Chapter Thirty-Seven Dottie
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Dottie
Dickie woke me this morning with a kiss and told me he has a wonderful surprise.
I pasted a smile on my face and tried to hide my dread. “What kind of surprise?”
“I’m taking you to San Diego!”
I blinked stupidly in the early-morning light. “For a vacation?”
“For political training!” he sang out, like that’s the same thing.
“It’s run by the national party. For men interested in running for local office.
And their wives. I’m one of ten men selected from the state of Virginia.
That means they think I have a lot of potential.
The party is investing in me. They’re investing in us. ”
“I see.”
He reached for my hands and pulled me out of bed. “We’re going shopping today. You need to look your best, for your future career as the wife of a state Senate candidate.”
“That might be hard to do. Barefoot.” He’d extended the shoe ban when he caught me rolling my eyes at something he said.
He planted a tender kiss on my forehead. “Of course you can have your shoes back, darling. And when we come home, things will be different. I promise.”
“Different how?” I asked warily.
He knelt beside the bed, took my hand, and gazed up at me. “I’ve expected too much from you. I see that now. This trip will be like a second honeymoon for us, a chance to start over.”
His gaze held mine as I stared into his beautiful blue eyes.
I want to believe him. I really do. But it reminded me of the year I got out of bed at midnight and found my parents stuffing Santa gifts into my stocking.
The next morning I desperately wanted to believe those presents came from an omniscient, bearded fat man in a red suit who slid down my chimney.
But I’d seen reality, and I couldn’t believe again.
June 14, 1965
San Diego
I can’t write the words because that will make them true.
June 16, 1965
San Diego
I wish I could stay here forever. The nurses take turns sitting beside my bed. They hold my hand while I lay here and cry.
June 17, 1965
San Diego
My grief is so big I’m no longer capable of feeling it. Like a landscape so vast you can’t see it all at once. I feel blank. Empty. There’s nothing inside me anymore.
June 19, 1965
San Diego
I was carrying twins. A boy and a girl. And now I’m not.
June 20, 1965
San Diego
The doctor says I can’t have more children. Because of the miscarriage and what they had to do to save me. Which means I’ll never have children at all.
June 21, 1965
San Diego
Why didn’t they let me die? Why didn’t they just let me bleed out on the operating table? Why did they “save me.” Save me for what exactly?
June 22, 1965
San Diego
How do you mourn not just one lost baby but two?
Plus all the children you will never have?
A future that will never be yours? A family that will never exist?
First steps and graduations and weddings and grandchildren that will never come.
All those babies on our street with their clinging fingers and soft smiles. Never to hold one of my own.
I hadn’t realized how much I loved these babies until these babies were no longer possible. I will never be a mother. And Dickie will never be a father.
Dickie says it’s my fault. He says I caused the miscarriage by changing the oil on his car. He whispered it to me, as I lay here in my hospital bed.
“You did this, you stupid bitch. You don’t deserve to be a mother.”
Later, I asked the doctor if changing the oil on Dickie’s car caused the miscarriage.
He frowned. “Where did you get that idea?”
“From my husband,” I said in a low voice, unable to meet his eyes.
And he gave me a long look, full of sympathy. And suddenly I wanted to tell him everything, about the way Dickie screams at me, and finds flaws in everything I cook and the way I keep the house. In the way I look and talk and everything I do. The way he took away my shoes.
But I didn’t because I’m so ashamed. Ashamed and stupid. And this is my punishment. For thinking I deserve a husband who looks like Paul Newman. For thinking I deserve a house full of babies. For thinking I deserve anything at all.