Composing Amelia

by Alison Strobel

  “Because your wife isn’t who you think she is!”

  “Yeah, so I heard.” He hadn’t believed it when he’d heard it, and he still didn’t believe it now. “Not a Christian anymore, either?”

  “I never was, Marcus. Not really. I thought I was, but come on—you must have seen it, too.”

  He shook his head. “No. I saw someone who was young in her faith and still working her way through it. Why didn’t you tell me you’d begun to have doubts?”

  Her laughter was hollow. “Tell you? Tell my pastor-husband that I thought God was a hoax? Yeah, that would have gone over real well.”

  “I can promise it would have gone over a lot better than this.”

  She buried her face in her hands, then slid them down to her neck. “Look, Marcus. This place suits you. You fit right in with the Main Street, USA, community and the quaint little church. Me—not so much.”

  “You were settling in—”

  “Settling in isn’t the same. And this is about so much more than just not liking Wheatridge. This is about a—a baby I’m terrified of, a husband whose job I can’t support—what would the elders say when they found out I wasn’t a believer anymore? You’re having a hard enough time there without people talking behind your back about your crazy wife.”

  Marcus cut her off with a slice of his hand through the space between them. He thought he’d been scared and angry when he’d realized she’d tried to kill herself, but what he was feeling now trumped all that, and then some. “Stop. Look, do you love me or not?”

  “Of course I love you, Marcus. What isn’t there to love? You’ve been absolutely amazing, aside from the whole moving-to-Nebraska thing. And it’s because I love you that I need to leave. I want you to have someone who wants the same life you do.”

  “Baloney. You don’t love me and you don’t have the guts to just come out and say it.”

  “That’s not true!” She shouted it, fists balled at her sides. “I do love you!” Her face crumpled as tears slid down her cheeks. “Do you know how frightening it is to think I’ll never meet someone who loves me as much as you do? Or that you really were the right one and I was too broken to make it work? Of course I love you, Marcus!”

  Praying with all the strength he had, Marcus stepped forward and pulled Amelia into his arms. “Then please, Amelia, don’t leave me.”

  Amelia began to bawl, clinging to Marcus as though in danger of being sucked away into quicksand. He wrapped his arms around her as tightly as he could with the bump of their baby between them and held her until she’d exhausted her tears. He led her to the bed and pulled her down beside him, never letting go of her hand for fear he’d never get it back. “There’s something I want to tell you.”

  She sniffed and looked at him, frowning. “What?”

  “Before you went into the hospital, I got an email from my dad.” He took a deep breath, then told her the whole story—not only his revelation about his father, but about his doubts about himself and his calling, about his fear that he’d dragged Amelia to Wheatridge for no good reason, and his conversations with Ed and Pastor Ryan. “I understand, way better than you realize, what it’s like to fear your future and to think your life isn’t what it’s supposed to be. I know what it’s like to learn something about a parent that completely upends your world and makes you question who you are. The difference between you and me, though, is that eventually I let out those fears and questions and sought input from people who were wiser than me. You’ve just—trusted your own mind. There’s nothing wrong with being independent, but you can’t expect to always come up with the right answers on your own.”

  Marcus squeezed her hand. Please speak to her, God. Handing her another tissue from the box on the nightstand, he said, “If you’d said you didn’t love me anymore, then I might have let you walk away. But I can’t when I know you’re just running scared. Give me a chance to help you sort things out, Amelia. Let me lay out some arguments for God. Let me brainstorm with you on how we can make this work. And if we can’t, and you want to leave … I won’t force you to stay.”

  She crumpled the used tissue in her hands, her expression dubious. “Seriously?”

  “Yes.”

  She was quiet a moment, looking lost in thought. “This sounds like another agreement we came to once upon a time.”

  He nodded soberly. “I mean it.”

  She stared at her hands, then nodded. “Okay.”

  “Thank you, God.” He kissed her, relief overwhelming him. He leaned his forehead against hers and willed the adrenaline pumping through his system to abate. “I love you so much, Amelia. I can’t even begin to tell you how much.”

