by Amy Seek
I didn’t think my sister’s love was dulled by the daily habit of parenting, and, despite the advice of my professor, that kind of easy familiarity was what I looked for when I practiced piano, day after day. I would ride my bike in the winter without gloves and then sit down, fingers frozen, to play the Molto animato of a piece by Franz Liszt I had played for more than three hundred days in a row. I wanted to have the music in my body, cold. I wanted my fingers to produce those notes under any conditions with a gesture as natural as gathering and tying up my hair. I’d made my move to New York and already found my rituals: I passed the same Laundromat and drank the same double espresso standing at the same copper bar every day. I brought the things I loved into my body like its own blood. What about the intensity of a phrase you’ve breathed so often, you can feel it in the softness between your ribs?
That familiarity allows the deep feeling to pass through your fingers with facility. I remembered standing beside my father when he would be cracking peanuts out of the big red canister at the kitchen table, and many times he put his free arm around me as he read the paper and hugged me and asked, “Where did you get such soft skin?” Or I would lie cradled in my mother’s arms watching television as she gently and involuntarily stroked my hand. Her touch was nothing more than the simple exploration of the provinces; flesh reuniting with flesh that was once and ever its own. Inexpressible feeling finding involuntary expression.
And cuddle, pet, hug, kiss—those casual touches must provide necessary relief. They must temper the wildness of a parent’s instinctive hunger for a child. They must soften the question, What does it mean that I’m this child’s mother? Questions peripheral to the daily habits of parenting—the waking, feeding, reading, disciplining, and tucking the child into bed—the child you still don’t understand, the relationship whose mystery doesn’t in fact diminish, that was initiated, surreally, the moment of birth.
I could snatch and squeeze Sarah and Andrew, and I didn’t care if they squirmed. During the period when their favorite thing was to be chased and grabbed and thrown, I would clutch them by their ankles, I would tickle their guts out, I would hold them captive and turn them upside down and start again. That kind of play was just this side of pure, raw affection, and they squealed and screamed and ran away as they should, without a sideways glance.
I couldn’t touch my son the simple way I did his siblings, and he wasn’t mine to touch as a parent does, so the mystery of him consumed me. And though with my son I was always playing less and longing more, just as my professor advised, when I finally saw him, I tried to touch him without feeling. I wouldn’t use touch to secretly share inexpressible things. I held my son less tight, for less long, and let him go before there was a chance he would resist. I let him determine the strength and the duration. I’d return to him every unit of affection he offered me, but not more. The older he got, the more he understood about his adoption, the more ambivalent he might feel about embracing me. It seemed like the very least I could do: to perceive and to honor his rejection.
* * *
But Caleb was telling me to just breathe. Quit thinking. Let myself feel, and don’t worry about how complicated it all was.
“If they didn’t want you there, they wouldn’t have invited you,” he said.
Yes, I would initiate the first touch. I’d move faster than my doubts, swoop him up, and hug him, whether he liked it or not. He would like it, that’s what Caleb was saying. There was nothing to think about. Why couldn’t I be Solid Gold? Our therapist said that I am So. Intense.
“What’s your sister naming the new baby?” Caleb asked. My sister was pregnant with her third. Her second had been born in the kitchen, nine minutes after the midwife arrived. Her third would be born in the same kitchen, delivered by a substitute for the assistant to the midwife and by her husband, who was growing tolerant of her eccentricities.
“Did I tell you what Jacob wanted to name it? Starship Light Buoy! I think they decided on Nina.” I always liked that name; it made me remember my Nina, who fed me grapes and delivered my son.
“I like the name Zsa Zsa. Or Mooba.”
* * *
We parked on the side of the road in front of the house. Just hug him, I told myself; don’t make it complicated. Be awake, and present, and show him affection. Jonathan met us at the door. He’d just finished his last Little League game of the season, and he stood there in his uniform. He was still only seven, but his shoulders were now broader than mine, and he was gaining on me in height. He was still growing into a different person each time I saw him. Every hug was a new invention, had a new diameter, a new elevation, a new strength. I tried not to think too much, but when I felt him loosen, I couldn’t help but let go.
