Jamie’d turned out great, I thought, but Marcus was questionable. He was still being bottle-fed. I felt tears fill my eyes, though, at receiving her permission. She was the first person who made it sound like no big deal to stop nursing.
“Well, it’s important, Mama,” Jamie said.
From where I sat, I could see the baby’s face tighten into her pre-howling expression. A knot the size of a boulder filled my stomach.
“Oh-oh,” Miss Emma said. “What’s the matter, precious?” She raised the baby to her shoulder and rubbed her back, but the howling started anyway. “She wants her mama, bless her heart.” Miss Emma handed the baby to Jamie—he already handled her with more assurance than I did—who walked with her toward my rocker.
“I’ll try to feed her.” It took all my strength to get to my feet. Jamie settled the baby in my arms and I walked toward the bedroom. I needed privacy, not out of a sense of modesty but because I didn’t want witnesses to my failure.
In the bedroom, I sat on the bed with my back propped up against the pillows and started the battle to get the baby to latch on. She cried; I cried. Finally she started sucking, but not with the fervor I’d witnessed in other infants. Not with the contentment of being in her mother’s arms. Her expression was one of resignation, as though she had to suck on my breast because it was her only option. She would rather be anywhere else but with me.
From the bedroom, I heard Marcus come home.
“Hey, Mama.” I pictured him striding through the living room, leaning over to kiss Miss Emma’s cheek. “When did you get here? Have you seen my little niece yet?”
“Lord have mercy, Marcus!” I heard Miss Emma say. “You smell like a barroom.”
I couldn’t hear the rest of the conversation, just the muffled sound of their voices—including that of a young woman—and I knew Marcus had brought home another of his girlfriends. He seemed to have one for every day of the week.
Closing my eyes, I listened to my own voice inside my head.
Your baby doesn’t like you.
I know. I know.
You can’t even give her enough milk.
I know.
The baby turned her head away from my breast, wrinkling her nose in what I could only interpret as distaste. I felt dizzy with tiredness.
“Jamie,” I tried to call.
I heard laughter from the living room.
Gathering my strength, I called louder. “Jamie!”
In a moment, he opened the door to the bedroom and peered inside. “You doing okay in here?”
“Can you burp her, please?” I asked. “I need a nap.”
“Sure, Laurie.” He took the baby from me and, as I burrowed under the covers and gave in to the exhaustion, I felt the guilty freedom of not having to think about her for an hour or so.
Marcus had moved in with us during the sixth month of my pregnancy and he’d been a mixed blessing. Between Jamie’s work at the real estate office, the fire department and the chapel, his hours were long and unpredictable and I liked having Marcus’s company, even if I often had to share it with his girlfriend du jour and a few six-packs of beer. Jamie’d gotten him a construction job where he used to work. On the evenings Marcus wasn’t working, though, he’d sometimes have dinner ready by the time I got home from my job at the pediatrician’s office. He helped me turn the third bedroom into a nursery, painting it in greens and yellows and setting up the crib and dresser I’d bought. He’d long ago given up the electric piano, but he played the stereo in his room so loud that if I walked on the beach, as I did most mornings and evenings, I could hear it a quarter mile away. He’d turn it down if I asked him to. He did anything I asked, actually. The problem was not between Marcus and me but between Marcus and Jamie. They rubbed up against each other like sandpaper, and I soon realized it had been that way for most of their growing-up years. Jamie was a different person around Marcus. To say that Jamie tried to understand another person’s feelings was putting it mildly. With Marcus though, he reacted before he thought. The music was too loud? He’d yell, “Marcus, turn that crap down!” If Marcus came home in the middle of the night, crashing into furniture and slamming doors after hours of partying, Jamie would get out of bed and I’d cover my head with the pillow to block out the fight.
I discovered it was impossible to intervene in the dance of anger between the brothers. It had been going on too long and my voice must have been a tiny, annoying buzz in their ears when I tried to make nice. Their parents had choreographed the rivalry many years ago with their deferential treatment of their older son. Marcus was no angel, to be sure, and he’d play dense when I tried to talk to him about the way he behaved with his brother. He drank way too much. Although he was only twenty, six-packs of beer appeared and disappeared and reappeared in the refrigerator with such rapidity that I lost track. We began to understand why his parents had planned to kick him out.
“You knew what he’s like,” I said to Jamie on one of our morning walks along the beach. It was a rare March day when the weather had turned so warm we were walking barefoot in the sand. My hands rested on my belly as we walked, cradling the baby I couldn’t wait to meet. “You knew he drinks, he parties, he’s rowdy.”
“Lazy and irresponsible.”
“He’s not lazy at all,” I countered, thinking of the help he’d given me with the nursery. I couldn’t argue with “irresponsible,” though. Several times, Marcus didn’t show up for work, and the foreman called Jamie to complain. Having gotten Marcus the job, Jamie naturally felt responsible for his performance.
“Why did you want him to live with us?” I asked. “Did you think you could change him?”
Jamie ran his hands through his hair and looked out to sea. “I thought I could change me,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“I always had problems with him when we were younger,” he said. “But I feel good about myself. Good about the person I am now, so I thought I could learn to be more tolerant of him. But I swear, Laurie, he’s a whiz-bang expert at pissing me off.”
