by Amy Seek
We weaved our way through Los Angeles and found everything beautiful. We rode bikes along the ocean, and a shiny statue person lurched out at me on the promenade and made us laugh. We danced beneath the bougainvillea in a parking lot, just because the day was so perfectly warm. Dad joked that we should try to wake up on East Coast time and go to sleep on West Coast time; there was so much to see and do. I would slip into the bathroom periodically to pump, but I wasn’t saving milk for Jonathan anymore; it was just to relieve the pain as I let my milk dry up.
* * *
On our way back from the Getty, Dad pulled the rental car over to inspect a bridge that was apparently designed for significant seismic loading. Cars passed at inhuman speeds, each one tugging ours with it for just a second. We followed him in a line along the shoulder of the road, as we’d been doing on road trips since we were little.
“See anything unusual?” he would ask, squinting as if the underside of the bridge were a text. We would all have to guess. What single member should be added to keep the bridge from twisting, or shearing, or buckling? Or what single member, if removed, would cause instantaneous collapse?
We followed a trailhead west into the foothills. I felt I had awoken to reality. Embodied, dusty, mountainous reality. My body felt fully extracted, and still the sunset mined my depths, puncturing a remnant vein of joy that surged and filled me. My tears joined the world’s waters. I was an entire planet, with deserts and oceans and infinite black cavities, every moment a different surface barreling into darkness just as the sun began to rise across another. I have a son; I don’t have a son; it is all the same dusty, difficult reality.
* * *
My signature on the line of a million credit card receipts. My signature on my driver’s license, at the ends of letters I still wrote by hand. My signature floated lightly all around the world, doing its little work. I’d written my name as I had a thousand times before, and the horizon didn’t bend, and sound didn’t somehow gather, extracted from every corner of the earth, and fly formlessly off the face of the planet, leaving a noiseless vacuum pounding in its place. The microscopic fibers of the paper received it, held the ink suspended, and didn’t crash under its weight or drink it up. The world was the same at 3:55, when I pressed the pen to paper, as it was when I returned my eyes to Molly, to the room, to the window, to my sister.
I held still; I didn’t want anyone to read my emotional signposts or think they knew what was happening within me. My sister’s face was red and swollen. Tears streamed from her eyes, but she held my gaze with a desperate urgency despite them. And yet she didn’t say a word. Everyone had trusted me to do what was best. Trusted me, somehow, to know what was best.
In those days before the Surrender, everything was the same as it had always been. The swings were squeaking in the park across the street; the sunlight was still kind and warm on my stoop. At the grocery store, people squeezed by me; no one made room for my heavy thinking. Not a soul at the bar where I threw darts looked sideways at me. Five times I’d showered and dressed myself. A sleeveless dress with tiny flowers that went all the way down to my ankles, my bangs held back with a single bobby pin. Five times I drove downtown. Nothing was registering the magnitude of what I was about to do. I thought I could absorb the impact, and there would be no evidence of what I’d done. But I was approaching a chasm, and only from a distance would the two lands, before and after, appear to be connected. And all of those times I didn’t do it.
Then that one morning. Rain was falling lightly, but there was warmth on the wind. I held on to the stillness before everything. Suddenly, I thought: I want this trouble. I am ready for anything, the force of any blow—but there were never any signs. No indication anywhere of right or wrong, no answer that could provide a station point. In the cold room on that hot day in August, there was just the synchronicity of my hand, holding that pen, and a moment, one of a few, when I thought it was my only choice.
Paula brought Jonathan, but I only remember that because in the lobby outside the conference room, she took pictures of my sister and me holding him.
* * *
Molly tried, months before, to walk me through the hours just after the signature. What would I do when I got home? I imagined my son having his first end-of-summer in North Carolina. He’d arrive at the height of heat and be incubated by the humidity. Everything past its bloom, the loud insect drone, blue jays screaming that it would all soon be over. Night would fall after a long dusk and he’d wake to wet grass and wet windshields and wonder for a long time before he’d know where that water came from.
