Morning light slants through the hospital window as slowly I come through the door of the nursery, my body aching with both fatigue and fear. My heart is beating in a painful staccato as I approach the plastic bassinet. I am swathed in scrubs and latex, due to the possibility of infection, but my arms ache with the need to reach and hold, and then to never let go. But I can’t; I know I can’t.
A nurse smiles at me sympathetically and gestures to the bassinet, as if granting me permission to approach, or perhaps simply pointing out the right baby. But of course I know you, my child.
My child. The words buoy me inside as if I am filled with lightness, with air, so I feel as if I am floating. My child. How could I not know it? How could I not feel it? It inhabits every fiber of my being, every cell. I pulse with the knowledge, the fragile joy. Incredulously, I smile.
And there you are – small, so small, swathed in a white flannel blanket, a tuft of light brown hair under a little knitted cap, your fists by your face like flowers, your lips pursed like a tiny rosebud, cheeks soft and round. Perfect. I know every mother thinks the same, of course she does, but no one feels it like me. No one.
I stand in front of your bassinet, battling both tears and euphoria, because it’s too soon to feel this way, or maybe it’s too late. I reach out one hand and rest it on the plastic crib, longing to touch your soft, pink skin, your round cheek, already knowing how smooth it will feel. I love you. I will do anything for you.
I didn’t expect to feel it so strongly, flooding me with both need and purpose. I’d separated myself somehow, over the last few harrowing months, because I had to. Because it felt safer and stronger, a necessary element of this whole torturous process, to keep myself a little bit distant. But now…
Now everything has changed. Everything. I lean forward, willing your tiny eyes with their sparse, golden lashes to open. To see me for myself, a mother.
And then they do, and I fall into their deep blue depths. I fall and fall, everything in me swelling with love as my heart starts to break.
‘Kev… I’m pregnant.’
Maybe I shouldn’t have said it like that. Maybe I shouldn’t have said it at all. But it’s his problem too. And I know that’s what it is – a problem. As much as I wish it was something else, something that it should be. A surprise, a blessing, a miracle. The normal things. The right ones.
‘What?’ Kevin stares at me blankly, slumped in the La-z-Boy with the threadbare arms and the stuffing come out of the bottom. I hate that thing. Especially since Kev’s been sitting in it for the last three years.
I know it’s not his fault. It was an accident. Hurting his back at work and now this baby. Two problems, two accidents that have torpedoed our little lives, exploding right into the middle of them so everything feels wrecked.
‘Do you mind if I turn off the TV?’ I reach for the remote resting on the arm of the chair. Kev grabs it instinctively, and I fold my arms and wait. He hesitates, and then, with a big drawn-out sigh, he puts the TV on mute.
Now maybe we can finally have a conversation, except I don’t know what to say besides what I already have. Kev’s gaze keeps flicking toward the screen. Doesn’t he realize how important this is? We’re going to have a baby. Another one.
‘How can you be pregnant?’ he finally demands. This probably wasn’t the best time to talk, at the end of a long, pain-filled day, one spent in front of the TV, and then a tense phone call from the union lawyer. There’s a hearing coming up but Kev didn’t tell me about the call. I just heard his low voice, like a growl, and I knew it couldn’t be great news.
But I think I’m at least twelve weeks along and we need to talk. I hadn’t paid attention to the signs that now suddenly seem obvious. The sore breasts, the tiredness, the nausea, the nasty taste in my mouth. I told myself it was the usual PMS, but this morning I looked in the mirror and saw my thickened waist, my rounded belly, and realization clanged through me, an almighty alarm bell. I had to tell Kevin.
It had to be when the girls were in bed, because the last thing I need is Lucy demanding in her high, piping voice what I’m talking about, or Amy triumphantly informing her how babies are made – something she learned on the playground a few weeks ago – in terms I would never use or want her to hear. I also needed to tell Kev before he took his pain meds, since he’s out for the count about twenty minutes after he pops them. Although maybe this conversation won’t even take twenty minutes. What else is there to say?
