by Lisa Tucker
David wanted to talk to his mother alone, but he didn’t want to go back to the old apartment. They ended up meeting at the same “hip” restaurant where Sandra had taken Courtney when the girl was pregnant and depressed. It was close to Brennan’s house. David was waiting at a table when Sandra arrived. He stood up, as always, to give her a hug, yet it wasn’t their usual long, warm embrace. He felt oddly stiff in her arms, but she assumed he was holding himself back so he wouldn’t cry in public.
He admitted he hadn’t slept or eaten since it happened. Sandra suspected he hadn’t showered or changed clothes, either. He was wearing navy pants and a rumpled white shirt with what appeared to be a pizza stain on the cuff. He clearly hadn’t shaved or combed his hair.
For the first fifteen minutes or so, his comments seemed random. He mentioned that he felt cold, and wondered if the restaurant was actually cold. He said it might rain later. He said his advisor had called him, a sympathy call. “Apparently everyone in the department already knows.” His voice was so far away and tentative, Sandra wondered if he was on something, and then she realized he probably was. The hospital would have given him a tranquilizer of some kind.
The only time he sounded more focused and sure of himself was when he said that he was going to divorce Courtney.
“Don’t decide anything right now,” she said. She was picking at her salad, trying not to scream at the perky waitress who kept interrupting them to ask if David had changed his mind about ordering some food. He was drinking lemonade, which had been his favorite drink since he was just a little boy. She felt her chest tighten.
“I don’t need to wait,” he said. “I know I will never be able to live with her again.”
Sandra noticed his eyes were watering constantly, the way they always did when he was very tired. “How do you know that?” she said softly.
He leaned back. “I know myself.”
It was true; David did know himself unusually well for someone his age. And among the things he knew about himself—Sandra was positive on this point—was that he was a sensitive person. “Too sensitive,” his father used to say, along with a variety of other things that were much more offensive. Her son had always been the type of man who could cry: when one of his crazy girlfriends broke up with him, when a college buddy had a diving accident, even when he watched a particularly sad or sweet movie, though his tears over movies would often be blinked off and laughingly denied later, as when Courtney accused him of crying during Groundhog Day. “If I was crying, and I stress the if, I was crying for the poor groundhog.” He was looking back and forth from Sandra to Courtney. He pushed out his chest and took on a French accent; Sandra had no idea why. ‘You humans use me without even knowing who I am! But I am not a hog at all . . . I am a rodent!’”
Had David cried at all about his baby yet? On the phone this morning, he’d sounded quiet and numb. Then he’d spent the day moving to Brennan’s apartment. He had to be still in shock.
When she gently suggested that maybe he needed to grieve before he could make any decisions about his future, he said he couldn’t do that.
She looked at him. “Can’t do what?”
“I don’t think I can grieve.” His eyes closed for a second. “It may change, but it might not. I never cried about Dad. I don’t—”
“That was completely different.”
“Because leaving Dad was necessary. But breaking up our family affected me more than anything that had happened in my life . . . until . . .” The waitress arrived with another lemonade. He thanked her and waited another moment. “I’ve never cried about it. Even when I realized Dad wasn’t going to try to change though it was the only way to have a relationship with me.”
“You were very angry, honey. That protected you.”
He lifted his chin. “And I’m divorcing Courtney now.”
Wasn’t her son basically admitting that his anger at his wife was keeping him from feeling his sadness about the baby? Sandra felt sure he was, but she also felt sure it couldn’t last. He would have to face it eventually, and so she insisted on staying in town, even though she was out of personal and vacation time, to be there for him when it happened. When David didn’t suggest that she stay in his old apartment, she checked into a cheap hotel over by the highway and met up with her son whenever he was free. She held his hand and hugged him repeatedly, whether he was stiff in her arms or not. She told him it would get better, and he went to all of his classes and taught his sections and acted like some version of his normal self. But he never laughed, and he admitted he couldn’t sleep without Valium. The doctor at the ER had given it to him, just as Sandra thought. Sandra told David it was fine as long as he didn’t use it for more than a few months. She herself was doubling up the Ativan she took for her occasional anxiety, so she could sleep without dreaming of the baby.