We’d told him we’d be bringing a skateboard (a little gift; Caleb’s idea), and we went outside to teach him how to ride it. We let Reg out of the car, and he raced past us. As Jonathan turned around to watch him pass, Caleb pulled Jonathan’s hat off and planted it back down, backward. I couldn’t believe how casually he did it! Jonathan looked suspiciously back, hands on his head, preventing his hat from being removed again, still deciding whether to put it back on right. There was the penetrating gaze: he looked at Caleb, assessing him. Caleb didn’t budge.
“That’s how the cool kids do it,” he said, dropping one end of the skateboard down and releasing it to the ground, his toes on the tail. Jonathan was still uncertain but used his hands to pat his cap down more securely, like the cool kids do, and turned his attention to the skateboard. Caleb showed him some basic ways of standing on the board and riding, but when it was his turn, Jonathan looked self-conscious, so I suggested an obstacle course. A game to give him something to aim for.
“What if you ride down there,” I suggested, “then over that bump where the driveway starts, and turn again out of the driveway, and then go down the hill?”
“The bump where the driveway starts?” Jonathan said, very uncertain.
“Here.” I walked it out. “Come down the road, then over this crack in the driveway, then up over the driveway bump again, and all the way down the hill.” I pointed into the distance. “Does that make sense?”
As he started down the hill, long arms like delicate streamers floating at his sides, I braced myself. Gritted my teeth. Opened my eyes wide. Leaned, like you lean to guide the bowling ball after it’s beyond your control. I yelled, “Yay!” involuntarily when he made it without falling. It felt strange. If I’d had a single wish in the world, I’d have wished for him to make it over the crack in the driveway, then over the bump, and then down the hill.
Andrew played alongside us. He’d found a half of a broken skateboard with no wheels. He sat on it, stationary and happy, calling it his “rhombas” board (his bottom, he explained, was his rhombas). I turned to him. “You want to try the obstacle course on your skateboard, Andrew?”
“Mine doesn’t roll,” he said contentedly, as though he were describing one of his board’s enviable features.
Caleb scolded me that I wasn’t paying attention to Jonathan. He told me quietly that Jonathan had looked up a couple of times to see whether I was watching, and I hadn’t been.
“You improved so much, Jonathan!” I called to him, correcting myself. “Like, in just the last twenty minutes I can see you’ve gotten better!” I wanted to assure him I really was paying attention, I just didn’t want to leave his brother out. And it was true, you could really see him starting to get it. This was the miracle of learning and what must make teaching so satisfying; someone could grow right before your eyes.
“Twenty minutes; that’s ten minutes less than half an hour,” he responded, robotically, dismissing my compliment. A small jab, I thought, to say he would not be so easily won.
We invented a few more obstacle courses, and then it was time for a break. Caleb and I followed the boys inside and took off our shoes in the foyer. Jonathan ran upstairs to put his skateboard away. We joined Paula in the kitchen.
“
Jon came in very excited,” Paula said. “He said you told him he’d improved a lot in just twenty minutes!”
* * *
She invited us to stay for dinner, but I had wanted to keep our visit brief so that I could be sure to sustain my energy for the duration. We’d have a great time, and as soon as I started thinking too much, fading out, it would be time to go. More frequent, shorter, higher-quality visits were possible now that I was in New York. I wanted my son to feel as though I was a short distance away, that I was always showing up, that it was easy to call on me, that it was always fun.
And sometimes I wondered whether long visits were hard for Paula, too. She was often relaxing on the couch or on her computer while I played with the kids, and sometimes I noticed slight tensions between her and Erik, and I wondered if I was seeing the complexity registering in her, whether she battled an exhaustion similar to mine.
I’d spare us both. Caleb and I had planned an evening in Boston so I’d have something light and fun to look forward to after seeing my son. We said goodbye and got in the car.