  “Even though I nearly …”

  “Even though.” He kissed her again, then stood and held out a hand. “Come on. I’m taking you out for dinner.”

  She let him pull her from the sofa and wrap his arm around her. With few words, but more peace in the air than he’d felt since December, they changed clothes and drove to the only Italian eatery in town after Amelia shyly admitted to a craving for lasagna. With the dam of secrecy broken, Amelia asked gentle questions regarding Marcus’s revelations about his calling and his father, and Marcus carefully broached the subject of the baby and what decisions they still needed to make so Amelia felt prepared for the birth. By the time they were pulling into the parking lot at the apartment complex, their argument felt like it had happened days ago, instead of hours. And finally, despite the agreement they’d reached that left the door open for Amelia to leave, Marcus felt some hope for their future.

  Marcus hung his keys on their hook and kicked off his shoes. “Can I get you anything? Ice cream? Water?”

  Amelia gave him a sheepish grin. “Both?”

  “You’ve got it.”

  He kissed her and walked to the kitchen, trying to remember if she’d finished the hot fudge he’d gotten her the week before. He was about to start looking when Amelia made a noise that made his heart skip a beat. He ran back to the living room. She was grasping the back of the armchair, her other arm hugging her belly. Her face was pinched and white.

  Marcus’s blood went cold. “What? What is it?”

  She shook her head, breathing hard, and grabbed his hand when he tried to wrap his arm around her. “I … I think it’s … a contraction.”

  His mouth went dry. He swallowed hard as his thoughts raced to queue up a plan of attack. “Wait—it can’t be, you’re only six months along.”

  “I know. Oh God. Marcus—”

  “Don’t worry, here, sit down.” He led her to the sofa, then ran to the kitchen for water. “Here, drink this, maybe you’re just dehydrated.”

  She drank down the entire glass as Marcus looked on and prayed. When she gasped again five minutes later, Marcus grabbed her phone from the table and scrolled through the numbers to find her OB. Please, God, protect the baby. Protect Amelia. He left a message with the answering service, then knelt in front of Amelia and took her hands. “I’m going to pack up some stuff for you in case we have to go to the hospital, okay? Just hang tight.”

  He kissed her and went into the bedroom, praying under his breath as he pulled clothes from the closet and stuffed them into the same duffel Amelia had taken to the hospital in Omaha. When the doctor called back and heard what was going on, she directed them to go straight to the ER, promising to meet them there. He grabbed clothes for himself, added them to the bag, and went back to the living room. “Okay, babe,” he said, helping her up from the couch. “Let’s get to the hospital and not have a baby.”

  It took over twenty-four hours for the OB to be sure, but after an array of medical interventions Amelia was declared to no longer be in labor and sent home on strict bed rest. She spent the first week scoping out daytime television and reading books, and the second week playing games on the Internet. Once she’d wrung the life out of every pastime, she had nothing left to do but think.

  The day spent in the hospital had brought into sharp clarit
y how uncertain life could be. Despite her reticence about the baby, Amelia had been terrified at the thought of something being wrong with her—or him—and feared it was her inability to accept the pregnancy that might be causing the baby to attempt a breakout. After she’d been cleared and sent home, she’d tried not to think about any of it—the impending birth, what had almost happened, the baby—but without anything else to do, it was hard to keep her mind off it all.

  She’d done some reading last week about how in-utero babies could be affected by their mothers’ emotions, and how a mother could turn a breech baby just by talking to it. If that were really true, then who knew what kind of damage she’d done to her child already with all her negativity, not to mention the depression. Guilt prompted her to apologize. “I didn’t know all this stuff before,” she said to her stomach as she visualized the baby politely listening. “If I had, I would have been more careful with how I thought about you. Don’t take any of this personally, okay? It’s really not about you. Heh—it’s not you, it’s me. I’m just … I’m not cut out to be a mom. And you’re going to have it hard enough, being a pastor’s kid and having my genes. I’m really sorry if you end up with bipolar too. Believe me, if there was anything I could do to make sure you didn’t get it, I would.” The thought came without her planning it, and she was glad to see she harbored enough goodwill toward the baby to wish she could prevent it from inheriting her faulty mind. “You know, if it were true that it’s the thought that counts, then I might feel a little better about all this, because it’s not like I have anything against kids in general. I’d love to be a great mom. I’d love to think I could handle this and that I’d figure it all out eventually. But wanting to be good enough won’t make up for the damage I do.”

