Rebecca

by Adam J Nicolai

  The door clicked open behind her. She turned to see a young man, maybe six years older than she, wearing a disarming smile. "Good morning."

  "Hi. Is my daughter here?"

  "Actually, she is. Your friend brought her in this morning; they've been waiting a couple hours, but wanted to let you wake up first."

  Sarah nodded, but she was confused. Her friend? She tried to think back, to sort through the nightmare impressions left by the night before, but it was impossible.

  "Why don't you sit up, we can check your vitals, and then I'll send them in."

  Sarah nodded again, feeling dazed.

  "Are you hungry?" the man asked as he worked.

  "Yeah." Starving, she realized.

  "Good." He smiled at her again. "We'll take care of you."

  54

  After he left, Tiff came in with Rebecca.

  Tiff was wearing jean shorts and a faded blue t-shirt with a picture of the earth on it, her hair loose. She looked gorgeous.

  "You all right?" she asked. She was holding Rebecca in one arm, the diaper bag swinging from the other.

  Sarah's eyes seized on Rebecca; she held out her arms. As Tiff passed her over, though, Sarah felt a wave of self-consciousness. No toothbrush, no deodorant. She had to stink to high heaven.

  "Yeah," she said. "Sorry I'm such a mess."

  Tiff scoffed, refusing to dignify the protest with a response. "So what happened?"

  Rebecca's eyes latched on to her mother at once, roaming eagerly over her face. Sarah surprised herself by kissing her on the forehead. Her skin was warm velvet and peach fuzz. It sent an unexpected thrill down her spine.

  Sarah glanced up at Tiff. "I missed her," she said, marveling. This was a revelation, a seismic shift.

  Tiff didn't get it. "She missed you, too. There's no boobies like Mom's boobies. We had to make do with formula."

  Sarah felt an automatic twinge of anxiety at this information, but tried to ignore it. "Thank you. When did you get her? I don't even remember."

  "Oh, god - was it around midnight?" She tickled Rebecca's nose. "Do you remember?" she cooed. "I think it was around midnight. They called my cell."

  A complex stew boiled in Sarah's chest: embarrassment, apprehension, gratitude. "Thank you."

  Tiff tried to wave her off. "I was up anyway."

  "No." Sarah grabbed her hand. "Seriously. And after everything I did to you... You didn't have to do that."

  Tiff sobered, for a second. She gave her hand an answering squeeze. "Hey, I told you to call. I knew what I was getting into." She smiled at Rebecca. "Besides, we had a good time, didn't we, Becca? Yeah.

  "I got a little taste of Mom's schedule."

  Sarah barked a laugh. It felt good. "What did you call her? Becca?"

  "Did I?"

  "Yeah. I like that. Better than 'Becky.' That's what my mom calls her, and it drives me nuts."

  "'Becky?'" Tiff recoiled. "No, that's not her."

  Sarah smiled. "How was she?"

  "She was great," Tiff said flatly. "We had to hit Wal-Mart for the formula. Not a lot of places open at one in the morning. We went back to your place. She slept on my lap." Tiff shrugged. "We did all right. Oh!" She dug in her pocket, fished out Sarah's keys. "I stole these. We took your car, too. I didn't have the car seat... latch... thing, for the carrier. And it was one in the morning, I wasn't about to try to figure out how the hell to move it."

  She did all that for me, after I turned my back on her. Sarah felt the tears coming. She feigned a yawn, dashed them away, got herself under control.

  "Good call. That thing is a pain."

  "So, again... what happened?"

  She owed Tiff an explanation, but didn't want to go into detail. She already felt disgusting and self-conscious. There was no need to compound things. "Complications from the delivery." She rubbed her abdomen. "Should be okay now, but it was pretty painful last night."

  "Christ!" Tiff hissed, then winced at the word. "Sorry. It just came out. Are you okay?"

  "Yeah, I think so. It doesn't hurt anymore. The guy said it should be under control but I'll probably have to take some kind of antibiotics for a couple weeks."

  "Man." Tiff squeezed her hand again.

