I opened my mouth to protest, but didn’t have the strength. I looked down at my hands where they clutched the card she’d given me.
“Alcohol is toxic for your baby,” she said.
“I only drink wine coolers.”
“They have as much alcoholic content as a beer.”
I shook my head. “No, they don’t,” I said. “The label on the beer says you shouldn’t drink it while you’re pregnant, but the wine cooler label says nothing about it.”
“It should. Right now the law doesn’t require that they do, but trust me, they contain the same amount of alcohol as a beer.”
I thought she was wrong, or maybe making it up to scare me. Probably, I thought, the brand of wine coolers I liked simply didn’t have enough alcohol in them to merit the warning.
“Okay,” I said to stop the lecture.
“Would you like me to find an AA meeting near your home?” she offered.
“I don’t need an AA meeting.” I felt my cheeks flush.
I was shaken by her words, though. Shaken enough to drive the hour home without stopping for a wine cooler, and once at The Sea Tender, I found the remainder of the prenatal vitamins I’d taken while pregnant with Maggie and popped one in my mouth. When I opened the refrigerator door to look for something to wash it down with, though, my choice was between the three-week-old carton of orange juice and the six-pack of wine coolers I’d purchased the day before, which was really like having no choice at all.
For another two weeks, I sat with my secret. I tried and failed to cut back on the wine coolers, but I forced myself to eat better and take the vitamins. I didn’t see a doctor. I asked Jamie not to bring Maggie over, telling him I didn’t feel well, which was certainly the truth.
Sara was so wrapped up with baby Keith that she rarely stopped by anymore, and that was a relief. Marcus still came over, and I wore loose beach dresses and was boring company, my dilemma the only thing occupying my mind. I knew I’d give birth to this baby, but I wondered if I should keep it. Maybe I could go away someplace where I could have the baby and place it for adoption with no one any the wiser.
One evening in my twenty-first week, Marcus was over and we drank too much and ate pizza as we watched Seinfeld. He carried our empty plates into the kitchen and I followed a moment later with our empty bottles.
“You look like you’re pregnant in that dress,” he teased me.
I was too taken by surprise to speak, and our eyes suddenly locked.
He reached over to touch my belly, then jerked his hand away. “Jesus!”
“It’s Jamie’s,” I said quickly.
“Jamie’s?” he asked, as though shocked I’d slept with Jamie during our separation.
“It was the week he and Maggie stayed here,” I said. “Remember? When Sara had her baby.”
“Does he know?”
I shook my head. “I haven’t decided what to do.”
“Looks like you’ve already decided to me. Why didn’t you have an abortion?”
I rubbed my eyes, suddenly very tired. “Don’t ask hard questions,” I said as I walked back into the living room and sat down again on the sofa.
He followed me into the room. “What’s hard about it?”
“I lost track of time and I waited too long,” I said. “Now I have to decide if I should go away someplace, have the baby, and let someone adopt it.”
He shook his head. “You need to tell Jamie.”
I let out my breath, dropping my head against the back of the sofa in resignation. “I know.” I’d known all along, deep in my heart, I would not go away, not because I felt any special bond to the baby I was carrying, but because I didn’t have the energy to figure out where to go.
He sat down at the other end of the sofa. “How do you know it’s Jamie’s and not mine?” he asked.
“Because,” I said, lifting my head to look at him again, “that’s the one thing I have decided.”
Jamie and Maggie moved back into The Sea Tender when I was nearly seven months’ pregnant. Jamie was furious with himself for the broken condom, as though it was his fault. He should have checked the date, he said, and he shouldn’t have made love to me when I was still so depressed. He wanted to take care of me, and he was upset that I hadn’t felt able to tell him about the pregnancy from the start. I was nervous about being two weeks farther along than I said I was. I hoped the baby came two weeks late and would then seem like it was right on time.
