The Birth Mother

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Part of her couldn’t believe the cruelty of fate that would allow her a taste of all life could be, all that her life had been without, only to make it all unobtainable. But the other part of her, the weak part, knew that it was only what she deserved. What right did she have to love, to be loved, to live happily ever after, when she’d withheld her love from her own child?

  He finally called Friday afternoon.

  “The tapes are still in the lab. They should be ready sometime early next week,” he said as soon as she picked up the phone.

  Jennifer smiled. It was just so damn good to hear from him. “Hello yourself.” She wrapped the phone cord around her finger.

  “How you doing?” His voice was softer, more personal as he asked the question.

  “I’ve been better. I miss you.”

  “Enough to have dinner with me tonight?”

  Her heart began to slam against her ribs. “Just you?”

  A heavy silence hung over the line, as if he was only just then deciding the answer himself. She held her breath, hoping with all she was worth that his answer was yes.

  “Me and Nicki,” he finally said.

  She thought about all the what-ifs and what-might-have-beens she’d been torturing herself with for the past couple of days. And she hadn’t even met his niece. She was afraid to find out how much worse it would get if she did what he wanted.

  “I can’t, Bryan.”

  “You don’t know what you’re missing, Jen. Nicki’s a great kid.”

  She closed her eyes. That was exactly what she was afraid of. Meeting Nicki was going to make her need to have what she could never have all that much worse. And more, she was terrified that if she met Nicki, it was only going to prove, once and for all, that she was a failure with kids. Bryan wouldn’t be able to make any excuses for her if his own kid didn’t like her. And she wouldn’t be able to make any, either.

  “It’s not Nicki that’s the problem, Bryan. It’s me. I’m sorry. I can’t have dinner with you tonight.”

  He said, “You can’t run forever, Jen. Think about it.” And he hung up.

  As awful as Jennifer felt, she also knew a huge sense of relief when she dropped the receiver back into the cradle. He’d invited her to dinner again. He’d had time to think about the bombshell she’d dropped in his lap on Wednesday, time to calculate the years, time to figure out what she’d been doing when most fifteen-year-olds were still having their parents drive them to the movies. And he’d still invited her to dinner.

  It was then that Jennifer admitted she’d been worrying herself sick that he wouldn’t. She’d been afraid, after blurting out her secret, she’d lost Bryan’s respect.

  Jennifer packed up her briefcase, cleared off her desk for the weekend and told Rachel she was leaving for the day. She might not be ready to face Bryan’s niece, but there was something she could do.

  She called Tanya from her car phone.

  “I have the afternoon free,” she told her friend as soon as she answered. “I thought maybe we could do a little bit of shopping for that package you’re carrying.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In my car approaching Lenox.”

  “Phipp’s Plaza is on Lenox. I’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes.”

  Tanya hung up and Jennifer had no chance to change her mind. Not that she was going to. She wasn’t about to lose the only real friends she’d ever had. Which meant she was going to have to come to terms with the new person in their lives. She could do it, too. She was a survivor. She wasn’t going to live out the rest of her life running away from a past she couldn’t change. But she couldn’t afford to fall apart at the seams, either. Not with the One Price campaign resting in the balance. She’d just have to take things one step at a time.

  Tanya pulled into the mall parking lot with two minutes to spare. She jumped out of her car with a determined grin on her face and said to Jennifer, “I’m not letting you off easy now that you dragged me over here.”

  Tanya needn’t have worried. Jennifer wasn’t about to back down. “Lead the way,” she said, trying to ignore the knot in her stomach.

  They walked into the department store, and Tanya headed right to infants’ wear with an ease that told Jennifer she’d already been there many times.

  “I’ve got a full layette of T-shirts, newborn through twelve months, but I haven’t started on sleepers and socks yet,” she told Jennifer as they walked past a display of cribs.

  “You’re buying clothes already?” Jennifer asked. She’d expected they’d just look for now.

