by Amy Hatvany
“I hope so,” Kelli said just as Ava dashed into their bedroom from the hallway and jumped on the bed with Victor.
“Daddy!” she squealed, throwing her arms around his neck.
“Oomph!” Victor said as she hugged him. “Where’s the fire, little girl?”
She pulled back and gave him a serious look. “There’s no fire,” she said. “But if there was, I call a fireman and then stop! drop! and roll! like my teacher taught me at school.”
Victor kissed Ava’s cheek. “Very good. How did you get to be such a smart girl?”
Ava shrugged. “I don’t know. I just am.”
Kelli smiled as she watched them together. She couldn’t remember her father ever holding her so long or with so much affection. She joined them and gave Ava a kiss. “Guess what, honey?” she said. “Mama might have a baby in her tummy. You could be a big sister.”
Ava was quiet a moment, then looked back and forth between her parents. “A girl baby?”
“Maybe,” Victor said. “But it could be a boy.”
“Yuck,” Ava said, screwing up her pretty face. “If it is, can we take it back wherever you got it?” Kelli and Victor both laughed and curled up with their daughter on the bed.
A test soon confirmed that yes, in fact, Kelli was pregnant again. After she began feeling better, she continued to help Victor prepare the restaurant to launch. They lured Victor’s best friend, Spencer, from the restaurant where they’d all worked, giving him a promotion from sous chef to executive chef, and together, the men designed the menu while Kelli worked on the décor. She was less panicky during this pregnancy. She knew what to expect. Max was born after another quick labor just a few days before the Loft was scheduled to open its doors. Money was getting tight, and Victor knew he’d have to spend more hours at the restaurant than he ever had at his previous job.
“I’ll be fine,” Kelli told him as he held their baby boy swaddled in a blue flannel blanket. “Diane can help out, and Ava’s almost seven now. She can help, too.” But then, inexplicably, right there in the hospital room, she began to cry, suddenly missing her mother more than she ever had before. She wanted a mother like Eileen—someone to nurture and help take care of her grandbabies. She wanted a mother who loved her deeply and uncontrollably, the way Kelli loved her own children. How could they not want to see her? Kelli wondered if they were simply relieved that she’d left so they wouldn’t be reminded of what she put them through. She wondered if there’d ever be a time that they might want her back.
Seeing her tears, Victor visibly tensed. “Are you sure you’ll be okay?”
A nurse entered just then, with Ava in tow. “It’s just a hormone crash,” she told Victor. “Totally normal.” Kelli felt like it was something deeper, something more insidious, but she hoped the nurse was right.
Ava rushed over to Kelli’s side, scrambling up onto the bed to cuddle her mother. “It’s a girl, right?” she asked excitedly. They’d told her as soon as they’d had the ultrasound that she was going to have a baby brother, but she remained convinced that if she just hoped hard enough, she’d get the sister she wanted. “Aw, rats!” Ava said when Victor told her again that Max was a boy. She looked up to her mother, worried. “But you still love me. I’m still your favorite daughter.”
“You sure are,” Kelli said with a smile. She wiped at her cheeks to erase any evidence of her grief. “And Max is my favorite son.”
“Huh.” Ava shrugged. “What about Daddy?”
Kelli looked at Victor, still smiling. “Daddy is my favorite man in the world.” Victor handed Max to her as though their son was a fragile piece of glass. The love she saw in his eyes would be enough, she decided, and at that moment, Kelli knew that after all she’d done wrong, this was as perfect a life as she would get.
Grace
After Victor went to comfort Ava and Max, I sat on the couch, staring at the wall above the fireplace, waiting. Waiting for what, I wasn’t sure. Maybe to see if he asked me for help, though I didn’t know what kind of help I might be. Clearly Ava wanted nothing to do with me, and on some level, I couldn’t blame her. She’d just suffered the biggest loss of her life; a woman she only saw a couple of times a month certainly wouldn’t be who she’d run to in search of emotional reassurance.