Maggie was two and a half and talking a blue streak, but I couldn’t understand most of what she said and Jamie needed to serve as her interpreter. I tried hard to understand her, struggling to make sense of the words.
“I’m sorry, honey,” I’d say over and over. “Can you say that again, please?” And when she’d repeat her statement and I still didn’t get it, she’d wail in frustration. Jamie, on the other hand, could listen to her nonsensical-sounding words and know their meaning almost every time. It was uncanny, as though the two of them shared a secret language I could not be part of.
He seemed to know better than to leave me alone with her, and he hired a nanny to babysit during his work hours at the real estate office and on Sunday mornings when he was in the chapel. He gave up the volunteer fire department altogether so he wouldn’t be called away unexpectedly.
Although I was fully in favor of having the nanny take care of Maggie, I disliked being in the house when the middle-aged woman was there. I felt her judging me. I was certain my strained relationship with my child was obvious to her. Jamie had told her my doctor wanted me to rest during the last couple of months of my pregnancy, so that my withdrawal and constant napping wouldn’t seem odd to her, but I felt in the way in my own home. So I spent most of my day sat Talos. I napped on Marcus’s sofa, watched TV, and drank the wine coolers that were forbidden to me at home. I needed them more than ever, with a craving that I knew had become more physical than emotional.
That’s why I was drunk when I went into labor, three weeks early, a full five weeks before the fictional due date I’d told Jamie. And that’s why I called Marcus to take me to the hospital, not wanting Jamie to see me until I was sober.
Andy was only ten hours old when the social worker came into my room at the hospital. Jamie was in the chair next to the bed, telling me he wanted to name the baby Andrew after his father, and I rolled the name around in my mouth even though I was thinking, I don’t care what we name him. What I really wanted was to go back to sleep.
The social worker, whose name I instantly forgot, was about thirty, five years older than me. She wore an expression that I read as ten percent pity and ninety percent condescension as she sat in a chair near my bed and asked me questions I didn’t bother to answer. I didn’t care what she thought of me. I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to see Jamie’s frown as I ignored her.
“Your baby was premature, but even considering his gestational age of about thirty-seven weeks, he’s smaller than he should be,” she said. “He didn’t grow well inside you.”
My eyes still shut, I tried to figure out if anything she’d said could make Jamie doubt his paternity, but the words and the weeks clotted together in my brain and I couldn’t sort them out.
“The staff called me in because of that, and because you were inebriated when you arrived.”
“I still can’t believe it,” Jamie said. He’d already chewed me out for it and I hoped he wasn’t going to start up again.
“You have what we call a dual diagnosis,” the social worker said.
“What does that mean?” Jamie asked.
“First, you have a substance-abuse problem.”
I opened my eyes, but only to roll them at her.
“Your blood alcohol level was .09 when you were brought in,” the social worker said. “The man who brought you…your brother-in-law? He told the staff you’d been drinking throughout your pregnancy.”
I was angry with Marcus. What right did he have to tell anyone anything about me?
“Well, I think she was drinking early on,” Jamie said naively. “We were separated. But the last couple of months, I’ve been home and she hasn’t had anything except I guess last night—” I saw the light dawn in his eyes. “Have you been drinking over at Marcus’s during the day?” he asked.
“Just wine coolers,” I said.
“Oh, Laurel.”
I wasn’t sure if it was disappointment or disgust I heard in his voice.
“The second part of the diagnosis is postpartum depression,” the social worker continued as if I’d said nothing. “I spoke with the nurse who talked with you, Mr. Lockwood—” she nodded at Jamie “—and it seems like that’s been a problem for your wife since the birth of your last child.”
Jamie looked at me. “Finally, Laurel,” he said. “Finally we know what’s been wrong with you all this time.”
I knew about postpartum depression, but whatever was wrong with me was so much worse than that. I’d imagined running a knife through my child’s heart. Wasn’t that more than depression?
