Mixed Blessings

by Danielle Steel

  “He was five months old. And in some ways I don’t think I was ever the same again. I always blamed myself because I had been so busy after he was born, I never spent enough time with him. And then I got pregnant with you, and I never dared get close to you. I was so afraid you would die, too. I never wanted to care that much about any human being again. Pilar … darling … I’m so sorry.…” Her mother sobbed, and Pilar cried uncontrollably. “I hope you know how much I’ve always loved you …” She could barely speak through her own tears, and Pilar choked on her emotions of more than forty years as she listened.

  “Oh, Mommy … I love you … Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “Your father and I never talked about it. Things were different in those days. You weren’t supposed to talk about painful things. It was embarrassing. We were all so stupid then. It was the worst thing I ever went through, and I had no one to talk to about it, and eventually I just learned to live with the pain. It helped when you were born, and I was glad you were a girl. At least you were different … His name was Andrew,” she said softly. “We called him Andy …” And as she said it, she sounded so sad and young, and Pilar’s heart went out to her. She had lived with her grief for almost fifty years, and Pilar had never known. It explained a lot of things, and it was too late now for the little girl she had been, but it meant a lot to her now to hear what had happened.

  “It won’t go away easily,” her mother said gently. “It’ll take a long time … longer than you think you can bear. And it will never go away completely. You’ll live with it every day, Pilar, or maybe you’ll forget for a day or two, and then something will happen to remind you. But you just have to go on, day after day, moment after moment … for Brad’s sake, for your own … for your little boy … You have to go on, and the pain will fade eventually. But the scar will stay on your heart forever.” They cried together again after that, and eventually, reluctantly this time, Pilar hung up the phone. But for the first time in her life, she felt as though she knew her mother. She had offered to come out for the funeral, but Pilar had asked her not to. She knew now how painful it would be for her, and she didn’t want to put her through it. And for once, Elizabeth Graham didn’t argue.

  “But if you need me, I’ll be there in six hours. You just remember that. I’m no further away than a phone call. I love you,” she’d said again before she hung up, and Pilar felt as though she’d gotten a gift from her. It was just a shame it had to be provoked by so much tragedy.

  And through it all, their son woke and slept, and cried for his mother, and whenever she or Brad held him, he was happy and quiet. It was as though he already knew them.

  “What’ll we call him?” Brad asked her that night. They had named Grace, but they hadn’t named her brother.

  “I like the name Christian Andrew. What do you think?” she said sadly. The middle name was for the brother she hadn’t known about until that day, and she had told Brad after her mother had told her.

  “I like it.” He smiled through his tears. It felt as though they had been crying all day, and they had. The day they had waited for for so long had turned into a day of mourning.

  “Life is a mixed blessing, isn’t it?” she said quietly as Brad sat beside her that night. He didn’t want to leave her, but she thought he should go home. He looked worse than exhausted. But he insisted he didn’t want to leave her, and a nurse had wheeled a cot into the room in case he decided to stay. She thought they needed to be together.

  “It’s all so strange, you expect one thing and you get another, you pay a price for everything in life, I guess … the good, the bad, the dreams, the nightmares … it all comes rolled up together. Sometimes it’s hard to tell them apart, that’s the hard part.” Christian was to be their joy, and Grace their sorrow, and yet they had come to them together. She had wanted children so badly finally, and now she had lost one before she even started. It seemed to taint everything, and yet when she looked at Christian sleeping quietly beside her, life seemed infinitely worth living. And as Brad looked at her, he wondered how she’d gotten through it. It had been the worst agony he’d ever seen, and then at the end of it all, they’d lost a baby.

  “Life is full of surprises,” Brad said philosophically. “I thought I’d never recover from it when Natalie died.” She had been Nancy and Todd’s mother. “And then suddenly there you were, five years later … and I’ve been so happy with you. Life has a way of blessing us once it’s punished us. I imagine Christian will be that way too. We’ve been hit hard … but perhaps he will be the greatest joy we share for the rest of our lives.”