‘I think you know how it happened. The usual way.’ I slump onto the sofa, too tired to stay on my feet. Last night I worked the night shift, cleaning an office building in Newark until three in the morning, and then grabbing a few hours of sleep before getting up for the girls, seeing them off to school through a haze of exhaustion. The thought of another baby, another need, makes everything in me churn with fear because I don’t know how I can do it.
This is the thought that keeps blaring through me like a car horn, palm flat on it, since I finally acknowledged to myself that I was pregnant: I can’t have this baby. We can’t afford it, not the space, not the time, and of course not the money. I need to start work full-time; that was the plan when Lucy went to kindergarten. We can’t make it without that money. I can’t have this baby. But I can’t see any way not to.
‘But…’ Kev narrows his eyes. His hair is rumpled, his face unshaven. He doesn’t see the point any more, and I understand why. He’s been out of work for two years and nine months. Lucy doesn’t even remember when Daddy had a job. When life was normal, when the electricity didn’t get cut off on a regular basis, when my bank card didn’t get rejected at Stop & Shop and I fumbled through an excuse about changed pins while the cashier looked on in either pity or impatience. When Kevin wasn’t sprawled in that chair every hour of the day, staring bleary-eyed at the TV, the life sucked out of him. This is Lucy’s normal, and I hate that.
As for a baby… ‘It’s not like we do it that often,’ Kevin grumbles, and I don’t know whether to laugh or groan. What is this, a tenth grade sex-ed lesson? Or did he miss that, because we were busy cutting classes and making out behind the storage sheds; two shy quiet kids who broke the rules for each other? And look how that went. Pregnant at seventeen, Kev a year older, married three months later, happy for a while, and here we are.
I remember those hungry, hopeful kisses, pressed up against the concrete block of the shed wall, my hands fisted in Kev’s shirt. Feeling so excited, so happy, like anything was possible as long as I had him. I’d never had a boyfriend before Kev. I’d drifted through high school, keeping my head down, trying not to get noticed, and he was the same. We lit each other up, like we had candles inside. Fireworks. I can’t remember the last time I felt like that, all fizzy inside. It was a long, long time ago.
‘It only takes one time, Kev,’ I say, trying for a smile. ‘Remember?’ Emma was a one-time baby, both of us too shy and uncertain to attempt the mess of it again until we were married. We fumbled through everything, a hurried half hour in Kev’s basement, zippers sticking, noses bumping, soft laughter in the dark, embarrassment rushing through us along with the dizzying lust.
As for more recently… not so different, really. A drunken fumble on the sofa, wanting to feel just a little bit of that connection again. And now this.
‘Yeah, I know, but…’ Kev shakes his head again, making me think of a sleepy bear. One who’s thinking about getting angry. Because since the accident, I never know when Kevin is going to get angry. He can be so sweet sometimes, playing Guess Who or Connect Four with Amy, listening to Emma read her silly pony books, slipping his arm around my waist, surprising me.
Then all of a sudden he’ll lash out, pushing the book or game away, demanding dark and quiet, which usually means beer and TV and sometimes cigarettes, the smoke snaking through the rooms of our little house, staining the ceiling.
I try to be patient. I do. I take deep breaths, I keep my voice mild, I let it all roll over me. But this? A baby? This is meant to be our problem, even though I hate that it’s a problem in the first place. It’s a baby. Our baby, already curled up inside me, heart beating hard. I’m not seventeen anymore, tearful and uncertain, except that’s how I feel a little bit, inside. Like I’m not sure how this is going to turn out, or if Kev’s going to be there for me. For us. For this baby.
Kevin runs a hand through his already-messed hair and lets out a sound I don’t like. It’s part groan, part sigh, and it sounds like despair. ‘We can’t have another kid, Heather,’ he says in a low voice. He won’t look at me, his stubbly chin tucked toward his chest. ‘Things are tight enough as it is.’
He thinks I don’t know that? That I don’t realize we’re two months behind on the rent, and we have all of two hundred bucks in the bank account? We’re one teetering step away from destitution, and have been for so long that I’ve almost got used to living on that knife-edge. But you can only keep your balance for so long.
It wasn’t always like this. When Kevin worked our lives were completely different then. I try to remember the people we used to be. I try to hang on to the woman I was, because sometimes I don’t recognize this person I’ve become; this tired, stringy-haired, stressed-out woman who screeches and shrieks and bites her nails, whose pregnancy is a looming disaster rather than the joy I wish it could be.