  “I have to have something to do. Dennis won’t let me paint until after the baby’s born. He’s afraid the turpentine fumes might harm it.”

  Jennifer’s hands were shaking as she tried to look around the department without seeing it. “Did you ask your doctor about it?” she asked.

  “Nope. It wouldn’t matter whether she said I could or not. If Dennis is worried the fumes’ll hurt the baby, I won’t mess with them. But if he tries to tell me I have to sit home all day and watch soap operas and knit booties, I’ll have to give him a severe piece of my mind.”

  Jennifer smiled as she pictured Tanya doing just that.

  Tanya stopped at a rack filled with tiny garments on hangers. “We need to start with newborns and work our way up,” she said, pulling a sleeper off the rack. “I want fourteen of these in each size.”

  Jennifer was sweating as if she’d just jogged, not driven, to the mall. “Fourteen?”

  “I’ve heard that babies go through a ton of clothes, sometimes three or four outfits in a day, and I’m not gonna lose what little sleeping time I’ll have to do laundry,” Tanya said.

  It made sense to Jennifer. She looked at the plastic tags along the top of the rack, searching for one that said newborn. She found it, moved toward it and grabbed a hanger off the rack. “How about this one?” she asked.

  “It’s cute, but we can’t do pink, or blue, either, since we don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl.”

  Jennifer looked at the sleeper. She hadn’t been aware she’d picked a pink one. But once she looked at it, she couldn’t look away. It was so incredibly small she could hardly believe a body could be small enough to fit in it. The feet were barely two inches long. And it was such a pretty pink, soft with a white lace ruffle across the bottom. It reminded Jennifer of one she’d picked once. She used to go to stores and choose outfits she’d like to buy for her baby, back in the beginning when she’d thought she’d be strong enough to stand up to her parents and keep the child growing inside of her.

  “You okay?” Tanya’s voice pulled her back.

  Jennifer blinked the tears from her eyes. “Yeah.”

  “You wanna go? I didn’t mean it when I said I was going to hold you to this, you know.”

  Jennifer nodded, putting the garment back on the rack. “Yeah, I know. But it’s okay. We can stay. And why don’t you know if we’re shopping for a boy or a girl? You’re almost four months along.” Ultrasounds were usually done as a matter of course, and when she’d been pregnant, she’d been told the sex of her baby by her fourth month.

  “We don’t want to know,” Tanya said. “Neither one of us gives a rip what it is so long as it’s healthy, and we decided to do it the old-fashioned way. Wait until it’s born.” She put a couple of little garments over her arm.

  Jennifer picked up a purple sleeper. It was terry cloth, and she liked the hearts embroidered on the chest. Love was what a baby needed most.

  “Here,” she said, handing it to Tanya. Tanya took one look at Jennifer’s face and added it to the bunch.

  They found four sleepers in all, a couple of pairs of newborn shoes and a comforter that doubled as an activity table before Tanya announced that they’d exhausted that department. Jennifer insisted on paying for all of the purchases. It was something she wished she’d been able to do twelve years before.

  “Where to next?” she asked Tanya as the two made their way back out into the
mall.

  “You sure you’re up for more?” Tanya settled her bag against her hip. It was almost as big as she was.

  Jennifer wasn’t sure. But she wasn’t giving up. “Lead the way,” she said, “and give me that.” She took Tanya’s package, stopped to buy a handled shopping bag to put it in and then carried it herself.

  They went through the next store, a baby boutique this time, with a fine-tooth comb, adding several more sleepers and a sterling rattle set to their pile of purchases. At last Tanya suggested they stop for burgers and malts in the food court. And the entire time they stood in line, she critiqued the children walking through the mall, or rather, critiqued their parents, telling Jennifer what she was going to do the same or, in many cases, differently with her baby.

  “How do you know all this stuff?” Jennifer asked her as they sat down at a table for two in the old-fashioned burger joint.

  Tanya shrugged, swallowing a bite of her big juicy hamburger with everything on it. “Common sense.”