Sandra had attended to the burial, but it was almost three weeks before David was ready to have a small service at the cemetery. It was a quiet, quick affair and her son seemed all right when it was over. He told Sandra that the only thing left to do was pack up the things. When she offered to do it for him, he seemed immensely grateful. Everything was to go in storage, until Courtney was better. Let her decide what she wanted and what to give away.
Sandra went over on a Wednesday afternoon, while David was in his seminar on the history of American manufacturing. She’d barely gotten the key in the door when a little girl was at her elbow. Her name was Lupe, and Sandra had seen her around the apartment complex several times. She was a scuffed-up-looking girl, maybe seven or eight, with scabs on her knees and hair that needed a trim. She had four brothers and three sisters, or so she said. It seemed impossible that such a large family would live in one of these small apartments, even if they had the larger, three-bedroom model.
“Hi, Joshua’s granny,” the girl said. Sandra had told the girl to call her that the first time they met, almost five months ago, when Josh was only days old.
Sandra flinched, but she looked at Lupe with an expression that she hoped seemed pleasant enough. “I’m really busy today. I’m sorry, I can’t talk like we usually—”
“I know he died. Everybody knows because the ambulance came and the police came and it was really loud.”
“Oh,” Sandra said. She had the door opened and now she was headed back to her car, to begin hauling in the stuff she’d brought with her: garbage bags, two dozen or so empty boxes she’d gotten from the office supply place, paper towels, a variety of household cleaners to get the apartment ready to rent when all the things were hauled away. She’d arranged for a truck to come this afternoon. As long as the place was emptied out today, David would get his deposit back, and they could use the money he saved in rent to pay the storage shed charges.
Lupe insisted on helping, though Sandra had told her twice that she could carry it all herself. The girl had the strangest way of lugging an empty box. She held it pressed against her legs, like it was keeping them warm, which, Sandra realized, it probably was. It was the last day of November, but Lupe was dressed in the same black nylon shorts she’d been wearing nearly every time Sandra had seen her. The shorts were too big and boyish, most likely a hand-me-down from an older brother.
Sandra and the girl stacked the cleaning supplies on the kitchen bar and the boxes on the floor by the refrigerator.
“He sure had a lot of stuff,” Lupe said, looking around the small living room. The rug was covered with Josh’s toys, many of which Sandra had bought. Her most recent purchase—a stuffed elephant with ears that crinkled and a belly that honked like a horn—was sitting on the couch, next to Josh’s rainbow blanket. One of Sandra’s favorite things to do was to lay Josh down on the bed, after she’d changed his diaper, and dance that blanket in the air while he giggled and reached for it. If he got his dimpled hand around a blanket corner, he’d squeal for joy.
“Are you sa
d?” Lupe said.
“Of course,” Sandra snapped. She took a breath and reminded herself that Lupe was just a child. “Don’t you think you should go home now?”
“I can’t. My momma told me to stay with you until she gets here. She’s coming over to help. She went around to tell her friends after I saw your car in the parking lot. Her friends want to help, too.”
Oh Lord, Sandra thought, but before she could tell the girl to please let everybody know she didn’t need any help, a woman was at the door. Her name was Delilah and she was holding a baby who was so big, his knees were circled with rings of fat. “This is Cody,” the woman said. She shoved the baby in Sandra’s arms. And so there Sandra stood, holding some stranger’s baby, half in and half out of the door, while a parade of three other women marched right past her and into her son’s apartment.
“Are you friends of Courtney’s?” she stammered. Her first thought was that they didn’t look like people associated with the university, but what she really meant was they didn’t look like people who would be associated with her daughter-in-law. Courtney had grown up in a very sheltered world. She once confessed that, until she met Sandra, she’d never known a grown-up who was paid by the hour rather than on salary, other than the immigrants her parents hired to do cleaning and lawn care.