  This wasn’t helping at all. Dwelling on her shortcomings just made her feel worse. Amelia shifted on the couch, her backside aching from being there all morning, and tried to think of something else she could say to the baby that wasn’t so depressing.

  “Your dad is awesome, by the way. He’s superhandsome, and really smart, and you would not believe how excited he is about you. The two of you are going to have a lot of fun, I think.”

  She considered Marcus’s relationship with his parents and wondered how he would do things differently as a dad. There were some obvious things, like not resenting your children and actually telling them he loved them. But what little things did she not know about from his childhood that would figure in to how he parented?

  Amelia’s eyes went wide as she had a revelation.

  Marcus was in the same boat she was—having grown up with a parent who did everything wrong and whose lousy example left him unprepared for his new role. He’d never want to follow in his father’s shoes. And yet, he wasn’t afraid of messing up their baby. He wasn’t terrified of falling into the same patterns. Why?

  Amelia picked up her cell from the table and dialed. “Why aren’t you freaking out about being a dad?” she asked without preamble when Marcus answered.

  “Um … why would I be?”

  “Because your dad sucked. Why aren’t you afraid of turning into him?”

  “I—I don’t know, I haven’t really thought about it. I just feel like this is different—that this is an opportunity for me to take a wrong and make it right, in a way. Like, I can use his example as an anti-example, as in, ‘If you want to be a good dad, don’t do this.’” He chuckled. “Does that make sense?”

  Amelia let out a frustrated sigh. “Sort of. Why can’t I think like that? I just realized we’re both coming at this whole parenting thing with major role-model deficiencies, but we’re responding in totally different ways.”

  “Maybe it’s because our expectations were different from the get-go. I wanted kids; I always imagined us having them. You saw them as something that might happen someday, but they weren’t a goal for you, they weren’t something you were actually looking forward to the way I was.”

  “Hm. Maybe.”

  “Don’t stress about it, babe. Just keep telling yourself, ‘I am not my mom.’”

  “But I am.”

  “No you’re not! You’re not at all your mom, given what you’ve told me about her. You’ve done way more to better your situation than your mom ever did. She didn’t get help. She didn’t go to therapy. She didn’t let her husband take care of her the way you let me take care of you. And your devotion to pursuing music is so admirable, so much more passionate than your mom ever was about her art … Believe me, babe, you are nothing like her.”

  Tears stood in Amelia’s eyes at Marcus’s affirmation. “Really?”

  “Really. Just do what I’m doing: Picture everything she did as an example of how not to be an awesome mom—and then just do the opposite. I know you don’t believe it, but babe, you’ve got the makings of being a truly fantastic mother. Remember when we worked with the inner-city kids during college? You were a natural, and they all loved you. You always seemed to know what they needed to hear. You made them feel important, and cared for, and respected. You’re fun, you’re funny, you’re passionate, you love like crazy.… What kid wouldn’t want a mom like that?”

  Amelia wanted to hug him through the phone. “Thank you, Marcus.”

  “Anytime, babe. I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  They hung up and Amelia let her hands rest on her growing stomach. She took a deep breath, blew it out through pursed lips, then said, “Okay, kiddo. We’re going to give this a shot, okay?” She closed her eyes and imagined holding the baby and enjoying it. She pictured herself pushing the stroller down Main Street, doing dinner dishes with the baby in the wrap she’d seen on a mom at church, sitting on the couch with Marcus and staring at him/her on the cushion between them. She pictured diaper changes, late-night feedings, baths in the kitchen sink. After a few minutes she opened her eyes and let out her breath as though she’d been holding it.

