A Mother's Goodbye

‘I’m not letting you go through this alone.’ He lets out a ragged breath and rakes a hand through his hair. ‘I know I haven’t been great about this so far.’

A tear trickles down my cheek; I can’t speak, for love and grief.

‘I just felt so guilty, Heather. I still do. Like this is all my fault.’

‘It isn’t, Kev—’

‘But if I’d kept my job, if I’d found another one—’

‘You have found another one.’

He lets out a hard huff of breath. ‘And I make piss all. You know that. This isn’t what you agreed to when you married me.’

‘I agreed to better or worse, Kevin McCleary.’ Now my voice is strong, despite the tears. ‘No matter what.’

He’s silent, struggling, because he knows I’m right but it doesn’t make much difference. ‘Still,’ he says finally.

‘Yes, still.’ I lean over and rest my head on his shoulder. ‘I love you, Kev.’ It’s been a long time since I’ve said it. Since I’ve felt it.

‘I love you, too.’ Kev’s voice is gruff and he squeezes my hand. ‘It’s going to get better for us,’ he says, his voice a little louder now, more sure. ‘We’ll get over this. Grace will give this baby a good life, and we’ll give our girls good lives. I’ll get more work. Maybe we can rent a bigger house. We’ll take the girls to Disney World when Lucy’s bigger.’

He’s painting a picture I desperately want to be real, to make it all worthwhile, but right now it’s enough that he’s saying it. ‘Yes,’ I say, clinging to him, nestling into him. ‘Yes, that’s exactly how it’s going to be.’

The next day I call Tina to tell her Grace can be at the birth. It feels like the right thing to do, even though part of me, a large, frightened part, resists. I don’t really want her to see me in the bloody throes of labor. And I don’t want to see her hold my baby when she is tiny and new, fresh from my womb. But I agree to it because it seems unfair to Grace to keep her from it. Tina is warmly approving when I tell her.

‘I know Grace will be thrilled.’

I don’t reply.

A few days later I am on one of the night shifts at an office in Newark, heaving a bucket of dirty water onto my cleaning trolley, having finished the worst part of the evening, the men’s bathroom, when I feel a pop low down, and then a gush of water.

I stare in shock at the fluid darkening the industrial carpet around my feet. It’s way too early, well over the month it was with Emma. I stand there, my mind going blank with shock and then panic as I feel the tightening bands of a contraction around my stomach. A real contraction, not just the Braxton Hicks I’ve become used to. I’m in labor. I’m thirty-four weeks and I’m in labor.

I fumble for my cell phone to call Kev, but the phone just rings and rings. Maybe he’s left his cell somewhere, or maybe he’s just that dead asleep. I disconnect the call without leaving a message, and call Stacy instead. The phone rings and rings and I remember that it’s three o’clock in the morning and she keeps her phone charging in the kitchen.

My belly tightens again, and it hurts. I take a deep breath, trying to keep calm, to figure out what to do. I need to go to the hospital, but I want Kevin, or at least Stacy, someone there with me. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Not even in my worst imaginings was it like this, me alone in an empty office building in the middle of the night.

‘Okay?’ Aneta, one of the Polish women I work with, stands in front of me and gestures to the puddle at my feet: ‘Baby?’

I nod, biting my lip. ‘It’s too soon, though,’ I say, and my voice sounds strained and high. ‘It’s too soon to have the baby.’ Emma was a month early, and that was scary. It’s six weeks until my due date this time.

Aneta nods, although I’m not sure she understands. ‘I drive?’ she asks, miming holding a steering wheel. ‘To…’

She frowns and I fill in shakily, ‘The hospital.’

Aneta brightens and nods. ‘Yes. That.’

‘Okay,’ I say, and as she gives me a reassuring smile I try to keep the panic back. I didn’t want it to be like this, on my own, panicked and scared. Aneta reaches for my hand, and I try to smile back at her. I tell myself it’s going to be okay. That this baby – my baby – is going to be fine. It isn’t until we’re on our way to the hospital that I even think about Grace, and then only for a second.

Twelve

GRACE

The new partnerships are due to be announced in mid-April. Bruce has as good as told me I made partner. So I celebrate before the partners are set to meet by buying a five-hundred-dollar bottle of champagne and drinking it all myself, while sitting in the glider in my daughter’s pristine nursery.

Everything is ready and waiting and perfect – the white Stokke crib, the matching changing table. The walls are a fresh, minty green with stenciled elephants cavorting a

long the picture rail. White gauzy curtains frame the window overlooking the park, with gray velvet sashes. A green polka-dot cushion rests behind me in the chair, and there is one framed print on the wall, a watercolor of a young girl in a field of daisies. A photo of my father holding me as a baby smiles from a sterling silver frame on top of the dresser.