She kept reminding me: me. What would I do after the signature? It was very important to be able to visualize: Two hours later. Four. The next morning. I had filled out the lines in the workbook. And now, so much later, it provided a script. I did what it said in my little workbook I would do. It was a process, with steps, and I took them. I signed my name, got in my car and drove home. I parked beside the Dumpster and entered through the side door. I picked things up off the floor. Registered for classes. Packed for California. Movements unworthy of being written, as mundane as any summer Saturday’s afternoon of chores.
Molly told Jevn that I signed, but I don’t know when exactly. I wasn’t talking to him for some period right before the signature, and I didn’t call him after. I knew he’d sign as soon as he heard I had—he had no doubt about what we should do. He had already spoken it in that room with Molly, and he’d held true to his name, true to his word, and proven me weak and faltering by comparison. But I didn’t know he’d do what he did then. He left town without a word.
The spotlight was turned off, its burning urgency now just the diffuse smell of heat. No one was watching me closely anymore; everyone’s questions were answered. I went home and walked numbly around the pond in the woods where I’d labored, but I remember nothing more about those first four days of August.
* * *
Soon after I got back from California, I received a letter from my father. His letters were always scribbled, written when he couldn’t sleep because I was facing a big or expensive decision. You’ve got some proud parents back in Tennessee, he wrote. Your mom and I couldn’t imagine how difficult your decision must have been. I’m sure you made the right decision, and not because you wouldn’t have been an excellent mother. He said as a single mother I wouldn’t have been able to give my son my best. He said that now Jonathan would have two mothers who love him.
Over the phone, Paula told me that she’d gotten a nice note from my father, too. She said that Sarah was adjusting well to having a brother, that the other day Sarah had kept Jonathan entertained by singing to him so that Paula could take a shower. It was a relief to talk to her; she listened as no one else could bear to listen. I told her I was excited about Jonathan’s life; I couldn’t wait to see him grow. But I missed being pregnant. I missed the very few things about motherhood I knew. I missed choosing a radio station based on what I wanted him to hear. I missed him kicking and hiccuping. I missed eating to feed him. I told her everything would be much harder if I didn’t feel confident about her and Erik as his parents. She said she was grateful that I felt good about them, that she was immensely grateful for me and Jevn and Jonathan in her life.
* * *
One afternoon, I walked down the hill to meet my geography professor for lunch, swinging my arms and enjoying the end-of-summer heat. It’s not hard to not have a son, I thought. No one had to sing to my son so I could take a shower or watch him so I could go to lunch. But what was hard was that I’d just had a baby, but no one could see what there was to be excited about. No one could see what was hard. My thoughts would cycle back to Jevn in search of recognition, a place to land, but they would ricochet into the void. An ache overtook me like a river with its own desire and direction; I wondered when he’d return from Colorado and whether we’d ever speak again.
Standing in the line to order, I told my professor that I was doing well. We took our sandwiches outside to sit in the sun. I
found I didn’t want to say much. I was ecstatic and devastated, but I couldn’t explain it.
“So in the end did you name him or did they?” she asked.
“It was their idea, but we liked it.” I hated the implication that one of us was in control, the other subjected to it. But then I also didn’t want to imply that everything was easy just because we agreed on so many things.
“It’s amazing to have seen what you’ve gone through. It makes me think of what my mother must have gone through,” she said. “But your son is going to be able to know you and see how much you care about him, and really understand what you did for him.” She had been consoling me since the moment I told her I was pregnant, but things were too close to measure against her experience; I didn’t want to give her the comfort of comforting me.
“I just want to go back out west, back to California or to Montana or somewhere,” I said. Anywhere, far away from everything, somewhere I’d never been before. I loved it out there, where there was only enough water to keep things on just this side of mortality. I was restless. I wasn’t ready to revisit what had just happened and decide what it meant. I wanted to keep moving.
