The Mommy Miracle

by Lilian Darcy

  “Yes. Yes, she is.” She learned the baby’s little face off by heart—the button of a nose, the plump cheeks—and thought, at least I’ll recognize her now…

  “I’m sure she won’t wake up if you touch her.”

  “How? Where? I mean, I really don’t want to wake her up.”

  “You won’t. Anywhere.”

  Where would I touch her if she belonged to me?

  Jodie didn’t know. She reached out her hand, and felt Dev holding her tight as if he knew she might otherwise fall. She thought she might put her hand on DJ’s head, to see if her hair felt as silky as Lucy’s, but it didn’t feel right. It felt…

  Not her head.

  She laid her palm on the baby’s back, instead. She was sleeping on her side, propped in that position with two little baby quilts rolled up, so Jodie had to slip her fingers between the roll and the stretchy fabric of DJ’s miniature pink sleep suit.

  “She’s breathing, I promise,” Dev said.

  “Oh, I wasn’t— I was just—”

  “It’s okay. I didn’t mean— It’s okay. I check that she’s breathing all the time.”

  But she didn’t feel as if it was okay, and took her hand away. She wasn’t strong enough to keep her arm in that position for long anyhow. It would start to disobey the signal from her brain pretty soon and just flop.

  Flop onto DJ and wake her up.

  Mom was hovering outside, peering around the door, which Dev had left ajar. “I thought about putting the monitor in your room, honey, but that’s probably not a good idea just yet,” she said in a kind of stage whisper as Jodie and Dev came out. “It would be hard for you to get out of bed quick enough to go to her.”

  Would I need to go to her that fast? Jodie wondered. Do all normal moms leap out of bed the second they hear the first tiny cry? What about in the dark, ancient days before baby monitors were invented? How fast did moms get to their babies back then?

  She could argue the issue. She could insist on Mom letting her have the monitor.

  Dev had gone watchful again, but she hid her panic, made it about common sense instead. “Yes, you’d better have it, Mom. I’d hate to…you know…” She indicated the common-sense issues with a flap of her fingers.

  I’d hate to only reach her after that big spotty monster hiding under her crib had already drooled all over her. I’d hate no one to get there in time to catch her reciting Shakespeare in her sleep.

  “I know. I think you’re right. I’m sure that’s the best decision,” Mom said, as if it were momentous, like deciding on risky corrective surgery, or what college DJ would attend. “We can keep it that way as long as you want. Well, when she’s sleeping here, of course.”

  Dev said nothing.

  “I’ve done a spreadsheet,” Barb announced when Dev arrived back at the Palmers’ house the next morning.

  “A spreadsheet?”

  “I can do one every week. Here’s a copy I printed out for you. The schedule has gotten more complicated now that Jodie is home, but see the color coding?”

  Dev took the page. Yes, indeedy, he could see the color coding. Yellow for Jodie’s hours at day rehab, blue for DJ’s naps, even though she wasn’t nearly as predictable in that department as the spreadsheet suggested. Green apparently meant DJ at Devlin’s and he didn’t like the scattered nature of those color blocks. So he was only having her two nights this week? Whose idea was that?

  Barb had said to him some weeks ago, when Jodie’s recovery began to unfold with such positive signs, “Now you’ll be able to go back to New York,” and he couldn’t get those words out of his head. Did the Palmers want him to go? Did he?

  Meanwhile, where was pink for Dev, Jodie and DJ go to the park? Or, better, lilac for Barb, Elin and Lisa get the hell out of town for a few hours so Jodie can make up her own mind about what she wants to do with the baby?

  In fact, he couldn’t see one color block or notation in the schedule that gave Jodie any time with DJ on her own.

  “I mean, it’s just a draft, obviously,” Barb said, reading the disapproval in his face.

  He said in apology, “I’m not a huge fan of spreadsheets, to be honest.”

  “But you must use them all the time, in your work.”

  “People put them together on my behalf. And I file them in the cylindrical file.” He mimed balling a sheet of paper and tossing it in the trash.

  “You throw them out?”

