After the Shut Up Ring

Chapter 8 – Angie

After the amazingtime with Brandon and the heron, the rest of the weekend sucks. On Saturday, after a few hours of sweaty sleep, I shower and call Tyler about the money.

He says he’s busy with his girls, and besides, he won’t fight with me in front of them, so I need to call back after they’re in bed. I spend the day nursing a hangover and trying not to freak out about whether the girls are okay and what’s going on with Brandon and me. I call Tyler back that night at eleven, and the girls are still up.

They hear my voice and clamor to talk to me, and I’m gutted like a fish. They want me, and I’m not there, and my arms have never, ever been so empty, and there is nothing I can do except keep my voice calm and sweet.

Tyler passes them the phone for a minute. Tamblyn asks if Chickie is okay. She forgot it here, and Tyler wouldn’t come by to get it because Chickie’s gross, and she’s too old for a blankie.

Chickie does get gross between washings, but not as gross as Tyler’s dirty socks, and he leaves them wherever he takes them off—in the living room, under the kitchen table, behind the bathroom door, wherever. And Tamblyn always knows where Chickie is. Can’t say the same about Tyler and his socks.

Saturday night, I sleep with Chickie, and I don’t care that it’s grubby. Inhaling its weird graham cracker smell keeps me from losing it.

Tyler doesn’t answer my calls or texts on Sunday morning. The only way I can stop myself from racing over to the house, frantic, is reminding myself over and over that this has always been his M.O.

When he’s in the wrong, he works himself up into thinking he’s been so misused and misunderstood that whatever he’s done is completely justified, and no one is owed an explanation. As a matter of fact, he deserves an apology, and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t deserve that apology to his face. So he doesn’t answer his phone.

I do a load of laundry, vacuum the stairs, and annoy Miss Dawn by scrubbing her tub before she has the chance to shower. She thinks it’s somehow wasteful to clean right before a shower—like you get more clean out of a scrubbing if you maximize the time between cleaning it and using it.

I think that since she’s too stubborn to get those grippy stickers, the less soap scum there is when she’s in there, the better, especially since her knees have the habit of buckling on her.

Eventually, she tells me I’ve done enough and shoos me downstairs, and I wait for six o’clock drop-off time, curled up on the futon in the basement, sipping my cold morning coffee and staring blindly at the TV. Miss Dawn leaves me to wallow in peace.

At noon, there’s a sharp rap at the front door. Instantly, my brain blares. Police! Accident! Sorry to inform you, ma’am, but—

I sprint up the stairs, two at a time. I should have gone over to Tyler’s. I should have never let the girls go with him.

This is punishment. This is what happens. People leave, and I never see them again.

I throw the front door open just as Miss Dawn hollers from the kitchen, “Who’s that knocking?”

Oh, thank God, thank God. It’s Tyler’s mom, Carol.

Carol is in her church clothes. She’s got Tamblyn and Ivy by the hand. The girls are wearing matching dresses that I’ve never seen before, new sparkly backpack purses, and frilly white dress socks with their dirty sneakers. They look desperate to bolt into the house, but they know better. They stand at Carol’s heels like sad, chastened dogs.

I want to rip my girls away from her, but I’m so happy it’s not the police, and they’re safe and home early.

“Hi, Carol.” I step back so everyone can come inside.

She frees the girls’ hands. They surge forward toward me. She coughs. They stop in their tracks.

“Now, do what I told you, girls,” she says. “Go change into your play clothes, fold the dresses, and bring them back to me to put in the wash.”

They surge toward me again. She coughs, sharper.

“Yes, ma’am,” they say in unison and then throw themselves forward the last foot into my arms.

I scoop them up and smoosh them together, gathering bony elbows and knobby knees and sweet-and-sour, grubby skin. My little girls. Love bleeds through me like spilled ink.

Ivy grabs a fist of my hair. Tamblyn monkeys her legs around my waist so tight that it hurts my hip bones. It takes all my strength to hold us upright and together, but I do.

“Oh, I missed you, babies,” I whisper. They’re trembling, and I would be, too, but I’m the mama. This is the way it is now. I need to maintain the fiction—everything will be okay, we’ll all get used to it soon, and it’s not bad, it’s just different. I need to sell it. Make it true. This was my choice, after all.

I steel my muscles and gently lower my girls to their feet. “Chickie’s on your bed,” I tell Tamblyn. The girls understand that we can’t hug too long—Carol is looming—and once I gently unpeel their fingers, they flee down to the basement. My leashed heart leaps after them.

Carol stands with her back almost touching the storm door, her arms folded. If she were the type of woman to roll her eyes, they’d have fallen out of the sockets and onto the floor.

“That was quite the demonstration,” she says, her thin lips pursed. She drums her long, acrylic nails against her thin upper arm.

I’ve literally never done anything Carol approved of. Long ago, I figured out the best I can do was keep it moving with her. I still haven’t figured out how to not let her remarks sting, but maybe one day. I’m growing as a person. I got all my paperwork in on time, so I’m in the next CNA cohort that starts after the holidays. And I don’t cry in the shower anymore.

