Over the phone, I told my mom, “Staying home with a baby is harder than a job. You know it is.”
“But Gabe has to show up on time. You’re already where you need to be.”
“I want him to share the responsibility. He shouldn’t be squeezing the occasional hour of babysitting into his life; he should be scheduling the rest of his life around his son’s never-ending needs and demands.”
“Men don’t usually do that,” she said, placating but firm. My mother, normally a little bit scared of me, wielded more authority with each of these late-night phone calls. “May I make a suggestion?”
She was smoking. I could hear her lips opening and closing around the cigarette. I wished she would quit. I wished she would eat something besides Stove Top stuffing, coleslaw kits, and Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches.
I wished she would use moisturizer and vote Democrat.
“You may,” I said.
“Try loving Gabe less.”
“Excuse me?”
“If you love him less, you’ll lower your expectations of him, and then Gabe won’t be able to disappoint you anymore.”
Momentarily, Jaclyn’s reasoning struck me as genius. I could accept that Gabe was not who I thought he was; I could subscribe to the belief that men are good for breadwinning and mowing the lawn and not much else.
Except that we don’t have a lawn, and my relationship with Gabe has been the only consistently satisfying venture of my adult life.
“I can’t love him less than I already do.”
“Are you sure?” Jaclyn asked. “After you were born, I made a deliberate choice to love your father less. I remember the exact moment. I was trying to breastfeed you, but you were never any good at it. You kept arching your back, squirming and fussing. Your father stayed in the other room, not even offering to bring me a glass of water or an extra pillow. And I thought, You know, I should really just love him less.”
I took a moment to resent my dad, an activity that brought automatic pleasure—as it aligned me with my mother—but an equal amount of guilt. Distracted by the dichotomy, I was slow to identify the flaw in Jaclyn’s advice.
“You and Dad got divorced,” I said.
“And he hasn’t disappointed me in many years.”
“Loving Gabe less won’t solve the problem of this baby needing to be attached to my body at every fucking moment.”
“That’s not a problem, Amanda. That’s motherhood.”
As soon as we hung up, Jack realized I’d forsaken him and began to wail. Watch, I told my mother in my head, Watch what happens next, and I waited for Gabe to rise from our bed, scoop Jack into his arms and—with remorse in his averted eyes—tell me to go lie down. My plan was to forgive him instantly. Gabe was exhausted, overwhelmed. He’ didn’t have the option of spontaneously quitting his job or the kind of mother he could call, hysterical, in the earliest hours of the morning.
Jack cried, and Gabe stayed in the bedroom. I changed my mind; I would not forgive him. I was the one who had given birth. I had done enough. By the time Gabe’s alarm went off at six thirty, the diaper bag was packed. All I had left to do was throw some clothes into a suitcase and gas up our mostly sedentary car.
He begged me not to go. Over and over he said he was sorry. He touched my face. He reached for Jack. He offered to call in sick and spend the day on baby duty. We already had plans to drive out to Ohio after his last day of teaching. We would see my mom then. There was no reason for me to go alone. Plus, Gabe claimed, he didn’t want to miss a moment of his son’s infancy, let alone a full two weeks.
“Really?” I asked. “Because you seemed perfectly happy to miss last night.”
I was proud of my cruelty. My tendency is to be passive, to end fights with an earnest apology almost as soon as they start, Gabe’s hand in mine. Of course I’ve fantasized about winning, but my desire to prove him wrong rarely outmeasures my need to be in Gabe’s good graces.
Yesterday morning he thought I was bluffing, but I wasn’t. As he pleaded with me, I was already calculating how many times I would have to stop the car to nurse Jack, whether we would need to stay the night somewhere in rural Pennsylvania.
“Don’t do this, Amanda. Give me the baby and go get some sleep.”
I didn’t give him the baby, and I still haven’t slept. I told Gabe I would see him in July. The sound of our padlocked door clanking shut filled me with an exhilarating sense of power, which was almost immediately consumed by regret.
Once a decade, often enough to constitute a pattern, I do something unforgivable to the person I love most. My transgressions fold into one another, so that as I was leaving him, I was leaving her all over again.
CHAPTER THREE
The fraught animal sound of Jack wailing drives me to bite my own arm. Afterward, teeth marks linger on my purpling flesh. That’s how Carrie finds me: hissing obscenities in my baby’s direction and bruising fast.
Somehow, it’s 3:00 a.m. again.
“Sorry,” I say, teetering between shame and indifference. It’s not the first time Carrie has caught me in a compromising act.
She shakes her head, dismissing my apology, and takes Jack. I love her for the confidence with which she seizes him, never offering or asking permission. What I’ve learned since giving birth is that few people are truly helpful. Unwilling to risk fucking up, most people want to help but require clear instructions, live tutorials—which is the opposite of helpful. Carrie does what needs doing. In her sturdy arms, Jack has already calmed down.
Passing him to Gabe sometimes has the same effect. Maybe it’s because neither of them smells like breast milk, that drug the baby craves always but can only stomach at two-hour intervals.
I grab the kettle from the stove and fill it with tap water. “I guess he’ll figure out I’m an asshole pretty soon.”
Carrie looks amused. “What?”
“The swearing. The insults.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it. You won’t always feel like saying terrible things to your baby.”
“When will I stop?”
“In, like, another two months.”
“I don’t remember you ever saying terrible things to Nina.”
“Oh, god.” Carrie grimaces. Her memories appear to cause her physical pain. “Let’s not even go there.”
I can’t come up with anything lucid to say. We stand in silence. The cuffs of Carrie’s sweatpants hit below her knees, showing off webs of tattoos covering both her calves. Some are sharp and saturated, while others have already begun to fade. Her hair is wrapped in silk for the night. Staring at the scarf, teal and gold, my first thought is I’ve never seen it before.