by Shirley Jump
“That you’re pregnant.”
The word hung in the air between them, so heavy, Alex was sure it weighed a hundred pounds. She shuffled through the paint chips some more. “How about this butter cream? I think it would be great in the kitchen. I also like the melted vanilla, even though the name makes me hungry.”
Grandma ignored the color palette. She poked her face in front of Alex’s, her light blue eyes missing nothing. “I’ve had a child of my own, you know. Seen my own child have kids. Worked as a nurse for ten years before I quit to be a mother. I can tell these things.”
If Alex acknowledged the words, she’d have to acknowledge the situation. Maybe if she just let the subject drop, Grandma would, too. For now. Until she could clear her head, get her mind around it, because right now everything was still whirling and spinning inside there with disbelief.
“Cinnamon would be good in the dining room. Or maybe hot tamale. I thought it might be dramatic. You know, make a statement. But I’m worried the orange-red tones might clash with the taupe in the living room. Either way,” Alex said, folding up the color wheel, “we don’t need to make a decision today. There’s still plenty of work to be done before we paint. I’ll come back later.”
“Not so fast.” Grandma clamped a vise grip hand onto Alex’s arm. “How far along?”
Alex sighed. Denying would get her nowhere. She knew her grandmother. If she didn’t get the answers she wanted, she’d probably trot on down to Alex’s doctor’s office and wheedle the information out of the gynecologist herself. “Six weeks. Maybe seven.”
“Oh, Alex!” Her grandmother put a hand over her mouth, then got to her feet and drew her granddaughter into her arms. “I’m so happy!”
Alex wriggled out of the hug. “I’m not sure I want to keep it.” She still couldn’t quantify this as a baby. Or a pregnancy. She kept thinking of the whole thing as an “it” and an “event.” Doing that kept her from having to come to a decision. She knew she couldn’t put it off forever, but another day or two wasn’t going to change anything.
A stricken look took over Grandma’s face, and guilt twisted in Alex’s gut. She’d disappointed Grandma Kenner, something she hated to do. “Why?”
Alex swung her purse over her shoulder. Beads of sweat broke out on her forehead, and suddenly the room felt tight, stuffy, closed in. “I have to go, Grandma. I have to go meet Mack and place the order for the light fixtures. If I don’t get there in time, he’ll pick out something awful. Some guy kind of thing.”
Her grandmother pursed her lips. “That is not the Kenner way.”
“Since when?”
“Since I made all new rules. And being the oldest surviving Kenner, and the one who raised you, I make the rules. So that means you have to go at this head-on, face your problems straight into the wind.”
“And how exactly am I supposed to go at this”—Alex still couldn’t get the words out—“head-on?”
Grandma picked up the paint chips and waved them at Alex. “By picking either a pink or blue room.”
Alex pressed a hand to her face and shuddered. She wanted to cry, scream and run out of the room. Why had she gotten into this situation? And how was she going to get out of it? The suffocating feeling began to climb up her throat, and she plucked at her T-shirt, pulling the collar away from her neck. “Grandma, don’t get ten steps ahead of me.”
“Well, you have to make at least one step, granddaughter. Or before you know it, that little booger inside you will be making them all.”
“Grandma, please let it go. I need to think about this, and pressuring me isn’t helping. At all. It’s just making it worse.” Alex rose, crossed to the refrigerator, pulled out a water bottle and unscrewed the top. She drank deeply, then put the bottle on the counter. Anything to avoid the questions in her grandmother’s eyes, questions she couldn’t answer, not right now. Not while she was still asking them herself. She reached into her handbag, pulled out the catalog of lighting fixtures and flipped through them, the pages going by fast and furious, and not doing much to quell the quick racing of her pulse. “So, do you want to pick out one of these or let Mack go with his disco strobe idea?”
“Did you tell Mack?”
Clearly, Grandma Kenner wasn’t going to let the subject drop. “No.”
“Why not?”
“He’s not the father. He doesn’t need to know.”
