The Color of Joy

by Julianne MacLean

  Jake set down his fork and sat back. “Why would you think that? You know how I feel, and the timing couldn’t be worse.”

  “Is there ever a good time to have a baby?” I couldn’t even look at my husband. All I could do was stand over the sink and stare down at the drain. “Tell me one person who actually felt ready to be a parent. All parents are scared. Especially the first time.”

  With a flash of regret, I immediately recognized my blunder because I knew this wasn’t the first time—not for him, anyway.

  Jake’s chair scraped across the floor as he stood. “Did you really just say that?”

  I sighed heavily and turned to face him. “I’m sorry, but I don’t see the point in having this conversation—again—when the horse has already left the barn.”

  There could be no more deliberating, no more discussions about why Jake didn’t want a child and how I thought he needed to let go of the past. Whether he liked it or not, I was pregnant and due to deliver in seven and a half months. Besides, I was tired of arguing about it. I’d been pleading my case for two years, working tirelessly to convince him that it would be different this time—that the future could be amazing if he would give it a chance.

  Jake regarded me with frustration in the early evening light beaming in through the kitchen windows. “I don’t understand how this could have happened,” he said. “I thought you were on the pill.”

  “I am—I was—and I don’t know how it happened either.”

  He was quiet for a long moment, and I was relieved he didn’t accuse me of getting pregnant on purpose.

  “You knew how I felt about this,” he said. “You knew it when we got married and you accepted it, for better or worse.”

  “Yes,” I replied, “but I didn’t think you’d feel that way forever.” I sounded childish, even to my own ears. “I thought you’d change your mind eventually.”

  He drew back and shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You agreed you didn’t want kids.”

  “I never said that,” I replied, wagging a finger. “I only said I understood how you felt, that it was okay, and that I wasn’t ready either. And I wasn’t—not at the time—but I honestly believed you’d feel differently by now.”

  Jake strode into the living room where he began to pace.

  I followed him in. “You’re angry.”

  His eyes lifted to meet mine. “Yes.”

  “Everything will be fine,” I tried to convince him. “I can handle this. We can handle this.”

  “You don’t know that,” he said with a frown. “And Christ, I’m not even going to be here! I’ll be halfway across the world!”

  We’d known for weeks about his deployment to Afghanistan. He was leaving at the end of the month and would be gone for nine months. It wouldn’t be the first time we’d lived apart. He was a soldier and it came with the territory. I’d never complained about it before and I certainly didn’t intend to start then.

  “I’ll have lots of support,” I told him. “Mom is less than an hour away and Sylvie is just across town.”

  He gave me a look. “You think Sylvie will be helpful?”

  “Maybe.” I hesitated. “I don’t know…”

  Jake sat down on the sofa and cupped his forehead in a hand. “God, I thought we were on the same page.”

  “We are. And I didn’t do this on purpose. It just happened. I don’t know how, but here we are.”

  He raked his fingers through his hair. “I don’t want to do this again, Jenn. I can’t do it again.”

  I sat down beside him and laid my hand on his back.

  *

  Jake and I began dating five years ago, and early on he took me out to dinner, ordered a bottle of wine and told me he’d been married once before. I was shocked to hear it because he seemed too young to be divorced. Naturally I wanted to know what happened.

  He explained that he’d married his high school sweetheart at the age of twenty-one and everything was fine until she got pregnant.

  “All I ever wanted was to be a dad,” he told me as he poured us each a second glass of wine. “Then Chelsea had a rough pregnancy with terrible morning sickness. It put a strain on our relationship because she was always irritable and I was doing shift work, so I wasn’t much better. After the baby was born she started acting differently. At first it made no sense to me because all of a sudden, she’s was nothing like the girl I knew. She stopped taking showers and she was crying all the time. She always seemed angry with me, like I couldn’t do anything right. She blamed me for the smallest things—like if the corner of the carpet was curled up and she tripped on it, it was all my fault. How could I let that happen? Didn’t I care that she might get hurt? Didn’t I love her? That kind of thing. I figured out pretty quickly that it was postpartum depression. At least she went to see her doctor about it.”

  He stopped talking for a moment, fingered the stem of his wine glass and seemed lost in thought.

  “I’m sorry you went through all that,” I gently said.

  He nodded. “Thanks. Anyway…things just went downhill from there.”

  “How?”

  He took another sip of his wine and kept his eyes on the table as he spoke. “One night we went to bed exhausted, which was pretty typical because one of us was always up every couple of hours for bottle feedings—”

  “She didn’t breast feed?”

  “No,” he replied, shaking his head, “which was a good thing for me because I got to feed Ava, too, and that was great. I loved doing it. Anyway, we slept like the dead, both of us, all night long. Chelsea woke up when the sun came in the window. She asked if I’d gotten up to feed Ava, but I hadn’t, and somehow we both just knew. Don’t ask me how. You’d think we’d be happy that our child had slept through the night for the first time, but we both knew that wasn’t what happened.”

  He swallowed hard and sipped his wine again.

  “It was SIDS,” he added. “We found her…in her crib.”

