Chapter 9
9
You remember, after that, suddenly a baby was all you wanted. You remember making love like a chore. You remember closing your eyes and knowing that there was something unhealthy down deep. What if this was, actually, the beginning of something? Or just not meant to be?
Or maybe: rot under the boards.
You remember I slept on the couch and everything I said felt like an insult. You were grateful for the hours I was at work. It never used to be like that.
Let’s skip that part, too, you say. You can add in what you need later. What do we need? In story, you can drop a few lines down.
You remember, in the end, it happened when we least expected it.
You remember, in the beginning, being pregnant like you were apart. You were algae, swaying. Or maybe the baby was? And you were the salt?
You remember making a mural in the nursery with frogs and sheep and roses, dragging home an abandoned dresser with no knobs from Seventieth and Columbus. Painting it white with yellow stars, feeling that you should rest but also fearing being too delicate. As if pregnancy was a fine balance and also somehow up to you.
You remember you could eat nothing but grapefruit. My mother had them shipped to us from Florida. She peeled them for you as you sat on the lip of the tub. You remember your stomach turned at milk, rice, chicken, zucchini, oats, chocolate, plums, dill, pepper, any kind of sauce, bread, cheese, tea, tonic water, salt. When you retched, my mother rubbed your back and you thanked her. She wasn’t your mother even if—and also, and so.
You remember I wrote you haikus about your belly, your feet.
I remember feeling like we could do anything, if we did it together. I remember knowing, believing, that you would be patient, intentional, kind. I remember thinking that a child wouldn’t take anything away from us other than maybe sleep and maybe time.
You remember feeling, discovering—maybe it was the pregnancy, maybe it was having no mother—that everyone really has a child alone. You don’t want to seem ungrateful. It is just the truth, and also biology.
You remember eighteen hours of agony. You remember when he came out, it felt like fleeing. He was gone in a hurry, had left the oven on, and there was fire ravaging inside of you. You were the house. You remember shutting your eyes, covering your ears, wishing to be walking near the Park again, to be alone with a grapefruit and a spoon, or reading on a bench with nowhere to be.
That must have been so awful, I say. I apologize. It is hard to say anything else to the person you love the most.
You remember knowing immediately that it wasn’t supposed to be like this. His cries were like sewing needles, you say, striking you all over your face. You remember the smell of wet basement, how everything felt damp and thick. You threw up twice into your lap. They gave him to me first. You were in a ball on your side.
You remember and you start to sway side to side, to cover your chest. You remember that when we took him home, it didn’t get better. He wouldn’t latch. The harder you tried, the louder he cried. And you cried. Some days, if I wasn’t home, you would put him in his crib, go into the bathroom, and shut the door. You’d rock yourself on the cold tiles, beg for help and also for forgiveness, and also, sometimes, that it would just stop. You ask me if I knew that. In a way, I say. But also not.
You remember promising to do anything to go back to the way things were. Sometimes, it felt as if the world was spinning and it wasn’t that you were dizzy so much as something had come loose and you were unraveling in circles, in chunks.
You remember that for weeks, you had nightmares. You remember falling asleep, standing up, waking with a gasp, your hand at your throat. You remember digging your fingernails into your palms, gritting your teeth whenever you heard a bird, brakes, a door open. You remember taking sips of cough medicine, getting so tired and also so wired. You were always hungry and also nauseated, so exhausted but you couldn’t sleep. You remember you missed your mother so much that it felt as if your chest was going to split open.
My mother would come over, cook and clean, and promise you it would get easier.
You remember you couldn’t ask her if she was sure. She wasn’t yours. You weren’t hers.
Oh, Jane, I say. I am so sorry.
Then you don’t want to remember this part. You skip around.
I remember—I hate to say it—that it was then that I was really trying to make a name for myself in the writing world. My second novel—it was part of a collection of three—was done; the third one nearly. I had an editor who believed in me; he wanted to take me out to dinners with people who could change things. I wanted to go.
At the same time, my father was wanting to sell me the company. Time, he felt, was of the essence. I did feel I owed him something. Money but not just that. I also felt I owed it to us but that was beside the point. Either way, I wasn’t there with you as often as I should have been. I take full responsibility. More than that, I wish I could take it back.
I will not say: I didn’t know. But I just didn’t. That, too, is entirely on me.
You shake your head. It was an impossible time, you say. Impossible.
You remember I asked my mother to spend most days with you. She made babka, scrubbed the toilet, sang “You Are My Sunshine” to Max. It came easily to her. You remember some days she put you in the tub and washed your face with a cloth bubbling with soap. You’ll be okay, she said and said and said.
