by Lilian Darcy
She felt stubborn and protective and private about it, suddenly. She didn’t want professionals helping her to learn to love and take care of her baby, she wanted to do it, like a three-year-old, All By Herself.
Even though she’d already proved to herself that she didn’t know where to start.
Trish and Lesley, the therapists, began to speak, stressing the importance of keeping her rehab on track in other areas. It couldn’t all be about the baby. Jodie would have to put her own needs first. “It’s what they say on airplanes,” Trish said. “First, fit your own oxygen mask, then assist your child. If you’re not taking care of yourself, how are you going to look after a baby?”
They all seemed to feel that this was a huge risk, that Jodie’s own therapy would be derailed by her tiring herself out with her child, attempting one hundred and ten percent.
“I have plenty of help,” she managed to say. “I think I’m going to be sensible about it. I know how much love DJ already has, even without me.”
Trish and Lesley seemed to approve. Then Trish repeated, “But is there anything more you need? Anything you want?”
Anything I want? Anything I need? I want to love my baby. I want to be the one who knows when she’s hungry or tired or hurting. I want to be the one who can soothe her to sleep. I want her to know in her bones that I’m her mom, but she doesn’t know it and I don’t know how to teach her. She responds to Dev and Lisa and Elin and Mom but not to me, and I’m scared about that.
So scared, she couldn’t begin to express it, especially not with all these eyes fixed on her face—the professional gaze of the therapist, the more personal ones belonging to Dev and Mom, trying to hide their concern but without success. Her whole life felt wrong and mixed-up, compared to last fall, before the accident. She remembered one of her last horseback rides, a trail ride through the woods belonging to Oakbank Stables with some intermediate riding students, the hooves of the horses soft on the carpets of newly fallen leaves.
That day, everything had seemed right with the world. The sweet secret of Dev and their plans to see each other that night. The fresh, peaty smell of the woods. The clink of stirrups and bridles in time to the rhythmic movements of the horses.
“I need to see my horses,” she said.
It wasn’t what Trish or Lesley had expected. Dev and Mom, maybe, but even they didn’t understand, she could tell. They thought she had her priorities all wrong. Horses, when she had so much work to do on her body? Horses, when she had a baby to learn to love and care for?
Dad shifted in his seat, and made a gruff sound, but said nothing. He could take her side sometimes, but when he stayed silent, she never knew what he was keeping back. Approval? Or the reverse?
So she backpedalled, ashamed and guilty and scared. “Not yet, of course. I mean, I know that. It’s not a priority. But when it happens, it’ll do me a world of good, I know it.”
“We’ll certainly work toward it,” Trish promised. “Hippotherapy is a definite possibility for you, given your background.” She looked at Dev and Mom, who both nodded. “But that’s not what we’re here to talk about today.”
Jodie understood that she’d gone off-topic, that her therapists and doctors were focused on her adjustment to the baby and the fact that she’d given birth. “I—I really can’t think of anything else for now,” she told them lamely.
Dr. Reuben and Dr. Forbes both shifted in their seats just the way Dad had, busy schedules dictating that they make a move to the next patients on their lists.
“Thank you,” Jodie said to them, and everyone stood up.
Thank you was incredibly useful, she’d begun to discover. You could make it mean so many different things. You could fob people off with it and they never guessed. She thanked Mom for the spreadsheet she’d printed out, even though they weren’t sticking to it. She thanked Lisa for her words of experience regarding diaper rash, even though she—Jodie—hadn’t done a diaper change yet. You could use it as a piece of very effective camouflage against revealing what you really felt.
The fear.
The doubt.
The distance.
The shame.
She said it again, just to make sure. “Thank you.” And everyone nodded and smiled and murmured and told her she was doing incredibly well.
For the next three weeks and more, thank you worked like a charm.
She said it to Dev when he picked her up and took her to the park with DJ and did all the carrying in the baby swing and the strapping in and out of the stroller so that Jodie barely needed to touch the baby—or Dev himself—at all. She said it to Mom and Lisa and Elin when one of them took her to rehab while another took care of DJ at home. She said it to Dad when he carried DJ in her car seat or filled her little plastic bath.