“Ava’s always been a little hard to reach,” Victor had told me one evening back in January. He’d just dropped the kids at their mother’s house and I’d voiced my feeling that no matter what I did, Ava seemed determined not to like me.
“It takes time for her to warm up,” Victor explained. He set his hand on top of mine. “Don’t take it personally. It’s about her, not you, okay? She’ll get there.”
I’d nodded, but really, it was impossible not to take it personally. Even though I reminded myself that she’d likely have treated any woman who dated her father this way, part of me worried that she sensed my trepidation around getting to know them and was simply keeping her distance. Maybe I just needed to give her more time.
Now I lay on the couch while Victor went back and forth between his children’s rooms, trying to comfort them as they both cried, and thought about the part I might play in their lives. My body tensed at the idea of being thrown into the daily demands of having them live with us—the homework, the meals, the inevitable fighting. I wasn’t sure I could do this, but I couldn’t imagine running away, leaving my fiancé and his children to manage on their own in the midst of their grief. Maybe more importantly, I didn’t want to. I wanted to be better than that.
I suddenly remembered a conversation I had with a woman I worked with in my late twenties. Her name was Barb, and she had just come back from maternity leave for her fourth child. She couldn’t stop gushing about how much she loved having those three months off to be with her children.
“It doesn’t overwhelm you?” I asked her. “Having four of them?” I thought about how hard it had been for me to help take care of just Sam by himself and I couldn’t fathom doing it with three other children to worry about. In fact, the idea made me slightly queasy. I pictured babies rolling off the edge of couches, food splatters against the walls, toddlers racing out the front door and into the street before I could stop them.
Barb laughed at my question. “Sure it does. When they’re all screeching and demanding something from me and I feel like I might explode if one more of them makes a sound.” She paused and gave me a dreamy smile. “But you really don’t know what love is until you’re a mother. You can’t understand it until you’ve had a baby yourself, but it’s the most intense feeling in the world. It makes every minute of the hard parts worth it.”
I winced a little when she said this, as though she meant that a heart like mine was somehow defective because I hadn’t had children. I didn’t think of myself as less able to feel love. But her comments made me question myself and wonder if by missing out on motherhood, I was missing out on something that would make me a better person. Barb worked full-time and had four kids, so it wasn’t as though she had to sacrifice her career just because she was a mother. I worked with countless women who managed their careers along with their families—it wasn’t that it wasn’t possible to do both; it was that I didn’t think I could.
Melody seemed like the only person who really understood how I felt. “I think you either have the mommy gene or you don’t,” she told me once when we were discussing the loud ticking of her own biological clock. “It’s probably like knowing if you’re gay or not. You just know.”
“Great,” I said, laughing. “My brother got the gay gene and I didn’t get the maternal one. My poor mother.” I knew my mom struggled with the idea that she likely was never going to be a grandmother, and ultimately, I felt responsible for depriving her of the experience. But even a severe case of daughter guilt wasn’t enough to convince me I’d make a good mother. I’d also decided to try to work through my fears when I met Victor. And now that he was the only parent to Max and Ava, it wouldn’t be fair for me to walk away. Not to me,
not to Victor, and definitely not to the kids.
I glanced at the clock on the wall next to the bookcase. It was already ten; the hours had melted away. Victor was still with the kids—their cries were so raw, the sound reached in and squeezed the muscles in my chest. It made me think of my clients when they first came to Second Chances, grief wrenching them wide open. It was impossible to fathom the depths of their pain, and now it felt impossible to know Max and Ava’s.
I rose from the couch and made my way to our bed, my body aching with fatigue. I took a long, hot shower, climbed beneath the covers, and tried to distract myself with some Jon Stewart while I waited for Victor. I didn’t think I could sleep, but a while later, I woke to his gently shaking my shoulder, the television still on. “Do you mind moving to one of their rooms or on the couch?” he whispered. “I’m sorry, but I think they might sleep if they can be in bed with me.”
