‘I didn’t expect to feel like this,’ I whispered.
Kev stroked my hair. ‘I know.’
‘I thought it would have been easier to give it up, if it was a girl, but I don’t think it matters. Either way it’s our baby, Kev.’
‘I know.’
‘What are we going to do?’ I asked, and his fingers stilled on my hair.
‘The same as we always were.’
That seemed incomprehensible to me, even as the truth thudded through me. Nothing had changed, and yet everything had. For me.
‘Do you want to see him?’ I asked, and Kevin stiffened.
‘No,’ he said after a moment. ‘No, I don’t want to.’
And stupidly perhaps, that hurt. After he left I asked the nurse to bring my boy to me. She said she couldn’t, he was too little; he had to stay in the incubator. But she could take me to him, and so I struggled into a wheelchair, my body sagging and aching in ways it never had before, and then let myself be pushed to the NICU.
I knew him right away, even though I’d only seen him for a second, lying there on my chest. He was tiny and wizened and red, squalling and perfect, raging against life already. He had a tuft of light brown hair, a miniature cowlick, just like Kevin. And when he opened his eyes, I felt myself fall. My child. My son. It felt so simple, then. So right.
Later, the doctor came and told me he was doing well, but his lungs were weak and he was jaundiced. He’d have to stay in the hospital for a couple of weeks, and he might suffer from some complications later in life.
‘Complications?’ I stared at him fearfully.
‘Premature babies often have a few health issues as they grow up,’ he explained, his expression kind. ‘But for the most part they can be managed, with the proper care and attention.’
Care and attention I doubt we could afford. He left me alone, and I lay in bed and stared at the wall and thought about my baby boy, and my three girls, and Kev and Grace. Everyone jumbled up together, but beyond the tight burn in my chest and the empty ache in my arms, I knew. I knew that just like Kevin had said, nothing had changed. I knew that Grace could provide this little boy with so much more than I could, including the medical care he might need. I knew that she would love him, and that if I kept him from her, I’d break her heart. I knew, even as I railed and raged against it, that he was hers, at least as much as he was mine. And I was the one who had made it that way.
So when Tina came and asked if Grace could see me, I said yes even though I didn’t want to see her at all. I wasn’t ready, but I needed to be. And that was when I thought of it, how Grace owed me something. Life owed me something. Maybe not a lot, not everything, but something, damn it. One afternoon a month. That felt reasonable to me. It felt fair.
The front door opens and I look up from the cake, my heart lifting, but of course it isn’t Grace and Isaac. They always ring the doorbell, even though I’ve told them they don’t have to.
‘It’s me,’ Emma calls, sounding tired. She works every weekend at CVS, eight-hour shifts on both Saturday and Sunday. She comes into the kitchen, still quiet and shy at eighteen years old, and just finishing high school. In the fall she’s planning to train as a nursing assistant, something I’m proud of although I was secretly hoping she might try for college. No one in my family has gone to college. No one’s even thought of it. Who has that kind of money? That kind of drive?
‘Oh.’ Emma notices the cake. ‘I forgot it was that Saturday.’
‘How could you forget?’ I ask, keeping my voice light. ‘What do you think of my cake?’ I stand back and survey the gray and green gloopy mess. The only thing to show it’s Minecraft-themed is the figure of Steve on the top.
‘Um… interesting?’
‘Yeah, sure.’ I sigh, wishing I could get it right sometimes. For the last seven years I’ve always felt like I’m just a little bit off with these visits. It was easy at the beginning, even though it hurt. Isaac was a baby, and I knew what to do with babies.
The first time I held him he curled right into me. I swear he smelled me as his mother. He knew me, no matter that it had been almost a month. He’d only been out of the hospital a week, and Grace was awkward with him. She hadn’t got the hang of him; she held him as if he was going to break, as if he were one of her expensive pieces of crystal.
She watched as I rocked him, my hand curving around his back, my fingers tracing the tiny knobs of his spine. He snuffled against my neck and I breathed him in. I turned away from Grace and sang a lullaby to him, love swelling inside me as he relaxed against me, tiny eyelids fluttering closed.
I knew I was hurting Grace, and part of me was glad. I didn’t care if it made me petty or wrong. Grace had her money and her job and her apartment; she had her son. At least I had this.
The next few visits I always played the expert, even though I knew it annoyed her. I told her when he was getting a tooth, when to start baby food, how to get him to sleep through the night. She was so uncertain, always doubting herself but never wanting my advice. Once I changed his diaper and made more fuss than I needed to about his diaper rash; she fought tears as I found the cream and applied it, clucking my tongue.
But then Isaac got a little older, and he went through a phase of being not just shy but terrified of us. Of me. I’d go to cuddle him and he’d back away, burying his head in Grace’s knees, refusing even to look at me. Then she was the one who was smug, although she tried to hide it, at least a little. Not enough, though. Never enough. I could tell, and I wondered if it would always be a silent competition between us, a standoff over our son. I’d made it this way by insisting on these visits, and seven years later, I can’t even be sorry.
Everyone else always seemed to fade into the background during these Saturday afternoons. Lucy, Amy, Emma, Kev. They’re in the room, but I don’t remember them. I remember Isaac, commando crawling toward the TV; then later, running around hyped-up on sugar, touching everything. I remember him playing Connect Four with me and how I’d slide the pieces in so slowly because I wanted the game to go on forever. By the next month he’d forgotten about Connect Four; I’d been waiting to play it with him again, c
ounting on it, and he wouldn’t even open the box.
And as he’s got older, it’s continued to be that way. I buy caramel popcorn only to find out he doesn’t like it any more. The new Cars movie is has-been by the time he comes over to watch it, never mind that the DVD cost twenty bucks. I ask about the school play, his piano lessons, the trip to California, but by the time I catch up he’s already moved on, losing interest, slipping out of my grasp. Still I try to hold on, even though it’s hard. Even though part of me whispers one day I’ll have to let go.