“Thanks for bringing the girls home,” I say. Bob and weave. That’s what I do with Carol Reynolds.

She sniffs, looks down her nose into the living room, and then turns her nose up at whatever she sees in there. “Tyler went with his dad down to the property in Virginia for the day. He needs a break once in a while, too.”

She took what I said like I was questioning why Tyler didn’t bring them home. That’s what she does—she sees things in the worst possible light. Except Tyler.

“Should I get the girls’ bags from the car?” I ask.

That throws her, but not for long. “Can’t the bags stay there? Aren’t they going to need their things on the weekends? I don’t see why you had to take everything with you.” She presses her lips together like she’s preventing herself from saying what she really thinks.

“It’s fine if you forgot.” And it’s not going to be every weekend.

Early on, Tyler said, “I guess you want to do that every-other-weekend shit,” and I didn’t disagree. Madison thought he’d want fifty-fifty so he wouldn’t have to pay support, and he’d end up dumping the girls on his mom. But I know Tyler. He figures I won’t put him on support, that I wouldn’t risk him getting primary physical custody by some fluke. And he’s right. I won’t.

I’d been making do with the hundred and fifty dollars he’s always had deposited from his check into our joint checking account for groceries, but I guess that gravy train is over if he’s going to be spending that money out of spite at Thom’s Cycle.

“I didn’t forget. I just think that things need to be fair. For the girls.” Carol folds her arms tighter, really making those boney elbows pop, and lifts her chin higher. She totally forgot. She’d rather pick a fight than admit she made a mistake, though. Like mother, like son.

“It’s fine,” I say again. I never fight if I can avoid it.

In the kitchen, a chair creaks. Miss Dawn must be losing her mind. I bet it’s killing her not to storm out here and give Carol a piece of her mind. They were actually friends back in high school, but as Miss Dawn puts it “as you get older, at some point it’s not class, it’s a stick up your ass.”

Carol’s shoulders fall a fraction of an inch. “Well, they didn’t have anything suitable for church. I had to run them up to Target yesterday.”

I know it’s criticism, but I’ll take it as an out. “Thank you,” I say. “The dresses and the backpacks are cute.”

“I was going to take them to Denny’s afterwards—they’ll probably tell you that I said I would—but they were just all over the pew. Slipping down in their seats, trying to reach over my lap, touching the hymnals.” She blows out a long breath. “They really need to be going to church every week if they’re going to learn how to behave.”

You couldn’t pay me to go to St. Pius X. It smells like burnt bacon from the social hall in the basement, and I don’t need weekly confirmation that I’m a dirty sinner on the wrong path.

Carol reads my face and summons up her catch-more-flies-with-honey smile. “I’d be happy to take them Sundays when they’re with you.” She rounds her eyes. The whites are stark, outlined by her blackest-black, spider-legs lashes. “It’s no trouble. You can use the time for yourself.” She scans me from my rumpled T-shirt to my baggy sweats. “Get your hair done. And your nails.”

Before I can answer, the girls trudge up the stairs, bearing their dresses and wadded-up fancy white socks. Tamblyn has made an effort at folding hers. Ivy has rolled hers into a ball.

They approach Carol, as solemn as prisoners, and offer her their bundles. Carol sighs, plucks out the socks and hands them to me, and then snaps the dresses out, laying them over her forearm. It really is quite the demonstration. There’s no need for all the fuss. The cotton is a blend; it won’t wrinkle.

“So shall I come for the girls next Sunday, then?” She levels her cold gaze down at them. “Perhaps if we don’t fidget so much, we can go to Denny’s afterwards, eh? Wouldn’t that be nice, girls?”

The girls deflate, their shoulders shrinking, their chins dropping.

It’s not church they hate. They love St. Rita’s. We go with Miss Dawn sometimes.

St. Rita’s has a children’s liturgy. A nun leads the little ones out to the annex where they have AA and Bible study, and she plays guitar. The kids sit around her on the floor and sing. Then they try to help her pull up cartoons about Jesus on her iPad until she throws her hands up and plays more songs and lets them get into the rubber tub of musical instruments that she keeps under her metal folding chair.

I went with the girls a few times to make sure it was okay. It was anarchy. Noisy, happy anarchy.

Mom didn’t take me to church, but I have vague memories of going with my grandparents to St. Pius X. I don’t remember much besides the charred bacon smell and helplessly sliding off the curved wood pews.

The irony is that if I were still with Tyler, I’d have certainly said yes, but Carol wouldn’t have dared to ask.

When I was with Tyler, I always said yes to her. If I didn’t, Tyler would hear about it from her, and he’d be unbearable to live with until I “got his mother off of his ass.” But she never would have brought it up. Tyler hates church like he hates the Steelers and bike lanes, like they did something to him personally. He really must have needed a break to let the girls go with her this morning.