The women shook their heads and one even looked confused, like she’d never heard Courtney’s name before. Sandra noticed that someone had brought food: a plate of fruit sitting on the coffee table, and a Crock-Pot that smelled like chili placed in the kitchen next to a dish rack of bottles, each set upside down to dry.
Baby Cody was heavy but good-natured. He kept leaning back to smile at Sandra. She tried to smile back, but it wasn’t in her, and eventually he broke down crying. His mother took him back, and Sandra was thinking about what to say to get these people to leave her alone when the woman who’d brought the food introduced herself as Lupe’s mother, Yolanda.
“You’re the grandma,” Yolanda said. “My daughter likes you . . . You talk to her. Your daughter doesn’t talk to no one. Don’t want to speak bad of her though.” She made the sign of the cross. “I’m sorry about what happened to the baby.”
“Thank you,” Sandra said. “She’s not my daughter,” she added numbly. Even if these women didn’t know that Courtney had been arrested, Sandra did, and her anger at her daughter-in-law was so intense that, more than a few times, she’d woken herself up screaming at Courtney. She’d even dreamed that she had her hands around Courtney’s throat.
She tried to tell Yolanda, and Cody’s mother, Delilah, and the other two women, whose names she’d already forgotten, that she didn’t need any help. That she was fully capable of doing this herself. And finally, that she wanted to do this herself, to have this time with her memories.
Had she lost her voice? Why was no one listening? Two women had already gone into the bedroom with empty boxes. Delilah was on the floor of the living room, keeping one eye on her baby while she loaded up toys into a garbage bag. Yolanda was in the kitchen, doing up a few dishes that had been left in the sink. Only Lupe was paying attention to Sandra, and the girl’s only response was to shrug.
“I don’t want this!” Sandra shouted. Now that she’d yelled, other shouts were bubbling up, against her will. “Oh my God! I can’t take this! I just want . . . I want . . .”
Then Yolanda was at her side, and one of the other women, too. They led her to the couch where she’d slept so many times with Joshua in his bassinet next to her. She didn’t realize she was crying until Delilah put Cody on her lap, and she saw her tears dropping onto his fuzzy, brown baby hair.
David wasn’t the only one who hadn’t really grieved yet. Sandra’s excuse was that she’d been trying to be strong for her son, and this was true, but she was also afraid that if she let herself start crying, she’d never be able to stop. If she’d just loved her grandson, the pain would have been bad enough, but she’d been in love with him, which made it unbearable. It was a secret that only mothers (and grandmothers) knew: that the feelings for a baby could be more intense than the most all-consuming schoolgirl crush. Every wall of Sandra’s house had pictures of Joshua. Each time when she came home from visiting New Haven, she always left one of her shirts unwashed, so she could put the fabric against her face and be back there, holding him in her arms.
Cody lifted his hand to her cheek, the way babies do, but it seemed like sympathy. She cried harder, and Lupe sat down next to her and patted her knee.
Did she sit there crying the whole time? It was possible. She really didn’t remember what she did during the hour or two while these strangers packed up her son’s apartment. They didn’t sing or hum or even talk much, but what they did say was respectful. One of the women remarked, “What a beautiful boy,” as she carefully wrapped up one of the framed pictures of Joshua on the bookshelf. The two in the bedroom punctuated their packing of Joshua’s clothes by mumbling “so sweet” or “little one.” At some point, one of the women brought her a mug of chili and Lupe fed it to her like she was an invalid. Or did Lupe feed it to her because Cody had fallen asleep and Sandra didn’t want to move her hands, for fear of waking him?
She knew she had every right to be furious with these women, for barging into her life and acting like putting another baby into her arms would make it any easier—except that it had turned out to be true. She would always remember the way that fat baby had nestled into her shoulder, as though it was still a safe place to be. As though she hadn’t failed to protect her son and his family. As though she hadn’t lost her ability to soothe someone, even if she could do nothing to make this any easier for her own baby, David.
