For the first time since Ally and I got together, I felt truly anxious over what I had done. This was way beyond concern over what my colleagues, my family – or even I –might think. And I had absolutely no idea what to do with these feelings. Was I supposed to tell her to back away from my kid? How ridiculous would that sound and how could we possibly move forward after a conversation like that? Was I supposed to tell her that I needed time to make sure that Reese had a palpable understanding of who his mother was before I brought another woman into his life? That would take years to accomplish and I might as well ask her to wait for me while I did a tour of duty with the Marines.
But this was scary. The very first promise I made to myself as I held Reese after Maureen died was that I would raise him in her memory. That not only would he know who she was, but that I would always parent him with her in mind. I owed her that. She was such a good mother and I learned so much about being a parent from her. To think that I broke this promise only months later and that I did it in the most provocative way – by bringing a woman in to replace her – was unconscionable.
And I once again had to wonder to myself who I was.Was I the kind of guy who obliterated the memory of the woman he loved at the first opportunity? Was I the kind of guy who made that woman a footnote in her son’s life because he found himself in the thrall of someone else? If I was that guy, did I have to take all of the mirrors down in the house? And if I wasn’t, then how did I get where I was right now?
I tried to convince myself that I was overreacting, that this was the result of too little sleep and an unusually clear dream. But the reality was that the scene in that dream could very easily happen sometime in the near future. Reese was very close to walking and he could as easily walk to Ally as he could to me. And he was babbling a lot lately. If I stretched my imagination, I could even convince myself that I heard him call me “Dada.” How much of a leap would it be for him to say “Mama”? If the scene actually did happen, how would I react to it?Would it stun me speechless? Or would I smile and enjoy the little family moment like any other thoughtless soul?
To quiet the voices in my head, I turned on the television. The YES Network was broadcasting their “Yankeeography” of Thurman Munson, the great catcher on the Yankees’ World Series teams of the ’70s. Even this was a form of taunting for me. I adored Munson and he was my first real favorite baseball player. And when he died in a plane crash in 1979, I knew that no other ballplayer would ever mean as much to me. But only a few years later, Don Mattingly joined the club and I became a passionate fan of his. And then there were those great teams from ’96 on. And while I still had a soft place in my heart for Thurman and could get choked up just seeing his image on TV, I let others co-opt his space.
I switched the channel. First to VH1, but they were playing a video by River, of course. Then to the Food Network, which at last offered safe harbor. There was nothing about the preparation of stuffed pattypan squash to torment me, though perhaps I was simply too defeated at this point to find it.
The cooking show soothed me and even proved a bit inspirational. Ally came out of the bedroom with Reese in her arms a while later to find me in the kitchen making French toast.
“When did you get up?” she said as I walked over to them. Reese reached out for me and I kissed him on the cheek and hugged him.
“A while ago.”
“Everything okay?”
“I just couldn’t sleep.” Ally touched me on the arm. I’m sure she thought I couldn’t sleep because of Tanya. I squeezed her hand. I got Reese his first bottle of the day and sat him in his high chair. “Sorry to make you get up with him. Do you want to go back to bed?”
“No, I’m fine.” She looked over at Reese and then grabbed his foot.He smiled, but kept the bottle in his mouth. “We cuddled for a little while, but then he got really squirmy.”
“Yeah, he can be like that in the morning.” I chuckled, but I could feel myself getting anxious again. I hoped that seeing Ally and Reese together in real life would convince me that I was overreacting to the dream, but it did nothing of the sort. They just had a thing for each other.
I finished making breakfast while Ally made coffee. Even the fact that the coffee and the French toast were ready at the same time set me off a bit. Still, as was the case with several of these bouts of uncertainty, I let my concerns go unstated. What could I say? If Ally knew that something was bothering me, she didn’t mention it, and even if she did notice something, she probably assumed it was one of my usual things.
After we ate and showered, I dressed Reese while Ally and I talked about our plans for the day.We intended to go to the park in the afternoon, but I had a number of errands to run first, including a stop with my accountant that could take a little while. Our practice on Saturday mornings was to attend to our personal business separately before getting back together after Reese’s nap.
“Why don’t I keep Reese here while you do the stuff you need to do?” she said.
“Don’t you have things to do as well?”
“Nothing that can’t wait. You don’t want to have a conversation about financial planning while juggling a baby.”
Given the thoughts I had all morning, I was loath to leave the two of them alone to bond some more. But at the same time, Ally made a huge amount of sense.
“Here, let me finish dressing him so you can get going,” she said.
“No, I can finish dressing him. My appointment isn’t until 10:00.”
Without question, accomplishing what I needed to accomplish was considerably easier without toting Reese around. Still, I couldn’t stop feeling uneasy about it. It seemed so silly; I’d left Reese with Ally before. But the dream initiated this creeping feeling of discomfort and an increasing sense that I needed to do something about what I was feeling, that this time around I couldn’t simply put it off. I was distracted throughout the meeting with my accountant, forgot to get toothpaste at the supermarket, and had to turn around after I returned to the neighborhood because I didn’t pick up my dry cleaning.
