The Break(22)

“June is our babysitter,” I say to the doctor. I smile. Maybe a part of me wants the doctor to ask me about her. I want to know if Dr. Templeton knows how nuts I went, and if she’s concerned.

But she doesn’t ask—not a single thing about me or my mental health. She gets down to business with Lila’s exam, and I stand there watching my baby, soaking her up, soothing her when the chill of the stethoscope presses her bare skin.

I almost feel like a normal mother.





NINE


Rowan. Wednesday evening. November 9th.


Early that evening we meet with a lactation consultant who brings a massive silver baby scale. She weighs Lila before her feed and after, and then tells me Lila’s only taking in an ounce from each breast. And of course that’s not enough, so I start sobbing. All I want is Lila to be okay, and plus it’s dark out, which makes everything scarier and uncertain. I never feel okay at night, not really. Not since that night nearly three decades ago when someone broke into our home and did things to my dad I hadn’t dreamt anyone could; you don’t have those ideas when you’re five. Even when my dad hurt my mom, he did it with grabs and twists and yanks—not a knife.

The lactation consultant puts me on an elaborate pumping and feeding regimen that my brain isn’t equipped to follow, but she tells me I can call her any time of the day or night, which makes me cry again. She leaves around eight, and we get Lila into her bassinet next to our bed around nine thirty.

I turn off the lights in my bedroom. The moon is nearly full and high in the sky, and I stare out the window and pray we’re all going to be okay. I still pray; my dad was the one who taught me. We’d kneel next to the bed, our hands clasped and our heads bowed reverently. I still wonder why he never prayed for himself. Maybe if he had, he wouldn’t have caused all the trouble he did for us. Even bragging about the watch: What kind of person needs that to fill them up? Maybe most people do. But then what was the point of all those Sunday masses he took me to? The coveting of that watch, the bragging: Wasn’t that hubris or greed or all the other sins we prayed not to commit? So much of who he was makes no sense to me.

Gabe’s in the kitchen making tea. He’s never been a heavy drinker of alcohol, but the smell of chamomile reminds me of when he swore off booze for six months because he realized hangovers were getting in the way of his writing (we’re both early morning writers). We drank tea every night those days, curled up together in bed reading books. We had less sex without the booze, but we read and cuddled more, which was infinitely better. It’s not that I don’t like sex—I do—it’s just that I felt so close to Gabe then, and I relished the feeling of it, all curled up with our books and screenplays. Every night after dinner I’d set out my stack of advance copies that publishers asked me to blurb, and Gabe and I would ignore our phones buzzing with texts from friends to meet them out. We’d climb into bed and I’d pass the books to Gabe so he could take a look, too, and help me decide which ones to say yes to. He’d carefully unfold the letters from publishers tucked into the pages politely asking me to lend a quote for the jacket and profusely complimenting my work. Then he’d tease me with blurbs I could write that verged on ridiculous. Gabe had more of a silly side back then, especially if he knew it would make me laugh. But mostly we were quiet those nights, squirreled away with those advance copies and reading them cover to cover. (There’s something about an advance copy of a novel that neither Gabe nor I can resist—there’s a thrill to finding a treasure before the rest of the world gets to see it.) When Gabe picked up alcohol again after those six months, things shifted a bit between us, not to anything all that bad: just different. We spent our nights out with friends again at dive bars, laughing, a little buzzed but never sloppy (the six-month abstinence was a reset that stuck). Gabe and I are only-children, and our friends back then were like surrogate siblings. But somewhere around turning thirty, most of them had broken up or gotten married and had children and moved out of the city to idyllic towns in New Jersey or Westchester with names that ended in dale. When we did see them it was a little forced; they all seemed so stressed as they tried to entertain us on their patios, the women asking their husbands how much longer the grilling would take as they shifted toddlers on their hips, or the husbands asking through gritted teeth where the pacifier was when a baby was crying over the conversation we were trying to have. We understood, of course; we wanted a family of our own, too. But we felt like we couldn’t keep up on those sunny suburban afternoons, listening to conversations about sleep schedules and potty training. After a while we all drifted apart, and then it was just us again and a few scattered writer friends and college friends who didn’t live in New York anyway.

I wait in the bed for Gabe to finish up in the kitchen, curling my legs to my chest. Instead of running through all the things I want to say to him, my mind’s pleasantly blank. I can hear the kettle whistle, and I know Lila’s sleeping deeply enough it won’t wake her. There’s this feeling I have when we get Lila down for the night: it’s mostly exhilaration, like a momentary brush with freedom, but it’s always followed by a sinking feeling that no matter how tired I am, and no matter how much I need a full night’s sleep, there’s no way I’ll get one. Lila will be up in an hour or two to nurse, and then after that feed I’ll get three hours or so until she’s up again—if I’m lucky. And I am lucky to have Lila. I’m just so exhausted and scared of myself it’s hard to think straight. Why didn’t my old friends ever talk about this feeling? Wasn’t it the crux of it? Or did they never feel this way?