38. Thirty-eight
Thirty-eight
The five minutes it takes Lyra to make it from her classroom to the front office where I checked her out early drags on for eleven years.
Does she know it’s me waiting? Is this purposeful torture? Did she skip school?
I pace the familiar laminate floor, every worst-case scenario playing through my head.
“Mom?”
I jump, mid-pace, hand to my heart. “Lyra.”
She holds her palms out, a What the hell do you want? expression on her face.
Right.
“Sorry, right. I want to, um, show you something.” I tilt my head toward the parking lot. “You left this morning before I could talk to you.”
She hitches her bag on her shoulder, blinks, then pushes passed me to the double glass doors of the school, opening it just enough for her to disappear into the sliver of brightness outside before it closes behind her.
In the car, it’s silence.
At the ice cream shop, it’s silence.
Sitting on the bench along Main Street . . . more silence.
“Here,” I say, handing her a cup of ice cream as I take the first bite of my own.
She eyes it, me, then takes it without a word, breeze blowing her blue hair.
“I never wanted kids,” I say, licking my spoon, watching a car whiz by us. “At least I never thought about it much—I don’t know if I ever told you that. I thought your dad would play baseball, and I would, I don’t know, tell stories with my camera. I liked shooting weird things—street signs, odd-angled portraits, trash, chairs . . . I didn’t think anyone would ever get it, but I loved it. In college, I pivoted to something more serious. Landscape photography.”
I laugh softly, imagining my old self as a ghost. Lyra’s silent, gaze blankly ahead, ice cream untouched in her hands.
“I fell in love with your dad right in that diner.” I point across the street to Paul’s Pancake Shack. Green vinyl seats seemingly unchanged. Frozen in time. “He took me there on our first date. A breakfast. I always loved breakfast dates.” My throat pinches with nostalgia, and I have to swallow through it before I can speak again. “He said to me, ‘June Downin’, I think you’re the most beautiful girl in the world to eat pancakes, and I never want to eat them without you.’ And I just knew that Saturday morning, with that rich southern drawl of his voice, I would love that boy all the way to forever and back. And I told him that too. I said, ‘Camp Cannon, I’ll love you all the way to forever if you keep feeding me pancakes.’ And he laughed. Then he said, ‘To forever, huh? What about back?’ And it was stupid, but I played along. Pretending I had to think about it. Finally, I said, ‘You feed me pancakes, I’ll love you to forever and back.’ And that was just . . . it.”
For the first time she looks at me, features softening, just slightly.
“When he got the scholarship to go to App, it was a no brainer I’d go there. They had a good art department, and he’d be there. It was the easiest choice of my life. Our senior year, he got called up to the minor leagues.” I laugh, remembering when he got the phone call. How damn happy he was—we both were. “It was perfect. He would go play; I’d figure out my career path. Maybe even photograph the cities he was playing in. I started looking at different photojournalism opportunities. Worked on building my portfolio as I waited tables.”
“Then you got pregnant and your life was ruined,” Lyra says, voice flat.
I start to argue, tell her that’s not true, but close my mouth. I look at her, fire in her eyes, clenching the ice cream tight in her slender fingers.
“I did and it was.”
She didn’t expect my brutal honesty because her eyes widen to the size of baseballs, and I chuckle under my breath.
“At least life as I knew it. The life I had imagined for myself.” I take another bite of my ice cream. “But I thought your dad would figure out his baseball career then I’d be able to figure out mine. When he got pulled up to the majors, we knew that was it. I waited again. His dream was so much bigger than mine.” I pause, lick my empty spoon. “I was living with my parents”—I shoot her a that was a nightmare look that makes her almost smile—“but I just knew that was it. Him out on that mound—it’s what he was made for, Ly. Then he got hurt and his contract didn’t get extended . . .” My voice trails off as the memories rush in.
“I felt so bad for him. It’s a devastating thing to watch someone you love lose their dream—have their heart broken. So when he said we’d saved enough money to buy his parents’ house, move back home and me stay home with you, I didn’t say a word. I did it because I wanted to make him happy after baseball was gone. I put my camera and dreams in a tub in the garage, sealed it like a tomb. Focused wholly on you. They were good years.”
I pause, studying her, wondering how much to tell her. How much she’s ready for.
“I had two miscarriages,” I tell her, my first time saying the word in years. “Lost two siblings that you’ll never know.”
A semi screeches by, and I tilt my head toward the sky, letting the sun warm my eyelids. I imagine them today sitting with us. They’d be thirteen and ten. Camp’s lost ones .
“And I blamed myself. Because it was my body. Because I wasn’t sure I wanted more kids. Because, selfishly, I wanted time to pursue my own interests.”
I pause, breathing through the tears that crack my voice. There’s not a 3-2-1 in the world that can save me from the pain, so I sit through it and let it singe my heart.
“The first one happened a week after I found out I was pregnant, you were little, four. The second one was worse—in my second trimester. I was already starting to show. We had told all of our friends and family. ‘Sorry, June, we can’t find a heartbeat,’ the doctor said.”
She stills next to me, but I can’t look at her. Not as I force myself to breathe. Not as every memory that fills my mind feels like a fever dream.
Camp wasn’t with me; he was coaching—out of town at a tournament. I didn’t tell him until he got home the next day. They won the state championship; I lost our baby. I couldn’t get in to have the surgery until the following Monday, and for three days I carried the dead baby around in my hollowed-out insides feeling like a walking wasteland.