By the time I got back home, the lack of sleep had caught up to me and I was feeling edgy. This kicked up to an entirely new level when I heard Reese screaming as I entered the house. I rushed to his room where I found him lying on his changing table and Ally standing over him holding a tissue to his temple. The tissue was soaked in blood.
“What happened?” I said excitedly.
“I left him alone for a second to make a phone call and he fell. He must have hit his head on the edge of the coffee table.”
I moved Ally aside and took the tissue from his head. Reese’s face was crimson and he was screaming uncontrollably. I tried to inspect the gash, but blood pooled in it as quickly as I could wipe it away.
“This is bad,” I said. “We need to go to the emergency room.”
I swept him up and brought him to the car, strapping him in his seat while he wailed. I hugged and kissed the top of his head while I stroked his hand trying to calm him down, but I doubt he had any awareness of what I was doing. Reese seemed to have a high pain threshold and even when he did get hurt, he tended to stop crying quickly. That he was so hysterical meant that this was excruciating for him.
I held another tissue against his temple. Ally asked if I wanted her to keep it there while I drove and I asked her to drive instead. Reese barely stopped crying when we pulled up to Mather Hospital ten minutes later. I quickly unstrapped him and carried him into the ER. There were a half-dozen people in the waiting area, but a nurse came to triage Reese right away. She checked his vital signs and then, while I held him tightly against my chest, I gave our insurance information to a clerk at the registration desk. He told us that a bed would be available for Reese within a few minutes and asked us to sit down. We went to sit with Ally, and it was only then that I noticed she was crying and probably had been for some time.
“I’m so sorry, Reese-y,” she said as she reached for his hand and held it. His head was on my shoulder and
his body was still shaking with sobs, though he no longer wailed.
We got a bed fifteen minutes later and waited another half hour after that for a doctor to see him. By this time, the bleeding had slowed considerably and Reese even smiled a little. But the worst was hardly over. The doctor took one look at the cut and asked me if I wanted to consult with a plastic surgeon.
“You mean there’s going to be a scar?” I said.
“He’s a baby. It’s always hard to tell with them. But I do think there’s going to be a mark of some sort. Plastic surgery is something to consider if you’re concerned about a scar.”
I glanced over at Ally. Her lips were set grimly.
“If I don’t want a plastic surgeon, what would we do?”
“He’ll need stitches. I think three will close this up.”
Neither option was particularly attractive. I’d hoped that this was something the doctor could have treated and then closed with a butterfly bandage, but obviously that wasn’t the case. I decided against the plastic surgeon. It would only extend the process for Reese and there was a very good chance that any scar would be barely noticeable.
What happened next was one of themost harrowing experiences I’ve had as a parent. A nurse and two orderlies came to our bed with a “papoose,” a board with something that looked an awful lot like a straightjacket attached to it.
“What are you doing with that?” I said.
“We need to put him in here before he can be stitched,” the nurse said.
“I can’t just hold him?”
“He’ll move around too much.”
Reese had calmed enough by this point to stand up while holding my fingers. When an orderly came to take him, he latched onto my arm and started crying again, climbing up my chest. At that point, turning him over to these people was just about the last thing in the world I wanted to do, but I also knew it was necessary. The orderly pulled him away from me and placed him down on the board while the others strapped him in.
Reese started screaming again as loudly as ever. But it got worse. An orderly held his head still while the doctor first anesthetized and then stitched him. Reese fought this all the way. He had no idea what was going on and couldn’t possibly understand why he needed to endure this. While this happened, I knelt next to him, patting his arm, singing to him and trying to get him to make eye contact with me – and at the same time trying to maintain my own composure, which quickly slipped away. I knew these medical people were doing their best to make this as painless as possible for him and to get it over with as quickly as they could. That still didn’t prevent me from wanting to punch them for putting him through it.
When it was over and a nurse released Reese from the papoose, I snatched him up as quickly as I could and held him close to me until he stopped crying. Ally, who I lost track of while the stitching was going on, patted him on the back. All I could think at this point was that I wanted her to leave him alone. That I wanted this time by myself with my baby to reassure him and let him know that this horrible experience was over. Ultimately, I moved away from Ally, telling her that I wanted to walk him a little to calm him down.
Reese fell asleep during the car ride home. I’m sure the crying and his ordeal had exhausted him. I brought him into the house and put him in his crib, wishing I could join him there for the next several hours. I felt absolutely washed out and beaten down. And I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about going out to see Ally. Between what had been going on in my head that morning and then the accident, I wasn’t at all sure what to say to her.
“Is he sleeping okay?” she said when I returned to the kitchen.
“He’s fine for now. It would be great if he slept a couple of hours, but I’m afraid he’ll wake himself up when he turns his head.”
“Poor guy. I can’t believe how fast that all happened.”
“You can’t?”
“You know what I mean. It was just the blink of an eye.”
“You mean he was standing up against the coffee table already when you left the room to get the telephone?”
Ally’s face fell. “He scrambles around that thing. I was going to be gone for a second.”
“I’m sure the accident took less than a second.”