Maddy called from Cincinnati to suggest coming up with Lucy for a mommies-and-babies play date, and Jodie said that rehab didn’t leave enough space in the schedule right now, but thank you for thinking of it, it was a great idea for sometime down the track. Trish said that Jodie could have the baby at rehab sometimes and they could work on some strategies for taking care of her safely within Jodie’s current limitations. Again Jodie hid behind “thank you” and “down the track.”
If anyone noticed that she’d only actually held DJ in her arms twice since that first time on the deck, they didn’t comment. DJ commented, in her own way. She didn’t smile. If anyone noticed that both those smileless times Jodie had to fight an overwhelming feeling of distance and inadequacy and panic, they didn’t comment on this, either.
Or not to her face, anyhow.
Three weeks and four days after her discharge from the hospital, a Wednesday, she caught them commenting behind her back. She’d been taking a nap—this napping business was getting old fast—after a tiring but encouraging day at rehab, when she heard the front door open and the voices of Dev, Lisa and Mom. Moving with the necessary slow precision across her bedroom rug and into the carpeted corridor, she was too quiet and they didn’t hear her. She’d only been asleep half an hour, a shorter time than usual. They wouldn’t expect her to surface for another hour.
It was the same old line, from Lisa. “I just don’t think she’s ready, that’s all.”
“But what’s going to make her ready, Lisa?” Dev’s voice, low and intense, an emotional, threatening growl that did something to Jodie’s insides every time she heard it. “Do you think I was ready, when DJ was newborn? I’d never held a baby in my life. Isn’t it only doing it, doing the hands-on with no one to step in the moment you have the slightest episode of not coping, that makes you ready as a parent? You do it, you have to do it and you learn. You live it, you can’t imagine life without it and the love kicks in.”
“The love?” This was Mom. “She loves DJ! Of course she does! You can’t be seriously suggesting she doesn’t love her own baby, Devlin!”
“I’m not sure that you’re letting her love her, Barb.”
“That’s not true!”
“I appreciate that she mustn’t be overloaded, but do you ever let her feed DJ? Or hold her in the bath?”
“That’s not the point!”
Jodie stood with her hands on the stair rail for support, hearing it all. She wanted to tell Dev that it wasn’t Mom’s fault. She wanted to say, “Hey, I’m here! Let’s discuss this face-to-face, not when you think I’m asleep because you think I can’t handle it.”
But maybe they were right. She couldn’t handle it. She wasn’t handling it. The love hadn’t kicked in.
“She’s working too hard on her rehab, for one thing,” Lisa said. “You know what she’s like. One of her riding instructors, when she was about twelve, said she had more guts than a slaughterhouse.”
“Oh, Lisa!” Barb wailed.
“Yeah, graphic image, but I’ll never forget that and it’s true. She’s an incredibly brave person, and she’s exhausting herself with work on her exercises.”
“Because she wants to be strong enough to take car
e of DJ,” Mom argued. “Which she isn’t, right now. She’s told me. She’s afraid of letting her fall.”
“She’s too tired to take care of DJ.” Lisa again. “She needs a break, just some time out. From everything.”
“I think you’re right,” said Mom. “Time out. How can we do this?”
“Dev, leave the baby here and just take her out tonight, or something,” Lisa said. “Take her to dinner. Take the pressure off. You want her to take more of the load off your hands—”
“It’s not about the load,” he interrupted. “Do you think that’s what this is about? That I want to be able to hand DJ over to her and get the hell out? Shoot, that’s the opposite of what I want!”
“I’m not saying that.” Lisa stopped, then added in an abrupt tone, “Well. I don’t know. You’re going back to New York, aren’t you?”
“Look, that’s a decision I can’t make yet.”
“You had made it, I thought.”
