172 Days
Rhea was jarred awake by her ringing cellphone. She squinted at Marcus’s name on the screen. To avoid disturbing Danny, she answered the call in a whisper and crept out of the room.
Marcus told her the baby was okay, a healthy boy, but there were complications with the C-section, and they could not figure out how to get Ada to stop bleeding.
He would call her as soon as he knew more.
Rhea held back tears and told him in an upbeat voice that the kids were doing great and not to worry about a thing.
Rhea went downstairs and wept on the couch.
She walked over to the fridge and looked at all the photos of Ada and her darling family.
The jealousy that would’ve normally been there was replaced by a vehement need for Ada to come home and take more pictures with her darling family.
Ada Achebe had built a chaotic, unmanageable, magnificent life, and if she did not come home and continue living it, Rhea would have to burn the world down.
She boiled water for herbal tea, knowing she would not be able to sleep until Marcus called back.
Just as she finished her second mug, her phone rang.
Marcus told her they’d performed a complete hysterectomy to stop the bleeding, and it was successful.
They’d also given Ada a blood transfusion, and she was now sleeping peacefully.
Rhea could not talk; she just cried, and Marcus did too. When they were able to use words again, Marcus said his mom was flying in that afternoon. Rhea said she was happy to stay for as long as they needed, but Marcus insisted she let his mom take over.
After she got off the phone, she went outside and took a walk in the dawn light.
She was restless with thoughts of Ada. She hoped Ada’s doctor had more sensitivity than Rhea’s; she tried not to imagine a man in a white coat standing across from Marcus, saying, “Your wife’s fertility is at the bottom of a cliff. ”
Ada had three children now, so having a hysterectomy would not be massively life-altering, but Rhea felt anguish for her friend and all that she had just endured. Three children. Ada was officially living inside Rhea’s vision board, and Rhea felt no one deserved it more than Ada Achebe.
Rhea slipped back in bed right before Ekele screamed, “Uncle Danny!”
Rhea winced and jumped out of bed to silence him.
“Uncle Danny!” he screamed again.
“That’s me,” Danny said in a voice thick with sleep. He opened one eye and smiled at Rhea. “Good morning, beautiful.”
“You keep sleeping, I’ll take care of him,” Rhea said quickly.
“That’s okay, I’ll do it…. But I think I’m gonna just bring him in here?”
“If you want to, but honestly, I’m happy to go—”
“I got it, I got it,” Danny said as he shuffled to the door, then he turned back. “Did you hear from Ada?”
“Yes, yeah, she’s gonna be okay, baby’s good, everything’s okay.” She was too exhausted to get into the details.
Danny looked relieved and was about to say something but was cut off by a shrill “Uncle Danny!”
He came back seconds later, holding Ekele, who looked delighted to not be in his crib.
They got into bed, and Ekele fell asleep immediately, followed by Danny.
Rhea lay awake with anxious thoughts rolling around her head.
Is Ada okay? Is Danny annoyed? Has Ada been able to hold her son?
Danny seems fine, but is he pretending? She decided she was going to force Danny to leave the second he woke up and wondered what she could say to make him do so…
. Then, somehow, amidst all her turmoil, she fell asleep.
Rhea woke up with Chichi’s feet in her face.
She squinted her eyes open and saw Chichi sleeping with her head at Rhea’s knees.
Ekele was crammed so close to Danny he was almost underneath him.
The tableau of these sleeping children and this gorgeous man was so tantalizingly close to what she had always wanted.
Partly because of the emotional events of the morning, but mostly because she wanted to be a mother so badly, she started crying again.
“What’s wrong, Ahree?” Chichi said.
Rhea looked down and saw Chichi peering at her. Rhea wiped her eyes and was about to say, “Nothing,” but could not stand the idea of denying Chichi’s instincts.
“I was just feeling a little sad,” Rhea whispered.
“Why?” Chichi crawled up and almost pressed her face against Rhea’s.
“Sometimes people get sad when they don’t get what they want.”
“Like ice cream?”
“Yes, exactly like ice cream. Have you ever cried when you couldn’t have ice cream?”
“Um…I don’t know, but Ekele does all the time.”
Rhea laughed. Chichi asked Rhea to read her A Fort on the Moon again.
Ekele and Danny woke up when they were halfway through.
