Protecting Her(6)

“Yes. Hello, Mother. How have you been?”

“Fine.” That’s always her answer. She’s always fine. “And how have you been?”

“Good. Very good.”

“Work is going well?”

“Yes. It’s going very well.”

The phone is silent. She doesn’t know what to say. I’m surprised she’s not asking me about the pregnancy. I know her gossiping friends told her about it. Victoria knew Rachel was pregnant and she’s the queen of gossip.

“I was calling, Mother, to tell you that Rachel and I had a baby.”

“Oh. Well, congratulations.” She sounds odd. I can’t tell if she’s happy for me or not. “What did you have?”

“A boy. We named him Garret.” As I say his name, I look down at him in my arms. He’s watching me again and I smile.

“That’s a nice name,” she says.

Was that a compliment? If so, it would be the first one I’ve heard from her in years.

Garret fusses and I rock him a little in my arms.

“Is that the baby?” my mother asks.

“Yes. I’m holding him.”

“Are you at the hospital?”

“No. I’m at home.”

“Why doesn’t your wife have him?”

My mother is someone who finds it odd for men to be involved in childcare, so I’m not surprised by her question. I’m sure my father never held me when I was a baby.

“Rachel is still in the hospital,” I say. “There were complications during the delivery. She lost a lot of blood so they’re keeping her there for a few days.”

“But you have a nanny, of course.”

“No. We chose not to hire one. We’d rather care for Garret ourselves.”

“You can’t care for a baby, Pearce. Not by yourself. Babies are a lot of work.”

“Yes. I know. I’ve only been home with him for an hour and I’m already feeling overwhelmed.”

“I’ll come right over. Where do you live?”

I almost drop the phone. She’s actually coming over? Without my having to ask?

“Thank you, Mother. I would appreciate the help.” I give her the address and she says she’ll leave right away.

I can’t believe this. Is she not angry with me anymore? Or does she just want to see her grandson?

Garret’s now asleep in my arms. I’m afraid if I move, he’ll start crying again. I turn on the TV, lowering the volume so he doesn’t wake up. I flip through the channels, stopping on a cartoon.

When I was a child, I never watched cartoons. I wasn’t allowed to. We only had one TV in the house and my father used it mainly to watch financial news. I’m going to let Garret watch cartoons. I’m not going to rob him of his childhood the way my parents took mine.

I flip to a sports channel. There’s a baseball game on. That’s another thing I’m going to do. Take Garret to baseball games. My father never took me to one, but I still went to games with people I knew from school.

I attended a private prep school with other very wealthy students. Some of them had fathers who were members. My friends were chosen for me by my parents. I didn’t particularly like these friends, but having them in my life allowed me to do activities my parents had no interest in, such as going to ball games in New York. Or sometimes we’d meet up and play football. I played football in high school and my father never even asked me how I learned to play. He doesn’t like sports so I was surprised he even let me be on the team. But he said it made me appear to be well-rounded, which would be good for my image. Of course, he never went to a game and neither did my mother.

There were no father-son activities when I was growing up. I had to teach myself how to do things. There was a time during my teen years that my father became so busy with work that he basically forgot I existed. I used that time to my advantage, doing things he’d never allow me to do if he were paying attention. That’s when I discovered girls and alcohol. The alcohol came first, which gave me the courage to talk to girls. It didn’t take long before I was drinking way too much, and by 15, I was having sex. I hid all of this from my father until one of the members caught me passed out drunk in my car with a half-naked girl.

When my father found out, he beat me. He took me outside and hit me repeatedly in a fit of rage. I wanted to fight back but he had his gun on him, so I just waited for him to finish. His anger wasn’t because I was drinking or with a girl. It was because I was caught by a fellow member, and that member told the other members, which embarrassed my father. My behavior made it look as though he didn’t have control over me, and he couldn’t stand the idea that people were saying he’d lost control of his son.