White Dresses

by Mary Pflum Peterson

  “Just what?”

  “Just,” I said, opening the door to meet Dean’s big brown eyes. “Just that I look like a beached whale and none of my clothes fit.”

  Dean laughed and hugged me to him.

  “You’re hardly a beached whale,” he said, squeezing me tighter now. “You’re beautiful.”

  I knew that he meant it. Dean always told me I was beautiful. Especially when I was pregnant. Without question, that’s when he was at his most protective and loving.

  “I have something that might make you feel better,” Dean said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  He pointed to a box on the couch.

  “Just picked this up from the doorman. It’s from your mom.”

  “Uh-­oh,” I said.

  Dean laughed. A box from Anne Diener Pflum typically contained toys for one or more of the boys—three-year-old Roman or one-year-old Creedence. And more often than not, the toys—Hot Wheels, Sesame Street books, Thomas the Train engines—were things that made lots of noise.

  Sitting down on the couch, I tore away the packing tape and pulled open the lid to reveal a thick layer of tissue paper and the softest white jersey material.

  “What is it?” asked Dean, intrigued. “Something for the baby?”

  “No,” I squealed. “It’s something for me!”

  It was a nightshirt. A delicate white cotton nightshirt. Lined with little buttons and a long, luxuriant grosgrain ribbon down the front, it featured an adorably stiff white collar that popped up preppy-­style, like something ordinarily reserved for a rugby shirt. On either side of the buttery-­soft garment were hidden pockets. Best of all, the shirt fell beautifully, in soft pleats, with a scalloped hemline that would, I knew, show off the one womanly feature that remained unaffected by pregnancy: my legs.

  Clutching the shirt to my growing belly, I ran to the desk phone and dialed my mother’s cell phone. She’d gotten the mobile phone when I was pregnant with Roman. And, when she remembered to keep it charged, it was a godsend to both of us. She answered on the sixth ring.

  “Mom, I love it! I love it! I love it!”

  “So you got the nightshirt?” she asked, her tone pleased.

  “Yes! Have I mentioned that I love it?”

  “Did you see who designed it?”

  “No,” I said, confused. Since when did my mother send me designer anything?

  I looked down at the shirt and gasped. There, on a blue fabric label, was none other than Vera Wang’s signature logo.

  “You got me a Vera Wang nightshirt?”

  “Why not?” My mother laughed. “You told me you needed something to make you feel pretty. And I thought you needed something practical, too. And we both know that Vera Wang is the best when it comes to nightgowns.”

  At this, we both laughed. Hard.

  My mother became my unofficial pajama supplier in 2007 after the birth of my first son, Roman. At the time, the maternity ward nurses strongly encouraged me to invest in a number of nightshirts that buttoned down the front. Easy access to the boobs was key for breast-­feeding, they said. They couldn’t have been more right. The two or three nightshirts that I had pre-­pregnancy barely got me through a day in those early weeks of sleepless nights and lactating angst. And my mother, aware of my determination to breast-­feed her grandson, offered to become my pajama point person. Over the course of those first months of motherhood, she sent me a half dozen nightshirts—­some cotton, some flannel, all desperately needed.

  By the time I became pregnant with my third child in three years, she asked what more she could get me. I told her, without hesitation, that I needed still more nightshirts.

  “What kind?” she asked me on the phone. It was January 2010.

  “Just the usual. Something that buttons down the front.”

  “Any particular color?”

  “White,” I told her. “You know me—­I love white.”

  And that is how my favorite gift from my mother, that white Vera Wang nightshirt, came to rest in my dresser—­when, that is, I wasn’t wearing it. My mother found it in Beaver Dam, of all places, deeply discounted at the local Kohl’s. My hometown, she said, clearly did not share my deep and abiding love for Vera Wang and her new discount collection of clothing.

  “Beaver Dam’s oversight is your gain, dear daughter!”