The social worker gave us a tutorial about hormones and brain chemistry. She said, “I think you must have felt pretty isolated living on Topsail Island after your daughter was born.”
In a flash, I relived the weeks after Maggie’s birth when she cried constantly and I felt as though I had no one to turn to. I started to answer, but the words couldn’t get past the knot in my throat.
“Your brother-in-law said that you barely drank at all before then,” the social worker said. “I think you felt so bad after your daughter was born that you started to medicate yourself with alcohol to take away the pain.”
I wanted a wine cooler right then, more than anything.
“The pediatricians in the neonatal intensive care unit believe your baby may have problems caused by your drinking.”
I was suddenly alert. “What kind of problems?”
“His small size is probably related to your alcohol consumption,” she said. “His Apgar scores were low. Fortunately, he doesn’t have the facial deformities we often see in babies with fetal alcohol problems, but he did have some respiratory distress that was more than they’d expect in a preemie of his gestational age. There’s often central nervous system involvement. Possibly intellectual or cognitive impairment. It’s too soon to know how severely he might be affected or even if he will be affected that way at all.”
I froze inside. What had I done? I felt the way I had the day I’d pulled into the street and cut off Jamie’s motorcycle. I’d hurt another human being through my actions. I’d hurt my own baby.
“Jamie, I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
He turned his face away from mine, and I knew that he would not be quick to forgive me this time. I didn’t blame him.
“Is he…” I tried to picture the baby I’d seen only briefly in the delivery room. “Is he suffering?” I asked.
“It’s hard to know how much neonates feel,” she said. “What you need to know at this point, though, is that Andrew’s now in the custody of Protective Services. When he’s ready to leave the hospital, he’ll go to a foster home until we can evaluate your home situation.”
“What?” Jamie asked. “We can take perfectly good care of him.” He didn’t look at me. “At least I can.”
“Protective Services will make that evaluation,” she said. “You’ve had a nanny helping with your other child, is that right?”
Jamie nodded.
“She contacted Protective Services when Laurel went into labor. She was worried that your home isn’t a safe environment for an infant.”
“That woman hates me,” I said. I couldn’t even remember the nanny’s name.
“So her report,” the social worker continued, “on top of a substance-abuse problem and Andrew’s fragile health means we have to do what’s best for him, and that’s to place him in foster care once he’s released from the hospital and the home is evaluated.”
“How do we get him back?” Jamie asked.
“The best chance of getting your baby back is for Laurel to go into a rehab program. There’s one in Wilmington that’s specifically designed for people like you with dual diagnoses. It’s expensive, though, so—”
“The money doesn’t matter,” Jamie interrupted her.
I was frightened. “Jamie, please don’t let them lock me up!”
“It’s completely voluntary, Laurel,” the social worker said. “But I highly recommend you go if you want a chance to regain custody of your baby.”
“Please go into rehab.” Sara leaned forward from the chair next to my hospital bed that evening. She’d come into my room and told Jamie to take a break. When she sat down next to me, that was the first thing she said. “Please do it for your family, if not for yourself.”
“I wish y’all would just leave me alone,” I said. Jamie’d been pleading with me about the rehab program for the last few hours and my nerves were brittle. Ready to snap.
Sara sat back in the chair, while I turned my head to look out the window at a darkening winter sky. She was quiet for so long, I thought she’d given up. I heard her shift in the chair and imagined she was getting ready to go, but she was only leaning forward again.
“I remember this woman,” she said slowly. “I saw her a few years ago in a little chapel her husband built. Her husband got up and spoke to the people who were there, and this woman…well, she looked up at him like he’d hung the moon. I remember watching her with envy, thinking I wish I could feel love like that.”
I wanted to tell her to shut up, but my mouth wouldn’t open. I stared through the window at a distant water tower as she continued.
“The man asked people where they’d felt God that week, and when no one answered, that woman got to her feet because she loved her husband so much she didn’t want to see him fail. And she said how she felt God when she was under the stars the night before. She said she was overwhelmed by the beauty of the world.”