  “I hope so,” she said softly, looking down at him, and trying to forget the little face she would never see again … the baby she would always remember.

  Christian cried lustily the day they left the hospital and took him home. Pilar dressed him before they left, in a little blue knit suit she had bought. She wrapped him carefully in a blue blanket and held him close to her, as a nurse rolled them downstairs in a wheelchair. A nurse’s aide followed with a rolling table full of flowers. And all most people knew was that she had had the babies. No one knew that one of them died. And double everything had come in, in pink and blue, with little dolls and teddy bears and Raggedy Ann and Andy.

  Brad drove them home, and they gently put Christian down in the bassinet in his room. Brad had already taken the second one out and put it in the garage. He didn’t want Pilar to see it. But she knew it had been there, and when she opened the drawers to put the baby’s nightgown on, she found the little pink ones, too, and she felt as though her heart were being squeezed as she closed the drawers. She almost couldn’t bear it. So much sadness and so much joy all at once. It was impossible to forget that there had been two babies, and now there was only one. How would she ever forget her?

  Christian was a good baby and easy to feed. Her milk had come in copiously, as though even her body wasn’t aware that there were no longer two babies. And she held him as she nursed and sat in the rocking chair in his room and Brad watched her.

  “Are you going to be okay?” he asked quietly. He was worried about her. She hadn’t been the same since the babies had been born and Grace had died. And he was almost sorry they’d had them. It was just so painful.

  “I don’t know,” she answered honestly, as she held the sleeping baby. And then she looked down at him, he was so perfect and so small, and yet so round and healthy. He was everything Grace hadn’t been, with her tiny features and miniature face. She had looked perfect, too, but infinitely smaller. “I keep trying to understand why it happened. Was it my fault? Was it something I did? Did I eat wrong, did I lie on one side all the time?… Why?” Her eyes filled with tears again as she looked at her husband, and he stood next to her as they looked down at Christian.

  “We have to be careful not to blame him,” Brad said, “not to make him feel later on that he somehow wasn’t enough, and we wanted more. I suppose this is just what was meant to be,” he said, and bent down to kiss her, and then Christian. He was a beautiful child and he had a right to a life of joy, not to the burden of having come into the world as a mixed blessing.

  “I don’t blame him,” Pilar said sadly, crying openly. “I just wish she were here too.” But perhaps she would be, in some way, a sweet presence, a loving spirit. It was so little to hold on to.

  * * *

  Pilar slept fitfully, and in the morning, she woke up feeling as though someone had dropped a ten-thousand-pound weight on her chest. She remembered what they were doing that day.

  She showered, and fed the baby as soon as he woke up. Her breasts felt huge, and she had so much milk that she sprayed his face at first when he tried to eat, and he made such funny faces at her that she laughed in spite of the way she felt, and Brad heard her.

  “What’s going on in here?” he asked, as he came into the nursery wearing a dark suit. It was the first time she had laughed in days and it was a relief to hear her.

  She showed him and he laugh
ed too. “He looks like one of those little old actors in vaudeville getting it in the face from a seltzer bottle, doesn’t he?… kind of like Harpo Marx.”

  “Actually,” Brad said, smiling, “I think he looks a little like Zeppo.” He was surprised by how much he felt for him, how much he already loved him, and how sorry he was that he had come into the world without his sister. He seemed so innocent and so dependent on them—Brad couldn’t remember his 6ther children being quite so small, or so needy, or perhaps even the baby felt that something terrible had happened. Where was she? He had lived with his sister for nine months, and now she was gone. It had to be traumatic for him too. Even he wasn’t exempt from the pain they were feeling.

  “Will you be dressed soon?” Brad asked gently. She nodded as she set down the sleeping baby after he’d eaten. It would have been so perfect if there had only been him, it would have been such undiluted ecstasy, and now it was so different. It was half happy and half sad, half agony and half beauty, everything was so bittersweet and so tender to the touch. She couldn’t bear feeling anymore, and she stood looking at him for a long time, thinking how much she already loved him. But she had loved Gracie too … that was the amazing thing. She had known her little face the moment she arrived and it was carved in her heart for eternity, just as her name was.

