A Mother's Goodbye

‘What is that?’

‘A cake,’ I answer, although it’s obvious. ‘For Isaac.’ Minecraft is his favorite game. I managed to track down a little figurine of the character Steve from the game and placed it on top, along with the glittery candle in the shape of a seven.

Kevin looks at the cake for another moment and then looks away, saying nothing. I’m used to this by now, the silences that I’ve stopped trying to analyze. Is he angry? Bitter? Bored? Or maybe, after all these years, Kevin is just indifferent to our son. I really have stopped trying to guess.

‘We’re having pizza too,’ I tell him as I squeeze another blob of green onto the cake. Last month all Isaac could talk about was Minecraft. That is, when he was talking. He tends to be pretty quiet during these visits, shy like Emma, but I always try to get him to open up, and sometimes I succeed. ‘Can you get the sodas and put them on the table?’

I don’t really need Kevin to do anything, but I want him to be involved. So often during these visits he just sits in his chair, sullen and silent, the way he used to be when his back was really bad.

I don’t remember exactly when his back started getting a little better; it happened gradually, in small, hopeful increments. After Lucy started school, he got another job, full-time, working the counter of a UPS store, and financially, after a couple of years, we just about managed to get ourselves on an even keel.

When Lucy was seven I got my high school diploma at night school and then took a course in computing at the community college.

It was a big step, and one I still feel proud of. Stacy supported me through it, picking up the girls when needed, taking up the slack with my mom, whose health has continued to flag and fail. She doesn’t leave the house most days, and my dad can’t manage on his own. We take it in turns, but Stacy did more for her – and me – then.

Kev supported me too, in his own way. The classes weren’t cheap, but he never said a word. And he put his fair share of frozen pizzas in the oven when I was going out to one of them at night.

For the last three years I’ve worked as a receptionist for a small company that owns a couple of greeting card stores in the area. It’s not much, just answering phones and doing some data entry, but the pay is much better than cleaning and I like wearing nice clothes to work: low heels and button-down blouses. It makes me feel like I’ve come up in the world a little bit, like I’ve managed to hold ont

o a dream amidst all the lost and broken ones.

Kevin grabs the two-liter bottle of Coke and puts it down on the dining room table with more force than necessary, not quite a slam. Again with the Mountain Dew. I focus on the cake. A few seconds later Lucy skips in, her angelic smile telling me that she’s up to no good.

‘Amy’s left,’ she announces proudly, always glad to be the bearer of grim news, and I can’t keep from letting out a sigh.

‘Left? What do you mean?’

‘She’s gone to meet her friends.’ Lucy’s eleven now, and she and Amy, who’s fifteen, are usually bickering. Amy gets into trouble and Lucy tattles.

I squint as I try to finish the green piping on the cake. My fingers ache from kneading and squeezing the icing bag so hard. Lucy leans forward and takes a big swipe of icing with her finger.

‘Lucy.’

‘Is Amy going to get in trouble?’

‘Maybe, but so are you for messing up the cake.’

‘It’s a gross color.’

‘Thanks.’ It is a gross color, but I know how much Isaac loves Minecraft. Every month I try to find something for him to like, to enjoy while he’s here. Every month I try not to doubt myself and the decision I made seven years ago.

His birth was a blur, right from the moment my waters broke all over the carpet, and Aneta drove me to the hospital. A rush of doctors, tests, tubes, the pain squeezing the breath out of me, and I feared, the very life. The insistent beep beep beep of some monitor, and then how the beeps suddenly got faster and doctors began talking urgently, telling me I needed an emergency C-section. I felt as if I were seeing everything from afar, from behind a gauzy curtain. I wanted Kevin.

And then the next thing I knew they were putting up a little curtain so I couldn’t see the mound of my own pregnant belly, and someone, a stranger, was holding my hand. I felt a weird, tugging sensation, everything moving too fast, and then the words I’ll never forget: You have a little boy.

It jolted me, because I’d been expecting a girl, but then it didn’t matter, boy or girl, because all I saw, all I thought, was mine. They laid him on my chest and he blinked up at me with those deep blue eyes and I saw myself in him. Of course he was mine. I didn’t even think about Grace once. Not once, not even for a second. I just looked at my son and smiled and then I fell in love.

Maybe from that moment it should have been simple. Forget Grace. This was my child. He’d been ripped out of my body. I was never going to hand him over like something the mailman had delivered that I needed to pass on.

But then they took him to NICU and they wheeled me away, and my body throbbed and ached and I still hadn’t talked to Kevin, and I remembered that I’d deposited that check for five grand, and some of it was already gone. Nothing seemed simple any more.

Kevin came later that morning, unshaven, his shirt buttoned wrong.

‘Did you hear?’ I gasped out and he nodded. Then I started to cry. I didn’t mean to; I’d wanted to be strong, but I couldn’t help it. I was so tired and absolutely everything hurt.

‘Babe,’ Kev said softly. He sounded torn, hurting the same way I was. ‘Babe.’ And then he climbed into the bed right next to me, gently, and even more gently, he took me into his arms. I cried into his shirt and Kev just held me.

We didn’t talk much, even after my tears had subsided. I may have slept a little, and when I woke, Kev was still holding me. My stitches throbbed and I was so very tired, but I also felt just a little bit better, although I couldn’t even say why.