  She was thrilled with her purchase, pleased that she had managed to surprise her fashion-­loving daughter. And I was ecstatic. Baby number three was on its way. And I had the perfect nightshirt with which to welcome him.

  Augustine Pfister Peterson entered the world on March 29, 2010. As was the case with my first two sons, Augie was born naturally, with Dean at my side.

  Everything seemed perfect. More than perfect. Doctors had told me at my thirty-­eight-­week appointment that Augie was likely to weigh no more than six pounds, owing in part to a bad stomach virus I’d contracted in my third trimester that had forced me to lose weight when I should have been gaining. But Augie bounded out of the womb at a strapping ten pounds, demonstrating his capacity to surprise and thrive from an early age.

  “He’s enormous!” the delivering doctor cried.

  While Augie got through the delivery unscathed, I did not. I was sent home from the hospital after just two nights, as is typical in the wake of uneventful deliveries. But within a week, I was experiencing sporadic fits of uncontrollable chills that left me temporarily unable to move. At first, the fits passed quickly, often in a matter of a minute or two. I told myself—­as did Dean—­that I must be having some kind of strange reaction to breast-­feeding or perhaps was going through a post-­pregnancy hormonal shift. But when the chills grew so bad that I was forced to retreat in my new Vera Wang nightshirt to a fetal position on our living room couch for more than an hour, huddled beneath a pile of blankets, I knew something was wrong.

  “Maybe take some Tylenol?” Dean asked helplessly. He looked nervously from me to our two older boys, seated in front of the television, watching an episode of Sesame Street we’d recorded the day before. The sun had set on that Sunday, and bedtime was upon us. Augie was just six days old. I’d managed to get him to sleep, and now Dean was waiting for me to assist in putting the bigger boys into their pajamas.

  “I already took some medicine,” I said, my teeth chattering uncontrollably. “It’s not working.”

  I started to shake harder now. “Dean, I’m scared.”

  For the nearly five years that we had been married, Dean had been the perfect partner. He patiently got up with me and the babies in the middle of the night, bringing me glasses of water while I nursed. He continued to cheer me on through career developments, applauding loudly when I brought home my first Emmy Awards. It was not unusual for him to arrive home from the office armed with my favorite flowers or a bottle of Chardonnay “just because.”

  But on this particular night of fever and chills, just one week into Augie’s new life, Dean wasn’t feeling particularly romantic or heroic. He was tired.

  “Let’s go to bed,” Dean said, yawning. “You can go to the doctor in the morning.”

  “I think I should go now,” I said, shaking my head. “Something doesn’t feel right.”

  He sighed. “But what do we do about the kids?”

  Choosing to raise our children in New York had distinct advantages and disadvantages. On the upside: We lived in a bustling, exciting city full of culture and career opportunities. We resided in a beautiful prewar building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. We had a growing family. And we were in love. On the downside: We had no family in the city. And while we had friends with whom to socialize, and a nanny to help us during the week, we had no one we could call upon in our non-­weekday hours of need. That meant that if I took off for the emergency room to address the paralyzing chills, I had to do it alone so that Dean could look after the older boys.
<
br />   After a beat, I had a solution. “I know what I’ll do. I’ll call my mom. She’ll know what to do.”

  No matter how old a woman gets, or how complicated her relationship with her family might be, she wants her mother when she’s sick. At least I did.

  My mother answered the phone on the third ring. At the sound of her voice, I surprised even myself by bursting into tears.

  “Honey, what is it?” she cried.

  “Mom, I’m sick. I can’t stop shaking.”

  As my teeth chattered, I described my symptoms. Then I told her of Dean’s suggestion that I rest at home and go to the doctor in the morning.

  My mother sighed. “Dean has a point. You do sound tired. But what does your gut tell you to do?”

  “It tells me something’s wrong, Mom.”

  “Then go to the hospital. Now.”