“Thank you for taking them today,” I say, and I mean it. The only way I’ve been able to breathe—let alone sleep—is knowing she’s close by, and Tyler would never be shy about calling her if he needed help.

“So, next Sunday then?” She frowns at the dresses, and I watch her wrestle with the idea of handing them over to me, the woman who washes everything together on cold.

Both girls slump at the same time. They know how I am with Grandma. They assume it’s a done deal.

Ivy stares longingly into the living room at the TV. They’re tired and done. I can smell the impending meltdown.

Neither of them makes a move, though. Because they want to be close to me or because Carol hasn’t dismissed them yet? Whatever, they aren’t budging. They stand in front of me, dejected in high water pants and mismatched tops that show a little too much belly.

Because they’re defending me.

That’s why they’re shoulder-to-shoulder, keeping their skinny little bodies between me and their grandma, when their comfy blankets with unicorn hoods and mermaid tails are waiting for them in a basket next to the couch. A memory flashes in my mind—Brandon throwing me behind him in the instant before he realized I was excited about a heron.

And then another memory—Tyler making fun of me in the kitchen while I fried potatoes for him and his friends. They were teasing him about whether he was ever going to propose to me. He was pinching the chub above the waistband of my jeans, joking that if he wifed me up, I’d chunk up until I wouldn’t be able to fit in any of my pants.

I’d slapped his hands, laughing because getting mad would have been worse. Tamblyn crawled down from her chair and demanded that I pick her up. She’d wrapped her legs around my waist so Tyler couldn’t pinch me anymore.

It didn’t occur to me then that I wasn’t the only one hurt.

But doesn’t it hurt when someone you love is sad?

Of course it does.

How was I able to know that as a fact and hide it from myself at the same time?

I’m so damn used to going along. It’s like God himself made me to cause no trouble and eat shit. And there’s always a good reason to go with the flow, isn’t there?

In that kitchen, I didn’t want to make a scene. And here and now, well, Carol is their grandmother, and I want them to have a good relationship. I want my girls to have as many people in their corner who love them as humanly possible.

But church with Grandma doesn’t look or feel like love.

Why is this so hard?

Marry the father of your children—that’s the right thing to do. Send your kids to church with their grandma—that’s right. These are no-brainers. You don’t have to think. You just have to cling like hell to what you’re supposed to have—the ring, the man, the house, family, church on Sunday—and you’ll be safe.

It’s so hard because it’s not true.

There’s no safe.

I’m on my own.

It’s my call.

No one but me can decide what’s right, and I have no idea.

I look at my stressed-out little girls, side by side, their bodies between me and their disapproving Grandma, their allegiance crystal clear.

I clear my throat. “No,” I say to Carol. “I don’t think we can make that happen.”

“Well, the Sunday after then,” she says, leaning over the girls’ head to dump the dresses into my arms.

“No. That’s not possible.”

The girls turn their heads and crane their necks to stare up at me over their shoulders, kind of like herons.

“Girls, how about you say goodbye and thank you to Grandma and go see what Miss Dawn is doing?” It takes them a second, but eventually they mumble their thank you’s to Carol and head off toward the kitchen, their steps lightening as they go.

Carol still hasn’t stepped much past the doorway, and she’s refolded her arms tight to her chest. She stares me down, and it’s clear on her face—if I keep going, we’re enemies.

“You’re welcome to take them when they’re with Tyler, if he’s cool with that.”

She glares at me, and my body reacts like there’s a bear in the hallway—my heart bangs, my blood rushes, and my head rings. It’s ridiculous, but at the same time, in a way, this might only be the second or third time in my entire life that I’ve stood up for myself.

“You’re heading down the wrong path, Angie.” Carol sniffs. “I hope you know what you’re doing. I wouldn’t be so quick to turn up my nose at a helping hand if I were you. It’s not easy being a single mother.”

She watches me very closely to see her shots land. I know my face is an open book. She’ll see exactly how overwhelmed and uncertain I am.

“The girls need values, a strong sense of right and wrong. Maybe if you’d had that kind of positive influence in your life—” She lets the second half of her sentence hang, and I can read her face, too. She knows my business, or at least, she thinks she knows.

What exactly did Tyler tell her?

I’m going to puke.

“Don’t you want that for them?” she finishes.

No.

Actually, no. I don’t.

I want them to be happy. I want them to be able to stand up for themselves and think through things for themselves. I don’t want them to have other people’s loud voices in their heads, drowning out their own good sense. I want them to believe, without a doubt, that they’re worthy of love, no matter what.

I step forward. Carol has no choice but to step aside. I swing the door open for her.

“I’ll see you later, Carol,” I say.

She glares at me. I can’t help it. My gaze drops, but I push the door open wider.

She huffs and strides off toward her town car, her head thrown back and her dignity in full sail.

“Did you tell her no, Mama?” Tamblyn’s little voice pipes from behind me.

She appears to my left, followed by Ivy to my right. They wind their arms around my thighs and watch Grandma reverse down the driveway much quicker than she usually does.

“I did.” I rest my hands on top of their heads.