You remember that when my mother wasn’t there, you panicked. You remember how hard it was to look Max in the eyes. Not because you were scared of him but because of what he might see in you.
You remember that every night, between bottles, I’d try to hold you. As if putting you back together was something physical and also up to me. You remember jumping at my touch. You remember there was no music in the house for months, just the sound of dishes and the tub running and also crying. No art. You remember the neat stacks of laundry that my mother did, stew cooling on the counter, your bowl uneaten and with a shiny film across it, spoon on the floor. You remember closing the curtains, though I opened them every morning. You remember how bright everything felt at every time of day except the dead of night, and also how loud.
I remember it was different for me. I somehow knew it was just a phase, gleaned solace from tasks: changing diapers, making bottles, doing dishes, cleaning up. But solace wasn’t what I needed. Just you, shining your light.
I remember Max falling asleep in my arms. Warm body, sweet smell. I remember believing that timing was everything. It would all fall into place.
You remember that it felt as if you never really knew where I was—working, writing, whatever—and were surprised by how little you cared. The only person you needed was my mother even if the only person who could save you was you.
I remember that when I was home, it wasn’t that I was angry at you, but I was surprised. Well, and maybe angry. Max was getting bigger. He had your cheeks, my eyes.
You remember the face I made every time I found you in the bathroom, alone. How hideous of me.
I’m so sorry, I say. You squeeze my hand.
You remember that when Max was four months, I got you a hotel room for one night. Rest, I said. We’ll be fine here. I knew we would. And maybe I needed it too.
At first, you fought it, couldn’t go. What about Max? If you got lost? Fell? You went. You remember the room was white with dark, thick shades that kept everything out and a large tub, silver drain. You remember the maid’s name was Nancy, she brought you grilled cheese, let you stay in bed as she cleaned around you.
You remember that time, you didn’t stay for a night, but for six. There were other times. You stayed for three days, or seventeen. You don’t remember what you did, all those hours without Max, without me, not working. You ask me if I remember. I wasn’t there. Sleep? Weep? You don’t know. I don’t know either. You didn’t stop me, you say. No, I say.
In the meantime, I remember, I worked in the office. I wrote. I made crispy egg sandwiches with tomato and dill. I told my mother you were meeting a gallerist and she pretended to believe me. She made large batches of lemony stew for my father, and for me. She took turns eating with each one of us because my father could do without babies. She read my manuscripts and loved them. I felt good about them too.
I remember that Max wasn’t an easy child, but in certain ways it was easier without you. I never felt underwater with him. You like to say that is because of who I am but I don’t know. What I want to say now is that I know how lucky I am, and have been. Without your mother, you were a bird without your flock. How hard it must have been to do anything. Make art, fall in love, have a child of your own.
You remember that every time you’d come home from the hotel after being gone, you’d get up before the sun. There was so much hope, so much promise before anyone was up. You remember thinking, today is the day. Happiness is going to start here again. You remember hearing Max and everything deflating. You remember thinking: that moment hadn’t been the beginning of happiness after all. It had been happiness itself, arriving just before it was gone.
You remember you weren’t there when Max had his first bite of food, sat up for the first time, really laughed. His first word was please because he’d heard you begging it for so long. But the way he said it, it sounded like peace .
You remember you didn’t see any friends for months. Bea came over more than once and you wouldn’t go to the door. You remember you were embarrassed, too tired, didn’t know which way was up. You remember how you braced yourself whenever you heard a bird, brakes, a door open. You remember that everything felt like, like what?
Glass.
And you just had nothing to say.
I remember that being a father didn’t feel the way I had imagined it would. I don’t know if that is because of Max or because of you. Nothing was as we thought it would be. But I did love when he laughed at my funny faces, watching him sleep. In a way, I loved that part the most.
You remember being a mother didn’t feel the way you had imagined. What had you imagined? Connectedness, at the very least. Hope. Instead, as soon as he could, he called you Jane. Nane, in the beginning. Never Mama. Or Mom. You remember how it felt like a line drawn. Not from him to you. But in between, as though with a key, jagged, corroded, divisive.
You remember that it was the longest time in your life without art. Making it or looking at it, or thinking about it even. You had nothing left.
It would have been different now, I say. There is language for the kind of pain you endured. You should have been medicated earlier, you say. Maybe that wouldn’t have fixed everything but it might have changed the course. I say that perhaps it was my fault. I should have been less focused on writing, the business. I should have been more take-charge. I didn’t want you to feel judged. I didn’t want you to feel worse. My focus was elsewhere. I didn’t know what I was doing, only that I didn’t want to lose you.
