The Winters in Bloom

by Lisa Tucker

  “I just fired up the broiler,” he said, kissing her. “How was your day?”

  “Same old,” she said, feeling a bit guilty. “What did you want to do tonight?”

  “Whatever you want, my darling wife. After all the grading I’ve been doing for the last two days, I could hang upside down by my thumbs and not mind.” He leaned back and grinned. “I’m saying I’m game for the games.”

  The games were Kyra’s logic puzzles. She had several books of them, and she loved solving them with David. They didn’t require any math knowledge, which she emphasized, though David was right when he said she had an advantage. Still, he won fairly often, at least a third of the time, and winning wasn’t really the purpose. It was the two of them thinking together until they revealed the beautiful pattern of the puzzle. Beautiful to her, anyway. David said it was interesting and fun, but she could tell he didn’t see the point to all this. In a way, there wasn’t a point—which was the point. These intricate patterns had absolutely nothing to do with their lives. They could think about them forever without running into a real problem. Like what David should do about the grad student he was working with who seemed depressed. Or how Kyra should deal with the new boss who was alienating everyone in the department. Or David’s mother, who seemed so fragile after a bout with pneumonia last winter. Or Kyra’s complicated feelings about her father’s death from a heart attack last January. Or Amy, who hadn’t come back for the funeral—another shocking sign that her sister had really meant it when she’d said that Kyra would never see her again for the rest of their lives.

  How could Amy have meant that?

  When they worked the logic puzzles together, Kyra forgot about all of it. She even forgot about the question of whether she wanted a baby. But the next morning, she wrote −1 without hesitating. If they’d had a baby, they wouldn’t have had that lovely evening, eating David’s perfectly cooked steaks and asparagus topped with sea salt while they discussed how to get the robots across the bridge in puzzle number 142.

  The baby would constantly be there; that was a huge problem with the whole idea. The baby would be like a very needy stranger forcing him- or herself into David and Kyra’s life, which was going quite well, thank you. They could talk and drink and laugh and have sex whenever they wanted. Why would they want to trade this quiet life for the chaotic reality of parenthood? Why would anyone, when you got right down to it?

  She had day after day of peaceful −1s until a few weeks later, on Saturday, when they went to a barbecue at Quon and Li’s house. Quon was a colleague of David’s who lived way out in the suburbs, in a cute borough called Doylestown. He and Li had two kids in grade school and a fourteen-month-old toddler. Kyra liked Li, even if spending time with her was always a challenge. Everywhere the toddler went, Li followed, and Kyra could either follow, too, or just stand in the kitchen like an idiot. So she followed and tried to continue her conversation with Li as the baby pulled open a dresser drawer and dropped sweaters on the rug, or took books off the bookshelf, one by one, until all of Li’s women’s history books were flung about the room as if the bookshelf had been hit by a hurricane. In fact, Kyra thought of the toddler as “Hurricane Baby.” “I know I’m spoiling him,” Li had explained, smiling. “I can’t help it. He’s my last one.”

  The picnic made everything harder because the outside world was not amenable to being childproofed, meaning everywhere Hurricane Baby went was potentially dangerous. The other two kids were playing soccer with David and Quon. They looked like they were having fun, but Kyra couldn’t be sure. She and Li had followed Hurricane Baby from the swing set to the tree to the front yard. Finally, at the back fence, they’d been able to stop long enough to look at each other while they talked, thanks to the toddler’s fascination with the neighbor’s barking German shepherd.

  Li was discussing an article she’d read in the New York Times, something about airlines lowering their fares to certain cities—Kyra couldn’t be sure of the details because Hurricane Baby’s squeals kept revving up the dog. By the time Li said she had to run into the house to go to the bathroom, Kyra was desperate to follow her right up to the bathroom door, anything to get away from this noise. But she could hardly object when Li asked her to stay here and watch Ping. “I’ll be right back,” Li said. She kissed the baby. “Mommy loves you.”