“Good job, Mama,” Tamblyn says. “Let’s go to the park.”

“Okay,” I agree.

There’s plenty of day left and fresh air is exactly what we need.

We callMiss Dawn’s neighborhood park “Turtle Park” because it has a big, green, plastic turtle to climb on as well as the usual slide, swings, ladders, and poles. Turtle Park runs up against land owned by the port, so beyond a patchy soccer field, a row of huge metal cranes rise beyond a dense patch of woods.

Most of the leaves have turned red and yellow, and there are plenty on the ground for us to bulldoze into piles. Tamblyn and Ivy ignore the playground equipment and go wild with the leaves, piling and jumping and making angels like wild women. They race through the leaves, kicking them into flurries and throwing them like confetti over their heads. They shout and screech and holler my name, even though I’m right here, and there’s no one else around.

The sky is watercolor blue, and the air is cool, but not cold enough to need a jacket once you get warmed up from running around.

Every exposed inch of my skin feels raw. My bones feel exposed. Now that I have my girls back with me, I don’t have to fight back the panic and fear and desperate need to make sure they’re okay, but the feelings don’t fade away. They settle and eat away at my peace like acid.

Is it going to feel like this every weekend they go with Tyler?

It has to get better, and honestly, I have my doubts that he’s going to stick with it very long. He had no time for the girls when we lived together. My dad was the same before he bailed, but I remember being so excited to see him. He’d flip me in the air or toss me over his head, and I’d squeal, and then he’d put me down to argue with Mom. I was always surprised that Tyler didn’t horseplay like that. He doesn’t even try to charm the girls, and they don’t pay him much mind.

It”s sad, but if he does a gradual ghost, it’s probably for the best. It’s weird—I wanted more than anything for my girls to have a dad who loves them, for them to know that security, and turn out how I might have if I’d had the support. And I one-hundred-and-fifty percent picked the wrong man for the job.

Picked him and stuck with him and gave him a second go at bat. Begged him for a second go at bat. I wanted Ivy so bad. So Tamblyn would never be alone like I was. I set this whole situation up, and if he walks out of their lives, in a way, I set that up, too, by choosing so badly. Of course, if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have the girls, so I guess I’d make those same bad decisions again every time.

I exhale and drop back into a pile of leaves. The sky is so damn blue. The girls’ shouts fade and grow louder in curlicues as they buzz closer and race away. The sun is warm on my face. Why do I need to beat myself up when it’s such a beautiful day?

How is it that I’m so powerful that everything is my fault, but so powerless that I can’t do anything to fix it?

I wish Brandon was here, lying beside me in the leaves, quiet and sure. I wish I could tell him all the crap in my head. He’d listen, and I don’t know if he’d understand, or what he’d say, but I don’t think he’d be mean. He’s a rough guy, but he’s gentle with me.

He wants me. I want him.

There are a hundred—a thousand—ways for it to go wrong. I let him in, and he realizes what a total doormat I was with Tyler and loses all respect for me. He gets sick of dealing with baby daddy drama. We get together, and he realizes he actually can’t be a dad to the girls. He decides he doesn’t want a ready-made family.

I fall utterly, madly, insanely in love with him, and he breaks it off for no other reason than people break up all the time, and I’m so crushed that I can’t hide it, and everyone pities me. Even more than they do now.

I tell him I’ve got herpes, and before he can mask his reaction, his mouth twists like he smells something bad. And then he’s kind. He really cares about me. He does. And it’s not because of the herpes. He’s just not ready for a relationship right now.

The first thing they tell you when you get herpes is that it’s not the end of the world, but also, yes, it is.

I was naked from the waist down, on my back, feet in stirrups.

Dr. Kidd was in a hurry like always. She was the top doctor in the practice, and on the few occasions I had to see one of the other OBs in the office, they always assured me that she was the best. I was in good hands.

At the beginning, when I was pregnant with Tamblyn, I saw her name as a good luck sign, but by the time I was expecting Ivy, it made me think of the pirate Captain Kidd instead of children. She was about sixty and built like a marathoner. Her hair was real, but it looked like a wig—steel gray, thick, and styled. She was intimidating, but business-like, and I figured I was doing as good as possible because the place was called Kidd and Associates.

I was nineteen. I had an infant at home. My mom was gone. My best friend was still reeling from losing her dad. My baby daddy was always busy.

I was vaguely aware that Dr. Kidd disapproved of me. She probably thought I was too young to be a mother of one, let alone two, and the few times Tyler came with me to appointments, he managed to get in her way. I figured she was like a teacher, though. They might not like you, but if you didn’t cause trouble, they wouldn’t go out of their way to hassle you. Or bother to humiliate you.

That day, she checked my cervix first.

She presses hard, and it hurts. I whimper.

“Breathe,” she says and pokes harder. My eyes water.

She grunts, and when she’s done, she stands between my spread legs, snapping off her blue rubber gloves, her lips pinched. The paper sheet that had been draped over my knees has been pushed up over my bump.