“He cares about you. He’d want to know.”
Alex turned the page of the catalog. She pointed at a picture of something, she didn’t even care what. “This one’s nice. I like the polished bronze finish. It’s kind of antiquey.” Her voice shook. She needed to sit down.
“He’d want to help you, Alex.”
“I don’t need him to help me. I’m a big girl.” Alex flipped several pages forward and pointed at another item, all of them a blur, just a diversion, but they weren’t working. Alex sank into the chair, willing her grandmother to change the subject, to just let her forget that she’d made this incredible stupid mistake. “They have matching ceiling fans, and there are even outdoor lights that coordinate. See? Aren’t they great? It’s like Garanimals for homeowners.”
“Alex.” Grandma laid a hand on her granddaughter’s and waited until she looked up. “What’s the matter?”
“I have to…” She pointed vaguely at the catalog. “I can’t…”
“Tell me, sweetheart.”
“I can’t…do this,” she said finally, the words breaking with a sob. “I can’t make this decision right now.”
“Nobody said you had to do it right now. You’ve got time.”
Alex closed her eyes, and finally pushed out the doubts that had been sitting in her gut for days. “I don’t want to make the same mistakes she did.”
“Who says you will?”
“And who says I won’t?” She shook her head. “I can’t talk about this right now. I have lighting fixtures to choose.” Concentrate on that, not the bigger problem. She’d deal with one thing at a time. Tackle the little problems first, the ones she could manage. Yeah, like dome lighting or chandeliers. Now there was a life-changing decision.
“You’re in no state to make any decisions right now. You need some time to think.”
Alex pushed the lighting pictures aside. “Fine. Then let’s talk about something else. Like…what the doom-and-gloomers are up to now. What is it today? Predicting tornadoes?”
Grandma ignored the temporary attempt at levity. She reached out and ran a hand down Alex’s hair, her touch tender and full of years of love. “I love you, Alex, and your mother did, too. From the minute she found out she was pregnant, she loved you. In fact, she bought a stuffed animal that very first day. A little bear.”
The bear. Alex remembered it. Her constant companion, a tagalong everywhere she’d gone. And now, the only picture she had of it, she’d thrown away. Regret pooled in her chest.
Alex had heard that story before—but never really heard it. Could her mother have been excited, not panicked, the first time she heard she was having a baby? Or did she change her mind after the baby arrived?
“If that was so,” Alex said, “then why did she ditch me every chance she got?”
Grandma sighed. “She was young, honey. Foolhardy, and stubborn as all hell. And scared. Scared that she would be a terrible mother.”
That was one emotion Alex understood now. But not how being scared could make someone put their children in second place.
Alex concentrated her attention on the vase of orange daylilies on Grandma’s kitchen. They blurred in her line of sight until they were one big circle, like a watery sun. “She was terrible.”
“All the time?” Grandma asked, her voice soft.
Alex didn’t answer. Just kept watching that orange flower sun.
“You need to let go of the resentment. So you can open your heart to what’s good, like a garden that’s finally planted with the right crops for its soil. And then you can heal.”
“I am
healed.”
“About everything?”
Alex looked away and sucked in a breath. A long moment passed, then she let the air out of her lungs. “No, not everything.”
“You still think what happened to Brittany is your fault?”
As if Grandma had flipped a switch, a tear ran down Alex’s face. Her breath hitched in her chest, so hard it hurt. The pink room flooded back into her mind, as clear as if it was yesterday. The stuffed bunny in the crib. The clowns dancing on the mobile. Soft yellow light from the Winnie the Pooh nightlight bathing everything in a golden glow, making her believe for several minutes that nothing was wrong, even as the babysitter continued to scream. Alex had told herself it was all a trick of the light, a cruel trick. “My mother should have been there that night. She should have been there, not a babysitter. But where was she? Out at a party. And if I had gone up there sooner, I could have—”
“You were five, honey. What did you think you were going to do? You were a little kid.”