  Ping was too in love with the dog to let out his usual where’s-Mommy wail. Kyra couldn’t tell whether the dog reciprocated Ping’s feelings, but she did know enough about dogs to keep the toddler from sticking his little hands through the fence, where he might get bitten. Ping was actually pretty cooperative; at least he was after she said no and pointed at the house, to show him where they were headed if he didn’t follow this rule. The poor baby was not doing anything wrong when the dog circled back in his yard and charged right for them, easily hopping the fence and landing on Ping, knocking him backward. Maybe the dog was just being playful, but Ping was screaming and Kyra was horrified. She pulled the dog off the baby so fast that, later, she couldn’t even tell David how she did it. The next thing she knew Ping was in her arms. He was crying, but more from fear than from pain. He only had little scratches on his legs. Kyra, on the other hand, had two bites on her forearm that were gushing blood all over Ping’s green polka-dot onesie.

  A moment later, everyone was there: Li, who anxiously examined her baby and pronounced him basically unharmed; David, who said Kyra needed to go to the ER; Quon’s boys, who said that dog had bitten a neighbor kid; and Quon, who asked his boys why they hadn’t ever mentioned this. Then the neighbor and owner of the dog came over, an older man, but Kyra didn’t hear what he said because David was leading her back up to the patio. Li came with them and gave David a few clean towels to wrap the wounds until they got to the Doylestown Hospital.

  The news was as good as it could be under the circumstances. The shepherd had had all his vaccinations. Though the bites looked horrible, once the ER doc cleaned them up, they only required about a dozen stitches each. The color came back to David’s cheeks and he seemed almost normal, if a little shaken. Kyra had no idea how she seemed, but her shirt and jeans were covered with bloodstains. She couldn’t wait to get home and change.

  They still had the long drive back to the city. They were about forty-five minutes away from home when David turned down the radio and said, “I keep thinking how cool this is.”

  “What?”

  “That my wife can wrestle a German shepherd and win.” He grinned. “It’s like discovering I’m married to Superwoman.”

  The pain pill the ER nurse had given her made her woozy and tired and overly emotional. It must have. Otherwise, why would this remark have made her feel so bad?

  When she didn’t say anything, David reached for her hand. “They’re not going to put the dog down, honey. I told you before, the owner agreed to keep him inside or on a leash. And Quon and Li like the old guy. It’s going to be all right.”

  Kyra had been worried about this earlier. She didn’t want the dog to die for simply doing what dogs were designed to do: fight back when someone they don’t know seems to be attacking them. But David was right; the dog would be okay. She wasn’t upset about that.

  “Even if I really was Superwoman,” she said. And stopped. Could she really be about to say this?

  “What?” David said.

  She glanced at him. “It wouldn’t matter, would it?”

  “Matter how?” He waited. And smiled. “Come on, you know I can’t stand it when you don’t finish your thought.”

  “It’s nothing,” she said. “I was just thinking that even if I really was Superwoman, you still wouldn’t trust me enough to have a baby with me.”

  “Whoa . . . wait a minute.” He let go of her hand. He sounded shocked and even a little frightened. “Where did that come from?”

  “I’m just saying I’m not your ex, David.” She looked out
the window, and of course some happy-looking woman was pushing a double stroller down the block. “I just saved Hurricane Baby, and I don’t even really like him. I mean, he’s cute. But even if he looked like a toad, I would have saved him.”

  “I know you would have.” David’s voice was quiet. He didn’t talk for a few minutes while he drove to the exit ramp, merged onto the highway, and settled in the middle lane. “What’s this about?”

  “I’d be a good mom.” She thought back to that hot July day when her own mom left. “I mean, I might be. It’s possible.”

  His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I didn’t know you wanted children, Kyra.”

  “I just wish you believed that I could have kids and not destroy them. That I’m a good person who would do anything to keep a child from being hurt.”