Back then, before his accident, Kevin smiled and laughed and tossed the girls up in the air. He kissed me in the kitchen, and we walked around the block on a summer evening, the girls on their rusty trikes in front of us. Small, simple pleasures, but that’s what happiness is, isn’t it?
We had money – not a lot, we’ve never had that, but enough for birthday presents and take-out on Fridays and the occasional splurge – a trip to a theme park, a dinner out. I didn’t hold my breath when I paid for the groceries, or wince when I checked the bank balance on the ATM, at least not often. Life didn’t feel like a minefield, and now I’ve just stepped on one, everything exploding around us.
I can’t have this baby.
I can’t have an abortion, either. That might seem obvious to some, and sometimes it does to me, but I’ve felt my babies kick, I’ve seen them curled up tight or wriggling like crazy on the ultrasound screen. What makes this one so different? Just a little bit of money, or even a lot? Besides, we’re Catholic. Not so much with the church going, not every Sunday, but still… It’s the way I grew up; it’s what I know.
And then of course there are other people to think about: Kev, my family, my neighbors, my friends. What if someone found out? What if I was seen? The gossip would never stop, along with the pity and judgment. I don’t know which would feel worse.
This part of North Elizabeth, New Jersey, is like a small town where everybody knows everybody else’s business. We gossip on our cracked front steps and out on the sagging back porches. Kids whisper in the schoolyard. Women lean across grocery carts. Men talk in bars. Someone would know. Someone would figure it out, and then what?
But am I tempted? Yes. I’ve looked up the number of the local Planned Parenthood clinic and sat there with the phone in my hand while Lucy played around me, chattering to herself, with no idea what was going on in Mommy’s mind. I’ve told myself to call. No one would need to know, no one would find out, and it would solve everything.
‘So what are you going to do?’ Kevin asks, and I blink, stung by the ‘you’. We’ve been married for eleven years, we have three kids, he’s the only man I’ve ever kissed or done anything with, but it’s my problem. Of course it is.
‘What do you mean, what am I going to do?’ I ask, and for once I let him hear my irritation. I’m always so careful with Kevin, but right now I don’t have it in me. ‘What are you saying, Kev?’ I ask, and I know I’m daring him to say what he means, even as I realize he won’t.
He’s a good man, Kev. Underneath the pain and the bitterness, that good man is still there. He’s still the one who stammered when he asked me out, who asked if he could kiss me that first time, and then bumped my nose with his. We both laughed, and it was okay. It’s always been okay, until the accident. Until a fall from a forklift turned Kev into a man I don’t feel I know and sometimes I don’t even like.
Kev stares me in the face for a full minute. I hadn’t realized how faded his eyes have become. They used to be such a warm hazel, glinting with gold, but now they just look muddy. He’s thirty years old and he looks more than forty, but then so do I. Three babies, no sleep, no money. It adds up – and then it takes away.
‘My workman’s comp ends in six weeks,’ Kev says, and for a few seconds I just stare back at him.
‘You mean you have the hearing.’ That’s what the lawyer called about this morning. Three years of disability payments and then it comes up for review. But Kev will keep getting it – he was injured on the job, something went wrong with the controls of his forklift and he ended up flat on his back on the concrete floor, a fall from fifteen feet.
I got a call at home, someone from work, and then the union, telling me the company would cover the hospital costs; that the company owed us. I could barely take it in; my mind was buzzing and blank, and everything in me felt gray and numb. I didn’t know if Kev had hurt his brain along with his back, if our lives were changed forever. And it turned out they were.
He was in the hospital for three weeks and nearly three years later he’s still on heavy meds. He can’t lift anything more than ten pounds. He certainly can’t go back to his old job. Of course he’ll get the disability payments renewed.
But Kevin is shaking his head. He won’t look at me. He picks at a threadbare patch on the chair with a ragged fingernail. ‘The lawyer said today that they won’t renew it. They’re saying I’ve had maximum medical improvement’ – he sneers at the words – ‘and that I can resume light duty, the dicks.’
I stare at him, hardly able to take it in. ‘So you mean there will be no more money…?’