  “Spreadsheets can make you feel like you’re organized when really you’re not, don’t you think? Like bullet-point presentations. I’m not a fan of bullet points, either.” He dropped the flippant tone and spoke gently, because despite everything, he was becoming fond of his daughter’s grandmother. He knew she meant well. “You know DJ won’t nap to a schedule, Barb, so why pretend about it on paper? We don’t know how much time Jodie’s going to be spending with her at this stage. Can’t we keep it flexible?”

  Barbara pressed her fingertips to her temples. “I’m just trying to manage this situation.”

  “I know. And I appreciate it. But I don’t think a spreadsheet is the answer. Where are they, anyhow?”

  “DJ is in her bassinet on the deck. I just gave her a bottle. Elin was helping Jodie in the shower, but I think they’re done.”

  “So Jodie’s upstairs?”

  “Let me call her. I’m sure she hasn’t come down.”

  He hesitated. It bothered him that Jodie wasn’t with the baby, and yet why should it? What did he expect? He’d been so afraid of the opposite happening, of the love kicking in too fiercely and possessively and shutting him out, and now he’d done a full turn-around and wanted to push the other way.

  It wasn’t logical. He wasn’t logical. He was a mess of conflicting wants—to go back to his real career in international law, yet keep the strongest possible bond with DJ, to see Jodie discover her love, yet for that love to be generous when it came to his own needs.

  Jodie had huge needs of her own. She still struggled to manage dressing and showering and the most ordinary day-to-day things. She was so brave about it. Brave and funny and stubborn. She couldn’t have taken over all of DJ’s care even if she wanted to.

  Did she want to? This was the crunch, the big question. Was she holding back from DJ in order to work harder on her own recovery, or because she couldn’t cope with suddenly being a mom?

  “I’ll go up,” he told Barb.

  “I’ll be in the kitchen, if you need me,” she said. “You’ll…say the right things, won’t you?” Her face twisted with worry and he felt his frustration build. What did Barb want from him? It would help so much if she could just relax a little.

  He found Jodie in her room doing some range-ofmotion exercises for her arms and legs. She wore calf-length black leggings and a strappy white tank, little more than a scrap of stretch fabric and lace. The swell of her breasts peeked above the neckline of the tank, and the leggings made her tight, round butt seem even tighter and rounder. Dev had trouble keeping his gaze where it belonged.

  But there was a serious point to the stretchy clothing. She was working hard. There was a sheen of sweat across her forehead and her collarbone, and she lifted her top away from her stomach to let in some air. “Nothing’s working this morning,” she said, slightly breathless. “Starting to come back a little.”

  “How about doing them on the deck?” He didn’t like the way she was shut in her room like this, with DJ out of sight and out of mind.

  “I guess that would be okay.”

  She managed the stairs on her own, while he went a few steps ahead of her, ready to brace her if she fell. When they reached the deck and she saw the bassinet with its lacy white canopy, she froze for a moment. She hadn’t known until now that DJ was out here. “Oh, right,” she murmured, then began to grab the air with her hand as if seeking something solid for support. Dev helped her get comfortable on the built-in wooden bench that ran along the railing and went to peek at his daughter.

  She’d woken up.
The wicker of the bassinet creaked a little as she tensed her body and let out a whimpering cry. She writhed, as if her digestion was bothering her, but then her gut settled and she blinked a few times and looked up at the view. Dappled leaves. Dev had learned that small babies, when awake, just lo-o-ove to look at dappled leaves with a background of sky.

  Ooh, and here’s something else they love to look at—their daddy. She caught sight of him and her face broke into the darlingest smile in the world. “That’s right, sweetheart,” he whispered, and smiled back. He was pitifully in love with her, and “in love” meant forever, and he didn’t even care.

  Jodie was watching him, he could see, distracted from the exercises she’d been so dedicated about up in her room. He felt a thud of sudden vulnerability—all that fear of the unknown where DJ’s future was concerned.

  He had to bite the bullet.

  They both did.

  Jodie had to have her first hold.