  Including losing Amy? Wasn’t that why Kyra had done what she did? Or was it something else, something ugly and unforgivable? If she could go back in time, she wouldn’t do it again. Didn’t that have to mean, on some level, that it was wrong?

  David was sputtering something to the effect that he didn’t understand what was happening. Unfortunately, neither did Kyra.

  “Look,” she finally said, “I don’t want kids. Not really.” She sighed and took back his hand. “I’m sorry. It must be the pain pill.”

  He let out a long breath. “Are you sure?”

  She nodded. “But I don’t think I want a dog, either. Maybe a cat?”

  “Good idea.” He waited a moment and said cautiously, “Any cat would be lucky to have you taking care of it.”

  The words flew out of her mouth before she could stop herself: “Is that supposed to be the same as being a good mom? Because there is a difference between a cat and a baby, you know. A big difference.” She sounded so angry. God, what was wrong with her? Could a pain pill really do this?

  “No, of course not,” he said quietly, and squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry.”

  Kyra could tell the argument was over. No matter what she said, now that her husband knew she was not herself, he would be unfailingly gentle, kind, and nonconfrontational. She appreciated this about him, but she was also inexplicably sorry that the strange discussion had ended, even though she was the one who changed the topic to the boring problem of their leaky dishwasher.

  She had no idea that this conversation had made an impression on her husband until a few weeks later. She was in their bedroom, about to put the sheets on the bed, when he told her, “You know, you really would be a good mother, honey.” Kyra was surprised how happy this made her. She billowed the ivory sheet in the air and asked him to tuck in the other side. After he helped her with the pillowcases, she reassured him that she didn’t want kids. That was the end of that, until another week had passed and he said the same thing again. Maybe Kyra smiled this time? In any case, before long, it had become a kind of routine with them, like “you hang up first” when they were dating. David would say, “Another reason you’d be a good mother,” after Kyra had cooked a good meal or taken care of their bills or done basically anything that was mildly nurturing, and she would reply, “If I wanted to be a mother, which I don’t.”

  Her journal backed her up on that. Indeed, the total was −92 on the night when she and David were in bed, kissing, and, after she rolled over to stand up, he reached for her and asked her to stay.

  “But I need to put in my diaphragm,” she whispered.

  “Leave it,” he said, touching her breasts.

  “What?”

  “You don’t need it.”

  She could feel him pushing against her. She wanted him badly, too, but she forced herself to move away.

  “Do you realize what you’re saying?”

  “I think so.” He laughed softly. “Birth control prevents pregnancy. Ergo, if we don’t use it, we could get pregnant.”

  She swallowed, trying to digest this news. After a moment, she said, “Aren’t you afraid something will go wrong?” She was thinking: this can’t be true. David is always afraid.

  “Something could go wrong if we don’t have a baby, too. And believe it or not, I believe everything is going to be all right.” He kissed her neck. “Now can we please go back to—”

  “But why did you change your mind?”

  “I think I’m ready to have a family. And I realized if I want to really know you, I need to know you as more than my wife and my best friend and a logic genius.” He brushed his lips against her eyelids, her nose, her cheeks, and her chin before leaning up on his elbows and smiling gently. “I can’t wait to meet you as a mother, honey.”

  At that, Kyra began to cry. It was the first time in the three and a half years they’d known each other that she let herself cry in front of David. Of course he was surprised, but he assured her that she did not look even slightly hideous and that he still viewed her as a calm, reasonable person who was just as strong. “Even Superwoman cried occasionally,” he said, but Kyra knew he was making that part up. David was not the comic-book-reader type.

  A few weeks later, Kyra opened her Pro and Con file for the last time. She wrote a short note on the last page: When the baby grows up, I’ll let him or her read this file and know how hard I struggled with this decision. But when she was seven and a half months pregnant, she got up one night and deleted the file from both her computer and her backup disk. She did not want her child, a boy, according to the ultrasound, to find this and wonder if his mother had really wanted him. And God/the universe/whatever needed to know that all those negative numbers hadn’t actually meant anything to Kyra. She didn’t want to be punished for her doubts, and so the universe needed to understand that she was absolutely, unambiguously in favor of having this child.