‘The lawyer says I can get permanent partial disability, but it won’t be much. And the company doesn’t have any light duty for me. What a fucking surprise.’ He sounds so bitter, and I can’t blame him. But we have to have more money coming in, baby or not. We can’t survive otherwise. We’ll lose the house, we won’t be able to eat, never mind another baby.
I swallow hard, blinking back the dizziness. ‘But can’t you appeal…?’
‘The lawyer says it’s not worth it. This is the best I’m going to get.’
The lawyer, the lawyer… I don’t even know his name. Someone the union sent, someone with a loud voice, shiny shoes, buttons straining against his belly, a smell of sweat. I never liked him. I didn’t trust him. I don’t think he once looked me in the eye.
‘So there’s nothing we can do?’ My voice is a squeak. Even after all the crap we’ve had thrown at us, I can’t believe it. I make two hundred and twenty dollars a week maximum, and doing that many nights just about kills me. Our rent is eight hundred, never mind all the other expenses.
I didn’t think we could sink much lower, but now I see a whole new pit opening underneath us. Losing the house. Going on welfare. Food stamps, public housing, the government paying our way, just barely. You never get out of that pit. You get lost in it, lost and forgotten and ashamed.
And I know it would just about kill Kev, to admit that much failure. Kev always has been proud how we’ve made it on our own. When we were first starting out, we didn’t accept a single handout from my parents, not that they had much to give, and even less now. His parents didn’t have anything – his father’s a drunk, his mother just as bad. Kev doesn’t even want the girls seeing them.
‘That’s it,’ Kev says dully, and he reaches for the little orange canister that holds his nightly medication and pops the lid. ‘Not much more I can do.’
‘And this baby?’ I ask in little more than a whisper. I feel sick inside, like that pit that just opened up beneath us is really inside of me. Everything is sinking into it until there’s nothing left but fear and despair. ‘What are we going to do, Kev? How are we going to manage?’
He looks up at me, bleary-eyed, as he shakes the pills into his hand. ‘You tell me, Heather.’
The day of my father’s funeral one of the partners, Bruce Felson, calls to tell me I’ve made Harrow and Heath seven million dollars in a single hour after I set the share price yesterday for a new social media company.
‘You’re on fire, Grace,’ he says with a laugh into the phone, that comfortable, jocular chuckle of an amused uncle, a forbearing father. I’m so tired even my teeth ache, and I’ve been wearing a pair of four-inch Louboutins for eleven hours.
‘Thanks,’ I say, my tone lacking its usual brisk vigor. I wonder why I even answered the call. I’d been in the elevator up to my apartment after attending my father’s funeral service, burial, and an interminable two hours at the country club in Connecticut where I’d held the reception, making chitchat with strangers, old business acquaintances of my dad’s, some of my parents’ old couple friends I hadn’t seen in about twenty years.
When I’d seen Bruce’s name flash onto my screen I’d answered as a matter of habit, a Pavlovian response to the pressures of work, because in venture capital you’ve always got to be on the ball, looking for the next opportunity before anyone else finds it. And I want to make partner before I’m forty, which is in seven months. I’ve been a principal for four years, and I’m ready. I’m so ready.
‘Oh,’ Bruce says, as if he’d just thought of it, which I’m sure he has. ‘Is today your father’s…?’
‘Yes,’ I say simply, and his chuckle peters out.
‘Sorry,’ he says, all stiff politeness now. ‘Did it go, ah, well?’
Do funerals ever go well? Can I even judge such a thing at this moment? People came. A priest spoke. There were a lot of murmured words and wilted sandwiches. ‘It was lovely, thank you,’ I say, and Bruce gives a pleased grunt.
‘Good, good.’ An awkward pause. ‘Well, then. See you tomorrow.’
I disconnect the call and step out of the elevator to unlock the door to my apartment, my hands nearly shaking with the effort. I’m so tired I feel like I could cry, and that is something I haven’t done since my father died a week ago. Behind me my neighbor’s door, the only other one on the floor, opens.
‘Oh, hello.’ The woman’s voice is cheerful, inviting conversation. I’ve been living here for four years and I should know her and her husband’s names, but I don’t. I turn back with a distracted half-smile and my key clatters onto the marble floor. ‘Been somewhere exciting?’ the woman asks brightly, and all I can do is stare.