“When we weren’t certain she’d ever come out of the coma. When she was so sick. Of course I wasn’t going back to New York if I had a daughter to raise on my own. The situation’s changed now, hasn’t it? Everything’s negotiable. All I know is, I’m not going to be shut out.”
“Okay, but I’m assuming—” She cut herself off again. “I don’t want to pressure you about the status of your relationship when it’s none of my business.”
Dad passed through the hall at that moment, and offered, “You got that right!” before he kept right on going, on his way out to mow the lawn.
“It is our business!” Mom said. “It’s about DJ’s future, and Jodie’s well-being. Is there a relationship, Dev?”
“Of course there is. We’re the parents of a child.”
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
“Yes, I know it, but that’s the only answer I can give you right now.”
“We’re going around in circles.” Lisa gave a sigh that traveled all the way up the stairs to Jodie on the top landing.
“We are,” Dev said. “But taking her to dinner is a good idea, and I’m happy to do it.”
Lisa kicked into action at once. “I’ll make a reservation. How far are you willing to drive? There’s that gorgeous new French place in Fairfield—La Brasserie. If you cut across through the back roads, it’s not too far.”
“And I’ll run DJ’s bath,” Mom said. “By the time Jodie wakes up, she can have the bathroom to herself to take a shower and get ready. It’s still early. If you make the reservation for seven, Lisa. That way Jodie’s not out too late.”
“Isn’t La Brasserie a little too—?”
But they didn’t let Dev finish. “Make it special,” Lisa insisted. “Make it a milestone. A new start. She’s off the walking frame. She’s already so much stronger and better than she was a few weeks ago. She knows we’re here for her. And she’s always fought so hard to be independent and to achieve her goals. If she’s not fighting us for more hands-on with DJ, it’s because she doesn’t feel it would be safe. When she’s ready, I know my baby sister, she’ll say so! She’ll absolutely insist!”
Thank you, Lisa.
Was it true, though? It would have been true, before the accident, Jodie knew. Now, though… Would she absolutely insist?
“You’re right,” Mom decreed. “She will.”
Jodie started carefully down the stairs. “Are you guys making plans for me?”
Mom looked up at her. “Oh, you’re awake already?”
“Just now. It’s great, isn’t it? Down to one nap, most days, and it’s getting shorter.”
“We’re sending you and Dev out to dinner,” Lisa said. “DJ’s staying here.”
“Can I help with her bath?” She caught the covert, meaningful looks Mom and Lisa exchanged that seemed to say, “See? Jodie’s absolutely insisting.”
“Of course, honey,” Mom said.
But they didn’t let her, not really. Dev went home to shower and change. Lisa made the restaurant reservation. “La Brasserie, Jodie, it’s gorgeous. You wouldn’t have been there, since it’s new.” Mom ran the water, testing it expertly with her elbow to make sure it wasn’t too hot.
“Let me get her undressed,” she said, “because that’s tricky.”
Jodie stood back and watched as the little wriggly arms came out of the stretch cotton dress, looking so fragile and small and wobbly it seemed as if one wrong move from Mom’s expert hands and the arms might break.
Jodie hissed in a horrified breath at the mental image and Mom turned to her with a question in her face.
“It’s okay,” Jodie said quickly. “Just glad you’re doing this bit.”
But then Mom did the next bit as well, sliding DJ into the bath and scooping the warm water over her perfect, satiny, slippery skin.
“Doesn’t she ever smile in the bath?”
“Ooh, no, bath is way too serious for that,” Mom cooed, gazing down at DJ, her own smile as gooey as a marshmallow. “She used to shriek, at first, but she likes it now. Don’t you, sweetheart precious?”
“H-how can you tell, without her smiling?”
“Look at her splashing her little arms and wriggling around.” Mom was still beaming, her hair damp around her face, a damp patch on the front of her blouse and two pink spots on her cheeks. She looked as happy as a young girl, but she also looked deeply tired. She was sixty-five years old, with forty years as a parent and seventeen years as a grandmother already under her belt. How much longer could she keep this up?
I have to start learning.
“Could I shampoo her hair?”