  David was constantly nervous that something would go wrong with the pregnancy (of course), but even as Kyra tried to reassure him, she had a terrible fear of her own that she never talked about. She remembered when Amy told her that a pregnant woman wants her baby more than she’s ever wanted anything. Now she knew how true that was—meaning if karma existed, she was in big trouble. Maybe she deserved to be punished, but her son didn’t. “Just let him be all right,” she told God. She was still in her office; her hands were resting on her abdomen, where she could feel her baby kicking. She wasn’t sure why he always kicked more at night. It was almost as if he wanted her to wake up and think about all this.

  After a few minutes, she escaped into the comfort of her logic puzzles, like she always did. She figured it couldn’t be good for her baby to feel her stress or hear her cry. Better to talk to the little kicker about the proper order of spaceships organized on their launchpads by color. “If the first spaceship lands on a red launchpad,” she said to her stomach, “the second spaceship must land on the green launchpad or the purple one.”

  Another kick.

  “I think you’re right.” She smiled. “Let’s try purple.”

  TEN

  The afternoon traffic was getting heavy, and Sandra pulled off the highway to get a coffee at a fast-food place and use the bathroom. Back in her car, she swallowed her arthritis medicine down with the bitter-tasting brew, and realized she wasn’t sure where to go. If she went to David and Kyra’s house, she might just add to the stress and chaos. Surely the police were still there, questioning the neighbors, tapping the phone—whatever it was they did in a case like this. And her son hadn’t asked her to come, had he? When she’d asked what she could do to help, he’d said he’d let her know if he thought of anything and hung up quickly, like she was a nosy neighbor offering him an unappetizing casserole.

  In college, David used to brag that Sandra was not only a good mom but also a good friend. Of course every child’s relationship to his mother has to change over time. Sandra knew that, and she tried hard not to feel bad when David pushed her away. It was part of motherhood, or so she’d heard: resigning yourself to
whatever role your grown-up child decides to give you in his life. Her grandmother had had a saying about the need to let go of your kids, something about a mother only being a river for her children to bloom in the future. Since her grandmother had grown up on the Susquehanna, a lot of her sayings involved water.

  Still, sometimes Sandra couldn’t help wondering if she was making a mistake just accepting the wall David had put up between them, especially as the wall had never been there until what had happened with Courtney. If her son was hurting on the other side of a wall, she couldn’t do anything to help him. She wouldn’t even know. And he’d changed so much after the baby died. Certainly it was a devastating loss, but there was something about his reaction, even at the time . . . well, it wasn’t exactly normal, was it?

  She was back on the highway, sitting in the slow lane behind an eighteen-wheeler that wasn’t bothering to inch up; the traffic was that bad. So there was nothing to do, nothing to distract her mind from the memory she’d been fighting since David’s first phone call today. It was by far the worst moment of her life, when her son had called that morning fifteen years ago to tell her that her grandson had died.

  Though she’d been sound asleep, she’d managed to get dressed and on the road in twenty minutes. The thought of her son dealing with such a tragedy by himself, surrounded by strangers in the garish light of an unfamiliar hospital, had made her put one foot in front of the other. Somehow she made it to New Haven without running off the road or into a truck. By the time she arrived, the lawyer Courtney’s parents hired had arranged to have her moved from the police station to a psychiatric hospital. Which left David alone in the apartment—except he wasn’t at the apartment. In just a few hours, he’d already moved his books and clothes and essentials to a two-bedroom place rented by another grad student. A guy named Brennan. That was all Sandra knew about him, but she was glad David would have somebody with him for the next few days and weeks, and possibly longer.