He came home, smiling wide with a trophy in his hand as he swung the door open and stepped inside. I was his opposite: bloodshot eyes, breakfast wine, a disheveled pile on the couch next to Lyra watching TV—a documentary about dolphins. I remember it because one gave birth to a stillborn, and it showed the mother dolphin nudging the dead baby with its nose, desperate for it to start swimming. Seemingly out of nowhere, I started sobbing, and Lyra looked at me like I was crazy.
What’s wrong? Camp asked, dropping the trophy on the floor as he scrambled to me.
I lost the baby. My voice was flat, like I wasn’t even in my own body.
For the first time—the only time in our lives together other than when he peeled away from the art gallery—Camp dropped to his knees and cried.
I did the same, consumed with grief and guilt. Grief, because I lost another baby. Another life I imagined growing side by side with Lyra. With me.
But the guilt? The guilt was almost worse. I didn’t know if I even wanted more kids, and I was convinced my doubtful thinking led to what happened. Like I willed this tragedy into fruition simply by being a tired and overwhelmed woman. And even worse, maybe this meant I was never meant to be a mom at all. Maybe Lyra being here was a fluke. The loss was a sign of my inadequacy as a parent.
In my grief-stricken state, the thirteen- and ten-year-old kids that would have been here today were gone because of me.
Next to me, Lyra takes the first bite of her ice cream.
“It’s a weird thing,” I confess when I can speak again. “They aren’t people you’ve met, yet somehow, you know them. These little heartbeats deep in your belly that have a whole life ahead of them—God, do you know them. Even though they aren’t, they so tangibly are.”
I pause, but not to cry. This time it’s to take a full breath. The relief from my confession is so instant that it feels a bit like a magic trick. Like, me telling someone all this was all I’ve ever needed, and it’s enough to make me want to cry again.
“After that,” I say, “I poured myself into you. Being the mom you needed. Fueled by guilt or grief or whatever it was. I wouldn’t have any more kids, but I’d be a good mom to you. And your dad had coaching, started playing on the softball team. He was happy, I was lost. I never told him. Figured I’d find my way. ‘These things take time,’ the doctor told me. So I started listening to podcasts, I started . . .” Visiting dead bodies at Scotty’s. Nope. Not ready to unleash that level of crazy on my kid. “Anyway, I just needed a little more time to sort it all out. I told myself when you started high school, I’d take time to do something for myself. My timeline in the sand until—”
“The boys,” she finishes for me.
I nod, laugh softly, and take another bite of ice cream as three cars drive by.
“Camp got busier with baseball, and I resented him for that, I think. He was so happy, doing something he loved. Setting goals and chasing them. State championships, the complex, and if he says he wants nationals next year, mark my words he’ll have that title. And Lyra, I need you to hear everything I’m saying.” I turn to face her, setting my ice cream on the bench between us. “People tell you about potty training and sleepless nights, but they don’t tell you how fucking hard being a mom is.” Her eyebrows shoot to the sky at my language, but I don’t apologize or stop. “About the slow drain that happens if you aren’t careful. How you exchange who you are for a different version of yourself without even knowing. Somewhere between dinners and homework and car lines, you forget yourself. And, somehow, despite how hard and thankless it all feels, when you lie in bed at night, you still worry. You still wonder, did I do good enough today? Did I love these little people enough? Encourage them to be nice people and treat others fairly? Do they know how valuable they are? How much I love them?”
I don’t wipe the tears that fall like raindrops down my face. Instead, I pick up my ice cream, take another bite, and watch another truck whiz by.
“And somewhere between all these little people we chase, we forget about our marriage. It gets shaved away if we aren’t mindful. If we don’t tend to it like a garden. Your dad got busy . . . and I let him. Until I was so far gone I didn’t know how to fix it. I just needed to feel like myself again. Just needed a break. But, instead of handling it, I made a mess.”
“Is that why you showed the entire senior class your ass in that ridiculous bathing suit?”
Despite my tear-streaked face, I let out a watery laugh. “I guess so, yes.”
For the first time, Lyra smiles. “A warning would have been nice.”
I shake my head, scrape the bottom of my cup for the last drops of now-melted ice cream.
“I do love you, Ly. And your brothers. And your dad. Life is just . . . messy. None of this is your fault. Or his. Sometimes”—I shrug—“people break.”
She finishes her last bites of ice cream, then we stand, arms hooked as we walk toward the minivan.
“Sorry about the miscarriages, Mom.”
I lean my head on hers as we walk. “Me too.”
“So, you and Nick?” I ask as we drop our ice cream cups in a trash can and I unlock the van. “How was prom . . . and everything . . . ?”
She smiles and her cheeks go pink. “Not the same as your night in the tent with Dad, if that’s what you mean.”
They did not have sex.
She sees the relief on my face, laughs again. “I trust him, but”—she shrugs—“the time wasn’t right.” She pauses as she opens the door. “And, I’ll tell you when it happens.”
Deep in my belly: butterflies. Not because she didn’t have sex, but because she’ll tell me. Because she doesn’t hate me. Just . . . because.
In the driver’s seat with a weight lifted, my phone dings, and I slide it out of my pocket, hopeful it’s Camp.
Hope dies; I groan as I read.
Ms. Mitchell: Mrs. Cannon, your unruly children have disrupted my class for the last time. Please come see me today at 3.
I mutter under my breath, hammering away at the keys, rewriting it twice to remove all the swear words. Settling on, I’ll be there.
“Everything okay?” Lyra asks.
I back out of the parking space. “I’m about to make up for all the words I haven’t said.”