She sighs and makes eye contact. “Your labs from last week came back. You tested positive for HSV-2. That’s genital herpes.”

She looks at me expectantly. My vagina is still out. I try to squeeze my thighs shut, but my heels are in the stirrups, and if I slip them free, my entire bottom half is going to fall off the end of the table. My stomach has no abs anymore. It’s an enormous inflated pudding sack.

“Do you understand what I’m telling you?” There’s impatience in her voice.

I nod. I want to sit up. Am I allowed to sit up now?

“Genital herpes is sexually transmitted. You get it from having sex.” She says that like I don’t know. Of course I know. Everyone knows. “There is treatment, but no cure, and I cannot emphasize enough—it is highly contagious.”

I tuck my butt, struggling to get higher on the exam table. I need to sit up.

“Do you know when you were first exposed?” she asks.

I shake my head.

“There might have been small bumps or blisters on your labia or anus, maybe ulcers, painful urination, itching, discharge, fever?”

“No.” I’ve been having discharge, but she tested it and said it was normal. No amniotic fluid. Wouldn’t that test have shown if it was from herpes?

“It’s very important that you remember, Angie. If you became infected recently, there is an increased risk of passing the virus on to the baby. Do you remember developing any sores or lesions, either on your genitals or anus, maybe accompanied by flu-like symptoms?”

Her eyebrows raise, and time reverses. I’ve been called on in class again, and I’m clueless. I can’t even guess. My gaze scrambles around the room like the answer is on a bulletin board, but there’s no help from the black-speckled white ceiling tiles or the white walls or the white cabinets.

“Angie, this is important.”

Oh, God. I know. “I don’t remember anything like that.”

She stares at me for a few more seconds, waiting for me to confess, but I have no idea when it happened.

Finally, she blinks and says, “Well, most people are asymptomatic.”

What does that mean? Most people don’t know they have it? Could Tyler have had it all along? No, they did this test with Tamblyn, too, and it was fine.

“You don’t appear to be having an active breakout at the moment, but this is very serious for the baby. You will need to go on antivirals immediately, and if you’re showing signs of a breakout when you approach your due date, we will need to schedule a C-section. This is very, very serious.” She’s lecturing me. Because I’ve done something wrong. I hurt my baby.

I can’t breathe. My bump is crushing my lungs. How did I get herpes?

Tyler. That’s the only way, right?

Tyler gave it to me. He cheated. He’s probably cheating right now. He said he had to help Duck haul stuff to the dump today. Is he with some girl? Is it Emily? She’s been hanging out with the boys since she dropped out of Salisbury and came back to town. That was last year.

Last spring, I had a UTI. I chugged cranberry juice and took some over-the-counter pills, and it went away. Was that herpes? I can’t say anything to the doctor now, not after I said I don’t remember. She’ll think I’m a liar.

I have to sit up. There’s nothing to grab. A plastic bin on the counter with cotton balls and alcohol packets. A diagram of the female reproductive system with the corner curled up. A stool on wheels. A blood pressure monitor on wheels. Nothing stable. Nothing that won’t slide away.

“Are you following me?” Dr. Kidd asks.

“Yes,” I say because that’s the right answer.

“You must use a condom when having sex between now and delivery, every time with every partner, and of course, I would recommend condom use moving forward, too, in addition to a hormonal form of birth control or IUD. You’re an excellent candidate for an IUD, but we can discuss that later. For now, condom use is non-negotiable. Do you understand?”

What is an IUD again? The one that looks like an anchor?

“Angie?” Dr. Kidd says sharply.

I nod. “Yes.”

Dr. Kidd frowns, unconvinced. “Among other things, genital herpes increases the risk of HIV infection. I cannot overstate how serious this is. You must use condoms every time you are intimate with a partner. Without exception.”

She’s talking like I’m arguing, but I’m not—I’m turtled on my back, and my vagina is out, and if she thinks I’m careless because of Tamblyn, I did use a condom. It broke. And Ivy was planned.

I want to argue that it’s not my fault—I’ve never been with anyone but Tyler—but I’m alone and nineteen and unmarried and dirty. I put my baby at risk. Oh, God. My hands fly to my belly. She’s bumping into the walls in there, almost out of space. My eyes burn.

“Is my baby going to be okay?”

Dr. Kidd straightens herself. “That will largely depend on you, Angie. You must take your medication exactly as prescribed, and you must inform the office immediately if there is any sign of a breakout between now and delivery. And you need to be prepared for the possibility of a C-section.”

How do you prepare for a C-section? What do you need to do differently? I’ve read a thousand posts on the pregnancy boards. What did they say about preparing for a C-section?

Is Tyler in love with Emily? Is he going to leave me? He can’t, please God, he can’t.

I can’t take care of two babies alone with stomach stitches. I broke my ankle at the skating rink when I was ten. A bone came through the skin, and I got six stitches. I wasn’t allowed to put weight on it for a long time. They gave me a scooter, and I wasn’t allowed to take a shower for a long time. I could hardly take care of myself, even with Mom there to help. How can I take care of Tamblyn and a newborn all by myself?

