Chapter 13
DEB
WE MARRY QUICKLY ONCE THE pregnancy is confirmed, and we agree to take this unromantic fact to our graves. I didn’t want to give up the baby, and Billy thought it only right to get married. So we drive away from the courthouse, husband and wife, on a crisp afternoon as the leaves begin to turn.
We are quiet in the car, a sense of despondency in the air between us.
We have no “Just Married” flag, no honeymoon plans.
It was a shotgun wedding and the slug lodges deep: we are not in love.
The whirlwind fling that started all this is long over, leaving two near-strangers bound by our shared sense of obligation, a marriage license, and a five-hundred-square-foot apartment waiting empty for us.
Or, not quite empty. Billy’s mother has gotten us some Corningware.
Tucked inside a casserole dish, we find a generous check and a list of pediatricians.
We glance at each other, understanding that our secret is no longer ours.
Mothers are eagle-eyed about these things.
But we know she won’t say anything. When we announce the pregnancy a month from now, she will congratulate us, and that will be that.
The day after the wedding—which we call the union—Billy goes off to scrape and buff teeth, and I shop alone for a new bed with a rubber band keeping my pants up where the button no longer reaches.
By the time I turn twenty-four, I’ll be a wife with a child.
When I turned twenty-three, I went out dancing with friends to celebrate.
The bartender double-checked my ID and called me baby face.
Our daughter arrives with the spring.
During April’s first years of life, her dad and I function as star-crossed business partners. The weeks and fights blur. We each have more than our share of opinions about how to raise a baby, yet none of the affectionate forbearance that makes it possible to do such a fearsome task together.
One weekend, Billy invites his mom over without telling me, and she stays for hours.
They wake April up to play with her, and when she fusses, his mother suggests that a better-quality formula might fix the problem.
Billy agrees, and I hold my tongue. When I later tell him that a little warning would have been nice, he says, I live here too.
I let out a loud “ha” in response, because I’m all too aware—he lives here like he’s the only one who does.
He parks his dirty bicycle inside our little apartment to protect it from the elements.
At every meal he smacks on his food, and with every breakfast he slurps thick V8 juice, leaving behind a red-coated glass that he expects me to clean, which fills me with an almost physical rage.
It feels like nothing belongs to me anymore, not even my own time or needs.
Worse than any of that, Billy wants April to sleep in her own room even though I’m the one who takes care of her all night, and even though he knows how strongly I want her to sleep with me so I can comfort her in the night. He says it’s a matter of discipline, of principle.
“But she cries for me,” I argue.
“It’s good for babies to learn independence,” he retorts.
We fight so vehemently about this that I begin to stay longer and longer in her room, hiding from Billy’s constant presence and pushing back and forth in the Boston rocker. If he won’t let her come to our bedroom, I’ll stay in hers. I would rather share a bed with her anyway.
This is how April’s little room becomes my respite—how April herself becomes my respite.
And whenever she babbles, happy and unintelligible, I feel my resolve renew: I got married because of her, and I will stay married because of her.
It’s worth it for her to grow up with Billy, even if he’s always under my skin.
Regardless of his many inconsiderations, I see the way he holds her.
The way he raspberries the bottoms of her feet until she laughs so hard that it seems like nothing has ever been wrong in all the world.
Plus, what if something were to happen to me? I’d want her to have him.
Once she’s grown, Billy and I can end this and each start again. Find love. But until then, this is all for April, who is beginning to toddle, to stretch cloudlike hands toward us and say up, waiting to be lifted to safety and never once doubting that she will be.
April has Billy’s smile, which softens me to him whenever it spreads across her face.
Our favorite pastime is making her giggle.
It’s a shared mission, whether through tickles or silly noises.
And as she awakens more to this life, her eyes begin to shift between us whenever we snap at each other.
She watches us closely, frowning her concern and wondering why our songs fled.
So we endeavor to fight less, and we settle into a new monotony.
Billy gets better about rinsing his red-stained glasses; I get more sleep and therefore care less about his V8 habits anyway.
In this manner, the calendar pages turn.
On occasion, I’m reminded of why I said yes to a date with Billy in the first place.
Well, our first date was only because we both wanted to see the local cover band for the Mamas and the Papas.
But on our second date, he took me out for Italian.
Halfway through dinner, I got sick to my stomach, and instead of politely bailing, he stayed.
Told me not to be embarrassed, that it’s only human.
He drove me home, brought me chicken soup and oyster crackers, and then waited until he knew I was all right.
That resulted in several more months of dates.