  She wore a simple black wool dress, which hung from her shoulders with no waist, that she had worn to the office when she was first pregnant. Black stockings, black shoes, and she found a black coat that fit, and then she stood mournfully and looked at her husband.

  “It seems wrong somehow, doesn’t it? We should be celebrating and instead we’re mourning.” And there were so many people to tell, everyone they knew had known they were having twins, and now they would have to be told they didn’t.

  Brad put the baby in the car, and he never woke when they put him in his car seat. And they drove to All Saints by the Sea Episcopal Church in Montecito in total silence. There was nothing Pilar could say to him, nothing that would take away the pain, or make it any different. He patted her hand when he parked the car, and Nancy and Tommy were waiting on the sidewalk with Marina. Tommy was wearing a dark suit, like Brad, and Nancy looked devastated as she held her baby. She hadn’t been able to find a baby-sitter, so in the end she just brought Adam. And he screamed with glee the moment he saw Pilar and Brad. For an instant, it lightened the moment.

  The minister was also waiting for them, and he had led them inside, but Pilar was in no way prepared for what she saw there, the tiny white casket surrounded by lily of the valley, waiting at the altar. It was a travesty, a lie, a cruel joke that Nature had played on her, first promising her so much, and then taking away half of it, and a sob caught in her throat the moment she saw it.

  “I can’t bear it,” she whispered to Brad as she dropped her face into her hands, and Nancy began to cry softly, while Tommy took the baby, and Christian lay sleeping peacefully in his car seat. They were the ways of God, the minister reminded them, to give and to take, to laugh and to cry, to mingle joy with sorrow, but the pain of it was almost too great to bear as he blessed the little girl who had been theirs for only a moment.

  Afterward, Pilar felt as though she were in a dream, a nightmare, as she followed Brad outside, and they followed the hearse to the cemetery. At the gravesite they stood silent and miserable in the rain, as Pilar began to panic.

  “I can’t leave her here …” She choked on the words as she clung to Brad, and Brad’s son-in-law stood near them, with Marina close to them, but at a discreet distance. Nancy had stayed in the car with both little boys, she just couldn’t stand it anymore, she had told her husband. It was too awful, too sad, that tiny box, and their ravaged faces. It was a terrible time for all of them, particularly Pilar and Brad. He looked a thousand years old, and she looked as though she were going to collapse as the minister gave little Grace a final blessing.

  Pilar put a small bouquet of tiny pink roses on her casket and stood staring at it for a long time, sobbing softly, and then Brad led her away and back to the car, but she almost didn’t seem to know where she was going. And then she sat staring straight ahead as they drove home, and she said nothing. Brad and Marina held her hands, but she had nothing to say to them, or anyone.

  Brad didn’t know what to say to her, he didn’t know how to comfort her or what to do. Even though Brad felt the loss when Grace was born, she had been a stranger to him. But Pilar had carried them for nine months, and she knew them intimately in a way no one else did.

  “I want you to lie down,” he said as they got home after they’d dropped everyone else off. And the baby began to stir when he put him in his basket.

  She nodded and went to their bedroom, and she lay there in her black dress, saying nothing and staring at the ceiling, wondering why she couldn’t have died, and they have lived. Why wasn’t one given different choices? Who would she have chosen? What would she have done? She knew in an instant that she would have gladly sacrificed herself to save them. She tried explaining that to Brad and he looked horrified. As much as he mourned their lost child, he would never have wanted to lose his wife, and he was furious at the suggestion.

  “Don’t you realize how much we need you?”

  “No, you don’t,” she said bleakly.