“Angie? Are you listening?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any questions?”

Yes. How was I supposed to know? What do I do now? How do I make this okay? I’ll do anything.

“No,” I mumble.

“Right. Get dressed. We’ll see you again in—let’s say—two weeks.” She strides to the wall and hits the lever on the hand sanitizer. Ca-chunk, ca-chunk. She’s done with me.

The door snicks shut. I can hear the air circulating. It sounds like a seashell.

Tyler cheated. I’m in shock, but I’m not surprised. My brain says sounds about right.

He’s going to deny it, but we’ll both know he’s lying, and I’ll have to pretend I believe him because right now, I can’t even bend over to tie my own shoes and carrying Tamblyn is so hard.

Or maybe he won’t bother to deny it. Maybe he’ll raise an eyebrow like he does when he jokes at my expense, daring me to draw a line, knowing I won’t.

How did I get here?

No matter, I sure can’t stay here, crying on my back with no pants on. I drop my feet out of the stirrups, and then I swing my right arm and leg, using the momentum to get myself onto my side. The paper liner on the table crumples. I push myself upright, and the blood rushes from my head.

I’m shaking.

I’m all alone.

I work my way to the end of the table and find the footrest with my toes. I can’t see past my stomach, and I can’t afford to miss it. The floor is too far down. My legs can’t buckle. I can’t fall now.

Because I’m not alone, am I? Tamblyn is waiting for me at Miss Dawn’s, and the new baby, who I call Ivy in my head, needs me, too. I can’t lose my shit now.

I cradle my bump, and I lower myself very, very carefully, holding onto the edge of the table as I step down to the floor. I pad slowly to the chair with my clothes folded on the seat so there’s no chance that I slip on the stark white tiles.

I get my underwear from where I hid it between the folds of my pants. It’s insane. That woman in her white coat can poke her fingers inside me, and she can use her medical words to call me slutty, diseased, contaminated, dirty, stupid, and careless.

She can say anything without saying it—I’m a bad mother. I’m a danger to my own child through my sluttiness and poor judgment. I shouldn’t be allowed to have babies. “You’re an excellent candidate for an IUD.”

She can say and do all that, but God forbid she sees my peach over-the-belly maternity undies.

I dress myself and shove my swollen feet into my clogs. On my way out, I check with the front desk to schedule my next appointment. The receptionist smiles at me, and I smile back.

I don’t cry until I’m in the car, bent over the steering wheel so no one can see my face, the radio blasting so no one walking by can hear.

Later that evening, after I lost my temper and accused Tyler of cheating, somehow my stuff ended up on the front lawn. Mr. Neudecker from next door helped me pick everything up. He was mostly silent, but after we finished, before he left, he said, “When you’re finally done, don’t worry about the stuff. Just take the babies and go.”

I didn’t cry then, either. Not until I was back inside, and no one could see me except Tamblyn who was too young to understand or worry.

In the here and now, Tamblyn shouts, “Mama!” Forty pounds of cold-nosed, rosy-cheeked little girl lands on my chest. Red and yellow leaves go flying.

“Oh, no! Stinker attack!” I hoist Tamblyn above me by her waist, and she squeals, her legs kicking, her fingers scrabbling for leaves to throw on me. She’s almost too heavy to lift, but my biceps are strong from lifting patients at work.

“Ay-ay-ay!” Ivy throws herself onto the pile.

I can’t defend against the two of them at once. Tamblyn wriggles loose, and they both go to town, piling leaves on my head, tossing leaves in the air to make it rain, shrieking and climbing over me and each other, tickling and flailing with utter disregard for where the hard soles of their sneakers land. Eventually, by some silent agreement, we all fall on our backs to catch our breath from laughing and hollering.

Leaf litter makes my eyes water. I pick a stem from Tamblyn’s hair and pretend to stick it up her nose. She shrieks and thrashes, and Ivy joins in until the pile’s a mess, and we’re a mess, giggling and grinning at each other.

My girls are beautiful. They have my brown eyes and my brown hair, but while I always thought of the color as common, it’s clear in the late afternoon light that it’s the prettiest shade on God’s green earth. Nothing is as lovely as their happy eyes and knotty hair.

Ivy snuggles close to my side, pops her thumb in her mouth, and rests her other tiny hand on my stomach. Their hands look like mine did when I was little, the stubby fingers, the dimples for each knuckle. Looking at them is like seeing the past in 3D. I love them so much.

“Getting tired?” I ask.

“Not yet, Mama,” Tamblyn says. “Let’s play a little longer.” She snuggles closer, too. I wrap my arms around them. Tamblyn takes a little squishy bear out of her pocket and parades it across my middle. Immediately, Ivy jumps in, giving the bear a squeaky voice and an urgent problem, and it becomes a game.

I half listen to the bear drama with my eyes closed, bathing my cold face in the warm sunshine. I feel full and awake and alive.