Eventually, we both got bored and there was a petering out. We ended things mutually. Weeks later, I found myself sitting in a doctor’s office thinking, No. Thinking, I can’t.
But I did. And he did. And sometimes if I’m under the weather, he will leave Saltines out or fill the humidifier or keep April quiet so I can rest, covering me with a blanket and brushing the hair from across my face, and I remember those first dates.
It seems like they were with a different person, but it was him. He’s all him.
One evening, I’m cooking a stir-fry when Billy gets home from work. He holds a bouquet of flowers out to me, and I frown.
He shrugs. “Today’s the day we got married.”
I blink. I hadn’t realized. It’s been two years—we didn’t acknowledge it whatsoever at the one-year mark. But here he is, handing me begonias. I don’t recall telling him they’re my favorite.
“Oh.” I hold them to my nose and breathe in slowly. “Thank you.”
April patters into the kitchen and points excitedly, saying, “Bitty trees!” She watches me put them in water and set them on the table, smiling.
When she is almost three years old, I pass by the bathroom one night while Billy demonstrates how to brush teeth without neglecting the gums. His patience with April makes me pause, not because it’s unusual but because it’s usual.
Because I’ve come to take it for granted.
Even though we fight about April’s sleep and how much money should be spent on toddler gear, this man has not wavered in his commitment to our daughter.
I take a step backward into the darkness of the hall, a domestic spy peeking at my husband in a sliver of the bathroom mirror.
A private moment with a child is when you can tell the most about someone.
I know so little of Billy, yet so much. I know which foods give him indigestion, how meticulously he opens envelopes, the brand of socks he wears, how high he likes the ankle.
And for all the time I’ve spent fighting him, I realize I’ve come to trust him.
April grips her little Elmo toothbrush. “Like this, Dada?”
Billy says her technique is exquisite, and he gives her a high five.
She beams. “I’m just like you!”
He musses her hair, and she hugs his leg, both of them smiling, proud of the other.
I back away from my hidden post, and a weighty, swirling feeling settles in my stomach.
Later that night, when April is asleep, Billy and I tidy the kitchen. We don’t typically talk during evening chores. But with a skillet in one hand and a dishrag in the other, I look at my husband for a long minute. And then I say to him, “So, I love you.”
He’s putting a mug into the cabinet and very nearly drops it. A smile comes over his face that hearkens back to when we met, when he held me from behind as we swayed to “California Dreamin’ ” before we were thrown into a future that seemed to have such little space for dreams.
He stares at me now, his relief so apparent it almost hurts.
And he says it with no hesitation. “I love you too.”
I set the dishrag down on the counter, and I lead him to the bedroom. We have not been together since before April was born.
Life can turn in any direction, that’s one thing it has going for it.
After that night, I can’t get enough. I push the limits on how early I can get April down, and I explore every inch of my husband’s landscape, making up for lost time.
I have seen Billy’s loyalty, his work ethic, his persisting goodness toward our family, and somewhere along the way, I have fallen in love.
Before long, he suggests we go whole hog with the family thing, and I smile wide in agreement.
Josie, and later Cameron, are born to very different parents than their sister was, and we won’t forget the miracle of that.
By this time, Billy has a burgeoning dental practice, and I have an inheritance sitting in a high-yield savings account.
I only bought my dad a handful of years, it turns out.
One bleak morning, he was simply and quietly gone.
Most days I choose to believe it was accidental, that he just needed a little pain relief and took too much without realizing.
This was before April came along. In fact, he came straight to mind when I got pregnant: how many starts and stops of life are accidents.
It was a complicated experience to lose him—I miss him sharply, but he had been so sad for so long.
I could never do enough for him. At his service, he looked like he was relieved to have “Amazing Grace” sung over him at last.
So the inheritance was unexpected, and it has been earning interest. Combined with Billy’s now-steady income, we have enough money for the house on Lexington Avenue.
A lawn mower. Contact paper and life insurance.
Soon, I am pushing a department-store stroller through an upscale neighborhood, marveling over the way lives of misery or jubilee can appear identical from the front yard.
I knock on doors with casseroles and cornbread, driven by a nosy determination that if there are people who are lonely like my father was—like I was—then I will find them.
And there are. And I do. And I learn what a profound generosity it can be to share lonelinesses. Our house on Lexington Avenue becomes a hub of life, and April will hopefully never remember her mother curling up tearfully beside her in a toddler bed in our former box of an apartment.
As our family grows, Billy works long hours, his gloved hands navigating people’s mouths so they can—as he likes to say—smile without shame. Whenever I need a companion, April is still the first person I turn to, because she is there.
And that matters as much as anything in life, the person who is there.