“I was the big sister, Grandma. I was supposed to protect her. When she was born, I promised her I’d protect her.”
Grandma cupped Alex’s face in her soft palms, as tears slid down Alex’s cheeks and over her grandmother’s fingers. Her lighter eyes held Alex’s, held them tight, and in Grandma’s shattered gaze, Alex saw the shared grief of a broken heart who had lost a loved one, too. “You were not responsible for what happened to Brittany. It was no one’s fault. It was SIDS, honey. A terrible tragedy that happens sometimes to babies whether their mothers are there or their big sisters or their babysitters. It was no one’s fault,” she repeated.
Alex still wanted to blame someone. She needed to blame someone. Anger was so much easier to hold on to than grief.
The orange circle blurred until Alex couldn’t see anything at all. She closed her eyes and wished the memories away, but they wouldn’t stay back this time. They came rushing at her like a truckload of linebackers, colliding into her chest, pummeling her heart, taking away her breath. That history played over and over in Alex’s head like a movie with only one repeating scene. She twined her fingers together so tight, the knuckles turned white.
And still the images came. Her mother, running into the house, crying and collapsing as she hurried up the stairs, calling out Brittany’s name again and again. All these years, Alex had blamed Josie for being gone, for putting herself ahead of her child, but now, with a life beating inside her own body, she began to see that past with new eyes.
The anger slowly gave way to empathy, to realizing how deep Josie’s anguish, pain and overwhelming guilt had gone. She hadn’t been there—and her child had died.
No wonder she had turned and run from the house, racked with an unspeakable agony. She’d gotten in her car, probably trying to outrun the image of her lifeless child, and found no amount of speed could close that gap. Blinded by grief, she’d run off the road, not knowing the mess she’d be leaving behind.
“What if it happens again? What if it happens to me? To my…” Alex let out a breath. “My baby?”
Understanding and empathy crested in Grandma’s smile. “And what if it doesn’t, sweetheart? You’ll be a wonderful mother. I know you will.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think I can raise a child, Grandma. What if I turn out to be just like her?”
“And what if you don’t?”
Alex shook her head harder this time, cementing her resolve. “I can’t take that chance.”
Her grandmother opened her mouth, as if she wanted to argue, then closed it again. She paused a moment, watching Alex’s face, as if trying to accept Alex’s decision. “What are you going to do?”
“I have an appointment at an adoption agency later this week. I thought I’d look at all my options.”
Grandma grasped Alex’s hand with comfort and support. “Are you sure you want to give your baby away? That’s a forever thing, honey.”
Give her baby away. Abandon her child, essentially.
The words sliced through Alex with a sharpness that nearly took her breath away. She hadn’t, until that moment, realized that she had, indeed, been contemplating exactly that. And would it leave her child feeling the same way she had felt as a kid? Alone? Rejected?
Her eyes misted, and she turned away, fingering the edge of the table, not seeing the wood, but needing the hardness of the oak for something sturdy to hold on to. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I want.”
Her grandmother’s arm went around her and she drew Alex into a White Linen–scented hug, one that reminded her of her childhood, of safety, security, and of someone who had been there no matter what. “I just want you to be happy, sweetheart, and to do what will be best for you. And for your baby.”
“I’m trying, Grandma, I’m trying.”
Her grandmother pressed a kiss to her forehead, and for a moment, Alex felt six again. “I know you are. I know you are.”
Chapter Thirty
The fliers littered the floor at Alex’s feet, pictures of happy families spread around her like a montage of what could be for other people. The words on the covers of the brochures seemed to leap off the pages and scream back at her.
Adoption.
A Chosen Child.
The Gift of Family.
A Forever Home.
Queasiness rose in Alex’s stomach, rolling like an ocean on a stormy day. She pressed her hand against her gut, trying to quell the nausea, but it continued to grow. She scrambled to her feet and dashed to the only working bathroom in the house, the one upstairs, upchucking what was left of the small lunch she’d had earlier.
