Chapter 18
It was eleven months to the day after Jared’s sailing accident that Shelby and Jared officially left Massachusetts and moved to Montana.
It wasn’t perfect timing. Shelby was nearly eight months pregnant and lived her life in permanent discomfort.
It was as though her body was constantly fighting her, sending aches and pains to areas she’d never even considered before.
She was now twenty-two years old—but she felt maybe ten years older than she had last year, when she’d turned twenty-one.
Life comes at you fast, she thought to herself as she taped up some of the final boxes and watched as the movers carried them to the truck.
Because Shelby was so pregnant, there was no option but to drive themselves all the way out to Montana.
Shelby decided to try to make it fun. She’d always loved road trips, no matter the distance, and she made them several playlists, hoping that the music would help them bond again.
Since Jared had secured this position in Montana, he’d felt even more foreign to her, even more domineering, as though now that he was going to be making “real” money, he had to act much more adult and much colder.
On the morning they planned to leave their place in Cambridge forever, Shelby and Jared sat on the porch and watched the sun rise over the little town.
Soon, the new semester would begin—one without Jared involved at all—and Shelby guessed that Jared felt complicated about that.
His grad school had been meant for another year or two, at the very least.
“I never wanted to go to Harvard in the first place,” Jared said darkly, sipping his coffee.
“What did you want to do?” Shelby asked.
“I wanted to travel,” Jared said. “I told my father that I wanted to go into the world and see what I wanted to make of myself rather than rush into anything. Obviously, he had other plans for me.”
Shelby wondered what her own father had wanted for her, back before he’d passed.
She wondered what Fred and Rebecca had whispered about Shelby’s future, long after Shelby had gone to bed.
They’d known she was an academic, that she needed to use her brain to be happy.
Now that she’d moved so far away from all forms of learning, she struggled to make use of her days, and even reading a few sentences at a time exhausted her.
It was as though someone had transplanted her brain for someone else’s.
Or maybe it was just “pregnancy brain,” as so many women said.
Before they left Massachusetts, they stopped to see Jim and Monica one final time.
Shelby sensed a frigidness between Jared and his parents, especially now that Jared had been kicked out of Harvard.
She guessed that Jim was suffering the consequences in their social circles.
But they managed to have a semi-civil breakfast together.
A few times, Monica caught Shelby’s eye, and Shelby tried to figure out what Monica was trying to tell her.
But Monica just shook her head and let her eyes drop to the eggs between them.
What? Shelby wanted to scream. But instead, she just smiled and told Jim and Monica they could come out West whenever they wanted.
“You’ll be grandparents soon,” she said.
When they got in the car, Shelby waved goodbye to Jim and Monica until they turned the corner.
Jared turned up the radio, then grumbled, “He thinks he knows so much better than me. But I’m doing exactly what he did, you know that?
He took the job my grandfather gave to him.
The only difference, I guess, is that my father wants me to move to Montana, while my grandfather wanted my father to stay here. ”
“It’ll be good for us,” Shelby said. “We’re always talking about how we want to start over.”
Jared nodded stoically. “We need to start over. Start fresh. It’s the reason people came out West in the first place. They didn’t want their old religions or their old cultures or their old laws to get in the way of their visions.”
“Exactly,” Shelby said, smiling, although she felt she was going to throw up.
The house they’d bought was on many acres of forest, mountain, and stream.
It was a five-bedroom house with far too much space for the two of them, but Shelby knew she was expected, via pregnancy, to fill the rooms. When they arrived, exhausted from the many days of driving, she moved from empty room to empty room, taking stock of what needed to be done and how each deserved to be decorated.
She’d never had a keen eye for artistry, but she’d been reading online about color palettes and redesigns.
Maybe this was a good way to use her brain?
When Jared went to work the following week, Shelby found herself alone for up to twelve hours per day.
On the one hand, it was delicious to have free time again.
As long as dinner was ready on time, and as long as the house was clean, Shelby could wander the grounds, or take long and luxurious naps on their new furniture, or try and fail to read.
Unfortunately, after only a few days of this, Shelby grew itchy and panicked.
She found herself online, researching what was going on at Columbia, and soon stumbled into her old roommate Molly’s blog, wherein she wrote about her new boyfriend, her classes, and sometimes Shelby.
Molly wrote: My old roommate dropped out of school, married some psycho, and moved out West. It’s such a good reminder always to uphold your own education, I think. Women and men are still SO not equal, and I want to make sure I secure my degree before I think about getting married.
She’s pregnant now. There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t worry about her.
At this, Shelby threw her phone across the room, her chest heaving. She wasn’t someone who needed Molly’s pity. But she knew this was also how her mother and sister felt: that she was a caged woman, without a degree and without a future.
Within a month, the baby would be born, she knew.
It gave her very little time to peek her head back into academia. Maybe it wasn’t too late?
Although she was frightened, she decided to call Professor Thames outright.
They hadn’t spoken at all since that fateful day when they’d met during Jared’s hospital stay.
A cursory glance at old emails told Shelby that Professor Thames had emailed her twelve times before giving up.
That didn’t feel good. But Shelby told herself that she had a pretty good excuse. She’d thought her fiancé was dead.
A little voice in the back of her mind reminded her, You weren’t engaged back then. You were lying to yourself. The reality was, you and Jared had broken up, and you freaked out and went back to him. Now, look at your life. Now, look at what you’ve done.
Shelby shook the thoughts out and called her old professor, praying that Professor Thames would answer. Instead, Shelby got the professor’s new secretary, who said, “What was the name?”
“Shelby Vance,” Shelby said. She hadn’t used her maiden name in ages, and it tasted so good on her tongue.
“Shelby Vance,” the secretary said under her breath. “Let me check our systems to see if she’s flagged anything about you.”