And because it’s such a good moment, I’m hardly startled when a man clears his throat. I blink and squint up. It’s Brandon. I kind of already knew it was him from the sound of his cough, and because it’s a perfect afternoon, so of course he’s here. My heart beats faster. The jigsaw is finished. We’ve popped in that last missing piece.

He’s got his hands shoved in his jean pockets, and he’s wearing a thick gray hoodie and his usual baseball cap. His eyes are narrowed against the sun, and there are crinkles in the corners. He smiles sheepishly. Butterflies erupt in my belly.

“Princess Sarabelle.” He nods to Ivy. “Bane of Doom.” He nods at Tamblyn, and her smile breaks so wide that I can see her back teeth. “Sorry to interrupt, ladies.”

“Brandon!” Tamblyn and Ivy are already scrambling out of our leaf nest to crowd him. They crane their necks to grin up at him and simultaneously deliver the news of the day at the top of their lungs.

“We made a leaf pile!” Ivy announces.

“And we jumped in it, but Mommy didn’t because she’s too big!”

Thank you very much for that, Tamblyn.

“I found this! What is it?” Ivy sticks a rusty piece of metal in his face. I didn’t even see her pick it up.

Thankfully, he takes it from her, soberly examining both sides. “This is a small pry bar.”

“What’s it for?”

“Prying.”

“Oh.” Ivy doesn’t complain when he slips it in his pocket. “Why are you here?”

His cheeks darken and his gaze flicks to me. “I was at the hardware store, and they had lawn debris bags on sale. I brought them over.”

“What’s debris?” Tamblyn asks, accepting his answer at face value.

“It’s uh…um…it’s like crap.” He stares at me over the girls’ heads like he’s checking to see if he got the answer right. I’d probably have said the same thing.

I’ve pushed myself up on my elbows, so I’m lounging in the leaves. His gaze can’t settle. It darts from my hair to my lips to my chest and my legs. I squeeze my thighs together. My limbs are numb and rubbery from the cold, but inside, warmth spreads through my belly. I like him looking at me like this, trying to be subtle and failing. Like he can’t help it.

I really like it.

“Angie,” he says, kind of gruff, and offers a hand. I grab it. He yanks me to my feet.

The girls blink up at us, round eyed and big-eared, like we’re a TV show come to life. Brandon plucks a leaf out of my hair.

“Thanks,” I say.

He shrugs and shoves his hands back in his pockets. “Mom said you were down here. I thought I’d walk you home.”

He holds my gaze. He’s not playing it cool at all. He wanted to see me, so he came to find me. He’s not trying to hide it. I don’t know what to do with a guy who acts like he likes me. All I can do is blush like crazy.

Brandon jerks his chin in the direction of the house and lifts a shoulder. I nod. We begin to walk, side by side. Tamblyn and Ivy wriggle between us.

“One-two-three-whee?” Tamblyn asks, grabbing my hand and elbowing her sister aside to grab Brandon’s. Ivy shrieks an objection, but she circles to my other side.

Brandon scrunches his brow.

“You know,” I say. “One-two-three-whee!” I lift Tamblyn, and she’s holding onto Brandon’s hand tightly enough that she gets air when she swings her legs.

The girls are used to doing this with Madison and me, and they must figure since his sister is down, Brandon will be, too. They’re right. He catches on immediately.

The girls and I don’t do one-two-three-whee with Tyler. If we go on a family outing, we still take the stroller. He has no patience for carrying a whining kid, especially now that they’re heavier.

Tamblyn and Ivy count softly to twenty as we walk. That’s the rules—three whees with twenty seconds between for Mommy to recover. Then the girls switch. Brandon doesn’t seem to need prompting. He swings right on time.

The girls know that they each get a turn and that’s it, but when Ivy’s done, Tamblyn grabs my hand again and grins up at me with every ounce of gap-toothed charm she can muster.

“One more turn each,” she says. “It’s a special day.”

It does feel like it.

We walk in the gravel on the shoulder, Brandon closest to the road, but there aren’t any cars to worry about. We’re far from any through street, and the folks who live around here are the type to sit down early to Sunday dinner. The sun has disappeared behind the houses to the west, but the daylight lingers, fading too slow to notice from minute to minute. There’s woodstove in the air.

If we kept walking a half mile and turned right, we’d reach the house I grew up in. The couple who bought it keep it up better than my mother did. They’re retired with grandkids, and they’ve put up an Amish-built playset in the side yard. The girls always ask to drive past, and they always say, “The swing set wasn’t there when you were little, right, Mommy?”

I always say right, it wasn’t, but they still ask, every time. I think they do it because they want the answer to change. They want my backstory to have been happier.

Me, too.

I didn’t want to be the foster kid with the junkie mom who got knocked up at seventeen by her loser boyfriend. I wanted to be the girl who married my high school sweetheart and lived happy ever after with her beautiful girls. I wanted it so hard that I could bend reality. Tyler wasn’t mean. He was funny, and I was overly sensitive. He didn’t have one foot out the door. He was waiting until he got the raise, until he got the down payment for the truck, until he could afford the ring. He didn’t hate me. He just had a hard time showing his emotions.