When Yolanda and her gang of gals got ready to leave, Sandra didn’t think to ask for their addresses, to send them a thank-you card. She insisted Delilah take the toy Cody had fixated on: a clear ball with green and red gears that spun and rattled when you rolled it. She also gave Lupe one of Courtney’s demitasse spoons because the girl clearly loved it; she said if she had a spoon like that, her ice cream would last longer.
And then they were all gone, and everything was packed, and the bathroom and the kitchen were clean, and there was nothing left to do but wait for the truck. As she sat on the couch, looking at the shadows on the walls where Courtney and David’s art prints had been, her mind drifted to her father. She missed him so much then, even though he’d been dead for thirty-three years. It was another hard fact, and something Sandra would never have believed when she was young: you never get over the ones you lose.
Sandra was in grade school when her father started showing signs of the leukemia that would rupture his spleen and kill him when she was thirteen. Though she wouldn’t fully understand what had happened to her dad until she was in nursing school, even at the time, she could tell what a struggle it was for him to take her and her little brother, Beau, to the pool or the park or just out in the backyard to rake leaves. He was much skinnier than the other fathers, and much, much more exhausted, but he did everything they did and more. He insisted on coming to every one of Beau’s piano recitals and every one of Sandra’s swimming meets. He read to the kids every night: another adventure of the Happy Hollisters or a chapter of The Boxcar Children, Sandra’s favorite book. She remembered him gently lifting her up and carrying her to bed when she fell asleep. She remembered the afternoon he hung a tire swing in their backyard, to cheer her up, because she’d had the chicken pox and missed the town theater’s production of Cinderella. In fact, her father was part of nearly every fond memory of her childhood.
He was a veteran of the Second World War, so he knew firsthand what it was like to have someone close to you die. He wouldn’t tell his kids about the deaths he’d seen, but he did tell them stories about all the hardships the men experienced: the lack of food and sleep, the tattered clothes and boots, the cold rain that made their bones ache. But somehow, all of his stories ended up being fu
nny, and while Sandra and Beau were laughing, her dad would shrug his thin shoulders and conclude, “Life has a way of going on.”
When Sandra was a child, she thought it was a happy saying, like “Hang in there, baby,” on the popular poster with the orange monkey hanging from a tree. Now she could feel the truth of what her father must have felt during the war, the irony behind his funny stories.
By the time the truck came, it was getting dark. David had been saying for days that it was time for Sandra to go home, and she knew he was right, though she’d been dreading this moment. Once she was back in Philadelphia, the crisis stage would be over and this would become a permanent fact of her life, something that was just true. If she were no longer able to react to it, there would be no choice. She’d have to live with it—and somehow, so would her boy.
ELEVEN
Michael Gabriel Winter was born on June 23 at 2:14 AM. He weighed 8 pounds and 11 ounces, and received a perfect Apgar score. He was absolutely healthy when Kyra and David took him home to their house in West Mt. Airy, which was like a suburb, with its yards and parks and kids and strollers, but still inside the Philly city limits. They’d bought a three-bedroom stone house with a sunroom built on the back. Kyra had placed a rocker in the sunroom, so she could nurse her baby and watch the sunrise.
The house had been painstakingly childproofed before Michael took his first breath. David had done it in the last months of her pregnancy. He’d gotten down on his hands and knees and crawled all over the house, pretending he had the eyes and reach of a toddler. Which of course Michael would not be for months, but since David couldn’t know exactly when their son would become mobile, better safe than sorry. That was pretty much a theme with him. If something bad could happen, they might as well expend the energy making sure it did not happen. Within reason, as David liked to add, though most people wouldn’t think it was reasonable to put locks on the attic windows, since even Kyra couldn’t operate the door to the attic, meaning it was unlikely that a tiny baby—or even a twelve-year-old kid—would get up there and squeeze himself into a window that was too small for anyone but a two-year-old to fit through.