Ally looked stunned and disappointed at the same time. I’m sure she was blaming herself for this already, but I’m also sure she didn’t expect to hear what I was suggesting now. “Are you saying this was my fault?”
“He was your responsibility.”
“The exact same thing could have happened if I was in the room with him.We don’t walk around him with a safety net.”
“But you weren’t in the room with him. This didn’t happen because he just slipped. There had to be some velocity for him to cut himself that badly. Maybe he was running around the table. Maybe he was running after you because you left the room.”
She threw her hands up to her face and then steepled her fingers and pressed her thumbs against the bridge of her nose. “I can’t believe you’re saying this. I love that kid like he’s my own.”
It was the exact wrong thing for her to say at that moment. Almost anything else would have made me see how upset she was about what happened and understand that this was very painful for her as well. But the events of the day conspired against us. So instead of feeling for her, instead of allowing this to be a trial that we endured together, what I said was, “Well, if you’re going to play at being a mother, you might want to practice on something less valuable first.”
Ally’s expression told me everything I needed to know: I had crossed a line from which I could not retreat. She wasn’t angry; she was humiliated.
“I won’t let you talk to me like that,” she said.
“I didn’t mean it the way it came out,” I said quickly.
“Explain to me how it could have come out differently.”
I gestured with my hands, but found I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Look, Gerry, I think you’re great and I think Reese is a gift from heaven, but I’m not going to be a junior partner in this relationship and I’m certainly not going to allow you to slap me in the face.”
Something else replaced the anger I was feeling. It wasn’t contrition; though I was certainly sorry I had said something so cruel to her. It was the realization that I had subconsciously prepared for this moment from the very beginning of our relationship. Realization that at some point the misgivings and hesitation I sublimated would rise up. Realization that I would always find something else to convince me that we started too soon, that I wasn’t ready to let go of Maureen, that I wasn’t prepared – and might never be prepared – to let someone all the way in again.
I knew that Reese didn’t get hurt because of Ally’s negligence. I knew that I had no reason to be angry with her. But I also knew as clearly as I knew anything on this fuzzy day that my striking out at her was a symptom of something much more pernicious. I was in over my head and I was now violently kicking my way back to the surface.
“Go, then,” I said.
I know that wasn’t what she expected to hear and she seemed deeply saddened by it. But while I couldn’t possibly imagine what was going on in her head, I have a feeling that a light clicked on for her at that point. And what she saw in that light was a man who would never give her what she wanted or deserved.
She bowed her head. When she looked up at me again, there was new resolve in her eyes.
“I’ll come by for my stuff sometime when Lisa is here.”
I nodded.
“And you need to let me know how he’s recovering. E-mail me if you have to. But I get to share that much.”
“I’ll let you know when I see you on Monday.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, as though she just then remembered that we would cross each other’s paths on a daily basis.
“Bye, Gerry.”
When she left, I went to the couch in the family room, sat back, and stared at the ceiling for an
incongruous length of time. Reese wound up napping for hours, leaving me uncomfortably alone with my thoughts.During this time, I realized I was at least as unready to move forward without Ally as I had been to move forward with her. None of my available options were good ones. If I could somehow get Ally back, I’d only subject both of us to the consequences of my next bout of guilt and indecision. But if she was in fact gone from my life, I was greatly diminished. I relied on her for so many things. And regardless of my anxieties, she made my life immeasurably better.
When Reese finally woke up, he looked miserable, the dressing at his temple drawing further attention to his haggard eyes. He’d been through so much and he had no idea why any of it had happened. And he wasn’t even aware of the major surgery I did on his life while he slept. He was listless and didn’t seem particularly interested in playing, so we sat on the couch together and I put on the Yankee game, which they won. Throughout the last four innings and the entire postgame show, he sat on my lap with his head tilted against my chest.
We were once again alone together.
I saw your brother’s blood for the first time today. It seemed like there were gallons of it coming out of him. Everything is exaggerated when someone you love is hurt, especially when you feel like you can’t do enough to help.
It was a scary experience and it got scarier before it got better. Ultimately, the solution was three stitches, which will leave a little mark on the side of his head. You managed to make it through your entire childhood without going through something like this. He couldn’t even get to his first birthday. Hopefully this isn’t an omen. But it’s clear that he’s a daredevil and it’s unlikely that this will be our last visit to the emergency room. I can only hope that future trips are less upsetting.
I got five stitches in my scalp when I was seven. It was the result of a stupid summertime accident involving a skateboard and a broken bottle. From what I remember, the stitches hurt much more than the cut did, even though I wasn’t supposed to “feel a thing.” That was the first in a series of lies people told me surrounding that accident, the biggest of which was that the other kids wouldn’t chide me about the patch of hair the doctors shaved off before they sewed me. I suppose Reese is lucky that he won’t have any memory of this event, not to mention that he won’t have to endure Frankie Wild’s endless teasing the way I did. Though of course we subconsciously store absolutely everything from our early years and these things work away on us even though we can’t recall them. For Reese’s sake, I hope today is just a complete blank down the line.
When You Went Away Page 24