“Well, you know I’m going to Montana, right?” She smiled, surprised.
I didn’t know. She told me she was leaving the following week to do research in Yellowstone; another professor had dropped out so there was an extra space, and she invited me to join her. The timing suited my internship, as we’d lost funding for the project I’d been working on before Jonathan’s birth.
* * *
It really was a big sky in Montana, and big air, and long roads leading to infinity between the grasses that inched golden all the way to the razor-sharp mountains. We listened to lectures about grizzlies and geology and the ecological impact of the rapid development encroaching on the periphery of the park. Sometimes we were in the geyser fields or the backcountry, with a moose or a bear in sight, and sometimes we were in conference rooms, which still felt like out west because there were exposed wood beams and windows looking into the forest.
We stayed for a few days on a ranch in Wyoming, where we went horseback riding, the kind of horseback riding people do when they don’t really know how to ride horses. It was a slow Disney World ride through the scenery, and the horses were so bored they bumped their noses into each other’s rumps. I used to take riding lessons at a tiny stable in Tennessee. I’d go every day for a week in the summer and learn how to post and barrel race. Once one of the trainers asked me, didn’t I know I had a beautiful smile? I was always sad, for no reason I remember. And I was always hiding the space between my teeth. At the end of the day in the ring, our teachers would let us ride in the pasture. One horse would start to run, and then we’d all run as a herd, all the way to the farthest corner of the field. The bouncy trot would swing into a gallop in a magical moment when the animal realized we weren’t pulling back on the reins. Its ears would fall back as it found its frequency, half wheel rolling on a four-point arc, and half bird as it caught air: roll, fly, roll, fly. It was a special gift the trainers gave us, to let us experience what felt like those horses’ deepest desire.
After our group ride and after dinner in Wyoming, I made my way down to the barn to ask the ranch hand if I could ride one of the horses out in the field. He brought out a massive black stallion and told me to squeeze my knees in and pull back low and taut on the reins. When I did, the horse tucked its chin and the whole left side dropped low, and then the right as it pranced forward. For all my summers on horseback in Tennessee, I’d never ridden a Tennessee Walker. After that, we wandered into the field, and in the cool shade of the canyon just past sunset, I dug in my heels and clung tight.
Over the next week, we were guided through the backcountry by a man who’d lived in the park for thirty-five years in a mobile home full of books. He walked us across a geyser field, where hot sulfuric oceans lay beneath thick plates of crust. Geysers were those openings that revealed the world’s watery nature all the way to its core. The cracks were soft and inviting, edged with rainbow salts, revealing bulbous yellow voids and turquoise chambers just beyond the darkness.
“Everyone talks about the balance of nature,” he said, standing in front of one of them, “as though nature would find some kind of peaceful stasis if we humans just left it alone. But look at this place—the grizzlies, the geysers; nature is violent. It’s precarious and schizophrenic, devouring itself ruthlessly, destroying in moments what it has taken millenia to create.” Everyone’s efforts to comfort me didn’t comfort me, but listening to him did. Around the fire that night, I felt an animal part of it all, my losses just residue from the world’s habit of destruction.
* * *
It was also easy in Montana to pretend the whole thing had never happened. I could no longer really imagine being pregnant. Even my milk was dry. I could take my heart out of it and tell myself that Paula and Erik were simply a young family with a new son, and it had nothing to do with me. But the morning of the last day, conversation among my professor’s colleagues at breakfast turned to the subject of children, and it felt disingenuous to listen as though I wasn’t a mother.
“I had a baby in July,” I said finally, to let them know I was a mother, too.
“Oh! Really?” one of the professors said. They all looked at me.
I didn’t know what to say next. I had a baby in July, but I gave him up in August? I couldn’t really talk about my newborn son without explaining his absence. I couldn’t describe his delicate features without admitting I hadn’t seen him since his adoption. Why mention my motherhood at all, just to undo it?
