Brad left, taking part of my heart with him as he always did. But today would be a good day. I had my baby, and I was with my mother, who was doing very well. Her suicide attempt seemed very far in the past. According to my father, therapy was going great, and she was on a new medication that was working wonders.
I believed it. She looked younger than she had in years, and the smile on her face seemed genuine. Not pasted on, as it had seemed so many times since I returned from my hospitalization junior year.
“Let me see that big boy!” She took Jonah out of my arms and snuggled him against her.
He let out a wail.
“Little dove, you remember your grandma.” I stroked his hair.
He gulped back a sob at my touch.
“He’ll get used to you in a few minutes, Mom.”
“I’m not worried. You were the same way. Only Mommy and Daddy for you.” She handed Joe back to me.
“Are you hungry?”
“Do you even have to ask?” I was constantly famished. A side effect of nursing, and a fringe benefit, to be frank. I could eat everything in the world and not gain an ounce. I was feeding two. “Let me just set up his portable playpen, and then we can eat.”
“I’ll get it on the table while you do that.” Mom headed back to the kitchen, whistling.
Whatever medication she was on was a wonder drug. I put the playpen together in the dining area and set Jonah inside with a rattle and a set of teething keys. He wasn’t teething yet, but he liked to suck on them.
Mom had made bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches—my favorites, but bacon always reminded me of Patty. She had introduced me to humanely raised cured bacon. I missed her so much. Why had she left so suddenly? Serving the Peace Corps was a noble calling, to be sure, but she and Ennis had just fallen in love. She had only completed one year of college.
So much of it didn’t make sense.
Having a friend had been nice. I still had Ennis, of course, but he was back in England now. I wasn’t sure I’d ever see him again. Brad had promised me I could go visit Ennis anytime, but leaving Brad and the baby didn’t feel right.
Plus, why hadn’t Patty written? I’d written three letters to the address Brad got for me, but she hadn’t answered any of them. I didn’t know much about the Peace Corps, but I did know that most of the volunteers wrote to their friends at home. Maybe I could call her parents and see if they’d heard from her. Surely she was writing to them.
It all reminded me of Sage Peterson from high school—my best friend who had moved away before junior year. I’d written her several times, but she never wrote me back.
I was still sad about her. And now the same thing was happening with Patty. If I left a friend, I’d want to keep in touch.
Mazie’s pale-green tulips popped into my mind. Whenever I got sad, I thought of the pale-green blooms that were her favorite. To me, they lacked color and vibrancy. I much preferred the sunny yellow blooms. Sadness made me colorless, so I forced a smile on my face.
My baby gurgled in his crib. He was happiness rolled into a sweet little cherub. Then there was Brad. My amazing husband who, though I missed him terribly when he was gone so often, was the heart and soul of me. And my pretty mother, who was assembling a BLT just the way I liked it, with extra tomatoes and a touch of mustard with the mayonnaise. She looked happy—happier than she’d been in quite a while.
Life was good. I was the yellow tulip again.
After lunch, I nursed Jonah and was ready to put him down for a nap in his portable crib when my mother took him from me.
“May I hold him while he sleeps?”
“Of course.”
She sat down in my father’s La-Z-Boy and cradled him as he dozed. “He looks a lot like you, sweetheart.”
“Really? Most people say he looks like a clone of Brad.”
“You and Brad have roughly the same coloring, the same fine features. I see a lot of you and him.”
I smiled. The thought warmed me. No doubt, little Joe favored his father, but when I looked closely, I saw that my mother was right. His eyes, which had just turned brown, were dark, dark brown like mine. Brad’s were slightly lighter. And the shape of his ears—small with attached lobes. Like mini replicas of mine.
“He’s a beautiful child, Daphne,” my mother said.
“He’s everything to me.”
My mother met my gaze and smiled. “You don’t understand that feeling until you become a mother.”
My mother’s eyes glistened. Just a touch, but I noticed. She wasn’t going to cry, but emotion was getting to her. And something in me understood her, perhaps for the first time. She felt about me the way I felt about Jonah. My troubled junior year must have nearly killed her.