  "I thought it was... I mean, it hurt, you know? I knew it hurt. But it's been hurting ever since..." Sarah fell silent, debating how much to tell her. "I mean, obviously it was sore from the delivery. So I didn't really think anything of it. At first, I actually thought Rebecca..." She thought back to the fever she had read on the thermometer at home, but the memory was nearly as fuzzy as all the others from last night. Had she begun hallucinating that early? Everything from Target to this morning was a hellish blur.

  "Was..." She hesitated, not wanting to sound like a lunatic, but her curiosity got the best of her. "I mean, Cal wasn't here last night, was he? Or my mom?"

  Tiff shook her head. "Not that I know of. I did call Cal. I didn't know if you'd want me to or not, but I did. But it wasn't until this morning. He didn't even know about it last night. And your mom's out of town or whatever, isn't she?"

  "Yeah." She tried a faltering smile. "I thought I heard them. Must've been the fever."

  "Those fever dreams can be nasty. I had one when I was seven of feral cats chewing off my legs at the knees." She paused. "Specifically, the knees. That was really important."

  "Nasty."

  Tiff shrugged. "At least my dreams didn't have your mom in 'em."

  The door clicked open. A woman came in, wheeling a tray, and Sarah's stomach thrummed.

  Tiff stood. "All right." She glanced at the breakfast, back to Sarah. "I've never done this before. What do you want me to do? Should I get going?"

  Sarah wasn't ready for that. "Can you stay?"

  "Yeah." Tiff smiled. "Of course."

  55

  After breakfast, the doctor came in. He reiterated the details of her condition and advised her to keep a strict regimen of antibiotics for the next two weeks. While she was on the meds, he explained, she shouldn't breastfeed.

  Sarah bristled. They had inundated her with propaganda about the virtues of breastfeeding during her maternity stay, and the research was everywhere on the internet, too. It was an absolute must, according to every article she'd read on the subject - until it wasn't possible, then all of a sudden it wasn't a big deal?

  "What if she doesn't want to start up again?" she pressed. "I've heard that some kids don't start again if they take a break like that."

  "That is a risk," the doctor conceded. "You can keep expressing to make sure your flow doesn't stop, but the child's preferences are another matter. Normally there would be some other options we could look at that would allow you to keep breastfeeding, but your infection was pretty bad. You could have become infertile. In this particular case I'd recommend the stronger antibiotic. We really need to avoid re-infection if at all possible."

  He was leaving the door open for a rebuttal - Sarah could read it in his eyes - but she didn't offer one. It shamed her to hide behind the claim of medical necessity to avoid doing what was best for her daughter, but she did it anyway. The old, familiar guilt settled in around her heart like a nest of thorns.

  They wheeled her and Rebecca to the doors that afternoon, and Tiff picked them up in Sarah's car. The whole thing smacked of theatrics, just like it had when she'd left the maternity ward. She was able to walk; if she wasn't, she wouldn't be leaving.

  Whatever. Their hospital, their rules.

  Tiff drove them through the ramp to her own car, a ratty '99 Civic, and followed them home. Rebecca was getting hungry by that time, so Tiff showed Sarah how she'd made the bottles. "I read you're not supposed to put it in the microwave. You gotta put water in a big bowl, then heat that up in the microwave, then put the bottle in that. By the way, it took me like twenty minutes to figure out your microwave." As Sarah gave Rebecca the bottle, she felt a pang of stupid jealousy at how easily the baby accepted it.

  "If you need anything, give me a
call," Tiff said as she was leaving. "If you want some company tonight, or whatever."

  "All right." Sarah gave her a quick hug. "Thank you again. Let me know how much that formula was; I'll pay you back."

  "The hell you will," Tiff returned. As she left, Sarah's cell rang.

  She locked the door and grabbed her phone, balancing both the bottle and the baby in her right arm. "Hello?"

  "Hey," Cal said. "You all right? I heard you went to the hospital last night."

  Sarah's teeth clenched. Yeah. Where the hell were you?

  At least he's calling, some part of her answered. Were you really even sure he would?

  "Yeah, I was there overnight. It was pretty bad. I'm all right now."

  "Oh, cool. Sorry I didn't make it over there; Tiff called me this morning but I was already busy with some other stuff. I was gonna come see you but I called and they said you were already gone."