“Jonathan thought you were going to hug him again when we were leaving, did you notice that?” Caleb asked me after we pulled out.
“No!” I said, shocked.
“You hugged him, and then everyone else, but then you were reaching down to pick up your bag, and he put his arms out for a second, thinking you were reaching for him. But then you didn’t.”
“What? I didn’t see that!” I looked at Caleb to reassure me it wasn’t true. My son had reached out for me, and I hadn’t responded? But thinking harder, I remembered. “I think I saw it, but I wasn’t sure, and it was too late, and then it felt weird! I didn’t mean to! I would have hugged him! I didn’t realize! Do you think he felt bad?”
“You have to pay attention, Seekie. He looks at you a lot, and you aren’t looking back.”
I sighed, putting my face in my hands, staring at the floor. Shaking my head, wishing I could be back in the foyer and fearless, hug him again even if he wasn’t reaching to hug me. So what if it was awkward? So what if he hadn’t wanted to hug me twice, and he rolled his eyes at his silly mother who couldn’t stop hugging him?
THIRTY
Our apartment was a tiny one-bedroom in a brownstone in Brooklyn. There was an eight-inch width of counter space in the kitchen and only one closet. In our first few weekends there, we built bike stands and bookshelves, a spice rack from scrap wood we found on the street and a desk that wrapped around the corner of the bedroom, a place for both of us to work. Every night Caleb would cook. He’d been a vegetarian since he learned how to spell and realized the chicken pecking around the barnyard in his storybook was the very same chicken in the meat case at the butcher shop. Often, he put a plate on the desk next to me where, after work, I’d focus on side projects. I was developing a program to help low-income Brooklynites buy produce from local farms. I’d also signed up for an online degree in food policy. Caleb would look over my shoulder as I took notes on my readings and marvel that, after ten years of school, I still hadn’t had enough of my nerdy stuff.
In the mornings before work, I’d do my physical therapy. I’d lie on the floor with my knees bent. Reginauld would walk over, giddy to have me on his level, to lick my face, and Haystack would stand on my belly, staking her turf. With a washcloth under one foot, I’d concentrate on engaging certain vertebral muscles as I slid one leg slowly into straight. Then, without letting those vertebral muscles go, I would slide my leg, ever so slowly, back into bent.
“You awake?” Caleb would ask, stepping over me.
* * *
Two and a half years after my accident, I thought I would have healed, but instead, I was beginning to think I might not ever run again. I couldn’t do the simplest things without feeling I wasn’t built to do them, and I found myself talking about my accident all the time. It explained why I couldn’t meet up for a day in the city, why I couldn’t stand for long at the bar, why I’d never go dancing. The pain had taken over, starting with my hip, slowly draining me of my most basic appetites.
My doctors were always speculating about why I was still having so much pain. One of them said that chronic pain often has an unrelated emotional cause. She said some griefs are too big to be borne by the conscious mind, so they find physical manifestations, which, troubling as they are, are often easier than emotions to manage. She said perhaps my grief about the adoption was homeless until the tow truck hit me, and then it took up residence in my hip, where there was an actual injury and a valid excuse for pain to reside.
That made sense, but it also made it harder to heal. The only thing that had ever helped me tolerate the grief was running itself, but I wouldn’t be able to run until I got rid of it.
* * *
That spring, my grandfather died in his recliner, beside my grandmother in hers. I got the news at work and left immediately. I cried all afternoon, and then Caleb and I planted tomato seeds out beside the garbage cans in front of our apartment. I decided I would save the seeds from those tomatoes and replant them every year, and every spring I would think of my grandfather.
At the funeral, Grandma rolled to the front of the tiny church and insisted we stop crying. She couldn’t find it in herself to want anything for Grandpa that he didn’t want himself. Once he could no longer build things or plant things or fix things, it was no longer a life. She tried to make us laugh by reminding us about the time she fell in the driveway and couldn’t get up. Grandpa ran to the barn to get the backhoe and carefully bounded toward her—careful because the brakes were shot, the edge of the steel bucket was sharp, the ground was bumpy, and he didn’t have such a good view of everything from his seat. But he rolled to a stop just behind her, lowered the bucket, scooped her up, and returned her to her feet like a gentleman.