“I know.” For all the help Marcus gave me, he did put Jamie to the test, like a rebellious teenager trying to see how far he could push his parents.
“Maybe it was a mistake letting him move in,” Jamie said.
“We told him we’d try it for six months,” I reminded him. “Can you tough it out that long?”
Jamie nodded. “If we don’t kill each other first.”
Jamie took three weeks off from real estate and the fire department after Maggie was born. It took me that long to begin thinking of her by her name. At her two-week checkup, the pediatrician I’d worked for confirmed what I already knew: she had colic. He took a finger-prick’s worth of blood from me while I was there and told me I was still anemic, which accounted for my exhaustion and pallor.
“And I think you have a touch of the baby blues, Miss Laurel,” he said, still referring to me the way he did when I worked there. He studied my face and I realized I’d forgotten to paste on my smile that morning. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Your hormones will sort themselves out in good time.”
I told him about my struggle to breast-feed. Every couple of hours, Maggie and I were locked in a battle that left both of us drained and at least one of us in tears. He was hesitant about suggesting I stop, but something in my demeanor tipped him over the edge.
“The first two weeks were the most important,” he said. “And if it’s having a negative impact on how you feel about her and about yourself, I suggest you begin weaning her now.”
I nodded, relieved. Things would be better, I thought. I wouldn’t dread feeding time. I would start to love her.
But that didn’t happen. She took to the bottle more easily than she had my breast, but she still seemed uncomfortable in my arms, fussing no matter how I held her. I could quiet her by slipping my finger in her mouth, but as soon as she realized there was no food coming from my fingertip, the crying started again.
She was
undeniably different with Jamie. She’d sleep on his shoulder or in the crook of his arm. I was both envious of her comfort with him and relieved that something could put an end to her crying.
The night before Jamie returned to work, I begged him to take another week off.
We were lying in bed together, keeping our voices low so we didn’t wake her even though she was a room away from us.
“I can’t, Laurie,” he said. “It’s nearly high season and I’ve already taken too much time off.”
“Please don’t leave me alone with her!” I sounded desperate, which was exactly how I felt.
“She’s your daughter, Laurie, not a rabid dog.”
“You’re so much better with her than I am,” I said.
“I know you haven’t felt well.” He raised himself up on an elbow and smoothed my hair back from my face. “Just walk with her a little. I don’t think you hold her enough. She wants to be held.”
“She cries when I hold her.”
“She picks up your tension. You just need to relax more with her.”
“I used to be so good with babies,” I said. I’d read nearly every book on babies ever written and suddenly seemed to know nothing at all. “Dr. Pearson always relied on me to help when a mother brought in her infant.”
Jamie smiled. “And you’ll be good with them again. You got off to a rough start with the hemorrhaging and everything. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
So Jamie went back to work, and I didn’t get better. I got worse. Having a baby had been a huge mistake, and only I seemed to know it. Sometimes I would look at Maggie—she could be screaming or sleeping, it didn’t matter—and I’d have to remind myself she was my child. I felt detached from her. She could have been a wedge of cheese or a frying pan for all the emotion I felt looking at her. I began to feel the same way about Jamie. I’d look at him and wonder how I’d ended up living on this sparsely populated island with a man for whom I felt nothing.
The uncrowded quietness I’d relished living on the island suddenly felt like isolation. I realized I had very few friends nearby, and of those I did have, none were young mothers. I still had a few friends from college, but they lived in the city. The only one with a baby called to congratulate me on Maggie’s birth, but her enthusiastic gushing over her own little boy only served to let me know I wasn’t normal.
I apologized to Maggie repeatedly. “You deserve a better mommy,” I’d say. “I’m sorry I’m so bad at this.” Marcus still offered to cook a few evenings a week, but as long as he was sober, I’d hand Maggie over to him instead and make dinner myself. Even Marcus was better with Maggie than I was.
When Jamie came home from work, it was Maggie he rushed to see, not me, and that was fine. It gave me the chance to crawl back in bed with the covers over my head—my escape in the guise of a nap.
One day during that first week alone with my daughter, I put her in the infant seat on the kitchen counter while I heated her bottle in a pan of water on the stove. Maggie was screaming, her face red as a beet. I was keeping an eye on the water when I suddenly pictured myself standing above Maggie with a knife in my hand, plunging it through her little pink-and-white onesie into her tiny body.
I yelped, backing away from the stove, pressing myself against the pantry door. I saw the knife block on the counter and quickly grabbed the entire block, carrying it down the hall into Marcus’s room, where I stashed it under his bed. Surely if I had to go to that much trouble to get a knife, I’d have time to talk myself out of harming Maggie with it.
Back in the kitchen, I trembled as I picked her up, took the bottle from the hot water, and settled down in the rocker to feed her. With the nipple in her mouth, she quieted down.
I thought of mothers who hurt their children. People who shook their babies so hard they caused brain damage. I was scared. Was I capable of doing that?
“I love you,” I told her as I rocked, but the words sounded like a line uttered in a play by someone pretending to be someone else.