That’s fair, you say. What can we do?
You remember that something about my books coming out less than a year later, one and then the other—from the perspective of a suburb, lonely, pristine, two families always trying to one-up—and doing well, enabled you to get back to your art. Max was one then. Maybe I would have given up otherwise, you say. But you did it.
You remember when you threw yourself into clay and then collage and then woodwork. You remember how it felt: spiritual and also like being lifted by a wave. You remember feeling larger and stranger in there without us. You remember a series of wildflowers you did from newspaper, yellow velvet, and scratchy twine. You even got them to sway. You remember putting them on the windowsill for people to notice as they walked by. You remember listening to what they said, feeling it enter you like sugar, or maybe light. You remember imagining, sometimes, a big sunny studio in France that overlooked a garden where you could work all day and night, if you wanted, whatever you wanted, whenever. You imagined showing your work. The loop of creativity possible without Max. Without me, even. The potency of that, in comparison.
You remember that we were okay but we weren’t great. We had dinner and sometimes held hands in our sleep. You remember when I began teaching at the college in the evenings. It felt like purpose and creativity, both. In the meantime, I really was getting closer to quitting my father’s business as you wanted, but that was the least of it.
You remember, some days, telling yourself, this is who you are now: a bad mother in a loving marriage who will one day be all right again. Who will right things again. You often wondered when too late might be. And what.
You remember the way whenever you held Max, he kept his head up. He looked at you as if you were a stranger. And in a way, you him. You remember thinking of how beautiful he was, but sort of objectively. Everything objectively. You couldn’t muster another way.
You remember knowing that a tone is always set in the beginning. You and Max. It is like art. First impressions are it.
You remember when the gallerist in Milan called.
You remember that first time, you left us for a month. You called only when you knew Max would be sleeping and you focused so intensely on how I was doing, and what.
Today, you ask me if I begrudge you that time away. No, I say immediately. And then, Perhaps I would have. But we had my mother. My books did better than anyone thought they would. I was distracted too. The students were inspiring. Their drive. It was easier for me, I say. Simpler. Max was. But art was too. We worked differently. You are a sailboat, reliant on the wind. I am a truck. I wrote no matter the weather, no matter the mood. Until now.
Not that it wasn’t hard some days, and awful others. It was. But, for so long, I could compartmentalize. You could not. Bless you for that.
You remember once—Max was in playgroup in the Park near the North Meadow—asking some other mothers if they all had wanted to be mothers and if they thought their babies knew that and they said, Of course. Their faces were doing something proud and beaming that yours never did, you thought. You couldn’t make it do even when you tried.
I ask you if this is too much. No, you say. It’s critical.
You remember how fast Max could run, how good he was at building things, cutting things, remembering things. You remember he wrote his name before any other kid, tied his shoes, swam to the deep end, locked a door. You remember when you knew how formidable he’d be. You were watching him at Heckscher Playground at the south end of the Park. The kids gathered around him, kneeled. He was telling them what to do without words. And they did it. You remember feeling both embarrassed and proud, wondering if any of him was yours. And knowing that if so: it would be despite you.
Then I mean to tell you something about your clarity of vision, your wherewithal. How he inherited that. But I say it wrong. It comes out as something about stubbornness instead. I am sorry.
He could be so cutting to me, you say and shake your head as if lightening the load. Charming but also, so cutting.
I remember he was good at math, uninterested in nature, food. I remember he reminded me of my father. His masculinity. I remember being aware of how powerful he was. He could look at a person and dismantle them. He could talk anyone around in circles.
Perhaps, I think, a father’s blessing is not taking things as personally.
But what does a father need a blessing for? Really?
Max was a part of me but also apart from me. I lost less sleep. I never heard him coughing when you did. I didn’t long for an apology. I bore the brunt of less frustration. It isn’t because of me. It is the feeling that you’d never get back what you gave, physically, physiologically. A father, by definition, has less to recoup.
You remember when you started painting about it. You remember, at first, the guilt of using him. You already had so much momentum, maybe you didn’t have to. But you did. Sometimes, you don’t get to choose. It came pouring out of you, you say. You remember stepping back, knowing it was something. You sold three pieces without telling me. It was more money than you’d ever had. You remember being afraid of my response. It felt like celebrating failure.
You remember my response. It is not something I’m proud of. I wonder about not including this. The difference between dialogue and conversation is that one you can take back.