  “What about him?” He motioned to the next room. “Don’t you think he has the right to a mother?” She shrugged, unable to answer. “Don’t talk like that,” he said. But she was depressed all day, she wouldn’t eat, she wouldn’t drink, it affected her milk eventually, and it made the baby fussy. It was as though they all wanted to cry and object to what had happened to them, and none of them knew how, least of all Pilar, who wanted to scream until she couldn’t breathe anymore, but instead, she just sat and stared at Christian.

  “He needs you, and so do I,” Brad reminded her again. “You have to pull yourself together.”

  “Why?” She sat and looked out the window, and then finally he got her to drink some tea, and then a cup of soup, and at least she had enough milk to feed the baby.

  She got up with him several times that night, as Brad slept. It had been an exhausting day for him, too, and he was desperately worried about Pilar. And as the sun came up, she sat in the rocking chair, holding Christian, and thinking about both her babies. They had been separate entities, separate people, separate lives, each with their own destiny and future. Christian had had his own fate to fulfill, and Grade’s mission had been accomplished early. Perhaps it was as simple as that, perhaps she was destined to be with them only for a moment. But suddenly Pilar realized that she had to let her go, that she had to touch her memory now and then, but she could not take her with her. And Brad was right, Christian needed her. Hopefully, he would have a long life with them, and she wanted to be there beside him. For the first time in five days, she felt at peace as she sat holding him. The blessing was theirs, not as they had expected it, or thought it would be, but as it was meant to be, and as it was, and she had to accept it.

  “You up?” Brad stood sleepily in the doorway. He had looked for her in their bed, and he hadn’t found her. “Everything okay?”

  She nodded and smiled at him, looking very wise, and very sad, and also very lovely. “I love you,” she said quietly, and he sensed that something had changed in her, something deep inside had broken and torn, and almost ripped her apart, and now slowly it had begun healing.

  “I love you too.” He wanted to tell her how sorry he was, but he didn’t know how to tell her anymore. There were no words, just very deep feelings.

  And then suddenly Christian stirred. He yawned and then opened his eyes and looked at them very intently.

  “He’s quite a guy,” Brad said proudly.

  “So are you,” Pilar said as they kissed in the morning sunlight.

  Todd came home to them for Thanksgiving that year. He wanted to see the baby, who was two and a half weeks old, and he also knew what an ordeal they’d been through and he wanted to be there with
them.

  Pilar already looked a little better by then, although she still had a lot of weight to lose, and she wasn’t going out yet. She was still weak, and drained by the ordeal, and she didn’t feel ready to face her friends and start explaining. It was still too painful.

  Todd didn’t know what to say to her about it at first, and then eventually he told her he was sorry they had lost the baby.

  “What a miserable thing to go through.” His dad had seemed very shaken up when he’d called to tell him of Christian’s birth, and Grade dying, but Pilar was taking it much harder.

  “It was awful,” she admitted quietly, though the wounds were healing slowly. She still felt a terrible ache when she thought of her, but she was beginning to allow herself to enjoy Christian. She was talking to her mother more frequently, and some of what she’d told her of her own experience had helped Pilar. It helped talking to someone who’d been through it, but she still didn’t want her to come out. She didn’t feel up to seeing anyone, not even her mother.

  “Nothing’s ever as simple as it looks,” Pilar said quietly to Todd, thinking of what agony it had been to get pregnant, and then her miscarriage … and now Grade. “You think it’s all going to be so easy, and just the way you plan, but sometimes it isn’t. It’s taken me forty-four years to figure that one out, and believe me, it hasn’t been easy.” Childbearing had not been the easiest thing she’d done so far. Her career had been a great deal simpler, and even marrying Brad. But somehow, she knew in her heart of hearts that all of this was worth it. She wouldn’t have given up Christian for anything. And even at the price she’d paid, she knew he was worth it, at twice the price, although even thinking that amazed her. “What are you two doing? Solving the problems of life?” Brad teased as he sat down next to them.

  “I was about to tell him how much I love him.” Pilar smiled at her stepson and then her husband. “He’s a very special person.”