  “Aren’t you the least bit worried you might not be a good mother?”

  “Hell no!” Tanya said loudly enough to draw several pairs of eyes their way. “All it takes to be a good parent is plenty of love,” she said, lowering her voice. “And that I’ve got in excess. I can’t believe how much I love this kid already, and I haven’t even felt it move yet.”

  Jennifer smiled sadly, remembering. “I know.” But she didn’t agree with Tanya’s assessment of parenthood at all. Her parents had loved her, yet in a lot of ways they’d been awful parents.

  “Have you thought any more about registering someplace?” Tanya asked softly, looking at Jennifer over her malt.

  Jennifer remembered a tiny hand brushing her cheek. “Constantly,” she told Tanya, pushing her unfinished burger aside. “I want to, but I keep wondering if it’s the right thing to do. Say I find her, say she wants to meet me and her parents are even agreeable to it, and, hell, while we’re at it, let’s pretend she likes me, will I be able to handle seeing her knowing she’s not mine? Will I try to take over, not even meaning to, or will my mere presence interfere in her relationship with her mother? At the very least, it would be complicated. And sometimes I think it would be best for all of us if I just left well enough alone and got on with my life.”

  “Can you?” Tanya asked, blunt as always.

  Jennifer thought of Bryan, of his niece—Nicki, he’d called her. “I thought so,” she said. But even if she wasn’t getting on with her life, was searching for her daughter the answer?

  “What if she needs you, Jen? What if something’s happened and she really needs you? You have so much you could give her now. And even if she doesn’t need you, even if she’s perfectly happy, wouldn’t you like to know that? Honestly?”

  Jennifer felt a panic attack coming on just thinking about it. “Of course. But she doesn’t need me, Tan. If I’m at all like my mother was, the last thing my daughter would need is me.”

  “You’re nothing like your mother, Jennifer Teal. That woman had ice for a heart. Your only problem is that you’re too perfect for your own good, my dear,” she said.

  “What are you talking about?” Jennifer scoffed. Perfect was one thing she’d never been. Not even as a baby, according to her mother and the tales of colic and diaper rash she’d heard about while she was growing up.

  “You are, Jen. You always have been. You’re so damned good you have to invent things to worry about. Dennis says it’s because you always tried so hard to please your parents, and the worst part was they never even noticed.”

  “That’s not true. They noticed me a lot, and always when I seemed to be screwing something up. Dennis is right about one thing, though. I did try. And it paid off in the end. I finally did something right when I took over the business and they were able to retire in luxury.”

  “And did they thank you for it?” Tanya asked somewhat bitterly.

  Jennifer loved her friend for her loyalty, even if it was misplaced. “They would have if they hadn’t died before they had the chance.”

  “The car accident was six months after they left!”

  “But they were in the Orient most of that time.”

  “I remember,” Tanya said.

  Jennifer wondered if Tanya also remembered that she’d been unable to cry at their funeral. It was something she’d never understood.

  “So what’s up with your hunk?” Tanya asked later as they strolled through the mall. They had too many packages to carry already and had decided to leave any further shopping for another day.

  Jennifer thought of the relief she’d felt when she hung up from Bryan that morning. “Well, he doesn’t think I’m easy.”

  Tanya hooted. “I don’t see how he could. You’re the biggest prude I’ve ever met.”

  “I am not,” Jennifer said, laughing as she hit Tanya with one of the sacks she was carrying. “I remember skinny-dipping in a very cold lake with about ten other people for club initiation.”

  “We were all girls, Jennifer. That doesn’t count.”

  “I’m not a prude, Tan,” Jennifer said, suddenly serious. “I just learn from my mistakes. Unfortunately I learned too late that you’re often judged by them. No matter what I did those last two years in high school, I was treated like a…a cheap slut.”

  “That was all a long time ago, Jen. You were a kid. You made a mistake. No man worth his salt is going to hold that against you today. Besides, Bryan doesn’t know about it, anyway, does he?”

