The Break(45)

My mom’s wide blue eyes are on Lila now, not me.

“Of course I want to hold my granddaughter,” she says. I sit in the chair beside her unmade bed. The white covers are spotted with yellow sunflowers. It surprises me that it’s already eleven a.m. and that an orderly hasn’t been here to tidy her room, especially when the staff knew I was coming. There are tissues on my mom’s bedside table, and crumpled balls of paper nearly topple over the edge of her tin wastebasket.

My hands are shaking against Lila’s body as I take her out of the carrier. Her brown eyes are open, looking up at me, which surprises me because usually when she wakes she cries out to nurse. The lactation consultant told me I’ll know she’s satisfied with enough milk when she seems awake but relaxed, hands unclenched. But right now I see her little fists balled tight as ever. I need to nurse her straight away, as soon as my mom is done holding her, and all the things I want this moment to be make me fluttery with anticipation. “Lila,” I say to my little girl, “are you ready to meet your grandmother?”

My mother makes a noise that sounds like a gasp, but sometimes even regular things my mom does make me nervous, like any slight neurological twitch could be the signal that another dementia episode is upon us. I pass Lila over faster than I mean to, but my mother is ready, her arms strong and sure as she takes my baby and cradles her, like this is the thing mothers are meant to do, that this is, in fact, what our arms are meant for.

I don’t cry.

I stare at my mom and Lila, my heart full to bursting. I love them so deeply I can hardly take it; it’s like staring into sunlight or diving into a black hole, so much feeling and power I can almost glimpse creation itself.

“Gray,” my mom says, shaking her head. “You are so very beautiful.”

I freeze again. My jaw is so tight I’m worried it’ll break.

“No, Mom,” I say, frustration rising within me no matter how saintly I want to be in my mother’s presence. “Her name is Lila. Lila Gray.”

My mother looks up at me. “Oh, right, of course,” she says. And then. “Rowan, this baby is just heavenly.”

“She is,” I say. “I love you, Mom.”

“And I love you.”

Lila stares up at my mother. She opens and closes her mouth and I know she’s hungry, and I have to sit on my hands to keep them from taking her back.

Just let them enjoy this moment, I think, and my rational mind knows an extra few minutes without milk won’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but my body thinks something different: my chest has filled with milk, and I can feel some leak out into my bra, and all I can think about is those drops adding up to an ounce going to waste, and then I say, “Mom?” and my mother says, “You want to nurse her, don’t you?” and the feeling of being understood by another mother, especially my own, is enough to fill me with everything.

“Yes,” I say, confidence swelling within me. “I do.”



My mom passes Lila back into my arms and says, “But we should talk, Rowan, we really should. Don’t you think? We should talk about everything that happened.”

I told my mom on the phone about my new therapist wanting me to go back there, to remember what happened with my dad. I glazed over it quickly because I didn’t want to upset her, but I wanted to gauge her reaction before trying to descend on her here in her room and force it upon her. “Okay,” I say, watching my mom, nervous. We never talk about this.

“Go ahead, darling,” my mother says. “I’ll be all right. I can handle it if you can. You know I’m here for you, even though sometimes I’m not . . .”

These moments are the most painful part of her illness—when she knows what’s happening to her mind, when she’s clear enough to understand how often she’s not.

“What do you remember about what happened to your family?” she asks.





TWENTY-TWO


June. Three months ago. August 2nd.


Outside WTA, a persimmon sun sinks between steel buildings. The sky is smoky lavender streaked with yellow; it’s chilly for an August evening. Steamy gray fumes rise from a subway grate, and the silver fleck of a candy wrapper flutters in front of Harrison and me. Hordes of people buzz past in a mix of suits/uniforms/gym clothes/going-out-clubbing outfits, talking to each other or to someone else on their phones. Languages swirl around me like a cyclone.

“I love this city,” I say to Harrison as we stand there taking it all in. He lights a cigarette.

“Do you?” he asks, inhaling.

“Yeah,” I say, watching an elderly woman pull a cart full of groceries. “I do. It’s got a grip like a vise on my heart.”

Harrison’s eyebrows go up. “Really?” he asks with a smile. “I like that.”

We walk west toward the Theater District. I hate smoking, but Harrison’s a handsome smoker, all long fingers and dramatic gestures. He tells me about his day, which is what he often does at work. I can’t deny that I find it exciting, to be in on this world, to know that a certain actress just signed on to a film, or that Harrison is in the middle of packaging a film with one of Louisa’s big-name actors and how that’s going to make one of his screenwriter’s careers, and how all of it fits together like a puzzle created by the top dogs in Hollywood. Puppeteers, really, all of them: making and breaking careers with a snap of their fingers.