thing. She still hadn’t made a decision and she was feeling worse every day.
“I’m kind of a mess,” she said hesitantly. She looked pasty and pale, and she hadn’t lost all the baby weight yet, and she was morbidly depressed.
“I don’t care if you’re a mess. I love you. I haven’t seen you in six weeks. Just see me for an hour or two, and then I’ll leave you alone until you figure things out. You’re lik
e the air I breathe, I need you.”
“I need you too,” she said sadly. And she didn’t need Max and her children, but she thought they needed her. “Are you coming just to see me?”
“Yes, I am,” he said honestly. It was frightening to let himself be that vulnerable, especially to a married woman, who might still decide not to leave her husband and children. And he knew he was asking a lot of her, but he couldn’t take on four kids, two of them babies, with joint custody, and a fleet of nannies and a possibly irate husband. He knew himself well enough to know he couldn’t handle it and they’d wind up hating each other. He wanted her to himself and on her own. And she knew it, he had told her. “I’ll fly back tomorrow night after I see you.”
“That’s it? Just one day to see me?”
“I’ll stay two if you want, or forever. You’re the boss here. I had guests arriving tomorrow. I just canceled them. I want to come and see you. Is that a deal? Ten A.M. tomorrow at my place? Is Max in town?” he asked as an afterthought.
“No, he’s not. He went to Seattle, and I forget where after that. I think he’s gone for another week.”
“That makes it easier.” He wanted to ask her to meet him at the apartment when he arrived that night, but he didn’t want to frighten her away. Anything but that.
“I’ll be there tomorrow,” she said softly, and lay on her bed afterward, thinking about him, and just knowing he was coming, she felt different. She got up and washed her hair and did her nails. She looked in her closet to find something to wear and discovered that her clothes fit better than she thought. She’d been so distraught that she hadn’t been eating and had lost most of the baby weight. There was a little left on her hips but that was all. Not nursing, she lost it faster.
In His Father's Footsteps Page 26