Turning on my back, I stare up at the ceiling.
Just close your eyes and sleep, I tell myself.
But it’s no good. I’m unsettled, and I can’t shake it.
It’s this feeling of failure. I was fine until Conor came home. Sure, I was tired and a little frazzled by Romeo’s one-man food fight with me. But at the time, I had laughed it off. The two of us shared this amazing moment of prolonged eye contact as we laughed over it. I felt so connected to him that it seemed our bond had been cemented by that silly act. I even thought at the time that I couldn’t wait to tell Conor about it.
But then he came home, and he obviously needed something from me that I couldn’t give him. It wasn’t sex. It was some kind of relief from the burden of his grief. I failed my husband at that.
And then Sophie came swanning in with her good intentions that only made me feel like more of a failure with my kids. Why can’t I shake the fatigue and just push through like she can? I love her dearly, but sometimes being the contrast to her seeming perfection is too much. I mean, really, she’s watching four children under the age of three years old downstairs while I’ve run away to my bed?
This sense of failure feels all too familiar. It’s exactly what I felt with Richard, my ex-husband. I didn’t just feel it when we split, but for years before that when it was becoming increasingly clear that I was not measuring up to be the kind of wife he expected and required.
That’s probably what’s got me in this funk. I’m worried I’ll fail as a wife to Conor like I did with Richard.
A self-pitying tear starts to escape my eye and I sit up quickly, swiping at it.
No. I won’t do this. I won’t sink into this self-destructive trap.
I did not fail as a wife to Richard. He’s the one who changed all the rules so that in the end we weren’t even playing the same game.
My mobile chimes. It’s a text from Conor.
I changed my mind.
I furrow my brow at the short message. But he soon sends a rapid succession of clarifying texts.
Wait up for me.
Or wake up for me when I get home.
I want to see your beautiful face.
I want you to tell me about your day with the little ones.
I want to hear your laugh.
I want you.
And just like that, I feel a million times better. That’s the thing about my husband—he knows exactly how to reach me when I need it. I know that the love we have isn’t anything like what I had with my ex-husband. Conor has never made me feel like I’m not enough or that he wants me to be something else. He’s always made it clear that whatever I am is exactly what he wants.
Smiling, I text him back. I am yours, every hot mess bit of me.
His reply is quick. You better believe it.
Cradling my phone to my chest like a love-struck teenage girl, I settle back into bed. Within minutes, my eyelids grow heavy and I fall into a deep sleep.
* * *
Almost three hours later, I wake with thoughts of Richard in my head. Though I feel well rested, I have a sour taste in my mouth. Stretching in bed, I realize it’s not because I was thinking of the bitter end to our marriage, but the sweet beginning of our relationship. Even though I’ve completely moved on from him, I still have good memories and I don’t quite know what to do with them. When a relationship as significant as a decade-long marriage collapses, you’re tempted to taint all memories as being part of your poor judgement in the thing to begin with. But I never did that. I always granted myself the right to remember those times with fondness, believing it was only fair to accept that even if it all ended terribly, there had been a genuine, beautiful beginning.
That beginning took place when I was in my third year at the University of Toronto, well in toward my Management and Marketing degree. I had decided on the area of study as a purely practical matter, believing it opened up a wide range of career opportunities. I could go in any number of directions after graduation. At the same time, I was immersed in a culture that spoke French as easily as they did English and that bolstered my high school-level French to a new level. I fell in love with the French language and extended my course load so I could indulge in exploring French literature as well. I first saw Richard when he was assisting the professor in one of those classes.
When I laid eyes on him that autumn morning, I felt a rush of heat fill my body. He wasn’t a stunner like Conor, but he was definitely handsome, with sandy hair and a body so fit that his clothes couldn’t hide that he was some kind of athlete. It was clichéd, but I knew in that instant that I not only wanted that man, but I’d have him. That feeling was confirmed when he glanced up from the materials he was sorting through and looked directly at me. I don’t know if he had already seen me and so this wasn’t as fated as it felt, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t scan the room. He didn’t look to the professor. He looked directly at me. He would later tell our friends that the smile I gave him in return was what made him instantly fall for me.
“It was a mixture of sweetness and sex. I simply had to know who this girl was after that. I had to know what that smile was all about,” he’d say, and I’d hit him playfully for sharing something like that. But, really, I loved it. I loved that he was possessive with me.
My experience with boys before Toronto was limited to Conor. He had been good to me when it was just the two of us. But the line he was able to draw when we were with other people always reminded me of the limitations of the deal I had negotiated with him. And I was left feeling like he could take me or leave me.
The boys I dated in those first few years after moving to Toronto were immature and only out for a good time. I didn’t mind that as I was busy trying to build a life for myself in a new country. I fell in with a group of Irish girls who had had similar plans of escape and we looked after each other.