  A half hour later, I’d mustered the strength to gather up Baby Augie and hail a cab to the emergency room. The plan was for Dean to stay with the older boys while I went to the ER for what we hoped would be a quick exam. Because Augie was a newborn and nursed every two hours, he would come with me. If things went well, I would get some antibiotics for whatever ailed me and be back home in no time.

  As the cab made its way across Central Park to New York Presbyterian Hospital, I continued to shake. By the time I arrived at the emergency room entrance, I could barely walk.

  Within a minute of my stumbling into the hospital’s triage station, the ER’s front desk nurse had a thermometer in my mouth. Within two, she had me on a gurney. Things moved so fast, I didn’t understand what was happening. I remember being whisked into the deep recesses of New York Presbyterian Hospital at breakneck speed, staring up at the blinding overhead lights that lined the hospital ceiling and crying out to the orderlies pushing me, “My baby has to come with me! Don’t leave my baby!”

  A half hour later, I was in a hospital gown and had not one, but two IVs in my arms. Augie, in his stroller, reclined by my side. I lay looking up at the ceiling, praying for Augie to sleep. When he let out a wail, I willed myself to prop myself up onto two IV’d arms and reach for him.

  That’s when I heard the bark.

  “Ms. Pflum, lie down!”

  The source of the bark was a tall bespectacled man in civilian clothes. He’d entered my little tent of an examining room when I wasn’t looking and, judging from his partially untucked shirt, had been roused from his home in the middle of the night to inspect me.

  “He’s my baby!” I cried, looking from the man back to a crying Augie. “I need to nurse him.”

  “What you need,” barked the man again, “is to lie down and listen to me. You have an infection. A potentially fatal one. In your womb. For centuries, women died from this kind of thing. Don’t add your name to that list.”

  The man who was doing the barking, it turned out, was one of the leaders of obstetrics for the New York Presbyterian Hospital system. He’d been called from his home to the hospital to inspect me when I’d presented signs of a post-­delivery infection. The potentially fatal condition was due to what were later called “unsanitary conditions” at the time of childbirth—possibly ­resulting from something as simple as the delivery room doctor’s failure to wash her hands properly. Now Dr. Barking Man was there to try to right the wrong.

  “Who’s with you?” the doctor asked, still barking.

  “N-­no one,” I stammered. I looked at my arms, covered in tape and IV tubing, and began to cry. “I just came with my baby. My husband is home with our older children.”

  “Call him. Or call someone. You shouldn’t be here alone. We need to keep you here for a few days. And that baby can’t stay with you unless someone is here to help you. Getting better—­not worrying about a baby—­should be your top priority.”

  I waited for the barking man to examine me and leave, then worked with a kindly nurse to locate the cell phone that was buried at the bottom of my purse. Dean’s phone rang once, twice, ten times, then went to voice mail. The home phone did the same. I looked at the clock in my little examining room. It was nearly midnight. He must be asleep. And he was a hard sleeper, especially now, in these sleep-­deprived days since Augie’s birth. Between the nonstop feeding schedule of a newborn and helping me to care for the older boys, Dean was exhausted. I tried his cell phone again. Then the home phone again. Then his cell phone again. Still there was no answer.

  “I need to take you to your room now,” said the nurse. “Think your husband will be along soon?”

  “Uh-­huh,” I lied. “I’m sure he’ll be here.”

  “You know the baby can’t stay with you unless someone comes,” the nurse reminded me. “Maybe your mom can come?”

  I smiled ruefully. “Maybe.”

  If only she could. If only she would. I knew my mother would be waiting for a call from me, anxious to know how the trip to the emergency room had gone. Talking on the phone with me late at night? That wasn’t a problem. But flying out to take care of me and the baby? That, I knew, was a tall order.