  "Yeah," Sarah answered tightly. "Don't worry about it, I'm fine."

  "Okay, good." The line plunged into an awkward silence.

  Sarah arched her brows. "Anything else?"

  "Well, yeah. I've been thinking about everything. Sorry about what I said the other day. It was a low blow."

  Sarah bristled. "Yeah, it really was."

  "I didn't mean it. I was just pissed off."

  Wow. "You were pissed off?"

  "Well... yeah, I mean I came over there to try and see the baby, and make it up to you that I was gone and stuff. When you went ballistic I was just surprised. I wasn't trying to start some kind of fight or anything."

  Sarah scoffed. You think that was ballistic? "Well, you screwed that one up." She adjusted her arm, trying to balance the bottle better so Rebecca could improve her grip on it, but messed it up. The bottle tumbled to the floor, coughing a brittle spray of formula onto the carpet.

  He sighed. "Oh, man... come on, Sarah. God, this isn't going right at all."

  "You think?" She couldn't pick the bottle up again with Rebecca in one hand and the phone in the other.

  "Why are you acting this way? You used to be so cool."

  "We have a baby, Cal!" She wanted to scream the words, pound them through his skull, but she kept her voice down for Rebecca. "And you keep acting like it's no big deal!"

  "What? I know it's a big deal. I'm calling -"

  "Yeah, you're calling. You've seen your daughter once. I was in the hospital last night and you didn't even know until Tiff told you."

  "I wanted to come, but by the time she called me -"

  "Oh, give me a break! This is what I'm talking about! You don't even know what the hell is going on!"

  "All right," he snapped. "This is going all wrong. Listen.

  "Let's just get married."

  56

  "What?" Rebecca had started rooting again, growing slowly more frustrated.

  "I..." He faltered, as if for a single, brilliant instant he had recognized his colossal misstep. Then he recovered. "You heard me. We have a baby. We should get married."

  Sarah's mouth worked; she was speechless. "Are you serious?"

  "You want me to help take care of the kid, right? I spent a lot of time thinking about this."

  "Like, what? Two days?"

  "It's the right thing to do, Sarah."

  She reeled. "For who?"

  "For the kid. It needs a good home."

  "You think we're gonna give her a good home?"

  Why not? she accused herself. It'd be better than you going at it by yourself. Cal's parents are practically rich. Maybe you could move out of this craphole and stop begging your mom for money all the time. But the knee-jerk rationales terrified her. Marry Cal? There were a thousand reasons why that was a terrible idea.

  "Yeah, we could. You could move to D.C. with me, take care of the kid while I finish school. My dad would -"

  "Move to D.C.," she repeated, numb. "What about Connecticut?"

  "Connecticut?" He sounded honestly confused.

  "Yale, Cal. It's in Connecticut."

  "You..." He sputtered. "Sarah, come on. You're not still going to Yale. Everything's changed."

  She'd been suddenly plunged into a debate round, forced to argue for her own future, but given no time to prep, or research. She was freezing. Rebuttals flooded her tongue, tripped over each other in their rage, and produced nothing.

  Mistaking her silence for acceptance, Cal forged on. "We could live in an apartment in the city or something. I could commute to school."

  She regrouped. "I'm not moving to Washington, D.C." The coolness of her own voice surprised her.

  "Why not?" He was incredulous. "Sarah, come on. You know what kind of sacrifice I'd be making not living on campus. Can't you -"

  The calm in her voice exploded. "Sacrifice?" she demanded. "Are you kidding me? You want to talk about sacrifice?"

  "All right, fine. You don't want to do it. At least I offered."

  "You offered?" On some level she realized she was repeating everything he said, and it appalled her. But everything that came out of his mouth was so abhorrent, so alien, that she had to spit it back just to get away from it.

  "Yeah, Sarah. I offered. I know you don't want this. You think I do? I didn't ask for this either, you know. I'm trying to do the right thing here. A lot of guys wouldn't."

  "Oh, yeah. Yeah, you're a real winner. Thank Christ you're such a great guy."

  "God dammit! I'm trying -"

  "You're not trying!" she spat. "Don't you give me that crap! You're not! You're trying to keep everything! You're trying to pretend nothing happened!"