I turned to her then. “You still remember that?”
“Oh, yes,” Sara said. “I admired that woman. Admired her and envied her.”
“Where—” my voice was tight, a whisper “—where did she go?”
“She drowned in a bottle of booze,” Sara said bluntly. “Her husband wants her back. And her children need her back.”
“Maggie doesn’t care,” I said. “She hates me.”
“She’s not even three years old!” Sara’s voice rose. “She’s not capable of hate, Laurie. She just doesn’t know you. She doesn’t trust you.”
I shook my head. “All I want right now is a drink,” I said.
Sara suddenly grabbed my wrist. I gasped in surprise, trying to wrench my arm free, but she held it fast. “You’ve become a selfish, self-absorbed bitch.” She looked hard into my eyes and I couldn’t seem to turn away from her gaze. “I understand that your hormones got screwed up,” she said. “I understand you can’t help the depression. But you can fix it, Laurel. You’re the only one who can.”
It was Sara’s anger more than Jamie’s pleading that propelled me into rehab. I didn’t go to get my baby back—I was certain he’d be better off without me. But Sara had made me remember the happy, contented, honorable woman I used to be. If there was a chance I could reclaim that woman—the woman who’d drowned—I had to take it.
The rehab facility was in a peaceful, bucolic setting that belied the intensity of the work taking place inside its four buildings. In the beginning, I hated everything about it: the forced structure, the food, the exercise, the group sessions, my assigned individual therapist. I was surrounded by addicts and crazy people with whom I had nothing in common. They allowed no one to visit me, not even Jamie. They gave me the Prozac I’d resisted a couple of years earlier. I was there a full month before I began to feel a change come over me. I broke down during therapy, crying a river of tears that had been locked inside me, perhaps since the deaths of my parents so many years earlier. I remembered Jamie telling me, so long ago,
If you don’t deal with loss, it could come back to bite you later. Was that what had happened to me?
One memorable day, I laughed at a commercial on television and it was like hearing the voice of a stranger in my ears. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed.
And one morning, almost two months into the program, I woke up caring. I cared how Maggie and Jamie were doing. I cared about my newborn son whose face I’d barely noticed and wished now I could see and touch. I had a picture of him that Jamie had taken at the hospital and I kept it in my pocket during the day and on my night table at night. A palm-size, dark-haired baby, he lay in an incubator, his head turned away from the camera, hooked up to more wires and tubes than I could count. I knew he was now in a foster home, and I prayed he was with people who were holding him and loving him. It felt extraordinary to care about him and Maggie and Jamie. It felt extraordinary to care about myself.
By then, I knew the names of the addicts and crazy people and I knew they were not all that different from me. Some of them had lost their children for good. I wouldn’t let that happen. I was going to fight to get well and then I would fight to get my baby back. And once I had him in my arms again, I would never, ever, let him go.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Maggie
BEN LEANED UP ON HIS ELBOW AND STRUCK A match to light the joint he held between his lips. In that quick flash of light, I saw the smooth, dark hair on his chest. I put my hand on his belly and rested my cheek against that hair. Sometimes I couldn’t get close enough to him. Even when he was inside me, it wasn’t really quite enough. What was wrong with me? He gave me so much and I still wanted more…though I wasn’t sure what it was, exactly, that I wanted more of.
He held the joint to my lips and I pulled the smoke into my lungs, holding it there as long as I could before letting my breath out across his chest.
“I’m worried about Andy,” he said suddenly.
“Me, too.” I knew Mom was still upset we’d given the cops the wrong clothes, but I was glad. I wished I could tell Ben. I wanted to tell someone about that split-second decision Mom and I had made. That weird, sudden connection between us. That no-turning-back moment. I couldn’t lay that on him, though. There were so many things I wanted to tell him but couldn’t. “Everyone’s turned against him all of a sudden.”