I blinked a few times and glanced at the clock. Midnight. I nodded. “Of course,” I said, my voice coming out like bits of gravel. I fumbled for the remote and turned off the TV. “Are you holding up okay?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.” His voice was ragged. He’d been crying, too. “I’m just trying to be there for them. There’s really nothing else I can do.”
I righted myself on the edge of the bed and put my arms around him, resting my cheek on his shoulder. “I love you.” I didn’t know what else to say.
He pulled back and gave me a soft kiss. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Me too,” I said, cringing a bit as I stood and made my way back to the couch, wondering if uttering those two tiny words had just turned me into a liar.
Ava
I couldn’t breathe. I lay on my bed, tears slipping down my cheeks, my lungs swelling against my rib cage. Breathe, I told them, and they let the tiniest bit of air inside. Mama is dead. Oh my god, she’s dead.
Daddy came into my room and lay down with me. He pressed his body behind mine, wrapping a long arm over my chest and pushing his face into my neck. “I’m so sorry, baby girl,” he whispered, his words muffled by my hair.
I shook my head, rubbing my face back and forth in my pillow. I wanted to scream at him to leave me alone, to go away and be with Grace. Leave me alone, leave me alone. The words beat a noisy rhythm in my head, but I couldn’t say them. All I could see was Mama’s face; all I could feel was the ache in my chest, the sharp stinging sensation of what seemed like a thousand tiny needles pricking my skin.
“I’m going to check on Max for a minute, okay, honey?” Dad said. His voice was frayed, like he might break down, too. I could hear my brother through the wall, the high-pitched, strangled edge of his cries. “I’ll be right back.”
I couldn’t speak. There were no words. He shut the door quietly behind him and I opened my mouth wide, my insides twisting tighter and tighter. I wanted to scream. I felt desperate to get the pain out of my body, but no sound would come. Only tears.
She was gone. Mama was gone. She’d never hug me again, never tell me that I’m smart and pretty. A slideshow flashed through my brain, one image clicking after another: Mama climbing into bed with me at night, rubbing my back, whispering a lullaby in my ear to help me fall asleep. Mama standing in front of the stove, stirring the lemon chicken soup she made only when one of us was sick. Mama laughing, her mouth open wide and her blue eyes sparkling; Mama curled up in her bed, Max on one side, me on the other. Mama crying, telling us Daddy wasn’t coming home anymore. Telling us we were on our own. Mama holding me this morning, saying she loved me so much.
“Mama,” I cried, the word creaking out of my throat with blades attached to it, tearing at my flesh. “Please, Mama, no.” How could she be gone? Here one minute and vanished the next? It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. She was just here. She was here this morning. But something was wrong with her. She was dizzy and I let her convince me she was fine. I should have known. I should have sensed something was really wrong. There had to have been something I could have done. I could have made her go to the doctor. I could have told Diane she didn’t feel well. But instead, I went to school. I didn’t even kiss her good-bye when she dropped us off. I didn’t want the other kids to see me and think I was a baby, like Max. Now she would never kiss me again. She wouldn’t help me get ready for my first date or pick out my dress for the prom. She wouldn’t take me to college or teach me how to use eyeliner like she’d promised she would once I turned sixteen. She wouldn’t even be there when I turned sixteen. I’d be alone. Motherless. I felt like I was falling off a cliff. Down, down, down, flailing for a branch to hold on to. Something, anything, to save me.
This can’t be true. The hospital made a mistake. I would have noticed if she was that sick. I would have known. I knew she wasn’t happy that week, maybe even more withdrawn than usual, but she didn’t look like she was dying. She’d been acting strange since Monday, when she picked us up from school, the black smudges beneath her eyes and red splotches across her face and neck evidence of her recent tears. Max didn’t notice, but I did. The signs had become more familiar to me than her smile.
She drove us to his basketball practice at the Boys and Girls Club, and as we sat on the bleachers watching my brother run up and down the court with his friends, I took her hand in mine. “What’s wrong?” I asked. She told me, sometimes, what was bothering her. That she was lonely or afraid that we didn’t have enough money to pay the bills. Today, she kept quiet, but I kept prodding her.