Rhea told Danny he should go home and get some uninterrupted sleep, but he refused.
The kids said they were hungry, and Uncle Danny’s offer to make pancakes was met with great enthusiasm.
Rhea tried to talk him out of it, but Danny marched downstairs, holding Ekele with Chichi in tow, and showed them both how to make pancakes.
—
That afternoon, when Marcus’s mother showed up to relieve them, Ekele clung to Danny’s leg and would not let go. Mrs. Miller was visibly insulted, forcing Rhea to say:
“Don’t take it personally, he has a weird thing for Danny.”
“He wasn’t like this at Christmas,” Mrs. Miller said.
“Yeah, he must be going through a phase.” Rhea highly doubted he wasn’t like this at Christmas.
Finally, Danny “wrenched Ekele’s tiny hands off his leg” so they could grab their belongings and abscond.
As they walked through Ada’s yard, Rhea wondered how to check in on Danny.
She wanted to know if he’d had a terrible time, but she also did not want to know.
If those needy brats had made him even more repulsed by parenting, it might force her to put off her fatherhood inquisition indefinitely.
“Man, that poor little guy,” Danny said.
“He has separation issues—not all kids are like that.”
“I think I have separation issues. I miss him already.”
Rhea felt her veins dilate as blood returned to her appendages.
“He adores you,” she said.
“I adore him—both of them. Those kids are amazing—completely exhausting, but also…wonderful.”
Rhea tried to hold her face in a neutral position.
“Well, I’m…happy to hear you feel that way.”
He opened her car door and pulled her in for a kiss.
“Thank you for coming with me. I could not have done it without you,” she said.
“It was truly my pleasure.”
They drove in companionable silence while Rhea flung gratitude at Ekele and Chichi.
Those darling angels might have just saved her life.
He thought they were “amazing” despite all the hard work and chaos.
He “adored” Ekele despite his tantrums and bathtub defecation.
It was “truly his pleasure” even though he only got five hours of sleep.
He loved parenting! There had never been a better time to bring up the forbidden subject.
She felt she had an answer for any excuse he came up with.
She had endless anecdotes about how to raise children in an environmentally friendly manner and was ready to fire them off: cloth diapers, secondhand clothes, wooden toys.
She had heavily researched every alternative school in Los Angeles.
She just needed to ask him what his most recent thoughts were; had they changed at all?
It could be casual; it did not have to be the end.
“Where are we going?” She was so lost in thought that she had just noticed he was pulling into a pay parking lot.
“I told you, Ferris wheel, it’s happening, no turning back.”
She looked up and saw the pier in the distance on which the great wheel of dangling pods loomed large; each pod contained a family of tourists snapping pictures of the ocean far below.
Rhea wondered if Danny was intentionally trying to make up for her terrible childhood, or did he just genuinely enjoy childlike activities?
“Oh wow, Ferris wheel, okay, yeah, let’s do it—I just—there’s something…I wanted to talk to you about—”
“Uh-oh…”
She did not intend to sound so serious, but her heart was racing and she started blinking.
“No, no, it’s not a big deal at all…. I just…um—Well, I was wondering if maybe, you had…ever…?” The walls of the truck were closing in on her; there was no casual way to ask this. He had been cellophane clear about his fatherhood feelings. How could she ask him again?
“Rhea…you’re freakin’ me out,” he said, turning his whole body to face her.
“No, sorry, I just—please don’t be angry with me, I just wanted to know if perhaps with all that’s happened in the past few months, with us and just—everything. If any part of you felt any differently about…fatherhood.”
He turned his whole body away as if she’d shoved him. He looked at the steering wheel for a long time and took an audible deep breath.
“Are you mad? I’m so sorry, I just…it crossed my mind that maybe, since we had such a good time last night and…I don’t know….”
After ten agonizing seconds of silence, he turned back to her.
“I’m not mad—you’re not doing anything wrong—It’s just…I love you—I don’t think you realize how much I love you—”
“I love you too. I just thought—”
“I wake up every morning thinking of ways to make you smile. I want to be your partner; I want to make your life easier and better. I want you to be happy in such a deep, brutal way, it’s probably unhealthy, honestly.”
“I want you to be happy, too. Please forget what I just said—”
“I can’t forget what you just said, Rhea. You still want to have kids…. Right? Please just tell me…the truth.”