Shelby closed her eyes tightly, praying that the secretary would still make time for her, given what Shelby had already done.
“Ah, I see. You’re an old student?” the secretary asked.
“Yes, but looking for a way to finish my degree,” Shelby said. “I had to drop out for, um, family reasons. This was the autumn semester of last year. Not so long ago?”
“I’ll have to talk to Professor Thames,” the secretary said brightly. “I’m sure she’ll call you back within the week, all right?”
“Sounds good,” Shelby said. “But if you could tell her that it’s important…”
“Yes, of course,” the secretary said. “Talk soon!”
Shelby sat on the sofa with her phone on her lap, aching with worry.
She wasn’t sure why it hadn’t occurred to her till now, but it landed heavy on her shoulders: she’d dropped out of school.
She’d simply stopped going to one of the most prestigious universities in the country and the world.
When she’d first gotten into Columbia, she’d jumped up and down with her mother Rebecca, celebrating her future.
Now, she felt that she’d closed the door on herself and she couldn’t get back inside.
Professor Thames didn’t call her back that week, nor the one after that.
When Shelby tried again, the secretary insisted that Professor Thames would get back to her soon, but that the semester was packed.
“She’s in over her head. She’s going on sabbatical next semester, so there’s a lot to do before then,” the secretary explained.
Sabbatical! It sounded like a gorgeous word. It was to be a semester in which Professor Thames could write and research and dream, rather than deal with twentysomethings like Shelby. Again, Shelby thanked the secretary. When she hung up, she burst into tears that didn’t cease for a full hour.
The following morning, Shelby went into labor.
She’d read online that she shouldn’t go to the hospital till the contractions were three to five minutes apart.
Not wanting to bother Jared, who had several meetings that morning and afternoon, Shelby tried to keep herself busy.
She walked to the stream. She practiced her breathing.
Mostly, she panicked, wondering what kind of world she was bringing her son into.
Why wasn’t her mother here? Why wasn’t her sister?
She imagined her little brother Chad, holding her baby for the first time, saying hello, and then she cried even harder.
What was she doing here, beneath this mighty white mountain? Where was her Nantucket shore?
When it was time, Shelby called her husband to let him know where she was headed, then took a cab to the hospital.
It wasn’t till she arrived and was situated in a bed in the labor and delivery wing that she realized she’d forgotten her cell at home.
How was that possible? Anxiety shuddered through her, and she had so little to do while she waited.
Jared had told her that he’d come as soon as he could, but there was no telling when that would be.
Recognizing she was bored, one of the nurses took pity on her and lent her a paperback left by another pregnant woman.
It was Gone Girl, and it gave Shelby terrible ideas about her marriage and her future.
She stopped reading when the pain got too bad.
When Jared arrived, Shelby was nearly ready to push.
She wanted to yell at him for being so late, but she was also secretly glad he was, as it had meant she hadn’t had to deal with him and his reckless emotions.
He kissed her and said, “All right. Let’s have a baby.
” He said it as though it was a thing they were doing together, rather than something she’d been doing all day alone.
It was the worst thing Shelby had ever done.
Pain rocketed through her, and she doubted herself almost continually, only to have the nurses yell at her to keep going.
Blind with anxiety and pain, she begged Jared to call her mother.
“I need her,” she sobbed. “Please. Call her!” But Jared didn’t have Rebecca’s phone number, and when Shelby told him to call the Sutton Book Club instead, as the number was listed online, he reminded her that it was the middle of the night. Nobody would be there.
“I need my sister! I need my mother!” She sobbed, as the nurses begged her to push.
For a little while, at least, Jared looked so panicked and youthful that Shelby thought he was going to apologize for everything. She wanted to beg him to be kinder to her. She wanted to demand: why did you drag me to the middle of nowhere? Why do you keep me in a cage?
But then, all at once, the baby was born, and he was perfect: pink and small and quiet.
He lay in Shelby’s arms and looked at her.
Shelby couldn’t believe it. When she looked up at her husband, who was exhausted and sweaty and beaming with pride, she couldn’t fathom that they’d somehow made this baby together.
It was only when Jared insisted that they give him the name of his grandfather that Shelby’s reality crashed back in on itself.
“I told my dad we’d name him Richard,” Jared explained. “He’s done everything for us, so I think we owe him.”
Shelby blinked at him. She considered asking, "What if I want to name him after my own grandfather? What if I want to name him after my father? What about me?”
But of course, Richard Kissinger was soon written on the birth certificate, and that was that.
When Shelby and baby Richard—whom she’d already decided to call Billy—returned home, Jared went immediately back to work, ready to gloat about being a father without helping at all with the parenting.
Shelby dove into new motherhood with the sort of energy she’d previously only reserved for academia.
She learned everything she could about babies: what happened day by day and week by week in their development, how their brains developed and what they could see.
Sometimes, when Jared came home from work, he wanted to hold Billy for about five minutes before handing him back and sitting in front of the television again.
Shelby told herself not to be resentful.
Resentment would only make everything in her life harder.
Not long after Billy was born, Shelby was pregnant again.
And after that, there was another pregnancy, another baby.
She had Billy, Penelope, and Evie in such quick succession that the years hardly felt like years.
They were a string of days, each with their own unique demands.
Shelby needed to make sure her babies were fed and well-rested.
She needed to make sure the house was clean.
She needed to make sure her husband was happy, or at least close to being happy.
His moods were continually erratic, a result maybe of the injury, although Shelby would never be sure.
Shelby never heard from Professor Thames. But two years after Billy was born, Shelby read an article in The New Yorker from her, in which she’d written about feminism and the future of work for women in a way that made Shelby feel like she was living in another time entirely.