That scant relationship experience, along with my own father’s indifference, meant I was a sucker for Richard right from the start. Our first date lasted three days because he said he couldn’t bear for it to end. He couldn’t get enough of me and being wanted like that was intoxicating. My Irish girlfriends thought it was too much too soon, but I quickly left them behind when I got lost in Richard and his world. And I did get lost. The essential me was lost to him for so many years.
I shake my head to rid myself of these memories and jokingly make a mental note to research what “maudlin musings about your ex” indicate. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but it’s the best explanation I can come up with. I have no reason to revisit the past like this. Not when my present is so good.
* * *
Downstairs, I find Sophie in the living area with the kids. She’s made a picnic, of sorts, on the floor, having spread out a throw blanket to sit on. Daisy is her main co-conspirator as they snack on Cheerios and sip juice out of the mismatched bone China teacups that were my mother’s. They are one of the few things of hers that I’ve kept. It instantly annoys me that she’s used them, even though she would have no idea of my sentimental attachment to them. They sit in the glass-door cabinets with all our other cups.
Hale and Romeo (will our boys ever forgive us for those names?) are both asleep.
Ella was too, but must have sensed my presence, because she has started her usual build-up to a full-on cry. It’s her hungry cry and I know it well. I can feel my milk ready itself for her.
Sophie looks up with a smile. “Did you get some rest?”
“I slept like the dead,” I reply gratefully. “Thank you.”
“I’m so glad to hear it.”
“Be sure to let Conor know his plan worked out.” There’s an edge in my voice. I hadn’t any intention of making a dig at her like that. It slipped from my mouth so quickly and easily that it didn’t feel connected to my rational thoughts. But there it is.
Sophie’s caught off guard and hesitates to respond. Poor thing. She’s only trying to help and what do I do to repay that? Snide remarks and inexplicable m
ood swings.
I should say something. Apologize. Or give an explanation. For some reason, I can’t. My throat suddenly feels thick and I can barely swallow. Instead of speaking, I take up Ella and get comfortable on the sofa. She quiets and quickly finds what she’s after to nurse.
“Well, we’re going to head out,” Sophie says.
I nod, still unable to spit out the right words, to do the right thing. As I focus on Ella, Sophie gathers her things and her children. She gets halfway toward the front door before stopping and turning back to me.
“I know you’re dealing with a lot,” she says, “but I hope you will remember that I’m your friend.”
“I don’t need pity, thanks.” Again, the words fly without my consent. What is my problem? I’m filled with regret and about to beg for her forgiveness when she responds.
“The thing is, there’s only so many times I can let you take things out on me. I’ve had more than my fair share of that in the last few years from Gavin. I just . . . can’t do that anymore.” She squeezes Daisy’s hand and adjusts the hold she has on Hale’s car seat. “Call me when you’re ready, okay?”
Tears pool in my eyes in an instant but all I’m capable of doing is watching her go.
5
I’ve never seriously thought I could have postpartum depression. Instead, I simply dismiss the behavior and unbalanced responses I have a hard time explaining as a result of simple fatigue. I rationalize that my lack of focus, mood swings, and anxiety can’t be postpartum because I’ve never once doubted my love and connection with Ella. I assumed that postpartum meant a disconnect with your child, or worse yet, wanting to harm the child or yourself, and there is none of that. Also, no one else—not my doctor, not Conor, not even Sophie who was just here to witness my troubling behavior—has suggested I might suffer from any kind of depression, let alone the kind that comes after having a baby. Maybe I’ve dismissed the idea out of denial. Or maybe it’s because I have good days. Truly good days where I feel like I’ve got it all under control.
Today has not been one of those good days.
I vow to reach out to Sophie to properly apologize and get things back on track with her. I also intend to eat a healthy dinner and look at some work emails. I’m convinced that if only I can get into a normal routine, everything will fall into place. But before I get a chance to attempt any of that, I receive a phone call that becomes my undoing.
My father’s name flashes on my mobile and I debate answering it. I’ve avoided his calls the last few times, though, and decide to answer it if only to get him to stop calling again for a while. I expect he’ll do a perfunctory check-in, as is his standard way of communicating, and then we can both feel we’ve done our part. It’s our normal pattern, but things soon deviate toward something much more discomforting.
“Ah, there you are,” he says. His tone is, as usual, breezy. No matter how long it’s been since we’ve spoken, he always acts as if it’s been mere days. I once went seventeen months without speaking to him and it was the same Ah, there you are from him when we finally connected.