“Of course.” Mom took a step to the side. She kept hold of DJ, while Jodie pooled a tiny amount of baby shampoo onto the round head with its water-slicked hair. She massaged it in, her coordination still jerky. Mom cradled the little head in her cupped palm to keep it steady.
“I don’t think I’d better rinse it off,” Jodie decided. “I might get shampoo in her eyes.”
So Mom did that part, also, then picked her up and wrapped DJ in a towel and sent Jodie for a clean outfit and a fresh diaper. “Just one of her little playsuits, in the second drawer. This is what Maddy used to do for you when you were newborn and she was seven, choose your outfits after your bath.”
Great, Jodie thought. My child-care capabilities are those of a seven-year-old. I’m so proud.
But it wasn’t funny. It hurt. It shook her up. And she couldn’t talk about it because that would only shake her up more.
Dev appeared at six-thirty, because Fairfield was a half-hour drive away. Jodie had spent nearly an hour getting ready, and in this area there was genuinely something to celebrate because she didn’t need help with any of it now. She could get her arms into both sleeves. She could manage the whole shower. Lipstick and mascara were another story, but this was easily solved. Her face was cleansed, exfoliated and moisturized, but makeup-free.
She met him at the front door and his expression seemed to approve the swirly print dress and tiered jacket, which she had teamed with flat shoes in basic black because managing killer heels at this stage would have made managing lipstick seem easy. He looked so good himself, in dark pants and a lightly patterned button-down shirt, freshly shaven and his hair still a little damp around his neck from the shower.
They’d both dressed as if it were a date, she realized.
Was it a date?
But no, they’d answered that one already.
“How’s DJ?” was the first thing he said to her.
“Oh, great. Asleep. I gave her her bath. Well, helped.”
“Did you?” She could tell he was pleased, and felt guilty that she’d overstated her involvement. What was that really about? Wanting to make him happy? Or hiding her own distance and fear?
He put his arm around her back as they walked to the car. To an outsider they would have looked like a standard pair of new parents, taking a well-earned break for couple time while Grandma babysat. It was such a long way from the truth. Such a
long, long way.
Dev had a glass of red wine with his meal but Jodie kept to plain water. “I’m not putting anything into my body that’s going to interfere with my control.”
It made sense, yet still he told her, “You can let go a little, can’t you?”
The idea of this evening had been to relax her, but so far it hadn’t worked. He could see her intense concentration on managing the meal, to the point of twisting the pepper grinder over her chicken all by herself when the waiter was eager to do it for her.
He could see her making the right kind of conversation, too, refusing to rehash today’s milestones in rehab and instead dragging in current events and politics and celebrity gossip as if this were a neurological examination. Could she remember the name of Scarlett Johansson’s latest film? Could she keep track of this summer’s star players in baseball and golf?
“I want to progress,” she answered.
“You won’t, if you push too hard. You’ll get overloaded and go backward. Was this dinner a mistake?”
“No, it’s great.” She squeezed out a smile.
“It’s not what you need,” he said on her behalf, because he could suddenly see this, and knew she wouldn’t say it herself.
“No, you’re right, it’s not.” Her face fell. “I thought maybe it was, but—”
“I’m sorry. It was Lisa’s idea, and I know how much she cares about you and wants you to get strong.”
“They all care about me. It seems to blind them, sometimes. It’s always been this way, and it’s so hard to fight it when I’m fighting with everything I have just to use a damned fork without messing up!”
She blinked back tears of anger and frustration and all he could think was Hell! Hell! Out loud he said, “But that’s them. Your family. This is me. You can tell me what you really want and need, can’t you?”
There was a pause and he could see her struggling, pushing things back deep inside. A familiar fear surged inside him. What might she say? What would he do if she wanted him out of her life completely?
She had no right to insist on it, since he was DJ’s father, but how much of a battle did he want, with his innocent daughter as the winner’s prize? Would he take her to family court over it? Hell, he dreaded anything like that. He knew that the law could make custody issues worse as well as solving them, especially when the matter crossed state lines.