Dr. Kidd did me one favor that day. She made it impossible to lie to myself anymore. Tyler was never going to be the person I was pretending he was.

Reading between her words, I figured out something else, too—I was damaged goods. No one else was ever going to want me. A single mom of two with herpes? It would be a miracle. The longest of long shots. I’d better hold tight to what I had. If I lost Tyler, the girls and I would be alone forever. We’d never be a family like the kind I’d always wanted.

But there’s something in the late afternoon sunshine today, something in the crystal clarity of the air and the starkness of the branches and the crunch of the gravel. Something about the sharpness of our breath in the stillness—Brandon’s, Tamblyn’s, Ivy’s, and mine.

The world keeps turning no matter what some uptight lady in a white, windowless room says. The seasons keep changing, and we’re still made of the same stuff we always were—heart and guts and muscle, fear and love and hope. Everything is a small thing next to this—we’re above ground, and it’s beautiful outside, and even if not everything is possible, we cannot possibly be sure what is and what isn’t until we try.

I catch Brandon’s eye. His mouth curves, and his brown eyes glitter.

I want to seize the day.

He sees something in my face that makes his smile widen.

“One, two, three, whee!” Tamblyn shrieks and swings herself as high as she can.

“Easy now, Bane of Doom,” Brandon says. “Your mama needs that arm attached to her shoulder.”

Tamblyn grins up at him. “Mama is strong. Her arm will never fall off.”

We reach Miss Dawn’s house, and I tell the girls to run ahead and wash up for dinner. They hug Brandon’s legs, surprising him, and before he can decide what to do with his hands, they race inside. I linger behind.

Brandon and I slow to a stop halfway up the driveway and face each other, shifting side to side, glancing at our feet and then up at each other, hiding our smiles like idiots.

“Coming in for dinner?” I ask.

“I told Shane I’d meet him down at Donovan’s to watch the game.”

I squint to where the sun has sunk past the horizon. “You’re gonna miss kickoff.”

“It’s all right.” His hands are shoved in his pockets, and mine are tucked in my long sleeves for warmth, but we’re standing close, closer than friends stand. “What’s Mom making?” he asks.

“I put a roast in the slow cooker this morning.”

“Yeah?” The corner of his lips quirk, and his gaze finds mine and stays. I feel it low in my stomach. And between my legs. I’m nervous, but I’m not scared. It is a special day, and the look in his eyes is urging me on. It’s telling me to say yes.

“Brandon?”

“Uh huh.”

I didn’t see him move, but he’s closer now, his head bent.

I try to take a deep breath, but my lungs are tight, so to give myself courage, I squeeze my hands into fists in my sleeves and make myself look him in the eyes. “Do you want to go out with me sometime?”

“Yes.” He doesn’t make me wait, not even a split second. “Where do you want to go?”

My stomach is being weird, relaxing and bursting and fluttering, all at the same time. “I don’t know.” I didn’t think that far ahead.

“How about Broyce Junior’s?”

“Okay.” Broyce Junior’s is a new steakhouse chain. Everybody says they’re great, but not as good as the original in Pennsylvania.

“How about next Saturday?”

I can’t ask Miss Dawn to watch the girls on the weekend, too, and Madison has a social life. “How about the Saturday after? Tyler will have the girls.”

This time, it takes him a beat to say, “Okay.”

I don’t want to wait two weeks, either. I don’t want to lose my courage. “Okay,” I repeat. I don’t know what to say now.

I’m still searching for words when he cradles the back of my head, pulls me to him, and kisses me. Like he hadn’t been allowed, and all of a sudden, someone told him he could.

My body floods with heat. My brain screeches to a halt. He nips my lip with his teeth. My mouth parts. His tongue plunges inside, stroking along mine. My pussy melts.

I gasp for air and grab the front of his hoodie like he’s got lapels. He groans. I slide my tongue along his. His teeth are hard, and his lips are soft, but firm. He tastes faintly like toothpaste.

He kisses like if he doesn’t hurry, I’m gonna run out. I sink against him, lost, sunk. My heart lifts like I’ve been let out of school early, unexpectedly.

Behind us, a door opens. His mouth is gone. He’s already stepped back. I blink up. His hat’s askew. My fingers are still curled in his hoodie. He grins.

“What are you guys doing out here?” Miss Dawn hollers at us from the porch. “The girls are asking.”

“Just saying goodbye,” Brandon calls, his voice as calm and even as always.

My knees are wobbling.

“Goodbye,” he whispers, his eyes twinkling, and he straightens his hat, smoothing the bill. He fairly struts to his truck.

Miss Dawn snorts. “About time,” she mutters, and then she says louder, “Folks are getting hungry in here, Angie Miller.”

Miss Dawn and I don’t look at each other when I pass her to go inside. I think it’s the only way either of us keep a straight face.