A Mother's Homecoming(54)
She stood, deciding brutal honesty was her best bet but not entirely sure how to articulate what had she’d gone through. “I don’t know how well I can explain this. Hell, I don’t even remember those months very clearly. Most of the time it was like I was sleepwalking, or like I wanted to be asleep. You were so cute with Faith, looked so happy when you were holding her, and I just … Annabel and I talked about this a lot last year. I did some research on postpartum depression. Statistics indicate that it’s more common and more severe in teenage mothers.”
Nick nodded. “I thought of that. Not at the time, but later. One of the guys who works for me, his wife Lisa had twins and she had trouble with PPD after they were born. They missed the signs at first, assuming it was just the understandable fatigue of dealing with two newborns. But after it got worse, they talked to a doctor. If that’s why you left … how come you never came back?”
He rose, too, and paced back and forth across the small room. “After you’d been gone a few months, I got scared to death. Despite the note, I was convinced you wouldn’t have stayed away from us that long. I thought …” He swallowed, shaking his head. “I thought something had happened to you. And when you popped up on that cable show? I hated you so damn much. Two and a half years of worry replaced with the realization that while I was trying to potty train Faith and roofing out in the hot sun for Donald Bauer, you were hobnobbing with country music stars and going to work every day at a television studio.”
“I should have sent you a letter telling you I was okay.”
“You think?” His voice was level, but old embers of banked fury still glowed within him.
She couldn’t stand for him to think she would have blown off her husband and baby to go play guitar. She had to make him understand.
“I told you that most of it’s a blur,” Pam said. “But there’s one day I remember. She was crying—which could have been any day. Whenever I was with her, she was crying. She smiled at you, even your mom, but I think she sensed the tension in me. Anyway, she was shrieking because she had a rash and had done something toxic in her diaper. I was trying to change her, and I was making a mess. She just kept kicking, and I couldn’t get her clean. I heard myself yell, ‘You’re ruining my life’ and it was Mae’s voice coming out of my mouth. I might … I’m so sorry, Nick—I might have even shaken her. Only for a moment, but long enough to be horrified at my behavior.”
Pam pressed her fingertips to her eyes, belatedly aware that she was crying. Tears ran down her face, but she forced herself to keep going so that he could understand how truly awful she’d been. Maybe then he’d stop mourning the abrupt end of their marriage and just be glad Faith hadn’t been subjected to her.
“It was an epiphany,” she said. “I was going to be Mae. She’d raised a daughter she hadn’t wanted in the first place. Even though she was a married adult when she got pregnant with me, she resented me my entire life, certainly never gave me a role model for loving maternal behavior. And even though I couldn’t bond with Faith, couldn’t love her, I knew for damn sure that I wanted better for her. I wouldn’t wish my childhood, my mother, on anyone. So I got the hell out of there. And I feel like, with your questions tonight, you want me to say I’m sorry for what I did. But the thing is, I can’t.”
He understandably viewed her actions as desertion, but the other way to look at it was that she’d set them free. In a moment of piercing clarity, she’d embraced the truth Gwendolyn Shepard had made clear all along, that Nick would be far better off in the long run without her.
Did Nick see that now, that she’d done them all a favor? “Faith’s had you, and even your dragon lady of a mother, and our daughter turned out … She’s beautiful. Smart. A little bit of a pain in the ass, but that just means she’s a normal kid so you’ve done your job right.” Pam hiccupped, aware she was rambling hysterically, but Nick watched her, silent and dry-eyed, letting her get it all out. “I can’t apologize for leaving the two of you. Because I knew in my bones that it was the right thing to do and the horrific mistakes I made after I left here prove that.
“Nick, you would have been so ashamed if you could have seen me. I was not someone you could have in good conscience let near your child. Even though I tried to run away from it, I still turned into Mae and every ugly thing I ever hated about her. Given the same set of circumstances, I’d leave you and Faith again.” And maybe that was what she felt guiltiest about, above everything else. What kind of unnatural woman not only abandons her baby but can’t even bring herself to regret it?