After the funeral I sat in the sunroom with her. His chair had been moved out and there was a giant emptiness there. I talked about my love life, asking her advice as a way of inviting her to talk about Grandpa if she wanted to. Caleb and I had been fighting about the marriage-and-kids question, and because I worked all the time and Caleb wanted me to relax. Grandma said that I was like my grandpa, who thought having fun was a waste of time. “But I don’t think Walter and I fought much,” she said. “The way I remember it was: He bossed if he was right, and I bossed if I was. And if he wanted to boss the times when I was right, he just yelled louder.” She seemed hollow and drained. “Just remember, all the time you spend fighting takes time away from doing things you’d really rather be doing.”
Things like playing Wiffle ball in the park, Caleb pitching and Reginauld covering outfield. Or walking down to the lake, where Reg’s full-bodied abandon as he leapt into the water gave me a vicarious feeling of physical strength and freedom that made me sure I would run again. These were the things I should think about.
* * *
I used all eight inches of our countertop to chop onions to make vegetarian chili according to Paula’s recipe, in preparation for my son’s visit that fall. All five of them stayed with me while Caleb was overseas visiting his mother. We took the Staten Island Ferry tour of the Statue of Liberty and wandered through Central Park in the rain. And before I knew it, they were gone, just a pile of towels and sheets and sofa cushions in their place.
And within a week, Jevn came to New York on his own business. He was moderating a panel discussion related to his recent book. I hadn’t seen him in four years, but from the back of the room in Midtown he looked the same, except for the bright lights and his suit jacket, and except for the way he adjusted the microphone, as if adjusting microphones was now something he did all the time. He was half-hidden by the lectern, and I was a safe distance away, concealed in shadow in the back. It seemed right, to be standing in the audience. I was always, in a way, merely a fan. Jevn spoke in the understated way he always had, about the same things he used to, but now it was his professional persona. I studied his face and realized that now Jonathan’s was more familiar to me,
and I could see how different they actually were. Jevn was sharp and stern, but Jonathan was soft and smiley.
I couldn’t listen. I was too busy watching him stand, and move his jaw, and shift his weight, and pause with care, and hold his thumb and index finger half an inch apart. I took breaks in the lobby, browsing the architecture books for sale as the caterers set wineglasses in neat rows.
When the lecture ended, people stood and got their coats and made their way to the wine and cheese and unwashed grapes, and Jevn and I made eye contact over their heads, across the room. He came over.
“Amyseek,” he said in the way he always had, as if my name was a single word with no accented syllables.
“Hi! How are you?—great job!” I said, heart thumping but telling myself to breathe.
“Thanks!” His same open-mouthed smile.
“Shouldn’t you be schmoozing?” I asked. I felt self-conscious about monopolizing his time.
“Yeah,” he said, and continued to look at me, waiting for the next thing I might say.
* * *
I wondered if he had forgiven me, or if I still owed him, somehow. I wondered if I would still be under his spell. He left me for a few minutes to schmooze, and then he asked if I’d like to go get a drink. Everything felt strange: his height, trying to keep up with him as I walked beside him on the sidewalk, entering through the door, sitting so close, side by side, together at the bar, angling myself to talk to him. All things that had once been old habits. Jevn ordered a beer, as he always used to, and I ordered a whiskey, which I’d only started to do after Jonathan was born.
“May I have a Jameson, neat, please?” I said, because Caleb had kicked me at a hundred countertops in coffee shops and bars before I got used to saying, May I. People behind bars are people, he said, and proper English and the opportunity to say no are the least you can offer. He would also stick his finger in my mouth if I yawned without covering it; I imagined these were his mother’s techniques.