Our relationship is complicated but mostly boils down to him being a non-presence. He made it clear very early in my adolescence that he didn’t have a lot of interest in knowing the highs and lows of my life. When he left my mother, it was a package deal of leaving me, too. He treated my mother and me as if we were just an error he moved on from. The new family he had after us was the one that “stuck.” We were the ones he discarded. In response, I tried to mirror his remote attitude as much as I could, though inside I, of course, always hoped he’d realize the error of his ways and dote on me as I fantasized a father should. That never happened. And neither did my mother ever get over him choosing another over her. After years of living with both her and my disappointment, I decided it was better to just accept that he would never be the father I wanted. That freed me to simply take what he was willing to offer me on those rare occasions when he reached out without being devastated by all the many more times he gave me nothing.
“Yes, here I am,” I say. I try to remember how long it’s been since we’ve spoken. I know he called after Ella was born. I was just home from the hospital and don’t remember the conversation well. There was too much going on with Romeo to care for, too.
“You’re well?”
“Yes, fine. And you?”
This is how our conversations usually go. Very impersonal, as if we’re the sort of long-term neighbors who will go as far as greeting each other but nothing more.
“Your husband away, then?”
“He’s working, but not on tour, if that’s what you mean.”
My father had an odd reaction when he found out Conor and I got married. We basically eloped, with a simple ceremony in the back garden of the rental house we’d been to once before on Formentera, one of Spain’s Balearic Islands. Conor had set it all up as a surprise to me and it was the most romantic, perfect moment of my life. It was just about the two of us, which was exactly what I wanted. I later learned my father was upset that he hadn’t been there to be a part of it. The sudden claim of familial concern was disconcerting. It seems that whenever I’ve discounted him from my life, he finds inopportune ways to reassert himself.
“When will I get to meet my grandchild?” he asks.
“You mean your grandchildren?” He hasn’t met either of my children yet.
“No, I mean the girl. Not the dark one.”
“What did you say?” I ask, incredulous.
“I’m just wanting to meet my natural grandchild, that’s all.”
“Wait a second.” Heat rises to my cheeks as I try to process what he’s said. I’ve never known him to be racist. But then again, I’ve never really known him. “You’re saying you don’t want to meet Romeo? But you do want to meet Ella?”
“Listen, Felicity, you needn’t get into a strop over it.”
My voice has risen but I only realize it now that he’s reacting to my response in such a condescending way.
“I don’t know who you think you are—”
“I’m your father. And that little girl’s grandfather. Family. I’m getting on and I may be coming late to the realization of its preciousness, but doesn’t family count for something?”
His tone has softened. There’s almost a plea in it, and I second-guess my reaction. I’m confused about what’s even happening. The lack of clarity I’ve been fighting these past few months has returned in full force.
“I, eh, yes, it counts,” I mumble.
“That’s right. I might not have been as . . . involved as you’d have liked when you were growing up,” he says, “but this is an opportunity to change that. I want to be there for my granddaughter.”
It’s not an apology to me, but it is a partial acknowledgement of his mistakes and a step toward a course correction. Except, that is, for the glaring omission of Romeo.
“Yes, but I have a son, too. You have a grandson. You must include him.”
“I’m not interested,” he says firmly, cutting off any other argument I might want to make.
“Then, I have to end this call,” I say, my voice shaking.
“Felicity—”
I disconnect the line and stare at nothing, my eyes glassy. I can’t handle this in addition to everything else that has been overwhelming me lately. I don’t want my father to be in my head. I don’t need that struggle piling on top of my other insecurities and fears.
But there’s no stopping the flood of tears that stream down my face. They’re tears of anger and frustration and disappointment. They’re an attempt to release the confusion and disbelief at what my father was asking of me, that I grant his claim that only one of my children is legitimate enough to be considered family. But the release doesn’t work. I’m weighed down by the oppressive feeling that I can’t cope anymore. That everything is too much.
All this goes on while the babies are lying on the floor nearby, somehow sleeping through my breakdown. I feel incredibly a
lone.
Forcing myself to focus on something other than self-pity, I open the laptop I’ve had every intention of using all day. My chest aches from the crying bout that is only just now starting to subside. I take in ragged breaths as I try to focus on the screen. Without consciously thinking of it, I type “postpartum depression” into the search engine. The symptoms match what I’d recognized in myself earlier: lack of focus, mood swings, and anxiety. Other symptoms like feeling overwhelmed, being quick to cry, and withdrawing are also dead on. The more I read, the sadder I feel. I finally stop reading, as tears cloud my vision. Yet, nothing can pull my eyes away from the glow of the laptop. I fall into something like a dissociative state, blocking out everything, trying to escape my worries.
And this is how Conor finds me when he returns home at close to midnight. The concern on his face as he sees me sitting in the dark, with only the light from my computer screen illuminating the room, both babies nearby and fussy in diapers that I can suddenly tell need changing by the smell wafting in the air, splits my heart in two. There’s no doubt that he’s horrified by the picture of neglect I’ve created.
Felicity Found (Rogue Series Book 6) Page 3