Rhea stared at the floor of the truck. “Maybe…”
She looked up and noticed his eyes were turning red. She wanted to rewind time. She wanted to go back just one minute to keep her mouth shut and ride the Ferris wheel with the man she loved.
“Thank you…for being honest. I’m just—heartbroken—hearing this ’cause I think I’ve been convincing myself you really were okay with not having kids, but part of me knew I was lying to myself and…I hate saying this so much—but—”
“Then don’t say it—”
“I just can’t keep wasting your time and holding you back from the life that would make you happy. I’ve been doing that for months, and deluding myself, but I can’t claim to love you and cause you that kind of pain. I see the way you are with kids; I see the light in your eyes.”
Rhea stayed silent as tears rolled down her cheeks.
“If you were one of my sisters, I would pull me aside and say, ‘Look, man, if you love her, you have to let her go live her life. Let her go find someone who wants what she wants—’ ”
“But couldn’t you maybe want what I want?”
“Rhea…”
“But what if you’re wrong? What if you would love being a dad and you won’t even open your mind just a little bit? I see you with kids too, and there’s a light in your eyes too.” More tears fell down Rhea’s face, and Danny wiped them off.
“You don’t think I would if I could? If it was that easy?” he said gently.
“It is that easy. I feel like I’ve more than proven to you there’s a way to have a kid that doesn’t go against your values, so what is it? What’s the real reason, Danny?”
He stayed silent.
“Han says sometimes people are afraid to have kids because their childhood was so painful—”
“You talked to Han about this?”
“Are you afraid of being like your father? ’Cause I’ve never even met him, and I can promise you, you’re nothing like him. You would be a wonderful father. You’re so—caring and—and thoughtful and loving and patient—the world needs you to be a dad.”
Danny sighed and looked out the window. “So many people just blindly stumble into having kids without thinking about what kind of world they’re bringing them into.
And I’m honestly so jealous of them…. But I can’t have a kid and tell them, ‘Sorry there’s no more clean air or water,’ ‘Sorry you’re addicted to your cellphone and junk food,’ ‘Sorry I have to be so overprotective of you—it’s just that I brought you into a world full of mass shooters and child molesters.
Oh, and good luck figuring out how to earn a living after AI takes your job…
.’ I just can’t do it. This is something I’ve always known about myself, and I’m not gonna change my mind. ”
“Well, they don’t have to be addicted to junk food or their cellphone, that’s up to their parents—”
“Yeah, exactly. Parenting is basically fighting every day to protect your child from a toxic planet—”
“But can’t you stop being so stubborn and certain about all of it and just say ‘maybe’?
I don’t need you to promise me a child today.
We could freeze embryos and buy some time—a lot of time—years if we want.
You don’t have to commit to being a father right now, but can’t you just say, ‘Maybe someday’? ”
“Sure. I can easily say ‘Maybe someday.’ But what if ‘someday’ means ‘never’? Then you don’t get the life you want.
I want everything good for you, Rhea. I seriously feel like I would go try to find you a man who could give you everything you want.
The idea of doing that makes me want to fuckin’ puke, but I feel like I would do it to protect you—to make you happy—I love you, Rhea. But I can’t give you this.”
Rhea wept into her hands. Danny watched with a helpless expression. After several minutes, he backed out of the parking lot. Rhea saw the pier get smaller in the side-view mirror and knew she would never in her life get to ride a Ferris wheel.
Danny drove her home. He parked vertically and walked her up fifty-two steps.
“Can I hug you?” he asked with a cracking voice.
She fell into his arms and sobbed.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She turned and opened her door. They stood still for a moment, each waiting for the other to say something.
Neither spoke; Rhea walked inside and closed her door.
She felt the dull ache of her heart splitting in half, and there was nothing she could do about it.
Her phone buzzed, and her stomach lurched, desperate for it to be Danny.
It was the Ada-Tiny-Rhea-Zoe text chain. Ada had sent a picture of her newborn with the message: He’s finally here! Obinna Achebe-Miller! 11 ponds and 6 ounces!!!!! Huge!!!! I am in a lotttttta good drugssssss!!!!
Through her love of Ada, Rhea found the strength to fire off hearts, balloons, and smiley faces.