I’ve shared minimal, meaningless chitchat with my neighbors over the years; I think our longest conversation has been about when the recycling is going to be collected after Christmas. They pushed me a Christmas card under the door several times, and I’ve forgotten to give one back. How on earth can I tell this woman with her squinting, near-sighted smile what I’ve been doing today? So I don’t.
‘Nothing terribly exciting.’ I try to smile but my face feels funny. The woman nods, clearly waiting for more, but I don’t have anything and so I turn my smile into something more of a farewell and stoop down for my key. She stays in her own doorway, waiting, while I fumble with the lock and finally, thankfully, close my door behind me.
My heels click across the marble foyer, echoing in the emptiness. Ahead of me floor-to-ceiling windows overlook Central Park, twilight already settling over it, the shadows lengthening between the clusters of trees, the traffic emptying out, a few cabs gliding down Fifth Avenue.
The air smells of lavender and lemon, the organic furniture polish my cleaner uses. Everything is still and quiet and perfect, my oasis in a full, frenetic life.
My father is dead.
I feel like I should cry, but I can’t. The tears have gathered into a cold, hard lump in my chest. I feel it every time I swallow. I picture it ossifying, getting harder and bigger, choking me, taking me over. But still the tears won’t come. They came after my mother died; hot tears pouring down my cheeks while my father held me. A grief shared is one divided, lessened; I bear the weight of this one all alone, and it’s crippling me. I am bowed beneath it.
I walk to the window, kicking off my heels, flexing my cramped toes, but even that small thing feels like an indulgence I shouldn’t enjoy, not now. Not when my father is no longer alive. How can I enjoy anything any more?
One hand rests on the cool glass, connecting me to the world. Ten stories below two women walk along the cobbled pavement by the park, deep in conversation, gesturing widely. Behind them a mother, or perhaps a nanny, hurries her child along. He’s holding a soccer ball and dragging his feet; the woman is steering him by the shoulder.
When the reception after the funeral ended, I went to the club’s bar and drank two Scotches, neat, my father’s drink, while the bartender polished glasses and the club emptied out. The alcohol seethes in my stomach now; I didn’t used to like whisky, but I learned to drink it. When you work on Wall Street, whether it’s investment banking or venture capital, and just about everyone other than the secretaries is male, you need to do that kind of pseudo-masculine stuff. Drink whisky. Laugh at the titty jokes. Play golf, or at least be interested in it. I’ve even smoked a cigar.
But now I’m home, and the apartment is as empty as it ever was, and I feel like I can’t stand it for a second longer. The silence screams at me, hurting my ears.
On a normal night I’d change out of my suit, pour myself a glass of wine from the expensive bottle I keep chilling in the fridge, and settle down in front of the TV to watch the news on CNN. After about five minutes, if that, I’d switch to Bloomberg to keep up with the financial markets, because I can’t stay away. Then I’d do thirty minutes on my elliptical trainer before getting ready for bed. And I’d feel happy, damn it. I’d feel happy and satisfied, and just a little bit smug, but in a good way. I had it all, I really did. Now I feel as if I have nothing.
I’m alone. The words rattle around like marbles in the emptiness of my mind. Of course, I’ve known I’m alone for a long time. I’ve been single for my entire adult life, save a few forays into relationships that never went all that far, mostly because I didn’t see the point.
My work has precluded a lot of things: lots of good women friends, serious boyfriends, long vacations, any semblance of what most people call normal life. But it’s made me a lot of money, including a cut of the seven million today, and I’ve enjoyed the chase, the discovery, the benefits. I never felt like I was missing out. I never wished for more than I had.
But right now I have a deep, primal need not to be so alone. I need someone here with me, someone to shoulder something of what I feel, and the sad and glaring truth is that there just isn’t anyone to do that.
Friends, fine. I’ve managed with casual acquaintances and office chitchat, meeting my colleague Jill to work out, the occasional after-work drink with someone from my MBA days. One summer I shared a rental in the Hamptons with my friend Joanne and a bunch of her friends; it was fine. I could have taken or left it all, I’ve never been that bothered. I’ve never needed lots of friends.