  He didn’t give her a choice today, just picked DJ up—she was wearing a stretch-cotton smock dress with tiny blue flowers on a white background, and matching bloomers—and brought her across. “Here, why don’t you take her for a bit?”

  “I—I— Now?” Jodie stammered.

  “Yes, but you need a couple of cushions, right?”

  “I think so.”

  “I’ll grab some.” He was more than capable of managing a baby and two cushions at once. He’d recently managed a baby, a poopy diaper and a handful of wipes with a phone pressed to his ear at the same time, talking international law. He settled the cushions on either side of her.

  “Can you…? I’m leaning, I think.”

  She was right. Her body had slipped a little on the bench. He sat down beside her and nudged her bare, pale shoulder with his.

  “I hate this,” she said.

  “Hate it?”

  “No… No!” she corrected quickly. “Not the baby! Not her. My body. The fact that sometimes I’m not coordinated enough to sit straight, by myself.”

  “Right. You’ll get there.”

  “I know. But it’s frustrating.” She sounded wobbly. Scared. Maybe she didn’t hate the idea of holding the baby, but she definitely had issues with it. Because she didn’t trust her body?

  “I would never let her fall,” he said, and lifted the baby across.

  This is my baby. To Jodie it still didn’t seem real. This is my baby, in my arms.

  DJ didn’t seem to consider this event to be miraculous in any way. She looked up at Jodie, fixing her gaze just below her hairline. She didn’t smile. Her eyes were a dark, swimmy blue and she had translucent blisters on her lips from sucking on her bottle. The neckline of her tiny dress was still a little damp from where some of the formula had leaked from the corners of her mouth. She felt heavy.

  No, it wasn’t the weight, it was the tension in Jodie’s muscles. “I didn’t feel this tired, holding Lucy yesterday,” she said.

  Dev had risen and moved away. He stood on the far side of the deck, beneath the thickest shade from the black-cherry tree, watching her to check that she was all right. “You were in a chair with armrests for that,” he said. “And Lucy’s a little lighter than DJ. Can you not manage it? Let me know if—”

  “No, I want to.” Something kicked inside her, a stirring of tenderness and love. But it wasn’t strong enough. It wasn’t the overwhelming certainty Jodie wanted it to be.

  I love her, she said inside her head.

  No, that wasn’t quite right.

  She tried again. I love you!

  It was true. She knew it was. But she couldn’t feel it. She looked down at the baby, smiled at her and learned by heart every crease in her little arms, every strand of her hair, but she couldn’t feel her love.

  Those swimmy blue eyes looked up at her, so serious and unsmiling and somehow so wise and old.

  She’ll see it. She’ll feel it. She’ll know.

  She still wasn’t smiling. Jodie tried to coax it out of her by showing her how. She stretched her lips, crinkled her eyes. This is your mommy smiling at you, DJ. But it didn’t work. DJ didn’t smile back, and Jodie knew why.

  You couldn’t tell lies with your own body. You couldn’t fake love coming out of every pore of your skin. Lying here in her arms, DJ would soon know that this person, this mommy person who was supposed to have such a total skin-to-skin bond and connection, didn’t yet love her in the right way, and she absolutely must not be allowed to know that.

  Jodie broke into a sweat. “Can you take her, Dev?”

  “Or I could give your arm some more support.”

  “No, take her. I don’t think more support would be enough.”

  “Here…” he said, and sat down beside her again, twisting around so that his left arm cradled hers and his chest shored up her shoulder. His strength and warmth and clean male smell slammed into her, seeming far more right than the feel of a baby in her arms. More real. Stronger. Could he feel it, too? She thought so. His breathing had changed, growing shallower.

  She felt weak and shaky and tingling with need, all at the same time. Her body was far better at remembering familiar things than learning new ones, it seemed. Every cell and all her senses remembered last year so vividly. The way his touch and his laughter had set her alight, the way she’d felt strong and alive yet safe in his arms. The feel of his mouth making a hot trail from her neck to her breasts. The sureness in the way he caressed her, slipping his hand between her thighs, curving his palms over her butt.