  “That wasn’t too bad. I guess at the beginning it’s pretty easy to be a decent mom, right? Feed you, clothe you, change your diaper, put you to sleep … I think I can do that.” The baby gave a kick and Amelia chuckled. “Glad you agree.”

  A contraction seized her around the middle, driving her breath from her lungs. When the tension released she grabbed her water bottle and downed it all, then picked up her phone and squeezed it as she stared at the clock on the DVD player. A minute passed, then another, and after the third Amelia began to relax. “Are you just playing with me? Because I don’t actually find that amusing.”

  Six minutes passed before another one struck, and this time Amelia was dialing Marcus before it even finished. “Contractions again,” she said through clenched teeth when he answered. “Six minutes apart.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  At the hospital, Amelia was dosed with terbutaline and a steroid to mature the baby’s lungs. After twenty-four hours, the contractions still hadn’t stopped, and her OB prepared them for the possibility that the baby would be born in the next day or two. “But I’m only twenty-seven weeks along,” Amelia said, trying not to panic. “The poor thing will barely be …”

  The OB put a hand on Ameila’s shoulder. “Odds for survival at this stage are good, though—80 to 85 percent. And the facility here is excellent; this is the hospital you want to be at if you can’t be in Omaha or Lincoln. We’ll do everything we can to put this off, but you need to stay positive and prepare yourself for the possibility of labor soon.”

  When she’d left Marcus and Amelia alone, Amelia groaned and buried her face in her hands. “What am I doing wrong? Why does this keep happening?”

  “I don’t know, Ames, but listen, it’s not your fault, all right? There’s nothing you did to start it and nothing you can do to stop it. You just have to go with it and try to stay positive. Whatever happens, God’s in control. I know you’re having a hard time believing that these days, but I believe it and I’m confident that no matter what happens, God will use it for good.” He kissed her hair. “Now,
is there anything I can do for you? Anything you can think of that we didn’t bring from home that you might want?”

  Amelia shook her head, her arm over her eyes. “No. Nothing.”

  “Would you mind if I prayed? I’ll do it in my head if you want—I just want to be with you when I do.”

  She shrugged. “Okay.”

  They used to pray together all the time, but Marcus’s prayer now was nothing like the ones he used to pray. He’d always sounded so confident, so eloquent, so pastorly when he prayed. But this time, the first time she’d heard him pray for her since before he’d moved to Nebraska, the posturing was gone. Instead, his words were humble, simple, and straight to the point. “God, we’re scared for our baby, but I know You know what’s going to happen and that, whatever it is, it’s what has to happen for Your plan to be fulfilled. But even so, God, I’m asking You to please protect him or her, and protect Amelia, too. Prepare us for what’s coming next, and help us to cling to You for our peace and comfort. Amen.”

  “Thank you,” Amelia whispered.

  “You’re welcome.”

  She peeked out at him. “Would you feel awful if I wanted to be alone for a bit?”

  He smiled. “Not at all. If you need me, just tell the nurse I went down to the lobby. I’m going to call Ed and let him know what’s going on. Okay?”

  She nodded and they kissed once more before Marcus disappeared down the hall. Amelia brushed tears from her cheeks and whispered, “What are you up to in there?” Another contraction was the baby’s reply, and when it was over Amelia squeezed her eyes shut and took a chance.

  All right, God. I’m desperate here. I don’t know what else to do. I’m scared about labor, I’m scared the baby is going to have all sorts of problems … I can barely imagine parenting a normal child, God; I can’t even begin to fathom parenting one that has special needs from being born too soon. If You’re real, then please don’t shut me out here. Give me some hope or something. Reassure me that whatever happens, I can actually handle it. Because honestly, all this is making me want to flee the state even more than the thought of being a mom to a regular baby did. I know I told Marcus I’d give it a shot, but that was when I thought things would be normal. I don’t know if I can agree to that if things go south here.