As for boyfriends, lovers? I’ve had a few, some more serious than others, but I’ve never really wanted to go down that whole marriage and kids route that so many women seem to think is inevitable, and that’s been fine. Fine.
But my dad? My daddy? The man who gave me twenty dollars to invest when I was seven? Who sat with me poring over the business section of the New York Times, who told me about getting in on Microsoft before it went big – never mind that he didn’t, he just thought about it.
My dad was so proud of me. He didn’t like me going into venture capital, true; he felt it was too risky. He played it safe, lived a middle-class life out in Newtown, Connecticut, and retired at sixty-five. But he was proud of me, even with the risks. When I found that first tech investment that went big, six years ago – All Natural, a company that sourced organic products from different stores to present the whole healthy living/wellness package to subscribers – he pumped his fist in the air and said, ‘Gracie, you did it. You damn well did it!’
My dad was everything to me: mother, father, family. When my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was seven, he stepped right up. He came to my ballet recitals; he made spaghetti and meatballs for dinner; he sat with me at bedtime. He bought me pads for my first period and stammered through a talk about birth control right before I went to college. He took me out for my first legal drink on my twenty-first birthday; we shared a very good bottle of wine. He can’t be gone.
But he is.
The lump of tears and grief is growing, taking me over like the cancer that ate away at my father’s insides. Kidney, diagnosis to death took six weeks. Six weeks. Barely enough time to understand what was happening, never mind accept it. The impossibility of it is like slamming into a brick wall, leaving me not just breathless, but reeling.
Slowly, I walk from the window to the enormous kitchen I barely use, all marble counters and stainless steel appliances – a cliché, I know, the professional woman who doesn’t even make use of the apartment she paid a fortune for, and certainly not the kitchen. You think I want to spend hours making some gourmet meal I’m going to eat alone in front of the TV?
The enormous sub-zero fridge holds very little – milk, some nice Brie that’s probably gone bad, and the bottle of wine I opened last night and that is already half-empty. I pour myself a fishbowl-sized glass and for good measure I take another bottle from the wine rack and stick it in the fridge. I’m going to need a lot of alcohol to get through tonight. To get through the rest of my life.
I wriggle out of my pantyhose and black crêpe dress, leaving them crumpled on the floor of my bedroom before I slip into yoga pants and a t-shirt and curl up on my king-sized bed, cradling my wine.
I feel so lonely. It eats at me, like some physical attack from an invisible monster. I want to claw at my own skin, pull my hair, scream, anything to alleviate this moment. To change it. Instead I drink more wine.
It slips down nicely, and soon the glass is empty. I’ve only nibbled a couple of soggy sandwiches all day, and so I have a nice buzz going on as I walk back to the kitchen and pour a second glass. I think about turning on some music – I paid a fortune for a voice-activated system – but I’m afraid music, any music, will tip me over the emotional edge. I’m not ready to cry. Not yet, and maybe not ever. I don’t know if I’d ever be able to come back from that.
So I drink and I watch darkness settle on the park and the lights of cabs stream by. The apartment is so quiet. I liked that about it, when I toured the place four years ago, after I got the big bonus that provided me with the deposit. I liked that I couldn’t hear anything – not neighbors, not traffic, not the creak of the elevator or the blare of a car horn. But right now I feel like I’m in an isolation chamber. I am in one.
The second glass of wine goes down easier than the first, even though my empty stomach is starting to churn. Blearily, the world going fuzzy, I reach for my phone and start scrolling through contacts. I’m not so drunk that I don’t realize this is a bad idea, but I need to talk to someone. I feel like if I don’t, I might explode – or die.
I call Joanne, my friend from business school, first. She works in Chicago now, managing a hedge fund, and I haven’t seen her in over a year. Her phone flips over to voicemail and I open my mouth to leave a message, except no words come out. What can I say that would make sense? I haven’t talked to her in months. She doesn’t even know my dad was sick. I swipe to disconnect the phone and toss it on the bed. I drink more wine.
I’m not sure what time it is, but it feels late. After a little while, I’m not sure how long, I pick up my phone again. I swipe . . .
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