“I need to sleep,” I muttered from bed the next morning when Jamie was getting dressed. We’d both been up half the night, taking turns walking with our colicky daughter.
“I’ll take her to the office,” Jamie said, surprising me. I didn’t even wonder how he would manage having her at the real estate office with him. I rolled over and went back to sleep, my relief at the thought of a day without Maggie outweighing my guilt. Soon, he was taking Maggie with him every day while I slept. I vaguely wondered what his coworkers thought about the situation, but I didn’t really care. Jamie would find a way to explain it.
I felt drugged half the time, as though someone was slipping narcotics into my drinking water. In my sleepy state, I fantasized about running away. I could go someplace where no one knew me and start over. When my chest hurt one afternoon, I hoped I was having a heart attack. A fatal heart attack would put an end to the numbness I felt inside. I wouldn’t have to hear Maggie screaming any longer or do laundry or worry about what to make for dinner. And Jamie and Maggie would be better off without me. I was completely convinced of that.
“Do you remember Sara Weston?” Jamie asked me one Sunday afternoon.
It took me a minute to place the name. “The woman who came to the chapel a few times in the beginning?” I hadn’t been to the chapel since Maggie was born, and the pentagonal building down the beach from our house seemed miles away.
“Right. She came back today with her husband, Steve. He’s stationed at Camp Lejeune. Anyhow, the reason she hasn’t been coming is because Steve wasn’t interested but she finally talked him into it today.”
“Did he like it?”
Jamie laughed. “I don’t think it was his cup of tea, though he was a good sport about it. But anyway, what I’m getting at is that Sara asked about you and I said you could use some help with Maggie and she volunteered.”
Oh no, I thought. “I don’t want a stranger in the house, Jamie,” I said.
“No, I know you’re not up for that. But she can take Maggie when I’m tied up during the day.”
“We hardly know her.” I thought about the knives, which I’d had to bring back to the kitchen to avoid having to explain their whereabouts to Jamie and Marcus. Sara Weston could hardly be as dangerous as I was. “If you feel okay about her, then that’s fine,” I said.
I was still in bed the following Tuesday morning when Jamie knocked on the bedroom door.
“Laurel?” he said. “Sara Weston’s here. Come out and say hi.”
I shut my eyes, trying to draw energy from someplace inside me. “I’ll be out in a minute,” I said, too softly.
“What?” Jamie was right outside the bedroom door.
“In a minute.” I spoke louder.
I got out of bed, pulling on the same clothes I’d worn the day before, and stumbled into the living room.
Sara looked as she had many months earlier, when I first saw her at the chapel. Only now, in summer shorts and peach-colored polo shirt, I could see that she was athletically built. She looked like a soccer mom. She sat on the sofa, holding Maggie on her lap.
“You have one gorgeous baby.” She smiled at me.
“Thank you.” I pasted on the smile as I sank into the rocker.
Jamie set a glass of sweet tea on the coffee table in front of her.
“And I love your house,” she said. “So unique.”
“Thanks.”
“I wanted to meet you since I’ll be helping out with Maggie,” she said. “You know, to see if you have any special instructions or anything.”
“Just—” I shrugged “—you know…don’t kill her or anything.”
She and Jamie stared at me, and I laughed.
“You know what I mean.” I knew I sounded insane. I didn’t care. I wanted to go back to bed in the worst way.
“Well, okay.” She laughed, glancing at Jamie. “I think I can manage that.”
I had my six-week postpartum checkup with my obstetrician in Hampstead. On
ce he was finished examining me, I sat up, crinkling the paper sheet around my thighs.
“I’m still so tired all the time,” I said.
“The new mother’s lament.” He smiled, then scratched his balding head. “You’re still slightly anemic. Are you taking your iron?”
I nodded.
“How are you sleeping?”
“Not great at night. I take care of the baby during the night because my husband takes her during the day.”
“But you sleep in the daytime?”
I nodded again.
“How’s your appetite?”
“I don’t really have one.”
“I think you’ve got some depression in addition to the anemia,” he said.
I hated that catchall word “depression.” I knew there was something wrong with me, but depression was too simplistic a term for it. “If I could just get caught up on my sleep, I think I’d be fine,” I said.
“I’d like to start you on a trial of Prozac.” He pulled a prescription pad from the pocket of his white coat. “Have you heard of it?”
The new miracle antidepressant. “I don’t want an antidepressant,” I said. “I don’t feel that bad.”
He hesitated. “Well,” he said, “I want you to know it’s available to you if you’d like to try it. And I can refer you to a therapist. It might be good to have someone to talk to about how you’re feeling.”
“I don’t think so, thanks.” How could I tell a stranger that I’d thought about killing my child or running away? He’d send me to the loony bin and throw away the key.
The doctor reached for the doorknob, then turned back to me. “Oh, and you and your husband can begin having sexual relations again,” he said, and I masked my antipathy with a smile.
Over the phone that afternoon, I told Jamie the doctor had said I was still anemic.
“Did he say we could start making love again?”
“A couple more weeks.” I winced inwardly at the lie. “He said I could have an antidepressant if I wanted one, but that I didn’t really need it yet.”