  I sat back in my chair. “Oh, God, Jake, I’m so sorry.” Neither of us spoke for a moment. “How old was she?”

  “Four months.”

  Taking a deep breath and letting it out, I leaned forward and covered his hand with mine. “I don’t know what to say.”

  He waved a dismissive hand, as if it wasn’t necessary for me to say anything because it wouldn’t make any difference anyway.

  “You didn’t want to try to have more children?” I asked after a time.

  “Not after living through that nightmare. As for Chelsea, she just wanted out of the marriage. She wouldn’t even talk to me. It was like she hated my guts. I think she hated herself, too.” He paused. “The guilt… You can’t imagine it. You can’t help but blame yourself and in your mind you go over and over all the things you could have done differently. Everything you did wrong. You just feel so much anger over how things worked out. What I really wish is that we could have leaned on each other more instead of feeling bitter toward each other.”

  “You were young,” I said.

  He nodded and took a breath. “Everything just got so screwed up. I couldn’t stop any of it from happening. That was the worst part. I had no control over anything.”

  *

  As I sat on the sofa rubbing Jake’s back, I recalled our conversation from five years earlier and understood completely why he was so frightened about this.

  But that was a long time ago—and I’m not Chelsea.

  “It won’t be like before,” I assured him. “I promise I’ll be able to handle this. And it’s highly unlikely that something like that would happen twice to the same family. Think about it this way: The odds are in our favor. But even if it did happen, I’m strong and so are you. I love you more than anything in the world, and no matter what happens, we’ll get through it, together.”

  Jake leaned forward, rapped his knuckles on the coffee table and gave me an anxious warning look. “Please knock on wood when you say things like that.”
/>   I immediately leaned forward and knocked.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Later that night

  It was sometime after 10:00 p.m. when I knocked hard on my sister’s apartment door. “Sylvie! Let me in!”

  Jazz music was blaring inside so I knew she was there, but I’d been knocking for the past five minutes and she hadn’t answered.

  Her hysterical phone call earlier had sent me into a panic and my blood pressure was surely skyrocketing by now. Jake had been called in to work so I had no choice but to hop in the car and drive over there as fast as I could.

  Just then, the door across the hall opened and a thin, elderly woman with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth peered out at me. “She’s been playing that music for an hour. I called the super but he’s not answering either. That girl’s going to get herself kicked out of here if she keeps that up.”

  “I know, I’m very sorry,” I replied. “I’m her sister. I’ll talk to her.”

  “If she ever opens the door.”

  At long last, the safety chain jangled across the track and the door opened. “I was taking a shower,” Sylvie explained defensively before I could say a word.

  I took in her overall appearance. She wore a blue terrycloth bathrobe and had wrapped a pink towel around her head. Her mascara was smudged sloppily under her eyes.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Do I look okay?” she testily replied as she opened the door wider and invited me in. Behind me, the neighbor across the hall shut her door.

  A moment later, I stood in the tiny kitchen of Sylvie’s one-bedroom apartment, watching her pour herself a glass of white wine, full to the brim.

  She tossed the empty bottle into a recycling bin with a clatter. “Another dead soldier,” she said flippantly.

  I bowed my head and took a deep breath, for I was never fond of that expression.

  “Want some?” Sylvie asked. “I can open another bottle.”

  “No, thanks. I’m driving.” Among other reasons.

  I glanced around and took note of the empty Chinese food boxes on the kitchen table—not the kind you order from a restaurant, but the kind you buy frozen at the supermarket and heat up in the microwave.

  “I should have seen the signs,” Sylvie said, fretfully pacing around the kitchen while she gulped down her wine. “Damn him!”

  “How did you find out?”

  “Oh, you know…” She casually waved a hand through the air. “He just started acting all antsy and uncomfortable. He said he never meant to hurt me, but I know he didn’t care about that. He just wanted to have a good time. At least he took me out for dinner before he dropped the bomb.”

  She guzzled half the glass of wine.

  “So, he never wore a ring?” I asked.

  She scoffed at me. “Am I stupid? I wouldn’t have gone out with him in the first place if I’d known he was married. He must have taken it off every time he came into the club.”

  Sylvie was a waitress at a chic dance bar downtown. While we were in college, it was a dream job for her because all her friends went there on weekends and the tips were fantastic. But now she was thirty-two years old and her friends were all married and starting families. It wasn’t exactly a healthy environment for someone like her.

  “You need to find another job,” I said, leaning back on the counter. “A day job where you can meet people who aren’t just out looking for a party. Take a course or something.”

  She shifted her weight and raised an eyebrow. “Really, Jenn? You’re going to kick me when I’m down? Start judging me?”

  “I’m not judging you. I just think you’re in a rut, that’s all. A change would be good.”

  She rolled her eyes, pulled the towel off her head, and flung it onto the back of a kitchen chair. Her long wet hair fell down her back in tangled blond waves.

  I noticed at least a half-inch of dark roots, which concerned me because Sylvie was always on top of her hair appointments. She was gorgeous and took great pride in her appearance. The last time I saw her roots showing, she was heading into a severe depression and ended up on suicide watch.