  Tanya stopped suddenly and stared at her friend. “Does he?”

  Jennifer couldn’t miss the astonished, but hopeful look on Tanya’s face. “I told him about the baby.”

  “Well, hallelujah!”

  CHAPTER TEN

  SHE WAS HOLDING her baby, smelling the baby-sweet smell, gazing into her daughter’s bright blue eyes, and everything was as it should be, as it always would be…And suddenly the nurse was there, taking her baby away, and there was nothing Jennifer could do about it. Her arms wouldn’t work, her hands were numb, and no matter how she cried out, the nurse didn’t seem to hear her. Her parents were there, too, and the doctor, but no one saw her. They were all looking at her baby. And then, ignoring her protests, they all walked out of the room together, taking her baby with them…

  Jennifer woke up feeling sick to her stomach, her tears mingling with the cold sweat on her face and neck. She lay shaking in her bed, trying to tell herself that it was only a dream, that she had to be up in just a few hours, that she should go back to sleep. But she didn’t want to go back to sleep. She didn’t want to dream anymore.

  Getting up, she wiped her tears away, but to no avail. They kept right on falling. As if she had no will of her own, she was drawn to her wallet, to the tattered picture waiting there to torment her. She pulled it out, looked again at the image she knew better than her own face and remembered. Remembered things she hadn’t thought about in years…

  She’d lost her virginity on her fifteenth birthday. She’d been hoping for a quiet celebration, just she and her parents and a good meal someplace where they sang “Happy Birthday” to you and brought you a little cake with a candle in the middle. She’d had a quiet party, all right—a TV dinner at home, alone. Her parents had forgotten what day it was.

  But Billy Wilson hadn’t forgotten. A couple of years older than Jennifer, he’d taken her out a time or two, and while his experience had made her uncomfortable, she’d basked in his attention. No one had ever made her feel special before. Billy brought flowers for her birthday, red roses, and told her he loved her. He asked her to drive out to the lake with him, to let him make the day really special. Anxious to get out of the empty house, Jennifer grabbed a sweater and followed him to his car.

  His kisses excited her at first. And though she knew it was wrong, she even liked the feel of his hands on her breasts. But when his fingers slid beneath her skirt, she wanted him to stop. He told her that she wasn’t being fair to him, that she couldn’t lead him on
and then just expect him to stop. He said that he loved her, that he wanted to show her how much, that he wanted to marry her as soon as she turned seventeen. That if she loved him, she’d let him do what he wanted.

  Jennifer wasn’t even sure what love was, yet she knew she wanted to be loved more than anything else on earth. Feeling awkward and scared, she lay down in the back seat of his car and let him climb on top of her. It hurt. A lot. But he held her afterward, so gentle with her she almost cried. And she was glad she’d let him love her that much.

  She wasn’t nearly so glad a couple of weeks later when she caught him out with a girl from the cheerleading squad at school. Or when, that same day, she heard some girls talking about her in the locker room. They knew what she’d done with Billy.

  She wanted to die then. She went to her favorite place, the last mechanic’s bay at Teal Motors, and worked on an old Pontiac her parents had given her. They’d taken it in on a trade, and even the wholesalers hadn’t wanted it. She could keep it if she could get it running. She cried a bucket of tears as she worked, hating Billy Wilson, but mostly hating herself for being such a fool.

  Her only comfort in the days that followed came when she’d gotten her period. Billy hadn’t made her pregnant…

  Jennifer looked again at the picture in her hand, wondering just when she would have atoned for the sins of her youth. If there would ever be a time. She didn’t know, but one thing was for sure. Until she did, she couldn’t see Bryan and his niece. She just couldn’t handle it…

  “DAMN!”

  Nicki huddled back into the couch as she heard Uncle Bryan in his office swearing again. He’d been working all morning, even though it was Sunday, and things didn’t seem to be going too good.