After rinsing out her mouth and wiping her face with a damp paper towel, Alex leaned against the sink and stared at her reflection. “What are you going to do?”
The other, paler version of herself didn’t provide an answer. She had no idea what to do. When she’d walked into the adoption agency earlier this morning and picked up the brochures, the answer had seemed so clear. But now, not so much.
She couldn’t raise a child. She could barely take care of herself, for God’s sake.
The work waiting for her downstairs—work Mack didn’t want her doing because he thought she had the flu, but work that served as a blessed distraction from the one growing in her belly—suddenly seemed too overwhelming. Alex didn’t want to go back down there and face the unfinished walls, the piles of construction debris. Instead, she exited the bathroom and wandered aimlessly down the hall.
She’d avoided the upstairs, except to use the bathroom, ever since she’d realized whose house this was. Mack had tried to convince her to do the construction on all the rooms at the same time—and he was right, it was the most practical way to tackle a renovation—but she hadn’t been able to make any decisions about these bedrooms. Not right away. So she’d put him off, and put him off, telling him they’d do those rooms later, once the new downstairs walls were in place.
Save for that one time, she hadn’t stepped foot in the other bedrooms, hadn’t looked in a single closet. Hadn’t opened any other doors, except the one to the pink room. Resurrecting those ghosts had been enough.
But now, something pulled Alex down the hall, past her old bedroom, to the master at the back of the house. The door opened to a view of a wide picture window that looked out over the yard—or what was essentially a weed factory now.
Alex pushed open the door. The hinges creaked in protest. She crossed the threshold, stepping onto brown shag carpeting that had long ago faded from the sunlight and matted like a mangy dog’s fur. A double bed frame sat squarely in the middle of the room, an eerie metal skeleton. On either side of the window hung the remnants of lacy white curtains, more tatters than fabric now, yellowed to the color of butter.
An old dresser sat against the wall, the drawers opened, half-spilled onto the floor, the contents long gone. The wood—maple, maybe—was scratched and stained. A hand-me-down, she thought, or a side-of-the-road find. In the corner of the room, a pile of clo
thes sat in a dusty bundle. Whether they were her mother’s or some teenager’s who had broken in at some point over the years, Alex didn’t know.
The rest of the room was stripped as bare as the walls. Her mother hadn’t owned much. Whatever she’d had of value had been sold or pawned to support the never-ending party.
Alex crossed the room to the closet. The cheap particleboard door stood open, the walls falling apart, damaged from a leak in the roof. Mack had mentioned that they should open up this closet space, expand it into the room and create a walk-in.
She pressed a hand to her stomach and looked around at the room, so empty it nearly echoed. What was she doing here, in this situation? Weeks ago, she’d set out to change her life, to change this house.
She scoffed. All she’d ended up doing was repeating the very past she’d tried so hard to leave behind. What an idiot. How stupid could she be?
Anger roared inside her gut, fast, a tidal wave bursting with frustration at herself, her mother, everything. Here she was, twenty-seven years down the road, making the same mistakes all over again. Had she learned nothing from her childhood?
The closet was empty. No clothes. As if no one had ever lived there, ever made their mark on this space. For some reason, that only fanned the flames of Alex’s temper.
“Where were you?” she shouted into the room, spinning back toward the closet, the closet that no longer held even one memento from her mother. It was as if she’d never existed, as if she’d simply evaporated, leaving Alex alone, to handle everything in her life—and now, this, this pregnancy—all by herself. “Where were you when I needed you? You weren’t here. You weren’t with me, with my sister, with anyone. You aren’t even here now, goddamn you.” Tears escaped her, hot and furious. She let out a shriek of frustration, along with a fist that landed square in the middle of the Sheetrock. “Where were you? I needed you, damn it! I needed you!”
Long-ago softened by water damage, the wall crumbled beneath the force of the blow and fell onto the floor. Something skittered behind the wall and Alex jumped back, thinking it was a mouse, until she heard a thud.