  Last year, he would have pressed his lips to her neck and teased her and set her on fire. She would have turned her face toward him and kissed him back, brushing her mouth against his and sliding it away, making him go after her and coax her lips into parting and drinking him in, and it would have lasted for minutes on end. She would have gloried in the feel of those hard muscles covered in satiny skin.

  Their physical connection was magic and wonderful and made her dizzy.

  Still.

  But the new thing, the magic and wonder and dizziness of being a mother, her body couldn’t learn. She couldn’t even fake a smile now. No wonder DJ wasn’t smiling back.

  “I really think you need to take her now, Dev,” she said shakily.

  Mom appeared in the doorway to the deck. She was wearing a flour-spattered apron, and was brushing her hands against it, as if dusting them off in readiness to be of help. She must have heard the note of panic in Jodie’s voice, the panic that Dev had ignored.

  “No, see?” he said quietly. “You’re fine.”

  “I—I think I’m not. I think I need a break. Can you please take her?”

  He still wouldn’t. Instead, he pressed his body more tightly against her, curved his other arm over her shoulder to support her on the opposite side. Her back wasn’t touching the bench at all now, it was only touching him, and she began to take calming breaths, giving in to his insistence and certainty.

  Maybe she could do it, after all. Maybe with him here, loving his baby girl so much, the love would filter into Jodie as well, filter through her into DJ so that wise DJ wouldn’t guess who it really came from. She could smell the mingled scents of both of them, Dev and DJ. Baby powder and milkiness and aftershave and warm male skin.

  Mom stepped forward. “Dev, she says she’s tired. Don’t push it, please, until after we’ve talked to her doctors and therapists on Tuesday.”

  “Does that make a difference?” He slid his hand around the bundle of baby.

  “Well, yes, doesn’t it? They may have very specific guidelines about how much she’s allowed to do.”

  “How much baby holding?”

  “How much child care. How much of anything. She has a heap of exercises to get through every day. Just brushing her teeth…” She bent down, and Jodie could smell that, too—flour and vanilla and peaches. Mom must be making a pie.

  She picked up the baby, cradling DJ’s head against her shoulder. Dev loosened his supporting grip and she saw him rake his lower teeth acros
s his top lip in a gesture of unspoken frustration. There were so many pairs of arms in this little baby’s life, reaching out to her.

  “Let’s bring her bassinet inside,” Mom said. “It’s getting too hot out here now. Maybe she could lie on her blanket on the lounge-room floor and have a kick. She loves that. I’ll get her baby gym, too. She was really hitting those rattles the other day.”

  “Thank you, Mom,” Jodie said.

  Just as had happened last night, Dev didn’t say a word.

  Chapter Six

  “Is there anything more you want to talk about at this stage, Jodie?” asked Dr. Reuben on Tuesday morning.

  Everyone waited for her response. Mom, Dad, Elin, Jodie’s physical and occupational therapists, the neurologist and the obstetrician who’d delivered DJ nearly twelve weeks ago.

  And Dev.

  DJ herself was at home with Lisa. She and Elin were both schoolteachers, with the summer off, which Mom had pronounced to be a blessing. Jodie wasn’t so sure. Dev seemed restless about the baby’s absence, moving as if his empty arms needed filling, although Jodie herself had agreed there was no point in bringing the baby in for this meeting.

  “No, I think I’m fine. For now,” she said brightly. “I mean, you’ve all said I can call, talk to anyone about anything at any time. You’ve said—” she turned to the obstetrician, Dr. Forbes “—that my body recovered very well from the birth itself, and that there’s no reason why I shouldn’t conceive again in the future.”

  She bit her lip. Why parrot this back to him, this reassurance about her future fertility, when she hadn’t even begun to deal with the baby she already had? She couldn’t think of the right things to say. She couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “You’re doing very well indeed,” the man said.

  He was older and a little distant, somehow exactly the kind of man you would expect to have delivered a baby you’d had no knowledge of until two days ago. The kind of man who would have looked after Jodie’s physical well-being perfectly and professionally during and after the birth, but who would be rather glad that her emotional adjustment now was an issue for other professionals, such as Dr. Reuben, to deal with.