  "What? I just asked you to marry me -"

  "You should've been at the hospital! You should've been here last night, feeding Rebecca! Not sitting at home, trying to figure out how to keep everything you have while dragging me and your daughter across the goddamn country!"

  It was too much; Rebecca gave a sharp, scraping wail.

  "All right," Cal ordered. "Shut up."

  He might've slapped her. She fell into a stunned silence.

  "Look, I know you had a hard night and your hormones are raging and whatever. I get it. Just take some time to think about it. You're trying to push me away, but I'm not getting shoved away that easy. This conversation's not over. Settle in, calm down. I'll call later."

  Click.

  57

  Rebecca was shrieking.

  He hung up on me? Her heart jerked in her chest. He hung up on me? She was quivering. She had never been this angry in her life: her body twitched between hurling the phone and kicking the wall. She imagined screaming, her voice twining with her daughter's like the howls of some god-forsaken wolf pack. The people in the next unit would probably hear it and call the cops.

  Rebecca's body bucked with every indrawn breath, every renewed piece of the onslaught. Like the killer's arm flexing as he stabbed the victim in a horror movie, over and over and over.

  Shut up! Sarah suddenly wanted to scream. Just shut the fuck up, do you ever just SHUT UP! Her arms tightened, fighting the manic urge to shake the kid silent.

  No, something told her, some quiet but steady part of her brain - the last one left.

  With the muscles in her arms locked like steel bars, she reached carefully down and set Rebecca on the floor.

  Then she stalked into the bedroom, slammed the door, and broke everything she could find.

  58

  The room looked like a tornado had hit when she finished. The closet hung off its hinges; the diaper bag's contents were strewn everywhere, its zipper broken. She had kicked the futon frame until it broke. Everything was dotted with bits of her pillow stuffing, like the first snowfall of the year.

  She sank to the floor. Her foot was throbbing and bloody; her elbows and her temples ached.

  As she slowly came back to herself, she heard Rebecca's unabated screaming from the next room. Suddenly, though, they didn't sound accusatory and enraged. They sounded desperate. Frightened.

  She has no idea what the world is, Sara
h realized. It's terrifying. Every bit of it is terrifying.

  She has nothing and no one. Only me.

  "Ah, god," Sarah breathed. She limped into the hall, grimacing with shame.

  "Hey," she whispered as she picked Rebecca up. The girl's face was pinched and purple, her voice hoarse but unflinching. "It's okay." Sarah pulled her close; took her flailing arms and held them to her sides as if the girl were back in the womb; kissed her crown and felt her own lips tingle with warm milk and velvet. She felt like a fraud, going through these motions. She didn't know what they meant. She did them anyway.

  "Shhhhhhh. I'm sorry. It's okay." She caressed the girl's face, started to sway without really thinking about it. She saw a tear drip from her cheek to the blanket.

  "I'm sorry," she whispered again. "I'm sorry. Mommy's sorry." Another kiss.

  "No more."

  59

  When Rebecca had finally calmed, Sarah brought her up to the rocking chair and fed her. She took the bottle eagerly, pulling comfort and sustenance from it as if it might be the last time she would receive either.

  "Slow down," Sarah warned. She pulled the bottle and sat Rebecca up, burping her while she held her close, relishing the smell of her head. Weird, she thought. She had never noticed how good Rebecca's head smelled.

  She laid her back and gave her the bottle again. "Were you scared out here?" Rebecca blinked, long and slow, her eyes trained on her mother's face as her mouth worked.

  "Yeah? You know something? I'm scared, too. Mommy's scared, too."

  Rebecca kept drinking, enrapt.

  "I don't really know what I'm doing. I guess we have that in common. I'm doing the best I can, though. You know?"

  A dribble of formula escaped the corner of Rebecca's mouth and ran toward her ear. Sarah wiped it up with the corner of her bib.

  "How do you like this bottle thing? It working for you?"

  Rebecca pulled away, her face scrunching into a grimace of discomfort.

  "We gotta burp more. You drink it so fast." She sat her up again, tapped her back with her palm. "But I think you like it. It's easier, isn't it?"