  Becoming a parent had done some wonderful things when it came to my relationship with my mother. We talked frequently now—­as much as or more than when I was in college. More, certainly, than when I’d been overseas. More than around the time of my lung problems. Now we chatted like old girlfriends, about balancing work with motherhood, about teething and fevers, and about questionable pediatricians. When I was in labor with each of the boys, she was my first phone call. The same held true when I gave birth. And when Roman was diagnosed at just three months with a heart murmur, which eventually turned out to be nothing, she was the one I tracked down by cell phone, sobbing—­knowing she was the only one in the world who could fully understand my fears and calm my nerves.

  But while I could talk for hours a day to my mother about ear infection woes and the best means of combating the croup, about Pampers versus Huggies and about when to introduce an infant to solid foods, the chasm that divided us in other areas of our lives grew ever greater.

  More than ever, I was losing her to that damned house.

  Not only was my mother incapable of cleaning it, but she was increasingly loath to leave it—­or to talk to anyone interested in helping her to clean it up.

  There were a multitude of red flags. After the wedding, Dean and I tried unsuccessfully to visit. We made it all the way to Beaver Dam one weekend and were making our way from the airport to the house when my cell phone rang.

  “Change of plans,” my mother said. “I know you talked about staying at the house this weekend, honey. And that would have been great. But I have an even better idea. I made you and Dean a reservation at the Best Western.”

  “But, Mom, why?” I asked, disappointed. “We were looking forward to seeing you and the house.”

  “It’ll be better this way,” she told us. “The Best Western has a pool. And a coffee shop. Won’t that be more fun than staying at the house?”

  I put my head into my hands. I didn’t want to go swimming on my visit back to my hometown. I didn’t need a coffee shop. But my mother left us with no choice.

  During our visit, my mother worked to entertain us. She took us to a number of local restaurants and gave Dean a grand tour of Beaver Dam’s main city parks and St. Peter’s. But she refused to let us go anywhere near the house.

  “It’s just not a good time,” she told us, repeating the mantra she’d used for years. “I’ve been tired. So the house looks tired. It’s not up for entertaining. You understand.”

  Neither Dean nor I understood. But there was nothing we could do. It was her house. Violating her wish for us to remain in the hotel would have done irreparable damage to my relationship with her and undoubtedly resulted in tears and arguing all around.

  “Mary, you have to trust me on this one,” my mother told me over dinner at the local Applebee’s. “And I will not tolerat
e you failing to respect my personal space. Do you hear me?”

  I heard her. Loud and clear. She wanted to keep me as far away from my childhood home as physically possible.

  Eventually the oddity of the situation—­of my being back in the town I’d grown up in but unable to go to the house I’d called home—­became too much. On the final afternoon of our visit, when my mother was out running errands, I took Dean out to my old neighborhood for a drive.

  It had been seven years since I’d last seen the outside of the house. The place was largely unchanged. It was still two stories tall, still red with yellow trim. All that was different was the garage door. My mother had gotten a new one to replace the old one, which had broken a ­couple of years before. All white, and decidedly cheap looking, it stood out like a sore thumb against the red-­and-­yellow backdrop.

  “Should we go in?” asked Dean, slowing the car as we drove by.

  “I wish,” I said, shaking my head. “But we can’t. She’ll know. Somehow she’ll know. And she’ll never forgive us.”

  The summer after Roman was born brought more red flags. My mother came to stay with Dean and me for two weeks to help me when I returned to work. But while she was supposed to be there to care for her newest grandson, she often seemed more interested in the large television in our living room than our company. She was at her happiest when she sat with the remote control in her hands, scanning channels in search of Law and Order and delighting in our other cable offerings.

  The situation came to a head on one of the final nights of her visit when I tried to coax her into joining Dean and me at a local Italian restaurant while the baby stayed home with a babysitter.

  “Come on, Mom,” I said, trying to pull her up from her place on the couch. “It’ll be fun. The food is great and so is the wine list.”

  “But I’m watching Law and Order,” she said, the remote still in her hand. Her eyes didn’t even meet mine. They were focused on the TV.

  “You can watch Law and Order when you go back home.”

  At this, her face fell.

  “Anne, what’s the matter?” Dean asked.