“I just have a lot on my mind,” she said. “I had a talk with your father today.”
“What about?”
“Grown-up stuff,” she said, and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes a little. I’d been dealing with the fallout of her “grown-up stuff” with my dad for years now. Comforting her when she cried, making sure she got out of bed in the weeks after he moved out. It irritated me how she went back and forth between trying to be my mother and acting helpless. Strong one minute, then dissolving into tears the next. It made me jumpy, never knowing which version of her I’d get. I missed the mother she used to be, the one she’d been before Daddy left.
“He asked me not to tell you,” she said, and my stomach flipped over. Even if she wasn’t doing it on purpose, I hated it when she said things to make my dad look like the bad guy. Suddenly angry, I pulled my hand away from hers and concentrated on watching Max attempting to dribble. He bounced the ball off the tip of his tennis shoe and it shot across the court. “Don’t worry, I got it!” he yelled, waving to his teammates. He picked up the ball, tried to dribble, and bounced it off his shoe again. His coach started yelling at him to pass, but Max didn’t listen. Instead, he raced after the ball, recovered it, and took a shot at the basket. “Nothing but net!” he hollered as the ball finally went through the hoop, then he did a little victory dance on the court. Watching him, I couldn’t help but smile.
I wondered what it was Dad didn’t want Mama to tell me, but it really could have been anything. I shot Bree a text message, “My mom’s such a pain,” and she texted back, “Mine 2.”
Mama nudged me as I tried to text. “Hey,” she said. “Are you mad at me?”
“No,” I said, not looking at her. “Just watching Max.”
“No, you’re not. You’re texting.” She reached for my phone. “I want you to talk with me.”
“God, Mom,” I said, yanking my phone away so she couldn’t get it. “I don’t feel like talking, okay? Is that all right with you?” Her face crumpled and her eyes filled with tears, and I immediately felt horrible. I sighed and put my arm around her. “I’m sorry. I’m just tired.”
She leaned her head on my shoulder and wiped her eyes. “Me too, baby girl. Me too.”
Did she know she was sick, then? I wondered now, as I lay on my bed crying. Did she want Daddy to tell us instead of her, because he was better at handling those kinds of things? Maybe she knew she had something wrong with her as I sat with her on those hard bleachers. Maybe she wanted me to make her tell me, to coax
it out of her like I’d done countless times before when she was upset. I’d let her down. I got irritated and ignored her. I should have told Daddy something was wrong. I should have called him and told him how upset she was, how she wasn’t sleeping and how she still cried all the time. I didn’t do any of this and now she was dead.
The pain suddenly inflated, pushing against the underside of my skin. I rolled around, trying to escape the mounting pressure inside me. “No, no, no,” I cried, and without warning, the ache exploded, slashing through the muscles in my chest and up out of my mouth. I screamed into my pillow, hot tears scalding my cheeks. I punched the wall, barely registering the hard smack of my knuckles against it, then hit it again. My cries raked against my throat, over and over, until finally, Daddy came rushing back in.
“Oh, Ava, sweetie,” he said, wrapping himself back around me, trying to hold me still.
I struggled against him, wanting to pull away, but there was no point. He was too strong; he wouldn’t let me go. “I’m here, honey,” he said. “It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”
“No!” I screamed again, but he only held me tighter. I sobbed then, the pain seeping out of me, my body melting into my father’s embrace, my mind still knowing he was wrong.
Knowing that no matter what he said, things would never be okay again.
Grace
In the morning, I didn’t want to leave Victor alone to deal with the kids, but I also wasn’t sure really what good—if any—I would be to him. Max had some Cocoa Puffs, but the rest of us didn’t want to eat. We all carried dark luggage beneath our eyes and no one said much. Ava wouldn’t even look at me. The kids watched noisy and distracting cartoons in the den, while Victor and I took some time to talk in our room. We sat on the bed, his hands wrapped around mine.
“I’m sorry I snapped at you last night,” he said.