  “Oh, hell,” she said, tipping her head back. “Maybe you’re right. I should get out of there. I’m sick of meeting guys like John. I just don’t know what else to do. I never finished college so I’m not qualified for anything except maybe retail. But I couldn’t live without my tips.”

  I followed her into the living room where she continued to pace around. I wanted to tell her to slow down with the wine, but knew I needed to tread carefully to get through to her. I needed to connect and build up her confidence.

  “What would you like to do?” I asked in a more cheerful, uplifting tone. “Could you see yourself working in an office? You could wear skirts and heels every day, meet smart professional men. It’s not too late to take your life in a whole new direction, you know. You’re only thirty-two and you’re smart. You could do anything you want.”

  “I can’t just quit my job,” she argued. “I have rent to pay.”

  I sat down and patted the sofa cushion beside me. “Let’s take this one step at a time. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

  She let out a heavy sigh and sat down.

  “What do you love doing?” I asked. “Let’s focus on that first.”

  She thought about it for a moment, set her wine glass down on the coffee table and shifted to face me. “You know what I love? All those decorating shows on TV. Maybe I could be one of those home stagers for houses that go on sale.”

  I glanced around her apartment which was tiny but tastefully decorated. “We could definitely look into that. I’m sure there are courses you could take. And you’re good with people. You have gorgeous taste. That’s obvious from the way you dress and present yourself. I think you’d be amazing at that. Do you want me to Google it?”

  I pulled out my phone and searched for some programs she could enroll in. Most of them were six months to a year in duration. Some of them were offered by correspondence.

  She picked up her wine again. “I don’t know about this.”

  “Why not?” Please, Sylvie. Give it a chance.

  “I don’t want to do anything by correspondence. Like you said, I’m in a rut. I’d be kidding myself if I thought I could wake up in the morning and break out the books. You know I work late. I need to sleep in the day.”

  Though she was hesitant, the fact that we were even discussing this was astounding to me. I knew I couldn’t drop the ball now. Not while she was actually considering a real change.

  Maybe it was a mistake not to think it through, but suddenly I found myself blurting out another option. “What if you moved in with me?”

  Sylvie inclined her head doubtfully. “Seriously? I don’t think Jake would be too happy about that.”

  “Well…maybe not under normal circumstances, but things aren’t exactly normal right now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Should I be doing this?

  A part of me worried about telling Sylvie the truth. It wasn’t exactly the best timing after her break up with John. Nevertheless, I carried on.

  “No one knows this yet,” I said. “I haven’t even told Mom, but Jake just found out he’s getting deployed to Afghanistan. He’ll be gone for nine months, and on top of that…” I paused. “Well…I’m pregnant.”

  My sister stared at me, expressionless. “Pregnant?”

  I forced myself to smile brightly and nod, hoping my joy would somehow reflect back at me. “Yes!”

  My news was met with silence. Then Sylvie finally spoke. “That’s amazing. Really. But I thought Jake didn’t want kids.”

  I tried to keep the mood light. “It wasn’t exactly planned.”

  She blinked a few times, then at last, she leaned forward to hug me. “Congratulations. I’m happy for you.”

  “Thank you.” I knew my sister too well, however, and felt an emotional thundercloud roll into the room. Here we go.

&nbs
p; Sylvie rose from the sofa and looked down at me. “Well, this definitely calls for a toast.”

  With a sigh of defeat, I watched her stride into the kitchen, pull another bottle of wine out of the rack on the counter and hunt around for a corkscrew.

  “Here it is,” she said to herself as she opened a drawer. With trembling hands, she pulled the cork out with a pop. Still seated on the sofa, I was surprised when she poured me a glass.

  “I can’t drink that,” I reminded her.

  She stopped, set the bottle down and let out a silly laugh. “Oh, what an idiot. Of course you can’t. That sucks. Cheers anyway.”

  Raising her own glass, she took a deep swig, then glanced around the kitchen as if she were searching for something, but didn’t know what it was.

  I rose from the sofa and joined her. “Jake’s going to be gone for a long time. I could really use your company, Sylvie. It would be good for both of us because I don’t want to do this alone. You could get out of your lease, quit your job and live with me rent free until you get back on your feet. Think about it. You could go to school and take whatever kind of course you want. It would be a fresh start, and you wouldn’t be alone either.”

  Her gaze dipped to my belly, which was still as flat as a pancake. “I don’t know, Jenn. I’m not sure I could handle being around you.”

  I swallowed uneasily. “Why not?”

  She scoffed. “You know why.” She gestured toward my belly.

  Of course, I understood that she was referring to the abortion she’d had when she was sixteen. The two of us had always spent our summer holidays with our grandparents on the coast of Maine, and during one exceptionally hot summer, Sylvie fell fast and hard for a handsome eighteen-year-old. She didn’t find out she was pregnant until October, after we’d returned home to Montana and gone back to school.

  She still considered that boy from Maine to be the great love of her life. Unfortunately things didn’t work out for them.

  “I always wanted babies,” she complained to me, “but look at my life now.” She glanced around her apartment. “It might really depress me to see you pregnant in your perfect life.”