I explained everything quickly. I had to—I was making everyone confused. I hoped by describing my diligence about his adoption I’d gain back ground so I could join the conversation as a fellow mother, but the more I spoke, the more it seemed as if I was changing the subject. And breezing through such a weighty story made me seem like only the most heartless kind of mother. The more comfortable I tried to make everyone, the less like a mother I seemed.
* * *
I returned from Montana and called Paula and Erik in North Carolina. I wanted to hear the sound of their voices and for all of us to remember that this really happened, I really did have a son, we were all part of it, and we were all going to get through it. There was no world without this experience, but I wasn’t alone in it. They’d witnessed my motherhood. They understood it.
They didn’t pick up. Their answering machine said that I had reached Erik, Paula, Sarah, “and the newest member of the family—Jonathan!”
EIGHTEEN
I turned to the life I’d chosen. Students returned to school as always in September, a hundred new costumes, a hundred reinventions. We piled into the large auditorium in the architecture building.
“Did anyone see the report in U.S. News? We ranked second in the country among design schools and first in interior design! Good going, guys!” Our director shook his tiny fists.
The faculty assembled on the stage, and everyone found seats as the cold vanquished all our steamy memories of summer. Students greeted one another and braced themselves for another year. We sat down and shivered and, if we’d thought ahead, put sweaters over our knees.
I was excited; I couldn’t help it. The impulse to reinvent yourself at the start of school was like a natural instinct. Summer was a chance for a set change, and this crowd of students wasn’t just coming back tan from the beach; they’d sublet flats and held design internships in fashion-forward cities around the world. They were coming back with professional confidence and clothes you couldn’t buy in Ohio.
“This year we’re saying goodbye to someone who’s been here longer than almost anyone on staff. After twenty years, Professor Collins has announced his retirement. Congratulations, Professor, and we’d like to present you with something to remember us by—”
The director looked to the back of the auditorium and we began to turn our heads, and then there was commotion at the rear
doors. One opened, and Jevn came running down the side aisle stairs with a prize of some kind, while everyone laughed and cheered. I watched the scene, stunned. He did not appear to be the father of a baby he’d just given up for adoption.
* * *
I was always looking for him, always afraid I’d find him. I’d seen him one other time, right before school started; he was across the street near the little cinema and our favorite restaurant, but he ignored me, grimacing strangely at no one, to tell me that he saw me but that there were no words to say about it. I’d sent e-mails when he was in Colorado, and he responded by assuring me he was thinking often of Jonathan and me. I said I was angry with him, but he said he had never done anything to hurt me and never would. His composure made my anger feral. It seemed as though while I’d been pregnant, speaking to him daily, relying on him at every turn, he had somehow managed, in the midst of it all, to heal, apart. I was left with the loss of him—but then I couldn’t distinguish the losses: Jevn, my son, myself.
We were like the number eleven, he had said. Between us there was another, invisible one, made of space and air. I looked for him, hoping our proximity would sharpen the features of the absent third, and the hollows in his cheeks would tell me how to feel about it. When I saw him in the auditorium, I wondered what I could learn about the shape of my son in this vast divide: Jevn, leaping fast down the stairs in front of the whole cheering school, and Jevn, three months ago, lifting me gently off the birth ball for another contraction.
I stared, frozen, toward the stage, one of the many reinvented faces in the crowd, and watched Professor Collins graciously receive his gift.
* * *
When the assembly ended, someone grabbed me by the arm. It was a professor who’d taught at the school I attended in Copenhagen. He’d squatted with me on the grass in front of Grundtvigs Kirke, a church with dramatic stepped gables at its westwork, and advised me not to abandon the things I drew until I’d really tested them. He said it was always easier to start over, a new major, a new design, but at some point you have to understand that everything is in the details, the how. Not the what.
